To combat this unprecedented danger, we cannot rely on old fashioned techniques. We must use 21st century investigative methods.

1. Suspects must remain under suspicion until they can conclusively prove their innocence. Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.

2. Investigations and hearings must either be conducted in complete secrecy, or in the open media. This is the only way to weed these dangerous terrorists out.

3. Truth is too high a standard and increasingly irrelevant. Seeking after Truthiness and gut-feeling is more likely to yield results.

http://www.theage.com.au/news/national/pms-plan-threatened-security/2007/07/21/1184560109123.html

“THE Australian Navy’s war-fighting ability has been blunted by the Federal Government’s efforts to keep asylum seekers out — a policy so unpopular that some sailors have feigned illness or quit rather than enforce it…. One crew complained, during the politically charged operations in September and October 2001, that they were banned from sending personal emails to their families — a level of censorship that did not apply even in wartime.”

How did we ever let our country get like this?

http://www.theage.com.au/articles/2007/07/21/1184560109126.html

Should “government stategists” have anything to do with our justice system? It appears you can now in effect be deported for being a political embarassment in an election year.

Leunig in todays Age.

I actually read all 142 pages of the interview….If that is all they have on him we should all be very very scared. He is guilty of generosity!

My eldest son and I were discussing the Howard Government and Bush’s America a few weeks ago and came to the same conclusion as Paul Keating did later….The country fought against facsim and totalitarian regimes in WWII, our Govenment seems so Xenaphobic and extremly right wing that perhaps the Nazi’s did win after all.

In the film “The Patriot” Mel Gibson would have been a terrorist to the British and a Patriot to the Americans.

The record is not good on special laws for things we dont understand - Witches, Jews, Communists etc. etc.

But then I like lattes, they seem so much more practical than cappuccinos with their frothy poorly defined layer on the top.

I think I’m willing to make that compromise… but privacy is reasonably low on my list of priorities… and I know other for whom privacy is terribly important.

Case in point… someone at my husband’s work was burgled… and claimed she almostfelt like she’d been raped because it was such a violation of privacy. We were burgled at around the same time… and my concern was not that a stranger had been in the house (big deal) but that getting everything fixed and replaced and filling out insurance forms was such a nuisance.