Terrorism

Welcome to this week’s I Call Bullshit column. In a world full of bunkum, it’s often hard to narrow the field down – but today there is a clear winner. Mark Wahlberg and his funky bunch of bollocks.

The brother of a NKOTB member, actor, producer and all round ripped guy told the Men’s Journal he could have totally sorted out those September 11 terrorists. He was meant to be on one of the planes that crashed into the World Trade Centre. He told the journal:

“If I was on that plane with my kids, it wouldn’t have went down like it did. There would have been a lot of blood in that first-class cabin and then me saying, ‘OK, we’re going to land somewhere safely, don’t worry.’”

Continue reading "ICB: Is Mark Wahlberg really Hangin’ Tough?" »

What happened
Our biggest wartime horror in a long time. Three diggers and their Afghan interpreter were killed and seven other Aussie troops wounded when an Afghan army ally turned his weapon on them.

This was not the first time that an Afghan colleague attacked Australian soldiers this year and nor was it the last. Lance Corporal Andrew Jones was killed by an Afghan soldier as he came out of his base accommodation in May. And just last month three diggers and two Afghans were wounded when an Afghan soldier opened fire from a guard tower with an automatic weapon and grenade launcher.

What happened next
A serious erosion of trust between Australian troops and their Afghan allies.

Continue reading "Biggest moments of 2011 #8 Afghans turn on Aussies" »

One of the more striking photographs from the sadly crowded files of modern Australian terrorist coverage came in 2005, when 17 men were arrested for plotting the murder of hundreds of civilians in a bombing campaign against major landmarks in Sydney and Melbourne.

When the men were rounded up by the Australian Federal Police, two of their wives decided to go public. They said their husbands were just normal Aussies, good blokes going about their business who loved Australia and wished no one any harm.

The women were photographed in a normal suburban backyard with a Hills Hoist and a barbecue in the background and were wearing full body-length niqabs, those burqas on steroids, peering through the slots in their medieval outfits to say that they were no different from any other group of Australians. As a public relations exercise this little photo opportunity wasn’t exactly a roaring success.

Continue reading "Have these terrorists reformed? Fingers crossed" »

Three more Australians are dead, and seven injured, in Afghanistan. It’s even more tragic because it appears the killer was an Afghan soldier, a colleague. Follow the news at news.com.au. Nathan Mullins spent time with the Australian Special Forces in Oruzgan, and this is his perspective on the many questions that beset Australia about our role in Afghanistan.

What are ‘we’ doing in Afghanistan? People ask me whether we can win the war. That’s not the important question. The question is whether we should be trying to ‘win’ in the first place. But before that the question is: who’s ‘we’? We the Coalition, we the Australian Army, we Australians, or indeed, we the western world? It’s a long way from Melbourne to Afghanistan, both geographically and figuratively, but when I had the chance to fight in the hills and valleys of Uruzgan with the Australian Special Forces, I did it. I needed to know if ‘we’ should be there.

When I decided to go I thought I represented the Australian Army. While I was there I realized that the people of Afghanistan feel isolated from the rest of the world. They didn’t see me as an Australian soldier, or an Australian really, they saw me as a citizen of a world that was so foreign to them as to barely exist.

Continue reading "We are doing the right thing in Afghanistan" »

World leaders and of course, many Libyans, have celebrated the death of Colonel Gaddafi. Many suffered under his brutal regime. There is no doubt Gaddafi was a tyrant and the head of a government known for torture and mass killings of dissidents.

He was either complicit or directly aware of major human rights abuses happening under his rule. He also took power of a country without the mandate of his people. He was eccentric and unpredictable and many world leaders accepted him and treated him as their equal, yet none truly admired the man. His death was a cathartic moment for many. 

But even though he was a mass murderer and rightly despised, his death should not have been treated in the undignified manner that we saw again and again on our screens.

Continue reading "Dancing on graves is appalling, even if it’s Gaddafi" »

The lack of comprehension for the atrocity committed on September 11 is such that it has taken 10 full years for it even to begin to sink in. In many ways, this is the first anniversary of September 11.

One woman from the Red Cross, handing out water and tissues down at the Ground Zero memorial, was asked what was different about this anniversary to the others.

She said on the first anniversary, she saw so many women wheeling in babies. On this day, a decade on, as the families gathered at the memorial in lower Manhattan, there were no prams or strollers.

Continue reading "Like flickering candles, the 9/11 babies symbolise hope" »

Ten years ago to the day, Australians woke up to discover that the world had started to end overnight. At least, that’s how it felt.

No one had any idea of what was happening that morning, or why it was happening. Especially the kids.

In September 2001 I was 10 years old. That morning I remember rolling out of bed at around 7:30, nothing on my mind but the Milo I was about to have and the game of CrazyBones I was going to play at lunch.

Continue reading "Growing up in the Age of Terror" »

Nathan Edwards was the first Australian photographer at Ground Zero on September 11. He wrote this piece for The Punch when Osama bin Laden was killed.

For the past six months I’ve been sifting through hundreds of photographs that captured the anonymous heroes of September 11. I’ve spent countless hours tracking down those New York firefighters who put their lives on the line as the ten year anniversary looms.

But it wasn’t until the news that Bin Laden had been killed - a decade later - that I had flashbacks to the day that changed the world. I was the only Australian photographer at Ground Zero capturing the horror around me.

Continue reading "Osama’s death took me back to Ground Zero" »

There are many things I remember about 11 September 2001.

