The origins and detailed description of much of the worlds turmoil 101:

http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com

The USA does not create turmoil, it is a peace loving christian country!

Very good Julie; the terrorists are diversifying and spreading too; perhaps your article should have addressed the issue of how many of the poor refugees/illegals/boat people are terrorists. The odds are, many are; so thanks to this Green-led, ALP government which, apart from giving obscenely well paid jobs to otherwise useless union hacks, is also betraying Australia's security by allowing potential terrorists to pour unchecked into our country.

Either fix it or kick this government out!

Does Ms Bishop actually write these articles, or does someone on her staff just pass her the latest CIA Fact Sheet for Dummies and point to where she has to sign?

cohenite,

"Very good, Julie; the terrorists are diversifying and spreading too..."

Is your panel of advisers headed by George Dubya? I think I may have misunderestimated you : )

"I think I may have misunderestimated you"

Time will tell.

BIN LADEN ISOLATED FROM 2005

Why do we trust Ms Bishop's or President Obama's narrative of bin Laden's final years or the effect of his death on al Qaeda?

Do you accept the following narrative or accept America’s unlikely narrative that it had no idea where bin Laden was from mid 2002 to late 2010?

An Indian intelligence estimate “"Do you know how many intelligence operatives work for America inside Pakistan? …There are around 3000 intelligence operatives helping Americans collect information.” indicates the depth of US coverage of Pakistan. http://www.rediff.com/news/special/if-america-kept-pakistan-in-the-dark-on-osama-their-ties-will-end-says-as-dulat/20110505.htm This indicates the US would have been well aware where bin Laden was imprisoned from 2005.

Bin Laden was a spent force in al Qaeda for several years before his execution in 2011.

He was arrested by the Pakistani ISI and its security Intelligence Bureau (IB) in 2005. From 2005 he was in most respects a prisoner under house arrest behind the high walls of the compound in Abbottabad (Pakistan). This effectively meant that he was intentionally isolated from the Al Qaeda rank and file and most of its leadership.

As bin Laden was living in Abbottabad from 2005 his electronic communications, laptop use and written messages were also monitored by Pakistan. It is notable that Abbottabad was the site of a major British signals intercept base during WWII - making it quite possible that Pakistan maintained/maintains legacy intercept facilities in Abbottabad (possibly within the Military Academy).

Bin Laden would have been conscious of the likelihood that Pakistan was intercepting messages to and from the rest of al Qaeda. As a man of the world he would have expected that Pakistan was passing most or all of these message to American intelligence.

It is no coincidence that this passage of al Qaeda information to American intelligence permitted the West to head off all major al Qaeda attacks on the West from late 2005.

Pete
http://gentleseas.blogspot.com.au/2008/10/islamabad-marriott-hotel-bombing.html

American propaganda is centred around the idea that the world is filled with terrorists who threaten America's interests..., sorry, the West's interests.

Julie is doing her bit to help America by spreading American fear-mongering which inevitably leads to American warmongering and the deaths of millions.

American warmongering is going to end up in nuclear war because both China and Russia are not going to allow the imperial U.S. to push them into a corner and/or to gain control of the major resources of the world.

Neither the LABOR nor the LIBERAL Party have the wit to see where our world is headed.

Australia should divorce itself from the U.S. as quickly as it can before the nukes start falling on us!

http://dangerouscreation.com

You are spot on David G.http://www.patriotsquestion911.com/ Here you will see Major General Albert Stubblebine and thousands like him wanting a proper investigation into 911.Stubblebine was in charge of all Army Intelligence in the early 1980's.

See also http://www.ae911truth.org/ Here you will see over 1700 Archirects and Engineers + 12000 other supporters seriously questioning the official story of 911.

Al CIAda as they are known these days have been found in Libya and Syria helping the West expand their imperialistic agenda.

The real terrorists are the financial ones who want a New World Order,more wars and Carbon Taxes to enslave us even more.

Whose side are you on Julia?

If this is the best the Coalition can come up with then God help us all. If Ms Bishop is being fed her lines from Australia's intelligence agencies then we are in even deeper trouble that I thought.

It is probably too much to expect that she should acquaint herself with even the rudiments of the origins and history of al-Qaeda but why is OLO publishing this manifestly false piece of propaganda?

If this is the best the Coalition can come up with then God help us all.
James O'Neill,
Well, a hell of a lot more than what Labor has come up with thus far.

Individual,the left/right paradigm was invented to confuse and divide the masses,while the elites plunder our gullability.

I don't trust the Coalition on their promise to retract the CO2 tax.All the banks need it because of their exposure to toxic derivatives.They want and need the ETS.Malcolm Turnbull is a Goldman Sachs boy and there are many like him within the Coalition.

