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MISFITS GRAVITATING
Modern policing apparently involves a disinclination to examine evidence:
Federal police commissioner Mick Keelty has urged people to back off Muslims, insisting Islamic Australia is not to blame for terrorism.
In a revealing interview with The Weekend Australian, Mr Keelty said racial profiling was self-defeating because it risked alienating mainstream Muslims while ignoring the real danger of homegrown non-Muslim terror.
"I remind people that the first person who was convicted of a terrorist offence in Australia was a person with the unlikely name of Jack Roche,” the police chief said.
Question for our police commissioner: to which faith did Jack Roche convert in the 1990s? More from Keelty:
"Some of the best examples of (terror originating beyond the Muslim community) are coming out of Canada and the UK where people have, for whatever reason, converted to Islam almost as a step towards committing a crime they probably would have committed anyway."
If they’ve converted, surely their crimes originate from within, rather than beyond, the Muslim community.
Social misfits were gravitating towards Islam as a justification for lashing out.
"Some of these people harbour resentment of Western liberalised democracies in any event, or feel alienated or isolated within their own environment for whatever reason.”
So get to work investigating recent Islamic inductees with leftist backgrounds, chief. That’s where the trouble is, according to you.
UPDATE. James Cook University history lecturer Merv Bendle in today’s Australian:
The revelation that terrorism research in Australia tends to blame Australia and other democracies for terrorism, while absolving the terrorists, is appalling.
However, what is even more appalling is the fact that this ideological perspective is being force-fed to members of our police, intelligence and counter-terrorist agencies.
For example, the Australian Police Summit, held this week in Sydney, was addressed by Dr Colin Wastell of Macquarie University’s Centre for Policing, Intelligence and Counter Terrorism. On ABC radio’s World Today, prior to the summit, Dr Wastell claimed that terrorists are responding to injustices and are not religious fanatics. Indeed, suicide bombers "are people of deep concern, of deep thought about the injustice that they see being done to the people they identify with”.
He had a lot more to say besides. Consider, please, the deep thoughts of Dr Colin Wastell:
In general, suicide bombers are not any more mentally deranged than members of their society. In other words, they’re not a specifically dysfunctional group of people.
We also know that in terms of the motivations that they express and that we can certainly see is consistent in the literature that they either have used, say in their video taped last wills and testaments, or other material, they are in fact people of deep concern, of deep thought about the injustice that they see being done to the people that they identify with.
One of the things that’s been unfortunate is that we have little knowledge of some of the underpinning ideological structure of the Islamic faith.
And so without that knowledge, it’s easy for us to, if you like, latch on to ideas and interpret them through our particular models of reality, or our particular viewpoints.
And so I think it’s been the essential kernel of the facts are there, but we then take them and mould them, interpret them, look at them in, shall we say, Western coloured glasses.
We do have to accept that there is a real possibility there could be people who are disaffected, who are so enraged, who are, by what they see, and I emphasise, by what they see as the injustice, and they wish to do something about it.
To dismiss it would be very unwise.
And this guy works in counter terrorism?
(Via Dan Lewis)
"Islam almost as a step towards committing a crime they probably would have committed anyway???” Is this guy joking or is he just delusional???
The evidence for this is of course all the bombinbgs of trains and buses and planes by non-muslims (nutbag Timothy McVeigh is the one oft cited exception of course) which is proof positive that people inherently have this desire to go out and murder innocents, and their religion is a completely non determining factor…
What?? Oh its only Muslims doing all the killings??? Oh well the obvious conclusion to draw from this is that they all just converted for conveience sake… Good one Mick… Apart from the fact that the number of converts, as opposed to people born and bred into the religion, is tiny…
So how do we explain that all the people doing it are muslims, and most have been life long mussies, and are following the instructions of radical imams… A four year old could put together a more convincing argument!!!!
I commented about this effing moron on my blog this morning.
How in hell can anybody be so stupid? Or is he simply a coward?Posted by Crusader rabbit on 2006 09 15 at 10:41 PM • permalinkThis is embarrassing.
Yes, yes. We get it. Not all terrorists are of Middle Eastern Appearance but that’s not the bit of profiling which should be applied anyway.
However, the absolute bulk of terrorists, who pose a clear and present danger, are Muslim, like it or not. To ignore this statistic is simply bad policework.
