Climate Fascists

AGW is an ideology promoted by bully-boy tactics and a consistent refusal to debate the issues. Most supporters are unable to carry the conversation past their blind belief in the "science". They are hopelessly ignorant of the main arguments.

It is not surprising to find radical climate fanatics asserting their right to protest includes the right to shut down free speech of others.

It's not just the radical kooks but alleged intellectuals like David Suzuki who would like to jail those he disagrees with.

The Danes are doing their bit by selling out the Dalai Lama in the hope the Chinese will get on board the train of climate madness.

In Australia the CSIRO is no longer a scientific body. It tried to prevent a scientist publishing a paper which didn't conform to government policy. The scientist, Dr Clive Spash, had the integrity to resign rather than be cowed by these fascists.

It is also not surprising to find that the leading 'scientists' promoting the AGW agenda conspiring to silence scientists who disagree with them in the Climategate emails.

Google, of course, is doing its bit by limiting prompts to "climategate" search enquiries.

Decrypt Or Die

A UK man has been jailed for not decrypting his computer:

The first person jailed under draconian UK police powers that Ministers said were vital to battle terrorism and serious crime has been identified by The Register as a schizophrenic science hobbyist with no previous criminal record.

His crime was a persistent refusal to give counter-terrorism police the keys to decrypt his computer files.

The 33-year-old man, originally from London, is currently held at a secure mental health unit after being sectioned while serving his sentence at Winchester Prison.

Australia has similar laws in s3LA of the Crimes Act 1914 and s201A of the Customs Act 1901. Failure to comply can result in a penalty of up to 6 months imprisonment.

The New Denialists

The reaction to the Climategate scandal from the die-hard AGW fanatics has been a thing to behold. They are in complete denial about the emails. The alleged news organisation, the New York Times, is focussing its coverage on the actions of the whistleblower, and running interference for those implicated in this scandal. Funnily enough they do not have the same attitude to other leaked information. In this, as in so many things, they are acting as partisan hacks rather than as journalists.

Worse than even the NYT is the BBC which had the new information for a month before the scandal broke, but did not publish it. They are just another discredited 'news' outlet.

Leftist intellectual George Monbiot is a strong supporter of the AGW thesis. The new information, while not causing him to change his mind on AGW, has given him pause for thought. He apologised to his readers, and acknowledged the seriousness of the now public CRU emails.

The response of the greens and most of the scientists I know is profoundly ironic, as we spend so much of our time confronting other people's denial. Pretending that this isn't a real crisis isn't going to make it go away. Nor is an attempt to justify the emails with technicalities. We'll be able to get past this only by grasping reality, apologising where appropriate and demonstrating that it cannot happen again.

This ability to engage and deal with new facts as they emerge is the difference between true intellectuals and mere ideologues.

UPDATE:

Andrew Revkin at NYT (who you can see being duchessed in the Climategate emails) is showing signs of critical thinking.

Islam Hates Free Speech

The push for blasphemy laws to restrict criticism of Islam is being continued at the UN, the lead this time is being taken by Pakistan and Algeria. Islamic countries have no business depriving people of their right to free speech.

Because their are a significant number of muslims prepared to resort to violence, it is no surprise that the makers of the movie 2012 have decided to give Islam special treatment:

'I will not have a fatwa on my head because of a movie'.

Sadly, most western leaders are too gutless to denounce this sorry state of affairs. The Dutch are subjecting one of their own politicians to criminal prosecution for offending muslims in a 10 minute film.

Not with a bang, but with a whimper.

Schoolies Off Their Facebook

Unbelievable!

Police try to shut down a Facebook page. They say it might cause even more stupid behaviour.

Words fail me.

Hoodwinked

Censorship imposed on oneself for the purposes of political correctness is an insidious thing. it is a form of free speech suicide.

It is quite clear that for Obama and the Obama Slobbering Media, speculation about the motivation of the Foot Hood killer is fine so long as it doesn't include speculation about any possible religious motivation, despite the fact that there are many clues pointing in that direction. Some of these are canvassed in this Time piece.

Obama said:

It may be hard to comprehend the twisted logic that led to this tragedy. But this much we do know - no faith justifies these murderous and craven acts; no just and loving God looks upon them with favor. And for what he has done, we know that the killer will be met with justice - in this world, and the next.

Sounds like wishful thinking.

