The above pickie is radical Islamist cleric 'Abu Bakr' who is allegedly inciting people to acts of terror. Another bearded 'Goldstein' in a long line of them that have been thrown up in the last few years. I guess Bert wasn't tough enough.
Swinging Into Action...
Police counter-terror operations swooped on terror suspects in Sydney and Melbourne and arrested 15 men including a prominent Muslim cleric. Sydney, Australia - Police arrested 15 alleged Islamic extremists in raids Monday and said they had foiled a major terrorist plot, days after parliament passed new anti-terror measures triggered by the London bombings in July.I guess they're now going to get questioned without access to a lawyer and then they're going to be held for 2 weeks without a charge. It's a minor miracle that the ones in Victoria weren't shot on sight.
Authorities refused to comment on speculation that the suspects were linked to a group whose members were seen last year filming Melbourne landmarks.
'I am satisfied that we have disrupted what I would regard as the final stages of a large scale terrorist attack or the launch of a large scale terrorist attack in Australia,' New South Wales Police Commissioner Ken Maroney said.
Helicopters and 400 police swept through suburbs of Sydney and Melbourne during Monday's raids.
'They are currently being interviewed by police and my expectation is that they will appear in Sydney courts this morning,' Maroney said.
Officials refused to comment on speculation that those arrested were Moslem radicals whose homes were raided by spy agency ASIO in June.
Members of the group, followers of fiery Algerian-born cleric Abdul Nacer Benbrika, were last year observed filming the stock exchange, the central train station and other landmarks in Melbourne.
ASIO is believed to have pushed for an urgent change in the law so plotters could be picked up even when the time and place of the attack they were plotting had not been established.
The arrests came four days after an amendment to the terror laws was rushed through in a special session of parliament to deal with a 'specific threat' to national security.
The change came at the insistence of intelligence agencies who feared a group of locally born Moslem extremists were planning a terrorist attack.
Parliament is also about to consider major new anti-terrorism laws. The government has won over critics within its own ranks and opposition members of parliament by adopting minor changes to its proposed legislation.
The new proposal, likely to become law by the end of the year, provides for terrorist suspects to be served with control orders that for a period of 12 months would oblige them to wear electronic tagging devices, report to authorities regularly and undertake not to make contact with certain people or groups.
Police would also get the power to detain suspects without charge for up to 14 days. A further provision would bulk up the seditions laws to make it a crime to incite violence or sow hatred.
The push for new counter-terrorism legislation came in the wake of the London bombings in June in which an Australian was among the more than 50 people who died.
ASIO voiced its concern over 'home-grown' Moslem terrorists prepared to die in order to kill and main others in Australia.
There has not been a major terrorist attack in Australia, but 88 Australians were among the 202 people killed in the first Bali bombings in October 2002. Four Australians were among the 23 people killed in the second bombings on the Indonesian island of Bali in October.
There are around 300,000 Moslems in Australia, around half of whom live in Sydney. Australia's national security alert level remains at 'medium' -- where it has been since the September 11, 2001 bombings in the United States.
Peter Costello says the raids were linked to the law changes:
"As the prime minister said last week, certain intelligence matters were bought to the attention of the government, and acting on the basis of that advice the government proposed some amendment to the law and that went through the parliament last week," he told ABC radio.I'm not sure how I feel about this as there are some issues that race through my mind:
"Now of course you see that some arrests have been made and you don't want to comment too much on any operational matters but you did hear the NSW commissioner and the Victorian commissioner make their own observations about what those arrests had prevented."
NSW Police Commissioner Ken Moroney and Victoria Police Chief Commissioner Christine Nixon said the raids in their capital cities had foiled a large scale terrorist attack.
"I heard the Victorian commissioner say that she also believed that the changes to the legislation which the (federal) parliament made last week were of assistance in relation to that," Mr Costello said.
"Let's hope that we have prevented a large scale terrorist event and one has to bear in mind now that various charges will be laid and the law will follow its course.
"But this does really illustrate that the threat of terrorism is real, that we cannot be complacent about it.
"It's no consolation to wait until after an event and then try and pick up the suspects."
