Not only is the Sydney Lord Mayor advocating residents prepare an emergency kit for any potential terrorist attacks, a man will be placed in a detention centre, then eventually deported because he gave his SIM card to his cousin. The cousin was then involved in the recent terrorist activity in London.
There had better be more to it than that. If all he did was hand his cousin a SIM card, we're probably all potential terrorists.
As Ron Hyndman wrote in today's letters to the editor in The Age:
OK, I confess. I recklessly loaned my phone to someone I didn't know well. I also recklessly stopped to help a woman whose car had broken down. Then I recklessly paid for a man's lunch when he couldn't do so himself. Any one of them could have been a terrorist. I plead guilty.
Please lock me up. I'm a danger to society. I'd rather die in prison for reckless acts of kindness than live a free man in a country where love, mercy and compassion are outlawed.
*Update* There is a great opinion piece about the issue by Julian Burnside here.
P.S. Like Burnside's style? Come join us at the Facebook group, Julian Burnside is the thinking woman's crumpet.
P.P.S. Not interested in the Burnside group? Alternatively, let me bite you on Facebook and turn you into a zombie!
Link: Let's get ready Sydney!
8 comments:
I love it when letters-to-the-editor are tongue in cheek like that, especially when most of them are the usual pompous crap that [old] people send in.
PS - how does one commit a terrorist attack with a SIM card?
Jacob- Me too. I think letters like that really bring home how racist (religion-ist? is that a word?) some of these decisions are. Think about the uproar that occured when it was discovered that a white woman - Cornelia Rau - had been put in a detention centre. I just don't think they would have condemned Haneef so quickly had he been white. (The exception, of course, being David Hicks).
But then, there is, of course David Hicks.
Whoops, retract that last line.
Finally! The City of Sydney is FINALLY doing something about terrorism - advocating a 'Go Bag'.
It's nice to see sticky tape on the list of essentials.
After all, post-terrorist attack, you never know when you might need to secure a liferaft with some sticky tape.
Hi Cibby!
Indeed.
Perhaps I should buy a liftraft just in case!
You going for this Burnside event? If so, maybe see you there?
Julian Burnside is a strange kettle of fish. For a long time he was extremely conservative. The Waterfront dispute in 1998 seemed to be a turning point. He was involved in helping the MUA. Since then he has been an extremely vocal critic of mandatory detention, and the government's anti-freedom, sorry I meant anti-terror laws. He is still a bit too conservative in some areas, though he does show that you are never to old to change for the better
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