Terrorism

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" »