Thanks to Kevin 07.......Australian Prime Minister, Kevin "I have never been a Socialist" Rudd,and his Socialist government for sending the message world wide, at every opportunity they can, that he and his government are soft on illegals.
I guess we should take Indonesia at their word / threat.
And the challenge of migration?
SMH
Paul Sheehan
August 4, 2008
Did you know the Rudd Government is implementing the biggest immigration program since the end of World War II, and the biggest intake, in absolute numbers of permanent immigrants and temporary workers, in Australia's history?
Did you know the migration program for 2008-09 has set a target of 190,300 places, a robust 20 per cent increase over the financial year just ended?
On budget night, May 13, amid the avalanche of material released by the Government, the Minister for Immigration and Citizenship, Senator Chris Evans, issued a press release stating, among other things: "The use of 457 visas to employ temporary skilled migrant workers has grown rapidly in recent years. A total of 39,500 subclass 457 visas was granted in 2003-04 compared with an expected 100,000 places in each of 2007-08 and 2008-09." That is a 150 per cent increase in four years.
Did you know the number of overseas students coming to Australia is also at a record high, with 228,592 student visas granted in 2006-07, a 20 per cent increase over the previous year?
Under the Rudd Government, Australia's net immigration intake is now larger than Britain's, even though it has almost three times the population of Australia. To put all this in perspective, the immigration program in the Rudd Government's first year is 150 per cent bigger than it was in the Howard government's first year. The immigration intake is running almost 60 per cent higher than it was three years ago.
On November 14 last year, when Kevin Rudd launched Labor's election campaign, he mentioned at length the challenges of climate change and water shortages: "It is irresponsible for any national government of Australia to stand idly by while our major cities are threatened by the insecurity of water supply." While presenting a commendable shift away from John Howard's inertia on these issues, his policy is breathtakingly inconsistent. Not only did Rudd commit to a policy of building high-energy desalination plants for Australia's main cities, he has also committed Australia to record levels of immigration.
Talk about shifting sands. To quote Rudd in this same keynote speech: "Mr Howard lacked the decency to even mention Work Choices at all during his 4400-word policy speech on Monday. Work Choices has become the industrial relations law that now dare not speak its name."
Rudd did not have the decency to mention immigration once in his 4300-word campaign launch. It is the most glaring inconsistency of his Government.
The immigration figures quoted above do not even include New Zealanders, who are not counted as part of Australia's annual migration program, nor do they include people who have overstayed their visas. Add another 50,000 or so people to an equation which will see a million people added to the population during the three-year term of the Rudd Government. The only element in Australia's immigration program that is not going gangbusters is the refugee and humanitarian intake, which remains static at 13,500 places a year.
It was not until Evans made his first key policy speech last week that I began to appreciate the scale of the Government's selective silences. He began with a ritual bashing of his Liberal predecessor as minister, Kevin Andrews, who is now not even in the Opposition shadow outer ministry and would do his party a favour if he retired.
After the point-scoring Evans got to the essence: "Today I want to announce … [that] mandatory detention is an essential component of strong border control … [but] children and, where possible, their families, will not be detained in an immigration detention centre … Detention that is indefinite or otherwise arbitrary is not acceptable … Detention in immigration detention centres is only to be used as a last resort and for the shortest practicable time …"
It was not until the last paragraph of his long speech that Evans got to the core point: "In the future, the immigration system will be characterised by strong border security, firm deterrence of unauthorised arrivals, effective and robust immigration processes and respect for the rule of law and the humanity of those seeking migration outcomes."
Sounds like Howard. In other words, the fundamentals of the system are not going to be changed. The Rudd Labor Government is not dismantling the detention system first set up by the Keating Labor. It is not ending the excision of Australian territory from the Immigration Act, which prevents asylum-seekers from entering Australian territory via offshore islands. It is not ending the detention of adults until security and health checks are completed. It is not cutting funding for navy border patrols. It is maintaining the new Christmas Island detention centre, far from Australia's shores, and capable of housing 800 people short-term, as a place to warehouse any new wave of boat people.
The fundamentals have not changed because they cannot change. The electorate holds dear the principle that people cannot determine when and how they will move to a new country, bypassing immigration controls or refugee programs. This is elementary to a nation's sovereignty.
The hysterics in the refugee and mandatory detention debates have always thrown around words like "shame" and "gulags" and engaged in moral relativism, comparing Howard to Saddam Hussein, while refusing to recognise that there are real consequences of failures of immigration policy. Thousands of Australian have paid a heavy price for the failed refugee-vetting processes in the 1970s and 1980s, when many people who should never have been allowed into the country were approved. We are still paying the price.
Labor learned the hard way that to compromise border security is to invite political disaster. This is why the Rudd Government is still talking tough on border security, and has a major immigration policy but dare not speak its name.
Rudd Govt's Immigration Policy an Invitation to Chaos
The Australian Labor Part, ALP, is the political arm of the Marxist based Australian Council of Trade Unions,ACTU,this organization supposedly represents the interests of "the workers" "working families" how is the ALP /ACTU's immigration policy in the interests of the workers?
The biggest insult to the workers is that not only are they forced to watch their jobs and standard of living go south, they are also forced to fund the political party that legislates to do so, the ACTU funded ALP.
Denmark's Warning to North America...Australia
Thanks to Canada's Human Rights Commissions, we've almost lost the battle before it can really begin. SALUTE to Denmark... this could very well happen here on our continent.
Salute the Danish Flag - It's a Symbol of Western Freedom
by Susan MacAllen
In 1978-9 I was living and studying in Denmark. But in 1978, even in Copenhagen, one didn't see Muslim immigrants. The Danish population embraced visitors, celebrated the exotic, went out of its way to protect each of its citizens. It was proud of its new brand of socialist liberalism one in development since the conservatives had lost power in 1929 - a system where no worker had to struggle to survive, where one ultimately could count upon the state as in, perhaps, no other western nation at the time.
The rest of Europe saw the Scandinavians as free-thinking, progressive and infinitely generous in their welfare policies. Denmark boasted low crime rates, devotion to the environment, a superior educational system and a history of humanitarianism.
Denmark was also most generous in its immigration policies - it offered the best welcome in Europe to the new immigrant: generous welfare payments from first arrival plus additional perks in transportation, housing and education. It was determined to set a world example for inclusiveness and multiculturalism.
How could it have predicted that one day in 2005 a series of political cartoons in a newspaper would spark violence that would leave dozens dead in the streets -all because its commitment to multiculturalism would come back to bite?
By the 1990's the growing urban Muslim population was obvious - and its unwillingness to integrate into Danish society was obvious.
Years of immigrants had settled into Muslim-exclusive enclaves. As the Muslim leadership became more vocal about what they considered the decadence of Denmark's liberal way of life, the Danes - once so welcoming - began to feel slighted. Many Danes had begun to see Islam as incompatible with their long-standing values: belief in personal liberty and free speech, in equality for women, in tolerance for other ethnic groups, and a deep pride in Danish heritage and history.
An article by Daniel Pipes and Lars Hedegaard, in which they forecasted accurately that the growing immigrant problem in Denmark would explode. In the article they reported:
"Muslim immigrants constitute 5 percent of the population but consume upwards of 40 percent of the welfare spending. Muslims are only 4 percent of Denmark's 5.4 million people but make up a majority of the country's convicted rapists, an especially combustible issue given that practically all the female victims are non-Muslim. Similar, if lesser, disproportions are found in other crimes."
"Over time, as Muslim immigrants increase in numbers, they wish less to mix with the indigenous population. A recent survey finds that only 5 percent of young Muslim immigrants would readily marry a Dane. Forced marriages - promising a newborn daughter in Denmark to a male cousin in the home country, then compelling her to marry him, sometimes on pain of death - are one problem."
"Muslim leaders openly declare their goal of introducing Islamic law once Denmark's Muslim population grows large enough - a not-that-remote prospect. If present trends persist, one sociologist estimates, every third inhabitant of Denmark in 40 years will be Muslim."