The hapless president implored people not to rush to judgment. This is typical. Every time a muslim perpetrates and atrocity on the basis of their religious beliefs, a cry goes out eliciting sympathy for muslims who might be subject to a backlash. Just like when a christian shoots an abortionist the cry goes out for fear of an anti-chrisitian backlash, or not. A little more concern for identifying the cause of the atrocity and the steps necessary to prevent it happening again would be in order, even if it means considering an (in this case) obvious, but unmentionable cause.

The U.S. Army Chief of Staff, George Casey, likewise seemed primarily concerned about the safety of Muslims, not about the safety of the potential victims of the next jihad attack: "I'm concerned that this increased speculation could cause a backlash against some of our Muslim soldiers. And I've asked our Army leaders to be on the lookout for that." Not "I'm concerned that there could be another jihadist among our Muslim soldiers. And I've asked our Army leaders to be on the lookout for that."

Some of the excuses include stress (I assume it was some form of pre-traumatic stress disorder as he hadn't deployed yet), peeling a bumper sticker off his car, that he snapped or that he was "nuts".

In fact Major Hasan explained what the motivations of a muslim might be in a powerpoint presentation (we love death more than you love life).

The Dead Hand Of Capitalism

Now the US is the driving force behind ever more draconian intellectual property laws. It wasn't always so.

Now the push is on to extend intellectual property even further, including in relation to to the internet. It seems that counterfeiting now includes releasing material without DRM.

Intellectual property laws are granted by society for its own benefit. Unfortunately the laws have created monsters, companies who profit obscenely from exploiting their statutory monopoly. Part of the their ill-gotten wealth is directed at political lobbying, ensuring that politicians screw their constituents as they continually extend the reach of intellectual property laws.

Rudd's Orwellian Regime

There was a disturbing story in the Daily Telegraph two days ago. Steve Lewis reported that the Rudd government reserved the right to vet government funded communications between MPs and their constituents.

In a move that has incensed MPs, Commonwealth bureaucrats are exploiting new laws that allow them to ban newsletters being sent to voters.

Using Orwellian-type powers, they are putting a black mark through words such as "dreadful", "mismanagement" and "incompetence" - declaring they can no longer be used because they criticise government policy.

The new laws which came into effect on October 1 deliver a big advantage to the Government in the election year.

Senior ministers are even able to access material from Coalition MPs and the minor parties before they are mailed to voters.

The crackdown follows the Auditor-General's criticism of the $300 million parliamentary entitlements scheme.

This is beyond belief. It can’t be right, can it?

UPDATE:

I made enquiries of an ALP MHR who gave me the following reply:

The Telegraph story that you have referred to has arisen out of some changes to Parliamentary entitlements. Essentially, the issue is that a Member of Parliament is not permitted to incorporate party political comment into publications printed at taxpayers' expense.

The details of these requirements are contained in the attached Ministerial Circular and Q & A attachment.

The circular was released by the Special Minister of State following his press release:

http://www.smos.gov.au/media/2009/mr_352009.html

This press release was issued in response to the findings of the ANAO in the attached report.

http://www.anao.gov.au/uploads/documents/2009-10_ANAO_Audit_Report_3_.pdf

It is worth noting that an MP only has to comply with these requirements when using taxpayer funded entitlements.

I'll think of that every time I pass one of those school signs that must be kept up until after the next election.

This sounds like doublespeak to me. If this is the approach to be taken, politicians need to be given great latitude as to what they might say. They should certainly be allowed to criticise government policy in the most trenchant terms. Quoting Hansard clearly should be exempt from this regulation.

Moral Rights And Moral Wrongs

The profit motive drives economic growth, encouraging innovation and producing a cornucopia of goods and services for consumers. However, coupled with a statutory monopoly it draws out niggardly nastiness in those retarded bullies who enjoy nothing more than screwing people.

Performing rights associations specialise in bullying stand over tactics, as these two cases show.

Here we have an attempt to extort money from a shop because a girl stacking shelves was singing out loud. Ultimately the copyright cretins backed off after a public outcry.

The second case involves an attempt by Warner Bros. to shut down a Harry Potter themed party. The party morphed into an ' Anonymous Wizard' party.

Vain Thin-Skinned Thug Attacks Press Freedom

Obama promised to change the way Washington does business. In a sense he has done that – by importing the even more corrupt Chicago machine school of politics to Washington.