1) How do they know this?
They probably have accumulated circumstantial evidence, but ho on earth do they know with any kind of legal certainty? and I'm not asking a Greater Epistemic Doubt question here where you end up questioning reality. I'm asking, how do they know what they believe is going to be Justified True Belief that will stand up in court? Or even that of public opinion?
2) Is this the beginning of Pre-Crime intervention cases?
In 'Minority Report', they vaguely touch upon this issue of arresting people before they commit their crimes and freezing them down for years. It doesn't make a whole lot of sense in the crimes of passion, but it did make for exciting cinema. The thing is, these terror attacks that were plotted have not taken place. So now it's a crime to plot a terror attack; but how will it stand up in court?
"Look at these photos. Look at these bombs. Look at these plans. They were clearly going to do it!"
I'm not sure about the man on the street, but I think it's going to hold about as much water as a strainer.
Even if it does turn out these 15 people were plotting mass bombings on major landmarks with concrete proofs of their plans and what-not I'm still not satisfied that they bent the law out off shape to get to these folks.
UPDATE:
Well here we have it, the first shootings in the War Against Terror on our very own soil.
POLICE have shot and wounded a suspected terrorist after he allegedly opened fire at them outside a mosque in Sydney's west this morning.They are now reporting 17 have been rounded up as terror suspects; amongst them is controversial radical cleric Abu Bakr. It's almost like some Dungeons and Dragons scenario if you don't mind me saying, where a bunch of vigilante PCs raid a temple.
The man, who was wearing a backpack, had been under surveillance by counter-terrorism officers in Green Valley just before 9am.
When police approached the suspect after he left the mosque in Wilson Rd, the man allegedly fired two shots - wounding an officer in the hand.
Police returned fire, hitting the man in the neck with a single shot.
Assistant Commissioner Graeme Morgan today confirmed police had been monitoring the man, aged in his 20s.
"Police attending Wilson Road saw a man that was of interest and as they did ... witnesses have told police that he produced a firearm and fired at the police," Mr Morgan said.
"One officer was struck, we believe in the hand, and suffered a minor wound.
"One of the police officers returned fire and the person of interest to police was wounded in the neck."
Ambulance officers treated the suspect at the Wilson Rd scene before taking him to Liverpool Hospital.
He was later undergoing surgery in a serious but stable condition.
UPDATE 2
Link 1: ABC Online... Group Committed to Jihad, court hears The Melbourne group were hauled in front of a judge for a hearing already. 'Justice' is swift when it wants to be, obviously. :)
Link 2: Keelty Seeks Suppression of Terrorism Allegations this one's sort of weird. The "We don't want a trial in the media because we want to really slam these fuckers in court" logic.
Sixteen people were arrested in Sydney and Melbourne, after what Mr Keelty says was an almost 18-month investigation.
Mr Keelty says seven people in New South Wales will be charged under counter-terrorism laws that were passed last week.
The Commissioner says the allegations against those people should not be made public.
"An application will be made by the Commonwealth Director of Public Prosecution this afternoon to suppress the details of the allegations," he said.
"It's important that we give these people a fair opportunity to prepare their defence before the court rather than run the trial in the media."
Hmmm. So is it 16 or 17? Can't people do some maths and let us know? :)
Yankee Fan Apologia
I found this in google news today..
Psychoanalysts could argue that many athletes unconsciously dread success. Some superstars equate superiority with greed and narcissism. After a monster season, A-Rod (A-Choke?) could barely hit a pitch in the five-game playoff series against the Angels. (His mother told reporters that Alex's performance was hindered by the recent death of an uncle who acted as his surrogate father.) But to these eyes, the 2005 Yankees wanted the crown. They resembled a well-fortified mythical beast that promised and strived for immortality, but inevitably gave in to bodily limitations. Even on the highest throne in the world, man sits on his arse.That's some bleak shit going on there. :)
Why do non–New Yorkers, myself included, cheer so emphatically for a team we expect to succeed? Why do Democrats? Aren't the Yankees the sporting analogue of doodle dandy U.S. imperialism, spending intimidating sums on colonizing the game's greatest players, launching preemptive strikes on small-market teams with potential Weapons of Red Sox Destruction? In a summer of second-place soul-searching, Ernest Becker's Pulitzer Prize–winning, post-Freudian psychoanalysis primer The Denial of Death provided me an answer to this dilemma and every dilemma. Best known, perhaps, as the butt of a joke in Annie Hall, this 1973 text universally reduces human anxiety to a single overarching fear, encapsulated in the title.