It is easy to understand why a growing number of Danes would feel that Muslim immigrants show little respect for Danish values and laws. An example is the phenomenon common to other European countries and Canada: some Muslims in Denmark who opted to leave the Muslim faith have been murdered in the name of Islam, while others hide in fear for their lives. Jews are also threatened and harassed openly by Muslim leaders in Denmark, a country where once Christian citizens worked to smuggle out nearly all of their 7,000 Jews by night to Sweden - before the Nazis could invade. I think of my Danish friend Elsa - who as a teenager had dreaded crossing the street to the bakery every morning under the eyes of occupying Nazi soldiers - and I wonder what she would say today.
In 2001, Denmark elected the most conservative government in some 70 years - one that had some decidedly non-generous ideas about liberal unfettered immigration. Today Denmark has the strictest immigration policies in Europe. (Its effort to protect itself has been met with accusations of "racism" by liberal media across Europe - even as other governments struggle to right the social problems wrought by years of too-lax immigration.)
If you wish to become Danish, you must attend three years of language classes. You must pass a test on Denmark's history, culture, and a Danish language test. You must live in Denmark for 7 years before applying for citizenship. You must demonstrate an intent to work, and have a job waiting. If you wish to bring a spouse into Denmark, you must both be over 24 years of age, and you won't find it so easy anymore to move your friends and family to Denmark with you.
You will not be allowed to build a mosque in Copenhagen. Although your children have a choice of some 30 Arabic culture and language schools in Denmark, they will be strongly encouraged to assimilate to Danish society in ways that past immigrants weren't.
In 2006, the Danish minister for employment, Claus Hjort Frederiksen, spoke publicly of the burden of Muslim immigrants on the Danish welfare system, and it was horrifying: the government's welfare committee had calculated that if immigration from Third World countries were blocked, 75 percent of the cuts needed to sustain the huge welfare system in coming decades would be unnecessary. In other words, the welfare system as it existed was being exploited by immigrants to the point of eventually bankrupting the government. "We are simply forced to adopt a new policy on immigration.
The calculations of the welfare committee are terrifying and show how unsuccessful the integration of immigrants has been up to now," he said. A large thorn in the side of Denmark's imams is the Minister of Immigration and Integration, Rikke Hvilshoj. She makes no bones about the new policy toward immigration, "The number of foreigners coming to the country makes a difference,"
Hvilshøj says, "There is an inverse correlation between how many come here and how well we can receive the foreigners that come."
And on Muslim immigrants needing to demonstrate a willingness to blend in, "In my view, Denmark should be a country with room for different cultures and religions. Some values, however, are more important than others. We refuse to question democracy, equal rights, and freedom of speech."
Hvilshoj has paid a price for her show of backbone. Perhaps to test her resolve, the leading radical imam in Denmark, Ahmed Abdel Rahman Abu Laban, demanded that the government pay blood money to the family of a Muslim who was murdered in a suburb of Copenhagen, stating that the family's thirst for revenge could be thwarted for money. When Hvilshoj dismissed his demand, he argued that in Muslim culture the payment of retribution money was common, to which Hvilshoj replied that what is done in a Muslim country is not necessarily what is done in Denmark. The Muslim reply came soon after: her house was torched while she, her husband and children slept. All managed to escape unharmed, but she and her family were moved to a secret location and she and other ministers were assigned bodyguards for the first time - in a country where such murderous violence was once so scarce.
Her government has slid to the right, and her borders have tightened. Many believe that what happens in the next decade will determine whether Denmark survives as a bastion of good living, humane thinking and social responsibility, or whether it becomes a nation at civil war with supporters of Sharia law.
And meanwhile, Canadians clamor for stricter immigration policies, and demand an end to state welfare programs that allow many immigrants to live on the public dole. As we in Canada look at the enclaves of Muslims amongst us, and see those who enter our shores too easily, dare live on our taxes, yet refuse to embrace our culture, respect our traditions, participate in our legal system, obey our laws, speak our language, appreciate our history... we would do well to look to Denmark, and say a prayer for her future and for our own.
I edited some details at the end of this article for security reasons only.
An American, Australian ,Israeli, British "Judeo Christian Friendly " blog.
Anthropogenic Global Warming SCAM
Thursday, February 05, 2009
China orders it's Military to obey Communist Party,"at any time, under any circumstances"
China warns of upheaval, calls for discipline
"........"We must make sure the army will follow the instruction of the [Central Military Commission] and the Communist Party at any time, under any circumstances,"
SMH
John Garnaut in Beijing
February 3, 2009
THE Chinese President, Hu Jintao, and his top generals have publicly ordered the military to obey the Communist Party "at any time, under any circumstances", as China enters its most politically fraught year since 1989.
Chinese officials yesterday warned of social instability as they raised their estimate of newly unemployed migrant workers to 20 million - triple the number they gave a month ago.
The huge economic and social dislocation coincides with a series of pressing political tests, including next month's 50th anniversary of the Dalai Lama fleeing Tibet, the 20th anniversary of the Tiananmen massacre on June 4 and a small but strident new democracy movement.
"We must make sure the army will follow the instruction of the [Central Military Commission] and the Communist Party at any time, under any circumstances," the commission said after a meeting chaired by Mr Hu. "We must always be sure of the army's stability and its unity," the commission said, in a statement read out on China Central Television's prime time news on Sunday night.
A senior military leader separately warned yesterday that China would "accelerate the building of our nuclear and conventional combat strength". This marks a sharp break from a three decades-old policy of maintaining a stable and relatively small nuclear arsenal while rapidly building its conventional forces.
The comments were penned by Jing Zhiyuan, the commander of the second artillery corps, in an article for the party's main journal on theory and policy.
Experts say Mr Hu's comments reveal the party's acute anxiety about potential uprisings rather than any immediate call to arms.
Chinese leaders sometimes exaggerate the risks to their hold on power to ensure the party sticks together in difficult times - a lesson learned after a top leadership split led to huge protests in Tiananmen Square in 1989 and a subsequent bloody crackdown.
But Sunday's military commission statement was unusual in its strident language and its prominent broadcast.
"When you have growing social unrest the party leadership always makes sure they have their coercive elements prepared in case they may be drafted in to stabilise things, like in 1989," said Tai Ming Cheung, an expert on the People's Liberation Army at the University of California. "I don't think this indicates any great distrust between the party and the military or that there is any significant tensions or possible unrest within the military ranks."
This week would normally mark the end of Chinese new year festivities, when rural migrants head back to their urban jobs at factories, construction sites and restaurants.
But China's leading rural expert said tens of millions would not make the journey this year.
Chen Xiwen, a top rural planning official, told reporters yesterday: "Due to the economic downturn, about 20 million rural migrant workers have either lost their jobs or have not yet found employment and have gone home to the countryside.
"After returning to their village what do they do about revenue? About their lives? This is a new factor impacting this year's social stability."
Mr Chen said the number of newly unemployed rural migrant workers was likely to rise to about 25 million as new job seekers entered the market.
China in Africa: Developing ties
War is Not Far From Us and is the Midwife of the Chinese Century
"........"We must make sure the army will follow the instruction of the [Central Military Commission] and the Communist Party at any time, under any circumstances,"
SMH
John Garnaut in Beijing
February 3, 2009
THE Chinese President, Hu Jintao, and his top generals have publicly ordered the military to obey the Communist Party "at any time, under any circumstances", as China enters its most politically fraught year since 1989.
Chinese officials yesterday warned of social instability as they raised their estimate of newly unemployed migrant workers to 20 million - triple the number they gave a month ago.
The huge economic and social dislocation coincides with a series of pressing political tests, including next month's 50th anniversary of the Dalai Lama fleeing Tibet, the 20th anniversary of the Tiananmen massacre on June 4 and a small but strident new democracy movement.
"We must make sure the army will follow the instruction of the [Central Military Commission] and the Communist Party at any time, under any circumstances," the commission said after a meeting chaired by Mr Hu. "We must always be sure of the army's stability and its unity," the commission said, in a statement read out on China Central Television's prime time news on Sunday night.
A senior military leader separately warned yesterday that China would "accelerate the building of our nuclear and conventional combat strength". This marks a sharp break from a three decades-old policy of maintaining a stable and relatively small nuclear arsenal while rapidly building its conventional forces.
The comments were penned by Jing Zhiyuan, the commander of the second artillery corps, in an article for the party's main journal on theory and policy.
Experts say Mr Hu's comments reveal the party's acute anxiety about potential uprisings rather than any immediate call to arms.
