Wednesday, October 05, 2005
NEWS BRIEFLETS
* Ken Summers presents the new British flag! It sizzles with goodness.
* CNN asks: “Is it time for England to change its national flag?” Problem already solved, thanks to Summers!
* In other bacon-related developments, the Coalition of the Swilling urges a Coalition of the Pigging.
* Please welcome Investigate magazine’s Corner-like Briefing Room, starring James Morrow and Alan R.M. Jones.
* Newly-appointed ABC breakfast host Julie McCrossin has pulled a Latham and quit for health reasons. (Via Deo)
* Wizbang brings interesting bus revelations from New Orleans.
* Happy first birthday to the PunditGuy!
* SUVs have doors. But they don’t have The Doors.
WHY-NERS
Christopher Hitchens—who notes that “East Timor was for many years, and quite rightly, a signature cause of the Noam Chomsky left’”—has some answers for the just ask why crowd:
Do not forget that on Aug. 19, 2003, a gigantic explosion leveled the Canal Hotel in Baghdad, which then served as the Iraq headquarters of the United Nations. The materials used to do this were of a high military grade not available to any random “insurgent” and certainly came from the arsenals of the fallen regime. The main target—and principal victim—was Sergio Vieira de Mello, the dashing Brazilian who had been sent by Kofi Annan to reanimate the U.N. presence in Iraq. De Mello had been the most devoted and humane of the world body’s civil servants and had won himself golden opinions in Cambodia, Lebanon, Sudan, and the Balkans. But it was his role as U.N. supervisor of the transition in East Timor that marked him for death. A communiqué from al-Qaida gloated over the end of “the personal representative of America’s criminal slave, Kofi Annan, the diseased Sergio de Mello, criminal Bush’s friend.” It went on to ask, “Why cry over a heretic? Sergio Vieira de Mello is the one who tried to embellish the image of America, the crusaders and the Jews in Lebanon and Kosovo, and now in Iraq. He is America’s first man where he was nominated by Bush to be in charge of the UN after Kofi Annan, the criminal and slave of America, and he is the crusader that extracted a part of the Islamic land [East Timor].”
More lies, I guess. Andrew Bolt reports a recent ABC surrender festival hosted by Libby Price, who asked listeners to suggest terms for “peace talks” with Islamic terrorists:
Sure, we shouldn’t really negotiate with killers, Price said on Monday, but “things have progressed so far beyond that”.
To save ourselves we must open talks—if not with bin Laden himself, at least with “someone within the (al-Qaida) organisation that doubts what’s happening”.
And for half an hour her listeners rang with helpful suggestions to cut a deal with the terrorists who have killed so many of us.
We should appoint an expert in “conflict resolution”, suggested one. What about the United Nations, asked a second. And, of course, of course, we should get out of Iraq, the cause of all sorrows.
Dear God, how strange it was, to hear so many callers assume that terrorists happy to blow up children and behead civilians are as reasonable as are they themselves, in a manner of speaking.
Hang on, warned one listener, but wasn’t one of al-Qaida’s desires the return of Spain and East Timor to Muslim rule?
Well, that could be just a “starting point” in these talks, Price replied.
No wonder The Age’s Pamela Bone has ditched her old comrades:
”A move back towards the left for you?” a regular correspondent emailed, in response to a recent column. “I never left the left. The left left me,” I replied. “The left I thought I was part of didn’t make common cause with fascists.” This did not please him.
The big “why” in all of this isn’t anything to do with terrorist motivation, but why so many on the left—facing a force that opposes feminism, homosexuality, diversity, freedom of expression, and democracy—seek cosy understanding of that force. Although, in truth, they don’t; otherwise they wouldn’t deny evidence (East Timor) not supportive of happy assumptions that it’s all about Evil American Imperialism and Oil.