Like almost all New Yorkers on that day, I remember the crisp fresh air and the blue sky unbroken by clouds. I remember going to work, thinking about the busy day I had ahead of me.

For me, that day was just another day. Another day at work as a human rights activist.  And then the first plane streaked across New York’s crisp blue sky, flying too near, too low, too fast and too loud.

Continue reading "I was there when the planes hit the towers" »

It’s a pretty reasonable guess that, over the coming week, we’re going to hear a LOT more about the 9/11 terrorist attacks.

Ten years on from that awful event, the media will hammer us remorselessly with commemorative newspaper liftouts and TV specials, and we’ll quickly tire of emotionally-loaded words like “courage”, “tragic” and “heroism” being used ad nauseam.

At times, it will seem like a collective remembrance of tragedy almost completely disproportionate in scale to the nearly three thousand lives lost on that day. (Which, to put that number in perspective, is one fifth of the number of people that died in March this year as a result of Japan’s earthquake and tsunami.)

Continue reading "The day that changed everything" »

Just for a minute, imagine if David Hicks was charismatic, brilliant, eloquent, and truly, truly remorseful. He came across as precisely none of those things on ABC TV’s David Hicks special on Australian Story last night. But if he had, would Australia forgive him?

We’ll never know. Because what we saw was an unconvincing charade. And some irrelevant shots of Hicks on a motorbike, his wife in soft focus, and his mate making a cup of tea.

The former Guantanamo Bay detainee, by blaming his childhood and talking about his way forward, seems to be seeking some sort of forgiveness. ‘Closure’, even.

Continue reading "David Hicks is a sinner, sinned against, but no martyr" »

In her excoriating review of David Hicks’ memoir My Journey, ABC reporter and author Leigh Sales begins with the following assessment of the blame-shifting psychology of the former Taliban recruit:

“A sentence near the end of this controversial book encapsulates David Hicks’s attitude to his stay at Guantanamo Bay on terrorism-related charges:‘Any and all inconvenience . . . was brought about due to my incarceration and treatment and that was at the hands of others.’

“In other words, Hicks eschews personal responsibility. Guantanamo: My Journey is a flawed memoir, chiefly because of an astonishing lack of self-reflection.”

Continue reading "Maybe Dave just shouldn’t have joined the Taliban" »

The aftermath of news like that from Oslo leaves only numbness. The injustice of it, the disbelief that this was even possible. Bombs at least kill in a single action. The deliberate persistence involved in attacks like Anders Breivik’s make them all the more distressing.

For a writer with comedic inclinations, the usual set of responses are neutered. Laughter falters, mouth half open. Even in our bleakest political situations, there are moments of light. Something like this is all darkness.

As reports began to come in, it was the last subject in the world you would have imagined being used for political point-scoring. But if ever someone was going to do just that, it was Andrew Bolt.

Continue reading "Even the worst nightmares can’t keep Bolt upright" »

Despite our web-interconnected, frequent-flyer, globalised world, we are still predominantly tribal people. We identify or invent enemies to scrap it out with, and occasionally this tribalism ends in violence. Extreme violence, as we’ve just seen in Oslo.

Tribes were once small groups of families, communities that lived together. People survived and prospered because of their commitment to those groups. Now tribes might be religious, or cultural groups. They might be left wing or right wing, emos or nerds. Footy supporters. Gamers, Nazis, fetishists, gypsies, gun nuts or just plain nutters who’ve found something in common.

We huddle together, sometimes in peaceful solidarity, sometimes with spears raised to the outside world. We use clothing, our words, our beliefs, to signal our membership.

Continue reading "Tribalism can lead to terrorism and tragedy" »

So radical Indonesian cleric Abu Bakar Bashir will spend the next 15 years eating porridge, or bubur as rice porridge is known in Indonesia. It is not long enough. The only thing softer than bubur is his sentence.

In the mid 2000s, Bashir served 26 months of a 30 month sentence for being part of an “evil conspiracy” behind the Bali Bombings. Many felt he should have been put away for life then.

Bashir has just been found “legally and convincingly guilty” of planning and motivating others to commit terrorism, and of using violence or the threat of violence to create fear. Well, how does all that warrant a meagre 15 years when Schappelle Corby copped 20 for her boogie board bag full of dope?

Continue reading "Bali survivor: Bashir’s 15 year sentence is much too soft" »

You would think after the recent happy news that Osama bin Laden had been shot, placed in a bag and thrown into the ocean that the world might have lightened up a bit. Sadly this does not appear to be the case. In these troubled times the price of freedom continues to be eternal pedantry.

A clean-living colleague emailed on Tuesday asking whether, as a smoker, I knew whether it was permissible to board a plane with a cigarette lighter on your person. It was, I replied.

His curiosity was piqued by the fact that he had just been accosted by security guards at the Melbourne Airport for having a miniature can of shaving cream in his hand luggage. Not the big type you’d use for school muck-up day or to shave a mammoth, just one of those tiny travel cans.

Continue reading "Another close shave in the humourless war on terror" »

The death of Al-Qaeda’s leader has sparked a fierce response that lacks an understanding of the real world. The world is not perfect and nobody should pretend that it is.

Nor is foreign policy black and white. It is a cocktail of aspirational idealism and hard fought realism but too often we forget this. The last few weeks have seen an army of armchair commentators purporting their often narrow and moralist interpretations of events as the only courses of action that would have been permissible. So let’s set the record straight on ten fundamental questions with some real world answers:

1. Could Bin Laden have been captured rather than killed?

No.

