Post Sydney-Dawn-Terror Raids

mccardey

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Note: I'd consider it a personal favour if this thread could avoid the jokes. There's already a thread for that.

A backlash of hate crimes against the Muslim community after the police raids last week has also sparked a rash of social media comments such as "this is how they should deal with them", "behead them all", "give them a taste of their own medicine for a change" and "we just need to blow up parramatta n bankstown".

Read more: http://www.smh.com.au/federal-polit...uslims-say-20140920-10jdkw.html#ixzz3DtOVZA2w

I suspect that at the moment the increase in abuse is confined to those idiot far-right-wing websites, but I do wish there had been a less head-line-grabbing, politically-expedient approach to all this. It makes it so easy to do this sort of thing:

Terrorism laws to be strengthened and 'modernised', says justice minister

Bills giving authorities greater powers to deal with terrorism will be introduced into federal parliament next week, the justice minister, Michael Keenan says.

The proposed laws come after police anti-terrorism raids in Sydney and Brisbane on Thursday.

While providing only vague details, Keenan said the mooted laws would “modernise” existing legislation.

He shied away from saying whether they would allow police greater powers to detain suspects on terrorism charges.
http://www.theguardian.com/world/20...-and-modernised-says-justice-minister[/B][/B]
 
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Helix

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Oh dear. The first comment in that thread is a call to lock away Greens because Climate Change. I can see how this lot got in now.

Here's a good piece from the Saturday Paper that looks mostly at the new 'anti-terrorism' laws recently enacted in Qld, where terrorism includes chucking eggs or unauthorised kite flying. I can't see anything about iPhones.

You might laugh, but this is actually serious. Elsewhere in its 104 pages, the special Queensland legislation sets out extraordinary powers, among them strip searches, warrantless searches of premises, and for anyone charged with an offence such as the unapproved possession of a kite, a presumption against the granting of bail.
 

mccardey

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I'll bet nobody saw this coming...
Australians must accept a reduction in freedom and an increase in security “for some time to come” to save lives from the significant threat of terrorism, Tony Abbott has told parliament.

The prime minister asked Australians to support a shift in “the delicate balance between freedom and security” as he sought to bolster his case for the biggest overhaul of the nation’s counterterrorism laws in a decade.
 

mccardey

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This is the sort of thing.
Like the vast majority of Australian Muslims, I was shocked and horrified when I heard of Operation Hammerhead. For days, I have felt nauseous at the sound of police helicopters in the sky, scaring away the birds that usually woke me up at dawn.
Not only did I feel sick and paralysed with fear at the thought that, again, criminals had hijacked my religion, I was fearful of the backlash that would now race towards Muslim women in Australia. I am incredibly fearful of the right-wing extremism that is breeding in this country and the consequences for all of us.
I still feel the scars of the Cronulla riots, where the flag of my beloved country was used as a symbol of pure hatred, of thuggery and racism. It is a deep wound in my heart that is slowly healing.


Read more: http://www.smh.com.au/comment/opera...slim-women-20140923-10koi6.html#ixzz3EBJwGpJz
 

Helix

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There was this awful incident yesterday evening.

An 18-year-old man who made threats against the Prime Minister has been shot dead after stabbing two police officers from the Joint Counter Terrorism team in Melbourne's outer south-east.

The dead man, who recently had his passport cancelled, was considered a "person of interest" by authorities and was being investigated over terrorism.

[snip]

[Victoria Police Assistant Commissioner Luke] Cornelius added police believed this was an isolated incident.

"It appears this individual was acting on his own and was not acting in concert with other individuals," he said.
 

CassandraW

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This is horrifying. What the hell is happening in Australia?
 

mccardey

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There was this awful incident yesterday evening.

I know. Waiting to see how that one plays out..

The spillover into the community is awful, though. Some really ugly voices are getting megaphoned, and I'm worried there'll be a general push to silence discussion about it. One of those "You're with us or you're against freedom" things.
 

CassandraW

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After 9/11, the U.S. went nuts too -- both in terms of the government reaction (IMO) and the on-the-street anti-Muslim, anti-Arab paranoia. But we'd had an attack on our soil, 3000 innocent people dead, etc., so while I found it deplorable, it was at least a little more understandable.

What I find most disturbing about what's happening in Australia is that this is all in response to a threat. A horrible, scary threat, yes -- but that's not the same thing as a major attack on your soil.

And Plot Device is right. Once your government has curtailed freedoms and ramped up security, they won't dial it back any time soon. Look at us in the U.S. If anything, between Homeland Security, the NSA, the TSA, etc. the U.S. government has infringed further into our privacy and our 4th Amendment rights in the last few years, even though we haven't had another attack like 9/11.

