Terror in Australia: Workers' Paradise Lost

John Stapleton

Description

Terror in Australia: Workers' Paradise Lost, by veteran journalist John Stapleton, is a beautifully written snapshot of a pivotal turning point in the history of the so-called Lucky Country.

This book is a sidewinding missile into the heart of Australian hypocrisy.

In 2015 there were well attended Reclaim Australia demonstrations in every major capital city, all protesting what the demonstrators saw as the growing Islamisation of Australia, along with countering anti-racism demonstrations. There were frequent violent clashes, hundreds of police were forced to form lines separating the demonstrators in Sydney and Melbourne, there were a significant number of arrests and injuries, and dozens of people were treated for the effects of capsicum spray. The terror alert was at its highest level ever, the country was engaged in an unpopular and discredited war in Iraq and Syria, and relations between the government and an increasingly radicalised Muslim minority had broken down.

Despite the billions being spent on national security, authorities believed another terrorist attack was inevitable.

A demoralised population, saddled with a history of grotesque overregulation, turned inwards, increasingly questioning the failed social creeds of the past.

On the streets once vibrant entertainment districts were desolate, while closed and shuttered shops became a characteristic of many suburbs.

An optimistic, freedom loving country with an irreverent, larrikin culture and a wildly optimistic view of its place in the world lost faith in its own story.

Well documented, switching through multiple points of view, Terror in Australia: Workers' Paradise Lost is a sometimes frightening, sometimes intensely lyrical step inside a democracy in serious trouble.

Sujets

• Political Science

Informations

• Publié par: eBookIt.com
• Date de parution: 28 septembre 2015
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9780992548797
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 1 Mo

Extrait

Copyright John Stapleton
Published by A Sense of Place Publishing 2015
First Edition 2015. All rights reserved.
ISBN-13: 978-0-9925-4879-7
 
 
No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the author. The only exception is by a reviewer, who may quote short excerpts in a review.
SECTION ONE: A TERRIBLE BEAUTY IS BORN
Australian jihadists:
• Adam Dahman, 18, from Melbourne, strapped a belt bomb to himself and detonated it in a busy marketplace near a Shi’ite mosque in Baghdad killing five people on 17 July, 2014.
• Abu Asma Al-Australi aka Ahmed Succarieh, 27, a family man from Brisbane and Australia’s first suicide bomber; he detonated a truck loaded with 12 tonnes of explosives, killing 35 Syrian soldiers. Video shows him giving a speech on the back of the truck draped in the Islamic State flag prior to the martyrdom operation.
• Abdul Numan Haider, 18, killed by counter terrorism officers in Melbourne. Hailed by Islamic State as a martyr.
• Man Haron Monis, 50, died in Sydney in December, 2014, in the resolution of the Martin Place siege. Hailed by Islamic State as a martyr.
• Abdul Salaam Mahmoud, reportedly killed in Syria in March, 2015. A Sudanese born Australian.
• Abdul Mohamad Al-Ghaz’Zaoui, Australian born of Lebanese descent from Bankstown in Western Sydney. Reportedly killed in Syria Christmas of 2014.
• Ahmad Moussalli, Lebanese Australian killed in Syria, February 2014.
• Temel Caner, 22, killed in Syria, January 2014. Went AWOL from Brisbane army barracks.
• Irfaan Hussein, 19, killed in Syria, allegedly for attempting to return to Australia.
• Mustapha Al Majzoub, 30, killed by rocket attack in Syria, 2012. Sydney resident and former President of the Islamic Awareness Society.
• Sammy Salma, 22, killed in Aleppo in April, 2013. From Roxburgh Park, Melbourne.
• Suhan Rahman, 23, killed in Kobane, Syria. Sent messages to Australian Muslims urging them to spill blood. Former student, Melbourne University.
• Zakarayah Raad, 22, killed in an ambush in Syria, June, 2014. Appeared in Islamic State recruitment video There is No Life Without Jihad.
• Zia Abdul Haq, 33, former Brisbane City Council worker, killed October, 2014.
• Abu Nour al-Iraq appeared in a propaganda video for Islamic State. He was an Australian insurgent but his true identity remained in doubt.
• Yusef Ali, 22, from Redcliffe north of Brisbane, was found dead in a bullet-ridden house in Syria in January, 2014.
• Wife of Yusef Ali, former suburban Sea World staffer on the Gold Coast Amira Ali aka Amira Karroum was killed with her husband in Aleppo. Studied graphic design at Queensland University.
• Roger Abbas, 23, kickboxing champion from Melbourne, was killed near the Turkish border during a skirmish in October 2012.
• Yusuf Toprakkaya, killed in a sniper attack in Syria in December, 2012. He left behind a wife and son in Melbourne’s northern suburbs.
• Mustapha Al Majzoub, of Bankstown, Sydney, killed in a rocket attack in Syria while fighting in Aleppo on behalf of terror group Jabhat al-Nusra.
• Former nightclub bouncer from Sydney’s Kings Cross Ali Baryalei became a senior member of Islamic State in Turkey. Reportedly killed by drone attack in 2015.
• Sydney born Zakaryah Raad appeared in an Islamic State recruitment video calling Australians to jihad. He died a martyr following the filming.
• Preacher Ahmad Moussalli from Parramatta in Western Sydney, believed to have been killed in Syria.
• Former Australian soldier Caner Temel went AWOL from Brisbane army barracks in 2010 and died in Syria in January of 2015 while fighting for Islamic State.
• Sydney father of two Housam Abdul Razzak was killed in Lebanon in 2015.
• Melbourne party boy turned Muslim Mahmoud Abdullatif reportedly killed while fighting for Islamic State in Syria in January, 2015.
• Ahmed Mohammed Al-Ghazzawi, born in Lebanon and living in Bankstown in Western Sydney was killed by Syrian forces on Boxing Day, 2014.
• Jake Bilardi, 18, Melbourne. Died as part of a series of coordinated Islamic State suicide bombings in the Iraq city of Ramadi in which at least 17 people were killed and dozens injured. 12 March 2015.
• Mohamed Elomar, 29, reportedly killed June 2015. Notorious for social media posts. Drone attack.
• Khaled Sharrouf, father of five, unconfirmed reports killed June 2015, drone attack.
• Sharky Jama aka Abu Tawba Alsomalee, former male model from Melbourne killed in April, 2015 fighting in Syria for Islamic State.
 