Continue reading "Everything you ever wanted to know about OBL’s death" »

What a strange mob we’ve become, we in the ‘Western world’. On holidays in Europe the past few weeks I found I myself with a few days to fill in and began to watch a bit too much Western TV coverage of the biggest story in roughly nine and a half years - the death of bin Laden.

It got me down more with each passing hour. If the USA and its President thought to earn the world’s gratitude and praise for this astonishing operation, they must have been scratching their heads.

Let’s see, the cave dwelling, messianic mass murderer and his animal cronies declared war on America (and the rest of us in the ‘West’  while they were at it).  They did it formally, with an announcement on TV - and a press release for all I know.

Continue reading "Osama a victim of aggression: you’re kidding, right?" »

Storming a building, in which latest reports suggest there were children, wounding a woman and shooting a man in the head is not your typical story of heroism espoused by the US Military. 

It all changes, however, when that man is Osama Bin Laden.

There are many theories about how heroes and villains are created. The majority of us are destined to work nine to five and will neither blow buildings up nor end world poverty.

Continue reading "Good guys are nothing without bad guys to destroy" »

When announcing Osama bin Laden’s death, US President Barack Obama declared it was about “liberty and justice for all”.  The Punch asked RMIT’s Adjunct Professor Peter Norden, a law, crime and justice expert, what that means.

What was your immediate response to the announcement of bin Laden’s death?
Certainly a sense of surprise that it happened without warning.  But then I reacted to the words used by the US President and Australian Prime Minister that “justice had been done”. My understanding of justice being done is when an accused person is taken into custody, tried and receives the verdict of the court. 

Continue reading "Punch Q & A: Just what is justice?" »

Welcome to this week’s ‘I Call Bullshit’, a weekly look at the strange twists and turns of the human mind. 

It’s not surprising at all that conspiracy theories have shrouded Osama bin Laden’s death. Before the dust had settled from September 11 crackpot ideas started surfacing, the most persistent of which is that it was an ‘inside job’ carried out to trigger the war on terror. People love to doubt the official line.

And it took mere cyber seconds – in this crazy interweb-connected world of ours – for people to start speculating that Osama was not dead at all, the whole extravaganza just concocted to boost Obama’s election chances. Or an alien plot. Or something.

Continue reading "ICB: Bin Laden is alive and well and living in Graceland" »

Was it a hit squad? The Americans’ codename for Osama Bin Laden was Geronimo. Geronimo was the Apache leader who was pursued, captured, became a sideshow attraction and lived out his days on a reservation.

No one wanted bin Laden to become a sideshow. The White House says that they would have captured bin Laden if they could, but that he offered resistance.

Of a choice between capture or kill, kill was always preferable.

Continue reading "Bin Laden: From hide and seek to show and tell" »

The world is justifiably relieved that Osama bin Laden is dead. But there’s this niggling little feeling that the whole operation was a little bit too… American.

The US as judge, jury and executioner. A daring and dramatic feat, and our brave heroes, kill the bad (really bad) guy. The President declares the victory and the crowds take to the streets chanting “USA. USA. USA.”.

Update: Osama bin Laden was unarmed when he was shot and killed, although the Whitehouse says there was a “volatile firefight” underway. All the latest at news.com.au.

Continue reading "Team America: Shock and awe over hearts and minds" »

President Barack Obama, whose presidency has been instantly and spectacularly rejuvenated, will visit Ground Zero in Manhattan tomorrow and provide the next major rallying point for Americans to consider life after Osama.

Despite scenes of intense celebration, the reality is that gatherings outside the White House, Times Square and Ground Zero have been quite small.

The shock of the announcement saw people rushing out to the streets late at night to join with their fellow Americans, but the lack of any large screens for people to focus on, or any organised speakers, meant the gatherings burned out quickly and people went home.

Continue reading "The US now wants to bury the rest of Al Qaeda" »

There is probably no other person in history who altered human behaviour and undermined our presumed freedoms and collective quality of life on the same scale as Osama bin Laden.

Bin Laden easily ranks among the greatest evil-doers of the modern era, alongside Hitler and Stalin – not in terms of the death toll from his deeds but the pernicious ripple effect of his actions throughout the world.

The genius of the organisation he formed is that it functions along a simple franchise model whereby any disaffected and fanatical group, in any corner of the planet, can hang out its shingle and operate as a terrorist cell under the al Qaeda brand. In this small globalised world, the effects of his actions were immediate.

Continue reading "The deserved demise of the man who changed us all" »

The ‘world’s most wanted man’, Osama bin Laden is dead. For all the latest news, see www.news.com.au. For an analysis of what it means, here is what Matthew Gray, ANU expert in Middle Eastern and Islamic Studies, had to say.

This is a symbolic victory, and there’s considerable satisfaction for those who wanted revenge. I’m not sure it’ll have that much operational or strategic impact on Al Qaeda, though.

Osama was not, as far as I can tell, doing much direct operational work or strategic stuff beyond setting vague directions as to where the Al Qaeda ‘brand name’ might go from here – Al Qaeda is now a set of like-minded groups in different parts of the world.

Continue reading "Bin Laden: Some questions answered, many remain" »

US president Barack Obama has just announced officially the news currently flashing around the world, which is that Al Qaeda leader Osama Bin Laden is dead.