Keelty:
"I think a statement like the war against terror is an easy statement to make. But terrorism is a crime, it’s murder. It’s more about a mindset and a motivation than it is about a war ...
If they treat Islamist terrorism as a crime, just like car-theft or rape, rather than as war - as declared on us by Jihadists, then we can’t win.
The Clinton Administration blew it with Osama Bin Laden, precisely because they were approaching it from the conventional criminal angle rather than applying the rules and concepts of warfare. Instead of dropping bombs, they were arguing over indictment proceedings.
It’s hard to know if Keelty actually believes this stuff or if he’s saying it for a specific political reason. If he genuinely believes it however, he should spend the rest of his career writing parking tickets in Kingston.
"Some of the best examples of (terror originating beyond the Muslim community) are coming out of Canada and the UK where people have, for whatever reason, converted to Islam almost as a step towards committing a crime they probably would have committed anyway.”
Congratulations Commissioner! You take the Australian blue ribbon for “Dumbass, Best of Show”. See you at the world finals!
Greenpike gets to the heart of the matter, and Keelty for all his faults may have a point and concur given his comments on ‘racial profiling’.
Islam is indeed to blame for an aweful lot (if not the majority) of terrorism in recent years.
But Islam is not a race. Racial profiling will not identify Muslims much less potential Muslim terrorists. While Islam can be ethno centric (eg nearly all Malays are Muslim) that is increasingly less the case (Jihad Jack, increasing recruitment/conversion of Aboriginal Australians etc)
I am not against profiling - it’s been used for year in many different contexts. But it is not a predictive measure, rather a way of assessing risk, and it’s a dynamic process: “profiles” are constantly revised and updated.
So the question for those agitating for profiling (like we don’t profile already) is: how do you profile for religious belief (not every Muslim wears a hijab or a beard or is Arab just as not every atheist wears the mark of the beast on their forehead) much less how do you profile for an extreme religious belief that may make one more prone to violent action?
(Yeah I have some of my own thoughts on this, but just want to make the point...that often religion, race, profiling etc are all thrown into the bag together)
Coincidentally(?) this letter appears in today’s Australian:
The revelation that terrorism research in Australia tends to blame Australia and other democracies for terrorism, while absolving the terrorists, is appalling ("Research ‘blames West for terror’ “, 15/9).
However, what is even more appalling is the fact that this ideological perspective is being force-fed to members of our police, intelligence and counter-terrorist agencies.
I’ve only quoted some of it, but the author, Merv Bendle, Senior lecturer in history and communications at James Cook University restores some of my hope for our academia.
Saint, you can never use profiling to pin point exactly who to look out for as things do change, your right, but old white women??? old white men??? I think you can reasonably use your intelligence to narrow down certain groups that have a less than 1% possibility of being a person of interest, and exlude them so that you can focus more resources and attention on more likely candidates…
And no matter what colour their skin or country of origin, if your screening someone and their name is Muhamed or Rafiq or something or has Al- before their last name, you might just want to stop and think for a second or two....
lets put this in a secular style say about the Sicilian Mafia that shares its HONOUR culture with Islan.
Federal police commissioner Aldo Cassini has urged Sicilians to back off the Cosa Nostra, insisting that the Italian mafia is not to blame for terrorist attacks on italians. it is a peaceful organisation dedicated to helping the poor.
“I remind people that the first person who was convicted of a Mafia offences in Sicily was a person from Chicago with the unlikely name of Jack Rocci,” the police chief said.Say does anyone think the police commissioner might be in the Mafia’s pocket?
NAH!I have to agree with Saint here: Mick Keelty may be right, even if by accident and not for the right reasons.
Islam itself, while abhorent to many, is no more “nuttier” than any other religion (my own admittedly half assed Roman Catholicism included). What makes Islam dangerous is its appeal to “victims”, e.g. those who feel society/the Establishment/The Man, has f*cked them over.
Islam, throughout it’s history, has always attracted converts from the ranks of the dispossessed and the downtrodden. Islam promises equality, brotherhood, and peace in submitting to the Will of God.
For example, initially Islam caught on in India among the lower castes, it is extremely popular among prison inmates worldwide, and it’s largest group of adherents in the USA are African-Americans, not as might be supposed, immigrants.
Unfortunately, it also attracts sociopaths (see prisoner appeal) because it validates and gives purpose to their anti-social proclivities in a way that say, Orthodox Judaism or Christian Science or even the justifiably hated and feared Presbyterians do not. (My wife is a Pressy. Gotta watch her like a hawk!)