Chinese leaders sometimes exaggerate the risks to their hold on power to ensure the party sticks together in difficult times - a lesson learned after a top leadership split led to huge protests in Tiananmen Square in 1989 and a subsequent bloody crackdown.
But Sunday's military commission statement was unusual in its strident language and its prominent broadcast.
"When you have growing social unrest the party leadership always makes sure they have their coercive elements prepared in case they may be drafted in to stabilise things, like in 1989," said Tai Ming Cheung, an expert on the People's Liberation Army at the University of California. "I don't think this indicates any great distrust between the party and the military or that there is any significant tensions or possible unrest within the military ranks."
This week would normally mark the end of Chinese new year festivities, when rural migrants head back to their urban jobs at factories, construction sites and restaurants.
But China's leading rural expert said tens of millions would not make the journey this year.
Chen Xiwen, a top rural planning official, told reporters yesterday: "Due to the economic downturn, about 20 million rural migrant workers have either lost their jobs or have not yet found employment and have gone home to the countryside.
"After returning to their village what do they do about revenue? About their lives? This is a new factor impacting this year's social stability."
Mr Chen said the number of newly unemployed rural migrant workers was likely to rise to about 25 million as new job seekers entered the market.
China in Africa: Developing ties
War is Not Far From Us and is the Midwife of the Chinese Century
Peter Costello rips Australian PM Kevin "I have never been a Socialist" Rudd.
You spin us right round, Kevin, right round …
SMH
Peter Costello
February 4, 2009
Every now and then you see a change in the political spin-cycle that is so audacious, so contradictory that you have to go back and check the facts - just to make sure you haven't imagined the whole thing.
That's what happened on the weekend, when newspapers reported Kevin Rudd's claim that "the great neo-liberal experiment of the past 30 years has failed" and "social democrats [will have] to save capitalism from itself".
That's what he's saying now, but 12 months ago, the Prime Minister, laid out the path for his Government as follows: "Prior to the election, we ran as fiscal conservatives. With the election behind us, we now intend to govern as fiscal conservatives … Today I announce a fiscal target that will guide our decision-making … a budget surplus of at least 1.5 per cent of GDP … This will require a determined, disciplined approach to spending."
Rudd, the fiscal conservative of last year, was attacking the Coalition government because it hadn't cut spending enough. He promised to do more. He wasn't worried about all those "neo-liberal" ideas on careful spending, balanced budgets and low debt. He was complaining it hadn't gone far enough.
And by the time of the May budget, he was boasting how much better he had done. The budget speech boasted a surplus of 1.8 per cent of GDP "built on disciplined spending with the lowest real increase … in nearly a decade".
Forget about all those namby-pamby Liberal Party budget surpluses. Labor would show who was really the tough economic manager. Last year Labor was billing itself as the true apostle of expenditure restraint and smaller government.
A budget is only a projection of what a government intends to do. The budget outcome records what occurred. Last year's budget bears no relation to what will happen. It should be filed with Labor's previous budget of 1996 - in the fiction area of the Parliamentary Library.
Then comes the change of the spin cycle. All those ideas of expenditure restraint and small government? Just a failed experiment, a load of nonsense. The biggest nonsense of all was the TV ad Labor ran before the 2007 election where a beaming Rudd declared: "A number of people have described me as an economic conservative. When it comes to public finance, it's a badge I wear with pride." You can still see it on YouTube.
Late last year the Government delivered more than $10 billion (1 per cent of GDP, 4 per cent of Commonwealth outlays) to pensioners and families and asked them to spend it before Christmas. Many didn't. Very sensibly, they thought they should pay off some debt or put away something for the future.
The Government urged them to spend it all at once so it could massage the retail figures in the December national accounts. Last week, the Treasurer, Wayne Swan, claimed the payment was successful because Woolworths had good sales results in that month. If the purpose of the payment was to boost sales at Woolworths, the Government should have bought the goods and distributed them to pensioners and families. But it is a low-quality use of $10 billion.
Now we are in the March quarter and there is nothing lasting to show for that money. So the Government is looking at new ways to massage this quarter's results. But in case everything goes wrong, it's not the fault of Rudd or his Government. It's all the fault of a great neo-liberal conspiracy - and you guessed it - the Liberal government.
No Australian bank has suffered a run or collapse. Our major commercial banks are all in the top credit bracket of the world's banks. Nor has there been any regulatory failure here. The only institutions that have had trouble are those debenture funds that had to freeze redemption because of Rudd's ill-considered deposit guarantee.
Rudd inherited a government with no net debt and a budget surplus of $20 billion. Which socialist or social democratic government did better than the Coalition? Name a country in a stronger position in 2007.
Rudd claims there has been a 30-year failure - enough to cover the Howard-Costello government, the Hawke-Keating government and the Fraser government, taking us right back to which economic success story?
You guessed it. Gough Whitlam.
It is hard to tell whether Rudd was always a big spending Whitlamite who managed to con the public with all that stuff about being an economic conservative or whether his dexterity results from the fact he has no strong economic convictions. His about face is a matter of wonder. By political standards it is a media spin that stands in a class of its own.
Peter Costello is a former Liberal federal treasurer and the member for Higgins.
The Liberal Party in Australia is Australia's Conservative Party, the Labor Party is the Union / Marxist funded Socialist party.
Vintage Costello !!
Watch Peter Costello been 'interviewed" by Labor's public relations division, the publicly funded Australian Broadcasting Corporation, ABC, on its Lateline program...
Peter please come back and do these arse clowns over,they have not got a clue.
SMH
Peter Costello
February 4, 2009
Every now and then you see a change in the political spin-cycle that is so audacious, so contradictory that you have to go back and check the facts - just to make sure you haven't imagined the whole thing.
That's what happened on the weekend, when newspapers reported Kevin Rudd's claim that "the great neo-liberal experiment of the past 30 years has failed" and "social democrats [will have] to save capitalism from itself".
That's what he's saying now, but 12 months ago, the Prime Minister, laid out the path for his Government as follows: "Prior to the election, we ran as fiscal conservatives. With the election behind us, we now intend to govern as fiscal conservatives … Today I announce a fiscal target that will guide our decision-making … a budget surplus of at least 1.5 per cent of GDP … This will require a determined, disciplined approach to spending."
Rudd, the fiscal conservative of last year, was attacking the Coalition government because it hadn't cut spending enough. He promised to do more. He wasn't worried about all those "neo-liberal" ideas on careful spending, balanced budgets and low debt. He was complaining it hadn't gone far enough.
And by the time of the May budget, he was boasting how much better he had done. The budget speech boasted a surplus of 1.8 per cent of GDP "built on disciplined spending with the lowest real increase … in nearly a decade".
Forget about all those namby-pamby Liberal Party budget surpluses. Labor would show who was really the tough economic manager. Last year Labor was billing itself as the true apostle of expenditure restraint and smaller government.
A budget is only a projection of what a government intends to do. The budget outcome records what occurred. Last year's budget bears no relation to what will happen. It should be filed with Labor's previous budget of 1996 - in the fiction area of the Parliamentary Library.
Then comes the change of the spin cycle. All those ideas of expenditure restraint and small government? Just a failed experiment, a load of nonsense. The biggest nonsense of all was the TV ad Labor ran before the 2007 election where a beaming Rudd declared: "A number of people have described me as an economic conservative. When it comes to public finance, it's a badge I wear with pride." You can still see it on YouTube.
Late last year the Government delivered more than $10 billion (1 per cent of GDP, 4 per cent of Commonwealth outlays) to pensioners and families and asked them to spend it before Christmas. Many didn't. Very sensibly, they thought they should pay off some debt or put away something for the future.
The Government urged them to spend it all at once so it could massage the retail figures in the December national accounts. Last week, the Treasurer, Wayne Swan, claimed the payment was successful because Woolworths had good sales results in that month. If the purpose of the payment was to boost sales at Woolworths, the Government should have bought the goods and distributed them to pensioners and families. But it is a low-quality use of $10 billion.
Now we are in the March quarter and there is nothing lasting to show for that money. So the Government is looking at new ways to massage this quarter's results. But in case everything goes wrong, it's not the fault of Rudd or his Government. It's all the fault of a great neo-liberal conspiracy - and you guessed it - the Liberal government.
No Australian bank has suffered a run or collapse. Our major commercial banks are all in the top credit bracket of the world's banks. Nor has there been any regulatory failure here. The only institutions that have had trouble are those debenture funds that had to freeze redemption because of Rudd's ill-considered deposit guarantee.
