hello police state

[miriam_e]

Howard wants 107 pages of new "anti-terror" legislation to be passed in a single day. John Stanhope has leaked the document because he is appalled that the Howard government can be so irresponsible.

That a police state can be introduced in Australia overnight with virtually no argument from the Beazley opposition is astounding. That is is to be done under the pretext of fighting terror is not surprising. In truth the real terror is the desire for this kind of power.

If this legislation gets passed how long till we are able to throw it off? Do something now. Email, phone, write a letter, or walk into the offices of your local politicians. Make it known that you are not happy that this is being done.

More info, including contacts for all state premieres, federal and state political heads, the pdf file that was leaked, and what the proposed laws mean for us all.
http://www.livejournal.com/users/patchworkkid/532267.html

Howard is a dangerous nut. He needs to read the brilliant Wendy Grossman's delightfully humorous article Spot the Terrorist at http://www.newswireless.net/index.cfm/article/2447
I love to read her technology pieces in Scientific American.

Comments

[sleepyaardvark.livejournal.com]

That a police state can be introduced in Australia overnight with virtually no argument from the Beazley opposition is astounding.

HA! Its not so surprising if you've lived in the US the past five years. There has been no opposition to speak of with the exception of the activist community which nearly got Howard Dean into the White House--and yet the Democratic Party establishment still thumbs its nose at the progressive constituency.

[slave-driver.livejournal.com]

I'm sorry to see you're having the same problem over there that we're having over here. It seems a lot of americans are finally waking up to the fact that King George is a power grabbing moron. It's too bad that it took a major disaster like Hurricane Katrina for most people to see that not only is he a power hungry son of a bitch, he's also wildly incompetent. It's too bad that so many of us (myself included) had to lose our homes and jobs (although we did find out that our house was fine, we haven't been able to go back there for six weeks, nor have we been working for that long) to a natural disaster before the scales started coming off peoples' eyes.

I always thought that Australians were much more fiesty about their freedoms than to allow power hungry assholes to erode those freedoms. Hopefully your country won't have to go through what we did before they start to wake up and realise that these so called anti-terror measures don't make anyone safer, but they sure as hell do make people a lot less free.

I'm glad to see that you're calling on people for action now. I think people in all countries that are supposed to be democracies need to wake up and realise that our freedom is NOT guaranteed. We all have to be on the lookout each and every day for those assholes who will surely try to take our freedoms away from us if they think that we've let our guard down for even a minute. What frustrates me even more is the fact that a lot of these jerks don't realise what they're doing. They're not consciously trying to be evil, they really think they're doing the right thing. How could fighting terror be a bad thing, they might ask. Well, if you eliminate all the freedoms people have fought so hard to obtain, then it's a horrible, evil thing. Why the hell can't they see that?

That's how it felt here...

[exileinparadise.livejournal.com]

Yep... thats exactly what 9/12 felt like in the U.S.A.

The day after some lunatics crashed planes into buildings, suddenly all of society was on a war footing and new anti-terrorist crap was conceived and passed in a fortnight.

Writing them and passing them quickly helps prevent those danged-ole naysayers from having time to spray some common sense on the proceedings.

With 9/11, Darth Bush and Darth Cheney had carte blanche to oppress everyone in new ways their predecessors only dared imagine in dreams!

Welcome to hell.
It only gets worse.
Wait till they stamp out privacy (a necessary codicil to 'protecting' everyone).

Go throw up, reread 1984, and pray they let you vote for someone else later.

Re: That's how it felt here...

[miriam-e.livejournal.com]

I think we have already lost the right to vote. Certainly you in USA have lost it. Bush has stolen the last two elections and everybody has become comfortable with the idea that cemetaries of dead people regularly vote along with herds of cattle now. The electronic voting scams are not even cleverly done -- they don't even need to bother to be careful anymore.

I was talking with my sister about how neither of us knows any more than a few people who voted for Howard (our Australian lying rodent). It is weird. So many people here say the same: they don't know anybody who voted for Howard... and yet he got in with a huge majority?

I was a vote scrutineer at the last general election here in Australia and I could see right away how the vote could be easily rigged here. I am sure that if I could see it the people who have billions of dollars of interest in the election will see. They have no scruples.

I don't believe we elected Howard in the last election. I don't think we have democracy in Australia any more than you have it in USA. We have been conquered and we never even noticed.