Bin Laden was hunted down and killed by US operatives, in a mission which followed a tip-off last August. The strike on Bin occurred in Abbottabad, in northern Pakistan. Members of his family are also believed to have been killed. There were no US casualties in the firefight. It is not known whether any civilians were harmed.

The architect of 9/11 and numerous other terrorist atrocities, Bin Laden has been wanted dead or alive by the US for almost a decade now. The immediate question now is whether the global jihadist movement will be diminished or indeed possibly strengthened by his death.

Continue reading "Osama is dead. What next?" »

There’s a lot of religion on the site today – sorry. Then again, there’s a lot of religion in the world… anyhoo, welcome to this week’s edition of I Call Bullshit.

They love a good Muslim stoush, those Liberal MPs. Cory Bernardi on the burqa, Kevin Andrews on ‘religious enclaves’ – and now Bernie Finn on beheadings.  Scott Morrison in general. Mr Finn jumped into what has become a rather messy debate on assimilation by saying on Facebook that he failed to understand “how concerns about a religion that seems to sanction decapitation can be construed as racism”.

The halal butter wouldn’t melt in his mouth.

Continue reading "ICB: Does Islam sanction beheadings?" »

Our national security environment has changed dramatically in recent years. The 2002 and 2005 Bali bombings and the attack on our embassy in Jakarta in 2004 served as a stark reminder that Australia faces real terror threats.

Attacks overseas in places like London and Madrid demonstrated not only the threat posed to Australian citizens internationally but highlighted the possibility of an attack at home.

That’s why we invest a significant amount of money and resources in keeping the country and our interests safe from terrorism and violent extremism – most of which, for obvious reasons, is not and cannot be reported.

Continue reading "Tackling home-grown Aussie terrorism" »

Dr Gill Hicks is the Australian-born founder of London-based not-for-profit M.A.D for Peace, and a motivational speaker, author, curator, and trustee for several cultural organisations. She began her career as a speaker in the wake of the 2005 London bombings: Hicks was the last living victim rescued. Both her legs were amputated below the knee, and her injuries were so severe that she was initially not expected to live. She was admitted to St Thomas’ Hospital without an identity - she was labelled only as ‘One Unknown’.

Q. What do you think is the biggest threat to peace within Australia?

A. The greatest threat to peace within any country, in my opinion, is division, identity, fear and ignorance. 

As we witnessed with the London bombings of 2005, those responsible were not from other lands, the threat was not external – but internal – the four bombers were raised and schooled within the UK – they were British citizens.

Peace, I believe, does need to be defined before we can discuss firstly what it is, and how we achieve it. The core of the work within my not-for-profit organisation, M.A.D. for Peace, focuses on the responsibility of the individual to create an environment in which he/she has choice in every word and action – ensuring that those words and actions are positive and/or constructive. We believe that peace is within – and that peace starts with you.

Continue reading "Gill Hicks: Facing death and choosing life" »

Clad in his spectacular Bishop’s regalia, Greek Orthodox Bishop Ezekiel throws a cross in the water at the annual “Thefeonia” at Station Pier. This Greek “Festival of the Waters” is held at Port Melbourne in early January every year, where I’ve represented Federal Labor to the sometimes 5 to 6 thousand members of the Greek Australian community. 

Usually I’m there with an array of local State and Federal Greek Australian politicians, but, in my own mind, my presence is emblematic of the natural tolerance and pluralism of modern Australia.  All the politicians release doves and make brief speeches. 

At the “Thefeonia” this year it seemed appropriate that I briefly expressed the nation’s solidarity with another ancient Christian community, Australia’s Copts, who are approximately 80,000 strong across Australia four of whose churches, in Australia were amongst the sixty four listed worldwide as targets by an Al Qaeda website.

Continue reading "Christians under attack in the Middle East and Australia" »

News that our Diggers have rejected Kevin Rudd’s pessimistic view of the war in Afghanistan is no surprise.

A foreign minister who derides the French and German contribution to the conflict as nothing more than ‘organising folk dancing festivals’ when each nation has suffered nearly 50 casualties is insensitive and out of touch.

Like our European friends Australia’s participation in Afghanistan is part of a broader international effort that is making considerable progress.

Continue reading "Why Australia must stay the course in Afghanistan" »

Secret US cables concerning nuclear politics in South Asia provide important context for debates over Australia’s uranium export industry.

US cables released by Wikileaks warn that a limited Indian invasion of Pakistan, in response to an incident such as the 2008 Mumbai terror attacks, would be to “roll the nuclear dice’’ and risk triggering nuclear warfare.

An invasion would be limited in the hope of avoiding a nuclear response but would nevertheless be “fraught ... with potential nuclear consequences”.

Continue reading "Rolling the nuclear dice with Australian uranium" »

The beginning of the debate into Australia’s commitment to the war in Afghanistan is a refreshing exercise.

For a cynical electorate it has provided impassioned and well reasoned political debate - albeit one in which the major parties agree – and the best thing the new paradigm has provided to this Parliament.

While Julia Gillard and Tony Abbott agreed to the need for Australia to stay in Afghanistan there were subtle differences in the arguments that they made in support of it: one given by somebody with the responsibility for the military commitment, the other from somebody with a firm belief in its ideological commitment.

Continue reading "Nine years on, it could be another ten in Afghanistan" »

Greens leader Bob Brown will today have his first real win of the new paradigm, with the debate he called for on our involvement in the War in Afghanistan set to commence at the conclusion of Question Time in the House of Representatives.