Rudd inherited a government with no net debt and a budget surplus of $20 billion. Which socialist or social democratic government did better than the Coalition? Name a country in a stronger position in 2007.
Rudd claims there has been a 30-year failure - enough to cover the Howard-Costello government, the Hawke-Keating government and the Fraser government, taking us right back to which economic success story?
You guessed it. Gough Whitlam.
It is hard to tell whether Rudd was always a big spending Whitlamite who managed to con the public with all that stuff about being an economic conservative or whether his dexterity results from the fact he has no strong economic convictions. His about face is a matter of wonder. By political standards it is a media spin that stands in a class of its own.
Peter Costello is a former Liberal federal treasurer and the member for Higgins.
The Liberal Party in Australia is Australia's Conservative Party, the Labor Party is the Union / Marxist funded Socialist party.
Vintage Costello !!
Watch Peter Costello been 'interviewed" by Labor's public relations division, the publicly funded Australian Broadcasting Corporation, ABC, on its Lateline program...
Peter please come back and do these arse clowns over,they have not got a clue.
Islamic Terrorism: Daniel Pearl and the Normalization of Evil
Daniel Pearl and the Normalization of Evil
When will our luminaries stop making excuses for terror?
By JUDEA PEARL
This week marks the seventh anniversary of the murder of our son, former
Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl. My wife Ruth and I wonder: Would
Danny have believed that today's world emerged after his tragedy?
WSJ
February 2, 2009
The answer does not come easily. Danny was an optimist, a true believer in
the goodness of mankind. Yet he was also a realist, and would not let
idealism bend the harshness of facts.
Neither he, nor the millions who were shocked by his murder, could have
possibly predicted that seven years later his abductor, Omar Saeed Sheikh,
according to several South Asian reports, would be planning terror acts from
the safety of a Pakistani jail. Or that his murderer, Khalid Sheikh
Mohammed, now in Guantanamo, would proudly boast of his murder in a military
tribunal in March 2007 to the cheers of sympathetic jihadi supporters. Or
that this ideology of barbarism would be celebrated in European and American
universities, fueling rally after rally for Hamas, Hezbollah and other
heroes of "the resistance." Or that another kidnapped young man, Israeli
Gilad Shalit, would spend his 950th day of captivity with no Red Cross
visitation while world leaders seriously debate whether his kidnappers
deserve international recognition.
No. Those around the world who mourned for Danny in 2002 genuinely hoped
that Danny's murder would be a turning point in the history of man's
inhumanity to man, and that the targeting of innocents to transmit political
messages would quickly become, like slavery and human sacrifice, an
embarrassing relic of a bygone era.
But somehow, barbarism, often cloaked in the language of "resistance," has
gained acceptance in the most elite circles of our society. The words "war
on terror" cannot be uttered today without fear of offense. Civilized
society, so it seems, is so numbed by violence that it has lost its gift to
be disgusted by evil.
I believe it all started with well-meaning analysts, who in their zeal to
find creative solutions to terror decided that terror is not a real enemy,
but a tactic. Thus the basic engine that propels acts of terrorism -- the
ideological license to elevate one's grievances above the norms of civilized
society -- was wished away in favor of seemingly more manageable "tactical"
considerations.
This mentality of surrender then worked its way through politicians like the
former mayor of London, Ken Livingstone. In July 2005 he told Sky News that
suicide bombing is almost man's second nature. "In an unfair balance, that's
what people use," explained Mr. Livingstone.
But the clearest endorsement of terror as a legitimate instrument of
political bargaining came from former President Jimmy Carter. In his book
"Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid," Mr. Carter appeals to the sponsors of
suicide bombing. "It is imperative that the general Arab community and all
significant Palestinian groups make it clear that they will end the suicide
bombings and other acts of terrorism when international laws and the
ultimate goals of the Road-map for Peace are accepted by Israel." Acts of
terror, according to Mr. Carter, are no longer taboo, but effective tools
for terrorists to address perceived injustices.
Mr. Carter's logic has become the dominant paradigm in rationalizing terror.
When asked what Israel should do to stop Hamas's rockets aimed at innocent
civilians, the Syrian first lady, Asma Al-Assad, did not hesitate for a
moment in her response: "They should end the occupation." In other words,
terror must earn a dividend before it is stopped.
The media have played a major role in handing terrorism this victory of
acceptability. Qatari-based Al Jazeera television, for example, is still
providing Sheikh Yusuf Al-Qaradawi hours of free air time each week to spew
his hateful interpretation of the Koran, authorize suicide bombing, and call
for jihad against Jews and Americans.
Then came the August 2008 birthday of Samir Kuntar, the unrepentant killer
who, in 1979, smashed the head of a four-year-old Israeli girl with his
rifle after killing her father before her eyes. Al Jazeera elevated Kuntar
to heroic heights with orchestras, fireworks and sword dances, presenting
him to 50 million viewers as Arab society's role model. No mainstream
Western media outlet dared to expose Al Jazeera efforts to warp its young
viewers into the likes of Kuntar. Al Jazeera's management continues to
receive royal treatment in all major press clubs.
Some American pundits and TV anchors didn't seem much different from Al
Jazeera in their analysis of the recent war in Gaza. Bill Moyers was quick
to lend Hamas legitimacy as a "resistance" movement, together with honorary
membership in PBS's imaginary "cycle of violence." In his Jan. 9 TV show,
Mr. Moyers explained to his viewers that "each [side] greases the cycle of
violence, as one man's terrorism becomes another's resistance to
oppression." He then stated -- without blushing -- that for readers of the
Hebrew Bible "God-soaked violence became genetically coded." The "cycle of
violence" platitude allows analysts to empower terror with the guise of
reciprocity, and, amazingly, indict terror's victims for violence as
immutable as DNA.
When we ask ourselves what it is about the American psyche that enables
genocidal organizations like Hamas -- the charter of which would offend
every neuron in our brains -- to become tolerated in public discourse, we
should take a hard look at our universities and the way they are currently
being manipulated by terrorist sympathizers.
At my own university, UCLA, a symposium last week on human rights turned
into a Hamas recruitment rally by a clever academic gimmick. The director of
the Center for Near East Studies carefully selected only Israel bashers for
the panel, each of whom concluded that the Jewish state is the greatest
criminal in human history.
The primary purpose of the event was evident the morning after, when
unsuspecting, uninvolved students read an article in the campus newspaper
titled, "Scholars say: Israel is in violation of human rights in Gaza," to
which the good name of the University of California was attached. This is
where Hamas scored its main triumph -- another inch of academic
respectability, another inroad into Western minds.
Danny's picture is hanging just in front of me, his warm smile as reassuring
as ever. But I find it hard to look him straight in the eyes and say: You
did not die in vain.
Mr. Pearl, a professor of computer science at UCLA, is president of the
Daniel Pearl Foundation, founded in memory of his son to promote
cross-cultural understanding.
Thanks to Susan & Terri for this article.
When will our luminaries stop making excuses for terror?
By JUDEA PEARL
This week marks the seventh anniversary of the murder of our son, former
Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl. My wife Ruth and I wonder: Would
Danny have believed that today's world emerged after his tragedy?
WSJ
February 2, 2009
The answer does not come easily. Danny was an optimist, a true believer in
the goodness of mankind. Yet he was also a realist, and would not let
idealism bend the harshness of facts.
Neither he, nor the millions who were shocked by his murder, could have
possibly predicted that seven years later his abductor, Omar Saeed Sheikh,
according to several South Asian reports, would be planning terror acts from
the safety of a Pakistani jail. Or that his murderer, Khalid Sheikh
Mohammed, now in Guantanamo, would proudly boast of his murder in a military
tribunal in March 2007 to the cheers of sympathetic jihadi supporters. Or
that this ideology of barbarism would be celebrated in European and American
universities, fueling rally after rally for Hamas, Hezbollah and other
heroes of "the resistance." Or that another kidnapped young man, Israeli
Gilad Shalit, would spend his 950th day of captivity with no Red Cross
visitation while world leaders seriously debate whether his kidnappers
deserve international recognition.
