By Graham Macafee
Canberra, Australia
18 March 2004
As in other Western capitals, the back-wash from the
terror-bombing
of Madrid is still claiming headlines in Canberra.
But when the Commissioner of the Australian Federal
Police
(our FBI
equivalent) Mick Keelty, said during a TV interview
that
Australia's
support for the US bombing of Baghdad probably
increased
the risk of a
terror bombing on Australian soil (as happened in
Madrid)
all
hell broke loose from his employer - the
ultra-conservative
Australian
Government.
The government's case was hardly helped by a
high-ranking
US official
saying exactly the same thing at a top-level Sydney
'security'
conference!
Mick has since 'eaten crow' blaming the media for
quoting
him 'out of
context' - which is a ludicrous proposition - since it
was a LIVE interview.
Mick spoke the truth - but it's a truth the
government
dislikes - that
terror works and Western governments have yet to find
a solution. The
government's pathetic 'answer' is less freedom, more
spies and some
second-hand US tanks!
And thus another day dawns in the age of
terror!
But there IS an answer to
terror tactics - as they've happened before on
Australian
soil.
The terror bombing of shearing sheds, as happened
during
the Queensland
shearers strike of 1891, no longer occurs. And that is
due, not to the
government employing more spies or buying bigger guns,
but to labour unions
and the Labor Party reining in the worst excesses of
capitalism.
But few such restraints apply at the trans-national
level
- leaving drug
addiction, violence and religion as the only relief
options
when global
capital (like a tornado) wants to suck the third world
dry.
Seeing a Commissioner of Police being 'flogged
around
the fleet' by Liberal
spin-masters (for lifting a tiny corner of the terror
carpet) will hardly
encourage Australia's intelligence services to reveal
the whole truth about
where terrorists come from.
With so much Liberal money available for stork and
cabbage-patch
answers
and second-hand US tanks, revealing the inept futility
of a pre-1891
approach to terror will have to wait for a change of
government.