Sydney Hostage Siege Unfolding

[Paul Rigby]

Cui bono? Why 12-15 Was an Inside Job

by N Wahid Azal

Posted on December 30, 2014

Centre for Syncretic Studies

http://syncreticstudies.com/2014/12/30/c...nside-job/

The Australian deep state, manufacturing domestic consent, gearing for a future war with Iran, fueling Islamophobia, the patsy "mad sheikh" Man Haron Monis and the Lindt café siege

…An act of terror generally…[is]…capable of rippling waves of public indignation, and accordingly provides the adversarial faction(s) with the pretext for commencing war. Recruiting terrorists never seems a problem: these appear at the basic level to be a loose collection of desperadoes, who end up being easily trained, provisioned, and oriented by the undercover intelligence services…

In general, the art of terror entails the (state's) underground promotion of a fractious grouping: say, an ethnic army of liberation,' or a radical militia…Meanwhile the higher levels of this conspiratorial franchise feature a mix of intelligence officers in charge of disinformation, organization and cover-up, and hired consultants' themselves intelligence officers on loan' from other state agencies, foreign and otherwise, or former soldiers of fortune, whose expertise runs the gamut of recruitment, financial shuffle, subversive methods and like techniques of destabilization.

In the simplest configurations, the subterranean instruction of the terrorist cell' by the state's secret services is part of a maneuver aimed at implicating this phantom organization' into a more or less spectacular act of sabotage. Sabotage either against the state itself, or against the targeted enemy', that is, a nation whose ruling clans are to be antagonized by the terrorist recruits in the name of ethnic or religious rivalry. In the first case, while the wounded government in the vengeful heat of retaliation clamps down on the terrorists,' a variety of prearranged ends, all congruent in point of social control and surveillance, is swiftly implemented.

Guido Giacomo Preparata, Conjuring Hitler: How Britain and America made the Third Reich, London, 2005, 20-1.

Nothing about the official Australian story regarding the sixteen hour Lindt café siege that occurred in Martin Place, the Sydney CBD, on Monday, 15 December 2014[1] makes any sense. All the elements making up its "official" narrative have been so clumsily cobbled together, are so blatantly inconsistent, embarrassingly porous, conceitedly fake and outright contrived yet simultaneously so obviously orchestrated and staged that to believe in the official corporate presstitute MSM line (or, rather, lies) about any of it requires a total suspension of belief, not to mention reason. As demonstrated in subsequent days, the only level at which this story maintains any level of consistency (albeit, still without any actual credibility) is on the level of the memeocracy[2] itself, which is to say on the level of hype, wilful misinformation and disinformation perpetrated by the Australian corporate state's propaganda apparatus which in this case are the duopoly of the Fairfax Media group[3] controlled by Australian mining queen Gina Rinehart[4] and Rupert Murdoch's News Corp Australia (formerly News Limited).[5]

This whole debacle, even before it began, maintains all the classic hallmarks of a false-flag staged by powerful, behind the scenes interests within Australia itself; namely, the entrenched Australian plutocracy which together with the Australian intelligence establishment (particularly ASIO)[6] and assorted powerful Zionist lobbies[7] and organizations properly constitute the unelected Australian deep state'. This is the main constituency that practically installed the current Liberal-National Coalition party (Tory art-Abbott_Parliament-620x349conservative) government of Tony Abbott on 7 September 2013 and has stood behind this government's nasty culture wars, its draconian (even criminal) anti-asylum policy, as well as, above all, its policies of economic neo-liberalization on steroids and casino-type deregulations solely benefiting the corporatocracy. However hastily concocted and clumsily executed, perhaps due to an urgency of some sort, nevertheless it appears that this false-flag was undertaken by the Australian deep state with intent in order to clear several decks. That a counter-terrorism training exercise was conducted by the Australian Defence Force in Martin Place, the Sydney CBD in May 2013 only bolsters the case for the staged nature of 12-15 and that something had already been planned by the system long before.[8]

12-15 could also not have come at a more opportune time for the Abbott government whose electoral fortunes have been consistently sinking in the polls ever since (and even before) it handed down its May 2014 national budget; a situation increasingly going from bad to worse with each fortnightly electronic polling result revealing a palpable sense of genuine hatred rising among significant portions of the Australian electorate for the Abbott government: an electorate who only fourteen months prior could not get rid of the former Rudd-Gillard-Rudd ALP (Labour) government fast enough, itself plagued by rotating leaderships, paralysing internal destabilization and electoral back-flips.

In fact, on the very same day that this spectacle unfolded, Abbott government Treasurer Joe Hockey was to release his mid-year economic report that reveals the Australian national budget deficit to be a further $100 billion AUD in the black than anticipated back in May 2014.[9] Had the Lindt café siege not occurred, most certainly this would be the issue dominating the news cycle and its headlines in Australia on that specific day. On that score alone, the "mad sheikh" Man Haron Monis threw the Abbott government a providential life-line (a veritable life-raft, to be sure) to its fast sinking electoral fortunes. But this hasn't been the first occasion that "Muslim extremism" and the threat of home-grown "Islamic terrorism" have salvaged the Abbott's government's declining fortunes in the past fourteen months of its term so far.[10] It was merely the most publicized and most hyped of such occurrences yet, and one thoroughly capitalized and milked for every last contrived element of it by the Australian deep state establishment and its chief estates, particularly the Australian corporate presstitute media.

Besides the strategic consensus building exercise this event was designed to be for purposes of shoring up official justifications for future "interventions" and wars in the Middle East (together with the expected enactment of tougher, more punitive "anti-terror" security measures to follow), there are other background and noteworthy elements to this story that further reveal its transparently orchestrated nature: issues which pundits so far have not given adequate attention to. Indeed 12-15 has been a literal gift from heaven on a whole litany of issues to the Australian deep state establishment and the Abbott government specifically, and this is why none can take the MSM's official narrative seriously. As the old Persian adage goes, the tail of the rooster shows.

