Leftist tripe about the Martin Place siege

Piers Akerman

THE white heat of immediate peril often brings out the best — and worst — in humanity. This week we saw the worst when Islamist fanatic Man Haron Monis executed an act of barbarism straight out of the terrorist textbook.

The stories of heroism now emerging as the surviving hostages tell what took place during their hours of cruel captivity are a testament to the best the human race can offer, as are the courageous actions of the NSW police who were detailed to the Martin Place siege.

Over the next six weeks a joint federal-state inquiry will attempt to answer the questions that have been at the forefront of most thoughtful minds since the siege began Monday morning.

First, how did Monis come to Australia around 1996 and what argument did he present to win asylum, permanent residency and eventually Australian citizenship around 2001?

Which government agencies provided him with social support, what information was held by state and commonwealth agencies about him, what was his interaction with the justice system, and how did he access firearms?

Could national security laws have been used and was there co-ordination between federal and state security organisations?

Parallel investigations are being held by the NSW State Coroner, NSW Police and Australian Federal Police.

There cannot be any questions left hanging when the joint review is completed by the end of January and handed to the federal and NSW cabinets.

What is obvious is that Monis was a homicidal nutjob. It is most probable that his lunacy was a factor in granting him asylum here, just as so many other damaged people fleeing the Middle Eastern are found to need sanctuary.

Unfortunately, Monis’s mania played straight into the hands of the latest Islamist terrorist cancer, Islamic State, which actively recruits the lunatic fringe through its polished websites.

It is wrong to categorise him as a lone wolf as there are a disproportionate number of other Australian Muslims who have flocked to the IS banner or who support the medieval notion of a caliphate, an Islamic theocracy.

Contrary to the ideology overwhelmingly expressed by the bulk of “our” ABC’s commentators and the majority of editorial opinionistas at The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age, the Greens and the left of the ALP, Australia should not be a global grease trap for cultures or individuals who practise religions which teach hate, practise intolerance, subjugate women and reject secular democratic values.

Those media organisations have since Monday mindlessly presented Australian Muslims as a homogenous community united in their victimhood.

Sydney psychiatrist and writer Tanveer Ahmed accurately nailed Islamism for The Australian when he described it as “fundamentally an ideology of resentful humiliation, unable to accept the reality of the weak place of Islamic civilisation and determined to act destructively, often self-destructively, believing domination is the birthright of the doctrine.”

Wall Street Journal commentator James Taranto noted that the SMH displayed a sickening syndrome labelled pathological altruism by US scholar Barbara Oakley. The paper rushed, as it does, to suspect the public of the worst traits. In this instance its editorial warned there would be a “temptation … to pursue vigilante justice” and then got preachy with its readers, asking them to think of the homicidal maniac.

“Perhaps we face an even more difficult test of our empathy as well. How should we feel for the perpetrator so far witnessed and his family? While we do not know his story or his motivation, we know he was once someone just like those people whose lives he has now treated with such disdain. He must have loved ones, too. Forgiving him will be very difficult, and it will take time. Without forgiveness, though, we have to live with destructive hate.”

Spare me. It later produced an extraordinarily boring 16-page wraparound in which the “I"-word which was at the core of the terrorist act barely rated a mention.

It also gave writer John Birmingham a platform to disseminate his toxic thought that the electronic rolling coverage of the siege was just a “never ending shit show”, demonstrating that, at that newspaper just as at the ABC, the title editor or editor-in-chief may be held by someone certainly but not by anyone with any discretion.

The eagerness of the ABC to project its “luvvie” mentality has inspired the truly pathetic social media hashtag sentimentality of the adolescent illiterati.

The true-blue Australian spirit, long disparaged as redneck and racist by the sanctimonious, can be seen at Martin Place where a seemingly never-ending queue of people of every race and creed patiently wait to leave flowers, messages and prayers at the impromptu memorial.

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Monis proves Australia needs to sort out its immigration mistakes

Now for the cover-up. Australians are entitled to know, but are highly unlikely to be told, who were the lawyers and officials who advocated that Man Haron Monis be allowed to live in Australia, and then granted citizenship, despite red flag after red flag that he was trouble.

Magistrates, lawyers and police prosecutors collectively decided that Monis, with a long history of harassing behaviour, with links to the brutal murder of his former wife, with charges for sexual assaults of multiple women, with a history of extreme political views, with convictions for writing threatening letters, and with an open record of support for jihad, was deemed no threat to society.

Right at the start, in 1996, when Monis claimed political asylum, the Iranian authorities made it clear that he had been charged with multiple counts of theft that had nothing to do with either political persecution or capital crimes. The Iranian foreign ministry reiterated this week that his psychological instability and criminal charges were known to Australian officials when they granted him asylum status.

Within months, Monis had chained himself to the front gate of state Parliament in Macquarie Street in a political protest. He was later given citizenship.

Monis is a classic case study of why Australia needs to have probationary conditions applied to the residence status and then citizenship granted to immigrants, refugees and asylum-seekers. To cover for mistakes, this probationary status needs to be rigorous and lengthy.

Australians take security seriously, starting with border integrity. The moral vanity of former prime minister Kevin Rudd, in giving a green light to people smugglers, was a key reason the public handed him a smashing defeat when he was voted out of power last year.

The instability through the Muslim world is growing worse. Thousands of Muslims are killing thousands of Muslims, leaving millions of Muslims displaced. The murder of more than 100 school children in Pakistan on Tuesday is the latest numbing instalment of the butchery being carried out in the name of Islam in Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan, Nigeria, Libya, Pakistan, Somalia, Yemen, Chad and Kenya. Egypt is under martial law. Iran is a theocracy. Numerous outbreaks of jihad-inspired violence have taken place in Western Europe, Russia, Canada, the United States and Australia.

