Yes, everyone,Terrorism IS so bad.
It is bad because each act is worn as a badge or trophy by the perpetrators to highlight and elevate their usually pathetic causes.
Lets all start to become sensitive again.

i'm sorry, folks, it's all my fault.

when our master announced he was dispatching troops to iraq to sequester those wmd, i emailed him, warning: "there will be blow-back, when bombs go off in oz, it's on your head."

clearly, he took my warning seriously and is determined that his policy will not result in a single ozzie casualty while he is standing for prime minister. so he took the threadbare facade of civil rights from the face of his government, and let you see what can be accomplished by an augmentated police force not hampered by having to have evidence, and a castrated judicial system, cut out of the punishment process.

who'd have guessed 1 email could achieve so much?

but it was an accident, and i'm really,really sorry.

Well Sylvia, I guess you might be in the funeral industry.

At the time of the first Gulf war a comment was made that if the US
troops had not gone to the Gulf more of them would have been killed in road accidents at home, hmmmm.
So they saved lives by going to war. Hmmmm.

It does seem a rather lefthanded way of looking at it.

Boaz-David, your near accident reminds me to tell everyone when waiting to make a right turn
DO NOT HAVE YOUR WHEELS ALREADY TURNED !

If someone runs into the back of you, you will die as you go headlong into the oncoming traffic.

Yes terrorism is bad. Ask anyone who has lost someone they love to terrorism. It may kill less people than other events but the difference is that many other events may be the result of natural disaster, non-deliberate human error etc.
Terrorism is changing the way people live. It is no longer seen as 'safe' to do certain things or travel to certain places. It makes people less willing to trust.
In addition to all that we have people who use terrorism for other political ends...in this case to criticise a government which would be held responsible if anything did happen here.
Too many Australians seem to believe that the threat of terrorism is not real. It is - and they would be among the first to complain if we were attacked. Using that threat in a negative way (trying to say it does not exist) in an effort to obtain the government of your choice is, if anything, every bit as bad - if not worse - than the actions of those you criticise

Communicat,

The question was not whether terrorism is bad, but whether it is *so* bad. Is it *so* bad that it trumps all other considerations, such as justice, the presumption of innocence, a fair go? Is it *so* bad that a mere accusation of involvement, no matter how peripheral, should be sufficient to lock a person away in solitary confinement until their trial which might be two years later. Is it *so* bad that we should give the executive government powers that can be abused for political purposes?

It's even arguable (and I'm willing to argue) that excessive zeal to use these powers and have even stronger ones is going to have a negative effect on stopping terrorism. This is because anyone with possibly useful information is going to fear getting caught up in an accusation of being a terrorist. Far better to stay quiet, because any particular individual has very low risk of being hurt, much less killed, in a terrorist attack.

Sylvia.

sharkfin

You and yours may not be the target now, but these things have a habit of expanding by a process of contagion. Once it is seen to be politically acceptable to target a particular group, it is easy to add people just outside that group, thus enlarging the group, and repeat.

This is of course, a slippery slope argument, and such arguments need to be subject to scrutiny, but I think it stands up here.

We saw something similar with the European witch trials, and with McCarthyism in the US.

Sylvia.