Webdiary - Founded and Inspired by Margo Kingston

Resources and skills that could be used to fight climate change, develop new health-care technologies, or create environmentally responsible industries, will be channelled into a trade in death and horror that will make some very rich, and many very dead. We need to stop this nightmare vision before it begins.

Here's where it gets interesting: picked up in Afghanistan in 2001 by the Northern Alliance, what's the most Hicks has done? Shot at an enemy soldier. If that's not a crime, then David has been jailed both in Guantanamo and here for something not regarded as criminal. So, since "material support" is a crime introduced retrospectively by the U.S., should his innocence be as retrospective as the charge?

Ministers and senior military officers are today challenged over discrepancies in evidence they gave to a parliamentary committee on the use of torture techniques by British troops in Iraq. (Robert Townsend)

The only way to win the “war on terror” is to be less willing ourselves to use terror to win a political victory. The war on terror will be won when all terrorists – including those financed by democratic governments – are brought to justice in the International Criminal Court.

Wars make a lot of money and threats of war make more as stable economies can continue in a pyramid scheme to beef up these carrion feeders using taxes. In the USA, the actual government is tightly interwoven with this industry due to the national security impetus and the drive for privatisation as a model. Trouble is the same industry then sells to US future threats and hence the whole thing is nationally stupid but financially gold making.....

"We’re training our people in smarter purchasing practices - we need to worry less about stocking up for a rainy day and more about getting our quantities right. Where it makes sense to do so, taking a ‘just in time’ rather than a ‘just in case’ approach will save both time and money. " - Department of Defence Secretary Nick Warner

The threat of terrorism is now part of the landscape of daily lives all over the world, yet we have hardly begun to think properly about it. In his new book Terror and Consent  and in this lecture Professor Bobbitt argues that we are fighting these wars with weapons and concepts which though useful to us in previous conflicts have now been superseded.

Last year ... I said [the troop surge] is a new tactic used to achieve the same old strategic aim, political stability. And I foresaw no serious prospects for success. I see no reason to change my judgment now. (William E. Odom, LT General, USA, Ret.)

How we came to confront one another is uncertain.  Amid a multitude of conflicts we found ourselves face to face, testing over and over, sometimes mirroring each other’s methods, sometimes striking unexpectedly into what had been considered safe ground in an attempt to create a “domino effect” from within.  We appear to have a similar level of  tactical dexterity, and we both know that in the end there will not be a winner but a loser, waning determination creating inadvertent forfeits, loss of confidence resulting in dimished thinking capacities. 

"When I attend NATO meetings and tell them we are a Defence Force ofjust over 51,000 they look at me with surprise.  When I tell them thataround half of our Infantry and Cavalry are currently tied to overseasdeployments they respond with a look of shock and disbelief"- Defence Minister Joel Fitzgibbon

Indeed,there is a widespread assumption that the ranks of terrorists arefilled with seriously psychologically disturbed individuals.  It's an assumption arising from pop psychology, reinforced by Hollywoodtypecasting. Yet psychiatrists and psychologists find it is not goingtoo far to assert that terrorists are psychologically "normal" in thesense of not being clinically psychotic.  Terrorists are neitherdepressed nor severely emotionally disturbed, nor are they crazedfanatics

The Afghanistan action is commonly viewed as a "clean" conflict ... that didn't bring the kind of international opprobrium onto the United States that the invasion of Iraq would lead to a year later. ...  But ... [e]verything that followed ... flowed inevitably from the failure to challenge Bush's claim that an act of terror required a military response.

In 2005 the Australian government dramatically expanded the security powers of many state agencies as part of the “war on terror”. The new sedition laws, control orders, and secret pre-emptive detention all seem major threats to civil liberties, dissent, and (dare I say it?) democracy in this country.

Over the past two and a half years, researchers at the Fund for Independence in Journalism have sought to document every public statement made by eight top Bush administration officials from September 11, 2001, to September 11, 2003, regarding (1) Iraq's possession of weapons of mass destruction and (2) Iraq's links to Al Qaeda. Although both had been frequently cited as rationales for the U.S. war in Iraq, by 2005 it was known that these assertions had not, in fact, been true.(Center for Public Integrity)

In Nemesis: The Last Days of the American Republic, Chalmers Johnson compares  the US’s present military behaviour with that of the Roman Empire, and warns that financial bankruptcy could herald the breakdown of constitutional government in America.