In short, Islam is too often popular with grievance-types, including second generation immigrants and homegrown criminals.
That doesn’t de-legitimize Islam as a profoundly great historical religion but it does suggest Keelty & colleagues monitor the mosques and madrassas in Oz. Keeping police antanae up is just common sense.
As long as people such as Keelty remain in denial or ignorant of Jihad, Australia will be in danger.
The clintonesque 1993 relegation of Jihadist attacks as merely criminal acts on par with GBH and the denial of the state of war openly declared on the west by so many Jihadists since, is a far far worse error now that it was then.
This man needs instant dismissal for the SAFETY OF ORDINARY AUSTRALIANS.
We may not be yet at war with islamic jihad, but it must not be forgotten that they are at war with us as they have repeated over and over again.
To suggest that criminals convert to Islam so they can openly and ligitimately wreak havoc on our society, thereby exonerating islam, is one of the worst falsehoods i have heard in a long time.
And how convenient for Keelty that the only convicted jihadist was a “convert” from an English background. What uproars would have been generated against the police had he been a bona fide Pakistani, Algerian or palestinian?
unable to claim victimhood from his background, he was an easy target no?i agree with wastell terrorists aren’t mentally deranged they are morally evil.
Posted by drscroogemcduck on 2006 09 16 at 01:13 AM • permalinkWastell and Keelty are busy turning counter-terrorism into just another multiculti “blame the victim” postmodernist bullshit exercise.
Time to get some serious people into these positions before these morons simply hand the country over to the islamists.Posted by Crusader rabbit on 2006 09 16 at 01:27 AM • permalinkCasanova: I suspect you don’t get profiling, and if too many think like you, I suspect you will see more white Jihadists with non al-surname background, including women and children. Oh wait what was Jack’s name again?
JDB: I will disagree with you on one point. There is a profound difference between Judaism/Christianity and Islam. Mutually exclusive in fact. Maybe I will blog about that some other time but in one oversimplified sentence: without an understanding of God’s self revelation as Trinity and with no concept of incarnation (both of which are ‘nascent’ in Judaism and explicit in orthodox Christianity; let’s forget the theologically-liberal basket-weaving Christians), Islam is stuffed.
And that’s me putting it very very very very mildly.
we have little knowledge of some of the underpinning ideological structure of the Islamic faith. And so without that knowledge, it’s easy for us to, if you like, latch on to ideas and interpret them through our particular models of reality, or our particular viewpoints.
Classic Postmodernist cant. HE [an academic paid to read] has so little knowledge of Islam that he can lazily say that. If he knew more, he could distinguish the LACK of congruency between classic regressive Islam and modern Christian cultures.
But it’s easier to be intellectually vapid and lazy, and talk of ‘coloured glasses’.We also know that in terms of the motivations that they express and that we can certainly see is consistent in the literature that they either have used, say in their video taped last wills and testaments, or other material, they are in fact people of deep concern, of deep thought about the injustice that they see being done to the people that they identify with.
Actually what we know is that they are people of deep self pity and scapegoating. Just like the Nazis.
Posted by Lloyd Flack on 2006 09 16 at 02:28 AM • permalink”...concern, of deep thought about the injustice that they see being done to the people that they identify with ... by what they see as the injustice, and their wish to do something about it”
See something you think is unjust? Feel thoughtful, disaffected or concerned about it?
Go kill a bunch of people. Nice Dr Wastell will understand.
Seems he’s pretty concerned about the injustice of calling Islamist terrorists (gasp) mass murderers ... If I were Keelty I would have him watched. He might want to do something about it.
Posted by arrowhead ripper on 2006 09 16 at 03:21 AM • permalinkI can’t believe how clueless Mick Keelty wants to be . . . . can’t we bring Peter Cosgrove out of retirement and give him the job?
Posted by Oafish and Infantile on 2006 09 16 at 03:50 AM • permalinkI’m sorry, survival is the one of the most basic instincts animals, human beings included have. Humans have reason, the ability to judge actions and consequences, whatever.
A person who suicides is seriously mentally deranged whether through depression or mind control. Radical islamic ideology is about mind control.
Radical islamic idealogy combines suicide with murder. The converts, or reverts, are simply being used by the Islamists because they are outside the normal profile of an Islamic terrorist - Arab/Asian Muslim.
