In my view if we continue to allow hate literature we’ll have to do away with Harmony Day.

We live in a democracy which didn’t happen by chance. That democracy may have to be maintained by making unpopular decisions from time to time. What is more of an interest is the fact that we need to introduce a degree of censorship. Why? Let’s work backwards and see if we can find the problem and bring about a thoroughgoing change which will prevent the need for a degree of censorship in the future. The need for censorship is a result of immigration. Which immigrant group has caused this action: Chinese? Spanish?Lithuanian?Tongan? Pitcairn Islanders? South Americans? or perhaps people from the Middle East?

The tocsin has been sounded and I’m sure that one day our leaders will hear it.

What fear is that? That writings arguing the terrorist case may enter our world , to be analysed?
That we might be tempted to take the issues to law and have them tested?
Our A/G could do so since we are party to the Rome Statute. Such might provide better understanding and gain credibility by removal of the double standard.
But no Governments need fear as part of the strategy of control, as part of their being with the in crowd.
Denial of actions is the way of control though there are others as the Four Corners Programme showing Australian complicity in torture mighty indicate.
No I am not advocating terrorism but treating it as an unfathomable black box gets us no where, nor does the application of might.
Governments like law and order as an issue except when applied to them and there is more than enough evidence to warrant testing at law.
That is of course if we want a world run on democratic principles. However the National Security Statement of September 2002 by the USA would suggest old style power politics and the rule of might in which people and countries are pawns to the desires of the rulers, dressed up of course as national needs and patriotic endeavour.
Our leaders have not the patience to continue the frustrating search for World laws, presumably because apart from issues like "nappy changing" which the UN is said to be good at anything further would impinge on governments need for Nationalism, patriotism. Hyped emotive behavour often with the variuos attributes of modern politics, Dog Whistling, Push Polling, wedging and misinformation as much by omission as direct falsehood.

What if I want to read a biography of Nelson Mandela? Or a history of Fretilin? Or analysis of the troubles in Northern Ireland? If you bring in laws banning anything that relates to terrorism its a pretty wide net.

Why is it in Australia that we want to ban what we don't like? There are many points of view being expressed in our society which I vehemently disagree with and find offensive, but I am still glad that people are allowed to express them. Freedom of speech/expression is a fairly fundamental right in a democracy.

perhaps you're new here, 1340: oz is not a democracy.

ozzians are not citizens, they are subjects. many of them value 'harmony' over freedom of expression. many of them think laws against public discussion are a good thing. many of them support the government view that talking about terrorism is a bad thing, lest it inspire rebellious thoughts. many of them can not conceive that anything the government does can be bad for australian people.

in short, many ozzians are 'biddable', house-trained sheep.

I think this issue can't be resolved anytime soon, and most certainly won't.

Having said that, our Civil Libs have shown themselves to be akin to terrorists themselves at times, shown most obviously in their fury that the racist Islamic cleric Sheik Feiz had his vile propaganda banned.

These capitalistic Islamic preachers who abuse western hospitality - selling death on tape! Far worse than what Benny Hinn does! need to be monitored, and we aren't going far enough.

Anyone who preaches violence against another group, or even spreads scurrilous lies unsupportable by evidence - like the 9/11 conspiracy theories that it was really Israel or the C.I.A, or clerics who preach that Christians spread AIDS through Africa, should be banned.

Such things have shown themselves to be dangerous.

One of the London bombers left a will saying that Britain must stop gassing Muslims, an utterly absurd proposition.

This lunatic actually ended the lives of people based on incorrect information, propaganda.

Muslims have shown themselves to be very conspiratorially minded, so need to be watched closely, and much of their literature banned.

This isn't wrong.

I also reject the notion that such actions lead to looking at say, the French resistance against Nazi Germany as terrorists.

No.

The reason Hezbollah and Hamas are terrorists is simple. Their own charters state that Israel must be destroyed, Jews genocided, showing they aren't at all victims - rather perpetrators.

I don't remember the French resistance motto being 'All the way to Berlin', or 'Germany for French, not Germans'.

They simply wanted THEIR country back, they didn't want to make Germans bow to France five times a day.

This is a big difference.

It means one needs to look into it more, as groups with such agendas can never be victims. It's like saying we should be nice to Nazi's.

They simply must be crushed.

My question is with respect! If Israel is the promised land, why do not all jewish people move there?

I appreciate that, that is not possible. I read so much about the meaning of Israel and the promised land.

Who promised this land and has anyone met this person?

Why is this promised land so sacred, that people can be sacrificed and suffer for it. Irrespective of whom they are?

I suppose it stops anyone looking too closely at state sponsered terrorism.... as a potential major cause, I mean.

Kipp, the answer may be found in descriptions of other countries. NZ is the land of the long white cloud but I have seen photos of NZ bathed in sunlight. Australia is said to be down under but as you know a lot of us live on the surface. The USA is said to be the land of opportunity but what opportunities are available to those citizens who are residents of Sunnybank Nursing Home or citizens who have passed over to the other side?

Ain't it a paradox.