For example, the public distraction role these events of 12-15 may have played in diverting attention from the Australian government and corporatocracy's ongoing secret negotiations in the Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement (TPP)[11] - the greater Pacific region's version of the Transatlantic Free Trade Agreement (TAFTA),[12] both of which are effectively ceding state sovereignty and rights over to globalist corporatocracy and its looting - is something that will certainly need to be explored more fully in the near future. Although nothing is apparent online as yet palpably demonstrating as much, some are however privately speculating as to whether something important having to do with the TPP was occurring in mid-December 2014 (on or just after the event) and which may have prompted the Australian deep state to orchestrate the events of 12-15 during this time. Watch this space, but no need to point out that any false-flag event that would predictably beef-up the surveillance state and increase court and government gag order powers would certainly help the plutocrats and their government lackeys who are deeply engaged in this process and who wish to continue keeping both its ongoing negotiations as well as its provisions secret.

Now, given Australia's role on the geopolitical front as the Empire's stooge, as a specifically Iranian refugee who left Iran in 1996 under questionable circumstances and was granted asylum in Australia in 2001 under even more questionable circumstances; Man Haron Monis' role in 12-15 provides the perfect justification (dare one say, ploy) for the Australian establishment to now begin smearing Iran more aggressively than ever before, even though Australia and Iran officially maintain diplomatic relations and there is an Iranian embassy in Canberra, ACT. No need to mention that on one level this all has the stench of similar developments in Canada during 2011-2012 and appears to be following a script straight from the Stephen Harper playbook in 2012 when his Canadian conservative government unilaterally cut off all diplomatic relations with Iran, closing down the embassy of the Islamic Republic of Iran in Ottawa and expelling all diplomatic staff for totally bogus, trumped up reasons and with obvious and deliberate Zionist engineering.[13] But more than the Islamic Republic of Iran itself, the immediate target here is more explicitly Iranian asylum seekers and especially those incarcerated in processing and detention facilities on the island nation of Nauru or Papua New Guinea's Manus island. Tangentially, and possibly in the long term, such a target may also include the relatively well integrated, successful and materially affluent immigrant Iranian-Australian community itself as a whole.

Up until now, usually the targets of either the social Islamophobia of those racist "bogan" Australians, or official police and security probes and raids, have been Arab, South-Asian, some Turkish, Sudanese, Bosnian and Albanian Muslim immigrant communities with some white converts here and there (all generally Sunnī by creed and always Salafī/Wahhabī). As of 12-15 this has now been augmented and implicitly extended to also include Iranians, where an engineered and manufactured consensus-building exercise casting suspicion on Iranians and Shiʿi Muslims alike is presently in the works; this, irrespective of the fact that Australian Shiʿi Muslims have themselves been victims of hate-crime attacks perpetrated by local Sunnī takfīrī extremists in Sydney and elsewhere as recently as the 2014 commemorations for the Shiʿi holy day of ʿAshūrā.[14] Moreover, while Iranian immigrant communities (other than the now single case of Man Haron Monis), including religious ones, have more or less remained distant and aloof from the circumstances, conflicts and politics plaguing other Australian Muslim immigrant communities many of whose internal circumstances and mosque cultures have produced such hotbeds for "extremist" recruitment and activity this will not stop them from being cast in a negative light from here on out by the system as of 12-15.

The figure of Man Haron Monis, now elevated to the official personfication of evil' meme, allows the Australian deep state and the Abbott government specifically to smokescreen and shift the Australian public's attention and further whitewash the deplorable, criminally inhumane conditions Iranian asylum-seeking refugees presently face within these island detention facilities, not to mention having to answer any further for the 1418688714248publicized case of Hamid Kehazaei[15] or similar. 12-15 has provided the Abbott government just such a perfect foil, and so the implied justification for a wider cover-up by giving it this golden opportunity it otherwise would not have possessed in order to implicitly cast all of these Iranian asylum seekers as being potential Man Haron Monis'. Here the present government or its supporters would not even need to articulate anything explicitly because these orchestrated events (as reinforced by the corporate media spin) have already seeded such notions into the greater mainstream Australian collective conscience. By extension, all immigrant Iranians in Australia (guilty by ethnic' and national' association) have likewise been made suspect as well here, implied scapegoats, as it were; and one will have to watch closely from now on to see how such manufactured hysteria and Iranophobia will be further cultivated by the Australian corporate media. There is ample evidence of it already as some of the stories being put out as of the week of 22 December 2013 by the MSM amply demonstrate.

Yet the deliberate and quite transparent social engineering going on is quite unmistakable, nor can a straightforward causality implicating the Australian deep state be denied since it ultimately benefits from such polarization within the greater Australian polity, as the past decade and a half has abundantly shown. Indeed an action-reaction-solution dialectic is palpably at play here, and one which can be easily graphed and mapped out. That the event has already claimed the political scalp of a prominent New South Wales state parliamentary leader also speaks to it.[16]

The long-term benefit to the Australian deep state lies especially in the event of a future build-up to a war with Iran which Australia, as a key Five-Eyes Transatlantic partner of the United States in the southern Pacific (and as recent conflicts from Afghanistan to Iraq have amply demonstrated), would certainly participate in. 12-15 allows the Australian establishment to draw upon the event, together with the predictable mythos they are presently erecting around it, in order to galvanize future domestic public opinion in order to sell such a conflict to the wider Australian masses. This manufactured consent would seek to further demonize Iran and Iranians (both domestically and overseas), while simultaneously muting or otherwise dampening anti-war sentiments against that segment of the Australian population who would likely dissent and protest - and particularly if there happened to be any outspoken Iranian-Australians amongst such future dissenters, where the official narrative about Man Haron Monis would be conveniently trotted out in order to serve as a means to discredit them with the mainstream, if even by innuendo.

