Die Australiese regering het Vrydag sy terreur-waarskynlikheidsvlak na “hoog” opgeskuif, het premier Tony Abbott in ‘n verklaring bekend gemaak.
Die rede vir die besluit is die toenemende aantal Australiërs wat bande het met of geïnspireer word deur terreurgroepe, waaronder die Islamitiese Staat.
“Die besluit is nie gegrond op kennis van ‘n spesifieke aanvalsplan nie, maar eerder op ‘n klomp bewyse wat daarop dui dat Australië wel deur terroriste-aanvalle bedreig kan word,” lui die verklaring.
Van wat? Abbos en Boomerangs?
Elders gelees: How Freudian of the smaller, vassalised country to attempt outshining the larger, fraternal (and maternal) counterpart. Even as the IS threat is being expanded as the curse of the Middle East, distant legislatures are getting busy finding hypothetical standards in examining terror threats. Even worse, they remain hypotheses, untested and hostile to evidence.
The Australian Immigration Minister, Scott Morrison, has never been troubled by the incursions of the empirical world into his scantily governed portfolio. On Wednesday, he decided to tell Australia that there had been “specific” threats to Australia which he was “not at liberty to go beyond”. With broad strokes of presumption, he suggested that those “radicalised” by their period as combatants overseas, some “two-thirds of them [had] got up to things when they come back.”
Some at the country’s National Press Club at Canberra should have been falling off their seats at the remarks. “We know there is a very real threat by the death cult that is operating over in Iraq and Syria and we know that that threat is not just over the Middle East.”