RUTHFULLY YOURS

Qatar’s extensive ties to terrorism and abetting of financiers to bolster it are well-documented.

Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Egypt and Bahrain issued a statement designating 59 individuals and 12 organizations as having terror ties to Qatar. According to the statement, Doha “announces fighting terrorism on one hand and finances and supports and hosts different terrorist organizations on the other hand,” and harbors “terrorist and sectarian groups that aim to destabilize the region, including the Muslim Brotherhood, Daesh [ISIS] and Al Qaeda.”

Ironically, pressure from this new anti-Iran Muslim bloc in the Middle East has done more to call the world’s attention to Qatar’s key role in the spread of Islamist terrorism than years of cajoling on the part of previous administrations in Washington to get Doha to live up to its signed commitments.

A mere two weeks after U.S. President Donald Trump delivered his first major foreign policy speech in Riyadh to delegates from dozens Muslim/Arab countries, Bahrain announced on June 5 that it was halting all flights to Qatar for being a sponsor of radical Islamist terrorists. Immediately, Saudi Arabia joined the boycott, as did the United Arab Emirates (UAE), Egypt and Yemen, all of which also shut off access to Al Jazeera, the anti-American, anti-Semitic Qatari television network established in 1996 and operating since then to foment unrest across the Middle East and bolster the terrorist organization the Muslim Brotherhood and its offshoot, Hamas.

The emir of Qatar, Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani, and other officials in Doha fiercely denied the charge that their government has been backing terrorism, blaming a “fake news” report on the website of the state-controlled Qatar News Agency for the eruption of the Gulf crisis.

The report, which the FBI and other U.S. security agencies believe was the result of a Russian hacking attack, quoted Al Thani calling Iran an “Islamic power,” referring to Hamas as “the legitimate representative of the Palestinian people” and saying Qatar’s relations with Israel were “good.”

Although the report did turn out to be a hoax, Qatar’s extensive ties to terrorism and abetting of financiers to bolster it are well-documented. A Foundation for Defense of Democracies (FDD) study, titled “Qatar and Terror Finance: Private Funders of al-Qaeda in Syria,” shows that while Doha has pretended for more than a decade to be partnering with the United States to defeat Al Qaeda, the monarchy, in fact, has taken no action whatsoever against the Qatari financiers of the terrorist organization’s Syrian branch, the Nusra Front, which continues to plot attacks against the West. One of the reasons that this group eluded U.S. strikes operating in Syria was that it, like America, has been fighting ISIS. Another was that it changed its name to Jabhat Fateh al-Sham (JFS or the Front for the Conquest of Syria), in an effort to distance itself from Al Qaeda. This effort was led by Qatar.

When a Senate committee sought perspectives on the future of multiculturalism I shared the thought that, given some of the odious and appalling customs and beliefs made immune to criticism by official policy, it shouldn’t have a future. Here is what our elected representatives refused to accept.

The recent atrocious behaviour of the Saudi national team at the World Cup football qualifying match in refusing to observe a minute’s silence in remembrance of Australians killed in the London terrorist attack has rightly been criticized in our media. However the issue goes beyond the Saudi team’s insult to innocents who have been killed. During the apartheid era in South Africa, that country was not allowed to participate in international sport because of its racial discrimination. Many Islamic countries practice total gender discrimination — their women are not allowed to participate in international sport, indeed in some of these countries women, particularly in Saudi Arabia, are not allowed to participate even in domestic sport but spend their lives in any public area encased in all-encompassing black burqas.

Why are men’s teams from these countries allowed to participate in international sport? Isn’t gender discrimination as serious as racial discrimination?

International sporting federations need to examine this issue. And that brings me to the issue of multiculturalism and the myths surrounding this latest cult of the Left’s intelligentsia. Yes, I know “Left’s intelligentsia” is an oxymoron, but let it pass for the moment.

Recently, an Australian Senate Committee, dominated by ALP and Greens, called for submissions on strengthening multiculturalism. I put in a submission expressing the view that multiculturalism should not be promoted; rather, it be rejected as it implied promoting a number of obnoxious cultural practices alien to Australia.

My submission was initially accepted, but I was informed it had been rejected as it did not comply with the terms of reference. The rejection is, I suppose, technically correct because the Senate Committee had called for submissions on strengthening Multiculturalism, and my submission rejected the concept.

