I'm not much of a conspircist but I am firmly believe most of our leaders at present are intellectual cowards -
we are condemned to a life under terror becuase of the disprortional response to a couple of lucky terrorist actions no one is prepared to say we made a few errors in judgement (and that putting it kindly)

Western powers are currently stomping all over arab lands - based on lies and misinformation - Afgahistan is a running sore - anti western forces have an arms life line funded by opium and even though the Britsih and the Us has had an opportunity to stop the trade it flourishes - we will have terror of one sort or another for jusr as long as we want it

As a result western countries have spent squillions jumping at shadows - sure the bad guys have blown up a paltry few thousand - and that is sad - but worse has been done;

We will continue to "foil" half arsed plots to blow up planes trains and autombiles - and parade the hapless wannabe's and copy cats in fornt of the cameras - and be told time and time again "told you so" and how these severe and costly measures are needed to protect our way of "life" and our "values" - yawn!

We are not that importent that the terrorist give a tinkers cuss about our way of life - their interests lie in getting us to pull our noses out of theirs - may be we should try minding our own damn business for a while and things will settle down.

I think I'll post to this thread too -

This is a thorough description of Al Qaeda, if you have the patience to read it... it's worth your while.

http://kurtnimmo.com/?p=131

More can be found in Episode 1 of The Power of Nightmares (BBC), which was aired on SBS a few months ago:

Streaming:

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-1002626006461047517

The thing that amazes me is how earnestly our politicians trot out this Al Qaeda muck, even though they must be aware how tissue thin the myth is becoming.

The sad reality is that they are far more afraid of the creators of the myth than they ever could be of mysterious blokes with rags around their heads.

Welcome to "sovereign" Australia.

*

That 'power of nightmares' documentary is brilliant - it should be required viewing in schools.

We do have cause to fear terrorism, but not the huge reaction we have been getting.

You can break it down to the basic numbers - take a look at how many Australians have died in the last five years as a direct result of terrorism.

compare that to road deaths, or heart disease or skin cancer.

Now you can argue that without vigilance the toll can only rise - a valid point. But I would argue that the kneejerk reaction of taking the war to the middle east is only going to increase the likelihood of attack. I've said it before and I'll say it again - terrorism is a concept (and an ill-defined one at that), and you can't bomb a concept.

Then there is the issue of how real the threat actually is. There are terrorists out there, that can't be denied. But this idea of the overarching Al-Qaeda organisation that is some kind of monolithic enemy is absurd.
Instead we have a haphazard collection of cells working separately that are not the well organised machine we are being led to believe they are.

I'll leave you with a thought - what can signify victory in this 'war on terror.' What would justify it ending? Somehow I don't think Bin Laden's head on a pole would actually end anything.

Clearly there is no end in sight. So 'temporary' measures of war are not temporary at all. Each of these changes is permanent, because so is this war on terror.
So before you go allowing changes as a temporary pretext for protection, ask yourselves this - would you rather live in a world terrorised by haphazard cells of muslim militants, or a world where the state has the power to detain those who would criticise it? It can happen, it happened to the german democracy prior to WW2. Be vigilant about your rights.

When I heard of the arrests in the UK in August, my first reaction was of horror that people could plot to blow up innocent civilians, and the cunning nature of the weapons - liquid explosives for goodness sake.

Me second reaction was: hang on, remember this is the same police force that shot dead the innocent Brazilian man, that went in with extreme force on dozens of private houses on supposedly watertight intelligence, and found absolutely nothing.

Since then, I've been waiting for clarification of the evidence against those arrested in August in the UK.

I suspect it might well be like waiting for the Iraqi WMDs.

But the public will of course have forgotten about it by then, and the raising of the general fear level will have been achieved.

If Australia was a private company, a competent manager would be saying - where should we allocate our resources. Now lets see. About 2000 per year killed on the roads, and many thousands injured. About 3000 commit suicide, and many thousands more attempt it. Lets have a "War on Road Deaths" and a "War on Suicide". But of course this won't happen. Because instead of competent management we have dishonest, unscrupulous, unimaginative politicians who will do and say anything to retain power.

While our wonderful governments build this ridiculous terrorist threat, and set about creating new enemies, do they think they are hiding what most people know is the last big resource grab.
We (the west) all sit back and watch as our governments systematically divide the world, and to top it off, there is not even one person with a level head to vote for in Australia. Our country and the rest of the world is quickly deteriorating. Our children will inherit an environmental disaster with enemies they don’t even know or understand, when all we had to do was treat our neighbour with respect, at the end of the day the average world citizen just want’s to now they are safe, have clean water, food and most of all peace, where is our dialogue of civilisations, diversity is beautiful, we need new politicians that understand cultural differences are a good thing. There is evil on both sides, if we do not unite we will never have peace. (I understand many may not agree with me but I'm sad for my children and the generations that are not even here yet)

Good on you Warren.

Your thoughts reflect that of many thousands of thinking Australians.

Yes we do have cause to fear terrorism, even if that threat has been largely manufactured by our inhumane and cras foreign policies, not least the oil war embroglio in Iraq.

But terrorism is a miniscule threat to our safety and security, when compared with that posed by global climate change. Few Australians have yet to wake up to the immensity of this.

Al Gore's film - An Inconvenient Truth - is a real eye opener. Even for those already convinced by the now incontrovertable scientific evidence.