A Sydney bishop has been allegedly stabbed during a church service in the city's south-west on Monday night [15/04/2024], where police officers were also injured.

The attack occurred at the Assyrian Orthodox Church, Christ The Good Shepherd Church in Wakeley, with graphic video showing a man lunging at Bishop Mar Mari Emmanuel with something in his hand during a mass that was being broadcast online.

NSW Ambulance said three other people were also stabbed.

A male was arrested at the scene and "has been removed from the church and taken to an undisclosed location," according to NSW Police.

They said those stabbed suffered non-life-threatening injuries and were treated by paramedics before being taken to hospital.

The public were advised to avoid the area during the large scale police response which started just after 7pm. 

Vision from outside the church shows chaotic scenes with a large crowd of people.

"A constable was hit with a metal object and sustained a twisted knee and a chipped tooth," NSW Police said in a statement.

"Another constable sustained a broken jaw after he was hit with a brick and a fence paling.

"They were both taken to hospital for treatment."

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2024-04-15/nsw-bishop-mar-mari-emmanuel-stabbed-man-arrested-wakeley/103711236

SEE ALSO: https://www.smh.com.au/national/nsw/christian-leader-stabbed-during-mass-in-wakeley-20240415-p5fk25.html

MEANWHILE:

Iran has carried out its long-promised retaliation for Israel’s attack on its consulate building in Damascus, launching a massive barrage of drones and missiles which it claims hit and destroyed Israeli military targets, while Israel says they dealt only superficial damage with a few injuries. The US and its allies reportedly helped shoot down a number of the Iranian projectiles.

Just as we discussed in the lead-up to the strike, the western political-media class are acting as though this was a completely unprovoked attack launched against the innocent, Bambi-eyed victim Israel. Comments from western officialsand pundits and headlines from the mass media are omitting the fact that Israel instigated these hostilities with its extreme act of aggression in Syria as much as possible. Here in Australia the Sydney Morning Herald write-up about the strike didn’t get around to informing its readers about the attack on the Iranian consulate until the tenth paragraph of the article, and said only that Iran had “accused” Israel of launching the attack because Israel has never officially confirmed it.

In any case, Iran says the attack is now over. Given that we’re not seeing any signs of massive damage, Iran’s reported claim that its retaliation would be calibrated to avoid escalation into a full-scale regional war seems to have been accurate, as does Washington’s reported claim that it didn’t expect the strike to be large enough to draw the US into war.

A new report from Axios says Biden has personally told Netanyahu that the US will not be supporting any Israeli military response to the Iranian strike.

An anonymous senior White House official told Axios that Biden said to Netanyahu, “You got a win. Take the win,” in reference to the number of Iranian weapons that were taken out of the sky by the international coalition in Israel’s defense. Apparently helping to mitigate the damage from the Iranian attack is all the military commitment the White House is willing to make against Iran at this time.

And thank all that is holy for that. A war between the US alliance and Iran and its allies would be the stuff of nightmares, making the horrors we’ve been seeing in Gaza these last six months look like an episode of Peppa Pig.

But Washington merely declining to get involved is nowhere near enough. As the Quincy Institute’s Trita Parsi quipped on Twitter, “Biden needs to PREVENT further escalation, not just declare his desire to stay out of it.”

https://johnmenadue.com/us-declines-israels-invitation-to-start-ww3-for-now/

It is a war on their childhood and their future,” said UNRWACommissioner-General Philippe Lazzarini, who described as “staggering” the latest Gaza health authority data indicating that at least 12,300 youngsters have died in the enclave in the last four months, compared with 12,193 globally between 2019 and 2022.

https://turkiye.un.org/en/263401-gaza-number-children-killed-higher-four-years-world-conflict#

Our society is failing the seriously mentally ill.

In the wake of the Bondi junction shopping centre attack, reporters expressed surprise that a person with a serious mental health illness could be living in cars and hostels. Ask anyone in mental health services they will tell you it’s common for people with serious mental illness to be on the road. This is not the fault of their families. Families are not mental health experts. Families are often distraught and at the end of their tether in dealing with the person. Often these people are wilful and will not do what their families want.

https://johnmenadue.com/how-many-more-tragedies-sydney-siders-in-disbelief-as-they-lay-flowers/

THE MENTALLY ILL OF THE WORLD ARE IN THIS ORDER:

BIBI NETANYAHU

JOE BIDEN

VOLODYMYR ZELENSKYY

"NAPOLEON" MACRON

OLAF SHOLTZ

ANYONE WHO BELIEVES THAT GODS RUN THE PLACE....

AND MANY MORE... SOME LESS DANGEROUS THAN OTHERS...

THEY PROVIDE THE INSPIRATION FOR CRAP...

AND PEOPLE (ENGLISH MUCKS) WHO KEEP JULIAN ASSANGE IN PRISON

GUS LEONISKY

POLITICAL CARTOONIST SINCE 1951