Now that my submission is rejected, I am free to circulate it so here it is:

To: the Senate Select Committee on Strengthening Multiculturalism

Dear Committee,
This is a submission on behalf of Endeavour Forum Inc. which is a women’s NGO having special consultative status with the Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC) of the UN. We are opposed to the “strengthening” or promotion of multiculturalism. This does not mean disrespecting ethnic groups other than those of British origin, but it does mean that the unsavoury aspects of some other cultures should be acknowledged.

1/ I was born in India and lived there until my marriage to an Australian, after which I came to live in Australia.

2/ India is a fascinating “laboratory” for multiculturalism because it is probably the most multicultural country in the world. India has 15 main languages, about 150 dialects and several religions. This has not created harmony; and, in fact, led to the Partition of India in 1947 into India and Pakistan, because the Muslim-majority provinces could not tolerate the idea of living in a secular democracy.

Islamic culture does not give priority to democracy, freedom of speech or freedom of religion, with death sentences prescribed for apostates and blasphemers. Currently there are several prisoners, both Muslims and Christians, on death row in Pakistani jails on spurious charges of blasphemy.

3/ Even nearer to home, Basuki Tjahaja Purnama, also known as Ahok, the popular former governor of Jakarta in moderate, supposedly secular Indonesia, has just been sentenced to two years in jail on a charge of blasphemy. Similarly in Turkey, a member of NATO and supposedly democratic and moderate, has arrested and jailed hundreds of journalists, generals in the army, and civilians from all walks of life, on charges alleging treason.

4/ All this should enable you to understand that that the culture of Islam is simply incompatible with democracy and basic human rights.

Islam mandates death for infidels, apostates, homosexuals, and for Christians and Jews who will not convert or cannot pay an additional tax. Some of the “multicultural” aspects of Islam include polygamy, child marriage (following the example of their “Prophet”), female genital mutilation, requiring rape victims to produce four pious male witnesses to the assault or if unable to do so, be stoned for adultery, and sex-slave taking by the victors in any tribal war.

Saudi Arabia and Iran are the main examples of Sunni Muslim culture and Shia Muslim culture respectively. In Saudi Arabia women are forbidden from driving cars, and women in Iran are forbidden from cycling in public as these practices will allegedly damage their “virginity”.

Bruce Thornton, professor of classics and humanities at California State University and research fellow at the Hoover Institution, is today one of the most scathing voices in the academic and intellectual American landscape. In various books and essays he has contributed to demystify the myths and fetishes of liberal thought and enabled us to understand better the origin of the crisis which affects Western society.

Among his books we wish to remember: Plagues of the Mind (1997), Decline and Fall: Europe’s Slow Motion Suicide (2007), The Wages of Appeasement: Ancient Athens, Munich, and Obama’s America (2011).

Professor Thornton, let us start from a quotation coming from your last article about Islamic terrorism written for Frontpage Magazine, “Committed only to material goods and pleasures, how can we battle a foe passionately loyal to the spiritual? Despising our own civilization, how can we confront those fanatically assured of the superiority of their own? How can we defeat such an enemy when there is nothing we believe is worth killing and dying for?” These are compelling questions which address dramatically the core of the problem. Let me ask you the first one. How can we battle a foe passionately loyal to the spiritual?

We must fight the battle on two fronts. First, we must recommit our civilization to its spiritual roots, the Classical/Judeo-Christian foundations from which flow our goods such as equality, freedom, tolerance, and human rights. This is a difficult task, but we cannot give up that fight in our work and lives. Second, we must press our leaders to recognize that we are at war, and must fight as fiercely as we did against Nazism. If the jihadists love death more than we love life, then we must give them what they love.

The despising of our own civilization has gone on for many decades now. The West, according to its western critics, is responsible for every evil in the world. We have been projecting on the so called Third World the myth of pureness and innocence in order for us to feel more guilty for our wrong doings. What are, according to you, the origins of this of this self-flagellation?

I believe it begins in something precious and unique to Western civilization: what I call critical consciousness: the willingness to question received wisdom and dogmas as Socrates did. But for most of Western history, critical consciousness was grounded in the transcendent, a spiritual reality that assured us there was the truth and the good for which we should be striving. Modern secularism destroyed that ground, and reduced critical consciousness to the “hermeneutics of suspicion” that typifies modernity’s trinity of Marx, Darwin, and Freud. Now we furiously attack our beliefs in the name of materialist, contingent ideologies that deny the spiritual reality of the human person, reducing us to mere things in the world driven only by our base appetites and the laws of physics.As for our idealization of the Third World it is a retread of the old Noble Savage myth that compensates psychically for the trade-offs of civilization, even as we have no intention of actually living in such backwards, tyrannical countries. This Disney version of history is then given a spurious political rationale by being cast as “anti-colonialism” or “anti-imperialism.”

