Australians awoke on Nov. 8 to find that 400 state and federal police had staged the biggest "anti-terror" raid in Australian history, arresting 17 in Sydney and Melbourne. Despite the presumed highly sensitive nature of the operation, Prime Minister John Howard ensured that all media were present for the pre-dawn raids. And, despite police claims that they had prevented a "catrastrophic" attack, no supporting evidence was presented.

This was only Howard's latest stunt in his plans to turn Australia into a full-fledged police state before the world's financial system blows to bits. His Anti-Terrorism Act of 2005, provides for, along with accompanying legislation:

• Vague, catch-all definitions of "terror" and "terrorists." No evidence is required that the "terrorists" are planning a specific attack, only that they might be "considering" one.
• Sedition laws with seven-year sentences for "exciting disaffection against the Government" or "promoting feelings of ill-will and hostility."
• Police powers to imprison anyone for 14 days or to confine them to home detention for up to one year with no charge, and to "shoot to kill" in making such arrests, as British police did around the subway bombings in July.

• Family members or journalists who disclose such imprisonment or detention may be sentenced to 5-7 years, and those detained or their lawyers may not see the evidence upon which such confinement is based.
• Conversations between lawyers and their defendants may be taped, a procedure outlawed even at Guantanamo Bay.
• The use of unchallengeable video or other evidence from abroad, opening the door to that gained by torture.
• New "stop, question, and search" laws modeled on Britain's notorious laws in Northern Ireland.
• The use of the Army to carry out civilian policing for the first time in Australia's history, under even the "potential" of a terrorist attack. An earlier Howard law gave the Army the right to "shoot to kill" civilians.

Australians presumably breathed a sigh of relief when Foreign Minister Alexander Downer proclaimed, "There won't be soldiers patrolling the streets shooting at people under normal circumstances."

The history of this latest bill bespeaks its fascist intent. Howard had planned to ram it through his Liberal/National party coalition-controlled Parliament with a mere week of hearings, with no prior warning. However, one state premier, Jon Stanhope, posted the bill on his website in mid-October, and refused Howard's enraged demands to take it down, and a nationwide furor erupted. Even so, the Act will clearly pass within weeks.

Howard has been a puppet of the Synarchy and its Mont Pelerin Society throughout his career. He has lined Australia up with every neo-con policy pushed by U.S. Vice President Dick Cheney and British Prime Minister Tony Blair, most notably as one of the "Three Musketeers" of the disastrous Iraq War. He signed onto Cheney's fraudulent WMD claims—which Howard's own intelligence services had refuted—and concocted his latest "anti-terror" bill only after meeting Blair on the subject in London on July 21.

One of Howard's more notorious cases of lying to ram through "security" legislation came in 2001. With draconian anti-immigrant legislation pending, he dramatically claimed that "illegal immigrants" trying to reach Australia in rickety boats were throwing their children overboard, so as to force Australian ships to rescue them as a back-door entrance to Australia. That legislation was rammed through before the truth emerged: No child had been thrown overboard, and the government knew it. Those immigrants who did make it to Australia have been kept in concentration camps under murderous conditions.

In the same week that he introduced his fascist anti-terror bill, Howard also introduced the most wide-ranging "industrial relations reform" since Australia was federated in 1901. The bill gives businesses the power to sack employees at will, and effectively crushes unions.

While the civil liberties lobby and even some of the media were wringing their hands over the new fascist bill, Lyndon LaRouche's associates in the LaRouche Youth Movement (LYM) and the Citizens Electoral Council distributed 500,000 copies of their New Citizen newspaper, headlined, "LaRouche: 'Dump Cheney Now!'|" with its second lead, "World Financial System Explodes, 'Little Hitler' Howard Goes for Fascism." Cheney is now going down. And, to paraphrase from Shelley's "Ode to the West Wind," "When Cheney goes, can Howard be far behind?"