UPDATE. Asked on Lateline about Jemaah Islamiyah leader Abu Bakar Bashir, Robert Fisk hit the big red evasion button:
Get rid of these people out of your mind for the moment. They’re the guys who are bad, they’re the guys who are calling for suicide bombings, yes. But we have to deal with real facts on the ground, and most of them are in the Middle East and we will not do so. I notice every time I raise the issue of the Middle East with you, we come back to Indonesia again. But there are connections between Indonesia and the Middle East—with Indonesia and Libya, actually as well. There are direct connections between al-Qaeda and Indonesia. You’ve said that on your program. We need the talk about the Middle East and we will not do so, and even you on this program - and with much respect, we’re talking as journalists together - you don’t want to make that connection, and that connection exists and unless we make it, we are in danger.
Why might Fisk be so eager to dodge any mention of Bashir? Possibly because of views like this, revealed in an interview with Scott Atran:
Atran: What can the West, especially the US, do to make the world more peaceful?
Abu Bakar Bashir: They have to stop fighting Islam. That’s impossible because it is sunnatullah [destiny, a law of nature], as Allah has said in the Koran. If they want to have peace, they have to accept to be governed by Islam ... We’ll keep fighting them and they’ll lose. The batil [falsehood] will lose sooner or later. I sent a letter to Bush. I said that you’ll lose and there is no point for you [to fight us]. This [concept] is found in the Koran.
Atran: How can the American regime and its policies change?
Abooby Bing-Bong Basher: We’ll see. As long as there is no intention to fight us and Islam continues to grow there can be peace. This is the doctrine of Islam. Islam can’t be ruled by others. Allah’s law must stand above human law. There is no [example] of Islam and infidels, the right and the wrong, living together in peace.
Let’s all talk about the Middle East instead.
UPDATE II. More on Bashir the ignored:
There are reports Bashir, who was sentenced to 30 months jail over the 2002 Bali bombings, could have his term reduced by a further month.
It is also reported that Bashir used the telephone in his cell to call on terrorists to use nuclear weapons in their fight.
More urgently, let’s talk about the British invasion of Iraq in 1917.
COLOURS LOWERED
Poor pigless England ...
Dudley Metropolitan Borough Council (Tory-controlled) has now announced that, following a complaint by a Muslim employee, all work pictures and knick-knacks of novelty pigs and “pig-related items” will be banned.
... is soon to be flagless, if certain intolerant folk get their way:
British prison officers who wore a St. George’s Cross tie-pin have been ticked off by the jails watchdog over concerns about the symbol’s racist connotations.
The pins showing the English flag—which has often raised hackles due to its connection with the Crusades of the 11th, 12th and 13th centuries—could be “misconstrued,” Chief Inspector of Prisons Anne Owers said ...
Chris Doyle, director of the Council for the Advancement of Arab-British Understanding, said Tuesday the red cross was an insensitive reminder of the Crusades.
“A lot of Muslims and Arabs view the Crusades as a bloody episode in our history,” he told CNN. “They see those campaigns as Christendom launching a brutal holy war against Islam.”
Doyle added that it was now time for England to find a new flag and a patron saint who is “not associated with our bloody past and one we can all identify with.”
A new flag, eh ... I guess a St George’s Cross made from bacon strips is out of the question?
UPDATE. Perry de Havilland: “I wonder how this organisation would react to calls for Muslims to abandon the crescent moon, the green flag and all other overly Muslim symbols as being offensive to some English people who may associate them with slavery?” (via Tom Pechinski)
Tuesday, October 04, 2005
OSAMA LIES
He’s been given a few answers over the years—some from Osama bin Laden himself—but when it comes to Islamist terrorism, Robert Fisk (here interviewed by the ABC’s Tony Jones) still thinks we need to ask why:
TONY JONES: Jihadist extremism has spawned countless suicide terrorists from New York to London, from Baghdad to Bali. How do you stop them without generating a general conflict between Islam and the West?