Some of the questionable stories the MSM has put out, such as Man Haron Monis' purported connection to the Iranian military, security and intelligence establishment, or those claiming his association with the founders of the Islamic Revolution and members of the government of the Islamic Republic of Iran, are solid proof of what we say.[17] Such evidently fake stories are being solely put out for purposes of a manufactured consensus building exercise targeting Iran. One correspondent privately pointed out to us in email that with 12-15 there is every indication that something is actually afoot and may be building up behind the scenes against Iran as we speak such that this event constituted a sort of domestically manufactured casus belli, as it were, that others elsewhere can also draw upon (private communication, 17 December 2014).

Moreover, given Man Haron Monis' public antics over Australia's military involvement in both Afghanistan and Iraq in the last decade, and especially the publicity stunt and brouhaha in 2007-2008 over his inflammatory letters to the families of Australian servicemen killed in Afghanistan;[18] it would appear that if the Australian establishment had not succeeded in generally de-legitimizing dissenting opinions at home regarding Australia's involvement among a greater mass of its electorate up to that point (particularly as it has now re-entered the fray in Iraq once again, this time to fight ISIS), they very well may have succeeded now after 12-15. Anything with even a whiff of protest or dissent regarding Australia's former involvement in the Empire's wars in Afghanistan and Iraq (and now Iraq once again) will henceforth be opportunistically seized by the establishment and its media agents against such dissent, with projections of the ghost of Man Haron Monis following suit whose manufactured' shadow is now made to hang long over any such criticisms. Given how the Australian establishment has behaved in the past in other scenarios, it is not difficult to predict their future behaviour here either.

Now let us turn to the dubious character of the "mad sheikh" Man Haron Monis himself. But first let us say that rarely does one come across a better typecast for a proverbial "useful idiot" or patsy better than he was. If he was indeed mentally ill, as all indications lead one to believe, then it makes the case for his useful idiocy and patsy status all that more compelling, not to mention visible. But a few things about this patsy's biography currently circulating in the Australian and global MSM need to be addressed and ruled out before proceeding further. Some of these stories put out by the Australian media are without any doubt carefully constructed sleights of hand and discursive subterfuges planted by the Australian deep state itself whilst attempting to deliberately smokescreen and muddy waters while shifting blame from the real culprits, who are none other than the Australian intelligence agencies, and ASIO specifically.

(1) Man Haron Monis was unlikely to have been an Iranian Intelligence officer, or even an asset, before he left Iran in 1996.[19] Arguably this idea would have first been incubated by Man Haron Monis' ASIO handlers for use at a later time. It first appeared in his media biography in the 2001-2002 period when the Iranian government began asking for his extradition back to Iran to face criminal fraud and embezzlement charges. (2) Whatever being claimed by dubious sources after the fact, there is no evidence now, nor previous to 12-15, that Man Haron Monis was ever an eminent figure in the Islamic Republic of Iran well connected to the founders of the Islamic Revolution or anyone high-up in the government over there.[20] Had this been the case, then the Australian establishment would have certainly known about it in the 1996-2001 period during his asylum application process. This feature alone would also have been an indelible part of his media biography in 2001-2002 when Australian authorities and media first paraded him nationally as some kind of "reformist Ayatollah" taking asylum in Australia from persecution in the Islamic Republic of Iran;[21] but it has only been in the week after 12-15 that we have first heard anything about it at all, which in itself discredits any veracity to the story. (3) Man Haron Monis was not a seminary trained Shiʿi cleric, let alone an Ayatollah. At only 32 when he left Iran in 1996 he was far too young to be an Ayatollah, nor did he author a major, independent treatise on Shiʿi jurisprudence recognized by other Ayatollahs in the Shiʿi seminary system (hawza) in order to qualify for the rank. In fact, not one shred of evidence has ever been put forward showing Man Haron Monis even spent a single day in the religious seminary in Iran. (4) It is questionable whether Man Haron Monis first came to Australia in 1996 on a business visa and then obtained asylum. Up until 19 December 2014 this matter had never been mentioned as a feature of his official biography at all.[22] If true, bureaucratic bungling or oversight in no way explains it.[23] Watch now as the Australian government uses this issue as a pretext to place even more draconian visa restrictions on Iranians legitimately travelling to or doing business with Australia.

Born 19 May 1964, currently nothing is known about the early life of Mohamad Hassan Manteghi Borujerdi, our mad sheikh. According to Persian language sources, on the very same year of its establishment, in 1982 he enrolled at Imām Ṣādiq University in Tehran as an entering undergraduate.[24] Towards the conclusion of his graduate studies for a Masters degree, he was expelled from the university due to mental health issues. During this time he married the daughter of one of the university administrators before separating from her some time later. It was only after he had already left Iran when this woman obtained court dissolution of their marriage on grounds of absence.[25] In 1996 Mohamad Hassan Manteghi Borujerdi fled Iran for Australia after embezzling two-hundred thousand US dollars (U$200,000.00) from a travel agency he had set up. In 2001 Australia granted him political asylum. Based on what documented evidence this asylum was granted, we will never know, but it probably would have come with some help from Iranian opposition groups such as the MEK/MKO, who would have certainly helped him with his manufactured profile[26] (and who are known to be working under the thumb of ASIO within Australia), not to mention the Bahā'īs who are deeply entrenched within some of the upper echelons of the Australian system and particularly its high level Commonwealth government bureaucracies and security agencies, and who have their own axe to grind with the Iranian government.[27] And so began his rather bizarre, sordid and shady public career in Australia as first an establishment saint and then finally an establishment demon, solid testimony to the mutual psychosis of subject and patron alike.

At this very early juncture, and before he was officially granted asylum, Iran began requesting his extradition, but the Australians refused on grounds that they had no extradition treaty with Iran.[28] The deep state's management of their puppet-in-the-making at that time demonstratively did not appear to care one iota for the pre-existing criminal background of Man Haron Monis in Iran itself. According to Iranian Chief of Police Brigadier General Esmail Ahmadi Moqadam, Man Haron Monis possessed a long and dark history of violent crime and fraud in Iran, and that he had first fled to Malaysia before coming to Australia.[29] Moqadam further revealed that Iranian authorities had provided all of Man Haron Monis' criminal file to Australian authorities during the four years while his application was in process all the way to his being given formal political asylum by the Australians in 2001.[30] The Iranians additionally revealed that they had submitted international warrants for his arrest via Interpol,[31] which the Australians also knew about and ignored. Australian authorities simply waved away all of these, thus bolstering the case further that for them Man Haron Monis constituted a person of interest whose sordid background in Iran did not bother them in the least. In fact, it may have even helped him get his political asylum given the potential' they found in the figure of Man Haron Monis.