We need a new political party free from corporate "facilitation money."

Further to my post on this string, see http://forum.onlineopinion.com.au/thread.asp?article=13829#239060 - regarding the alternate narrative that the US knew where bin Laden was from 2005.

This is not meant to be a criticism of the US or Pakistan. In fact if it is accurate it was an excellent intelligence operation which also disrupted al Qaeda for five and a half years.

It must be remembered that bin Laden valued his own life and his immediate family's (including the wives and children who stayed with him in Abbottabad). So he didn't volunteer to be a suicide bomber.

When he was arrested in 2005 he realised he was living on borrowed time - that his death sentence had been postponed by the US and Pakistan.

The US and Pakistan realised that bin Laden was of more use being kept quietly alive up to 2011 rather than killing him before that. The US wanted him alive while they could gain useful intelligence from him, mainly through his intercepted communications to/from al Qaeda. They also relied on the disruptive effects of this situation on al Qaeda - of having an increasingly isolated, hence ineffectual, leader under house arrest.

Senior figures in Pakistani intelligence (ISI and IB) as well as President Musharraf would have been politically embarrassed if it was known that bin Laden (admired by many Pakistanis) was locked up in their country - yet the US was very appreciative politically and financially. Subsequent US criticism of Pakistan should be seen as overt shadow play which is required to hide the reality of US-Pakistani cooperation.

Also several Saudis in the know wanted bin Laden kept alive. He was admired by many in Saudi Arabia especially within the nationally powerful bin Laden clan.

Bin Laden's al Qaeda subordinates who were aware of his house arrest would have become increasingly suspicious and demoralised the longer he remained immobile in Abbottabad. They would have communicated with him less and relied on him less. With this decline the intelligence value of keeping him alive also declined.

MORE TO FOLLOW BELOW (from Pete)

However the political value, to President Obama, of “finding” and killing bin Laden on Obama’s watch, in May 2011, would have increased cementing image Obama sought of being seen as tough and effective on terrorism. Saudi Arabia, whose political stability, was to a degree weakened by the Arab Spring had less power to keep bin Laden alive. Those Pakistani’s in the know could not (and still can’t) admit to several pro-Taliban, pro-al Qaeda sections of Pakistan’s population that Pakistan was cooperating with the US in keeping bin Laden under useful house arrest for so long.

So it was politically useful for the US leadership to at last carry out the death sentence that bin Laden actually expected for leadership role (he admitted) for 9/11.

How have I come up with this alternate narrative. By studying the region for five years, talking to people, and putting together what is more likely than the official, though perhaps necessary, story of America being simply ignorant about where bin Laden was. Implausibly ignorant of his whereabouts from approximately the time bin Laden escaped from Tora Bora in late 2001 to the time he “began to be discovered” in late 2010.

So this is not another anti-American theory. All credit to Pakistan, President Bush, President Obama and American intelligence for keeping this excellent intelligence operation so secret for so long.

The result of this six year “Operation Abbottabad” was that the intelligence and disruption gained prevented al Qaeda from carrying out any major terrorist acts in the West from late to 2005 to the present day.

I’ll write more after President Obama is re-elected in November this year.

Pete

Pete. An interesting hypothesis but one that I would argue is widely at variance with the facts. About three years ago an article in The American Conservative entitled Osama bin Elvis concluded then that there was more evidence that Elvis was still alive than that bin Laden was. The various arguments were nicely summarized in Griffin's book: bin Laden: Dead or Alive. That book incidentally demolishes the so-called admission by obl that he was responsible for 9/11.
The best evidence is that obl died in December 2001. The Abbottabad raid, like most of the media's coverage of Afghanistan, the war on terror, the Arab Spring, and current evenTs in Syria to name but a few belong in the fiction section. Ms Bishop's article may be similarly labeled.
Individual: I don't recall Suggesting that Labor's policy was any better. If anything it is worse because unlike the Coalition they pretend to represent something better.

Hi James

For obvious reasons I can't go into detail concerning the effect of an inadvertent tip-off from American intelligence which prompted this alternate narrative.

Regards

Pete

Hey Pete, "an inadvertent tip-off from American intelligence"

Is there really any such thing as American intelligence, I thought this pretty much disappeared after the death of Kennedy in '63.

G

Hi (again) James and G of P

Thankyou for your well argued comments on the alternate bin Laden narrative.

If you would like to debate this issue further I recommend you try my website http://gentleseas.blogspot.com.au/ as it provides non-derivative perspectives and generally respectful comments and responses.

Regards

Pete

Thanks Pete. I would like to discuss this further outside the constraints of a comment section. If you are ever in the Brisbane area give me a call.
James

Thanks Pete, I have saved your web site into my favourites. Once I get a little time I will have an in-depth look and comment.

