Multicultural Melbourne:  A city to avoid

This is the moment a brave shopkeeper locked himself inside his store with an alleged gangland thief and fought him for ten minutes.

The dramatic footage, captured in Melbourne yesterday, shows the shop owner and suspect exchanging blows as police try to make their way inside.

Eventually the officers get into the store and are forced to use capsicum spray to subdue the struggling man before handcuffing him.

Police told Daily Mail Australia they were called to the store, on Paisley Street, at around 2.45pm to reports that two men had entered and starting taking items.

Officers said the shopkeeper had detained one man, a 24-year-old from Shepparton, who was arrested at the scene.

The second man, a 29-year-old from Footscray, managed to get away but returned to the scene a short time later armed with a knife.

Police say he fled the scene a second time before being arrested a short distance away. Both remain in custody and are assisting police with inquiries.

According to 7 News, which obtained the footage, both men were of African descent and believed to be part of a gang operating in the area.

Video of the incident shows the shopkeeper exchanging vicious blows inside the store before struggling on the floor.

Eventually two officers get inside where they are forced to use batons to get the man in handcuffs before he is pictured on the pavement outside.

Witnesses said a gang of African men were terrorising the street before the robbery, in an area where African Apex are known to operate

Melbourne's streets have been plagued in recent months by the African Apex gang, a group of largely young males of Sudanese refugee background who have left some residents terrified.

The group are believed to have been behind multiple robberies, carjackings, and violent assaults around the city, and were responsible for the Moomba riots.

It is not known if the two men filmed in the store yesterday were part of that group.

News 7 reports that at least one man was arrested following the incident. Daily Mail Australia contacted Victoria Police, but had not received a response by the time of publication.

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Power fully restored across South Australia -- after two weeks

So who in their right mind would want to set up a business there? Greenie craziness will have done huge damage to employment in S.A.

Big industrial companies in South Australia finally have full loads of electricity two weeks after extreme weather damaged transmission towers and plunged the state into darkness.

ElectraNet, which provides electricity infrastructure across Australia, has announced the third damaged circuit was back in action ahead of schedule and was energised, returning full access to the transmission network.

The company has built five temporary transmission towers near Melrose in regional South Australia after three transmission lines and 22 towers were damaged in the September 28 storm.

The damage led to a statewide blackout and several regional communities were left without power for days.

ElectraNet has previously described the damage to the lattice steel towers, which were made in the 1980s, as unprecedented.

ElectraNet chief executive Steve Masters said in a statement that "full access to the South Australian transmission network has been restored to all our customers across the state".

"This is a significant achievement that will allow work to begin on permanent repairs," Mr Masters said.

"While the design and scheduling details are still being confirmed, we expect permanent towers to be in place over the coming months, provided weather conditions remain stable."

South Australian Treasurer Tom Koutsantonis tweeted that large companies like BHP would have a "full load" with the system "effectively" back on.

Large industrial sites in the days since the storm had access to some power but not normal loads.

Power was urgently restored to Whyalla's Arrium steelworks which minimised its loss to about $10 million, while the furnace at Port Pirie's Nyrstar smelter was damaged during the outage which is expected to cost the company millions of dollars.

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Bankstown terror raid: Sydney cops find Muslim teens wielding bayonets

Two teenage Muslim extremists arrested in southwest Sydney yesterday were members of Islamic State and were moments from carrying out an attack, police will allege.

The pair of 16 year-olds, one the stepson of one of Australia’s most notorious convicted terrorists, were arrested in a Bankstown alleyway wielding “bayonet-type” knives yesterday afternoon.

Early this morning, they were charged with acting in preparation for a terrorist attack, and being a member of a terrorist organisation. The first charge carries a life sentence, while the second carries 10 years imprisonment.

“We will be alleging that two 16 year-old boys went to a gun shop in Bankstown and purchased two knives,” NSW Police Force acting commissioner Cath Burn said this morning.