Obama’s administration has taken a rather precious approach to media relations, going to war with his media critics. This is reminiscent of Hugo Chavez’ style, but Chavez has taken things a bit further, closing down critical media. However, Team Obama appears to have crossed a line with its latest move.

An attempt was made to exclude Fox news from an interview with administration official Ken Feinberg. The other networks refused to do the interview if Fox wasn’t invited. Eventually Fox was invited and the interview went ahead. Deputy White House Press Secretary Josh Ernest said:

“This White House has demonstrated our willingness to do a round of interviews with a range of networks but not Fox. Clearly, that didn’t happen yesterday.”

Putin, that great sponsor of a free and independent media would be proud of this attack on press freedom.

Here is the Fox News report on this issue:

And here is the Huffington Post take on it.

Apart from being utterly childish, and possibly unconstitutional it is time that Obama showed some respect for the people he serves, including those who disagree with. This is of a piece with his attempt to foist a rag-tag bunch of charlatans, tax truants and political extremists into high administrative office. Classic was his attempt to put tax cheat Tom Daschle in charge of health immediately after Daschle’s stint earning millions lobbying for private health industry firms.

The Democrat new broom approach can be seen in the fact that Charlie Rangel is still chair of the Ways and Means Committee despite his serious ethical issues. This is Chicago politics writ large in Washington.

Obama's ambition to be a radical reformer coupled with his administration's bare-knuckled brawler style politics does nothing but ensure that he will be one of the most divisive of all presidents. Certainly now people opposed to Obama are reacting angrily, and in some cases dishonestly (see previous post). Such is the circus of U.S. politics

Net Neutrality And Tethering

Tethering is a means of getting internet access on your computer by hooking up your mobile phone and using the internet access you pay for on your phone plan to get online on your computer.

The natural thing for rent-seeking predatory companies is to block tethering on mobile phones. Many telcos do just that. It allows them to screw their customers harder.

The US FCC has just put out a statement suggesting that the practice of tethering would be offensive against the net neutrality principle, which the FCC has proposed. Basically ‘net neutrality’ is a principle designed to stop the internet being colonised by big business. For example an ISP may be paid by a corporation to prioritise the streaming of its movies, leaving less bandwidth to other traffic.

If the "any device rule" is enacted as a "Rule" with a capital "R," customers must be enabled to utilize any device they choose to connect with a wireless broadband network, as long as it did not harm the network.

Not surprisingly, big business has been lobbying hard against net neutrality, initiating a scare campaign based on an Obama-bashing conspiracy theory:

If you thought Washington—which already took over banking and autos, and is fast-tracking attempts to take over health care and energy—would leave the Internet alone, you were dead wrong. The Internet (perhaps our greatest free market success story in recent years) is squarely in the cross-hairs of the administration and it’s not waiting for Congress to act. The charge is being led by an eager, ideologically committed White House staffer named Susan Crawford.

Unbelievable! You really can’t make this stuff up. As soon as content owners can prioritise their traffic, and reduce your traffic to a standstill the price they charge will go up, and consumer choice will go down. Business has been searching for a means to colonise the internet so they can extract monopoly rent from users. Attempts by government to prevent this are characterised as a leftist conspiracy.

Tweeting For Free Speech

Suppression orders are a serious impediment to the transparency of the judicial process. There may be situations in which suppression orders are warranted, such as where there is an obvious and imminent danger to a litigant or witness.

However, such orders are becoming commonplace, and are being used more widely:

The use of "super-injunctions", under which commercial corporations claim the right to keep secret the fact that they have been to court, has been growing. Anonymity is also increasingly being granted to individual litigants.

For example Trafigura recently obtained an injunction to stop the Guardian reporting parliamentary proceedings, specifically a question asked in the House of Commons about the dumping of toxic waste. The injunction also prohibited the Guardian identifying the party seeking the injunction or the injunction itself.

An interesting part of the story is the role of Twitter in getting the story out:

First, bloggers and twitterers started linking to a report on the Guardian website, which told people a High Court judge had "prevented" the paper "reporting parliamentary proceedings on legal grounds."

Then, bloggers Jack of Kent and Richard Wilson started chiselling away at clues in the article to find out who had won the injunction and what the story related to.

Next, a steady stream of twitterers started posting links to Guido Fawkes, Don't Get Fooled Again, The Spectator and One Man And His Blog - websites that had decided to post the full text of Farrelly's question - to Twitter hash tags #Trafigura and #CarterRuck.

Around 10am on Tuesday, #Trafigura had become the top trend on Twitter, with #CarterRuck following close behind.