It’s unlikely the Government would have consented to such a debate if it didn’t have to, such is the growing chorus of questions surrounding our mission there.

The Greens are not the only ones questioning the strategy and time-frame of our deployment - but there’s no doubt Bob Brown is in the hot-seat now, and must be hoping the debate, which will also cascade into the Senate next week, produces something more than bi-partisan adherence to the stock standard lines.

The Punch will cover the commencement of the debate live directly after Question Time, which begins at 2pm. Check back on the home page this afternoon to join in.

Continue reading "What should we get out of the Afghanistan debate?" »

Bali has moved on from the bomb: Indonesians don’t really dwell on disasters.

In the eight years since the tragedy, the Sari Club site has become ground zero for a different sort of terror - that of extreme ugliness.

The memorial built there in 2005 in the Gianyar Gothique style is surrounded by girly bars of the Bangkok type and, on most days, by lots of yobs in Bir Bintang T-shirts brandishing stubbies. A community park anywhere in downtown Kuta would be a godsend.

Continue reading "A Bali peace park would not be a shrine, just a nice park" »

Apart from the two stars stitched onto his collar, there’s not much that sets Major General John Cantwell apart from his troops. And that is the way that Cantwell, who heads all of Australia’s Middle Eastern operations, seems to like it.

Cantwell, who turned 54 on Saturday, the day he escorted Tony Abbott on his visit to the Coalition base at Tarin Kowt, in Afghanistan’s Uruzgan province, is an interesting study in the modern soldier.

At least, he comes across that way. Because access to the Australian military is quite limited, it’s hard to tell if Cantwell is an exception or reflects the easy intelligence – brain-power intelligence, not the secret stuff – of the Australian military in 2010.

Continue reading "We can and will win this war" »

We have all met “truthers”. You know, the kind of conspiracy theorist who believes that every evil event was concocted at a secret military facility in the basement at Fort Dix, Georgia, or some such place.

Last week Iran’s President Ahmedinejad’s appeared before the UN General assembly. He told the assembled leaders that most of the world believed that the US government was responsible for the destruction of the World Trade Centre in 2001.

So now we have the phenomenon of a national leader as a “truther”. Ahmedinijad’s bizarre speech – the latest in a long series – gives an important insight into the nature of the regime in Tehran, a regime which may soon have its finger on the bomb.

Continue reading "Sanctions the best way to crush Ahmedinijad - for now" »

‘Stop firing’ screamed the Afghan interpreter metres away from a suspected Taliban leader as he emptied his magazine towards a small band of Australian commandos. As the walls exploded the insurgent responded by clipping on a fresh magazine and unloading it at them. The Australians returned fire and lobbed a grenade into the dark room. 

The firing ceased. As they crept into the room they noticed a sight that will haunt them forever. 

The suspected Taliban leader lay dead amongst a human shield comprising women and children.

Continue reading "Military injustice: our troops should not be charged" »

The Clash of Civilizations is a theory, proposed by political scientist Samuel P. Huntington that people’s cultural and religious identities will be the primary source of conflict in the post-Cold War world.

With plans underway to build an Islamic centre and mosque near Ground Zero, New York, where the September 11 attacks took place, many are once again are questioning this theory.

A recent poll by Quinnipiac University showed 67 per cent of voters across New York state want the mosque and community centre to be moved further away from Ground Zero than currently proposed (which is two blocks away). The poll also found 80 per cent agreed the project was legally allowed to go ahead.

Continue reading "What I learned from meeting the Ground Zero Imam" »

Watching Robert de Castella win the marathon at the 1982 Brisbane Commonwealth Games is one of my favourite sporting memories. De Castella trailed two runners from Tanzania for most of the race, eventually powering home to win in the last 100 metres. It’s what the Commonwealth Games is all about.

During the Republic debate in 1999, one of the most frequently asked questions was if Australia became a Republic could we still attend the Commonwealth Games? The answer of course was yes, but it showed how much the Commonwealth Games is part of our rich sporting history and national identity.

In just nine days, 390 Australian athletes will join 7,000 athletes and officials from 71 nations around the world to write the newest chapter in Commonwealth Games history.

Continue reading "To go or not to Delhi 2010 should be up to individuals" »

If there was a prize for droll understatement in public relations, the man to beat right now would be New Delhi police spokesman Rajan Bhagat who, with 23 construction workers being rushed to hospital after a bridge collapsed at Jawaharlal Nehru Stadium early yesterday, had this to say:

“The pictures on TV make it look much worse than it is.”

The indefatigable Mr Bhagat might have graduated with flying colours from the school of “It’s not a turd it’s a chocolate éclair” media management, but nobody else is buying it.

Continue reading "When cowardice is rational, honest and brave" »

Way back in 2003 it must have seemed like a great idea to have the Commonwealth Games in colourful, on-the-move Delhi instead of the other front-runner, Hamilton in Ontario Canada.

But in 2010 the decision by the Commonwealth Games Federation General Assembly to send hundreds of fresh-faced athletes from 72 nations into a hotbed of terror threats and general chaos now looks, at the very best, reckless.

At worst, the Federation could end up sacrificing athletes and spectators to an unjustified cause. While acknowledging the strength of the argument to pull out now would “mean the terrorists win” – knowingly putting people in harms way won’t achieve anything.

Continue reading "Let’s just pull the pin on Delhi 2010 now" »

It is fair to say that there is a growing sense of unease in Australia about our commitment in Afghanistan. Twenty-one Australian soldiers have now died.