“They’ve then caught a bus to that location in Bankstown where they were arrested and those items seized.”

“This is the 11th imminent attack we have prevented in this country, there have been four in NSW.”

Ms Burn, also the NSW Police Force’s counter terrorism chief, said three houses and a prayer hall were searched by police in their investigation.

“We did prevent what we suspect was going to be an attack,” she said. “In respect of these two, I think that they’ve probably had some degrees or radicalisation from potentially radicalised peers. “This goes to the hub of what were dealing with. We have a number of paths people follow to radicalisation. Whether it’s they have radicalised peers, it’s online , its grooming or whatever, this is what we’re facing.

While the boys had been known to police for a while, Ms Burn said the time between radicalisation and carrying out an attack is short.

“We have been aware of them, and we have been concerned about them,” she said. “What we’re seeing is that the time between the radicalisation and when they decide to do an action happens very very quickly.”

Australian Federal Police deputy commissioner Michael Phelan said it’s more difficult to track teenage terrorists.

“The activity accelerated quickly,” he said, “and had we not been in the right place at the right time, and that’s based on good credible intelligence, then certainly somebody could be without their life. That’s the problem we face every day.”

In what has become an all-too-familiar scene in the long battle against homegrown extrem­ism, the two 16-year-olds were ­arrested in the southwest Sydney suburb of Bankstown by heavily armed counter-terrorism police.

It is understood the boys were in possession of bayonets or hunting knives and carrying a note written in Arabic that indic­ated an allegiance with Islamic State.

Police are investigating whether the two were about to carry out an attack like the crude, grisly terror assaults that have ­become a hallmark of Islamic State-inspired beheadings and stabbings.

Counter-terrorism sources said both boys were under intense police surveillance at the time of their arrests.

It is understood one of the boys first came to the attention of police two years ago, after he refused to stand for the Australian national anthem when it was played at East Hills High School, then his school.

The school was also defaced with extremist graffiti, including the slogan “ISIS R coming’’.

At some point yesterday, surveillance officers trailing the pair noticed they had armed themselves with what were believed to be bayonets or hunting knives.

Police believe they either bought or stole the weapons from a nearby army disposal store ­earlier in the day.

Fearing a terrorist attack was imminent, the officers made plans to arrest the pair without putting members of the public, or themselves, at undue risk.

Within two hours of sighting the knives, police pounced, arrest­ing the two in a laneway outside a Muslim prayer hall.

“He was just talking about some sharia law and some terrorism act like, and some weapons,” witness Syed Irfan Ali told Seven News. “He spoke about some weapons but I’m not sure what weapons ... I was a bit ­panicked and a bit scared.”

The boys were being interviewed by police at Bankstown Local Area Command last night. As a relative left the station last night, she told the Nine Network the family believed the boys had intended “going fishing”.

Since the rise of Islamic State, police have become the target of choice for Muslim extremists, a point brought home to Austral­ians in October last year when Farhad Jabar, 15, shot and killed NSW police employee Curtis Cheng outside police headquarters in Parramatta.

Both teenagers arrested yesterday were well known to counter-terrorism authorities due to their radical views and their ­associations within Sydney’s small network of Muslim extremists. One of the boys was the stepson of a recently convicted terrorist.

The man, serving a prison ­sentence for terror offences, was notorious because of the influence he wielded over a network of ­impressionable young extremists, most of whom are behind bars.

A Bankstown local, who ­declined to be named, said he was not surprised two teenagers were arrested with knives near the ­discreetly located Bankstown Musalla. Adnum Lane, the scene of the arrest, was cordoned off by police yesterday.

“Things have changed a lot here in the last 10 years. They’ve changed a lot,” the man said.

The man said it was only a few weeks ago, after Friday afternoon prayers, that a skinny teenager with a meagre beard in traditional Islamic dress approached him — accompanied by a man in his 20s — while he was having a smoke.

