Mass Terror Arrests in Australia

A major anti-terror operation involving more than 800 police was carried out in Australia yesterday. Fifteen suspects — mainly supporters of the Islamic State, it seems — were arrested in Sydney and Brisbane. Their terror plans included — surprise, surprise! — the beheading of a random passerby on the streets of Sydney.

The following report from 7News has more details:

Below are excerpts from a Reuters article on the same topic:

(Reuters) — Hundreds of heavily armed police raided homes in Sydney and Brisbane before dawn on Thursday, launching a large-scale Australian “counter-terrorism operation” just days after the country raised its national terror threat level to high for the first time.

Australian police said the raids were focused on a dozen suburbs in west Sydney, while local media said operations were also taking place in the Queensland city of Brisbane.

Last week, Australia raised its terror threat level to ‘high’, citing the likelihood of terrorist attacks by Australian citizens radicalized in Iraq or Syria, despite stressing there was no knowledge of a specific threat.

Australia, which is due to host the Group of 20 Leaders Summit in Brisbane in mid-November, is concerned over the number of its citizens believed to be fighting overseas with Islamist militant groups.

Up to 160 Australians have either been involved in the fighting or actively supporting it, officials said. At least 20 are believed to have returned to Australia and pose a national security risk, the head of the country’s spy agency said when raising the threat level last week.

And from The Daily Mail:

The extremists arrested in Australia’s largest counterterrorism operation were planning to snatch a random member of the public off the street in Sydney and behead them, police told Daily Mail Australia, in an attack bearing the brutal hallmarks of Islamic State fanatics.

Fifteen people were detained in pre-dawn raids on homes in Sydney and Brisbane by NSW and Queensland state police and the Australian Federal Police. Just one man, Omarjan Azari, has been charged so far, with serious terrorism-related offences, and was due to appear in a Sydney court later today, police said.

‘Police believe that this group that we have executed this operation on today had the intention, and had started to carry out planning, to commit violent acts here in Australia,’ AFP Acting Commissioner Andrew Colvin told reporters in Sydney.

Police sources revealed more details to Daily Mail Australia, that the plot involved abducting a member of the public in Sydney and beheading them. ABC reported that the abducted member of the public would be draped in an Islamic State flag and beheaded on camera.

Channel Seven reports that the random beheading would have been carried out in the streets of Martin Place in Sydney’s CBD.

Prime Minister Tony Abbott confirmed that he was briefed on the anti-terror operation on Wednesday night.

He said a senior Australian ISIL member has asked supporters in Australia to carry out ‘demonstration killings’.

‘That’s the intelligence we’ve received. That exhortations, quite direct exhortations, were coming from an Australian who is apparently quite senior in ISIL to networks of supporters in Australia to direct demonstration killings in Australia. This is not just suspicion this is in intent,’ Mr Abbott said.

Mr Abbott said the information he has received shows Australia is at a ‘serious risk’ from a terrorist attack.

‘There are networks of people here in Australia who will do us harm and it’s very important that we are one step ahead of them and I think this morning we were,’ he added.

Hat tips: For the video, Vlad Tepes; for Reuters, LS; for the Mail, The Observer.

41 thoughts on “Mass Terror Arrests in Australia

  1. Looking at this positively, it might persuade the MC/PC fraternity that their ideology is flawed and that they, too, are at risk.

    • That’s almost as much of a long shot as saying that the Battle of Stalingrad might persuade Hitler that his dreams of conquering the world were flawed.

  2. Same different, but same in Norway

    Recent terror plan in Norway was to break into a private house, behead the residing family while filming, and present the terror to the public, informs “Hate speech expert” Kjetil Stormark today. (VG)

    “Hate Speech International” (HSI), network established by Kjetil Stormark and Øyvind Strømmen, in fear of “another 22 July” (Utøya). Strømmen allegedly, warned about “right wing extreme terror” already in 2007.

    • If this means that “Hate Speech International” acknowledges that “hate” may be directed by Muslims against infidels, maybe a hint of reason is breaking through.

  3. Good job, Aussies. Prevention is better than aftermath cleanup. But will anything have been learned?

    To the unknowing world, to liberals, and to Muslim apologists, only actual Muslim attacks count. A foiled Muslim attack proves nothing. The surveillance work by the NYPD and other surveillance agencies, like here, in foiling/preventing would-be Muslim attacks counts for nothing.

    Even when a Muslim attack occurs, a predictable, super-annealing use of the Muslim EXCUSE Machine, familiar to every counter-jihad reader, will be kicked into high gear, with its sole purpose being to invent reasons why an obvious Muslim attack is not a Muslim attack. “Who are you going to believe, us or your lyin’ eyes?”