Postmodernism, deconstructionism, multiculturalism, have been among the factors which have powerfully contributed to the erosion of our identity and to a long established tradition of values which were able to give us coherence and stability. Are we really destined to succumb to Islam with “smug blindness and arrogant ignorance” as you write at the end of your article?

Contrary to those movements you cite, humans are defined by spiritual freedom and free will, so we are not destined or determined to do anything. If we do succumb, it will be by choice, the same choice Eve and Adam made in Eden: to believe Satan’s lie that we can be gods, answerable to no transcendent power, and governed only by our transient and shifting bodily desires and comforts. Maybe when we are once again cast out of this material paradise will we will turn back to God.

“Health Canada considers sweeping ban on junk food ads aimed at children and teens.” So reads the headline at CBC News. And with that matter-of-fact announcement — just a normal day’s political news in the true north weak and socialist — a nation quietly declares itself lost to freedom forever. D-Day memories of the brave Canadians at Juno Beach washed away in a tide of authoritarian progressivism. Freedom traded for paternalistic social engineering in the name of protecting children from over-salted cheese.

“Most of the foods that are marketed to kids are these ones that are high in fat, high in sugar, high in sodium, so that’s what we’re looking at,” said Hasan Hutchinson, director general at Health Canada, who is overseeing the consultations.

“That would then cut out all of the things like, of course, your regular soda, most cookies, cakes, pies, puddings, ice cream, most cheeses because they are high in fat, they’re high in salt,” he said.

Health Canada would also target foods such as sugar-sweetened yogurt, frozen waffles, fruit juice, granola bars and potato chips.

When Canada elected Justin Trudeau, the foppish son of the foppish Maoist Pierre, I warned that what little was left of Canada as a representative democracy was on the verge of being swept into the ash heap of history by a wave of kneejerk neo-Marxist populism — imagine Barack Obama without any constitutional limits. Many of my fellow Canadians — collectively the most self-righteous “nicest people” in the world — accused me of overreacting to this disturbing new wave of nihilistic Trudeaumania, or of exaggerating the ideological seriousness of “young Trudeau,” as they breathlessly dubbed him.

But there is no way to overreact to the political dangers of a nationwide personality cult. And far from exaggerating Trudeau’s ideological purity, my point was precisely that Canada had fallen to such a level of ethico-political degradation that no ideologue was necessary to tip the scales toward totalitarian government; a vapid, politically correct attention-seeker would do the trick well enough.

And so he has, as his government has aligned itself with that of Kathleen Wynne, the Marxist premier of Ontario — the country’s most populous province — to produce government in a politburo style, with naturally curly hair. From legal preferences for sexual deviancy to legal punishments for emitting carbon, from Castro-loving to Christian-hating, and from outlawing criticism of Islam to normalizing drug abuse, Trudeau’s government is checking all the Euro-socialist boxes, all the while hiding behind the leader’s pretty-boy celebrity and prime ministerial pedigree.

But to remind everyone of that pedigree, Pierre Trudeau was the man who, through his panache and his clever exploitation of social trends of the 1960s and ’70s, shifted Canada irrevocably leftward: a close friend of Fidel Castro, a vocal admirer of Mao Tse-tung, and thus North America’s first openly communist-sympathizing national leader, preceding Obama by forty years.

Beyond all its legislative radicalism, the first Trudeau era was most significant for nudging Canadians into a gradual acceptance of a principle quite out of step with Western classical liberalism, but perfectly in keeping with Eastern collectivist authoritarianism, namely that the state is not a representative of the people whose interests it serves, but rather the rightful micromanager and mother hen of men’s daily lives, determining and enforcing correct attitudes and preferred interest groups with impunity and without restraint. In short, neo-Maoism.

Now “young Trudeau’s” government is proposing a “sweeping ban” on the marketing of legal food products. The absurdity of this proposal is outdone only by its paternalistic offensiveness.