Thanks for the heads up

Cheers

Geoff

Quote: "The world must remain vigilant to the threats and be prepared to make concerted efforts to disrupt the operations and ultimately dismantle these groups for all time"

What a waste of time and words. The issue of terror is not about a group or person, it is about an ideology of hate and violence called Islam. Where there is Islam - particularly in its fundamentalist form - there will be terror, destruction and death. I would note that Quran 9:111 says it all.

The only question is why has the West let in so many Muslims? Are we stupid? Yes, duh! Can anybody not see what Muslim immigration is doing? This will not end well and good people will get hurt.

The idea that a small group is responsible for terror or that terror will end if we kill or capture x number of extremists is silly when there is a petri dish of true believers that follow a man who proudly proclaimed "I am made victorious with terror" and consider that man a great moral example. I am not talking about the so-called terrorists but the everyday Muslim men and women. Have you every tried to get a Muslim to condemn the hate and violence in the Quran? Have you ever seen a Muslim condemn the dozens of attacks by their dear prophet on his peaceful neighbors? The usual "you don't understand" and "out of context" are not acceptable.

And our leaders pretend that Islam is peaceful and it is only a few Muslims that cause trouble. What could go wrong?

The US could kill every member of every terrorist group today and tomorrow the problem would be the same

I appreciate that Geoff

And look forward to chatting further, including your views on the Indian Ocean, which is an ongoing theme of my website.

Pete

Kactuz,

Great post, makes a lot of sense.

"Seven more terrorism suspects have been arrested and detained in the United Kingdom in what is now the fourth security-related incident this week... The arrests follow the six arrested Thursday in an early morning raid. New details that have emerged since those arrests indicate that it was three brothers and three other men who are suspected of being Islamic terrorists planning a strike in the U.K. during the Olympic Games" '
http://news.yahoo.com/u-k-terrorism-officials-arrest-7-more-suspects-112508246--abc-news-topstories.html

There are reports from two separate whistle blowers who were employed by this G4S private security company that security for the London Olympics is of a poor standard.

Due to costs they are planning pushing through thousands without any real checks.Also their staff is poorly trained with minimial checks done on their backgrounds.

Hi Geoff and James

As coincidence would have it the Fairfax Press has today printed a front page news article written by one Ben Doherty in Islamabad (Pakistan's capital) in part concerning Bin Laden's Abbottabad house arrest.

Mr Doherty's article appeared in Fairfax's five capital city newspapers and also described former President Musharraf meeting then Prime Minister John Howard in Canberra in 2005.

I'm putting on record that I was unaware of the 2005 meeting and have not communicated with the Press and certainly not with Mr Doherty (ever).

I'm writing this because Mr Doherty's article was temporarily online today in all five Fairfax newspapers websites but was rapidly taken down in all five for unexplained reasons. This may be a bilateral (Australia-Pakistan) or multilateral (Australia-US-Pakistan) concern or perhaps due to threats or litigation.

I have reacted by taking down the article on my website which was basically restricted to the three extended OLO comments on this matter that I wrote on this thread. I made no mention of direct or indirect Australian links in anything I've written online on bin Laden or the broader matter described by the Fairfax articles today

So this is saying to Pakistani intelligence, lawyers or military representatives, where ever they may be, that as Fairfax has removed this matter from the internet it must be for good reasons - so I have removed my barely related blog post as well. I removed it today.

For the record.

Pete

Thanks Pete,

as usual, when involved in the 'intelligence world and geopolitics' it is always pays to play safe.

You never know who 'watching, reading and listening'

Geoff

Thats true Geoff

Its similar to problems of journalism.

For example if a large newspaper chain had asked a mere member of the public whether it should run a story in a particular way it could have been warned that deals were made some years ago - meaning it could have avoided posting a significant story in five big city papers but then being pressured by governments (etc) to pull that story from all of its newspaper websites...

Planta

Curiously after Fairfax pulled the Pakistan - Australia - bin Laden article from its website on Saturday 7 July 2012 Fairfax published it again on Monday 9 July 2012.

The major difference appears to be the Fairfax author Ben Doherty was reporting from Islamabad, Pakistan on 7 July, but I assume he (and Fairfax editors) felt it prudent to pull the article until he was safely out of Pakistan by 9 July. Being an outspoken journalist in Pakistan is not always safe.

See the Fairfax article in question here: http://www.smh.com.au/world/bin-laden-protector-dined-at-government-house-20120709-21qk0.html

And my article, of 6 July, highlighting the likely American connection here: http://gentleseas.blogspot.com.au/2012/07/us-knew-where-bin-laden-was-from-2005.html

It all seems to be a puzzling episode in Fairfax's colourful history.

Pete