A popular absurd photoshop which floats around on the internet is the dynamite monkey. The image has an aggravated monkey sitting near dynamite with plunger, and infront of a sign which has emblazoned in red and yellow, "Don't taunt the dynamite monkey". The bottom right hand corner has a human hand with the middle finger extended, and the remaining fingers closed. This is a good analogy for what can happen when the shadow state is taunted - something John Howard did when publicly claiming Australia faced a terrorist attack.

The "Shadow State" is the underground policing and intelligence arms of Australia, these include ASIO, the SAS, parts of the AFP and other opaque and hidden arms of government tucked from public view under the auspices of national security. They are often used for political purposes, as it is difficult for the citizenry to query, or discover anything about these groups. A good recent example of this is the constant imagery seen on Australian television showing SAS, in black facemasks to hide their identity, dropping from Blackhawks in anti-terror operations.

More recently, John Howard brought an intelligence operation into public view, claiming that Australia was under imminent terrorist threat. This was despite the contradiction of the threat level not being raised, and his call for calm at the same time. This was a political stunt, where supposedly non-partisan arms of government were abused for political purposes. The Navy and Australian Defence Force was similarly abused during the Tampa Affair. There is a difference however when the shadow state is taunted and abused. While the military is used to a certain amount of public and political scrutiny, the shadow state is not.

The Plame Affair which is embroiling the United States is a modern example of what can happen when the Shadow State is taunted. The prosecution was performed with the support of the CIA, who, as an entity, were outraged that one of the NOCs was outed. A NOC takes a long time to develop, as the complicity and long lead times for informants are expensive and time consuming. In essence, a great deal of funding, training and capability was permenently destroyed by the leaking of a CIA operative to the media. The CIA was not impressed.

Now there is starting to appear a backlash in the Australian shadow state over John Howard and Phillip Ruddock exposing one of their operations to the public, for no prosecutorial gain - merely a political gain to put pressure on the Industrial Relations legislation being passed without scrutiny. This is parliamentary hi-jinks, using intelligence which cannot be disseminated by the public to any large degree, making an objective conclusion from the public impossible. It is theatre for the tabloids and mass media.

Politics has a long history of abusing the shadow-state for political purposes, sometimes successfully for the incumbent, such as the Petrov Affair; sometimes poorly, such as Watergate; and other times with great suffering, such as the installing of the dictator, Pinochet in Chile. Whether John Howard's abuse of ASIO and AFP intelligence will result in a public backlash is not clear, but governments usually collapse on their own hubris, arrogance, corruption and political exhaustion. It is more likely that this will be another notch against the Howard Government as it displays the hubris that John Howard himself railed against as leader of the opposition when the Keating Government controlled the federal executive.

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