No. Those around the world who mourned for Danny in 2002 genuinely hoped
that Danny's murder would be a turning point in the history of man's
inhumanity to man, and that the targeting of innocents to transmit political
messages would quickly become, like slavery and human sacrifice, an
embarrassing relic of a bygone era.
But somehow, barbarism, often cloaked in the language of "resistance," has
gained acceptance in the most elite circles of our society. The words "war
on terror" cannot be uttered today without fear of offense. Civilized
society, so it seems, is so numbed by violence that it has lost its gift to
be disgusted by evil.
I believe it all started with well-meaning analysts, who in their zeal to
find creative solutions to terror decided that terror is not a real enemy,
but a tactic. Thus the basic engine that propels acts of terrorism -- the
ideological license to elevate one's grievances above the norms of civilized
society -- was wished away in favor of seemingly more manageable "tactical"
considerations.
This mentality of surrender then worked its way through politicians like the
former mayor of London, Ken Livingstone. In July 2005 he told Sky News that
suicide bombing is almost man's second nature. "In an unfair balance, that's
what people use," explained Mr. Livingstone.
But the clearest endorsement of terror as a legitimate instrument of
political bargaining came from former President Jimmy Carter. In his book
"Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid," Mr. Carter appeals to the sponsors of
suicide bombing. "It is imperative that the general Arab community and all
significant Palestinian groups make it clear that they will end the suicide
bombings and other acts of terrorism when international laws and the
ultimate goals of the Road-map for Peace are accepted by Israel." Acts of
terror, according to Mr. Carter, are no longer taboo, but effective tools
for terrorists to address perceived injustices.
Mr. Carter's logic has become the dominant paradigm in rationalizing terror.
When asked what Israel should do to stop Hamas's rockets aimed at innocent
civilians, the Syrian first lady, Asma Al-Assad, did not hesitate for a
moment in her response: "They should end the occupation." In other words,
terror must earn a dividend before it is stopped.
The media have played a major role in handing terrorism this victory of
acceptability. Qatari-based Al Jazeera television, for example, is still
providing Sheikh Yusuf Al-Qaradawi hours of free air time each week to spew
his hateful interpretation of the Koran, authorize suicide bombing, and call
for jihad against Jews and Americans.
Then came the August 2008 birthday of Samir Kuntar, the unrepentant killer
who, in 1979, smashed the head of a four-year-old Israeli girl with his
rifle after killing her father before her eyes. Al Jazeera elevated Kuntar
to heroic heights with orchestras, fireworks and sword dances, presenting
him to 50 million viewers as Arab society's role model. No mainstream
Western media outlet dared to expose Al Jazeera efforts to warp its young
viewers into the likes of Kuntar. Al Jazeera's management continues to
receive royal treatment in all major press clubs.
Some American pundits and TV anchors didn't seem much different from Al
Jazeera in their analysis of the recent war in Gaza. Bill Moyers was quick
to lend Hamas legitimacy as a "resistance" movement, together with honorary
membership in PBS's imaginary "cycle of violence." In his Jan. 9 TV show,
Mr. Moyers explained to his viewers that "each [side] greases the cycle of
violence, as one man's terrorism becomes another's resistance to
oppression." He then stated -- without blushing -- that for readers of the
Hebrew Bible "God-soaked violence became genetically coded." The "cycle of
violence" platitude allows analysts to empower terror with the guise of
reciprocity, and, amazingly, indict terror's victims for violence as
immutable as DNA.
When we ask ourselves what it is about the American psyche that enables
genocidal organizations like Hamas -- the charter of which would offend
every neuron in our brains -- to become tolerated in public discourse, we
should take a hard look at our universities and the way they are currently
being manipulated by terrorist sympathizers.
At my own university, UCLA, a symposium last week on human rights turned
into a Hamas recruitment rally by a clever academic gimmick. The director of
the Center for Near East Studies carefully selected only Israel bashers for
the panel, each of whom concluded that the Jewish state is the greatest
criminal in human history.
The primary purpose of the event was evident the morning after, when
unsuspecting, uninvolved students read an article in the campus newspaper
titled, "Scholars say: Israel is in violation of human rights in Gaza," to
which the good name of the University of California was attached. This is
where Hamas scored its main triumph -- another inch of academic
respectability, another inroad into Western minds.
Danny's picture is hanging just in front of me, his warm smile as reassuring
as ever. But I find it hard to look him straight in the eyes and say: You
did not die in vain.
Mr. Pearl, a professor of computer science at UCLA, is president of the
Daniel Pearl Foundation, founded in memory of his son to promote
cross-cultural understanding.
Thanks to Susan & Terri for this article.
Wednesday, February 04, 2009
Pakistan:Man abducted and raped by three women over for days.
Three women kidnap, drug and rape a man for four days
"“his condition is really bad ... his genitals are bleeding and he cannot walk properly.”
" the women belonged to rich families of Karachi’s Clifton area.
“It’s a complicated case ... but we are hoping that we will solve it soon,” he added. "
Strewth!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
The Daily Telegraph
February 04, 2009 12:00am
POLICE are hunting for three women who kidnapped a man, drugged and raped him over four consecutive days before throwing him into a river in the Pakistani city of Karachi.
A 23-year-old man, known as Khalil, recently arrived in Karachi to live and picked up work as a waiter at a restaurant in the ritzy suburb of Clifton.
On the night of January 27, Khalil was sent to deliver food to a group of women sitting a car in the restaurant’s car park.
“I took the order to the car where the women – two of whom were young and the third was middle-aged – told me that they had recently shifted to the area,” Khalil told the Daily Times.
He said the women wanted him to deliver the food to their house every day and he agreed.
“They asked me to go along with them in the car ... they said they wanted to show me where their house was,” he said.
When they arrived at the house Khalil claims that “they gave me milk that had some drug mixed in it ... I fell unconscious after drinking it”.
Khalil said when he gained consciousness, he found that the women had undressed him, “and they were forcing themselves onto me”.
A police officer said the women assaulted Khalil sexually for the next four days, and then threw him near Qayyumabad River.
After making it to a nearby hospital a policeman said that Khalil’s “his condition is really bad ... his genitals are bleeding and he cannot walk properly.”
The officer said the women belonged to rich families of Karachi’s Clifton area.
“It’s a complicated case ... but we are hoping that we will solve it soon,” he added.
"“his condition is really bad ... his genitals are bleeding and he cannot walk properly.”
" the women belonged to rich families of Karachi’s Clifton area.
“It’s a complicated case ... but we are hoping that we will solve it soon,” he added. "
Strewth!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
The Daily Telegraph
February 04, 2009 12:00am
POLICE are hunting for three women who kidnapped a man, drugged and raped him over four consecutive days before throwing him into a river in the Pakistani city of Karachi.
A 23-year-old man, known as Khalil, recently arrived in Karachi to live and picked up work as a waiter at a restaurant in the ritzy suburb of Clifton.
On the night of January 27, Khalil was sent to deliver food to a group of women sitting a car in the restaurant’s car park.
“I took the order to the car where the women – two of whom were young and the third was middle-aged – told me that they had recently shifted to the area,” Khalil told the Daily Times.
He said the women wanted him to deliver the food to their house every day and he agreed.
“They asked me to go along with them in the car ... they said they wanted to show me where their house was,” he said.
When they arrived at the house Khalil claims that “they gave me milk that had some drug mixed in it ... I fell unconscious after drinking it”.
Khalil said when he gained consciousness, he found that the women had undressed him, “and they were forcing themselves onto me”.
A police officer said the women assaulted Khalil sexually for the next four days, and then threw him near Qayyumabad River.
After making it to a nearby hospital a policeman said that Khalil’s “his condition is really bad ... his genitals are bleeding and he cannot walk properly.”
The officer said the women belonged to rich families of Karachi’s Clifton area.
“It’s a complicated case ... but we are hoping that we will solve it soon,” he added.
Woman organizes rape of 80 women to later recruite as suicide bombers
Iraqi woman had 80 women raped then recruited as suicide bombers
From correspondents in Baghdad News.com.au February 04, 2009 09:15am
A WOMAN suspected of recruiting more than 80 female suicide bombers has confessed to organising their rapes so she could later convince them that martyrdom was the only way to escape the shame.
Samira Jassam, 51, was arrested by Iraqi police and confessed to recruiting the women and orchestrating dozens of attacks. In a video confession, she explained how she had mentally prepared the women for martyrdom operations, passed them on to terrorists who provided explosives, and then took the bombers to their targets.