With instability growing in the Muslim world, the tacit policy of open borders, advocated by the Greens and the churches, would have seen the 50,000 people who bypassed Australian immigration under Labor grow exponentially. Noone in the Greens or the churches offers structures setting limits, not 100,000 undocumented arrivals, or 200,000, or 500,000. Only compassion without limits. This has been sensibly and emphatically rejected by the electorate.

No limits were placed on Man Haron Monis. The District Court gave him a slap after he was convicted of writing dozens of harassing letters to the families of dead soldiers. He and his wife, Amirah Droudis, were provided with tens of thousands of dollars in legal aid as they pursued vexatious appeals all the way to the High Court. He was free on bail with multiple charges pending against him.

Less than three months ago, Abdul Numan Haider, 18, was shot and killed after he stabbed and seriously wounded a police officer in Melbourne. His crime, like that of Monis, was explicitly in support of Islamic State. The headband worn by Monis when he took hostages bore the inscription, in Arabic: "We are ready to sacrifice for you, O Mohammad."

He was responding to the call from Islamic State for Muslims to engage in individual acts of violence against non-believers. This call has not succeeded because the overwhelming majority of Muslims reject the rantings of Islamic State and are appalled by the actions taken in the name of Islam by people like Monis.

Australians understand this. But everyone also knows that thousands of Muslims have travelled to Syria and Iraq to join the barbarous IS.

A dissident former army major, Bernie Gaynor Jnr, says that more Australian Muslims have gone to fight with IS than have enlisted in the Australian Army this year. His claim has not been disputed by the Army.

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Crooks & Corruption Rule: What is it with the Wind Industry?

The wind industry seems to attract a particular class of bloke, in much the same way that the Prohibition era drew lots of heavy-set Italians to the Mob.

Maybe that seemingly endless stream of massive subsidies filched from taxpayers and power consumers generates the same allure as festering dung does for swarms of flies?

Whatever it is, the whiff that surrounds the wind industry has attracted (and continues to attract) a class that has no hesitation lying, cheating, stealing and even bonking their way to the easy loot on offer.

The Italian Mob were in on the wind power fraud from the get-go: applying their considerable (and perfectly applicable) skills – leading the European wind power fraud, with what economists call “first-mover-advantage” (see our post here).

We’ve reported on just how rotten the wind industry is – from top to bottom – and whether it’s bribery and fraud; vote rigging scandals; tax fraud; investor fraud or REC fraud – wind weasels set a uniform standard that would make most businessman blush.

The crooks involved – and the corruption, lies thuggery and deceit that follow them – are uniform across the globe.

Wind power outfits in Taiwan – faced with a pesky community backlash – sent the muscle in and beat the protesters to a bloody pulp (see our posts here and here).

The Thais aren’t much better.

In Australia, Thai outfit RATCH has been lying to, bullying and threatening communities far and wide for years (see our posts here and here and here).

In previous posts we’ve looked at how the goons that work for RATCH didn’t hesitate to invent a character – Frank Bestic – in a half-cunning attempt to infiltrate their opponents at Collector and elsewhere – see our posts here and here and here.

RATCH also teamed up with one of Queensland’s “white-shoe-brigade“, John Morris – in a joint plan to destroy the Atherton Tablelands by spearing 60 odd turbines into a patch of pristine wilderness on top of Mt Emerald – a move, quite rightly, opposed by 92% of locals (see our post here).

Morris – a five-star resort owner who has generously wined, dined and otherwise accommodated his mate, LNP pollie, David Kempton (who holds a rabid interest in the project getting approved, despite the fact that his own electorate is miles away) – has pulled out all stops to smooth the way to development approval (see our post here).

Faced with the inevitable community backlash to yet another pointless economic, environmental and public health disaster, the Queensland Planning Minister, Jeff Seeney has called “time-out”; declining to approve the project, as demanded by RATCH and Morris.

Morris – facing the uncharacteristic prospect of defeat – has turned to bullying and threatening the Planning Minister to ensure a speedy decision in his and RATCH’s favour: demanding that the Planning Minister make a decision no later than tomorrow (ie 19 December 2014) (see this article).

RATCH and Morris have shown all the care and restraint we’ve come to expect from the wind industry and its parasites: an “industry” that has absolutely no interest in producing meaningful power or “saving” the planet. Take away the promise of $50 billion in subsidies from the REC Tax on power consumers (see our post here) and this lot would will disappear in a heartbeat (see our post here).

RATCH shares its Thai roots with another Thai wind power outfit that owes its existence to the Thai Military Junta – “Wind Energy Holdings”.

Wind Energy Holdings has hit the news recently, as its hitherto-hot-shot head, Nopporn Suppipat has been caught with his fingers in the till. Having been caught – he’s acted with all the honour we’ve come to expect from wind weasels, wherever they ply their trade: he’s bolted!

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Phonics anyone?

Changing entrenched attitudes in education is like trying to turn an ocean liner -- the momentum has to be maintained for a long time. Such is the case with reading instruction, where it has taken decades to see real recognition of the need for teachers to be trained in proven, effective methods.

While there have been glimmers of hope in the past -- the 2005 National Inquiry into the Teaching of Literacy, for example -- this year there were strong signs the ship is finally turning. Increasing numbers of schools are adopting explicit teaching methods.

The NSW government announced it will only accredit teaching degrees that include evidence-based methods of reading instruction. The national curriculum review and the federal government endorsed an emphasis on explicit, effective teaching methods. New executives of the board of the Australian Institute for Teaching and School Leadership (AITSL) are evidence-driven reformers. The potential for significant reform in 2015 is great

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