Big Bullshit in Little Australia

The assholes who consider themselves the loyal opposition are spewing their same old divisive warnings and aiming for national paralysis, as is their wont. The Australian federal government has started an anti-terror campaign for TV, radio, and newspapers wherein they ask citizens to be on the lookout for suspicious behavior and to call a 24-hour hotline to report same. Sounds rational right? A country is on the short list and asks all its citizens to be aware and report possible dangers to the authorities. What could be a saner response? Here's a problem:

[The Australian and New Zealand College of Psychiatrists] New South Wales branch chair Dr Louise Newman says she believes health professionals will have to carefully monitor the impact of the campaign on the community, especially the young and those already suffering mental health problems.

She says the campaign is vague and will only heighten tension in the community.

Jesus. Nearly 100 Australians killed by terrorism, but let's be afraid of heightening tensions "in the community". Wait, it gets worse:

The Labour opposition party has claimed it will increase alarm across a country already nervous after the bomb attacks in Bali, in October.

As everyone knows, the worst thing you can do is increase alarm. Sometimes I think it's worse than terrorism itself. (Because the terrorists will have won, etc. Sometimes I think introducing the future perfect tense is the worst crime of all.)

Labour's foreign affairs spokesman, Kevin Rudd, said the advertisements contained no practical information advising people what they are supposed to be alert to.

It's unfortunate that the government can't tell people to be alert specifically for Abu Jaffar of 123 Main St., Brisbane. Of course these complaints are the same crap that the US opposition raised in the immediate aftermath of 9/11 when our own feds told people to be alert to suspicious activity.

I recall that Chris Matthews was a particularly egregious offender. Early on, within 6 months of 9/11, the government would say periodically that we were on high alert, and that everyone should be alert to suspicious activity, and that there was a lot of "chatter". And Chris would always bitch that perhaps this was information that we didn't need to know- what were we supposed to do with this info- what are we looking out for? Who the fuck knows Chris? The front is on our national territory and the government doesn't have all the answers (and they never will). Live with it, you whiny bastard. But of course, if something had happened during that time of high "chatter" and the government had said nothing, Chris would be among the most prominent to blast the feds for keeping the truth from us (in that ugly, contrarian spirit of journalism that J-schools have turned into a religion). To hell with that.

This is an asymmetrical war. Their terrorists are fighting our civilians. Our military cannot be everywhere, and indeed, we don't want our military stationed in every town and on every corner. We don't want our police listening in on every conversation. Terrorists target places in our country where our military doesn't defend. They live in cells that the police don't suspect. Our military comprises a targeted offense. This is effective when we're fighting terror-supporting nations. But when the terrorists are already here, the only way to handle their random targeting is with a distributed defense. That means armed pilots and an armed citizenry. That means an aware citizenry that knows who to keep an eye on and when to call the cops. That means a citizenry that takes responsibility for their own defense and doesn't rely on the government to lead them by the hand and give them guidelines and charts and mental health tests and reassure them for the sake of keeping tensions or the level of alarm down.

In a way, we're all on Flight 93. Our defense is in our own hands, as our Constitution always insisted. The government has bigger weapons, yes, but the government is made up of our employees, and when you come down to it, they're just people, as capable as some of them are. There is no magic solution there. This bullshit, tell us soothing stories and tell us that everything will be OK crap that some insist on hearing from our governments is a real danger; don't rock the boat; we don't want to hear bad news. That's for suckers. Everything will not be OK. It's already not OK. 3000 people died on US soil.