The iron law of terrorism prevention

Australian spies have scuttled boats, intended to take asylum seekers to Australia. Other boats have been sabotaged some of these may have left Indonesia and sunk en route to Australia drowning the passengers – we will never know for certain. Australian officials have paid people smugglers to return to Indonesia with their asylum seekers.

We do know that many things are done in our name which are violent and which would be illegal were you or I to carry them out but the Australian Parliament under both Labor and Coalition administrations have passed laws which mean that no penalties attach to these actions if carried out by officials acting under orders of the government of the day. There is little recognition that the Nuremberg Military Tribunals held that simply obeying orders did not absolve one of war crimes.

Those officials who handed back Sri Lankan Tamil asylum seekers to the Sri Lankan Navy certainly committed war crimes. Those who sabotaged boats in Indonesia may well be guilty of acts of piracy. There are other similarities between what Australian officials have done/are doing and those of terrorists.

Tony Abbott was looking around for a counter terrorism tsar he chose Moriarty totally unmindful that over a century earlier Sherlock Holmes had exposed Moriarty as a criminal mastermind.

The last time a community was subjected to a military-style invasion in Australia was that of Palm Island where following the killing by police in the watch house of an Aborigine and a subsequent riot during which the police station was torched, the police paramilitary invaded pushing pregnant women, old ladies and children to the ground at gunpoint. They know that governments will ensure their excesses are overlooked either by a compliant judiciary or by legislation or by a frightened public.

It is now the turn of the Muslim community to be pushed around, mugged, harassed. Some will be fitted up with dodgy charges. The law will be modified by a supine parliament in order to change what was legal yesterday into something illegal today. If all else fails then retrospective additions will be made. Macropods will be placed in charge of special courts. Once the terrorists have been sentenced to a year or more in jail they will then be deported if they were not born in Australia.

Eventually, we will reach a stage where the two most common charges brought against people will be:

"Failing to plead guilty as charged" and

"Attempting to prove innocence."