Well we had a navy man attacked this morning who was in uniform, we had 2 policemen stabbed and threatened with beheading, we had 15 arrested in Sydney with plans to have a beheading of an innocent victim in the middle of our city. We are being targeted and we currently have 60 Australian citizens in Syria and Iraq on the side of ISIS.
800 police officers, 15 people arrested after which most were released, 1 person charged vaguely with 'preparing to commit terrorism'.
ONE charged. And by the way, they had the power to do all of this under
current legislation, without the help of the new barrage of anti-freedom laws that George Brandis is madly rushing through Parliament. So imagine just how much of our liberty is being chopped and charred. But I digress.
I understand your sentiments, tatu. No one is saying that the Islamic State threat shouldn't be dealt with. The problem is the hyper-fantastical and grossly disproportionate way in which our government is dealing with it.
As if terrorism is the greatest threat to our existence.
But is it, really? In comparison to the things that
really threaten Aussie lives?
I don't think so. Since the Hilton Hotel bombing in Sydney in 1978, a total of 113 Australians have died from acts of terrorism. That includes in Australia and overseas. But in the last decade alone, 850 Australians - the vast majority women and children - were killed brutally by domestic violence (ABS). Hundreds of thousands more injured and suffering abuse right now.
Our government's response? Increase "anti-terrorism" spending by $670 million, on top of the yearly billions we spend on the AFP, ASIO, and the defence budget, and spit the word "terrorism" every chance they get to ensure a 24-hour news cycle obsessed with terrorism. Meanwhile, the issue of domestic violence gets close to zero top-level mention, and is thrown a relative bone of a policy: $25 million per year, courtesy of the Abbott government. And let's not forget, due to the "budget crisis" (
which miraculously doesn't exist when it comes to the "war on terror") and the refusal of the Federal Government to step in, many women refuges and homeless youth shelters were shut down this year. I want to believe that our leaders have their priorities straight. But I can't.
I also want to believe that they know what they're doing when they beat their chests and declare war against the Islamic State. But once again, I cannot. We have yet to hear even remotely intelligent discussions over
why the terrorist threat exists in the first place. It's a complex, but maybe -
just maybe - it involves the fact that since Australia joined the ill-conceived wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, thousands upon thousands of innocent civilians, many of them Muslim, have been killed as a direct result of Western military intervention. Maybe it's the way in which we've stayed silent while the US not-so-secretly backs murderous dictatorships in the Middle East. Maybe it's because we're arming and equipping other terrorist groups (cue PKK) to fight against IS. Maybe it's because our political leaders' appetite for war means we're bizarrely funnelling truckloads of money into rich Sunni Muslim countries like Saudi Arabia to feed our fuel-hungry military troops, all of which ends up in the hands of the elites who then fund Sunni extremist groups like IS. It's a blighted and vicious cycle of war begetting war, hate begetting hate, and willed ignorance screwing everyone over.
Our political leaders are not having the kind of level-headed discussions needed to deal with the root caused of terrorism, nor to deal with it according to it's actual level of relative risk. No, it's charge, charge, charge, all the way with the USA. Instead, our beloved government is insists that they're fighting to protect our freedoms by taking our freedoms away. By their count,
2 + 2 now officially equals 5.
