RUTHFULLY YOURS

A man rammed a car into pedestrians and Christmas shoppers in a bustling area of Australia’s second-largest city on Thursday, injuring more than a dozen people, in an act that police said was deliberate.

Police in Melbourne said they arrested the male driver of the vehicle at the scene, along with another man, and that several of those injured were in critical condition.

“At this stage we believe that it was a deliberate act. However, we do not know the motivation,” Commander Russell Barrett of Victoria Police told reporters.

Witnesses said a white sport-utility vehicle accelerated after running a red light and plowing into pedestrians at high speed adjacent to Flinders Street Station, one of Melbourne’s busiest transportation hubs.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/car-plows-into-pedestrians-in-central-melbourne-1513842409?cx_testId=17&cx_testVariant=cx&cx_artPos=0&cx_tag=related?cx_campaign=poptart&mod=cx_poptart#cxrecs_s

The incident occurred near the location of a similar incident in January, when a driver plowed through a pedestrian mall, killing four people and injuring 20 others. That incident wasn’t terrorism-related.

The January incident, coming after terrorist attacks in Europe and the U.K. in which attackers used vehicles to mow down pedestrians, prompted Australia’s government and police countrywide to strengthen defenses in an effort to guard against vehicle-based attacks. Concrete or metal poles were erected at popular locations and more armed police have been patrolling the nation’s streets.

Earlier this month, police in Sydney began patrolling with military-style rifles for the first time. Other deterrent measures have included fences and additional installations of CCTV cameras, as well as improved screening procedures across the country.

Heavily armed officers had parts of central Melbourne locked down after Thursday’s incident, which occurred at the start of rush hour at about 4:30 p.m. local time, during the busy Christmas shopping period.

An ambulance-service spokesman said at least 13 people had been transported to hospitals, while two others were being assessed by paramedics at the scene.

“The intersection was full of pedestrians and he just plowed through,” one bystander, who gave his name only as Jim, told Australian television, describing the car as a white Suzuki traveling fast. CONTINUE AT SITE

Dec. 20 marks the fourth anniversary of what will, in my life, always be a day of rebirth: my release from a Russian prison, where I had been jailed for 10 years by Vladimir Putin for crimes I did not commit. I remember my police escort, as he walked down the boarding ramp of the plane that was to take me to Berlin, telling someone on his walkie-talkie that I was on board. I remember the door closing.

Later I learned how many governments and people had applied pressure for my release. Among them was Amnesty International, which added me to its “prisoners of conscience” list in 2011.

On this, the anniversary of my freedom, I again thank AI—and I am urging it to put its weight behind Russia’s longest-serving political prisoner, Alexei Pichugin, who is stuck in the same vortex that entrapped me.

Mr. Pichugin, a former midlevel supervisor in the security office of Yukos Oil, was arrested in 2003 and has been convicted of multiple murders based on “evidence” fabricated by the Kremlin’s minions. Western democracies and even Interpol have decreed his case to be political and devoid of real evidence. In short, Russia holds Mr. Pichugin hostage, in hope that he will buy his freedom by giving false testimony against me.

There are protocols, I know, for determining who is a prisoner of conscience, as well as academic debate on the precise meaning of the term. I can tell you the simple test I apply. For 14 years and counting—more than 5,000 days—Mr. Pichugin has held in his hands the key to his freedom: All he needs to do is bear false witness against me and other Yukos executives. Lie, and walk free.

Every day, he wakes to that invitation. Every day, he refuses. There is only one way to describe his condition: Mr. Pichugin is a prisoner of conscience.

Hamas called for a “Day of Rage” — as opposed to the days of peace and harmony the terrorist group ordinarily calls for — but this did not spill out very far.

In Stockholm, meanwhile, the new “locals” contented themselves with setting light to the Star of David rather than to real live Jews as their compatriots in Gothenburg had tried to do.

The fabled “Arab Street” had been meant to rise up. And it did rise up. But not in the Arab world… instead it lit up in Europe.

It is now a fortnight since President Trump made his historic announcement about the status of Jerusalem. The speech which announced that America would drop the pretence that Jerusalem is not the capital of the State of Israel was relayed live around the world. Across the major networks and the world’s front pages the response was almost unanimous. They proclaimed this a major foreign policy blunder which would lead to any number of problems including — many predicted — an immediate “third intifada.”