****
 
In the second decade of the 21st Century after Christ, or the year 1436 in the Muslim calendar, Australia’s national security agencies were jumping out of their skins; sitting on a time bomb, the final countdown. Month after month, they had quelled one spot fire of terrorism after another, equally unable to trust themselves as they were their informants and their surveillance. The diversity employment programs aimed to make the security agencies reflective of the ethnic makeup of the population as a whole and to entice Arabic speakers meant that there were good people of the Islamic faith scattered throughout the security and police services. Nothing wrong with that; except that it was a factor converging into a time when the government had seriously misread and mishandled the country’s security, and was participating in a morally indefensible war in Iraq, killing Muslims in foreign lands, thereby further radicalizing the local populations day by day.
 
Australia, by its support of its ally America, whose conduct in the Middle East many, not just Muslims, saw as beyond reprehensible, in its torture, its massacres, its bombings, its misguided invasion and destruction of a sovereign country Iraq, the “mother mistake” as the invasion was called, had torched a religious war.
 
Through its misguided rhetoric, the Australian government had demeaned and insulted Islam, stoked the fires of jihad across the nation and seriously imperiled the safety of the general population.
 
In 2015 the Australian Security and Intelligence Organisation (ASIO) predicted that another terrorist attack on home soil was almost inevitable.
 
The Australian government now faced The Rising, as the pre-Anzac Day counter terrorism operations had been so aptly badged, Operation Rising, The Rising of Islam.
 
You didn’t have to be a genius, you barely had to be prescient, you barely had to be sentient, to realize that a terrorist attack in Australia was imminent.
 
The security forces had no idea which way to turn. They did not know where, they did not know when, but they knew, in their bones, in their hearts, in their calculating minds, the worst terror attack in Australian history was coming as sure as night followed day.
 
The authorities knew full well they could not thwart every last attack. And the authorities were riddled with those of the very faith they had so profoundly alienated, a faith that emphasized “my brother is my brother,” that emphasized the unity of the Ummah, the body of believers, and who, just like those they were expected to target, believed in the literal words of their faith, that God was Great, Allah was the Lord of all the Worlds, the one who did not resemble the creations, that Muhammad was his Messenger and that the world was entering The End of Days, the Apocalypse of legend and prophecy.
 
The greatest terror of all was the unknown. Perilous, uncertain and contradictory times bred inward looking populations, and as the danger increased the Australian population fell ever deeper into a daze of soap operas, cooking shows, game shows, celebrity gossip and sporting events.
 
But the security agencies knew they did not know; and many of the most senior governmental figures were severely, savagely spooked thanks to the master propagandists within the jihad movement.
 
This terrible fact was due entirely to failed social, economic, immigration, border security and foreign policies of the past; the government had imperiled local populations by involving the nation in foreign wars of which it should have had no part, created a depressed, demoralized, divided and disaffected populace by misguided economic and social creeds, both the left and right side of politics had brought in large numbers of people of the Muslim faith on the theory that a bigger Australia was a better Australia, and thanks to the relentless activism of Australia’s refugee lobby, in ideological lockstep with refugee lobbyists in other Western countries, many of the new arrivals had no identification papers. In other words, jihadists had been immigrating to Australia without barrier.
 
In both April and July of 2015 there were angry scenes as anti-Muslim protestors and anti-race demonstrators clashed in cities around Australia. In Melbourne 100 police were forced to stand between the two groups. The group Reclaim Australia, which organized the anti-Muslim protests, said it wanted to maintain Australia’s traditional values, make Islamic law illegal in Australia, ban Halal certification, ban the teaching of Islam in public schools and the burqa. Their website declared: “We have had enough of minorities not fitting in and trying to change our Australian cultural identity.” Five people were arrested at one protest in Sydney. One anti-racism organizer said: “We're trying to say that it is dangerous to allow hate speech to occur on the streets.” 1
 
Muslims were, by the very nature of their faith, opposed to capitalism and Western-style democracy. That their arrival in large numbers would prove problematic for traditional Australian society should have been self-evident to the social engineers holding sway over social and immigration policy.
 
Muslims knew that they had been cast into a society of unbelievers in order to transform the country of apost