"We arrested Samira Jassim, known as 'Um al-Mumenin', the mother of the believers, who was responsible for recruiting 80 women'', Major General Qassim Atta said. "She confessed her responsibility for these actions, and she confirmed that 28 attempts had been made in one of the terrorists' strongholds,'' he said. Samira Jassim was arrested on January 21. She is allegedly linked to the Ansar al-Sunnah insurgent group.
Two of the attacks for which Samira Jassim admitted responsibility in the video confession took place in Diyala province, in central Iraq, which is considered one of the most dangerous areas of the country. The Associated Press reports US military figures indicate at least 36 female suicide bombers attempted or carried out 32 attacks last year. Women are often allowed through military checkpoints without being searched, making it easier for them to hide explosives under their traditional robes.
Tuesday, February 03, 2009
Muslim Terror leader Abdul Nacer Benbrika,gets 15 years
Australian terrorist leader gets 15 years
Mex Cooper
News.com.au
February 3, 2009
The leader of a Melbourne-based terrorist cell has been sentenced to 15 years' jail.
Abdul Nacer Benbrika, 48, of Dallas, was sentenced to a non-parole period of 12 years. He has already been in custody for 1184 days.
Justice Bernard Bongiorno in the Supreme Court said a terrorist organisation led by Benbrika had been dedicated to the destruction of non-believers but the group had not planned specific attacks despite the evidence of a key prosecution witness.
Benbrika became the first Australian to be convicted of leading a terrorist group last September, following the country's biggest terrorism trial that lasted seven months and cost tens of millions of dollars.
The father-of-seven faced a maximum 25 years' prison for directing the terrorist group that the jury heard had discussed attacking Melbourne's Crown Casino and bombing the MCG.
Benbrika was also convicted of possessing a compact disc connected to the preparation of a terrorist act.
But in sentencing Benbrika and six of his followers today, Justice Bongiorno said he did not accept the evidence of Izzydeen Atik, who claimed Benbrika told him the terror cell had planned to target the casino on Grand Prix weekend in 2006 and the MCG on grand final day in 2005 and the 2006 NAB Cup.
Atik had been a member of the group before pleading guilty to belonging to a terrorist organisation in July 2007 and was jailed for just over four years.
Justice Bongiorno said Atik was a liar and a cheat who had defrauded the social security system while living in a luxury townhouse and employing a butler.
At the time, he was earning thousands of dollars a month from a credit card scam, the court heard.
But Justice Bongiorno said the terror group had still posed a "significant threat" and might have carried out a terrorist attack if not stopped.
He said the men had committed serious crimes but not as serious as if Atik's evidence had been accepted.
Benbrika used warped teachings of Islam to recruit his young followers and encourage them to wage violent jihad against "non-believers" in Australia.
Justice Bongiorno said that, although the word jihad had many meanings in Islam, Benbrika used the term only to mean a violent attack by his group to advance the Islamic cause.
He said Benbrika had admired Osama bin Laden and believed that killing people and destroying buildings was justified as it would help pressure the Australian Government into withdrawing troops from Iraq and leaving the American alliance.
The court heard Benbrika had told one of his followers, Abdullah Merhi, not just to kill a few people but to "do a big thing".
Merhi had responded "like Spain", in reference to terrorist attacks on Madrid, Justice Bongiorno said.
In May 2004, a Victorian undercover police officer posing as a Turkish Muslim man had infiltrated the group.
Five months later, he offered to show Benbrika how to make explosives and took Benbrika to a remote bush location north of Melbourne where he detonated a device.
Benbrika asked how much explosive would be needed to blow up buildings and homes but did not ask the undercover agent to get him any of the bomb-making ingredients or tell any of the other members of the group about the demonstration.
Six of Benbrika's followers also received prison terms.
Aimen Joud, 24, of Hoppers Crossing, has been jailed for a minimum of 7½ years.
Abdullah Merhi, 23, of Fawkner, must serve a minimum of four years in prison.
Ahmed Raad, 25, Fawkner, will be required to serve a minimum of 7½ years.
Amer Haddara, 29, of Yarraville, was sentenced to a minimum of 4½ years.
Fadl Sayadi, 29, of Coburg, was sentenced to a minimum of six years' prison.
Ezzit Raad, 27, from Preston, must serve five years and nine months.
Justice Bongiorno said that, under terrorism laws, those charged with offences had criminal liability earlier than in other criminal cases.
Remy van de Wiel, QC, had argued at presentence hearings that Benbrika's sentence should be tempered because he suffered from depression and an undiagnosed medical condition which caused him to have "embarrassing involuntary movements" and would make his prison time more stressful.
He said Benbrika had not properly led the group, which had never grown beyond an "embryonic terrorist organisation".
But Justice Bongiorno said that, by its existence and nature, the organisation had fostered in its members the desire to commit terrorist activities.
He said the evidence suggested that Benbrika was still committed to violent jihad, had shown no contrition for his offences and had talked about continuing the group's activities behind bars if its members were jailed.
Benbrika was arrested in November 2005.
More thoughts from this member of the "Religion of Peace & Tolerance"
The AGE
August 5 2005
"According to my religion, here, I don't accept all other religion except the religion of Islam.""I am telling you that my religion doesn't tolerate other religion. It doesn't tolerate. The only one law which needs to spread, it can be here or anywhere else, has to be Islam."
"Jihad is a part of my religion and what you have to understand (is) that anyone who fight for this sake of Allah . . . when he dies, the first drop of blood that comes from him . . . all his sin will be forgiven."
He described Osama bin Laden as "a great man. Osama bin Laden was a great man before 11 September, which they said he did . . . and until now nobody knows who did it".
Step-by-step al-Qa'ida terror guide used by Benbrika cell
Gary Hughes September 20, 2008
The Australian
IT was a blueprint for terror. Seized by police from the home of one of the alleged ringleaders of the Benbrika Muslim terror ring, it was al-Qa'ida's chilling step-by-step guide on how to build a terrorist cell, avoid detection, conduct training, obtain weapons, select targets and launch attacks.
It was one of at least two such instruction manuals that, according to authorities, were used by self-proclaimed Melbourne cleric Abdul Nacer Benbrika, 48, to set up and run his secret group.
One, which was also found in the hands of an al-Qa'ida member by British police, begins by setting down the three main principles essential to setting up a group: a commander and a leadership advisory council; individual members or "soldiers"; and a clearly defined strategy.
The primary mission of the group should be "the overthrow of the godless regimes and their replacement with an Islamic regime", the manual says.
Other missions are listed as "assassinating enemy personnel as well as foreign tourists" and "blasting and destroying the places of amusement, immorality and sin".
The manual was seized during a police raid on one of Benbrika's trusted lieutenants in June 2005. He was one of six of the fanatical religious leader's followers convicted alongside Benbrika this week of belonging to a terrorist organisation.
The manual, originally in Arabic when found on a computer by British police, had been translated into English for use in a later terrorist trial in the US. It was the English language version that was found in the Melbourne raid and later presented to the jury as a prosecution exhibit.
According to the manual, terror cell recruits had to be Muslims able to follow strict orders and "willing to do the work and undergo martyrdom for the purpose of establishing the religion of majestic Allah on Earth".
They also had to be able to "endure psychological trauma, such as those involving bloodshed, murder, arrest, imprisonment and reverse psychological traumas such as killing one or all of his organisation's comrades".
Operational funds had to be gathered, but kept hidden in scattered locations to avoid their being seized by authorities.
There were detailed instructions about maintaining security within the group, including using secret identification signals, selecting safe houses and avoiding the scrutiny of law enforcement agencies.
Paramilitary training of recruits should be done secretly in groups of no more than 10 at remote locations and care had to be taken when buying weapons to avoid being seen or ripped off.
They were lessons that Benbrika, who this week became the first person in Australia to be convicted of leading a terrorist organisation, apparently learned well.
The seven-month Victorian Supreme Court trial was told the self-proclaimed sheik, also known as Abu Bakr, chose three of the group to form his trusted advisory council to help lead the group, as laid out in the manual.
Fadl Sayadi, 28, was the group's security and intelligence officer; Ahmed Raad, 25, was the treasurer; and Aimen Joud, 23, was Benbrika's trusted adviser, the jury was told.
