Category: War on Terror

Research ‘blames West for terror’

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TERRORISM research in Australia is skewed towards the concept that Western policies are to blame and fails to explore fundamental questions about the nature of terrorists and the ideology driving them. University of Queensland terrorism researchers Carl Ungerer, a foreign affairs and national security adviser to former federal Labor leader Simon Crean, and David Martin Jones yesterday criticised the direction of terrorism research in Australia for ignoring the role of radical Islamism in breeding terrorists.
ARC chief executive Peter Hoj was forced to defend the council’s funding of terrorism research earlier this week after a Flinders University sociologist, Riaz Hassan, awarded more than $800,000 to study suicide terrorism, proposed to interview terrorist leaders.
What a novel approach. I can’t imagine why Churchill didn’t think to interviw Hitler to try and work out why he was at war with Germany. What was Riaz Hassan going to do – Phone up Osama’s PA and request an interview? Clearly, the 800 grand would be better spent building an assylum for socialologists to keep them out of harms way
War on Terror

Six of the Bali Nine now headed for the bullet

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Downer on six of the Bali Nine drug trafficers being set for the death sentence after an appeal raised their life sentences to death by firing squad. Downer said he was surprised that the convicts’ lawyers were not the first to be advised and that the Supreme Court had opted for more serious sentences than the prosecutors requested.
“In terms of the procedures, I must say they have been, to say the least, a little unusual in that the first we heard about this was through the media,” Downer said. “The Indonesian Supreme Court’s clearly taken the view that trafficking in heroin is a profoundly grave offense,” he added.
I have no great problems with that but I would just like them to take the view that mass murdering innocents a la Bali is likewise a profoundly grave offence.
War on Terror

Muslim Integration

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JOHN Howard has singled out Muslim migrants for refusing to embrace Australian values and urged them to fully integrate by treating women as equals and learning to speak English.
Mr Howard said: “There is a section, a small section of the Islamic population, and I say a small section … which is very resistant to integration.
He’s right. The comments prompted a fierce reaction from young female Islamic leader Iktimal Hage-Ali, a member of the Prime Minister’s advisory group. She accused Mr Howard of threatening to further marginalise Muslims. “There’s no value in pointing out the minority of the Muslim group,” she said.
“There’s a whole lot of other ethnic communities whose parents, whose grandparents don’t speak the English language, and it’s never a problem in the mainstream Australian community for them to go on living their everyday life without speaking the language.
Iktimal Hage-Ali needs to come to grips with the fact that Islam has the monopoly on terrorism.  The one common factor through all of the carnage throughout the world is ‘Islam’.  The terrorists are all either born or converts to Islam and that fact alone needs separate considerations.  Too many of the Muslims migrating here publicly put down on our way of life or stand silent as others do. Physician, heal thyself.
War on Terror

The magic missile II

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The status of the missile is now clearly defined as having the software and mechanics to deploy a cross-tip screwdriver mid-flight to remove the top central air vent before entering the vehicle for final demolition.Some punters writing to the Australian editor clearly have not grasped where the media world is heading with one Luddite questioning Downer believing blogs before the Red Cross in Lebanon.
WHEN it comes to holes in ambulance roofs, Alexander Downer would rather believe a US-based blogger rather than the Red Cross in Lebanon. This is just more of the same from a person who took us into the Iraq fiasco for non-existent WMDs and can’t remember anything about Australian companies bribing Saddam Hussein. Iain Lygo Anglesea, Vic
Quite smart of Downers’s advisors really but then obvioulsy all of Iain’s rationale is founded on the basic premise that everything Howard/ Downer does is wrong anyway. Try to broaden your reading Iain – you might learn something. Andrew from Tasmania has a similar viewpoint.  In fact both letters smack of the Editor having a anti Howard/Downer (insert today’s events) software package that just churns this shit out.
THAT websurfing is dangerous, addictive and extremely time-consuming is clearly proven when our Foreign Minister relies on a blogsite report to make a statement on the war in Lebanon, yet has no time to read emails, faxes and cables with dire warnings about AWB’s dealings with Saddam Hussein. Andrew Wyminga Bicheno, Tas
Anyone who reads the Zombie report in full and thinks it doesn’t raise questions is far too blinkered by ideology to accept the fact that people like Martin Chulov have agendas to put Israel in a bad light and the terrorists on a pedastal. Common sense eventually prevails with Tony Parkinson, Downer’s media advisor, nailing the issue.     
War on Terror

