Terrorism stalks the world.

For how much longer will Australia be the lucky country which hasn’t yet had a major terrorist blood-bath?

A Counter-Terrorism White Paper (2010) prepared by the Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet reveals that Australia is very much a potential terrorist target.

It says that, “Although al-Qa’ida has not itself launched a direct attack on Australia, it has shown an operational interest in doing so.”

Multiple planned attacks have been detected and prevented. Since 2001, twenty people in Australia have been convicted of terrorism offences.

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Terrorist attacks cost money to organise.

The Australian Transaction Reports and Analysis Centre (AUSTRAC) tracks financial business deals relating to the financing of terrorism and money-laundering.

In 2008-09, 29 such cases related to terrorism financing were investigated.

The enormous global drug trade is vital to financing terrorist criminal activity — what they call “narco-terrorism”.

The US Drug Enforcement Administration has evidence that 60 percent of identified foreign terrorist organisations are in some way connected to the illegal drug trade — and that the drug trade is increasingly used by Muslim terrorist groups to finance their activities.

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Money-laundering is facilitated by the existence of Casinos.

In the Lu Hong case in Australia in 1997, four people were convicted of laundering $10 million as part of a heroin-distributing operation.

It was in Melbourne’s Crown Casino where they laundered the money. (Herald Sun, 25/9/1997)

The last thing a small city like Mildura, in Victoria, needs  — with its thousands of families trying to live decent lives — is a Casino.

re Mustard and Grinols, visit:  http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=233792