We repeat that America, Australia, England and Italy are all our enemies," said the militant, wearing a black balaclava and constantly pointing his right finger in the air.

"We especially remind Australia that you, Downer and Howard, are killing Australia, leading it into darkness and misfortune and mujahideen terror," he said, referring to Australia's Prime Minister John Howard and Foreign Minister Alexander Downer.

"Know that as long as you (all) continue to colonize the land of Iraq and Afghanistan and intimidate Muslims then you too will feel our intimidation and terror."

Besides the fact that the warning shows the mindless hate and expresses the typical dribble of Muslim militants (he claims for example that we are colonising Iraq and Afghanistan, and that we are intimidating Muslims), his threats are empty, but chilling, and serve as a reminder that these people still have hidden cells here in Australia.

Already we have seen how Al Qaeda has been using these videos to get out the message that the time has come to act (viz the increased chatter amongst suspected terrorists in Australia and their disrupted preparation for a murder-suicide attack upon the innocent civilians, Muslim, Christian and Jewish in Australia). This tape was probably made as a means of telling these same suspects that the moment had come to put their plans into action.

In Australia, we are already seeing an increase in the jitteriness of the public at large, especially where suspicious packages are concerned (I would hate to leave my sandwich on the train and find that such an error had led to the public transport ending up in chaos), but on the other hand this means that there is an increased vigilence as people become more aware of the dangers of the moment. I have it from a very reliable source that certain potential targets are on high alert after receiving several bomb threats.