Sydney Hostage Situation

Erica Ambler wrote:

CJB is clearly upset, but I'm a bit bemused by Monkey's defence of this guy as well.

I'm as upset about the incident as CJB is. One of my closest friends works around the corner from Martin Place, and while I knew she wasn't there yesterday, it still hit pretty hard.

Nor am I defending the guy. I just believe that these things don't happen in isolation, and that the way to prevent them in future is to figure out not only what happened, but why. This guy was persecuted for being liberal in Iran, and felt persecuted when he got here. He publicly accused ASIO and Iran of conspiring to lock him up. It's an argument that flies in the face of common sense and reason, but the important part is he believed it.

When the government committed soldiers to fight against IS, upgraded the terror alert to its highest level in a decade, and introduced some of the toughest anti-terror legislation in history, there was backlash from the Muslim community who felt that they were being considered guilty until proven innocent. And that argument was, in some ways, reciprocated by the wider community, particularly in areas where the predominant political feeling is that the government is out of touch with what the country needs or wants, and that they are only governing for the people who voted for them.

So I think it's a legitimate question to ask: if this guy felt like he was being targeted by the government a year ago, then what role did the recent crackdown on terrorism and the anti-terror legislation play in contributing to his state of mind? And if it did play a role, then what can we learn from it in future?

Prisoner Monkeys wrote:

So I think it's a legitimate question to ask: if this guy felt like he was being targeted by the government a year ago, then what role did the recent crackdown on terrorism and the anti-terror legislation play in contributing to his state of mind? And if it did play a role, then what can we learn from it in future?

If I understand you correctly, you're suggesting that government policy should appease - and ultimately be decided by - the mentally ill.

It already is being decided by the mentally ill. We call them politicians. You'd have to be mad to actually want to get onto the Australian political scene.

According to the ABC, the High Court threw out the gunman's last-chance appeal to have his arrest and prosecution for accessory to murder on Friday. I'm guessing that's what set him off.

Lord Haw Haw meets Sheldon Cooper.

I better cool off for the day and attend some cultural sensitivity training.

So you liken me to a notirious wartime traitor because I don't blindly follow the edicts of a government that is completely incompetent and fear Muslims for no reason?

It's not about what "set him off". Yes it's important, but the issue is that someone who has been convicted for a number of crimes was on bail. There shouldn't have been the chance for something to have "set him off". Plus, if the government start pacifying the ideologies of those who want to instil potentially extremist ideology, it gives those individuals/terrorist groups power - which they shouldn't have.

My understanding is that he was released on bail because a) the prosecution did not make a convincing enough case for remand until trial, and b) the government recently relaxed bail laws to make it easier for defendants to get out on bail.

Meanwhile in Pennsylvania a guy kills six and is currently under siege. Didn't make the headlines, it's the usual start-of-the-week shooting.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/northamerica/usa/11294787/Six-dead-in-Pennsylvania-shooting.html

A report into the siege is being handed down now. It says security agencies should have detected Monis' radicalisation well in advance of the siege, though no conclusive evidence of his radicalisation has been presented, and the report does not take into consideration Monis' legal situation and the way his High Court challenge had been rejected the day before despite his instability and history of legal challenges to his convictions.

In short, the report enables terrorism by casting Monis as a terrorist and not the common criminal than he was, because it's more politically convenient for him to have been a terrorist. If he was a criminal, all we would get is a judicial review into his case, but because he's a terrorist, we can have a whole raft of national security laws come into effect - laws that, by happy coincidence, will be announced tomorrow.