In these first years, particularly during the 2001-2002 period, Man Haron Monis was paraded by Australian authorities and the media as a pro-Western religious renegade (whose family in Iran, he claimed, were being detained by the Iranian government because of his flight and political dissidence). The implied meme at that time about him was that he was a political asset to the Empire's early stages of crafting its assault upon one of the members of its designated "Axis of Evil," or as Tony Cartalucci aptly put it as "…the perfect poster child for the ongoing anti-Iran, pro-war propaganda…"[32] Seven and a half months before 911, the Australian Broadcasting Association (ABC) introduced him to the wider public in these terms:

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.[33]

In this interview, Man Haron Monis, prompted parrot-fashion, says:

…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…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.[34]

Of course, as far as this specific public profile and meme was concerned, such a honeymoon oozing with platitudes was to be short-lived as the expendable nature of Man Haron Monis (due perhaps to his erratic, loose-canon behaviour and mental health issues) became more apparent to his ASIO handlers. So now he would be used and built up by the Australian deep state for future use in a much more sinister capacity, blackmailing him to play such a role being the easiest part. 911 and Australia's entry into both the Afghan and Iraqi theatres provided the means for just such an opportunity.

We should now note that one motivation by the Australian deep state for this back and forth, moderate-extremist dialectic displayed in the choreographed public portrayal and presentation of Man Haron Monis was an attempt by them to nullify all typologies of the "moderate Muslim" or "moderate Islam" in the mainstream Australian public's consciousness in order thereby to conflate all Islamic persuasions under the single and convenient rubric of "extremist;" this, while simultaneously pushing the mainstream of the Australian Muslim community into a position of increasing servility towards the system's policies and its involvement in the Empire's wars, blunting its discourse of dissent lest they be branded with the "extremist" moniker, thereby pushing large segments of this community and their leadership into a state of social and political (and dare one say, paralytic) acquiescence in the face of starker realities. In other words, albeit subtle, we are dealing with a very sophisticated and multifaceted system of institutional blackmail of an entire religious and immigrant community. Such are the classic divide, conquer and control strategies and tactics perfected and employed by the imperial British colonial presence which indigenous Aboriginal Australians know all too well in their own experience.

Nevertheless this in itself reveals the social engineering mechanisms at play behind the Islamophobia in Australia and how the system ultimately benefits from it together with those powerful Australian Zionist lobbies and organizations fueling it from both the background as well as within the corporate media establishment wherein the system succeeds simultaneously in both muzzling the Australian Muslim community from engaging in real activism as well as pummelling it (in demonizing it further in the media and public opinion) if it should protest over anything. In other words, this is the Australian corporate state's aggressive mechanism of foisting a panopticon reality over the Australian Muslim community where only two options remain to it: silence or opprobrium. Such a reality, which naturally elicits serious resentment among certain segments of this community, then inevitably generates the necessary fertile environment for "extremist" preaching and recruitment, to which the system in one way or another also then becomes the beneficiary. Throughout every phase and facet of this process the system itself, of course, while always present in the background, maintains its plausible deniability.

Let us now fast forward to the next phase of our mad sheikh's Australian career. Publicly protesting on the streets of Sydney in dramatic fashion, and as Australia's own role in the Empire's wars in Afghanistan and Iraq increased, in the period between 2007 and 2008 Man Haron Monis re-emerged into the Australian media spotlight, this time as a bad guy, after authoring, together with partner Amirah Droudis, a series of inflammatory letters which were sent to families of fallen Australian soldiers in Afghanistan. In these letters he described the soldiers as "murderers" and "pigs" whilst simultaneously urging these families to call on the Australian government to leave the Empire's war in Afghanistan and bring home the troops.[35] This cause celebre further enflamed the ever rising Islamophobia in Australia at the time, whose flames are ever carefully stoked and facilitated by the Australian deep state at each juncture. But no one publicly challenged a key aspect to this narrative by asking the pertinent question as to how he and his partner so easily obtained these contact details in the first place? Why has this facet of the story been accepted as a given?

Withal, Man Haron Monis' new profile as a "dangerous Islamic extremist" (directly opposite to the choreographed profile his handlers had constructed for him only seven years before) was now in full swing, with him still in character playing the role of an Iranian Shiʿi cleric no less. We should also pause and draw the appropriate parallel here with Lee Harvey Oswald and his passing out pro-Cuban, pro-Communist pamphlets in the streets of New Orleans, Louisiana just a few months before the Kennedy assassination. Here Man Haron Monis' public antics are to the events of 12-15 what Lee Harvey Oswald's pamphleteering was to the events of 22 November 1963.[36]

These antics by Man Haron Monis earned him expected trouble with the Australian law enforcement and legal system as well as the predictable widespread media opprobrium[37] which in turn further stirred existing community tensions (particularly coming on the heels of the Cronulla riots of 2005[38]), muddying waters even further between the mainstream Australian and Australian-Muslim communities; this, with Australian Muslim community leaders being increasingly pushed into unenviable defensive positions of having to explain (or even sometimes grudgingly forced to defend and justify or otherwise dissimulate) Man Haron Monis' actions and behaviour at the time, since condemning him outright would compromise their own stance against Australia's involvement in Iraq and Afghanistan, where fellow Muslims (and not even combatant Muslims) where being butchered or brutalized daily by the Empire's onslaughts, evidence then constantly emerging regarding the Empire's unmitigated war crimes in both the Iraqi and Afghan theatres (the revelations about prisoner abuses at Abu Ghraib was already a fixture of the public discourse at this point). Yet, to reiterate, and as events showed, none but the social engineers of the Australian deep state benefitted from these specific actions of Man Haron Monis, and arguably they may even have put him and his partner up to it in the first place.

