How do you boil a frog?

Frogs are very reflexive little buggers and will spring away at the slightest stimulation. If you want to boil a lobster, you just chuck the sucker in the boiling pot, and there it'll stay. But not so with frogs; they're off the moment they hit the surface. No, to boil a frog you have to be more gentle. Put him in nice a slow like, then slowly, slowly gradually, gradually turn up the heat. He'll be lulled into an easy sleep and wake up cooked and eaten.

And that's one way to turn up the heat on our liberties, too. Don't go for the big grab all in one hit. Divert with your left hand, and take a little quickly with your right. Lie low a while. Make another diversion with your right hand and pinch a bit more with your left. A little here, a little there. You get lulled into a nice soft sense of security and wake up bound and gagged.

That's pretty much the description of what's been happening in Australia as told by David Marr in the SMH today: http://www.smh.com.au/news/opinion/labor-bares-its-empty-soul-for-all-to-see/2005/09/29/1127804606575.html

We only think the recent Howard rollback of presumptions of innocence, rights to counsel, notice of charges, habeas corpus, freedom of speech, freedom of association, etc., is an unprecedented and right wing Liberal party conspiracy. (Well, some of us only think that, those of us who think that our personal freedoms are under attack. Others don't think or don't think so.)

But David Marr shows us the water temperature was turned up long ago. He suggests (but doesn't say) that it may have something to do with the legacy of the White Australia policies, or of the fear of the Asian hordes to the north and our fear we cannot fend for ourselves. He reminds us (and how could we have forgotten -- shame on us) that "Labor introduced the virus back in 1992 to save the nation from a couple of hundred Cambodian boat people."

His conclusion is that Labor and Liberal are in cahoots to wind back our freedoms and liberties with few safeguards because "the real "safeguard" that makes mandatory detention of boat people and the prospect of tagging, searching and detaining terrorism suspects acceptable - even welcome - has nothing much to do with promises of sensitive policing and judicial review. It's simply the belief these days that these measures will only ever be used against Muslims. All along, it's always been about race."

And evils such as this don't usually end up as designed. Jews weren't the only ones to feel the jackboot of Naziism. You might want to have a read of his piece. And if you still don't think that panic and subordination of individual rights to due process is a concern, read this; it won't take long: http://www.smh.com.au/news/world/family-confronts-details-of-sons-killing-by-police/2005/09/29/1127804608677.html