forfeiture of citizenshipAustralian Prime Minister John Howard and his cohorts are treading a fine line; the penalty for removing the right to criticise a democratic constitution is the forfeiture of citizenship.Buried in the detail of Howard's bizarre 107 pages of secret proposals ostensibly to counter terrorism but effectively to silence criticism of his irretrievably corrupt neo-con regime, as revealed on the web site of Chief Minister of the Australian Capital Territory, Jon Stanhope, proposals to be rushed through a rubber stamp Parliament with the least possible scrutiny, is the revitalised offence of seditious intent, which "means an intention to bring the sovereign into hatred or contempt; or to urge disaffection against the constitution; the government of the Commonwealth; [or] either house of the Parliament".
The Constitution of Australia, criticism of which Howard seeks so desperately to silence, is a document designed by men who reckoned women were of insufficient intelligence to understand law.
It serves to subjugate women to the spurious view that men's intelligence is the standard, the only legitimate intelligence there is, a religious belief maintained without basis in science or reason it's protagonists share with terrorists.
Under Howard's proposals, if you purchase a poster from an organisation supporting constitutional reform you are liable to life imprisonment for financing a terrorist organisation.
The two-thirds of Australians in favour of the nation becoming a republic are liable to a fortnight's detention for expressing their view, seven years imprisonment for supporting, and life imprisonment for subscribing to a republican organisation.
To legislate what amounts to massive civil disobedience while engaged in an alleged war on terror is overwhelmingly derelict leadership.
Terrorists must be slapping their sides with mirth at the madness one of their most effective proponants is proposing.
Howard is legislating the trashing of the Constitution of Australia as an instrument of democracy.
Parliamentarians who vote for his proposals are liable to be held to account as enemies of the nation in forfeit of the rights of Australian citizenship.
Their best prospects will be to seek asylum with terrorists, their natural allies.
October 27, 2005
