Sydney cafe siege: 3 dead, but who shot hostages?

[Whitehall_Bin_Men]

Another harassed mentalist?

Sydney siege: Five hostages escape Lindt cafe as suspected gunman with Islamic flag is named locally as 'Sheikh' Man Haron Monis
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/australasia/sydney-lindt-cafe- siege-hostages-display-islamic-flag-as-up-to-20-people-are-held-by-arm ed-man-9924641.html

Gunman has reportedly told police he has planted four bombs in the city
By IAN JOHNSTON , LOULLA-MAE ELEFTHERIOU-SMITH , ADAM WITHNALL
12:07 AM GMT, Monday 15 December 2014
At least five more hostages have escaped from the Lindt cafe in Sydney as a series of loud bursts of gunfire and explosions were heard inside the area.
The news comes as the gunman who had been keeping them prisoner for over 15 hours has been named by police as a self-styled cleric who runs an pro-Islamic website and is reportedly on bail for accessory to the murder of his ex-wife.
Iranian refugee Man Haron Monis, who has been reported as either 49 or 50 years old, moved to Australia in 1996 where he assumed the title of “Sheikh Haron”.

[Whitehall_Bin_Men]

Top of the Australian terrorist watch list
With a gun
AGAIN!

[Whitehall_Bin_Men]

So the gunman and two hostages were shot dead?
Who shot the hostages?

ISIS gunman forced hostages to make youtube videos
http://www.ibtimes.co.uk/sydney-cafe-siege-hostages-forced-make-youtub e-videos-by-suspected-isis-gunman-1479598

[Whitehall_Bin_Men]

Police say they heard gunshots
I didn't
All the shots seemed to come from the same guns
Australian police guns

[TonyGosling]

FOX Upset, Demanding Australians Call Sydney Siege a “Terrorist Attack”
December 15, 2014 By 21wire 1 Comment
http://21stcenturywire.com/2014/12/15/fox-upset-demanding-australians- call-sydney-siege-a-terrorist-attack/

21st Century Wire says…

The Sydney Siege has come and gone, with what looks like another example of a known nut case who let out on the streets by the Security Services, only to wreak havoc on the community.

Australian SWAT police ended the 16-hour hostage standoff started by 50-year-old self-styled, Iranian-born Muslim ‘cleric’, Man Haron Monis, as police did a blitz-style assault on the Lindt chocolate store in Martins Place in Sydney.


Terror actor Monis played the role of shady ‘Sheikh’ in Australian media long before the incident yesterday.

Monis is said to have a very long and disturbingly long criminal rap sheep which includes among other things, multiple counts of sexual assault, and an accessory to murder charge.

He was also a local media darling, well known to local press and on social media playing the role of ‘Sheikh‘, including a role in a publicity stunt where Monis wrote inflammatory and insulting letters to Australian troops and families of troops who served in US wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Critics are raising questions as to whether or Sydney police intelligence unit were involved in ‘managing’ Monis, or whether or not he was being supervised by a government psychologist and taking SSRI anti-psychotic medication. Even Prime Minister Tony Abbott admitted that Monis was “well known to authorities” and had a history of “extremism and mental instability”.

Incredibly, Monis was allowed to roam the streets on bail instead of being detained in a security criminal or mental facility – where he clearly belonged.

Meanwhile, the lunatic right at FOX News was upset that the rest of the media wasn’t labeling it an ‘ISIS Attack’. During the channel’s plastic surgery showcase program, ‘Outnumbered’, today media debutante, Andrea Tantaros, appeared visibly upset that the Australian government was not calling the incident a “terrorist event”. Notice the standard fear propaganda scripted lines delivered by Tantaros:

“ISIS has been calling for these ‘lone wolf’ attacks on countries like Australia for a while.”

The mere fact that FOX has no actual proof other than hyperpbole, doesn’t stop Tantaros from demanding state-sanctioned fear mongering, flippantly demanding, “I don’t know what the Australian leadership won’t call this a terrorist attack”.

Listen to her clip hear:
Tantaros-Sydney

Other US media outlets, including the Washington Post, carried on the fear mongering:

“The long showdown riveted the world’s attention and raised questions over the possibility of another so-called “lone wolf” attack inspired by militants such as the Islamic State.”

