a terrorist blast from the past

Pity the poor Australian Federal Police. The headline on today's front page of the Murdoch broadsheet The Australian is about as damning as it gets. 'AFP - no evidence against Haneef'. Haneef was the terrorist we had to have. He had brown skin, a funny name, and a ticket out of the country. As evidence the AFP presented a scrap of paper on which one could clearly read the letter 'p', a half eaten strawberry yogurt containing Haneef's DNA, and a shoelace. Just joking. They didn't have any evidence at all. Actually there was a shoelace but it belonged to a cop. It was on his shoe. And give the guy a break. It's not easy trumping up evidence.

AFP footwear aside, it was all bullshit. Just like Bill Keelty, the head of the AFP. I doubt there's a single man in Australia who deserves the sack more than this bullshit artist. Please imagine the following yelled at top volume - "KEELTY! Hang your head in SHAME! You are an abject DISGRACE! Who needs criminals when we have FUCKERS like you running around?! I call you CORRUPT to your face! RESIGN KEELTY RESIGN!"


Fucking arsehole... sorry, where was I? Oh yeah, in honour of Haneef's innocence (and because the original piece copped a hit in my statcounter thus reminding me of its existence) I'm reprinting a thing I wrote way back when. I apologise to long-timers who've read it already. But I got a laugh out of reading it again and maybe they will too. Yoroshiku.

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I make a very serious terrorist threat

Attention - Australian Federal Police, ASIO and other assorted terrorist-hunting task-forces of Australia. This is not a hoax - It is precisely as real as everything you've ever been told about terrorism.


I have planted a bomb - lots of them actually. Don't laugh. This is serious.

You may now rejoice. Finally a real terrorist! Let the hunt begin! So that you may know that I'm for real I shall precisely adhere to your long experience of real terrorists. Which is to say, what you've seen in the movies and on the telly. To this end I am leaving clues just like a real cinema-terrorist leading you to an impossibly complicated cinema-bomb. Er... bombs, sorry.


In the spirit of these impossible villains of Hollywood I will make impossible demands of you. You must run around and do them all or EVERYBODY DIES! Here is my list of demands -

Google - bomb in san lazaro
Google - michael meiring bomb philippines
Google - john martinkus dateline abdurrahman wahid bomb
Google - liquid bomb myth
Google - july 7 bomb peter power
Google - charles menezes witness discrepancy
Google - 911 senior military intelligence law enforcement
Google - al qaeda threat adam gadahn pearlman

I demand that you read every article on the first google page. And the second. And the third. Feel free to follow other links and pursue you own lines. These articles contain all the clues as to the certain reality of the threat that I represent. Do not wonder, not for a second, that nothing makes sense. Do not wonder that it's all bullshit. Do you wonder at the WMD's in Iraq? Of course not.

Don't think, just do what I command. Lives are at stake! And certainly do not ask yourself - 'When was the last actual terrorist attack in this country? Surely it couldn't have been that stick of gelignite in a garbage bin outside the Hilton Hotel thirty years ago?' That was before half of you were even born. Dismiss it as a dim memory. Know that the terrorism you have been told is real - IS REAL. The lack of any actual terrorist attacks in this country, or even half credible plots, is neither here nor there. You are not running around wasting your time and the taxpayer's money for nothing. You are not part of some insane fear-mongering hoax. It's all real.


I am real. I am here. Making threats! I am proof-positive that your government, or whoever the fuck it is, is not making this shit up. I demand that my file be named - TERRORIST THREAT HEFFALUMP. Clues as the very real nature of the Heffalump threat can be found in the pages of the subversive terrorist manual Winnie the Pooh by AA Milne. So that you may know what Heffalumps look like, the manual contains precise depictions by Ernest Shepard. Study them hard and know that terror is real. I demand that you write long detailed reports on the precise threat of Heffalumps. I demand that you sit in meetings and make contributions about how we might address the Heffalump threat. I demand that you contribute to the WAR ON HEFFALUMPS.

As the impossible mad bomber, I will now taunt you in a cinematic fashion. I laugh at all your mad capering around, arresting people on trumped-up bullshit charges. That bullshit Haneef case! Ha ha ha ha ha. Were you not ashamed by that? Was that not a slur on you and your whole organisation? Look to your boss, Bill Keelty, he has the answer to such embarrassment - Secret Trials! Feel proud that you are doing your bit to have your country join that hallowed list of 'Nations That Conduct Secret Trials'. Follow your leader. He has secret knowledge. Trust him. He is leading you to a new place. It's called Australia apparently. Who knew?


Whatever you thought Australia was, you were wrong. The new Australia is, bravely, all about fear. You know that fear. It's the fear a man has that if he stands up and says, 'This is all bullshit!', he'll get the sack. Do you know what I'm talking about? I suspect that you do. Ask Andrew Wilkie. Alright for him, says you, he doesn't have a mortgage. Between the fear of being sacked and of not making the mortgage payments, and the fear of me, the impossible terrorist - you can choose both! I, the terrible Heffalump, will keep you in a job. Of course you will chase me. Even if I didn't exist you would do so anyway. You have no choice.

Or do you? What is that nagging voice in your head? It's annoying isn't it? It says maybe all this is bullshit. It picks at inconsistencies in what the government tells you. Don't listen to it! It's only common sense. It's only you wondering at what kind of people we are becoming and what kind of place Australia is now. All those ads and posters telling us to dob in our neighbours - Is that us? Is this my country?


Pay no attention to that questioning voice! Stuff it back in its box. Relax safe in the knowledge that if you pursue these impossible terrorists long enough, they will appear! Kick in enough doors, raid enough mosques, humiliate enough people and lo-and-behold they will fucking hate you! Finally you'll be able to take that idiot phrase 'They hate us for our freedom' and smash it, bend it, stretch it into shape to explain their behaviour. That no man ever hated another for their freedom, only for their oppression, can be consigned to the scrap heap of common sense in your head. Like I said, Forget Common Sense. It will do you no good and certainly not pay your mortgage.

It will certainly not assist you in chasing me. Nor in finding the bomb. Er... bombs, sorry. It's important that you view everything I've written here as being a Very Serious Threat. I am not taking the piss. Dismiss that thought from your head. I am real. I am nobody. I am the mad terrorist Heffalump of your imagination. If you want to know how mad and irrational I am, know this - I Have No Fear. In a nation full of fearful people I am clearly insane and must be stopped.

Now boys, get to work and arrest me. Don't forget the requisite and absurdly expensive government media campaign telling us how fearful we should all be. I demand the following slogan -

Australia! Nobody Wants To Kill You!