Dear Cherful,

What stops you from detaining that fellow who killed Jill Meagher?
Have I said anything to the contrary?

Where's the need to trial and punish someone whom you do not consider one of yours anyway? Given that he is a dangerous enemy who wants to kill more people - just lock him up forever, or shoot him for that matter, but don't play the punishment-game!

As for the land, you have no moral right over it. It's obscene and childish for some admirals who never actually planted a tree or built a house to draw a line on the sand saying "from here to here is mine". What you worked for is yours, that value you added to the land, not the land itself and if all you can rely on is empty declarations and the use of threats to kick out others, then that makes you are an unworthy brute.

I have been thinking that what I wrote earlier may not be clear enough because perhaps people fail to understand the difference between punishment and self-defence, as both could superficially look the same to the untrained eye.

Self-defence is all about YOU: You want to be safe, so you take the necessary measures.

Punishment is all about THEM: They are on the wrong and I am going to fix them.

Self-defence falls short of saintly, but is acceptable for ordinary people who value their own life, welfare, family and possessions.

But only the saintly may punish, casting the first stone, who in doing so are completely clean of self-interest and whose only motive is to help the sinner to repair their soul. Punishment is patronising ("me better than you") and hence should be strictly reserved to those who are truly worthy of being our patrons.

We are fighting a guerilla war with self proclaimed Isis supporters,

In times of war, national security takes precedence over civil law.
When peace is restored the laws can then be changed back to suit a society at peace.

Don't blame the law, blame members of the Islamic religion who were
Allowed to come to this country but then decided we should be killed because
We don't share their religion.

They are the ones making it hard for their people here.
They have incurred the mistrust of their fellow Australians.

As I see it, the government is acting in self defence to protect us from these enemy
agents within.

During world war 2, Germans, Italians and Japanese Australians were interred until
The war ended. There was no way to know who might send information to
the enemy intentionally or unintentionally, just by communicating with their families
back in their homeland.

Did the law violate their civil rights? Yes. Was it common sense and self defence in a war time situation. Yes, most definitely.

We are at war.

Chearful raises some valid points.
In fact the internies could not communicate with their relatives in
their home countries. The Red Cross did handle mail for POWs as it
is a trusted organisation but everything was censored.
That was covered by the Geneva convention on war & for POWS.
I do not know if those rules applied to enemy alien who were interned.

I heard an interesting talk on BBC World Radio last night.
The interviewee suggested it was not much use to try and eliminate ISIS
because there are dozens of groups like ISIS with very similar beliefs
who will just expand into the space left by ISIS.
His suggestion is we have to develop a program to take account of this.

That does suggest that we are in for another 1000 years of warfare
with the Islamists.
It brings me back to my suggestion of some months ago that we just
build an electronic wall around the Middle East and let no one in and
no one out. Any moslems outside that want to go in could do so but
none inside could come out or even communicate with the outside world.
Arrangements could be made for ships of each area to use the
Suez & Panama Canals but crews could not go ashore.

I know it is a wild proposal but does anyone else know how to stop
a war that has been going on for 1400 years ?
The Islamists occupied a lot of Europe in the past and they want to
reclaim Europe (and its colonies ?) as Allah has told them it is their duty.