CONTENTS http://www.tomgrossmedia.com/mideastdispatches/archives/001708.html

1. London’s Muslim mayor, previously the recipient of many anti-Semitic messages, says he will now consult Israel on fighting terrorism
2. Would Western intelligence agencies share information with a future prime minister Corbyn, sympathizer with Russia, Iran & Assad?
3. American journalist pleads guilty to anti-Semitic bomb threats
4. Norway to ban full-face veil in pre-schools, schools and universities
5. French-German TV channel under fire for refusing to screen anti-Semitism documentary
6. European MP and French intellectuals accuse France of covering up Jewish woman’s murder
7. Non-Jewish journalist: Two Jews called Halimi murdered, France doesn’t care
8. Memorial and museum finally to be built at France’s first concentration camp
9. Spanish police, originally tipped off by Facebook post, thwart Islamist attack
10. Switzerland legislates to end funding of anti-Semitic NGOs in the Mideast
11. Never too late to say sorry
12. “A single book to understand the 20th century”

Islamic State’s occupation of the Philippine city of Marawi is in its third week with at least 58 soldiers and police killed along with 138 terrorists. With an estimated 500 fighters controlling part of the town, the siege continues to take a heavy toll on civilians. But there is some good news from the past week: U.S. troops and planes are on the scene offering “technical assistance” to the Philippine armed forces.

This is an embarrassment for President Rodrigo Duterte, who called on U.S. forces to leave Mindanao last September and proclaimed that his country would move into China’s orbit. Now he says he didn’t request U.S. help in Marawi. That leaves Filipinos to wonder who is calling the shots in their fight against terrorism.

Mr. Duterte spent his first year as President promoting extrajudicial killings of drug pushers and users, a campaign that led to more than 8,000 deaths. Meanwhile, Islamist fighters converged on the southern island of Mindanao from as far away as Chechnya. Indonesia’s National Counter-Terrorism Agency reports that 40 terrorists from the Islamic State-affiliated Jamaah Ansharut Daulah are fighting in Marawi.

Islamic State has made no secret of its plan to make Mindanao a new caliphate. But Mr. Duterte boasted that he would pacify or wipe out the local separatist groups that have pledged allegiance to Islamic State. He set two deadlines for retaking Marawi, including the country’s Independence Day on Monday. Mr. Duterte was absent from the celebrations due to illness, according to his office.

The Philippine military has a history of losing fights with Abu Sayyaf, one of the groups holding Marawi. The discovery in the city of safe houses with large amounts of cash shows that the group has significant resources. In the past Abu Sayyaf bought arms from government soldiers and bribed them to slip out of encirclements.

The Marawi fighting shows the military’s familiar limitations. Ten Philippine soldiers were killed by friendly air-force fire on May 31, and on Friday 13 Philippine marines were killed in street fighting.

The U.S. is helping with battlefield surveillance, coordination and training. Even limited nonkinetic assistance will shore up morale among government troops and prevent more friendly fire losses, but more is needed. In the decade after 9/11, a larger and more active U.S. force in Mindanao turned the tide against lawless groups like Abu Sayyaf.

Defeating the terrorists quickly is important because a lengthy siege would allow Islamist groups to recruit fighters and dispatch them to start more uprisings in Mindanao. As northern Iraq shows, once Islamic State is entrenched it can destabilize the wider region. Mr. Duterte’s tacit acceptance of U.S. help is a step forward, but the Philippines’ struggle to retake Marawi and prevent similar occupations requires that he swallow his pride and ask for an international force in Mindanao.

LONDON—The death toll from a blaze in west London rose to at least 12 in a high-rise tower that residents had complained was a fire hazard, raising questions about maintenance and safety of low-income housing.

The fire started early Wednesday and spread rapidly through the 24-story public-housing block, which residents said lacked adequate emergency exits. Witnesses said they saw people jumping from the building to escape the flames. Dozens of residents were injured, and police said they expected the death toll to rise.

Firefighters were still battling pockets of fire Wednesday evening, but had searched most of the Grenfell Tower in the otherwise upscale North Kensington neighborhood, clambering through the ruins and also using drones, authorities said. It was too early to pinpoint the cause of the blaze, police said.

The London Fire Brigade said 65 people were rescued from the building, which a structural engineer said isn’t in danger of collapsing.

Residents said they heard few, if any, alarms. One man who got out described a chaotic race through a central staircase that was the only escape route.

London Fire Commissioner Dany Cotton called the blaze unprecedented, saying she hadn’t seen anything like it in her 29-year career.

Michael Paramasivan, who lived on the seventh floor, said he woke to the smell of burning plastic and heard people shouting. He, his girlfriend and their children fled down a crowded central staircase. He said he wasn’t sure if there were sprinklers, but said none had activated.

“I saw three kids near the top floor, and next thing we knew, bang, it went up in flames,” he said. “They must have perished. It was horrific.”

“It was the towering inferno, like lighting a bonfire,” said Piers Thompson, who lives in a neighboring building and said he was awakened by shouts at about 1:15 a.m. and watched fast-moving flames spread.