And this is our Federal Police Commissioner, how much further can he bend over on our behalf.
Everyone has nauiled these idiots as I would so I’ll just throw in some rhetoric.
I pity Australia, your police are infected with PCPCs as we are in the land of the broad strata of homicidal maniacs who are incidentally muslim.
Lets wait until a non-identifiable person of mis-understood motivation blows everyone, including themselves, up and we can then arrest the presume.
At least you seem to have one academic who sees the light, Mary Brendle.
Posted by Wimpy Canadian on 2006 09 16 at 04:59 AM • permalink#11 Yes, I would like Al Gore profiled, but not in the SMH.
Posted by Wimpy Canadian on 2006 09 16 at 05:02 AM • permalink#25 Saint,
I have heard your argument before but never heard it addressed, so here goes:
Yes, if the Presbytarians realize that anyone looking like a muslim or has brown skin or is named Mohamid or some other arab sounding name, they will find some white skinned granny called Edna to do the dirty.
If this is the case, then profiling has worked, for two reasons:
1. There is a far smaller pool of potential operatives for the
musli.. sorry, Presbytarians, to chose from.2. The West has a far better chance of inserting moles into the Presbytarian organisation as white would not only be acceptable, but sought out. This greatly increases the danger of discovery for the presumees.
Posted by Wimpy Canadian on 2006 09 16 at 05:15 AM • permalinkAs for the police commissioner, one might want to ask him why so many people “committing a crime they probably would have committed anyway” decide to convert to Islam before? Even if we did accept the premise that there’s no link between Islam and violence, isn’t he the least bit curious why the conversions are happening then?
Of course, that would lead him to the inevitable conclusion that it must be because Muslim criminals are treated more leniently by police representatives like him than non-Muslim criminals, so Keelty has pretty much backed himself into a corner with that argument - irrespective of whether his premise is correct or false, his making that argument implies he’s a bad cop. Congrats!
Keelty is right that eccentrics and weirdos tend to gravitate towards Islam and some convert. In past times they may have become anarchists or criminals or even Webdiarists.
But Keelty is glossing over the fact that modern Islam is like a warm cloak to those bent on random violence - it generously affords legitimacy to violence in a way that no other modern ideology does.
Posted by Bearded Mullah on 2006 09 16 at 07:01 AM • permalinkNothing at all unusual here.
It’s just another Uni dipping in to the large bucket of dosh the government has provided for CT. Dr Wasteall, sorry Wastell, has a publication record that has little to do with terrorism. It would also appear that Macquarie Uinversity has very recently set up a Centre for Policing, Intelligence and Counter Terrorism that a jaundiced person might think has been set up solely to be in a position to benefit from this government largesse. The centre’s publication record is less than impressive - it currently consists of .. er.. nothing.
But if you want to do a little bit of advertising for your new venture, why not give the ABC a call and say something stupid, fluffed up as provocative. Full marks to Dr WasteAll and Macquarie University.
Posted by Whale Spinor on 2006 09 16 at 07:10 AM • permalinkMr Keelty said the danger of mistreating people who felt “the least bit alienated” was that they would become permanent outcasts in the community.
There have been many times when I have felt just a little teensy weensy bit alienated. Only God and I know how many times I’ve been mistreated.
I’ve never felt the need to cut somebody’s living head off. Let alone blow myself up on public transport. No matter how late the bloody train was.
Dr Wright-Neville described Roche as an “Antipodean version of shoe bomber Richard Reid”, the British man found guilty of trying to blow up a packed flight with explosives hidden in his shoes.
“He didn’t know what he was getting himself into,” said Dr Wright-Neville, “and when he realised, he got cold feet.”
Could this be the most inappropriate use of a wornout metaphor in the history of the language?
What Mick Keelty really meant to say was that the real threat came from the Pope and his unconditional rejection of religiously motivated violence. Sack this guy on Monday, he has obviously not read the Koran.
Posted by platey mates on 2006 09 16 at 09:58 AM • permalinkOK, so I’m contrarian. In more ways than one…
I’m with Dr Colin Wastell, and I think his comments have been misinterpreted. Read carefully:
We do have to accept that there is a real possibility there could be people who are disaffected, who are so enraged, who are, by what they see, and I emphasise, by what they see as the injustice, and they wish to do something about it.
