But why?
Related: Sydney Siege Highlights Danger Posed by 'Lone Wolves'
Yup, the terrorists among us.
"Gunman, 2 captives killed as siege at Sydney cafe ends; Police say native Iranian had long criminal history" by Michelle Innis, New York Times December 16, 2014
SYDNEY — Heavily armed police officers ended a hostage siege early Tuesday, storming a downtown cafe where an armed man had held employees and customers for more than 16 hours.
The captor and two hostages died during the confrontation and four other people were wounded, the New South Wales Police said. Television images showed intense flashes of gunfire and loud concussions from stun grenades as police officers raced into the building with weapons drawn about 2:10 a.m., followed later by medics.
Just before the police entered the building, at least six hostages were seen running from the cafe. The police said there were 17 hostages in all.
The police identified the hostage-taker as Man Haron Monis, 50, an Iranian-born man with a criminal record who called himself Sheik Haron. Prime Minister Tony Abbott said he had ‘‘a long history of violent crime, infatuation with extremism, and mental instability.’’
Oh, no, not again!
See: Who Created Cartoon Character "Man Haron Monis" Behind "Sydney Siege" Circus?
Whatever the case is, Monis/Boroujerdi is certainly no "loan wolf terrorist." He, at best, is yet another Frankenstein of the establishment run amok after an abortive attempt to cultivate and use him to advance Western foreign and domestic policy. At worse, he is directly involved in an intelligence operation to further inflame division in Australian society and promote the long stalled war in Syria aimed at regime change there, before heading to Iran - the scorn of Monis/Boroujerdi.
An omnipresent all-invasive surveillance state that is constantly "blindsided" by terror attacks carried out by criminals and characters possessing extensive criminal records and who are well-acquainted with that state's law enforcement, media, and even government, is testament to the fact that such surveillance hasn't been and never was intended to serve the public's best interests nor to keep them safe - but rather another system of control and manipulation to allow true dangers to human civilization to endure with impunity.
Related: The ''Shape-Shifting Sheik'' and the ''Sydney Siege''
Wait for IT.
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Monis’s former lawyer, Manny Conditsis, told the Australian Broadcasting Corp. that he believed Monis was acting alone.
“His ideology is just so strong and so powerful that it clouds his vision for common sense and objectiveness,” Conditsis said, calling his former client “a damaged-goods individual who has done something outrageous.”
What is outrageous is the constant peddling of this crap by the $pew media.
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The siege had transfixed Australia since Monday morning, when Monis man took control of the Lindt Chocolate Cafe in Sydney with employees and customers trapped inside.
He was carrying a black flag with white Arabic script similar to those used by Islamic militants on other continents, and the flag was later displayed in the window of the cafe....
This is.... pfft.
Helicopters hovered over the city, the train network was temporarily stopped, and strategic buildings — including the nearby Sydney Opera House, the New South Wales Parliament, the state library, law courts and the Reserve Bank — were evacuated or shut down.
Australia's 9/11!
According to The Sydney Morning Herald, Monis was free on bail in two criminal cases. He was charged in November 2013 with being an accessory before and after the fact in the murder of his former wife, Noleen Hayson Pal, who was stabbed and set on fire in an apartment in Werrington.
Free on bail after murder, huh? WOW!
In April, Monis was charged with the indecent and sexual assault of a woman in western Sydney in 2002. He was later charged with 40 more counts of indecent or sexual assault relating to six other women.
The police have said that Monis presented himself as a spiritual healer and conducted business for a time on Station Street in Wentworthville, a western suburb of Sydney.
You can always find redemption in religion.
Monis pleaded guilty in 2013 to 12 charges related to the sending of poison-pen letters to the families of Australian servicemen who were killed overseas, local press reports said. He was reportedly sentenced to probation and community service.
A website apparently associated with Monis includes condemnation of the United States and Australia for their military actions against Islamic militants in Iraq and Afghanistan.
News reports said the site also contained a posting saying Monis had recently converted from Shia to Sunni Islam, and SITE, an organization that monitors Islamic extremist groups, said he posted a pledge of allegiance to the “Caliph of the Muslims.” The posting appeared to refer to Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi and the Islamic State.
That right there confirms that this is a pile of bullish**.
See: SITE Institute
Jewish Media Group, SITE, is the first to release another Islamic threat video
And they came up with this, huh?
