Australia taken hostage by Islamic Terrorists!

[cronus]

'Course they do. They found a use for leftover brewer's yeast (something they have in enormous abundance). They make sammiches with it. The rest of us just try to feed it to the dogs, without much success I might add.

Among other products of Australian the imagination are the tank, rotary hoe, electronic pacemaker, Atomic Absorption Spectrophotometer, solar hot water system, black box flight recorder, plastic spectacle lenses, variable rack and pinion steering, power board, digital sampler, bionic ear, baby safety capsule, gene shears, polymer banknotes, spray-on skin, wi-fi...

Tank was invented here. Just round the corner from my house. Oh, you meant the storage tank....

[Hermit]

Tank was invented here. Just round the corner from my house.

Wrong. In 1911 the Australian civil engineer named Lancelot de Mole submitted a basic design for a tracked, armoured vehicle to the British War Office. It was ignored. After a few years they thought it might be a good idea after all and pretended they thought of the concept first. Poms are like that.

[cronus]

Tank was invented here. Just round the corner from my house.

Wrong. In 1911 the Australian civil engineer named Lancelot de Mole submitted a basic design for a tracked, armoured vehicle to the British War Office. It was ignored. After a few years they thought it might be a good idea after all and pretended they thought of the concept first. Poms are like that.

Wrong. The idea of something like a tank originated with Leonardo Da Vinci, and the first working example of a proper tank that looked the bit, did the business was designed on the back of a cig packet after many pints of English stout here.

[Hermit]

Leonardo da Vinci also invented the helicopter and the submarine. Fine concepts all, but none of them were workable at his time. Lancelot de Mole's tank design was.

But tanks for conceding that the thing was not invented just around the corner from your house after all.

[cronus]

Leonardo da Vinci also invented the helicopter and the submarine. Fine concepts all, but none of them were workable at his time. Lancelot de Mole's tank design was.

But tanks for conceding that the thing was not invented just around the corner from your house after all.

The first working one was. That Australian one was half a tank. A fortified bathtub and could have been taken out with a grenade....

[Xamonas Chegwé]

Could be they haven't thought about it. Australians don't have much imagination.

'Course they do. They found a use for leftover brewer's yeast (something they have in enormous abundance). They make sammiches with it. The rest of us just try to feed it to the dogs, without much success I might add.

Oh, you "discovered" that, did you?

You didn't just copy Marmite, which had already been in production for 20 years?

No. I'm sure that didn't happen...

[laklak]

Marmite is most certainly not Vegemite. Marmite is a delicious, healthful, vitamin packed food that no civilized pantry should lack. Vegemite, OTOH, is shite.

[mistermack]

How can you invent the tank, when there are no steam or internal combustion engines?
What drives it? A horse in a wheel?
I doubt if Leonardo included the continuous track. I would say that whoever invented that was the real inventor of the tank. If they invented it for use with an engine.

If a tank is just an armoured vehicle, then I think the Romans had something that they could use to approach the walls of a fort, without getting speared or shot with arrows.

Latest news on the siege is that it's ended in shooting. No news of who got injured or killed, but a lot of people got out.

They are really bugging me on the news, referring to this twat as a "lone wolf".

Lone wanker would be nearer the mark.

[JimC]

Getting back to the tragic situation...

Now ended, with 2 hostages and the gunman dead, plus others wounded, at around 2 in the morning. Apparently, one group of hostages escaped, the gunman started shooting others, and the police then stormed the building.

He was a fairly crazy individual, who had previously sent hate letters to the families of dead Aussie soldiers, and was currently out on bail on a murder charge, plus a whole lot of sex assault charges. He obviously thought he had nothing to lose... (why the fuck was he was allowed bail?)

For a while at least, anybody in islamic dress entering a cafe in Sydney better be prepared for a hostile and suspicious reception, I suspect...

[laklak]

I wondered about the bail thing too. At least the asshole's dead.

[klr]

Quite possibly a lone nutter linking himself to IS for ego-driven reasons...

That seems to sum it up neatly.

With his criminal history, a lot of questions are going to be asked about a) why he was out on the streets and b) where did he get the weapon(s) from. Those are big enough questions to deal with, before you even get to the Islamic angle.

[klr]

I didn't realise he was Shiite. That - bizarrely enough - will embarrass IS, who hate Shiites with a typically murderous vengeance.

[pErvinalia]

Man, what a horrible ending. There's going to be a new bout of xenophobia and bigotry in the coming weeks/months. There's a twitter hashtag campaign that's been trending - #illridewithyou. People offering to ride on public transport with muslims who are afraid to due to bogans targeting them for abuse.

[cronus]

There's millions of pervy nutters in the world. They don't all go doing a armed siege holding up a cafe as a added extra. In fact they tend to keep a low profile except for the hands. What was the key difference here then? I shall use the power of scientific observation. Notice the dress? The Arabic writing on the flag? There's something on the web and this guy originating Iran? Yes, that's right. He was a Quaker....

[pErvinalia]

Any chance you can translate that into English?