Yet it was also in this very same period when Australian Shiʿi Muslim leaders, led by senior cleric Kamal Mousselmani (then head of the Supreme Islamic Shiʿite Council of Australia[39]), began publicly questioning Man Haron Monis' official narrative about himself and his credentials as an Iranian Shiʿi cleric specifically, calling upon Australian authorities, and the Australian Federal Police (AFP) particularly, to conduct an official inquiry regarding such claims.[40] Kamal Mousselmani stated to a correspondent of The Australian that "there are no Ayatollahs in Australia" and that "…From the way he [Man Haron Monis] writes his (fatwas or religious edicts), I don't think he is Shia Muslim…"[41]

The matter was even separately investigated by the Australian Federation of Islamic Councils, a mainly Sunnī body, who could find no credible information as to the real identity, credentials or background of "sheikh Haron."[42] Even though Man Haron Monis now found himself in the middle of a highly publicized legal and political battle over his inflammatory letters, no inquiry or official investigation into this aspect of his official biography was ever forthcoming by Australian high officialdom, the reasons being obvious since they were responsible for creating it in the first place. Instead, as with earlier complaints by Iranian authorities during his asylum application process, they were roundly ignored. Interestingly enough, Ikebal Patel of the Australian Federation of Islamic Councils even called out Man Haron Monis as a possible shill whose antics were specifically being put up to stir anti-Islamic sentiments within the greater Australian community.[43]

Clearly, therefore, as of 2007 the Australian Muslim leadership, from both Sunnī and Shiʿi camps, were well aware of Man Haron Monis' true provocateur nature and so were on to him. This also demonstrates by implication that some within this community may have privately held suspicions that there were shadowy, behind the scenes players at work in Man Haron Monis' activities here. The silence and inaction of Australian authorities in properly investigating his purported religious credentials when called upon to do so would have only reinforced such notions even more firmly.

That said, in late November 2009 Man Haron Monis day in court over the inflammatory letters finally arrived. Through his lawyers he first described himself as being a "peace activist," and appearing in costume as the Iranian cleric, he then chained himself to the entrance of the court house to protest the charges.[44] The Sydney, New South Wales court predictably banned him from mailing further inflammatory missives, and clearly overstepping its jurisdiction, likewise banned him from communicating with UK families of fallen British soldiers.[45] Upon what legal basis or how a New South Wales court possesses any mandate to ban communication outside of its jurisdiction - a legality which would fall more appropriately either under the purview of an Australian Federal court or the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade - is another aspect of this narrative that makes little sense. To any legal expert, this alone suffuses this specific part of the spectacle with the element of farce. Yet Man Haron Monis' handlers would need this slant in the story in order to build up their narrative regarding Man Haron Monis' international level menace-hood, despite the fact that at this point of the story to any actual, objective observer of events Man Haron Monis appeared more as a clown than as any "international menace."

Predictably Man Haron Monis appealed the court's verdict to the New South Wales Court of Criminal Appeals in Sydney, maintaining that the charges brought against him "were invalid because they infringed on his implied constitutional freedom of political communication."[46] The appellate court, however, dismissed the appeal. Further appealing to the High Court of Australia, but due to the absence of a single judge, the High Court was split 3-3 and so the NSW appellate court's decision was automatically upheld.[47] Another, final appeal to the High Court of Australia over the charges of "his criminal use of the postal service" was rejected for a hearing by the court on 12 December 2014, only three days before the Lindt café siege.[48]

Now, where Man Haron Monis obtained the needed funding for such a lengthy, grinding and obviously expensive court battle is a question that will one day open up a whole pandora's box of answers directly implicating the Australian deep state puppeteering all sides of this public circus, since it appears our mad sheikh's main source of income was actually as a social security welfare recipient.[49] That aside, this gruelling process would have also taken its personal toll even further upon someone of Man Haron Monis' already volatile and generally unhinged psychological make-up. Arguably the system expected it and actively encouraged it because Man Haron Monis' essential use-by-date, the purpose for which he had been cultivated and groomed, and whose "extremist" persona had been incubated and ever carefully choreographed since 2007, was now beginning to approach.

This growing psychological meltdown on Man Haron Monis' part can be seen during this period especially in the events surrounding the murder of his ex-wife Noleen Hayson Pal in April 2013 where she was found stabbed to death and set on fire.[50] In December 2013 Man Haron Monis' partner Amirah Droudis[51] (a dubious character in her own right and possibly being the Australian deep state's very own infiltrated honey-pot) was formally charged with the murder, with Man Haron Monis charged in the capacity of an accessory before and after the fact.[52] During the bail hearing, taking a page from an earlier script, our mad sheikh first declared that he was being set-up for the murder by the Iranian intelligence apparatus who, he claimed, had actually committed the murder and were framing him.[53] When that was rejected by the court, he then blurted out that it was in fact ASIO who were responsible,[54] which is probably closer to the real truth of the matter given what we believe about the role of Amirah Droudis. While the court rejected both these arguments, inexplicably it granted bail to both Amirah Droudis and our mad sheikh: a convicted murderer and her purported companion-accessory in the murder, with both walking.