Dear Tony

I studied Peace and Conflict at UQ, with a subject called Terrorism and Insurgency, suffered from a lack of evidence from the 'opposing' point of view and too slavishly accepted that government/military/intelligence 'security discourse' disseminated by George W Bush, Tony Blair and John Howard.

One lecturer, David Martin Jones, told us that the Chechnyans were 'terrorists' and tried to ignore my question when I asked why we should accept this version of the narrative since the Russian Army had destroyed the Chechnyan capital Grozny and massacred many of its inhabitants. Surely this was state terror.

As you say, "Taken together, these make terrorists of the Jewish armed resisters to Nazi troops in the Warsaw ghetto or French Resisters attacking German military facilities, and rule out as terrorist any acts committed by Russian troops in Chechnya or Serbian troops in Kosovo".

The Bush administration has accepted that the persecuted Muslim West China minority, the Uighurs, are terrorists and locked seventeen of them away in the psychological torture experiment centre at Guantanamo Bay.

The Bush administration also believes that the Hmong refugees now living in the USA are ‘terrorists’. This may seem a bit rich if you got your first gun from a kindly CIA aid worker when you were nine years old. Yes, state terror knows no boundaries - just ask the Apartheid-era South African Special Forces, who received plenty of support from the US government.

I have met Mamdouh Habib. I also hope to meet former Taliban foot soldier David Hicks. I am not drawn to terrorists, but I am gravely concerned when people like the former Minister for Immigration, now Australia’s Attorney General, Phillip Ruddock, take upon themselves the task of identifying terrorists.

Another former lecturer in Terrorism and Insurgency, Carl Ungerer, believes I "should be watched". I reminded him that I am a lifelong practitioner of non-violence and our government’s resources are expensive. He retracted the jibe, but the threat remains current.

As you imply, governments with powers of censorship will distort and reinterpret what they term seditious material. We cannot trust them.

Willy Bach
http://willybachpoeticthoughts.blogspot.com

R.I.P Democracy.

Wily,

Next time you speak to Mamdouh Habib ask him why he wore an Osama Bin Laden t-shirt after the brutal attacks on African embassies which killed hundreds of Africans.

Does he hate blacks or something?

Ask him why he laughed on the phone to his wife in the immediate days after 9/11, which ASIO thankfully tapped.

Ask him why he is such a scumbag who hates the western world he lives in Australia on the pension.

Ask him why he brought his son up to kidnap his female cousin, shave her head, and threaten her because she didn't wear the hijab.

Ask him why he was friends with Islamic supremacists convicted of the first WTC bombing in 1993? His phone records show that he regularly spoke to such vermin even after they were convicted from the US prison they were being held in.

Ask him why he thinks the Taliban deserve to exist, given their misoginistic treatment of women, racist treatment of minority Afghan tribes, and so on.

It seems like you've engaged with the very definition of the term bigot, racist, homophobe, misoginst.

If you don't ask him these things, your a coward.

Oh, you mention apartheid too, yet say nothing about Islamic aparthied.

Aparthied of Palestinians, those who Muslims are supposed to love dearly, and who live behind razor wire in camps that they can't leave, even to work, or to buy a home. They have no rights in their Arab brothers' nations.

Apartheid against women in nearly every Muslim nation, especially in Iran and Saudi Arabia - where if caught driving, are charged bizarrely with prostitution.

Aparthied against religions, with Saudi Arabia making it illegal for any citizen to be a non-Muslim, and Iran not allowing non-Muslims into many professions.

Or do you think so little of Muslims, are they so child-like, in-bred, that they know not what they do?

Condemn apartheid, don't just condemn white people.

Tony Coady

As a “constitutionalist”, not a lawyer, I succeeded against the Federal Government lawyers, in a 5-year legal battle, on all constitutional grounds. I publish books about certain constitutional and other legal issues, and my and despite being directed not to publish some of my own writings, still have done so, as nothing they can do to stop me.
Sure, most people would be scared of but I am not. As my website http://www.schorel-hlavka.com makes clear that in my view John Howard is a TERRORIST, and published that in my book and used this in my successful court cases as evidence! See also my blog; http://au.360.yahoo.com/profile-ijpxwMQ4dbXm0BMADq1lv8AYHknTV_QH. Ultimately a weasel they might scare of but with me they can only face defeat!

Hansard 2-3-1898 Constitution Convention Debates
QUOTE
Mr. BARTON.-Yes; and here we have a totally different position, because the actual right which a person has as a British subject-the right of personal liberty and protection under the laws-is secured by being a citizen of the states. It must be recollected that the ordinary rights of liberty and protection by the laws are not among the subjects confided to the Commonwealth. The administration of [start page 1766] the laws regarding property and personal liberty is still left with the states.
END QUOTE

While the Commonwealth of Australia is grabbing more and more power, albeit unconstitutional, I have taking them to task and defeated them in Court!
The more people were to follow my example, to fight for our constitutional rights, the less likely their TYRRANY will succeed.

Then again, those who cave in from onset or out of misconception support the unconstitutional grab of power may just discover one day that it is their turn to suffer at the hands of the Commonwealth of Australia and then it might be too late to resolve it.