The outcome of the siege now focuses on whether hostages were killed by gunman Monis, or died in cross-fire. If it is indeed ruled that hostages were shot by hair-trigger police, officials will no doubt come under heavy criticism and embarrassment.

[ian neal]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5deTABITkDs

FYI Anti-terror exercise held in Martin Sq in May

[TonyGosling]

After The Sydney Siege, The Clash Of The Fearmongers

BRENDAN O’NEILL EDITOR Some peddle fear of Islamofascism, others promote panic about Islamophobia.
16 DECEMBER 2014 63 COMMENTS Share on facebookShare on twitterShare on emailMore Sharing Services173

http://www.spiked-online.com/newsite/article/after-the-sydney-siege-th e-clash-of-the-fearmongers/16360

he Sydney siege – the grandiose name being given to the invasion of a chocolate-and-coffee shop in Sydney by a mentally ill sex abuser – has exposed the dual fears of the ‘war on terror’. On one side we have those of a more right-leaning persuasion citing the siege as evidence that Western nations like Australia are under threat from ‘politically motivated violence’ stoked up by outsiders. And on the other side we have small-l liberals, those who fancy themselves as searing critics of officialdom, claiming that actually it’s the insiders, Western nations’ own apparently dumb, prejudiced, Muslim-fearing populations, who are the true source of social instability today. One side ratchets up fear of Islamofascism, the other spreads panic about Islamophobia. One side frets over foreign-inspired lone wolves, the other agonises over the native masses and their likely response to seeing a brown man doing something bad on the news. Both sides peddle the politics of fear.

What happened in Sydney yesterday was certainly tragic. Ordinary people were buying their morning coffee in a Lindt cafe when they were terrorised and held hostage for hours by a clearly disturbed man in Islamo-headgear and wielding a gun. Three people, including the gunman, were killed. This is terrible. But was it an act of terror, as such, never mind an act of war? The man who carried out the attack, Man Haron Monis, was apparently a troubled individual, a weird sheikh, a‘fringe and erratic’ man, who was under investigation by the police for sexual assault. His attack could just as easily be seen as the random act of an individual with mental problems, which he then tried to doll up as ‘political’ by waving a black Islamic flag and demanding a phone conversation with Tony Abbott. Monis was certainly a threat to the people in the cafe, but he posed no threat to Australia or its national security or democracy. Even to describe his actions as the ‘Sydney siege’, as if he had the whole city under his command, is to imbue his erratic behaviour with way too much menace and meaning; he should be known as the Lindt loser, the chocolate-shop gunman.

Yet too many are rushing to hold up his actions as hard evidence that Australia faces a dastardly, foreign-inspired threat. Observers claim the Lindt attack reveals the ‘dangers of lone-wolf terrorism’, and that the West faces ‘a new phase of terrorism that is far more dangerous, and more difficult to defeat, than al-Qaeda ever was’. This is fear talking. The terrifying tag ‘lone wolf’ gives the impression that individuals, anyone with a Koran and a gun, can hold the West to ransom; but they can’t. They can invade coffee shops and, worse, plant bombs on trains and buses, but they cannot unleash any kind of serious instability. They can harm individuals, which is terrible, but they cannot harm society. Unless, that is, we allow them to.

The impact of acts of terror is determined, not by the terrorist himself, who is usually isolated and weak, but by us, by how we choose to respond to his actions. It is society’s resilience, or otherwise, which determines whether terrorism will be absorbed, coped with and moved on from, or allowed to become a defining incident after which we curb liberty, intensify everyday security and live in a state of heightened anxiety. Too often today, fearful Western societies overreact to acts of terrorism, talking them up as momentous and allowing them to change our way of life. Such an advertisement of Western insecurities, such a public depiction of sad, lone blokes as a mortal threat to the West, could prove deadly in the long term, acting as an invitation to other hateful, anti-Western individuals to have a pop at the West, too. Certainly yesterday’s global concern about what was happening in a Lindt shop in Sydney, with reportedly everyone from Barack Obama to David Cameron on tenterhooks, will have signalled to other terroristic opportunists that they, too, could potentially bring the West temporarily to its knees by carrying out one scrappy, bloody act of violence.