Later in January 2014, again appearing in court, Man Haron Monis this time declared that he had evidence that ASIO were "conspiring against him to have him jailed," urging the judge to force a legal disclosure of all documents about him by the intelligence organization, which the judge promptly indicated he did not have the power to do.[55] Yet here, on this point, we can take our mad sheikh's word for it about the actual responsible parties, albeit maybe not as to their specific intent. The patsy was now fully in loose cannon mode and so events needed to be brought ever closer to their denouement conclusion where the useful idiot would play his final, assigned role. While all the above was underway, in March 2014 our mad sheikh was now arrested, arraigned and then released over an incident from 2002 involving an alleged sexual assault of a woman who had responded to an add he had put in the local papers advertising his services as a "spiritual healer," where Man Haron Monis claimed to be an expert in "astrology, numerology, meditation and black magic."[56] In October 2014 further charges were laid against him over this including "22 counts of aggravated sexual assault and 14 counts of aggravated indecent assault," with six more women subsequently coming forward to make the same allegation against him.[57]

Clearly the system was putting the proverbial squeeze before the upcoming grand finale for which our mad sheikh had been groomed for some time. But with all of these serious criminal charges, convictions and court verdicts against him, it is utterly inexplicable to all reason, nay beyond comprehension, as to how a convicted criminal such as he would be allowed to roam and walk freely in any modern Western Anglo-American, Five-Eyes society, especially one in the post-911/post-Bali world: a man who was also a purported "controversial Muslim cleric" and deemed to be "extremist" by the system and corporate media establishment, no less. Any suggestions as to systemic oversight, bureaucratic failure or breakdowns is utterly preposterous, to say the least. No, that Man Haron Monis was not locked up in April 2013 (if even in December 2013) after the murder of his ex-wife is solid, irrefutable testimony to the fact that the Australian deep state possessed an agenda and had a direct hand in keeping him on the streets whilst preparing those necessary conditions before the main event when he would be unleashed for his final act in the play they were staging. This was their way of keeping him on a short leash and the manner in which they could simultaneously maintain their plausible deniability. And then, all of a sudden, to trudge up old allegations from 2002 (whether with a basis or without it, being tangential to the plot) from the period when he was the system's proverbial golden boy for their anti-Iranian war propaganda memes, further stretches credulity but also makes perfect sense to those who understand how these patterns unfold and how the deep state system predictably behaves at such junctures of the narrative.

So here now we enter the timeline on the eve of 12-15 itself. We should first note that forty-eight hours before the events at the Lindt café even got underway that is on Saturday, 13 December 2014 an anonymous tip-off to the Australian National Security hotline was made about the recent "extremist" content appearing on our mad sheikh's website.[58] Predictably authorities did nothing, demonstrating no intention or compunction whatsoever in picking him up, since that was not part of the plan. The anonymous caller had responded to recent changes made by our mad sheikh to his website only five days prior where just like that! he had dramatically renounced his lifelong Shiʿism (so much for being an Ayatollah!) and reverted to the radical, takfīrī Wahhabī Sunnīsm of the Islamic State (IS/ISIS/ISIL/Daesh), while (without mentioning him by name) in Arabic formally pledging allegiance to its CIA-MOSAD puppeteered "caliph" Abu Bakr al-Baghdadī, referring to him as the Commander of the Faithful (amīr al-mu'minīn).[59]

In English the reversion is even more explicit, where he says, "I used to be a Rafidi [i.e. the pejorative term in which Shiʿi Muslims are referred to by Sunnī fundamentalists], but not anymore. Now I am a Muslim, Alhamdu Lillah," dated December 2014. The die was finally cast and the "expected" event was about to unfold. What chain of events specifically set-off his reversion to takfīrī Wahhabī Sunnīsm, and then how this built into his decision to play his final, assigned role as the Lindt café hostage-taker - particularly what actors besides his honey-pot ASIO mole partner Amirah Droudis may have played a part will be a tale all unto itself. With rumours abounding for years that the Sydney Sunnī takfīrī scene is riddled with ASIO, AFB and other Australian law enforcement and intelligence moles and shills swelling its ranks from top to bottom, it is not difficult to envisage how this reversion may have transpired (and at whose hands) as the system geared up and formally put its final, anaconda-like death-coil-embrace around our mad sheikh where he was pushed to, and over, the breaking point and so had nothing more to lose. And yet his total psychological meltdown is fully in evidence at this point with his reversion and so why he would be even more malleable than ever (prone to suggestibility and outright psychological manipulation) in order to perform his assigned task in this defining, final act of these staged events. The only question which will always remain is what he thought to himself he was actually going to accomplish with these theatrics and whether he believed he would even survive the ordeal.

Reports being vague as to precisely when he appeared on the scene, at approximately 8:45-9:00am on the morning of Monday, 15 December 2014, Man Haron Monis had already stepped into the Lindt café in Martin Place, the Sydney CBD: an area with as many CCTV cameras in place as the most heavily surveillanced area of London, where local Channel 7 TV station security cameras from across the street had recorded a glimpse of our mad sheikh pacing up and down the area just minutes before he entered the premises.[60] With him, when finally entering the café, was a duffle bag with effects and, more lethally, a sawed off shot-gun. Where and how he had obtained the weapon, or whether he even knew how to use it, we do not know. Reports say when he entered Lindt café he first ordered himself a coffee and then sat quietly sipping it away before commencing the deep state orchestrated festivities that promptly unfolded next. By 9:45am the siege was already underway where clientele and staff were being held hostage in the Lindt café by our mad sheikh, with a black on white takfīrī flag (donning the calligraphic Arabic of "no god but God; Muḥammad is the Messenger of God") - used primarily by the Syrian al-Qaeda affiliate Jabhat al-Nuṣra and the Nigerian Boko Harām, among others - prominently displayed at the front window of the café for maximum dramatic effect.

Within a short space of time after the siege commenced heavily mobilized police with police military vehicles, together with the entire Sydney based Australian counter-terrorism taskforce, had arrived on the scene armed to the teeth surrounding the area. Then came the most bizarre feature of this story with our mad sheikh sending out video recorded messages from his hostages inside the café demanding the ISIS flag and a phone conversation with Tony Abbott while designating the siege an ISIS operation (a point which was promptly denounced as lacking any authorization by it).[61] Contradictory reports also said he had claimed at one point to have planted bombs in the area.