The world’s cameras immediately turned to Bethlehem where a small group of enterprising Palestinians burned an American flag for the cameras. This picture went around the world. Otherwise, not very much appeared to be happening. Hamas called for a “Day or Rage” — as opposed to the days of peace and harmony the terrorist group ordinarily calls for — but this did not spill out very far. The Friday immediately following the announcement might have been a flashpoint, tempers being famously frayed after the act of afternoon worship. And yet, as the BBC’s veteran reporter Jeremy Bowen tweeted from the scene, “At Damascus Gate in Jerusalem press pack outnumbering demonstrators.” The fabled “Arab Street” had been meant to rise up. And it did rise up. But not in the Arab world.

In London, the American Embassy was the scene of a protest called for by a number of prominent left-wing and Labour party activists as well as a some Muslim groups. The Labour MP Andy Slaughter was among those who addressed the crowds. This swiftly arranged protest soon degenerated into the usual anti-Semitic rally, with the crowds chanting “From the Rivers to the Sea Palestine will be free” (that is “There will be no Israel at all, not even a sliver of the land”). And the crowd also chanted “Khaybar Khaybar, ya yahud, Jaish Muhammad, sa yahud”. That is, “Jews, remember Khaybar, the army of Muhammad is returning.” For the crowd outside the American embassy in London, threatening Jews with the memory of the seventh century obliteration of a Jewish community near Medina was clearly an entirely appropriate move.

A recent Associated Press probe provided accounts of the rampant pedophilia, allowed to go unchecked due to a combination of factors, among them the fact that most of the victims are from poor and vulnerable families. Those who do try to complain are often bribed or threatened into silence.

Islamic judicial officials, and even civil court judges, usually urge those accused of sexual abuse to offer “blood money” to the victim or the family in exchange for withdrawing the complaint and “forgiving” the perpetrator.

Well-connected violators reach out to community leaders, particularly in rural areas, and persuade them to pressure parents of victims into keeping silent by accusing them of bringing shame to their villages or warning them that they will be subject to counter-charges of blasphemy.

Sexual abuse of young boys and girls in Pakistan’s madrassas (Islamic schools) continues to be both pervasive and suppressed, according to the latest “Cruel Numbers” annual report by Sahil, a child-protection NGO operating in four of the country’s main provinces.

A recent Associated Press (AP) probe provided accounts of the rampant pedophilia, allowed to go unchecked due to a combination of factors, among them the fact that most of the victims are from poor and vulnerable families. Those who do try to complain are often bribed or threatened into silence. As a result, the head of Sahil said, the 359 cases reported by the media over the past decade are “barely the tip of the iceberg.”

A mere fraction of sexual-abuse allegations has reached the court adjudication stage, and only a handful of the perpetrators in those cases have been indicted; very few have been convicted. Islamic judicial officials, and even civil court judges, usually urge those accused of sexual abuse to offer “blood money” to the victim or the family in exchange for withdrawing the complaint and “forgiving” the perpetrator.

If you read through a few U.S. State Department reports on living conditions in various countries, and then peruse the charter of United Nations, you’ll see that there’s a hell of a lot of horrible things going on around the world that the UN is supposed to be doing something about. Inconceivable levels of poverty, an almost total absence of human-rights protections, armed forces and police departments and courts that operate without any respect whatsoever for due process and the rule of law, primitive sanitary conditions, deadly infectious diseases that have spread widely and that go almost entirely untreated, whole regions in which everyday life is marked by the most extreme kind of tribal or gang or police violence, outright slavery, slave camps, women whose families treat them as little better than slaves, children whose families sell them into prostitution, and so on: such conditions can be found in scores of undeveloped nations.

How does a responsible UN official begin to address all these crises? Where does he start?

Why, in the United States, of course.

Yes, in every unfree or semi-free country on earth, every place where poverty is the norm and human rights unheard of, the great dream is to emigrate to the U.S. Innumerable Cubans have drowned while trying to make their way on rafts across the Florida Straits from the Castros’ island prison to the land of the free. Citizens of Mexico and points south have died of dehydration in the desert while seeking to cross into Arizona or New Mexico. Almost 46 million of America’s current inhabitants originally came from abroad, putting the U.S. at the top of the list of immigrant destinations; the #2 country on the list is Germany, where around 12 million people are foreign-born. So much of the world’s population is desperate to make it to America that the current president won election largely on the basis of his promise to build a wall on our southern border.