Stephen Fry tweeted 800,000+ followers: "Outrageous gagging order. It's in reference to the Trafigura oil dumping scandal. Grotesque and squalid."

While Guardian editor Alan Rusbridger informed the Twitterverse: "#CarterRuck ... High Court hearing [to challenge the injunction] fixed for 2pm."

Ultimately although a degree of common sense prevailed in this case, the larger issue of judicial transparency remains.

One Ring To Bind Them All

Fr Brennan has recommended that a Human Rights Act be adopted. Included are the following recommendations:

Recommendation 22

The Committee recommends that, if economic and social rights are listed in a federal Human Rights Act, those rights not be justiciable and that complaints be heard by the Australian Human Rights Commission. Priority should be given to the following:

· the right to an adequate standard of living—including adequate food, clothing and housing

· the right to the enjoyment of the highest attainable standard of physical and mental health

· the right to education.

Recommendation 23

The Committee recommends that a limitation clause for derogable civil and political rights, similar to that contained in the Australian Capital Territory and Victorian human rights legislation, be included in any federal Human Rights Act.

Recommendation 24

The Committee recommends that the following non-derogable civil and political rights be included in any federal Human Rights Act, without limitation:

· The right to life. Every person has the right to life. No one shall be arbitrarily deprived of life. The death penalty may not be imposed for any offence.

· Protection from torture and cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment. A person must not be

– subjected to torture

or

– treated or punished in a cruel, inhuman or degrading way

or

– subjected to medical or scientific experimentation without his or her full, free and informed consent.

· Freedom from slavery or servitude. A person must not be held in slavery or servitude.

· Retrospective criminal laws.

– A person must not be found guilty of a criminal offence as a result of conduct that was not a criminal offence when the conduct was engaged in.

– A penalty imposed on a person for a criminal offence must not be greater than the penalty that applied to the offence when it was committed.

– If a penalty for an offence is reduced after a person committed the offence but before the person is sentenced for that offence, the reduced penalty should be imposed.

– Nothing in the foregoing affects the trial or punishment of any person for any act or omission that was a criminal offence under international law at the time the act or omission occurred.

· Freedom from imprisonment for inability to fulfil a contractual obligation. A person must not be imprisoned solely on the ground of inability to fulfil a contractual obligation.

· Freedom from coercion or restraint in relation to religion and belief. No person will be subject to coercion that would impair his or her freedom to have or to adopt a religion or belief of his or her choice.

The right to a fair trial should also not be limited.

Recommendation 25

The Committee recommends that the following additional civil and political rights be included in any federal Human Rights Act:

· the right to freedom from forced work

· the right to freedom of movement

· the right to privacy and reputation

· the right to vote

· the right to freedom of thought, conscience and belief

· freedom to manifest one’s religion or beliefs

· the right to freedom of expression

· the right to peaceful assembly

· the right to freedom of association

· the right to marry and found a family

· the right of children to be protected by family, society and the State

· the right to take part in public life

· the right to property

· the right to liberty and security of person

· the right to humane treatment when deprived of one’s liberty

· the right to due process in criminal proceedings

· the right not to be tried or punished more than once

· the right to be compensated for wrongful conviction.

Human rights protection is a mixed blessing. Any such legislation that does not entrench a right to free speech in such a way that overcomes the current idiotic laws which may, for example, result in the gaoling of people for ridiculing religion, and which has resulted in the gaoling of Frederick Toben for his anti-Semitic remarks, is worthless.

The sad fact is that this law will be imposed on the people by the parliament. The true nature of a Bill of Rights is one imposed on the parliament by the people. The current proposal does not envision a constitutional amendment, as it is extremely unlikely that it would be agreed to in its current form.

Instead the people will have this pious effluent inflicted on them by a smug righteous soft left government.

There is also a section of the report calling for compliance with Australia’s international obligations. The UN has passed resolutions calling for laws to protect religion from defamation. There is a risk that in future this will be enshrined as a human right and that it may become an ‘international obligation’ for Australia. This is offensive to the concept freedom of speech. This may suit a cleric like Fr Brennan, but it is an abomination in terms of free speech.

Ultimately, the legislation will be a sad compromise. It will be bent to accommodate current law. It is unlikely the government will allow it to overrule current legislation like the Federal sedition laws. In the end it will be a horrible compromise which will not serve the community well. If we are going to enshrine fundamental rights in law, it should be done as a constitutional amendment, which will lead to a fulsome public debate involving ordinary citizens rather than merely the chattering classes.