We will not recap all the remaining details and minutia of the siege, but as the hours tolled away and hostages began to be released, the hollywoodesque nature of this whole spectacle was not lost on some. This whole event had an eerie feel to it of Al Pacino's 1975 film Dog Day Afternoon' with the Black takfīrī flag and self-association with ISIS a substitute for the film's famous clarion call (invoking the Attica prison riot): "Attica, Attica!"[62]

As the hours wore on, with weariness obviously setting in with both hostage taker and remaining hostages alike, the zero-hour and moment of reckoning now arrived. Sixteen hours into the siege and the police finally stormed the premises clearing it and ending the siege in an obvious, one-way shooting spree, killing our mad sheikh and the two remaining 10884747_10152521951557927_990549908_nhostages in the café along with him. All of the reports emerging in the first few hours, however vaguely worded by the local news organizations, clearly but implicitly show that that the police did all the shooting,[63] thus making of the finale of this staged event nothing more than a police execution with hostages Katrina Dawson (38) and Tori Johnson (34) as collateral damage in a police killing spree. For example, the initial SBS report after the siege - which was later post-dated to 10:03am the next morning (16 December 2014) states: "Both hostages died when heavily armed police stormed the Martin Place cafe early this morning. The 50-year-old gunman, self-described Muslim cleric Man Haron Monis, was also killed."[64] All subsequent reports, however tortured their attempts in articulating transparent vagaries, have in so many words asserted the same.

With not a single statement or brief forthcoming by either local or national police, or by national counter-terrorism taskforce representatives or the state and national elected governments, about what actually transpired at the conclusion of the siege; on Sunday, 28 December 2014, local news organizations themselves began partially confirming the true locus of blame for the killings.[65] Given this, 12-15 was no terrorist event perpetrated by Man Haron Monis in the name of radical Islam at all. Indeed the event was a terrorist event, alright, except the real terrorist culprit would be the Australian deep state itself and its police and security apparatus staging a false-flag for ulterior motives while using the opportunity to permanently decommission and dispose of one of their own patsy assets.

To further add to this tragicomic farce, the next morning Tony Abbott was briefed by the Australian Federal Police (AFP) regarding Man Haron Monis' possession of a firearm license only to be contradicted by the New South Police some hours later where they unequivocally retorted that he had possessed no such license.[66] Clearly in all the post-fracas haste and hustle and bustle, and before the smoke had fully cleared, the various levels of the Australian deep state had gotten their wires crossed on key elements of their official story, which indicates a developing, albeit even clumsier, cover-up. More aptly, Peter Symonds, writing for Global Research, points out:

…As of today, neither the Abbott government nor the New South Wales (NSW) state authorities has provided any official explanation for, or account of, the police storming of the Lindt cafe. None of the many questions surrounding the decision to activate the entire counter-terrorism apparatus on Monday have been answered. Instead, following his "query" on Tuesday, Abbott announced a joint review with the NSW government on Wednesday…the Abbott government's review seeks to deflect attention from the central question that must be posed: why was a terrible, but relatively straightforward, police matter elevated to the status of a national emergency involving the entire security apparatus? The political purpose of that decision, like the review, is to inflate the "war on terror" in preparation for greater Australian commitment to US-led conflicts and a deepening assault on…social and democratic rights…[67]

While the mainstream Australian public consciousness has generally been anesthetized by the power of the Australian corporate state propaganda machine from believing in conspiracy facts when it stares them in the face; with the ever ballooning surveillance state apparatus unfolding more and more in Australia and intruding its tentacles into every nook and cranny of their personal lives and futures, events may give pause to some who are more conscientious than others to reflect on the cloak and dagger reality of the deep state which indeed surrounds them and ultimately victimizes them as much as it callously does so to its assets as well as its targets. More will certainly be written on this case in coming years and much, much more will certainly be revealed as well. But given the facts right now (most glaringly of all, the consistent silences and do-nothingism by the system at crucial parts of the narrative) and as countless pundits in the alternative media have independently conceded, the staged nature of 12-15 together with the useful idiocy and patsy status of its claimed perpetrator Man Haron Monis - who now stands alongside names such as Gavrilo Princip, Lee Harvey Oswald and Sirhan Sirhan - will be difficult to deny.

For years this same mainstream Australian public opinion (against the judgement of actual on-the-scene eye-witnesses as well as later court findings that dismissed earlier expert testimony and proved one of its earlier court experts from England to have been a fraud) was also firmly convinced of the established guilt of Lindy Chamberlain in the murder of her baby Azaria at Uluru in 1980; that is, until years later when events and especially developments in zoology and forensics finally proved beyond doubt that indeed a dingo had taken her baby after all and that indeed Lindy Chamberlain was innocent of the crime initially attributed to her by corrupt officialdom of the Northern Territory government who (at the moment of tragedy over the loss of their child) instead set her and her family up in the territory's court system in order to deflect from negative publicity falling upon its tourism industry.[68] Here in the events of 12-15 a wild, ravenous, diseased and mangy demonic-dingo, which is the unelected Australian deep state, has in broad daylight assaulted the baby that was the remaining innocence, good faith, sincerity (and dare one say, gullibility) of mainstream Australia and forever destroyed whatever was left of the illusion of the "lucky country." It is perhaps time for the Australian public to wake up from their slumber, stop blaming the wrong people, and realize how they themselves have been massively hoodwinked and bamboozled in this situation by the sinister forces of the Australian "corporate" deep state who have stood to actually benefit from 12-15, the Lindt café siege, and thereby use the event as a pretext to disenfranchise mainstream Australia in even greater proportions than ever before.

N Wahid Azal is a specialist in Islamic esotericism and the occult, an independent scholar, political commentator and critic. He resides in Germany.

[1] As a shorthand, here we will be using the Americanized date 12-15 rather than the more accurate Australian one 15-12. Our reasons should be obvious.

[2] This is a neologism coined by us in our article on the Reyhaneh Jabbari case, see http://syncreticstudies.com/2014/10/30/t...-too-much/ (accessed 25 December 2014).

[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fairfax_Media (accessed 26 December 2014).

[4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gina_Rinehart (accessed 26 December 2014).