Funds to finance the group were raised through stealing cars to strip them for parts, and credit card fraud committed against non-Muslims, under a special religious ruling, or fatwa, issued by Benbrika.
One alleged training camp was held on a remote property in outback NSW in March 2005.
Joud, Sayadi and Raad were kept under surveillance by police as they drove to the remote campsite. A Belgian .308 rifle that forensic tests showed had been used at the site during the target shooting was later seized from another man associated with the Benbrika cell.
The group's mission, according to senior Crown prosecutor Richard Maidment SC, was to wage violent jihad on Australian soil to force the Howard government into withdrawing troops from Iraq and Afghanistan.
According to one Crown witness, potential targets included the AFL grand final at the crowded MCG in 2005 or Melbourne's Crown casino during Grand Prix weekend in 2006.
Among the group's recruits were Abdullah Merhi, 23, who had allegedly offered himself to Benbrika as a suicide bomber, and Haddara, who told police after his arrest he wished to become a mujaheddin and wage jihad as an Islamic holy warrior.
Members of Benbrika's group were taught that they would be regarded as Islamic martyrs if they died, and were instructed on how to be an "effective member of the organisation so that they were capable of going into a situation where a terrorist act was to be actually perpetrated".
The one piece of advice the Benbrika cell ignored from the terror manual, and which would prove to be their undoing, involved how they communicated.
The manual warns that modern communications, such as mobile telephones, were a "double-edged sword". "It can be to our advantage if we use it well and it can be a knife dug in our back if we do not consider and take the necessary security measures," the manual says.
For Benbrika and his followers, their undisciplined use of telephones became their knife in theback.
Despite the fact members rightly suspected that their mobiles, which included many held under false names, were being bugged, they kept talking.
Mobile calls between group members were among 482 covert recordings played to the jury as part of the prosecution case in thetrial.
One of the agents close to Operation Pendennis - the joint ASIO, Victoria Police and Australian Federal Police taskforce that spent 16 months between July 2004 and November 2005 targeting the Benbrika group - described the home-grown terror cell as "the real deal".
Some officers are now concerned that potential new Muslim terror threats could prove harder to combat because of the details revealed during the marathon trial of tactics and techniques used by the Pendennis team.
The trial was told how the taskforce threw a massive electronic and physical surveillance net around Benbrika and his followers: 16,400 hours of recordings from bugs in homes and vehicles, 98,000 telephone intercepts and 402 shifts by surveillance teams.
The trial was given detailed evidence about the techniques used by an undercover counter-terrorism agent, identified only as SIO39, to infiltrate the Benbrika group. The man, using the name Ahmet Sonmez, posed as the son of a separated Turkish-Australian couple who had initially grown up in Turkey with his Muslim father before moving to Tasmania to live with his Australian mother.
It meant that members of the Melbourne group would have had trouble attempting to verify his family background.
SIO39 went to great lengths to make himself as attractive a recruit as possible to Benbrika.
He told the sheik he had easy and cheap access to ammonium nitrate fertiliser and had learned how to turn it into an explosive mixture while working on farms in Tasmania.
He also claimed to have made surplus money from selling inherited shares, which he offered to give to Benbrika. And he repeatedly talked about how it was time to wage violent jihad in Australia.
Benbrika was apparently fooled but some of the other terror cell members were not so confident, believing SIO39 too good to be true.
As one of them pointed out, he didn't even want to argue with other members during their frequent heated discussions about religion. And in a group that was constantly squabbling, simple agreement was enough to cast suspicion.
Sunday, February 01, 2009
Iraq: Bad Mannered Pig Ignorant Muslim Votes Courtesy of President G W Bush and over 4000 of Americas finest.
Muntazer al-Zaidi votes in prison
From correspondents in Baghdad
January 31, 2009 09:30pm
THE Iraqi journalist who hurled his shoes at former US president George W. Bush in Baghdad has voted in secret from his prison cell in the country's provincial election.
"Muntazer al-Zaidi voted on January 28,'' an official with the Central Criminal Court of Iraq said.
"Nobody was allowed to ask him whom he would vote for so it would not be considered as a way of trying to influence his choice.''
Police, soldiers, hospital patients and prisoners cast advance votes on Wednesday to avoid the security, logistical and electoral fraud problems which plagued the 2005 parliamentary elections.
Mr Zaidi, 29, gained instant international fame when he threw his shoes at Bush during the US president's farewell visit to Iraq on December 14, an action considered a grave insult in the Arab world.
The journalist for the Al-Baghdadia television faces charges of ``aggression against a foreign head of state during an official visit''.
If convicted he faces up to 15 years in jail.
Up to 15 million people will be voting today to choose provincial councils in 14 of the country's 18 provinces in the first election since 2005.
I hope this piece of shit spends 15 years in jail, he obviously prefers the Saddam era, sounds harsh? no, under the Saddam regime he would have had his brain " liberated" from the prison of his skull within 10 seconds of him throwing his shoe at Saddam or any of his arsehole sons or upper management,via a baseball bat or a bullet to the temple.
Of course the liberals and their Islamic terror apologists in the west, would have been saying things like "who are we to judge" " Islamic culture is not like other cultures and whilst their social customs are at times, to the uneducated westerners, are confronting we in the west should ask what was it, the shoe thrower did to deserve to have his brains blown out" and the old stand by of "Islam means peace" and an announcement of a "Multi Faith Outreach" conference some where or other in NY or LA,code for, hey how you too can justify the beheading, enslavement and torture of "infidels" by Islams finest the world over, in the name of "peace"
I am glad this ungrateful spineless sack of Islamic shit has been afforded the right to vote, I am outraged that one DROP of " Infidel" blood has been spilt for that to become a realty for this arse clown
From correspondents in Baghdad
January 31, 2009 09:30pm
THE Iraqi journalist who hurled his shoes at former US president George W. Bush in Baghdad has voted in secret from his prison cell in the country's provincial election.
"Muntazer al-Zaidi voted on January 28,'' an official with the Central Criminal Court of Iraq said.
"Nobody was allowed to ask him whom he would vote for so it would not be considered as a way of trying to influence his choice.''
Police, soldiers, hospital patients and prisoners cast advance votes on Wednesday to avoid the security, logistical and electoral fraud problems which plagued the 2005 parliamentary elections.
Mr Zaidi, 29, gained instant international fame when he threw his shoes at Bush during the US president's farewell visit to Iraq on December 14, an action considered a grave insult in the Arab world.
The journalist for the Al-Baghdadia television faces charges of ``aggression against a foreign head of state during an official visit''.
If convicted he faces up to 15 years in jail.
Up to 15 million people will be voting today to choose provincial councils in 14 of the country's 18 provinces in the first election since 2005.
I hope this piece of shit spends 15 years in jail, he obviously prefers the Saddam era, sounds harsh? no, under the Saddam regime he would have had his brain " liberated" from the prison of his skull within 10 seconds of him throwing his shoe at Saddam or any of his arsehole sons or upper management,via a baseball bat or a bullet to the temple.
Of course the liberals and their Islamic terror apologists in the west, would have been saying things like "who are we to judge" " Islamic culture is not like other cultures and whilst their social customs are at times, to the uneducated westerners, are confronting we in the west should ask what was it, the shoe thrower did to deserve to have his brains blown out" and the old stand by of "Islam means peace" and an announcement of a "Multi Faith Outreach" conference some where or other in NY or LA,code for, hey how you too can justify the beheading, enslavement and torture of "infidels" by Islams finest the world over, in the name of "peace"
I am glad this ungrateful spineless sack of Islamic shit has been afforded the right to vote, I am outraged that one DROP of " Infidel" blood has been spilt for that to become a realty for this arse clown
Islam can only exist as a disruptive minority or an oppressive majority.
It's the Koran Stupid!!!!!!!
Garbage IN Garbage OUT
Garbage IN Garbage OUT
Friday, January 30, 2009
Australia: Medicare the best third world health system in the world bar none.
Tammy Hams - lying in agony on hospital floor
By Richard Noone
The Daily Telegraph
January 30, 2009 12:00am
TAMMY Hams thought she was "going to die" when she was offered a blanket and told to lie on a waiting room floor because staff at her local hospital could not find her a bed.
Ms Hams was booked in for surgery at Wyong Hospital to remove possible cancerous lesions when doctors discovered a huge abscess causing "agonising pain".