    Hasan’s 2009 attack is a perfect example of all that. Hasan Allahu Akbar-red his way through his rampage, but the J-I-M words are never used in officialdom or in the MSM. Jihad. Islam. Muslim.

    Nothing grabs one’s attention like being hit on the side of the head with a 2 by 4. And from all appearance it will take more Muslim attacks against infidels with the loss of Western lives before more necessary lessons about Islamic ideology are learned.

    • If history is a guide, the dominant theme will quickly become “It’s outrageous that Australians are acting suspicious of Muslims just because a handful of people did something bad — because, you know, there are bad people everywhere and it has absolutely nothing to do with Islam, and you’re racist if you say it does.”

      Soon after 9/11, the idea that we need to be nicer to Muslims and welcome more of them into the United States overwhelmed a newly awakened sense of the danger at the heart of Islam. After 7/7, Cameron went further, declaring that indigenous Brits ought to be adopting Muslims ways more than the reverse.

      The widespread delusion about the manifest character of Islam is clearly some kind of mental pathology. Someone who often comments on Power Line, usually sensibly, said she’s opposed to a sweeping ban on Muslim immigration because she doesn’t want to “be a bigot.” In other words: telling herself she’s a nice person is more important than self-preservation.

      • The objection that only a handful of us Muslims did bad things must be met with the undeniable truth that if Muslims weren’t in the country NONE of this barbarism would be occurring.

        Australia or the U.S. could admit 20,000,000 Buddhists today and there would be no increase in beheadings or other acts of terror (and treason).

        And guess what would ensure a 100% decrease of terror and treason?

        Great point about Cameron and that commenter. Would that there were more rage at the pathology of the former idiot. Instead, he’s heaped with respect, power, and the perks of power.

  4. Radical Islam is REAL Islam. “Moderate” Islam is real Islam’s Trojan horse for invading infidel lands. The “moderates” then serve to camouflage and hide the real radicals in their midst.

  5. Random bored young men out for a thrill? I suppose there’s a common ingredient of Presbyterianism. After all, the Nothing-to-do with-Islam-ic Not-a-State could hardly appeal to anyone else, could it?

    • My ancestry is part Presbyterian, Salome, and I take great offence over your comments. I may even write a strong letter!

  6. A Norwegian similarity to Australia
    I did use google translate

    http://nrk.no/norge/_-fryktet-terror-i-privat-hjem-1.11939035
    ………..extremists planned to bring into the house of a random family. Where would they kill the residents. Several sources told NRK that they would use knives. Everything was going to be filmed and posted on the internet…………
    ……..The aim of the operation should be spread as much fear as possible in population.
    ………..Previously VG reported that the PST received information that terrorists were planning to attack with knife in large crowds ………….
    ………..Recalling his reaction in Australia
    The action extremists planned in Norway is similar to the terrorist attack that claimed the AUSTRALIAN police was averted Thursday…..

    Did Norway have an empire and warring armies and take over oil and islamic countries?

    aaahhh Norway, I guess has been very 2 faced giving Nobel Peace Prizes to such people as President Obama, who is arming who? in the Middle East?

    Just which side were the Norwegians on, concerning Gaza and Israel.?

    Was it a concern about the killings in Syria and Iraq by ISIS.?

    How many that have fought there have now come back to Norway?

    Sorry I do not mean to be so facetious with my questions.
    Simpleton

  7. Luckily the commissioner of the Australian Federal Police told us on national television that the threatened attacks “have nothing to do with religion”. So this suggests Australia has large well connected groups of people who are intent on chopping off the heads of random strangers for no apparent reason. Well that makes me feel better!

  8. Unlike the UK and Australia, which confiscated them quite recently, the US population has managed (so far) to hang on to personal weapons for the purpose of self-defense.
    When they are about to chop off one’s head, dialing 911 (and waiting) is not a viable option. Unless it’s LOADED and HANDY, any gun is useless–but with it you have options.
    This ages-old war of theirs is about to get up close and personal to us all.
    As the Boy Scouts used to say. “be prepared”.
    Lock and load, boys and girls–it’s going to get messy.

    • Flintlock,

      The Australian government did not confiscate all our firearms, the ‘confiscation’ was actually a ban on semi-automatic and pump-action weapons. According to some commentators the number of firearms in the country has increased.

  9. The Daily Mail is “not accepting comments on this article.” I have to wonder if it’s because too many people were pointing to the evil in the core ideology, not just its “radical” form. Posted DM comments (those that get past the moderators) on Islam-related topics tend to be rather sanitized, avoiding the matter of theological motivation.