They’re losers. They’re wastrels, no Wastells, if you’ll pardon the expression. They see others getting ahead by hard work, intellect, wit, and they think they have the right to the same good things in life.Without the boring work and stuff, of course. That’s for jerks.
They are Aristocrats, born to have the good life because of their inate superiority. Well, they have to think they’re superior, to make up for the fact that they’re utter wastes of oxygen, and deep down, they know that.
Their thinking is that Someone Must Be To Blame for this. It can’t be themselves, oh no. It must be some vast conspiracy, probably by those over-achieving nerds they saw at school, teachers pets all of ‘em, and we hates em my precioussssss
The Nerds were Probably Jewish too. Always studying, always looking in books, they didn’t deserve to get high marks, they’re Jerks to be beaten up on, not Real Men.
These people are already enraged at being losers. They are already disaffected. Now comes along some group - maybe the National Socialist German Workers Party who say it’s all right to think this way, that being Aryan they do have a Natural Right to Rule as the Master Race, and the fact that they’re not Top Dogs is all the fault of International Jewry.
Or maybe it’s the Spartacists League, who say it’s all right to think this way, that being Proletariats they do have a Historically Imperative Right to be Dictators, and the fact that they’re not Top Dogs is all the fault of rapacious Capitalists and Jewish Bankers.
Or it’s Islamofascism, who say it’s all right to think this way, that being Muslim they do have a God-Given Right to rule the Unbelievers, and the fact that they’re not Top
DogsCats is all the fault of rapacious capitalistic Jews and Zionists.See the pattern? Baader-Meinhof? Symbionese Liberation Army? Islamic Jihad?
So to avoid acknowledging their own manifest inadequacy, they have to Do Something About The Injustice Of It All. Worthless Cowards, they have to see themselves as Heroes in some great, worthy struggle, or acknowledge their own worthlessness. They’d rather die than do that. (And we should encourage that ambition, to die I mean, but without taking anyone with them)
That’s what Dr Wastell meant. And in order to defeat an enemy, it really really helps to understand him first. Otherwise you make assumptions as to rationality, reason, logic, and self-interest that aren’t applicable, and will lead you astray.
I for one am glad he’s on the counter-terrorism team. Not that it should take a PhD to see the bleedin’ obvious.
One of the things that’s been unfortunate is that we have little knowledge of some of the underpinning ideological structure of the Islamic faith.
I once prided myself on researching the various religions to compare and find where we all agree and where we differ. It was kind of a hobby, as well as an educational field of study. Now I find myself less and less interesting in knowing more about Islam than I already know. I would prefer that they withdraw into their own little enclaves, if they don’t want to participate in the general civil society, and keep their religion to themselves. I have no interest in it, and if “moderate” Muslims persist in keeping silent, less and less respect for it.
One of the things that’s been unfortunate is that we have little knowledge of some of the underpinning ideological structure of the Islamic faith.
You know, even nanogiveadamns aren’t small enough to measure how little I care about the ‘underpinning ideological structure’ of the Islamic faith. I really, honestly do not care. And it’s not my job to care. What theological handsprings they may have turned to sanctify acting like bloodthirsty neomolochian savages are irrelevant. What self-serving sophistry they may have engaged in to justify their barbarity is immaterial. This is the real world. Behave or die.
#24 saint
Profiling may be imperfect, but if it prevents even a few terrorist atrocities it will have been worth it. Since it’s the Muslims, not the Swedes, who are aggrieved they are the ones doing the massacring of civilians. Why revert solely to random sampling when you know the population the murderers are likely to come from?I agree with #32. Yes they can get Western jihadist converts, but they’ll have to work harder at it than if they can just use the seemingly unlimited supply in the Muslim world.
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Argh. This is driving me crazy. Yet again we have this “muslim” race being referred to. There is no muslim “race” to be racist about. If one views a particular religion as basically evil (like I do - judge the tree by the fruit, and all that) I am NOT being racist. I hate all Islam whether or not it’s peopled by lebanese, indonesians or “whites” or whatever. Similarly I have no problem with people of the middle east or anywhere providing they are secularists and not interested in jihadding my ass.
I am probably being something else bad and I hope there’s some nice hairy-armpitted and unwashed tinfoil hat culture lecturer lurking here who can help me out by identifying it. Perhaps they might like to write PhD about it and get some of my tax dollars in funding? Perhaps I’m a “Liberal Voter”.