IS ISRAEL CONTROLLING PHONY TERROR NEWS?
It's their agenda that is reflected in my newspaper.
He apparently immigrated to Australia from Iran around 1996, and was previously known as Manteghi Boroujerdi or Mohammad Hassan Manteghi. Australian Broadcasting said he was granted political asylum. In an interview in 2001, he claimed to have worked for the Iranian intelligence ministry and to have fled the country in fear for his life.
A Muslim community leader in Sydney, Dr. Jamal Rifi, said “everything he stands for is wrong.’’
Rifi said Monis is not a sheik but had worn traditional clothes and a beard. “He had no religious qualifications whatsoever,” he said. “He has never been associated with any mainstream mosque, and he is not associated with any of our religious leaders.’’
The hallmark of a government intelligence asset and agent provocateur.
Adam Dolnik, a professor who researches terrorism at the University of Wollongong, in New South Wales, said the hostage-taker seemed likely to be either “a lone wolf sympathetic to the issues of the Islamic State and the goal of jihad more generally” or a case of “psychopathology in search of a cause.”
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"Australian laws failed to thwart siege" by Thomas Fuller, New York Times December 17, 2014
SYDNEY — Around the time that grisly images of beheadings circulated across the world this fall, Prime Minister Tony Abbott introduced a raft of laws in response to what he said was an increasing threat that the Islamic State would attempt a bold act of terrorism on Australian soil.
The laws, which passed Parliament with wide support, made it an offense to advocate terrorism; banned Australians from going to fight overseas; allowed the authorities to confiscate and cancel passports; and provided for the sharing of information between security services and defense personnel. The government also deployed hundreds of police officers in counterterrorism sweeps across the country.
None of these measures prevented a man with a long history of run-ins with the law, known to both the police and leaders of Muslim organizations as deeply troubled, from laying siege to a popular downtown cafe this week and holding hostages for 16 hours.
Yeah, imagine that. How could it happen, huh?
The attacker, Man Haron Monis, an Iranian immigrant, and two of the 17 hostages were killed early Tuesday amid the chaos of a police raid.
The victims were identified Tuesday as Katrina Dawson, 38, a lawyer, and Tori Johnson, 34.
Johnson was the manager of the Lindt Chocolat Cafe where the siege unfolded. According to Sydney’s Catholic archbishop, he brought the siege to a head when he grabbed the hostage-taker’s gun — which then went off, killing him.
At an emotional memorial service attended by hundreds, Johnson was lauded for sacrificing his life and helping to bring the siege to an end by grabbing the gunman’s shotgun.
‘‘Apparently seeing an opportunity, Tori grabbed the gun,’’ Archbishop Anthony Fisher said. ‘‘Tragically, it went off, killing him. But it triggered the response of police and eventual freedom for most of the hostages.’’
Dawson, a lawyer and a mother of three, is said to have been shielding a pregnant friend when she was hit. She was remembered by the New South Wales Bar Association as ‘‘one of our best and brightest.’’
Commenting on Monis’s past, Abbott asked Tuesday, “How can someone who has had such a long and checkered history not be on the appropriate watch lists? And how can someone like that be entirely at large in the community?”
Especially when he has been charged with murder.
Bret Walker, a lawyer who was Australia’s first independent monitor for national security laws, said, “The new laws don’t add anything to what can be done in advance in a situation like the siege.” In this case, Monis was overlooked because he did not travel overseas and was not believed to be part of a gang or a terrorist network, experts said.
The case, like recent lone-wolf jihadi attacks in Brussels, Ottawa, and New York, raises troubling questions about the ability of governments to monitor homegrown, radicalized would-be jihadi fighters and prevent them from doing harm.
Maybe they should stop training and creating them then!!!
Btw, Australia is part of the Five Eyes NSA surveillance system and thus would have collected all the data, so these state excuses once again do not wash.
Monis did not appear to have put a great deal of planning into his attack.
HA-HA-HA-HA-HA-HA!
Did it EVEN HAPPEN AT ALL or is it another STAGED and SCRIPTED PRODUCTION be passed of as real?
Arriving at the cafe without an Islamic State banner, he demanded one in exchange for several hostages and hung it in the cafe window, local news media reported.
(Blogger laughs out loud at this ludicrousness)
Manny Conditsis, a lawyer who had represented Monis in previous criminal cases, described him as “on the fringe of the fringe.”
