© EPAMan Haron Monis was no stranger to the Australian media and general public prior to the events at Martin Place. Was the public being primed to accept Monis as some kind of terrorist by virtue of his well known rantings and high-profile court appearances?
From the outset of the police siege in central Sydney on December 15 - 16, the response of the federal and state governments was based on a lie: that hostage-taking by a lone gunman in the Lindt café constituted a national "terrorism" crisis justifying the activation of the entire counterterrorism apparatus and the deployment of thousands of police, not only in Sydney, but other major cities around Australia.
The lie serves a definite political purpose. On December 17, Prime Minister Tony Abbott announced a joint review with the state government of New South Wales (NSW), not to investigate what had taken place, but to focus entirely on the hostage-taker Man Haron Monis as the pretext for deeper inroads into basic democratic and social rights. The incident is also being exploited to justify Australian involvement in Washington's predatory new "war on terror" in the Middle East against Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) militias.
However, the official story of the Sydney siege is riddled with discrepancies and contradictions and has provoked widespread suspicion and questioning. In response, Abbott sought to maintain the atmosphere of fear and hysteria, declaring on Tuesday that there had been "a heightened level of terrorist chatter." The tragic death of two innocent hostages has been mercilessly exploited to construct an image of a nation under siege coming together and thereby to render any criticism of the police and government illegitimate.
A massive cover-up is underway to whitewash the actions of the governments, the police and intelligence agencies. The extraordinary regime of censorship imposed during the 16-hour standoff at the Lindt café has continued. There is no official account, even in outline, of what took place during the siege or its tragic denouement. In the early hours of December 16, heavily-armed paramilitary police stormed the café, leaving Monis and two hostages - Katrina Dawson, a barrister and mother of three, and café manager Tori Johnson - dead.
Comment: It's past time Israel began demolishing its illegal settlements (ALL of them) and showing that it is a country bound by the "rule of law" (a buzzword bandied about by the West in relation to countries it doesn't like, but one which certainly doesn't apply to criminal Israel). But how realistic is it to expect the psychopaths ruling Israel to do something right? Is it possible that world opinion will eventually have an effect on Israeli leadership, or would they rather take the world down with them rather than show a shred of human decency?