Are we in the eye of the storm? Apart from cursory announcements of the terror legislation's passing on television and radio, reminiscent of similar news reports in the Soviet Bloc decades ago, there has been silence. Apart from a few letters, not a word in the newspapers, no commentary, no editorials, nothing. Nothing on the 7:30 Report. John Faine talks to Bob Brown on Melbourne ABC radio the morning after and, as far as I heard, they did not speak of it. Did the ABC instruct Faine to stay clear of the subject? Has self-censorship set in so completely so soon?

Friends are telling me not to be silly, nothing is going to happen. They may well be right; I certainly hope so. Then why has the media clammed up?

John Howard often says he stands on his record. But his record is one of sustained dismantling of democracy in Australia, a record of unbroken corruption and disdain for the fair go. Ten years of John Howard's record is enough for me to be 99.99 per cent worried about what is to come.

It beggars belief that he and Philip Ruddock and their slavering agents in ASIO and the AFP, both organizations virtually without restraint regarding the harassment of citizens, are going to do the right thing with these new laws. They have no honour and we no longer have rights.

History shows that we have absolutely no reason to believe that the Howard Government will not follow its predecessors in state terrorism. Howard and Ruddock want revenge on all who have crossed them. (I am not just speaking of ravers and ranters like myself, but everyone they hold a grudge against.) Now they have the power, the same power Pinochet had and used (minus, at this point, the military) shortly after America engineered the coup that brought him to power. Today, 32 years after he began his reign of terror, he is still a free man. If Pinochet could get away with it, 66-year-old John Howard must reckon, so can he. Especially when the same America, long since out of the closet as a world-threatening tyranny under the neo-cons and their Dubya, is right behind him.

The Age has bitten the bullet and published a few letters; I suppose they are reckoning that the Howard Terror won't swoop if they print the views of others. (John Howard: "in their dreams.") Here is a letter from Joseph Toscano of the Anarchist Media Institute, so often one of the sanest contributors to the letters page. Copy it and paste it on your fridge, right next to that magnet.

Humans are born with inalienable human rights that no government can legislate away. Governments can pass all the legislation they like; enforcing that legislation is another matter. The state's monopoly on the use of violence gives it the power to temporarily silence dissent, but it doesn't give it the moral authority to do so. Governments that declare war on their citizens by removing the protections that citizens enjoy against the arbitrary exercise of state power do so at their own peril.

As free individuals and as a free community, we have both the right and the duty to challenge these new laws. By refusing to censor ourselves and by continuing to speak our minds, we will force the Howard Government to either repeal these laws or fill the jails with the prisoners of conscience who are willing to directly challenge this Government's attempts to criminalise dissent.

Tomorrow: Harold Hark's Handy Hints For Political Prisoners.