ROBERT FISK: I mean, after the crimes against humanity of September 11th, 2001, we were discouraged from saying, “Why? Why did this happen?” We knew who did it—in this case, 19 Arabs flying aeroplanes. How did they do it? Planes, box-cutters, tall buildings. But the moment you asked why—in other words, the motive for the crime, which is something any ordinary policeman asks of any crime—you were told merely to ask the question why it was to be pro-terrorist to support the enemies of democracy, etc. But I think we do have to ask the question why, and we have to say, “What has happened in the Middle East to produce an environment from which these people can come?” We are not condoning what they do, the wickedness of bombing innocent people, but we do need to ask, “What’s wrong in the Middle East?” and that means dealing with injustices that exist there—injustices which the Australian Government, the British Government, the American Government could deal with or try to deal with if they wish. But I think we’re spending far too much time on, you know, mainframe computers, listening to telephones, legislation, than we should be in dealing with actual human problems that exist on the ground. You’ve just brought up the British. Let’s look at the British in Iraq in 1917. We invaded. We announced in a document, which I have hanging on my library wall, “We come here,” we said to the Iraqi people in 1917, “not as conquerors, but as liberators to free you from generations of tyranny.” Sound familiar? We then had an insurrection in 1920, we bombarded Fallujah, similar to the Americans. We surrounded Najaf, we demanded the surrender of Shi’ite clerics, we said there would be civil war if the British Army left and, indeed, British intelligence in 1920 said that terrorists were crossing the border from Syria. Now, we can go on repeating history endlessly, just as we are now. This is fingerprint parallel history. But at the end of the day, we’ve got to say, “Hang on a second. There are problems here. How do we deal with them?” And unless we deal with them, we are not going to be safe. By “we”, I mean the West, us.
Er, OK. It’s all about injustices dating back to 1917. But watch Fisk twitch when Jones—as he has done before, to his eternal credit—raises the matter of a more recent conflict:
TONY JONES: In one of his rambling justifications for these kind of terrorist acts, Osama bin Laden pointed the finger and said Australians were targeted in Bali because they intervened in East Timor.
ROBERT FISK: Yes. I think the East Timor thing is a lie by Osama bin Laden—I don’t think that’s what it is about.
Read the whole interview, in which Fisk is cranked up to maximum babble mode.
UPDATE. James Paterson: “The almighty Fisk thinks Osama is misrepresenting the aims of his own terrorist organisation in its bombing attacks? Where is the incentive?”
UNQUALIFIED COLUMN APPOINTED TO SUPREME COURT
Mentioned in this week’s Continuing Crisis column for The Bulletin are AC/DC, Mark Latham, Gough Whitlam, bag ladies, help desks, Tim Flannery, sparkies, chalkies, pollies, journos, Kate Moss, and Bon Scott.
Also, in a special petrol-scented photo gallery: Bathurst!
DISMEMBERSHIP
Meet some members of the Stupid Terrorists Club. They don’t go to the pub! They’re opposed to the Shrub! Their head’s just a stub! etc.
PEACE BACTERIA OCCURS NATURALLY
Washington peace bunnies carried rabbit fever:
Small amounts of bacteria detected in the District during last weekend’s war protests are not harmful and probably occurred naturally, say officials from the D.C. Department of Health.
D.C. Health Director Dr. Gregg Pane tells WTOP Radio that the bio-watch collectors, operated by the Department of Homeland Security, tested positive for a small amount of Tularemia [rabbit fever] last weekend during the protests on the National Mall.
Imagine what “bio-watch collectors” might have turned up at the San Francisco protests.
(Protest images via Lileks, who writes: “It’s interesting to look at people who share an entirely different set of predicates.”)
RONNIE BARKER
Wonderful British comedian Ronnie Barker has died at 76.
Monday, October 03, 2005
CULT MEMBER HAILS CULT
It’s been at least three days since anyone at Webdiary wrote something about how powerful and important Webdiary is. Josef Imrich addresses this shortage with his “in a nutshel” report on how Webdiary’s “grassrotts” activism could “lead the velvet revolution Down Under.”