She risked everything in her attempt to win democracy in Pakistan and she has been assassinated by cowards afraid of democracy. (Gordon Brown)

When I heard that Alexander Downer hadn't made a connection between the founder of an organisation and that organisation's most famous victim (the first Australian casualty in the Invasion of Iraq) I thought his memory had gone wonky again, like it had in the AWB hearings.  Then I checked his website and began to wonder.

"We will do our utmost to hold back the physical threat of attacks, but alone, this is merely containment. Long-term resolution requires identifying and addressing the root causes of the problem. This is not a job only for the intelligence agencies and police. It requires a collective effort in which Government, faith communities and wider civil society have an important part to play. And it starts with rejection of the violent extremist ideology across society - although issues of identity, relative deprivation and social integration also form important parts of the backdrop." Jonathan Evans, head of MI5

If the perceived future possibility of terror attacks was enough to implement a global war to eliminate it, how long will it be before "terrorist friendly" words are forbidden? If the treatment of Parkin and his words is an indicator of a "possible threat" being dealt with badly, what measures are the Government and police prepared to take to correct their ineptitude? How long before authorities come to sites such as Webdiary and begin to censor our words, in the name of saving citizens from being murdered?

As another September 11 anniversary comes and goes, a figure purporting to be Osama makes his first appearance in years. Is he real? I was particularly interested in this piece by Ramzy Baroud, enough to write to him and ask if he'd mind us publishing his piece on Webdiary.

Then it got really ugly. The police moved into the centre of the intersection and formed an outward moving circle, forcing the protesters to the curb.  I ended up trapped amidst protesters and media, shepherded into a corner with armed and mostly unidentifiable police (many police on the day had no ID badges, and I have footage).  Nowhere to move to, and cops in riot gear moving in behind them, and the chopper overhead, I was beginning to get scared.

The Federal Court’s decision that the Australian Government can not cancel a person’s visa on the basis of an innocent association should be the end of the matter, according to the Law Council.

The real killers of people all over the world are small arms, rudimentary explosives, and the ubiquitous Kalashnikov, known as the AK47. However, what many people in the West do not understand is that the symbolism of an AK to a beleaguered people is like that of a crucifix to underground Christians.

[The United States’] adversaries learned as long ago as the Korean War that decentralization would stymie America's overwhelming firepower, which was designed for concentrated armies, and provided a successful antidote for massive, expensive technology. All this is very well known. The real issue is why the U.S. makes the identical mistakes over and over again and never learns from its errors.

I also acknowledge that one of my officers put two errors of fact before the court.  The first related to the SIM card and was based on a misunderstanding of the facts.  The second related to the residence of Dr Haneef in the UK and was based on incorrect material provided by the AFP.  The prosecution is of course under a duty to inform the court promptly of any errors that are made in submissions to the court.  The hearing in which these errors were made was determined in Dr Haneef’s favour and when the errors were recognised it was decided to correct them when the matter was next before the court.

The trouble is that if there is no "Australian connection" the "terror scares" in Glasgow and London then the story being used to provide public support for the incredible amount of security that Sydney is about to endure will have much less credibility with the public.  The intense APEC security is more likely to be regarded with suspicion.

Does Saudi Arabia, one of the world's most prolific oil exporters (along with Russia) have such control over the Bush administration, and by extension the US economy, that its influence can produce such political cover-up, dishonesty and propaganda? Can US foreign policy be so conflicted and corrupted that this scenario could be replayed to a world "one warned"? I think it could.

I don't know what the story is with Haneef. The courts will decide that. The first transcript does not reveal very much. Maybe when it is added to other evidence a clearer picture will emerge.It could be that Haneef just has "too much going on" and has an unfortunate link in a database. Thank God for the courts! If he is as the Federal Police allege, then thank God for the Federal Police for keeping us safe.

Since joining with Christians Against ALL Terrorism I've gotten a picture of how deeply Christians are discriminated against and put down by people I'll describe here as secular lefties. In the past twelve years I've found, in purely practical terms, that communities of faith are much more likely to provide people who'll act against injustice than are communities of secular lefties.  Certainly our support from some Christian communities has been such as to nurture, sustain and develop our project, while secular political groups including the Labor, Green and Democrats parties have been at best hesitant and partial.