Travesty

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Let’s get it down to one single line…no legal arguement….no human rights lawyer input; Jihad Jack should be in gaol. The Australian carries more verbose articles; one by David Flint and an editorial that says the same thing under the banner Jack Thomas’s freedom is a victory for our enemies. It is too.
War on Terror

Just going camping, your honour

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No wonder terrorists are such a problem. The Sun Herald reports on the Terrorist suspects going through the legal process at the moment.
Mr Hammoud tells her he is going to the mountains for two days. When his wife asks what exactly they are doing, he says: “Uh, go do a bit of, you know, terrorist training.” She replies: “Don’t be stupid. What are you going to do there?” Mr Hammoud says: “Go camping . . . kick back, read a bit of the Koran.”
Go camping….kick back…read a bit of the Koran! It should be go camping….kick back…have a couple of drinks with your mates…do a bit of fishing/hunting…sit around the campfire telling exagerated stories of sexual conquests…..play a game of touch…..have a couple more drinks and buy some fish on the way home to prove it was all serious stuff. Shoue Hammoud, 26, made the comment, described by defence lawyers as an inappropriate joke, during a conversation recorded on October 8, 2004. Maybe it is a joke and they meant to have good time but I suspect they were sitting around the campfire plotting to kill us infidels. Maybe that’s a ‘good time’ to them but my way is more fun.
War on Terror

Bad move by Israel or Poor assessment by Sheridan?

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Greg Sheridan in todays Australian devotes about two thirds of his Bad Move by Israel article to the wonders of Lebanon and the Lebonese and how hard done by they are. I don’t think any of this is news to the western world and I’m sure most of us feel sorry for Lebanon. I know I do.

But he loses me when he blames Israel on their selection of Lebanon as the theatre of war as if they had a choice. He uses and old Lebaonese journalist aquaintence, Daizy Mir, as his sounding board;

Now Mir is devastated by what’s happening in Lebanon: “Israel is fighting a war against Syria and Iran and it’s using Lebanese territory. This kind of tactic has never worked. All it’s going to do is make things worse. It’s not going to get rid of Hezbollah. The people in control (of Hezbollah) know how to move around and they’ve set this up.”

The exact reverse is the case. Hezbollah has chosen the playing field. They sited their rockets in Lebanon and fired them at Israel from there.

What should Israel do? Send an email saying

“Look Hezbollah, it’s not fair on Lebanon that you site your weapons in their country and then attack us. Would you consider setting the war scene somewhere else?”

Hezbollah would reply –

“We know it’s unfair attacking you from Lebanon, that’s why we do it. It forces you to attack us there to save your people and then we can arrange for Lebanese civilians to be close to the rocket sites so when you do attack, other Arabs and western media can portray you as baby killers. It always works…it’s a part of our tactics…Fighting Terrorist Wars 101, Ch 4, Manipulation of western media. Haven’t you learnt this yet.

Israel has learnt this but are forced to defend themselves anyway and the western media choose not to learn it, they won’t even read the manual.

Sheridan apparently doesn’t even know the manual exists.

However, his last paragraph does touch on the root cause, almost as an afterthought;

None of this remotely excuses Hezbollah, which bears the lion’s share of the blame for this situation. Its leaders probably calculated on and wanted tough Israeli action for a multiplicity of political and strategic reasons.

and ends with this;

Israel certainly has the right to defend itself. But the gains from its actions are very uncertain, while the cost is certain. And enormous

The media just can’t bring themselves to say Israel certainly has the right to defend itself without slipping in the royal rider

But

As in, see how fair and balance I am; I mention Israel has the right to defend herself BUT she is still wrong.

Don’t like the civilian casualties?

Talk to Hezbollah.

War on Terror
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