ANTI-WEST WEST
The Sydney Morning Herald bills its new star online hire Andrew West as “The Contrarian”, presumably because “Predictable Standard Issue Terror-Cowed Anti-Capitalist ABC/Fairfax/Crikey Leftoid Hack” wouldn’t fit in a graphic. Let’s take a look at Andrew’s wildly contrarian views, which are opposed by at least 0.03% of his fellow Fairfax staffers:
I don’t want this to be my “Susan Sontag” moment, but in the wake of the second, awful – and yes, evil – round of bombings in Bali this past weekend, we need to ask a lot of questions. We’ve already started to answer some: who, what, when, where and how. But we still haven’t asked, at least not in any depth, the most important question: why?
We haven’t? In fact, West’s Sontagian allies have done little else for four years. They’ve received plenty of answers, too; it’s just that those answers are a little inconvenient. So the likes of West refuse to listen, and again ask: “Why?”
Why are the perpetrators – fanatics, lunatics, to be sure – willing to martyr themselves in process of murdering scores of innocents?
See?
The late Jewish-American writer Susan Sontag won herself infamy in American conservative circles when, just days after the September 11 2001 attacks on New York, Washington and Pennsylvania, she wrote, in an essay in The New Yorker, “… whatever may be said of the perpetrators of Tuesday’s slaughter, they were not cowards”. Sontag was emphatically not excusing the 9/11 mass murderers. She was merely trying to understand – in a provocative way – why such sacrificial madness was taking place.
Some essay. It’s only 30 or so words longer than West’s little blog item. And Sontag didn’t exactly struggle to explain September 11’s “sacrificial madness”, instead deciding that the attack was a rational response “undertaken as a consequence of specific American alliances and actions.” Also, there was no attack on Pennsylvania, neither planned nor executed.
And she was rejecting the empty sloganeering of George W. Bush that the attacks were “cowardly” and “mindless”.
A couple of paragraphs ago West described the Bali bombings as “awful” and “evil”. The empty sloganeer!
Like the bombings in Bali in both 2002 and last weekend, the 9/11 atrocities were anything but. They were meticulously planned – in the case of the World Trade Centre, right down to hitting the building in just the right place to raze it – and involved a perverted form of courage. But that did not stop these attacks from being evil.
Whoa, whoa, back up here a second … “hitting the building in just the right place to raze it”? For a start, we’re talking about two buildings here, not one. And there isn’t a great deal of finesse in the act of slamming a jet loaded with fuel into a skyscraper; that’s why both towers burned and collapsed even though they were hit at different levels, and at different angles.
The problem is that after any act of terrorism like the Bali bombings, the right-wing brands anyone who dares to discern the reasoning or the perverse logic behind the attacks an apologist, or charges them with blaming the victim. But surely if we are to stamp out, or at least limit, such carnage in the future, we must understand the perpetrators’ motivation or grievance.
We already do. They’ve told us often enough. A lot of it is to do with Jews.
It may be – and probably is – the case that their grievance is utterly without merit, completely undeserving of sympathy. This is not some 1970s social worker-style desire to understand the “pain” of the perpetrator. It is a clear-eyed, strategic need to determine the root cause of the terror. And frankly, it is a way of avoiding the kind of quagmire in which US-led troops are now floundering in Iraq, where a combination of conveniently ignored pre-war intelligence and misdirected vengeance over 9/11 has lead to an unmitigated military disaster.
Interesting how your sophisticated lefties, capable of detecting courage and reason in the behaviour of terrorists, suddenly turn all simplistic and stupid when analysing Iraq. The war? Unmitigated disaster! Next question.
We have a duty to mourn and a right to be angry over the latest outrage in Bali. But it would be grave mistake if our response was driven by rage and not reason.
“Grave mistake” might be a better title for West’s SMH site. Contrarian it ain’t.
Sunday, October 02, 2005
BOMB AFTERMATH
Newcastle’s Jennifer Williamson, on her first visit to Bali, is the second Australian confirmed dead following the bomb attacks. The first was Perth teenager Brendan Fitzgerald:
A family spokesman says the boy’s 43-year-old father Terry is in a critical condition at Sangla Hospital in Denpasar, while his 13-year-old sister Jessica is in a serious but stable condition.
The spokesman says it was the first overseas trip for both the children, and they were due to return home tomorrow.