    I was going to post a comment on DM saying that it’s long past time for the civilized world to recognize the menace in the core ideology and stop coddling and making excuses for the followers thereof. But it probably wouldn’t have gotten past the moderators.

  10. Muslims in Australia are already out with neatly printed signs complaining that Muslims are being “vilified” etc. That’s their first concern whenever evil is done in the name of Islam. They do nothing to try to prevent the alleged “hijacking” of their faith by “extremists”; instead, they try to shield their faith from inquisitive eyes.

  11. Reports today play up the ‘disaffected young men’ with ‘poor education’ and ‘menial jobs’ (if any?). I have commented to the effect that lots of people who are poorly educated and work in menial jobs don’t behave like that, because they don’t have religion that tells them that it’s a terrible evil if they are under the authority of infidels.

    • This doesn’t apply specifically to Australia’s terrorists, but it’s probably safe enough to generalize:

      http://vladtepesblog.com/2011/10/17/the-middle-class-terrorists-more-than-60pc-of-suspects-are-well-educated-and-from-comfortable-backgrounds-says-secret-m15-file/

      Back ~2006 or a bit later I reported on a study of the 19 terrorists and their compatriots who’d been part of the group responsible for the destruction of 9/11. Since we moved over to WordPress it’s harder to locate posts from those early days but I do remember this: The most surprising element we discovered in several studies done pre-and-post 9/11 was the education attainments of those Al-Qaeda killers. In pursuing the information one had to avoid the bricks falling from the edifice of The Current Consensus built by the MSM, government, academia, et al. But if you stuck with it you could find unsettling reports, particularly about social status and educational attainment for those mass murderers.

      What was striking was that many, if not most of those infamous killers had STEM degrees [science, technology, engineering and mathematics] and were from middle class families. One father, whose son had a degree in engineering, refused to believe his boy could ever have been part of the group responsible for that particularly hideous slaughter. While he claimed not to know where his child was – in reality the ‘boy’ had been vaporized on 9/11 – Dad was sure he was alive “somewhere”.

      Salome, there are threads woven into our western culture which are (inadvertently?) designed to produce a minority of disaffected young people – mostly boys – who’d rather blow stuff up than create anything. The “Threshold Years” are a time – between the ages of ~17 to ~25 – when the synapses of the cerebellum are increasing and connecting at a phenomenal rate. They finish the job the individual brain stopped around age 3 or so. Increasingly the process is not ending well. Factoring in all the pressures of today’s Western pace, a fair number get lost in the process.

      Add on the anomie of broken nuclear families, dissolving kinship systems lost through intense and widespread community migrations, money issues (not the same as poverty – you can have TOO much), widespread corruption – especially in ‘higher’ education, the sense of too many choices and not enough meaning in those choices, the deep loneliness of ‘virtual’ friendships, etc. ad nauseam, have geometrically increased a wide-spread anomie. It’s reminiscent of the aftermath of the French Revolution.

      But we also have a brand-new element, the poisoning of the soil and water supplies by our “better living through chemistry”. More people are quietly climbing off the grid while trying to make it look like they haven’t left at all.

      When you factor in ALL the changes of the 20th century, it’s a credit to our resilience that we’re doing as well as we are. The 21st century is going to be a transition to something else – either far better or a freaking nightmare – and there aren’t any people showing up who can assure us they’re the folks to help make the transition. When I hear old people shrug and say “Glad I won’t be here” it makes me realize how truly encapsulated we have all become.

      As to your point lots of people who are poorly educated and work in menial jobs don’t behave like that, because they don’t have religion that tells them that it’s a terrible evil if they are under the authority of infidels, I can only point out that many of those disaffected young men who’ve joined up weren’t Muslims to begin with…they were without any meaning at all. Islam provides the over-arching sense of meaning they didn’t have before. It may be a blood-drenched horrific meaning to us, but to them it’s a hero’s journey.

      http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Man's_Search_for_Meaning

      The great error of the shallow philosophy of the Welfare State was to believe that as long as one’s material wants were secure, that was enough to produce happiness. Provision for the essentials is necessary but not nearly sufficient to create meaning. And that latter task is one which the new world of multi culti political correctness cannot and will not address. But Islam will.

      • Sadly true, Dymphna. As a (mainly) non-believer, I find inspiration in other people and my love of the arts, especially music, and wonder why this isn’t enough for others. If I’m wrong and there is another life to come, this will be a bonus, but I’d still be looking for a worthwhile challenge in the next life.