Yet the response of so-called critical and liberal commentators to the Sydney siege was, if anything, even worse than the panic exhibited by some officials and experts. In keeping with other recent acts of Islamic terrorism in the West, these observers responded by instantly asking: ‘Will the mob now rise up and attack Muslims?’ Even while the siege was ongoing, the Australian Twitterati and sections of the commentariat were expressing pre-emptive solidarity with Muslims in anticipation of an ‘Islamophobic backlash’ in response to the siege. That is, almost their very first response upon seeing a Muslim carrying out an act of public violence was to wonder what Oz’s Neanderthal white hordes might get up to in the streets. To fear the lone wolf who waves a foreign flag and a gun is one thing; to fear the populace, the masses, the blob, takes the politics of panic to another level.

During the siege, an Australian woman posted a message on Facebook claiming she had seen a Muslim woman on a bus removing her hijab, presumably to hide the fact she was a Muslim. Before long, the hashtag #illridewithyou – that is, ‘I am willing to sit with a Muslim on a bus and be nice to him or her’ – was trending on Twitter. Some people actually printed out the hashtag and carried or wore it in public – a stunning act of narcissism, designed to draw attention to their presumed moral decency and implacable anti-racism in contrast to the alleged kneejerk Islamophobia of the uneducated and gruff. This fear of Islamophobia, this view of the masses as a pogrom in the making, has accompanied every terror attack in recent years, from 9/11 to the Madrid train bombings to London’s 7/7. It speaks to the chattering classes’ profound discomfort with their fellow citizens, whom they presume to be naturally racist and easily stirred up by hotheaded media coverage of Muslim people and Muslim behaviour. A bomb goes off or a gun is shot and they immediately think: ‘How will they respond to this?’ In a terrible irony, it is precisely this view of Western society’s masses as being ignorant of, or even disgusted by, Islam and its practitioners which fuels the narcissistic sense of grievance and self-pity exhibited by many of the young Western Muslims attracted to groups like Islamic State. These individuals often feed off the anti-Western outlook of Western society itself, the idea that the West is hostile to Islam, which is most vociferously promoted by the West’s own blob-fearing chattering classes.

So the Sydney siege – or the Lindt event, rather – shines a light on the extent to which modern public debate is really just a clash of fears, a struggle between different breeds of panic. The debate doing the rounds is pretty much: ‘What’s more terrifying: Islamofascism or Islamophobia? Muslim wolves or mass idiots?’ A better question to ask would be this: why is our first response to even small acts of violence always fear rather than defiance and simply carrying on with life exactly as it was the day before one guy with a grudge decided to do something wicked?

Brendan O’Neill is editor of spiked.

[Whitehall_Bin_Men]

http://www.globalresearch.ca/australian-government-exploits-sydney-sie ge-to-advance-war-on-terror/5420757

[outsider]

The "Shape-Shifting Sheik" and the "Sydney Siege":
http://landdestroyer.blogspot.co.uk/2014/12/the-shape-shifting-sheik-a nd-sydney.html

'The "Shape-Shifting Sheik" and the "Sydney Siege"
Suspect had multiple aliases, granted political asylum by Australian government, interviewed by Australian media, spent years as fake pro-Western "Shia'a cleric" condemning Iran and Syria before recently "converting" to Sunni and supporting ISIS.

December 16, 2014 (Tony Cartalucci - LD) - Another embarrassing chapter has unfolded for Western intelligence and security communities in the wake of the so-called "Sydney Siege." The suspect named by the media as "Man Haron Monis" also has gone by the names "Manteghi Boroujerdi" and "Mohammad Hassan Manteghi" and was an individual now confirmed to have long been on the radar of the Australian government, media, law enforcement, and court system since his arrival on Australian shores almost two decades ago.

Claiming he was a "lone wolf" attacker whose violence and extremism could not have been foreseen is betrayed by an extensive criminal record including murder, preceded by the suspicious circumstances that brought him to Australia to begin with.

