Sunday, September 21, 2014
Being afraid of
the Muslim bogeyman – Australia’s cowardice and double standards
Nine years ago, I wrote cryptically about the legal dubiousness of what has since publicly been
named as Operation Pendennis. I would like to refine my opinion, somewhat,
on the advisability and effectiveness of citizen intervention on crimes as they unfold – as opposed to crimes in
the anticipation. And certainly to
change my opinion entirely on what we have learned from September 11. Never mind the apparent cowardice, or more
charitably, the rote by-the-book-adherence by the passengers on the first three
planes; we are now all firmly on the fourth plane, United 93, as it were – well
I am, anyway.
Inchoate offences are a fraught area, because unless a
line is drawn around a small minority class of the surveilled, the only
alternative is a total police state, aka a permanent State of Emergency.
But even under the less draconian scenario, defining the unfortunate subject
class is, of course, hugely fraught. The
majority can keep living their lives much as before, but the singled-out, intensely-surveilled
minority – which in the present case is young Muslim men – will have their
lives (and those of their families) turned upside down. For this reason alone, I predict that the
main outcome of Thursday’s raids will be the creation of a dozens, at least, of
new terrorists. And if they are squashed with another
pre-emptive raid in a few years’ time, hundreds
will then fill the void. And so on: nice
one, Tony Abbott.
Of course, I am not a fan of terrorism, nor opposed to
legitimate law enforcement. What
happened on Thursday, however, was abhorrent – if, as was widely reported, 900
police were mainly there to stop a Lee Rigby-style planned public beheading of
a (i) random stranger, or (ii) uniformed soldier, that would be filmed,
presumably by an accomplice.
Here’s a shocking thought: two evil-, and You Tube-, minded terrorists,
one armed with a knife, and the other with a phone-camera, probably cannot do
that much damage in a crowded public place – unless we stand by and watch.
Someone can be easily fatally stabbed, sure, but to slit a throat, on
camera, requires a reasonable amount of choreography in the lead-up. Meaning that there may well be enough time
and opportunity for one or more passers-by to (a) jump, or incapacitate the
knife-wielder by heavy blow using anything at hand (fatal or otherwise, I think
it matters not), and (b) at the very least, jump the phone-camera wielder. Is mainstream Australia really so cowardly
that we cannot see this common-sense approach as a viable alternative, at
least, to pre-emptive mass raids of the sort that happened on Thursday? If so, then I suggest that the terrorists
have already won.
Corroborating this, albeit unintentionally, are the words
on Thursday of former judge Anthony Whealy (who was the judge in Pendennis),
who said that his lot, arrested in
2005 and some still in jail, were mere bumblers in comparison to those recently
raided:
So “horror” is no longer a physical thing, apparently,
but relates to You-Tube viewer statistics, including whether they are
domestic/Australian or international (larger numbers of the latter make for “more horrific” horror, because it is propaganda, see). And
indeed, personally I am shaking my head in horror right now – as to how someone
with as limited a set of insights as Wheatly ever became a judge.
There are also two related double-standards that concern
me, and may explain why what I term a common-sense approach is not that common,
apparently. One is Australia’s extreme
tolerance, in my view, for young, law-breaking bogan men – other than Muslim
bogans, of course. Steal a car, and then
die driving the stolen car, at a dangerous speed in a police chase? Apparently, that death is the police’s fault,
unless proved otherwise. This situation
is somewhere between an anomaly and an outrage.
Statistically I imagine that a random, innocent Australian is far more
likely to die as collateral damage in the stolen-car chase scenario than in a
public-place terrorist beheading, but not only are likely car-thieves not
comprehensively pre-emptively surveilled (as far as I can tell), but they are
not subject to murder charges, if they kill an innocent stranger, and live to
face court. Personally, I think that if
the stolen-car driver is the only person killed, then the cops deserve a medal
and this is a win for just about everybody.
Except the owner of the stolen car, now a wreck – but if this was me,
I’d be sending the bill to the family of the deceased.
The second double-standard concerns why we have
singled-out young Muslim men only (again, as far as I can tell) for
pre-emptive surveillance, while there are other categories of men – non-bogans,
this time* – who seem reasonably prone to the mass-murder of innocents. Forty-four year old farmers, apparently
happily married, for instance (44 being the age at which depression peaks for men). And
recently-separated fathers of young children, who have an access visit arranged for Father’s Day. If our police and
intelligence forces are as good at thwarting murderous plots as the generally
obsequious media coverage of Thursday’s raids suggests, then eradicating, in
the near future and throughout Australia, the murder of children and/or (ex-)
partners by men (none or few of whom are Muslim, as far as I can tell) should
be a cinch for them.
Such raids/surveillance would’t get the same applauding, banner headlines, though – and in fact the biggest headlines would probably come from
the protests of innocent men, outraged that they have been targeted unfairly,
as one of a high-risk minority. Treated
like a Muslim man in Australia in
2014, other words.
* I am trying to be an equal-opportunity offender