Yet if you believe the UN, the U.S. is a cesspit of Third World-style poverty. On December 8, the Alabama news site al.com quoted Philip Alston, UN Special Rapporteur on extreme poverty and human rights, as saying that he’s seen sewage conditions in that state that are “very uncommon in the First World….I’d have to say that I haven’t seen this.” Alston’s visit, reported al.com, was “part of a 15-day tour of the U.S. that Alston and his team are conducting to gather information for a report on poverty and human rights abuses in America that they expect to release in spring.” This crew have already visited California; from Alabama, they were planning to move on to Atlanta, Puerto Rico, Washington, D.C., and West Virginia.

Qatar’s purposeful support of the Muslim Brotherhood, Iran, Turkey, and radical Islamist terrorist groups led Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Egypt, and the UAE to cut all ties with the Emirate last June. Indeed, it was no secret that “Qatar has a long history of harboring terrorist operatives and financing various extremist groups, including Hamas, the Taliban, al Qaeda, the al-Nusra Front, and the Muslim Brotherhood.”

Nonetheless, Qatar has been protesting and arguing ever since that the “blockade” violates international law and human rights. But the Anti-Terrorist Quartet (ATQ) has put Qatar on their ‘terror finance watchlist’ and banned major Qatari charities. Among the terrorist-supporting charities named, is Qatar Charity that advertises its mission is “to participate in the preservation of Islamic culture through the construction of mosques. We spread our Islamic teachings with the world, and we invite you to be part of it in this achievement.” But the QC — that nation’s and one of the Arab World’s largest charities — has long been known to fund the very same extremists Islamists terror groups listed by the ATQ.

The ATQ designation was met with a furious reaction in Doha, where the allegations were rejected out of hand. It was stated that Qatar’s Ministry of Social Affairs evaluated all Qatar’s charities, “and monitors every penny they receive and send.” It was claimed that “Since its establishment in 1984, [it was actually founded in 1982] Qatar Charity (QC) has sponsored 213,750 young orphans into adulthood, and has built more than 621 schools worldwide.” The argument hardly countered the four-nation claim. Still, it was noted that in 2014, QC was ranked first by the United Nations for its relief efforts in the Syrian, Palestinian, and Somali crises. Of course, there was no mention of Qatar’s involvement in the overthrow of the Qaddafi regime in Libya.

In a dramatic press conference held at Andrews Air Force base on Thursday, the U.S. Permanent Representative to the United Nations, Nikki Haley, accused Iran of violating its commitments under UN Security Council resolution 2231, the instrument that renders official the deadly “Iran deal” known as the JCPOA.

Standing in front of a giant section of fuselage from an Iranian Qiam missile shot down by Saudi Arabia as it was hurtling toward the Riyadh international airport recently, Haley said: “Just imagine if this missile had been launched at Dulles Airport or JFK, or the airports in Paris, London, or Berlin. That’s what we’re talking about here. That’s what Iran is actively supporting.”

In other words, acts of war. Let me make that very specific: Iran has declared war on Saudi Arabia, and is engaging in that war by attacking civilian targets in the Saudi capitol, Riyadh, and by targeting civilian facilities, such as the international airport and the Yanbu oil export terminal, where another Qiam missile was shot down.

“What is most revealing about this missile is what’s not here,” Haley said. “It is the large stabilizer fins that are typically present on these kinds of missiles. The Iranian Qiam missile is the only known short range ballistic missile in the world that lacks such stabilizer fins and includes nine valves that you will see running along the length of the missile. Those valves are essentially Iranian missile fingerprints.”

Haley revealed that Iran delivered those Qiam missiles to Houthi rebels in Yemen, who acted as Iranian surrogates by launching them against Saudi targets. She then invited reporters to walk around an array of parts from the Qiam missile, including pumps bearing the tell-tale stamp of Shahid Bagheri Industries, the Iranian manufacturer.

I first exposed the involvement of the Shahid Bagheri Industrial Group in Iran’s ballistic missile programs in 1998 in Reader’s Digest, where I documented the active collaboration of Russia and China in Iran’s missile programs. That’s nineteen years ago. You can read that article here.

A Pentagon spokesperson, Laura Seal, provided additional detail this week to Ambassador Haley on three other Iranian weapons systems captured by the Saudis from Houthi rebels. These were an anti-tank guided missile, the Toophan; the Qasef-1 armed attack drone; and the Iranian Shark-33 boat, “an explosive-laden, unmanned boat used in an attack the Saudi Arabian frigate HMS al Madinah,” Seal said.