Terror show

摘要

The government of John Howard has is- sued many dark warnings of a possible home-grown terrorist attack in Australia. Yet few Australians have seemed concerned by the prospect—a happy state of complacency that was jolted early on November 8th, when police and security agents swooped in Sydney and Melbourne, and arrested 17 people on terrorism charges. What exactly they were suspected to have been plotting was unclear, though a minister for the state of New South Wales claimed Australia had been saved from a "potentially catastrophic terrorist act". At any rate, this was Australia's biggest-ever counter-terrorism operation. It has also raised the heat over a plan to introduce tougher anti-terrorism laws.