Two-Decades in the Spotlight

He fled Iran in 1996 for unknown reasons, claiming in a 2001 Australian ABC interview that he was formerly of Iran's "Ministry of Intelligence and Security." He claimed in the same interview to have been in contact with the UN about "secret information" he had regarding the Iranian government.

The 2001 interview titled, "New Cardinals for Rome, George Bush, Muslims in Australia," as part of ABC's "Religion Report," quoted Boroujerdi/Monis/Manteghi as claiming:

In Iran, mostly I have been involved with the Ministry of Intelligence and Security.
And that:

the Iranian regime wants to make me silent, because I have some secret information about government, and about their terrorist operations in the war. I sent a letter to the Secretary-General of the United Nations and somebody on behalf of Mr Kofi Anan sent the answer, and they want to do something.
He would also profess his love for the West, and in particular his belief that the US, Canada, the UK, and Australia in particular were "religious societies" claiming:

If we explain about the meaning of the word 'Islamic' as a religious society, if we say Islamic society is a religious society, and a society which has a relation with God, and wants to be honest, we can say Australia, Canada, England, USA, so many western countries, they are religious societies. They don't say 'We are religious', but in fact the spirit of religion, we can see the spirit of religion in these societies. And some other countries in the Middle East, in Asia, they say 'We are Islamic' they have a name of Islamic, but in fact they are not religious societies and religious governments.
Whenever I walk in the street, whenever I go out in Australia, I feel I am in a real religious society. I don't want to say it is perfect, we don't have a perfect society on the earth, but when we compare, if we compare Australia with Iran and other countries in the Middle East, we can say it is heaven.
ABC itself introduced Boroujerdi/Monis/Manteghi as follows:

People in Sydney walking past the State Parliament buildings on Macquarie Street in recent weeks might have noticed a tall Muslim cleric who has taken up residence in a tent on the footpath outside. He is Ayatollah Manteghi Boroujerdi, a liberal cleric who fled Iran four years ago after being very critical of the Iranian regime. Ayatollah Boroujerdi's wife and two daughters are now under house arrest in Iran, and he's hoping the Howard government will put pressure on the regime there to let his family join him here in Australia.
Far from an extremist - Boroujerdi/Monis/Manteghi instead posed as the perfect poster child for the ongoing anti-Iran, pro-war propaganda building at the time - propaganda that continues to this very day and is an integral part of current efforts to overthrow both the Syrian and Iranian governments.

He was a "liberal Iranian" fleeing the "Iranian regime" who held his family "hostage." He professed his admiration of Western society and praised it as "heaven." "Heavenly" could have also described his propaganda value to the West at the time.

The Shape-Shifting Sheik
Over the years, however, Boroujerdi/Monis/Manteghi would shape-shift, coincidentally along the same unsavory lines Western pro-war rhetoric shifted - first by helping discredit anti-war sentiment in Australia by sending abusive letters to the families of fallen soldiers, then discrediting Islam itself through cartoonish acts of rhetorical extremism. And just like a shape-shifter, the character Boroujerdi/Monis/Manteghi would don many different costumes.

At times he would appear as a secular liberal dressed in Western, if not outdated attire, at other times a "Shai'a cleric" wearing traditional robes. Most recently, to help sow ISIS hysteria, he impersonated an ISIS supporter, claiming to have "converted to Sunni Islam" a month ago, wearing Wahabi-inspired terrorist attire. And in his final act amid the "Sydney Siege," he would produce the flag often carried by Al Qaeda affiliate Al Nusra in Syria - a terrorist front that has in fact drawn many Australian's from Sydney over the course of the recent Syrian war.

His alleged ideological causes were as contradictory as his attire. First claiming for years to be a pro-Western "liberal Shia'a," dressed as a Shia'a cleric, his recent shift to supporting ISIS terrorists would mean he was backing a terrorist front of Wahabists - enemies of Iran and the Shai'a communities across the entire Muslim World that depend on Tehran for protection. It would also mean he was adopting an ideology that at least rhetorically claims to stand in complete opposition to the West he had previously claimed to admire.