The latest casualty, Lance Corporal Jared MacKinney, was laid to rest just nine days ago. Five hours after his burial his widow Beckie gave birth to their second child.

Beckie’s friend, Courier Mail journalist Jane Fynes-Clinton, wrote a heartfelt but forthright column about the broader meaning of this family’s private tragedy. She argued on behalf of her friend that Australia should honour Jared’s memory by staying the course in Afghanistan.

Continue reading "Whatever the wrongs, Blair is still right on Afghanistan" »

During Ramadan just passed this last weekend, an Australian born Muslim cleric was reported to have called for the beheading of a Dutch MP for denigrating Islam.

The world currently faces the real risk of nuclear weapons being obtained by a Shiite leader, Ahmadinejad, who draws his belief system from a strain of Islam that longs for the apocalyptic return of the 9th century Imam, Mohammad al-Mahdi. A significant portent to the messianic return of the Mahdi will be the re-possession of lands once ruled by Muslims. For Ahmadinejad, this means first and foremost, Israel.

How are we to deal with militant, fundamentalist Islam? For Australians, living as neighbours to the largest Muslim country in the world, this is no minor issue.

Continue reading "Islam is the answer to Islam" »

The picture is seared in the mind’s eye: a moment that cut a beautiful young woman, heavily pregnant with a baby boy, to shreds.

A late-night knock at the door revealed two uniformed soldiers, the bearers of the news that her husband, Lance Corporal Jared MacKinney, had been killed in a war zone a few hours before.

His bride was shattered. With one sentence, Beckie MacKinney’s world careened off its axis. I know this because I have the privilege of knowing this brave, fragile, amazing woman. And although two weeks have passed since that terrible night, the feeling of helplessness as her friend refuses to loosen its grip.

Continue reading "Afghanistan: honouring the dead by staying the course" »

The Greens might not have the balance of power in the Senate until next July but one of Bob Brown’s proposals, a parliamentary debate on our military commitment in Afghanistan, should be indulged well before then.

Nine years into a war that has recently grown much more dangerous for our troops the two major political parties have fallen back on a bit of a “just because” argument for why we should remain in such a Hell hole.

It’s an accepted reality that both sides are in unanimous support for our mission. But as public unease with the growing Australian toll intensifies, our leaders have failed to properly articulate much beyond championing our training role and that “progress is being made.”

Continue reading "What exactly are we aiming for in Afghanistan?" »

Update 7.21am: The ten passes have been nabbed. But go and see the movie anyway, it looks like a cracker. Tors.

Time Out Magazine called Four Lions “The most explosively funny bomb-com ever made.” The first feature film from British comedian Chris Morris (Brass Eye, The Day Today) tells the story of a group of British would-be suicide bombers as they pursue their increasingly ridiculous dreams of jihad.

The Punch has ten double passes to give away to preview screenings this coming weekend (13th, 14th and 15th of August) in Sydney, Canberra, Melbourne, Brisbane, Adelaide, Perth and Hobart.

I’ll pop them in the mail to the first ten readers to email me at tors(at)thepunch.com.au this morning with a friendly message of hello.

The recent discussion of the Afghan deployment focus on the loss of more, young Australian lives as part of a mission which is not understood. It is a tragic loss, yet fundamental re-appraisal of western aims in Afghanistan seems highly unlikely.

The western presence in Afghanistan is not simply a lost decade of US led Osama hunting, nor is it merely a 30 year hangover from Cold War conflict. The Western presence in Afghanistan is part of a larger mission that has dragged on for hundreds of years.

The common acceptance of the logic that underpins both sides of the public debate about Afghanistan, illustrates that this mission is so acceptable to western polities that its existence is taken for granted and passes largely unremarked.

Continue reading "The real reason we’re fighting a war in Afghanistan" »

Update 1:30 PM: Kevin Rudd has told a meeting of Labor MPs this morning that Australia has a “definite and finite” role in Afghanistan, but has not pointed to any specific withdrawal timetable.
The deaths of another three soldiers in a helicopter crash in Afghanistan means five Australian soldiers have been killed in Afghanistan in two weeks. 

The latest tragedy means 16 Australian soldiers have now been killed in Afghanistan, since Australian forces joined with American led coalition forces after the September 11 attacks all the way back in 2001.

For good reason politicians and parties in Australia are generally loath to be seen politicising the deaths of young people who serve their country, but the number and regularity of the deaths of our soldiers in Afghanistan leads to inevitable questions for the Government about our future there.

Continue reading "Should Rudd pull us out of Afghanistan?" »

AUSTRALIA needs to overhaul its travel warning system or end up looking like the boy who cried wolf.

We found out last week that 567,000 Australians visited our neighbour Indonesia last year.

This means more than half a million Australians either didn’t know about - or, more likely, happily ignored -  the Australian Government’s travel warnings when they flew off to Bali for a week of sun, surf, beer, braiding, tattoos and tummy upsets.

Continue reading "Our travel warning system is the boy who cried wolf" »

“That’s not insulation, THIS is insulation,” a Canberra insider quipped in mock Paul Hogan at news of Australian involvement in the Dubai assassination plot.

Three weeks of intense scrutiny over the bungled $2.45 billion free home insulation scheme, suddenly gave way to a news of an `actual’ political assassination.

And what a story it was, instantly providing Kevin Rudd and his beleaguered Environment Minister, Peter Garrett with some welcome political insulation. As former Liberal leader, John Hewson, noted, the PM grabbed it with unusual relish, so keen was he to start talking about something else.

