*Ø* Blogmanac | Terror for Australia for sucking up to Bush

Catastrophic terror attack 'certain', warns ASIO
"AUSTRALIA's domestic spy agency head has warned it is "only a matter of time" before there is another catastrophic terrorist attack.

"Dennis Richardson, director-general of the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation (ASIO), said in a speech released today that Australia was also more of a target because of its close alliance with the United States."

Source

Thanks for everything, Little Johnny
It used to be that you could travel safely anywhere in the world if you put a kangaroo sticker on your suitcase or backpack. We've heard of Americans, in fact, who did just that so as not to get shot. Now, Australians are afraid to hop on a Qantas jet and go anywhere that has brown people. This is thanks to Prime Monster John Howard, who sent young Australian troops way out of their region – to the other side of the world, in fact – to invade two rinkydink, weak, poverty-stricken countries and help kill many thousands of their innocent civilians.

Last October, more than 80 Australian kids were massacred in a Bali nightclub because of (a) mad/bad terrorists, and (b) mad/bad Australian neo-conservatives, not necessarily in that order. For policies such as these, our rinkydink country is one billion military dollars poorer this year – and I don't see petrol getting any cheaper. And let's not put too fine a point on it: apart from unbridled, unashamed racism, greed for oil money is what's running this tragicomedy. If we are the poorer because we are being bled dry by our own tin-pot military-industrial complex and that of Uncle Sam, how much the poorer are we for having our integrity dragged through the mud by this extreme right-wing government?

Once proud
Australian pride among the nations (there are 190 of them, Mr Bush and Mr Howard, and most of them are little tinted people, have you noticed?) will take decades to revive, if indeed it can be revived at all. Meanwhile, the once-progressive Australian Labor Party in Opposition, one of the oldest labor parties in the world, has been almost as reactionary as the Howard cabal. Happily, Labor faithful are quitting and joining the Greens in droves – would the last one out please turn out the lights?

Now, Australians have been told by their own Director of ASIO, just as we have said here at the Almanac for nearly two years, that because of this idiocy Australians cannot feel secure even here in the Land Downunder. Lest anyone think that Australians are all Crocodile Dundees who can wrestle crocs and catch bullets in their teeth, while living in ramshackle outback bush pubs, it should be noted that Australia is the most urbanized nation on earth, with most Aussies living in big cities. Sydney and Melbourne each have about 4 millions in population -- sitting ducks for 21st century terrorism.

For my money, every Australian death from terrorism can be sheeted home to the Government and lily-livered Opposition in this country. And for mine, the Aussie journalists who scarcely raise a whimper in protest against the many follies now around us, for fear of being sacked by Rupert Murdoch or Kerry Packer (two mega-wealthy, militaristic troglodytes who between them own almost all the media and media consumers in this couch potato land), are a disgrace to the profession.

Harsh words? Undiplomatic? Not measured and trendy? Hardly journalistic? Why, thank you very much!

Myths of the War on Terrorism and Iraq