The 29-year-old said she spent 3½ hours writhing in agony on the waiting room floor of the hospital's surgical ward on Wednesday before she was eventually given a bed.
Staff at the hospital "categorically deny" her claims.
Rees quiet on Rudd hospital bailout
The incident comes amid yet another hospital outrage, in which a 24-year-old man was discharged from Griffith Hospital early on Monday after complaining of sinus pain.
The following day he again presented to the hospital and was flown immediately to Sydney's St Vincent's where he died from unknown causes.
Tell us your hospital horror stories below
Greater Southern Health has launched an investigation into why he was discharged.
And in Dubbo, doctors are threatening to quit because they routinely run out of basic medications.
Ms Hams said her GP had been trying to get her into hospital since Friday when she began feeling stabbing pains in her stomach.
A biopsy four months ago revealed pre-cancerous lesions on her cervix, which if left would turn cancerous.
"I thought I was going to die," Ms Hams told The Daily Telegraph yesterday from her hospital bed.
"I have never been in that much pain in my life - it was agony."
She was booked-in for a hysterectomy and told to arrive at 9am.
Her mother Jenny Leatham said she was "crying and doubled-over in pain" and could not sit on the waiting room chairs or stand, so they pleaded for a bed.
"They gave her a blanket and said the best she could do was lie on the floor," Mr Leatham said.
"The staff were so nice and you could see they were upset about what was happening. This is just unfair, I'm not rubbishing the staff. There just wasn't enough beds.
"The system has to change."
A North Sydney Central Coast Health spokeswoman said an investigation found there was no shortage of beds and Ms Hams was "treated in a caring and timely manner".
"It is unacceptable for a patient to be expected to lie on the floor and staff on duty when Ms Hams arrived at the hospital deny making any such recommendation," the spokeswoman said.
The hospital argues she was assessed by an anaesthetist at 10.10am and that she asked for the blanket.
Mrs Leatham said by 12.30pm staff found her daughter a bed and she was operated on at 2pm.
When surgeons cut her open they discovered a huge abscess pushing on her cervix.
Unable to perform the hysterectomy they removed as much of the infection as they could and inserted a tube to drain it over the next seven to 10 days.
"If the abscess had burst while she was in the waiting room she would have died," Mrs Leatham said.
Wyong Hospital is just one of the state's many hospitals plagued with debt, bed shortages and a lack of specialist doctors.
Last week its emergency department - one of the busiest in the state - lost all but one of its specialist doctors to Gosford Hospital so it could retain its status as a teaching hospital.
Senior doctors at Dubbo Base Hospital threatened to walk off the job after they ran out of morphine because the hospital could not afford to pay pharmaceutical companies.
Patients in intensive care also sweltered for days in record temperatures because contractors could not be paid to fix the air conditioning.
The Greater Western Area Health Service reportedly owes more than $23 million to suppliers. Many are no longer prepared to provide food or medical equipment.
The situation across the state is expected to get far worse before it gets any better.
A report by auditing firm PriceWaterhouseCoopers last month revealed the state's health budget would blow out by as much as $900 million by March if dramatic changes were not made
Before the Australian Labor Party introduced their socialised medicine aka Medicare the Australian health system was THE BEST health system in the world bar NONE.
Now we have the best THIRD WORLD health DONT CARE SYSTEM IN THE WORLD BAR none.
AMERICA beware the Obama universal health care threat, look to Australia to see what happens when you SOCIALISE your health care.
The NSW Labor Government wont spend a dollar on the Manly Hospital simply because the land is worth millions of dollars and they have a parade of big business big Labor donors ready and waiting to get their hands on the land to develop into an exclusive residential development with million dollar views of Sydney Harbour, hey the minister himself said that Manly Hospital is a coastal Hospital, and does not need air conditioning as much as Hospitals in the Labor Party's electorates.
Mona Vale Hospital is the next on the list of the institutions that have to be dismantled on the basis of who benefits from them in Mona Vale Hospitals case it is a predominately anti Labor electorate, with a Hospital sitting on a billion dollar site that the Socialists simply cannot tolerate, they see the site as a place where they could build a holiday resort for Labor faithful and those wanting to be educated in correct thinking.
Caution Talk Back Radio callers
Caution when calling "Talk Back " Radio.
Hello Aussie,
I want you to know about my experience re calling Sydney's # 1 Radio station 2GB.
I called the station and spoke to Frank Crook one Saturday morning some weeks back, I spoke negatively about Obama, I was derided and quickly cut off.
I phoned back in order to finish off what I wanted to say, I was repeatedly cut off by the call screener who I later identified himself as Mark Kennedy.
I was not allowed to finish my call to Frank Crook,I was not reconnected, I was however told that the New South Wales Police would be informed of "your details" by Mark Kennedy should I call 2GB again.
The right of Frank Crook and 2GB to decide what type of political calls go to air is certainly their perogative and whilst I would like to have unfettered acces to their air waves I understand that whilst they generally fall to the left point of view they do indeed give the majority viewpoint a reasonable hearing over "their" airwaves.
What I found unsetling, to say the least, was the threat of my "details" been forwarded to the New South Wales Police Department should I not stop calling 2GB.
2GB's majority owner, John Singleton, is a self confessed Australian Labor Party supporter and multi millionaire, callers to 2GB's open line talk back should be aware that should they want to offer, as in my case, a negative opinion of the now US President Barack Obama,or enunciate a negative opinion of Obama's Australian based # 1 sychophant and apologist, Australian Labor Party leader Kevin Rudd that it could be that their "details" could very well be forwarded to the New South Wales Police Department.
As of time of writing I have not been visited by the NSW Police Department or am I aware of any action taken by them against me because of my call to Frank Crook & radio 2GB, however I find it unsettling to think that a radio station that promotes itself as a voice of the majority, and voice of the people, would threaten to forward my or anyone elses "details" to the New South Wales Police Force when it deemed my / our views were contrary to the views of the station management or their presenter.
Caution remember when calling a talk back radio station and talking on air on whatever subject your "details" as in your phone number and name are retained by the station on their computer data base, they have your name and address and phone number in their data base that can be given to any one they deem should have have it along with the content of your call to them or any other data that the call screener or presenter deems fit to enter against your "DETAILS"
Cheers ANON.
Hello Aussie,
I want you to know about my experience re calling Sydney's # 1 Radio station 2GB.
I called the station and spoke to Frank Crook one Saturday morning some weeks back, I spoke negatively about Obama, I was derided and quickly cut off.
I phoned back in order to finish off what I wanted to say, I was repeatedly cut off by the call screener who I later identified himself as Mark Kennedy.
I was not allowed to finish my call to Frank Crook,I was not reconnected, I was however told that the New South Wales Police would be informed of "your details" by Mark Kennedy should I call 2GB again.
The right of Frank Crook and 2GB to decide what type of political calls go to air is certainly their perogative and whilst I would like to have unfettered acces to their air waves I understand that whilst they generally fall to the left point of view they do indeed give the majority viewpoint a reasonable hearing over "their" airwaves.
What I found unsetling, to say the least, was the threat of my "details" been forwarded to the New South Wales Police Department should I not stop calling 2GB.
2GB's majority owner, John Singleton, is a self confessed Australian Labor Party supporter and multi millionaire, callers to 2GB's open line talk back should be aware that should they want to offer, as in my case, a negative opinion of the now US President Barack Obama,or enunciate a negative opinion of Obama's Australian based # 1 sychophant and apologist, Australian Labor Party leader Kevin Rudd that it could be that their "details" could very well be forwarded to the New South Wales Police Department.
As of time of writing I have not been visited by the NSW Police Department or am I aware of any action taken by them against me because of my call to Frank Crook & radio 2GB, however I find it unsettling to think that a radio station that promotes itself as a voice of the majority, and voice of the people, would threaten to forward my or anyone elses "details" to the New South Wales Police Force when it deemed my / our views were contrary to the views of the station management or their presenter.
Caution remember when calling a talk back radio station and talking on air on whatever subject your "details" as in your phone number and name are retained by the station on their computer data base, they have your name and address and phone number in their data base that can be given to any one they deem should have have it along with the content of your call to them or any other data that the call screener or presenter deems fit to enter against your "DETAILS"
Cheers ANON.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)