Self Censorship - The Soft Jihad

A German publisher has decided not to publish a novel out of fear for the safety of himself, his family and his employees.

Surely he knows that Islam is a religion of peace, and that only a very tiny minority of misunderstanders of Islam would resort to violence, so he has nothing to fear, right?

The novel was about an honour killing, obviously a topic wholly unrelated to Islam. The offending words were "You can shove your Koran up your arse". My thoughts exactly.

Censorship at Stanford

Stanford university has banned a filmmaker from using footage of an interview he conducted with an academic who had moved from a global cooling alarmist position in the 1970s to a warming alarmist position now.

In the 1970s there was widespread panic in the scientific community (which flowed through into the popular press) about the threat of global cooling.

It would be interesting to hear an interview with a scientist involved in both incidents. Stanford is doing everything it can to prevent this.

US Puts Free Speech On The Alter of Appeasement

This is quite disconcerting. As part of Obama's policy of "reaching out" to muslims the US has co-sponsored a dubious UN Human Rights Council resolution which sends out very mixed signals in relation to free speech.

The implications are discussed in the linked article.

Book-Burner Denied Top UNESCO Position

Looks like UNESCO dodged a bullet here:

In his lengthy political career, Hosni has often been accused of promoting anti-Semitism, in particular in 2008 when he told the Egyptian parliament: "I'd burn Israeli books myself if I found any in libraries in Egypt."

Hosni, who has been Egypt's culture minister for 22 years, insists his comment was made during an angry exchange with hardliners from the Muslim Brotherhood and had been taken out of context.

The last thing the UN science and education body needs is someone who threatens to burn books when the Islamists turn up the heat.

Net Neutrality

There has been a move among ISPs to reduce bandwidth for specific applications such as Skype or bittorrent files. This tactic may easily push internet users to paid services, especially those which encourage or induce ISPs to limit access to free services.

Fortunately the FCC is making a stand in favour of net neutrality which provides for non-discrimination against particular content. The internet is a relatively free, and as such is a tempting prize for potential monopolists who would like nothing more than to colonise it and ration it to users for a price.

Also, the Electronic Frontier Foundation site is a good source of information on freedom in the electronic age.

Don't Offend Muslims

Apparently if someone is offended because Muhammad is referred to as a 'warlord' the UK police will arrest the perpetrators.

Not with a bang but a whimper, European civilisation is now groveling at the feet of a hideous 7th century religion. This is what happens when a relativistic culture, not even sure of its own values, and without even the self-confidence to reproduce itself, meets a vigourous self-confidant cult.

A Triumph For Junk Science

English defamation laws are notoriously favourable to plaintiffs, and frequently used to silence debate. Debunking junk science there is a minefield for anyone brave enough to attempt it, as this article amply demonstrates.

Defamation law should be subject to a fair comment exception which requires proof by the plaintiff of bad faith on the part of the defendant.

The internet has only complicated this problem, as its global reach means that unscrupulous plaintiffs can sue in countries with the laws most favourable to them. An example of this is discussed here.

Copywriting The Law

In an interesting development some governments are starting to use copyright law to make money out of their laws and the guidance they publish regarding those laws.

This is bizarre. People are expected to obey the law, but must pay for the privilege of finding out what the law is and how it is administered. There must be better ways of raising revenue than this.

Scientology Secrets

The Scientology cult is quite happy to trash free speech to protect itself from scrutiny and criticism. Here are the recommendations in its submission to the Australian Human Rights Commission:

Recommendation 1: The implementation of Criminal and Civil Restrictions on Religious Vilification.

Recommendation 2: Restriction on Anonymity on acts of Religious Vilification:

2.1 Websites created with primary purpose of inciting religious vilification shall be removed or their access to the Australian public restricted.

2.2 Creators of websites whose primary purpose is the incitement of religious vilification shall be prevented from concealing their identity.

Recommendation 3: Restriction on Religious Misinformation and Misrepresentation known or reasonably known to be untruthful in the Media

Recommendation 4: Include a form of Bill or Charter of Rights into the Australian Constitution, which prevents the Commonwealth from making any law, which ‘directly, indirectly or incidentally’ prohibits the free exercise of religion to the extent of such prohibition.