I'd love to opine that once your current government in Australia is out, it will get better. But, well, that's not what's happened in the U.S. I'd had high hopes that Obama would roll back at least some of the stuff put in place by Bush. But he hasn't. Once that stuff is in place, there isn't much incentive for the government to undo it. And a whole bunch of people will always back them up, believing (wrongly, in my opinion) that anything done in the name of "security" trumps everything else.
 

LA*78

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What I find most disturbing about what's happening in Australia is that this is all in response to a threat. A horrible, scary threat, yes -- but that's not the same thing as a major attack on your soil.

I think you'll find a lot of this is related to G20 combined with ISIS issue, not just isolated incidences of threats.
 

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I know. Waiting to see how that one plays out..

The spillover into the community is awful, though. Some really ugly voices are getting megaphoned, and I'm worried there'll be a general push to silence discussion about it. One of those "You're with us or you're against freedom" things.


The anti-mosque shenanigans at Maroochydore a few days were fronted by a 'visionary-leader pastor' and the head of a would-be political party, which uses the Templars' cross as a symbol and refers to the Tenth Crusade.

They apparently reacted quite strongly to anti-anti-mosque people singing Aussie songs at them. I don't know what was sung. I hope it was 'Am I Ever Going to See Your Face Again?'
 

CassandraW

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I think you'll find a lot of this is related to G20 combined with ISIS issue, not just isolated incidences of threats.

I'm sure. But until the threats occurred, I wasn't hearing all these horror stories, so I'd assumed the terror threat was the catalyst/excuse for the security excesses and demonstrations by racist crazies. Is that correct? Or was that stuff going on already and just wasn't highlighted so much in the international news?
 

Helix

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I'm sure. But until the threats occurred, I wasn't hearing all these horror stories, so I'd assumed the terror threat was the catalyst/excuse for the security excesses and demonstrations by racist crazies. Is that correct? Or was that stuff going on already and just wasn't highlighted so much in the international news?


I don't know that racism has increased, but the government has made the racists comfortable enough to be arseholes in public.

The number of actual terrorist acts on Aussie soil has remained more or less the same. Sure we've had bombings -- there was a scumbag in Derrinallum, who allegedly wandered around town in a suicide vest and rigged his entire property with explosives, which he detonated after the police arrived. The cops didn't know how he'd managed to accumulate so much explosive material without anyone noticing. He wasn't a Muslim, though. The Russell Street bomb, which I witnessed first hand, wasn't planted by Muslims either.

The raids in Sydney and Brisbane were theatre -- 800 officers and only one charge for planning to commit a terrorist act.

Richard Ackland wrote an article in the Guardian (already posted by mccardey) that points out how these horror stories have come from the media and C'wealth government. (It's a short piece, but covers the main points.) The state police -- who have an entirely different, much more measured and calm take on it -- are being drowned out.

“Right now is a time for calm,” said the NSW police commissioner Andrew Scipione. “We don’t need to whip this up.” However, the message the politicians were trying to get across was, “Now’s the time for you to be desperately anxious.” The Navy at Garden Island spent this morning blaring “alert ... alert ... alert” throughout the neighbourhood, accompanied by various head-splitting whoops and sirens.



As a result, moderate mainstream Muslims have been put in a dreadful position, with raucous elements of the media and the population beating-up the unrest. This will be a real test to see that Australia’s peaceful multicultural cohesion is not hijacked. In the meantime, only when a court determines the weight of the actual evidence still being gathered will we be in a better position to know what Azari has been up to.
ETA: I'm waiting for these 'go back to your own country'-style bigots to twig why one of the cross-continental railways is called the Ghan.
 
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Helix

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And I forgot to mention my point.

We're pissed off by the over-reaction and proposed curtailment of our civil liberties on the basis of a 'children overboard'-style steaming pile of political bullshit.
 

mccardey

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Controversial anti-terrorism laws expected to pass in the Senate as early as Wednesday night will give spy agency ASIO the power to monitor the entire internet, the government has confirmed.

It comes as Greens senator Scott Ludlam urged senators to reconsider their vote on the National Security Legislation Amendment Bill (No.1) 2014, which is likely to pass the senate on Wednesday night.

"I think this Parliament is being bullied to pass something in the heat of a national security crisis that we will later regret, as we regretted an earlier tranche of legislation that we passed in 2005," Senator Scott Ludlam told Fairfax Media on Wednesday evening, before debate was due to commence.

http://www.smh.com.au/digital-life/...ens-senator-scott-ludlam-20140924-10lir9.html

I don't think I care very much if the Government spies on the Internets, but I really don't like bullying. In any form.
 

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That story about the teen misidentified as the dead terrorist is horrible! How on earth did that happen?

