The constant referring to immanent terrorist attention is deeply offensive. The Prime Minister has told us we face unprecedented terrorist threats and a “death cult” and neither of these things is true. The people who are going to fight overseas in various wars has barely changed in number or content to those who went to fight in the Balkan Wars. The difference may be that the wars we fight in now were caused by us and are being fought by us despite all the options we could have brought to bear to avoid them. This small trickle of warriors is easily dealt with by the airport security and pre-existing ASIO networks. Or perhaps it would be easily dealt with if airport security in Australia had ever been as capable as it claimed it was. It will not become more capable by giving it more power and money without forcing it to become efficient and capable.
There is no death cult and there is no terrorist army. Terrorists, by definition, cannot form large armies. Once they do that they become something else. There is terrorism and there is a war but we have had these things almost without a break since Australia was Federated. The Prime Minister, Tony Abbott, and his smirking crew of luncheon pirates are being looked on as idiots by a lot of people because they insist on treating us as fools. In this day and age with the internet we see them in close-up and it sickens us.
The second issue for this post is internet television. I have spent the last week trying to (legally) get my hands on enough content to replace my television viewing. It is a shock to see the way the internet information highway is being chopped up and parceled out between corporations and governments so they can control the flow of data and money from our wallets. It is though every shopkeeper with enough money has built a gate and a wall on his section of highway and added a beadle to ensure we do not escape the limits they now add to our surfing. The internet is not a possession of the government. It is already owned and shared by the people who built it. Slowly corporations took over the role of extending it and those of you who came later have betrayed those of us who made a free information highway by demanding they take it over and save you the effort of having to think.
Now we have corporations and governments slowly chopping it into ever smaller and more controlled parts so they can charge for each parcel. With that comes the ability to control what each parcel contains and then finally to limit access to undesirable ideas. Like this one. It is terrifying to watch Tony Abbott’s war on the poor while he gives great swathes of our community’s resources to anyone with a buck to buy to buy it and knowing he is doing the same to more important things like the internet.