[5] https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?tit..._Australia (accessed 26 December 2014).

[6] The Australian Security Intelligence Organisation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Australian...ganisation (accessed 26 December 2014).

[7] http://www.smh.com.au/federal-politics/p...36dys.html (accessed 26 December 2014).

[8] http://www.news.com.au/national/australi...6633535675 (accessed 26 December 2014).

[9] http://www.theguardian.com/business/2014...MP=soc_567 (accessed 25 December 2014)

[10] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2014_Austr...rror_raids (accessed 25 December 2014)

[11] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trans-Pacific_Partnership (accessed 28 December 2014).

[12] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transatlan...Trade_Area (accessed 28 December 2014).

[13] http://www.aljazeera.com/news/americas/2...13503.html (accessed 28 December 2014)

[14] http://rt.com/news/201767-isis-supporter...australia/ (accessed 26 December 2014)

[15] http://www.abc.net.au/news/2014-09-03/as...al/5716292 (accessed 26 December 2014)

[16] http://www.9news.com.au/national/2014/12...ign-report (accessed 27 December 2014)

[17] http://www.smh.com.au/nsw/martin-place-g...2c9ny.html (accessed 26 December 2014)

[18] http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/nat...6713441205 (accessed 25 December 2014).

[19] http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-...liefs.html (accessed 26 December 2014).

[20] Ibid.

[21] http://www.abc.net.au/radionational/prog...in/3478556 (accessed 26 December 2014)

[22] http://www.theaustralian.com.au/in-depth...7161198324 accessed from https://www.facebook.com/theaustralian/p...3995119978 (accessed 26 December 2014).

[23] And this, in same year which the Howard government had no compunction whatsoever of watching Afghan and Iranian asylum seeking children being thrown overboard sinking smuggler boats in the Indian ocean while the Australian Navy was ordered not to interfere and just watch as all of these children (as well as adults) went to their deaths https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Children_Overboard_affair (accessed 26 December 2014).

[24] http://fararu.com/fa/news/217176 (accessed 26 December 2014).

[25] Ibid.

[26] http://ashraf-news.com/news_view_2479.html (accessed 27 December 2014)

[27] See http://bahaicultfaq.blogspot.com (accessed 26 December 2014).

[28] http://www.presstv.ir/detail/2014/12/17/...ge-crisis/ and http://www.abc.net.au/news/2014-12-17/ir...is/5972288 (accessed 27 December 2014)

[29] http://en.mehrnews.com/detail/News/105117 (accessed 26 December 2014).

[30] Ibid.

[31] http://en.irna.ir/News.aspx?Nid=81428520 (accessed 26 December 2014).

[32] http://landdestroyer.blogspot.de/2014/12...ydney.html (accessed 25 December 2014).

[33] http://www.abc.net.au/radionational/prog...in/3478556 (accessed 27 December 2014).

[34] Ibid.

[35] http://www.sbs.com.au/news/article/2013/...ers-advice (accessed 28 December 2014).

[36] Compare https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D1F_G5ku7KM with http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnew...otest.html (accessed 28 December 2014).

[37] http://www.dailytelegraph.com.au/news/mu...6713467150 (accessed 27 December 2014)

[38] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2005_Cronulla_riots (accessed 26 December 2014).

[39] http://www.shiitecouncil.org.au/ (accessed 28 December 2014)

[40] http://www.theaustralian.com.au/national...1115413357 (accessed 25 December 2014)

[41] Ibid.

[42] Ibid.

[43] http://www.theaustralian.com.au/national...6151d3619e (accessed 25 December 2014).

[44] http://www.sbs.com.au/news/article/2009/...side-court (accessed 25 December 2014).

[45] http://www.sbs.com.au/news/article/2010/...nsive-mail (accessed 25 December 2014).

[46] http://www.abc.net.au/news/2011-12-06/cl...il/3715612 (accessed 25 December 2014).

[47] http://www.abc.net.au/radionational/prog...transcript (accessed 26 December 2014).

[48] http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/12/15...27220.html (accessed 27 December 2014).

[49] https://quadrant.org.au/opinion/qed/2014...enterlink/ (accessed 28 December 2014).

[50] http://www.abc.net.au/news/2013-11-22/se...ch/5111744 (accessed 26 December 2014).

[51] That this woman was only finally taken into custody, with her bail revoked, after the events of 12-15 is more than just a little suspicious and eyebrow raising, especially as regards to who she ultimately answers to, http://www.skynews.com.au/news/top-stori...voked.html (accessed 28 December 2014).

[52] Ibid.

[53] http://www.dailytelegraph.com.au/news/ns...6781623998 (accessed 25 December 2014).

[54] Ibid.

[55] http://www.abc.net.au/news/2014-01-22/co...er/5212862 (accessed 25 December 2014).

[56] http://www.abc.net.au/news/2014-04-14/sp...lt/5388332 (accessed 27 December 2014).

[57] http://www.skynews.com.au/news/local/syd...aler-.html (accessed 26 December 2014).

[58] http://www.dailytelegraph.com.au/news/ns...912bcfc6ce (accessed 26 December 2014).

[59] https://web.archive.org/web/201412151413...haron.com/ (accessed 26 December 2014).

[60] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i1_EjsGBP1o (accessed 27 December 2014).

[61] http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=12a_1418655542 (accessed 28 December 2014).

[62] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dog_Day_Afternoon (accessed 28 December 2014)

[63] http://www.sbs.com.au/news/fragment/sydn...tims-named (accessed 28 December 2014)

[64] Ibid.

[65] http://www.news.com.au/national/sydney-s...7167655143 (accessed 26 December 2014).

[66] http://www.afp.gov.au/media-centre/news/...monis.aspx (accessed 26 December 2014).

[67] http://www.globalresearch.ca/australian-...or/5420757 (accessed 28 December 2014)

[68] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lindy_Cham...-Creighton and http://www.theguardian.com/world/2012/ju...hamberlain (accessed 28 December 2014).

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