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2014-09-25/innocent-man-labelled-as-haider-on-fairfax-front-pages/5769936

Teenager Abu Bakhar Alam 'terrified' after Fairfax mistakenly used his photograph on terror suspect Abdul Numan Haider stories
...Fairfax Media has apologised for mistakenly publishing a photo of Melbourne 18-year-old Abu Bakhar Alam on the front pages of The Age, the Canberra Times and the Sydney Morning Herald on Thursday.The papers ran Mr Alam's photo with headlines including "Teenage Terrorist", "Teen Jihad" and "Teen Takes Terror to the Suburbs", dubbing him a "schoolboy turned fanatic" who "set terror trap for police".
Haider was shot dead on Tuesday night after stabbing counter-terrorism police officers in Melbourne.
Fairfax issued a statement apologising unreservedly to "the young man in the suit" and admitted that Mr Alam had "no connection whatsoever with any extremist or terrorist group"....


Then that article asks his uncle where he'd be and explains where he works, by name. wtf?
 

mccardey

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That story about the teen misidentified as the dead terrorist is horrible! How on earth did that happen?

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2014-09-25/innocent-man-labelled-as-haider-on-fairfax-front-pages/5769936

I'm not sure if I posted this or not.

At this point, who are we kidding when we tell ourselves Australia is an equal society? Based on the last week alone, it’s obvious Muslim Australians have a very different lived experience to Anglo Australians — one in which they are perpetually regarded with suspicion and fear that often escalates into outright hatred, abuse and violence, and in which they are continually expected to justify their own existence. Catholics don’t have to constantly reassure people that they aren’t child molesters; young white guys don’t get checked for firearms by police every time they’re around a school; but a Muslim? If a Muslim’s not screaming #NotInMyName and constantly apologising for the latest atrocity committed by a band of thugs half a world away, we assume they’re complicit, if not an active participant.
Read more at http://junkee.com/heres-a-quick-rec...e-garbage-this-week/42244#KYr3d31qs3chTw2j.99

Saddest this is that I was talking to a 20-yr-old last week and he said "But the world's always been like this." Husband and I and the kids parents looked at each other aghast. We started a discussion about "Australia hasn't always been like this - this is new for Australia!" and realised during it that for the whole of the young person's aware. political life Australia has been exactly like this.

(Not blaming the kid for that ;) )

ETA: Thinking about it, this is why I was so - ahem - butt-hurt by that Other Thread. Massive pre-dawn terror raids in Australia are just not a thing that happens. If there ever is a raid it's almost always against well-known illegal bikie gangs. And small. And in daylight. But it's very hard to discuss because the right-wing press just keeps screaming "Terrorist threat!"

Australia is changing. I feel like shaking my fist at the clouds about that.
 
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Helix

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That story about the teen misidentified as the dead terrorist is horrible! How on earth did that happen?

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2014-09-25/innocent-man-labelled-as-haider-on-fairfax-front-pages/5769936

Then that article asks his uncle where he'd be and explains where he works, by name. wtf?


Look what happened with the Boston bombing. Misinformation everywhere. I can't begin to imagine the horror that Sunil Tripathi's parents went through.

It's lazy journalism. Lazy journalism has real and sometimes devastating consequences. Once we'd expect better of Fairfax, but it's going the way of the Murdoch rags. (One of which loves making offensive Photoshopped pics of its enemies, ie everyone who isn't the current govt. A recent piece of stupidity was Photoshopping the head of a journo and a keffiyeh onto a Boston bombing victim.)
 

backslashbaby

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I didn't know which of those were rags and which might be legitimate papers. The NY Daily News (a rag) ran pictures of 2 guys in the crowd at the Boston Marathon who weren't the Dagestanian brothers; I do remember that.



It's very, very sad if Australia has been becoming less tolerant in ignorant ways of Muslims, absolutely. I have to take y'all's word for it, so I don't know what to add. But it is horrible.

Personally, I do think terrorists exist here and I have Muslim friends, too (naturally). I don't think that's unusual here. So being afraid of terrorists isn't about Muslims in general, it's about the scary crazies. It's a view shared by a large percentage of our Muslims, so it's not like you can say that folks concerned about terrorism are anti-Muslim. Some are, of course.

Here is a long and very detailed piece of research on Muslim-Americans (from the time of the Bush administration). It discusses how things have panned out here, and it compares it to Western Europe and sometimes to Muslim stats in the ME. Unfortunately, it doesn't discuss Australia.

The cultures of Muslim-Americans are different than in other countries, but it might give a general idea of how Muslims feel about all sorts of things related to this topic.

"Muslim Americans
Middle Class and Mostly Mainstream"

http://pewresearch.org/files/old-assets/pdf/muslim-americans.pdf
 

mccardey

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Here's a nicer piece of post-dawn-raid related news: Women In Solidarity with Hijabis. Is it happening in other countries, or is it ours?
Just as a point of clarification, this page was started by Muslims who were overwhelmed by the heartfelt gestures of solidarity of non-Muslims.

This page was inspired by "Ruth" in particular who donned the hijab to stand in solidarity with Australian Muslim women.