“He wasn’t accepted by anybody,” Conditsis said.
The violence in Sydney occurred two months after a gunman in Canada, Michael Zehaf-Bibeau, killed a soldier and stormed the Canadian Parliament building in Ottawa, apparently driven by a similar mix of personal disaffection and jihadi zealotry.
See: ISIS Freezes Canada
Also see: Canada’s False Flag Terror: Fingerprints of U.S. Involvement
It was all a drill?
Zehaf-Bibeau, a convert to Islam, had criminal convictions in cases that included robbery and drug-related offenses.
Monis, who won political asylum in Australia two decades ago, had been a Shi’ite cleric in Iran. He recently wrote on his website that he had converted to the Sunni branch of Islam.
Whatever his government handler wants.
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"Australian gunman had drawn scrutiny" by Thomas Fuller and Michelle Innis, New York Times December 18, 2014
SYDNEY — Australian authorities came under pressure Wednesday to explain why the gunman in a siege at a Sydney cafe that left two hostages dead had dropped off a security watch list and was not being monitored despite his criminal record, history of violence, and public airings of his radical views.
I think we know why.
In a news conference Wednesday, Prime Minister Tony Abbott questioned why the gunman, Man Haron Monis, had been removed from a government terrorism watch list around 2009 and had been granted permanent residency.
On Monday, Monis held 17 people hostage in central Sydney before police brought an end to the 16-hour siege, leaving the gunman and two other people dead.
Monis had been charged with numerous crimes in recent years and sought to publicize his radical views.
Hey, look at me! STINK!
Abbott, who came to office in September last year, appeared to be blaming previous governments for what he described as lapses, including a decision to grant Monis asylum.
“The system did not adequately deal with the individual, there is no doubt about that,” Abbott said in a radio interview Wednesday.
Speaking to reporters later in the day, the prime minister said he and his Cabinet were incredulous when they learned details of Monis’s background, including a decision to grant him bail last year in a separate murder case.
“We do need to know why the perpetrator of this horrible outrage got long-term residency,” Abbott said.
I think we already do.
“We particularly need to know how someone with such a long record of violence, such a long record of mental health instability, was out on bail after his involvement in a particularly horrific crime,” Abbot said.
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"After Sydney siege, Australian Muslims feel wary" by Thomas Fuller and Michelle Innis, New York Times December 19, 2014
SYDNEY — When television networks this week showed hostages being forced by a gunman to hold a flag with Arabic script against the window of a Sydney cafe where they were being held, it was the first sign that their captor wanted to link his cause to Islam.
That doesn't mean it really happened.
While watching the news coverage of the siege at the Lindt Chocolate Café from his office, Rashid Ben Zerouk, a computer specialist in Sydney who is Muslim, said he felt a piercing glare from one of his colleagues.
“He looked at me like I had to explain myself,” Zerouk said. “I walked back to my desk with my head down. I felt like I wanted to hide.”
In the aftermath of the siege that left the gunman and two of his captives dead, Australian Muslims say they are relieved that there has been no major backlash against them. But they say they are also fearful that the country is one attack away from reversing their integration efforts, as well as their growing but tenuous acceptance in the wider community.
The gunman, Man Haron Monis, an eccentric and troubled man with a history of crime, appears to have acted alone. The Australian prime minister, Tony Abbott, described him as a “sick and disturbed individual.”
Muslim leaders in recent days nonetheless followed what has become a familiar script after terrorist attacks: They issued a statement denouncing any connection between the violent acts and the teachings of Islam, they took part in interfaith meetings and candlelight vigils, and they gave countless interviews to speak about Islam as a religion of peace.
It sure is, and I'm sick of it. I'm tired of the endless war propaganda that is beyond belief.
Muslim office workers, students, and homemakers in Australia have said that many of their non-Muslim compatriots expected answers from them.
Hisham Bouab, the manager of a chain of restaurants who attends a mosque in the Sydney suburbs, began receiving calls from non-Muslim friends and colleagues while the hostage drama was unfolding.
“I thought, ‘Here we go again,’ ” he said. “Another thing I’ll have to explain.”
Nancy Mourad, 24, a cancer researcher at a government medical institute, said she felt “guilty by association.”
“I felt the need to apologize to everyone who looked at me — sorry, sorry, sorry — for something I had no connection to,” she said.
I only apologize for this terrible blog. Sorry, readers.
