Anti terror laws are one part to stop radical islamists and two parts to to subjugate mass populations for gloabal economic radicalism. They are not specific enough to realise the latter.

It seems a new 'divide and conquer' paradigm is being proposed:

A WORLD without punishment sounds like paradise and, given a choice, most people opt for this live and let live approach. But as freeloading inevitably becomes rife, they quickly flee to join a group where selfish members are made to pay, new research by European scientists shows.
Solving some of the world's most pressing issues, such as climate change, will depend on finding the right conditions to exploit this tendency, researchers say.
No explanations, however, account for why many ordinary people recycle, donate blood, or fight wars to help society, for no glory and at great effort.
People do not foresee the personal benefits of co-operating, the study found. When 84 people were offered the choice of playing a money game where punishment was allowed or banned, two-thirds chose the no-punishment group.
In the end almost everyone joined the yes-punishment group. Co-operation increased, punishment dropped off and the financial rewards were high. People were more than willing to undergo financial pain to achieve a collective gain, the team concluded.

http://www.smh.com.au/news/national/scientists-confirm-no-pain-no-gain/2006/04/07/1143916722780.html

Comments:

*This is Amazing-Propaganda - no scientists or institutes are mentioned

*It has a stunning and timely connection with the AWB scandal, Howard's looming AWB involvement and new media ownership laws.

*Howard is worried and is unashamed to call in media favours to propagate propaganda to tell we the masses that we should dob each other in for any petty sin or annoyance that a neighbour might convey. This is just 'divide the masses and conquer them'. I just think its time to get rid of Howard. I can't think of any one else who would want to propagate this nonsense at this particular moment in Australian history.

* If this is in fact any proper study at all, there are many flaws.

Continuing..

Continued..

1. It is based on stable communities. They don't exist anymore because of global economic investor/everyman-for-himself paradigms.

2. Communities are also destabalising due to global economic pressure to immigrate skills and new consumer markets rather than train community members. This is a punishment for merely existing and redifines the entire game anyway. The above results become inapplicable to modern societies.

3. It is well known that behaviour is not predicated on economics alone. Such things as Jungian connections to the Gestalt and feeling good about oneself (conscience) have also been studied and validated.

4. Such nonsense is reminiscent of Big Brother in '1984'. It seeks to make communities slaves by some moral or economic imperative to whatever paradigms it might propose to enhance economic advantages for minority classes. Typically just a bunch of type A personality, alpha males.

5. This propaganda can be construed as wedge-politics. The simple defeat for this new 'wedge politics' is to vote immediately for an opposition - ANY opposition, before its too late. We still have the power to vote! I don't fancy living in a society where I get stabbed by a neighbour for not tying my shoe laces properly or mowing the lawn a day late. What a joke!

I don't understand why there isn't any rational debate about the value of our freedoms.

In the 4 years before all these laws were installed no acts of terrorism took place in Australia. Many people died or were seriously injured in motorcar accidents or of poor healthcare. We could say that the risk of being killed by terrorists is much smaller than the risks we take every day.

We could lessen these risks by banning (or restricting the use of) cars or doubling the medicare levy. However we deem these everyday risks to be acceptable and don't resort to those measures.

The risk created by terrorists however is deemed to be so great by the government that it will sacrifice all our hardwon freedoms without any measure of debate.

As any insurance person will tell you life is governed by risk. Governments by rules and regulations (eg such as making drink driving illegal) can reduce the everyday risks we face. However the way our government has kneejerked to the suddenly increased risk of terrorism is absurd and defies all common sense.

Australians have been lucky that we have never been governed by a truly malevolent government but we shouldn't be complacent and think that we are immune from abuse. For instance in the last generation the police force of just about every state has had a royal commission into corruption. Not exactly reassuring and it make you wonder if you really want to trust these guys with all your rights.

What's next? Perhaps the immigration department can bring in former stasi informers from eastern Germany under the skills shortage program.

PS I realise this post may come across as coldhearted but I just don't see why we must forgo all our freedoms to save lives from terrorist acts whilst saving lives by doubling the medicare levy or (shock horror) redirecting taxcuts into healthcare is not worthwhile.