Because he fears death, man, per Becker, "must desperately justify himself as an object of primary value in the universe; he must stand out, be a hero, make the biggest possible contribution to world life, show that he counts more than anything or anyone else." Cheering for the Yankees is an investment in a seemingly foolproof hero myth. (Conversely, cheering for the Chicago Cubs is an annual acknowledgment of mortality, and a textbook case of Rankian neurosis: "With the truth, one cannot live.") To root for the Yankees is, simply put, to deny death. And because we deny death, we are all Yankees.
Does this season's early playoff exit mark the death of this dynasty? Probably. But if you want to continue the causa sui project, to fight off mortality neurosis by tranquilizing yourself with trivialities and hero myths (and yes, this is what sports is about), here are three reasons why I might be wrong:
1 Comeback Kid: The true pride of the Yankees rests on the notion that bodily decay does not exist—or rather, that it can be hidden from view. How else to explain the expensive acquisitions and subsequent demotions of Kevin Brown and Tony Womack, years past their prime, both scaling new heights of ineffectuality?
But then there's Jason Giambi. Starting the season in Womackian fashion (announcers cautiously invoked a "depression" diagnosis) after a winter of allegations and "maybe I did and maybe I didn't"s, the former MVP was asked to take a minor-league vacation by Yankee execs eager to sweep decay under the rug. He refused—a veteran's prerogative—and re-emerged. Extra batting practice with Don Mattingly and a 24-hour looped screening of Rockys I through V molded Giambi into the fiercest, sweatiest lefty slugger the Yankees had owned in years. Pharmaceutical means be damned. Giambi denies death on his own terms.
On a personal level, Giambi reaffirmed my faith in the grand illusion. To liberally quote the bible on existential sports fandom, Frederick Exley's 1968 semi-autobio A Fan's Notes: Giambi, "when I heard the city cheer him, came after a time to represent to me the possible, had sustained for me the illusion that I could escape the bleak anonymity of life. . . . He may be the only fame I'll ever have!"
2 Small Ball: Steinbrenner's win-or-win business model remains both infamous and politically incorrect. Trade away young prospects for older, established superstars. Seek home run power, not relief pitching. And yet, some of the brightest stars in the 2005 Yankee lineup—Robinson Cano, Shawn Chacon, Bubba Crosby, Aaron Small—arrived fresh off the boat from AAA Columbus (or worse, the Colorado Rockies' pitching rotation), chewing up less than one percent of the team payroll combined.
Aaron Small provided heartwarming proof that Major League Baseball is staged for maximum dramatic effect, to shelter the masses from their fear and trembling. A 33-year-old journeyman pitcher who considered retiring in AAA this season, Small joined the Yankees as an injury replacement and won 10 games without a loss. In his spare time, the happily married pitcher works with foster children and church youth groups. You can script this. (See: The Rookie with Dennis Quaid.)
3 Love Fest: The Yankees' major off-season hurdle has already been cleared by an improbably fruitful session of marital counseling. "We didn't use the word love, but it was pretty warm," admits Torre about his hour-long sit-in with the Boss last month in Tampa. Steinbrenner never hid his mounting frustration with the stoic, revered manager over the course of this grueling season, going so far as to forcefully funnel his criticisms through the mouths of YES Network reporters. Torre and Steinbrenner had spoken only five times since spring training, and many speculated that the Boss would replace him with fiery Devil Rays manager Lou Piniella. (Torre has led the Yankees to eight consecutive division titles, but such is the burden of New York expectations.) In the end, the "talking cure" helped cooler heads prevail. "I had to not only hear it," Torre adds, "but to hear the tone in which it was said."
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