The Australian releases startling new information:
Indonesian terrorists planned to attack Western targets by spreading hydrogen cyanide, a deadly gas used during the Holocaust, through the air-conditioning systems of large buildings.
Details of the method of the proposed attack, designed to maximise the number of victims, were revealed in a 26-page training manual produced by members of Jemaah Islamiah, the terrorist group blamed for the Bali bombings.
Hand-written in the Indonesian language Bahasa, the document expresses optimism that victims exposed to the poison gas will die within 30 seconds.
The source of this is Rohan Gunaratna, terrorism “expert” and regular commentator in the Australian media.
But who is Gunaratna? His record is less than impressive and his past statements suggest a man prone to hyperbole. Further investigations, published in August 2004, outlined numerous issues with Gunaratna’s “sources”:
Martin Bright, the home affairs editor of the Observer and long-time writer on Islamic terrorist groups has described Gunaratna as “the least reliable of the experts on bin Laden”.
Gunaratna’s current project to establish a data base of Asian terrorist groups has been said to blur the line between freedom of academic research and intelligence-gathering for governments.
Gunaratna tends to rely on what he claims are inside contacts within intelligence networks. By their very nature, however, no claims based of these sorts of sources can be independently tested.
As compared with Martin Bright’s comments which are independently tested!
Does Australia have one of those funky colour coded terrorist warning systems yet?
They can have these on news reports, side by side with bushfire warmings, so long as they are not confused.
The problem with this shadowy area is that it is very difficult in the short-run to tell the difference better an opportunistic, attention-seeking hack like Gunaratna and someone who is in fact collecting information from actual human beings who wish to remain anonymous.
Exactly,
Gunaratna could just be another Chalabi wanna be. What ever became of that huge sweep of terrorist plotters that took place last year?
Addamo May 28th, 2006 at 2:34 am
What worries me about fools like Gunaratna is not so much the unsubstantiated and unsubstaniatable claims he makes; it’s the insaneo fascistic policy prescriptions he recommends in the light of his intentionally scary, unsupport claims; it is always the same: cut back on civil liberties and basic human rights for citizens more draconian powers for an ever-more unaccountable state.
911 seemed to flush flocks of these readymade experts on Islamic terrorism out of obscurity and into the broadsheets and current affairs circuits of the West. Most of them were Jewish but some like Gunaratna are less ethnically problematic, untainted by association with the thousand year enmities of the Middle East. Handy, no?
For such experts who as Edward notes tend in their prognostications to support the fascist designs of Western governments, my default position is that unless it can be shown otherwise, they are animated by those governments at some level. It could be by direct intelligence psy-ops involving Rendon or Lincoln Group style shenanigans, or by the less direct but equally effective phenomena of low-level academic grunts sensing an opportunity to shoulder the pack aside in a shot at pundit fame, and so busily set about trimming their cloth to exactly fit the whims of those who underwrite their meal ticket.
It seems that when Bush, Blair and Howard spoke of exporting freedom and democracy, they were referring to shipping out whatever we had left.
rohan’s a longstanding fraudster on things islamic and muslim, not having any expertise in language (it’s bahasa indonesia, not ‘bahasa’ which just means ‘language’) or the region’s diversity of islamisms and cultures. But he’s parlayed his research on the tamil tigers masterfully, persuading that ol’authoritarian lee kuan yew to take him in before 911 and install him at singapore’s defence ‘thinktank’. Rohan’s a useful conduit for the disinformation fed out via s’pore, which as old spooks know, still hankers for the days when it was the region’s espionage central station.
What happned to that dateline documentary that talked about how the Indonesian army was behind terror networks in Indonesia?
Good question Nadia. I beieve the evelations were based on an interview with the former Indonesian prime minister, who was regarded as the most honest Indonesia has ever had.
He stated, I believe, that the Indonesian police/military were behnd the terrorist attacks and that it had become a gravey train, seeing as the US gave at least US$50 million to Indonesia to combat terrorism. Needless to say, more terror attacks = more money to fight it, expect that the money probabyl ends up in the bank accounts on military generals and politicians.
http://tinyurl.co.uk/8cuk
this article references the sbs dateline doco you are thinking about,
the site also has a lot of interesting articles on the bali bombings and south east asian terrorism in general
well, interestingly the transcript of the dateline program should be here
http://news.sbs.com.au/dateline/index.php?page=archive&daysum=2005-10-12#
but it is mysteriously unavailable
Intersting post and comments.
I agree that some Muslim terrorists in Indonesia have a former military background or are perhaps still in it. This provides technical knowledge in bombmaking and (maybe) poison gas planning.
The Indonesian army and security services once received extensive US and Australian aid to combat communism but now that get this to combat Islamic terrorism.
Meanwhile many in the Indonesia government refuse to believe that JI exists or ever existed - no problem.
Looks like the old problem of bribing many sides really quiclky to get a result favourable to the West.
Its clear the transcript of other dateline doco’s can be read, but not the one of Indonesian army involvement in terror attacks.
So what can we make of that?
Are people not interested in this story, so they took it of the list? Is it all lies, and therefore had to be removed? Or is it the truth that we are NOT supposes to talk about?
Here is the transcript link from Global Research
Thanks Nadia
An interesting link.
Pete
My pleasure Pete, I am happy I can help