        If people get the leaders they deserve, we must have done something wrong, but what? Freed ourselves from religious fundamentalism after the Enlightenment? The alternative is worse.

        • Yes, the only immediate relevant factor was/is Islam. But an immersion in Western culture during undergraduate years (once you’re a Believer), only hastens your radicalism…

          There has to be the envious hatred of Western technology and material success – two big factors for Islam) fuels their defensive barbarism. This, if Allah approves of them, why are they perpetual losers? That is a main factor in driving this latest iteration of Islamic ignorance.

      • Thank you dymphna so well explained..You truly are a gem..Yes you too Baron but this is priceless..

      • “The “Threshold Years” are a time – between the ages of ~17 to ~25 – when the synapses of the cerebellum are increasing and connecting at a phenomenal rate. They finish the job the individual brain stopped around age 3 or so.”

        I knew about the increase in rate of brain growth around puberty, followed by massive “pruning” of neurones, but I hadn’t realised that it followed such a long halt in growth. One thing struck me as a possible error, though; I assume that you intended to refer to the cerebral cortex, not to the the cerebellum? The cerebellum has long been thought to be mostly involved in managing and coordinating movements, rather than in “higher” functions, such as abstract thought and contemplating consequences of actions that are multiple steps away. See:
        http://faculty.washington.edu/chudler/sagittal.html

        • yes, of course. The cortex. For kids now, it’s the cortex caught in a vortex of destabilizing change. That site is wonderfully done.

          The problem we’re starting to see is that brain disorders are far more common than realized and that, for instance, sports events for kids ought avoid physical contact, just becuase of the potential for unseen and untreated brain damage. See their news page:

          http://faculty.washington.edu/chudler/inthenews.html

          That would be a good resource page for home-schooling parents or those trying to supplement their kids’ education.

  12. Of course Muslims have started whining about the ‘backlash’, probably somebody will say something offensive to a woman wearing a hijab or perhaps a mosque will be defaced—trivial occurrences compared with church burning, massacres and forced conversions, Muslims are so narcissistic. They should pray to their Allah that they never suffer a real backlash.

    • Old Man, I have no doubt that the backlash will arrive one day. Just a matter of time and to how much of this crap the typical Aussie will endure before the brain snaps.

    • If and when a backlash occurs who says there will be any muslims left to whine. They love death. The world may just oblige if they cross the wrong line. The muslim denial about the Armenians and God knows how many other races really won’t matter. Muslims would not be remembered kindly.

  13. All these jihadists needs to be return to where they came from and never allowed to leave their home nation

    • As this problem metastasizes around the world (including throughout the West), we will be increasingly threatened by our inability to distinguish between “jihadists” and ordinary Muslims. I seem to be one of a tiny nucleus in the Counter-Jihad that isn’t willing to play Muslim Roulette; while the majority, it seems, still harbor a sufficient number of PC MC pathogens in their system, so to speak, causing them semi-consciously to elicit that asymptotic spasm of reflex to protect Muslims — in one way or another. You know, all those innocent Muslims who “don’t know their Islam”, or who “are not really Islamic but are afraid to come out of the Islamic Closet”, or who are merely “cultural Muslims”, or any number of permutations of what, by any other name, the fetid rose of Moderate Muslim stinks the same.

  14. OK ALL, congratulate me… : )

    Have just finished much more genealogy research and have discovered that in one line I am a direct descendant of Charles Martel. In another line a cousin of Jan Sobieski. Yet another line, I am a cousin of Queen Isabella of Spain. The Czarina of Russia, Catherine the Great also a cousin.

    FIGHTERS OF MUSLIM CONTROL AND EXPANSION …ALL of them!

    So now I can say that the idea of a destruction of any and all Islamic plans for the world , is present in my DNA .

    HURRAY!

    To Flintlock.
    We are in a fight against the foot soldiers of the NEW WORLD ORDER as is Christian Russia.

  15. Some of the GOV Gang may not know, but I post comments copiously on Jihad Watch under the nickname “voegelinian” (and prior to that I was “LemonLime”, then “Hesperado”, and many other nicks going back to the mists of time reaching into the years just following the howling Blizzard of Ought One). And many here may not know that I have had strained relations with my fellow JW Family (from whom I have come to feel estranged and betrayed, for their unwillingness to defend me from hostile and often crude attacks by two of their fellow commenters in particular — but that’s not why you called, as Dave Letterman would say…). Mostly these strained relations revolve around my persistent reminders to them that, in this “battle space” (as Frank Gaffney has aptly termed it) of that most important theater of this World War being waged against us by Mohammedans, the Horror & Terror of Islam needs to be countered by a more robust clarity than seems to typify the Counter-Jihad. There is much more I could say to articulate this, but I will close with this: The robust clarity should express, at its pinnacle and as its touchstone, the following holistic axiom:

    Islam is the problem, and all Muslims enable that problem.