Another family had just returned to Bali:
An Australian family holidaying in Bali during the 2002 nightclub blasts had returned to the Indonesian resort island for the first time two weeks ago, only to be caught up in the latest blasts.
Meanwhile, reports that the attacks were carried out by suicide bombers are in dispute, despite certain evidence:
“They have three heads that they’re examining and that’s a typical outcome from a suicide bomber, but that’s not yet confirmed,” said Australian Federal Police chief Mick Keelty.
Some witnesses claim bombs were thrown rather than worn:
“A bomb went off right under our table,” said Joe Frost, 20, of Newcastle, who had been out with about 17 friends from his home city when bombs rocked two cafes at Bali’s popular Jimbaran beach.
“Someone ran past and threw it under there.
“The next thing I know I’m thrown to the ground. It’s all black and I can’t hear anything.”
Frost said he didn’t see the bomb thrower, but said two of his friends did.
Rumours of unexploded bombs are also circulating:
Emergency workers and local shopkeepers claimed another two bombs apparently failed to detonate because their mobile phone triggers failed to work when the local phone network collapsed after the initial two blasts.
Perth’s Gareth Parker writes to correct an earlier piece that claimed Australians in Bali had received detailed warnings of a bomb attack:
I’ve just spoken to Mick Collis, the Perth rugby player quoted on AAP, and his mate in Bali who gave the supposed warning. The story as it appears on AAP is rubbish. The local, a bloke called Hamish Sutherland, was only speaking in general terms. He had no specific information about any potential threats. He was just offering general advice that Saturday nights are not a good time to go out to tourist areas. Hamish teaches in a local international school and in that role has some responsibility for security. He was only aware of the general “bomb season” warnings made by the likes of SBY.
Speaking of warnings, Geoffrey Gold in Jakarta received the following automated e-mail last Thursday from the Australian government’s Smartraveller advisory service:
Australians are advised to defer non-essential travel to Indonesia. Australians in Indonesia who are concerned for their safety should consider departing. Australians who consider their presence in Indonesia to be essential should exercise extreme caution. The recommendation that Australians defer non-essential travel applies to Indonesia as a whole, including Bali.
We continue to receive a stream of credible reporting suggesting that terrorists are in the advanced stages of planning attacks against Western interests inIndonesia. Attacks could occur at any time, anywhere in Indonesia and could be directed at any locations known to be frequented by foreigners. The bomb attack outside the Australian Embassy on 9 September 2004 underscores that the threat to Australians in Indonesia is real. On 29 August, Indonesian President Yudhoyono called for heightened security in Indonesia during September and October due to the risk of terrorist attack.
Saturday, October 01, 2005
HEADS, FEET LOCATED
Three suicide bombers were responsible for the Bali attacks, reports AP:
Maj. Gen. Ansyaad Mbai, one of Indonesia’s top anti-terrorism officials, said Sunday that the three attackers went into the restaurants on wearing explosive vests. The remains of their bodies were found at the scenes, he said.
“I have seen them. All that is left is their head and feet,” he told The Associated Press. “By the evidence we can conclude the bombers were carrying the explosives around the waists.”
Not sure how that squares with the mention here that four unexploded bombs were found after the blasts. Three Australians are now believed dead, together with 12 Indonesians. Among the 101 wounded: 49 Indonesians, 17 Australians, six Koreans, three Japanese and two Americans. Muslims weren’t behind the attacks, claims Indonesia Council Of Holy Warriors spokesman Fauzan Al Anshari: “This is a grand design to again put Muslim people and Ustadz (honored cleric) Abu into a corner.”
UPDATE. One dead in Oklahoma, where a suicide bomber apparently intended killing only himself.
UPDATE II. Australian rugby player Mick Collis, in Bali for a competition, says he was warned of the Bali attacks by an Australian resident:
“We got up here on the Wednesday and on the Thursday he said to us they had found some detonators around the place and then he said that some of his contacts he had - he called them sort of the Bali mafia - they had warned him.
“They said ‘look, with the guys coming up, if you are white, don’t come into town on the Saturday night’.