Continue reading "Espionage and terrorism give Rudd some insulation" »

Tony Abbott has accused Kevin Rudd of sexing up the language in the counter-terrorism white paper. Very Wag the Dog. Join us here from 2pm for our live coverage of Question Time.

It was so simple for the Opposition. Keep hammering Peter Garrett on the details of when exactly he saw Minter Ellison warnings about the risks associated with the Government’s home insulation scheme.

If they didn’t get his scalp, they would at least have a strong message about Ministerial incompetence in the Rudd Government for the Federal Election campaign.

Then this morning Liberal Senator Simon Birmingham jumped the shark.

Continue reading "Coalition’s own goal in the insulation shoot-out" »

The Indonesian President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono is due to visit Australia in early March and will be addressing both houses of Parliament.

It’s not that common to have a foreign leader address the Australian Parliament but it will be repeated later in March when the US President Barack Obama is expected to do the same.

Australia-Indonesia relations are always complex. At the leadership and government level they remain strong as the Howard Government had left them, despite frustrations in official Indonesian ranks over the Rudd Government’s handling of the Oceanic Viking saga and the ongoing issue of the Sri Lankan asylum seekers that remain in limbo off a West Java port.

Continue reading "Our role in defending democracy in Indonesia" »

Who’s going to say it first? Surely in the prickly conversations going on through the ranks of Australian sport and diplomacy, many people are suggesting it: that we shouldn’t be going to the Commonwealth Games.

It is one thing to take your own life in your hands by getting on a toboggan and going down an ice chute but it is quite another for governments and sporting authorities to send athletes to a place where people are threatening to kill them.

Following today’s threat of a terrorist attack on the Games in New Delhi from an al-Qaeda offshoot the stakes have been raised to vertigo-inducing levels. Fox Sports reports today:

Continue reading "Game on? The Delhi question" »

As a new year begins we should look at where we are with the struggle against Jihadi terrorism.

Retrospectively, we can now see a pattern in the role of Pakistani based Jihadists and new potential threats to Australia.

Three Australians, Gareth McEvoy, Nathan Verity, and Craig Senger, were murdered in Jakarta on July 17 by al-Qaeda’s South East Asian franchise, Jemaah Islamiyah.

Continue reading "On terrorism, we need to tell Pakistan enough is enough" »

England is reportedly seriously considering pulling out of the Commonwealth Games in Delhi in India in October because of fears its team will be targeted by Pakistani militants.

If it does pull the pin, it will be the first time England has not competed in the Games’ 80-year history - it’s potentially a very significant move. Presumably if the Brits pull out they won’t be the only ones - the whole Games could be in jeopardy.

Sport and geo-politics have always been inextricably linked, and sometimes this has resulted in great peril for the athletes. Images of the 1972 Munich Olympics, when Israeli athletes were taken hostage and then murdered by extremists with links to Fatah, are seared into our memories.

Continue reading "If we stop playing sport have the terrorists won?" »

Last night The Punch took a flight from Canberra to Melbourne and settled in for a viewing of Qantas’ in-flight news bulletin provided by Channel Nine.

Slowly recovering my obligatory takeoff fear of dying next to some guy in a Ralph Lauren t-shirt and blond tips in his hair, it occurred to me that the entire bulletin had not mentioned the biggest news story of the last few days: the failed terrorist attack aboard the Northwest Airlines flight to Detroit.

Absolutely nothing was reported in an almost half hour long broadcast about a failed terrorist attack aboard a passenger plane which a little group called Al-Qaeda have now claimed responsibility for. A story that still commanded high priority during their national news broadcasts that evening.

This wasn’t some shocking editorial oversight by a confused news editor, rather it’s very intentional Qantas policy not to inform it’s passengers of airline disaster related news stories.

Continue reading "Do we need to know about terrorism while in the air?" »

An evocative photograph taken last week underscored that old utterance about a picture being worth a thousand words, and prompted at the same time some perennial questions about war in general, and about the particular war being waged at present in Afghanistan.

The AP photograph showed a small boy in the Afghan province of Helmand, standing on top of a small mound, his left hand reached out to clasp the right hand of a uniformed and heavily-equipped US marine.

Just what the two of them might have said to one another was not recorded in the caption, nor in the report below, which detailed a call from the UK Minister for International Defence and Security, Baroness Ann Taylor, for Australia to commit more troops to the NATO effort against the Taliban and al-Qaeda in Afghanistan.

Continue reading "Afghanistan needs us to decide if we’re fighting on" »

It went for 90 minutes, six times longer than the time allocated, so if you’re after a full transcript you’ll have to wait until Sunday.

Not since Kruschev banged his shoe on the table has the United Nations played host to a comparable level of madness, as Libya’s Colonel Gaddafi launched a sleep-deprived rant this morning which made Fidel Castro sound succint, Boris Yeltsin look dignified and Kim Jong-Il seem sane.

I’m not suggesting that you subject yourself to the above video in its entirety - it’s only 10 minutes long, no-one has yet bothered to upload the full 80 minutes - but the first couple of minutes are worth a look, as it seems Gadaffi has been mugged by the stationery aisle at Officeworks as he takes to the podium with a mountain of yellow legal paper and pieces of foolscap, and then waves like a sports star at the crowd before delivering his opus magnum. 

Continue reading "Was this the craziest speech of all time?" »

Has anyone else noticed there was something missing from the reaction to last week’s failed terrorism plot to stage a Last Stand at Holsworthy?