“I couldn’t believe it. You could see people flashing” lights in an effort to attract rescuers attention, especially on high floors, he said. “Someone was waving a blanket.”

People-smugglers bring the migrants to the NGOs’ ships, which then reach Italian seaports. Another legal enquiry has been opened about the mafia’s economic interests in managing the migrants after their arrival.

One cannot compare the migrants to the Jews fleeing Nazism. Pope Francis, for example, recently compared the migrants’ centers to Nazi “concentration camps”. Where are the gas chambers, medical “experiments,” crematoria, slave labor, forced marches and firing squads? These comparisons are spread by the media for a precise reason: shutting down the debate.

By 2065, it is expected that 14.4 million migrants will arrive. Added to the more than five million immigrants currently in Italy, 37% of the population is expected to be foreigners: more than one out of every three inhabitants.

First, it was the Hungarian route. Then it was the Balkan route. Now Italy is the epicenter of this demographic earthquake, and it has become Europe’s soft underbelly as hundreds of thousands of migrants arrive.

With nearly 10,000 arrivals in one recent three-day period, the number of migrants in 2017 exceeded 60,000 — 48% more than the same period last year, when they were 40,000. Over Easter weekend a record 8,000 migrants were rescued in the Mediterranean and brought to Italy. And that is just the tip of the iceberg: during the summer, the number of arrivals from Libya will only increase.

A wooden boat carrying migrants waits to be escorted to the Topaz Responder vessel, as members of the Migrant Offshore Aid Station make a rescue at sea on November 21, 2016 in Pozzollo, Italy. (Photo by Dan Kitwood/Getty Images)

A replacement of population is under way in Italy. But if you open the mainstream newspapers, you barely find these figures. No television station has dedicated any time to what is happening. No criticism is allowed. The invasion is considered a done deal.

In 2016, 176,554 migrants landed in Italy — an eight-fold increase since 2014. In 2015, there were 103,792. In 2014, there were 66,066. In 2013, there were just 22,118. In the last four years, 427,000 migrants reached Italy. In only the first five months of this year, 2017, Italy received 10% of the total number of migrants of the last four years.

There are days when the Italian navy and coast guard rescue 1,700 migrants in 24 hours. The country is exhausted. There are Italian villages where one-tenth of the population is already made up of new migrants. We are talking about small towns of 220 residents and 40 migrants.

One of the major aspects of this demographic revolution is that it is taking place in a country which is dramatically aging. According with a new report from the Italian Office of Statistics, Italy’s population will fall to 53.7 million in half a century — a loss of seven million people. Italy, which has one of the world’s lowest fertility rates, will lose between 600,000 to 800,000 citizens every year. Immigrants will number more than 14 million, about one-fourth of the total population. But in the most pessimistic scenario, the Italian population could drop to 46 million, a loss of 14 million people.

“Today, Muslim public opinion is shaped by schools, mosques and the media. Everywhere in the Islamic world, these three channels are state-controlled. This triad is how terrorism is bred.” — Ayad Jamal Aldin, Iraqi Shiite cleric and former parliamentarian.

The Muslim Brotherhood, too, is linked to the House of Saud, which, Aldin said, “offers every kind of required support to the White House. In exchange, they enjoy the U.S.’s cover, which they use to spread Wahhabism even farther. From Minnesota, to Canada, to Latin American, to Asia, Africa, and Europe — they claim they only build mosques. Through their literature, they constitute a more lethal danger than that posed by nuclear technology proliferation.”

“Let the U.S. and others pressure the Iranians and Saudis to stop their support for extremist movements. You will be surprised how soon people will start to think and act differently.” — Ayad Jamal Aldin.

In the wake of the ISIS’s Palm Sunday bombings of Coptic churches in Egypt, Cairo’s Al-Azhar University, Sunni Islam’s most revered institution, not only refused to denounce the terrorist organization as “un-Islamic,” but repeated its implausible boast of being a bulwark against extremism in the Muslim-Arab world, and accused those calling for religious reform of treason.

One such “traitor” was Egyptian TV presenter Islam Behery, a British-educated writer and Sunni Muslim who had been exposing the roots of violence within Islamic tradition itself, until he was forced off the air after protests by Al-Azhar in 2015.

According to Behery, who was later convicted of blasphemy and sentenced to a year in prison, the tradition in question

“has very little good amid a multitude of evil, least of which is the insistence by all the four schools of Sunni Islam that Christians can be killed with impunity [as] a Muslim life is ‘superior’ to that of a non-Muslim.” (Kol Youm show, ON TV with Amr Adib, 25 April).