“We just thought, well, we didn’t need to be told twice.
“We’re not the brightest of people - rugby players - but a warning like that sunk in pretty quick.”
UPDATE III. A second Australian death, that of a 48-year-old NSW woman, is confirmed.
UPDATE IV. Travel agencies report a rush of Bali cancellations.
UPDATE V. A report out of Kuwait claims 11 Britons are confirmed dead. Most likely this is wrong.
UPDATE VI. Australian Peter Hughes, a survivor of the 2002 Bali attacks: “I feel we’re pretty much a soft target and I don’t want it to happen, but I just feel we need to be more aware, because these guys are crazy.”
WEIRD ECONOMIST NEVER WRONG
How difficult is it to get a correction out of Paul Krugman? Almost as tough as catching a 70 lb. carp.
BALI ATTACK LATEST
An Australian teenager is among some 32 confirmed dead. At least 17 other Australians are injured, two of them gravely:
The Indonesian government has asked Australian Federal Police to help in the investigation, as they did with the 2002 bombings.
[Australian foreign minister Alexander] Downer said seriously injured Indonesians may also be evacuated to Australia for further medical treatment.
“We’ve offered medical assistance to the Indonesians, even with a view to evacuating by aircraft some of the more seriously injured to Australia if that proves to be necessary, and to provide additional medical resources if they need those medical resources,” he said.
Downer says there may be up to 4000 Australians in Bali at present, many of them on school holidays. There are other fatalities not yet confirmed involving a group of friends from Newcastle, according to Dr Adam Frost, interviewed by the ABC:
“They’re all in various states of injuries. Some didn’t survive.
“I’m waiting to go to the morgue to identify them.”
Images from the attack here and here. Sydney radio reporter Justin Hale mentions an earlier bomb discovery:
Hale said local people were already concerned by the reported discovery in a hotel of a bomb - with a letter attached to it - two weeks ago.
“At first people thought it may have just been a hoax or possibly even an extortion attempt. But with the letter in Arabic, that put a different slant on it,” he said.
Great timing from former Australian foreign minister Gareth Evans, who said last week that JI was “effectively smashed” and “no longer constituted a serious threat.” Singapore-based Rohan Gunaratna wasn’t as glib: “I think that Australia and the Indonesian police have done a very good job in fighting JI, but still JI key operatives are free, and they are planning and preparing attacks. I believe that JI will mount an attack in the coming months.”
BALI BLASTS
Another apparent bomb attack in Bali:
At least three Western tourists have been injured in a series of bombings in Bali, almost three years to the day that terrorists killed 200 people in a similar attack.
A local radio station on the Indonesian island said the explosions went off along Jimbaran beach and in Kuta, both popular tourist destinations.
It was in the town of Kuta on October 12, 2002 that terrorists associated with al Qaida set off two bombs close to each other that killed 202 people - including 26 Britons - and injured another 209.
UPDATE. Eight dead and 13 injured, reports the Associated Press.
UPDATE II. Several victims are being sent to Sanglah Hospital in Denpasar, where a burns unit was donated by the Australian government following the 2002 Bali bombings.
UPDATE III. The Jakarta Post now reports nine dead and 40 injured, while Reuters has the death toll at 12—many of them foreigners.
UPDATE IV. Indian media reports 30 dead in three explosions, and says a hunt has begun for Malaysian Islamists:
Police were searching for two Malaysian fugitives - Azahari and Noordin - accused of being behind the attacks. The two are believed to be senior members of the Jemaah Islamiyah (JI) regional terror group.
UPDATE V. Azahari Husin and Noordin Top are both wanted over last year’s attack on the Australian embassy in Jakarta that killed 10.
UPDATE VI. Two Americans are among at least 19 dead, according to AP.
UPDATE VII. An Australian is among 23 dead, reports AFP.
UPDATE VIII. A Japanese woman is among those killed.
UPDATE IX. Sangla Hospital says eight Australians, two Americans and 28 Indonesians have been admitted with injuries. The Department of Foreign Affairs number to call for Australian information: 1800 002 214.