I pricked up my ears and sniffed the air but try as I might I could no longer detect a dog whistle, that barely audible call to channel justified fear into something altogether more ugly.

In a sign that the Howard era is finally over, both the Prime Minister and the besieged Opposition Leader exhibited a fundamental decency in playing the men and not the race.

Continue reading "Down boy - no more whistling to tune of terror" »

The ABC has been criticised for not mentioning the “M” word in their coverage of the arrest of the alleged terrorists in Victoria, for planning an attack on the Holsworthy army base in Sydney.

There have been calls from media pundits that members of the relevant community condemn terrorism.

As a member of the relevant community I’m not afraid to use the “M” word: Melburnian.

Continue reading "As a proud Melburnian, I denounce all terrorism" »

If you really want to depress yourself, type the name Sheik Hersi Hilole into Google.

He’s an Islamic scholar and Somali spiritual leader who, almost two years ago when still based in Sydney, was howled down as a rabble-rouser for issuing what his (Islamic) critics dismissed as a reckless, baseless warning about the radicalisation of young Somali refugees in Melbourne.

Hilole is now living and working in Singapore as an academic. No doubt he watched the events in Melbourne this week with a sense of weary despair. For without wishing to prejudge the terror charges, the case which the prosecution will try to prove is pretty much a scene-by-scene enactment of the scenario painted by the cleric in 2007.

Continue reading "The decent Islamic leader whom we ignored at our peril" »

One of the most disturbing things about this morning’s counter-terrorism raids in Melbourne is the profile of the suspects, who were allegedly planning a Mumbai-style machine-gun attack on Australian Army barracks.

They were, The Australian reports, construction workers and taxi drivers of Somali and Lebanese descent, living in suburban Melbourne.

Combine this with the admission of Anglo-Australian terrorist Shane Kent that he was part of a terrorist organisation and it’s clear terrorists don’t look like anything in particular and could be living in your street.

Continue reading "Race profiles a blunted tool in fight against enemy within" »

Social media proved itself an an extraordinary tool today with the best coverage coming out of the Jakarta bombings provided by people on the ground with mobile phones and Twitter accounts.

But today’s events also proved that no matter what you think of journalists and the major media outlets they work for - there’s a reason why we filter information and images.

There’s a photograph all over the internet right now you won’t find on any mainstream news site - and nor should you. It shows a victim of the bombing, believed to be from New Zealand, who is now being reported as having died from his injuries.

Continue reading "Citizen journalism: you might not like what you see" »

Australian travel journalist Natasha Dragun lives down the road from the Ritz and Marriot hotels in Jakarta. She filed this post for The Punch on the bombings today.

I’ve lived in Jakarta for about 15 months (I moved here having spent 5 years in Beijing, and now work for a travel magazine based in Jakarta). I’ve always felt extremely safe here.

In fact, I’ve felt safer here than when I lived in Melbourne. Everyone here is always so friendly and lovely.

I’ve never been scared for my safety – even during the elections, or the executions of the Bali bombers… my family and friends were more worried than I was.

The security at both hotels (the Marriott and Ritz) is extremely tight, so I just don’t understand how the bombs got in.

Continue reading "“I heard the second one go off”: post from Jakarta" »

THE continuing carve-up of Australian Federal Police Commissioner Mick Keelty has been framed around the events of 2007; or, rather, around one event, the botched handling of the terror investigation into Mohamed Haneef.

It has been used to deride Keelty as incompetent and pig-headed, as a morally questionable plod who cobbled together the flimsiest of cases against a poor subcontinental fellow who was jailed for a fortnight and waited a full year until every charge against him was dropped.

There was another event in 2007 that provides a more telling insight into Keelty’s character. It has enjoyed limited discussion in the days since he announced his resignation, as it undermines the agendas of those who are determined to portray him as set out above. This is because it goes to three things: courage, professionalism and decency.

Continue reading "Departing chief cops more flak than he deserves" »

He’s one of our most misunderstood and maligned public figures - and today, Australian Federal Police Commissioner Mick Keelty has confirmed he will be quitting the job on September 2, thirty-five years to the day he joined the force.

Keelty was reviled by the Left for his pursuit of exonerated terror suspect Dr Mohammed Haneef, and vilified by the Right for daring to suggest that the 2005 Madrid bombings were the direct result of the then conservative Spanish Government’s commitment to the war in Iraq.

The Madrid episode was a low point for the Howard Government - and was only defused when John Howard, who’s never been great at saying the s-word, invited Keelty to a secret dinner at Kirribilli House where he apologised to his face.

Continue reading "The day John Howard said sorry to Mick Keelty" »

SOMEWHERE in a cave in Afghanistan, a guy has just got home after a hard day’s jihad, cracked an ice-cold tube of something halal, and is laughing himself silly watching Australia’s Funniest Home Videos.

Not the normal program, where parents deliberately place their toddlers in front of the swing in a bid to win the Sony camcorder.

But the 6pm Sydney news from Monday night, where one of the biggest cities in the southern hemisphere shuddered to a halt because a few power cables cacked themselves and shut down two sub-stations.

And despite our alleged possession of a world’s best practice city-wide warning system, nothing was done to activate it - and, more importantly, nor could it have been. It’s not like we’re not prepared. The authorities have helpfully armed the nation with fridge magnets.

Continue reading "The Joker would have been proud of Sydney’s dark night" »