While Australian authorities seemed perfectly comfortable with Boroujerdi/Monis/Manteghi's continuously disruptive behavior, genuine leaders across Australia's Muslim community implored the Australian government to investigate him. In a 2008 Australian article titled, "Call to probe mystery Shia cleric," it was reported that:

FEDERAL agents have been urged by the nation's senior Shia leader, Kamal Mousselmani, to investigate an Iranian man purporting to be a prominent Islamic cleric.
Sheik Mousselmani told The Australian yesterday the mystery cleric - who has been identified as Ayatollah Manteghi Boroujerdi on his website after appearing under the name Sheik Haron - was not a genuine Shia spiritual leader.
He said there were no ayatollahs - supreme Shia scholars - in Australia and none of his fellow spiritual leaders knew who Ayatollah Boroujerdi or Sheik Haron was.
"We don't know him and we have got nothing to do with him," Sheik Mousselmani said. "The federal police should investigate who he is. It should be their responsibility."
What could have possibly motivated the Australian government to continue giving a clear and persistent menace to society free reign?

The Current Narrative Doesn't Add Up

It could be argued that Boroujerdi/Monis/Manteghi was mentally unstable, and the New York Times in an article titled, "Gunman in Sydney Had Long History of Run-Ins With the Law," would even claim Iran itself warned of his mental instability stating:

The state-run Iranian news agency, Fars, quoted a Foreign Ministry spokeswoman, Marziyeh Afkham, as saying that it had warned the Australian authorities about Mr. Monis.
“The history and mental-psychological conditions of this individual, who sought political asylum in Australia more than two decades ago, had been discussed with Australian authorities many times,” Ms. Afkham was quoted as saying.
However, were that the case, and had Iran warned Australian authorities of this man, one wonders why he would be allowed political asylum in the first place, let alone allowed to occupy the spotlight amid Australia's divisive political landscape for so long, especially in light of his many alleged criminal offenses.

Considering the global surveillance state Australia finds itself a willing partner in, how is it possible to claim Boroujerdi/Monis/Manteghi was a "lone wolf" terrorist? Surely if Australians are being surveilled without probable cause, so too was Boroujerdi/Monis/Manteghi, and yet he was apparently able to obtain weapons, travel freely with them, all while publicly supporting terrorist organizations including ISIS.

Vox Media would report in its article, "Sydney hostage taker Man Haron Monis pledged allegiance to ISIS on his website," that:

According to a portion of his now-deleted website (which you can see here) ... Monis pledged allegiance to ISIS before the attack.
Vox would go on to cite Washington-based Neo-Conservative pro-war, anti-Iranian think-tank, the Foundation for the Defense of Democracy (FDD) to claim Boroujerdi/Monis/Manteghi had no ties to ISIS and that he was simply a "fruitcake." No evidence was provided.

However, this "fruitcake" was credible enough to be granted political asylum by the Australian government in 1996, credible enough to serve the West's propaganda campaign against Iran in 2001, and then play along with the West's coordinated strategy of tension designed to discredit anti-war sentiment during Australia's participation in the invasion and occupation of Afghanistan, and more recently ratchet up anti-Islamic sentiment and help justify continued Western military intervention in nations like Syria and Iran against which both Boroujerdi/Monis/Manteghi and the FDD are/were clearly opposed to.

In fact, if unable to convince Australians to back "liberals" like himself in opposition to the Iranian government, perhaps he and his handlers felt posing as an extremist to provoke support for direct military intervention in Syria and in turn, Iran, was the next best bet.

One thing is for sure, for a man in Australia's political and legal spotlight either for good or for bad for nearly two decades, it is highly unlikely he was able to put together this plot without Australian security and intelligence agents knowing. After several recent "anti-terror" operations carried out across Sydney based on intercepted communication, why hadn't federal agents also visited a suspected murderer openly pledging allegiance to ISIS?

The Western media's eagerness to dismiss Boroujerdi/Monis/Manteghi's actions amid the "Sydney Siege" before a full investigation reeks of a cover-up and whatever the truth may be - what is being insisted upon by the media, government, and corporate-funded think-tanks now certainly isn't it.'


Yes, the West's 'Strategy of Tension', indeed. I'm afraid Australian Govt/Military/Police, 'Security' Services etc are just as Luciferian as UK's and US's. There are pictures in the link.