The siege brought out the best as well as the worst in those around her, Mourad said.
As it continued into the night, Mourad, who wears a head scarf, was jeered while playing in an indoor soccer tournament.
“I heard people on the sidelines saying, ‘Kick her! Tackle her, take her down!’ ”
The next day, while she was on the way to her office Christmas party, an elderly man shouted at her on the train, “Bloody Muslims, go back to your country.”
But Mourad also said her non-Muslim colleagues were very supportive.
Mariam Veiszadeh, a lawyer and the founder of an organization that monitors anti-Islamic sentiment, said she had been encouraged by the signs of solidarity, compassion, and unified mourning after the hostage drama ended.
“The worst in that deranged madman has brought out the very best in us as a nation,” she said.
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"Australians offer support to Muslims via social media" by Jill Lawless, Associated Press December 16, 2014
NEW YORK — Some Australian social media users sent a message of solidarity to Muslims as the Sydney cafe siege went on for almost a day, offering to accompany anyone who felt intimidated on public transit.
The Twitter hashtag #IllRideWithYou had been used more than 90,000 times by early Tuesday, as tweeters tried to allay fears of anti-Islamic attacks on Australia’s streets.
Hostages were held for more than 16 hours inside Sydney’s Lindt Chocolat Cafe by a gunman who had a flag bearing an Islamic declaration of faith that has been used in jihadi imagery. That prompted speculation that the siege could ignite retaliatory violence against Muslims, many of whom wear traditional Islamic attire in public.
Sydney resident Rachael Jacobs wrote on Facebook that she had seen a woman on the train remove her headscarf and offered to walk with her.
That spurred a Twitter campaign in which users offered to travel on public transit with those in Islamic dress who felt insecure. Users were encouraged to supply details of their travel routes to ensure their online gestures were practical.
About 500,000 of Australia’s 24 million people are Muslims.
Kristen Boschma, a social media manager in Melbourne, printed out a sticker with the hashtag and stuck it on her bag. Her photo of the sticker was retweeted hundreds of times.
She said she wanted to send a message of support “not just for the Muslim community, but for anyone who feels a bit scared or insecure about taking transport or being out and about.”
Boschma said she hoped the siege would prove “galvanizing rather than polarizing” for Australia.
“We very much believe in looking out for our mates,” she said. “And I think this situation has widened the definition of what is a mate.”
Several hostages sent text messages and at least one video from the cafe during the siege, showing how instant communications can be both helpful and harmful in such situations, officials said.
A television news station said it received a video in which a hostage relayed the gunman’s demands. Station officials said police requested that they not broadcast it, and authorities asked all media that might be contacted by the gunman to urge him to talk to police instead.
In a separate development, the cab-hailing company Uber promised free rides and refunds for people fleeing central Sydney as the hostage siege unfolded, after it came under fire for raising prices during the crisis.
Related: Police offer tips on Uber, other services after assaults
Technology news website Mashable reported that Uber was briefly charging customers a minimum fare of about $82 and four times the usual per-mile rate to leave the city center. Uber said on its smartphone app that the rates had been increased because “demand is off the charts,” according to Mashable.
But Uber, which offers a service based on hailing taxis from its app, quickly backtracked after an outcry on social media.
The company explained that it had used automatic “surge pricing” to encourage more drivers to get online and pick up passengers.
They always have an excu$e for looting, don't they?
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Also see: Eight children killed in home in northern Australia
Related: 'Unspeakable Crime': Eight Kids Found Dead in Australia Home
"Australian woman arrested in deaths of 8 children" Associated Press December 20, 2014
SYDNEY — An Australian woman was arrested on murder charges in the killings of eight children, seven of whom are believed to be her own, police said Saturday. The children were found dead inside the 37-year-old woman’s home in Queensland.
The woman, who is recovering in a hospital from stab wounds, was under guard and speaking with police, said Detective Inspector Bruno Asnicar of the Queensland Police.
Asnicar said investigators are examining several knives in the home that may have been used to kill the children, who ranged in age from 18 months to 14 years. One of them is believed to be a niece of the suspect, he said.
Police went to the home in Manoora on Friday after receiving a report of a woman with serious injuries, and found the bodies of the children along with the woman.
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Related:
Blackstone mother charged in deaths of 2 infants
She looks mad.
Lawyer for Blackstone mother casts doubt on murder indictment