    The problem with the Counter-Jihad is that it is perfectly gung-ho about the first half of that formula, but goes into various permutations of a Shrinking Violet crossed with a super-flexible Yoga master going into pretzel contortions trying to avoid the Dreaded A Word (viz., ALL Muslims).

    Inextricably related to this realization is its corollary: the problem of Taqiyya, rendering us unable, on a macro scale, of telling the difference, with sufficient reliability necessary for our primary responsibility (to protect our society from attack), between the Harmless Muslims and the Dangerous Muslims.

    This then leads (if our logical faculties are not impaired by the asymptotic spasm) to giving serious consideration to Total Deportation of all Muslims from the West. For this last conclusion especially I have been taken through the wringer by my fellow JW commenters over the years. Other than a pitiful two or three who agree, not one of my many demurrers has ever bothered to take the time and trouble to read my detailed arguments for this and give me the respect of posing a counter-argument based upon such a careful reading. Instead, they either attack me passive-aggressively through an incoherently raveled tissue of rhetorical questions, or they aggressively attack me by insinuating that I am (or at times outright calling me) a “racist”, and/or comparing me to a “Nazi”.

    It was with bittersweet gall and a wearily jaded grin that I swallowed a lump of rue the other day then, when I noticed two of my erstwhile friends (who have decided to side with my calumniators) post comments, in the wake of this Australian razzia plot, quite strongly implying an advocacy of total deportation.

    • LemonLime….voegelinian…….Hesperado? I, for one, have read your comments on JW for sometime and enjoyed/agreed with them. I too, agree with your reasons for deportation. Obviously one cannot be nice to cancer, for it will still kill you no matter your niceness. The PC MC BS of the LIBS only reveals the ignorance of said folks, the root word ‘ignore’ showing their blind spots. Be rest assured you are not the only one today who has taken a hit from others, either on blogs..or in real life via family members and friends. All we can do is keep vigilant and know that our perception is right on. This means you can’t let the bastards take you down…keep up the good ideas. Your one liner….”Islam is the problem, and all Muslims enable that problem” is so true. Having taught at one of those turkish muslim charter schools, I was amazed when the principal of said school told me they were coming here to ‘civilize’ their boys!! And yet, the founder of said schools, one Fetullah Gulen has high hopes of a returning caliphate with his [fervent wish] of being said head of caliph. Funny, but Erdogan also has the same [fervent wish] and so the two are in each others faces. Not so lucky for Gulen, is that FBI is onto the schools and starting to close them. Thank god for small favors..it is a start.

      • Jane, thanks for your encouragement, and the interesting story about the Gulen school. I wouldn’t count on the FBI being intelligent enough to really be able to defang someone as serpentine as Fethullah Gulen…

    • Hey hesp..St. Pat from jw here..Always agreed with your tboughts. All five or six years of them..Peeves me to find out you get banned..Keep ’em comin’..

  16. Hesperado, I mentioned some flaws in your proposal, here, earlier this year- can’t recall if I was replying to you or not.

    We’d need to be prepared for rioting, martial law, many innocents’ deaths, and retaliation against non-Muslims in Islamic countries, and possible use of nuclear weapons against Western targets, or Israel, by Pakistan and Iran. Also the loss of much of our oil supply, causing economic catastrophe, more so in Europe (and your home of Japan) than the Americas.

    People being forcibly evicted would need to be drugged for the safety of the crews of the aircraft (which would be using our dwindling reserve of fuel, remember), and they’d likely be refused permission to land if the Arabs’ treatment of “Palestinian” refugees is any guide. Given the likely quantities involved, all this would take months, so all the prospective emigrants would meanwhile have to be interned, but where?

    So before using radical surgery, which might kill the patient (ie ourselves), let’s try therapy: no PC concessions, all laws applied equally to everyone, using existing laws on treason and sedition, and stopping further Muslim immigration too, of course.

    • Thanks, medge!

      Mark H.,

      It seems like you are reverse-engineering, first trying to find a way to deconstruct deportation (because you already think it must be wrong), then thinking about it to develop your reasoning. If the West felt it had to do it, it would 1) do it; and 2) be able to do it (which doesn’t mean it wouldn’t be very difficult and also imperfect).

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