“He told me cigarettes and smoking were haram (forbidden),” the practising Muslim said.

“I told him there are people killing women and children in the name of Islam, and to worry about things like that, not me smoking. He could have been one of those boys. I see the young boys around all the time, coming from that mosque.”

The man told The Australian that young men often wandered the area, close to shops, a library, and Paul Keating Park, before and after prayers. The man said the teenager became aggressive when he told the boy to focus on atroc­ities committed by Islamic State.

“He told me Daesh was doing jihad,” he said. “This is not Islam. They need education. This is ­ignorance.”

Neither of the boys had been charged last night. However, detectives executed a number of search warrants and charges are expected.

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Huge potential oilfield will not now be exploited

So now Australia will have to continue as an importer.  Despite denials, the decision was undoutedly influenced by the prospect of a big battle with the Greens

The minister for resources, Matt Canavan, says he is “bitterly disappointed” by BP’s decision to not proceed with its controversial plan to drill for oil in the commonwealth marine reserve in the Great Australian Bight.

He said the Turnbull government was still confident the region could be developed, and he would be speaking to other oil and gas companies in coming days.

He criticised environmental groups that have campaigned against BP’s project, saying their celebratory response to the decision showed the “ugly side of green activism”.

“We think up to 100 workers will be impacted, and those workers I’m sure went to bed last night a little restless ... but we had other people in this country popping the champagne corks and celebrating that fact,” Canavan said on Wednesday.

BP announced on Tuesday it would scrap its $1.4bn drilling program in the Great Australian Bight, off South Australia, citing commercial reasons.

The announcement was applauded by green groups, coming after repeated requests for more information from the Australian regulator, the National Offshore Petroleum Safety and Environmental Management Authority, and mounting public concerns about the impact the drilling and any potential oil spill would have on the pristine waters of the bight.

BP had previously boasted the bight had the potential to be as big an oilfield as the Gulf of Mexico, where there are now more than 4,000 oil rigs.

Karoon Gas Australia, which announced its plans to explore for oil last week, has said the bight holds “the world’s last underexplored Cretaceous basins”.

Canavan told ABC radio on Wednesday he was bitterly disappointed . He said BP had been allowed to explore for oil in the marine reserve after making almost half a billion dollars worth of commitments to do work in the area, and now it was walking away from them.

He said he now expected BP to “make good” some of those commitments in other ways. “I’ll be very interested in discussing with them in coming days what those plans might be,” he said.

He criticised environmental groups that campaigned against the project. “What does frustrate me is sometimes the workers in these industries, who tend to be fairly quiet, reticent types of people, aren’t the ones on the radio or in the media telling their stories,” he said.

The government still believed the region could produce large amounts of oil and gas, he said. “Obviously there is still a lot of uncertainty about the area, but we remain confident of its long-term prospectivity and I’ll be talking to some of those other companies about their plans in coming days,” he said.

Canavan was also asked about the effectiveness of the petroleum resource rent tax, after reports that just 5% of oil and gas projects operating in Australia are paying the tax.

The Tax Justice Network has warned that Australia is set to blow another resources boom, forgoing billions of dollars in potential tax revenue, because the PRRT is failing to collect adequate revenue from the explosion in liquefied natural gas exports.

“[The PRRT] is a profits-based tax and what happens, of course, is that resource developments take large upfront costs, particularly some of these LNG developments … that take some time before profits are realised,” Canavan said.

“This tax has delivered billions to the federal government over a number of decades, and it has underpinned the development of a massive industry in this country.

“So we’ve got to be very careful about making any changes, particularly to people that make massive investments. We’ve got to attract this investment to our country.”

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Posted by John J. Ray (M.A.; Ph.D.).    For a daily critique of Leftist activities,  see DISSECTING LEFTISM.  To keep up with attacks on free speech see Tongue Tied. Also, don't forget your daily roundup  of pro-environment but anti-Greenie  news and commentary at GREENIE WATCH .  Email me  here