This pathological perversion of religion wants to be left to fester in the dark recesses of society. The last thing it wants is informed discussion of its questionable methods and ridiculous doctrines.

Hitchens on Yale

Christopher Hitchens has a good column on the disgraceful cowardice of Yale University Press. His point is that not only have deliberately censored themselves, but have said that they would have been culpable for any violence resulting from their publication of Danish cartoons:

But now the rot has gone a serious degree further into the fabric. Now we have to say that the mayhem we fear is also our fault, if not indeed our direct responsibility. This is the worst sort of masochism and it subverts our language as well as our concept of moral responsibility. ...

What a cause of shame that the campus of American hero Nathan Hale should have pre-emptively run up the white flag and then cringingly taken the blood guilt of potential assassins and tyrants on itself.

This craven behaviour is eating away at freedom. If you are not prepared to stand up for your rights you don't deserve them.

Toben Martyred

Frederick Toben has now been jailed following an unsuccessful appeal against his conviction for contempt of court perpetrated by Toben not taking down anti-semitic statements from his website in accordance with a court order.

Some may say that his jailing is for contempt rather than for exercising his right to say what he pleases. This shallow analysis ignores the fact that it was precisely his continued publication of the offensive speech which constituted the contempt. This is merely a difference in legal terminology, not a difference in impugned conduct.

Sadly we live among the dying embers of the enlightenment, when hard-won freedoms are being rolled back by priggish PC censors. Now society is being made to conform to a new religion, a new set of irrational beliefs inflicted on us to protect the sensitivities of the liberal elite.

This is much more sickening than anything Toben said.

Crypto Fascists

Apparently privilege against self-incrimination only goes so far. In the UK you can be jailed for up to five years for not letting people view your documents:

Two people have been successfully prosecuted for refusing to provide authorities with their encryption keys, resulting in landmark convictions that may have carried jail sentences of up to five years.

The legal system is spiralling towards insanity. There have been calls for such legislation in Australia.

Utterly Gutless

Now it seems a prestigious university is too scared to publish a book about the Danish cartoon controversy which actually shows the cartoons themselves, or any other representation of Muhammad. Apparently the editor didn't want blood on his hands.

If there was any blood, it would not be on his hands, but on the hands of the murderous fanatics bent on dictating to speech laws to the rest of the world. Whatever their religion is, it is not a religion of peace.

Freedom Slipping Away

The Attorney-General, Robert McLelland, is continuing the process of diminishing civil liberties in Australia.

He said:

While I will not attempt to outline in detail all the measures contained in the Discussion Paper, there are a number of key measures that are proposed, including:

• expanding the definition of a ‘terrorist act’ in the Criminal Code to include psychological, as well as physical harm;
• providing police with new emergency powers to enter and search premises without a warrant where it is suspected, on reasonable grounds, that there is material relevant to a terrorism offence and there is a threat to public health or safety;
• extending the time available for police to re-enter a premises under a search warrant from one hour to 12 hours in emergency circumstances;
• introducing a new ‘terrorism hoax offence’, punishable by up to 10 years imprisonment, for those that seek to create a false belief that a terrorist act is occurring, or will likely occur;
• establishing a maximum seven day limit on the amount of time that can be specified by a magistrate and disregarded from the investigation period in relation to an alleged terrorism offence;
• inserting a right of appeal for both the prosecution and the defendant against bail decisions in terrorism and national security matters, including a power to stay a bail order where an appeal is planned;
• creating an offence of inciting violence against an individual on the basis of race, religion, nationality, national origin or political opinion to supplement the existing Commonwealth offence of inciting violence against a group;
• extending the expiration period of regulations proscribing a terrorist organisation from two to three years;
• amending the National Security Information (Criminal and Civil Proceedings) Act 2004 so that national security and counter-terrorism court proceedings may be expedited;
• establishing a Parliamentary Joint Committee on Law Enforcement to extend parliamentary oversight to include the Australian Federal Police (AFP) in addition to the Australian Crime Commission (ACC); and
• renaming the offence of sedition to ‘urging violence’ and expanding its provisions to include urging force or violence against an individual, not just a group, and including ‘national origin’, as well as race, religion, nationality or political opinion as a reason for urging violence.

Warrantless searches! Terrorism equals psychological harm!

Unbelievable. Philip Ruddock never dreamed he could get away with this nonsense. This will do lasting damage to freedom in this country. It will be applied first to terrorists, then to bikies then to anyone who looks to be guilty of anything at all.