RUTHFULLY YOURS

Here is the dark magic of PC thinking: it subtly inverts the truth, leaving us feeling virtuous while literally and metaphorically disarmed. Hug the person next to you, urged Katy Perry at the Manchester memorial concert. Just hope he’s not wearing a suicide vest.

It is easy to be cynical about pop singer Katy Perry’s appeal during the June 4, 2017, One Love Manchester benefit concert for members of the audience to touch the person next to them and say, “I love you”. The all-star performance commemorated victims of the terrorist attack carried out after an Ariana Grande show at Manchester Arena on May 22, resulting in 22 deaths (many of the victims young girls) and 119 people injured. Given that only the day before One Love Manchester, Saturday June 3, another terrorist assault, this time in the vicinity of London Bridge, left eight people dead and 48 injured, the all-star concert assumed additional meaning.

Some with longer memories, of course, might have remembered all the way back March 22 when Islamic State sympathiser, Khalid Masood, drove a vehicle into pedestrians on the south side of Westminster Bridge and Bridge Street wounding 50 people, four of them fatally.

Some construed Perry’s plea as foolish, even delusional: “It’s not easy to always choose love, is it? It can be the most difficult thing to do. But love conquers fear and love conquers hate. And this love that you choose will give you strength, and it is out greatest power.”

I, too, was ready to dismiss her “little exercise of love” as utterly facile, and yet she is halfway to the truth. “Love”, courtesy of our Judeo-Christian origins, really is one of the attributes of Western civilisation. That said, we need to add the caveat that love, in the sense of transcending the tribal and acquiring a universal quality, has a post-Christian flavour today. Still, something Christian remains in our increasingly post-Christian worldview. There are those who would contend that we have, by and large, eschewed the religious dimension of our traditional faith – “Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength” – while maintaining the Golden Rule aspect: “Love your neighbour as yourself”.

katy perry

Unconditional love is in the air and I hope some young Muslims, in the United Kingdom, Australia or anywhere for that matter, were inspired by the good vibrations emanating from One Love Manchester and have elected to shun the homicidal tribalism of Sudden Jihadi Syndrome. We can hope.

Arab News reported (6/7/2017) that “Suicide bombers and gunmen attacked the parliament building and the Mausoleum of Ayatollah Khomeini in the Iranian capital. Islamic State (IS) claimed responsibility and released a video purporting to show gunmen inside the parliament.” The twin attacks on Wednesday killed 12 Iranians, and embarrassed the radical Islamist regime by showing its vulnerability at home. IS terrorists hit the most potent symbols of Iran’s Islamic Republic on Wednesday. It has brought into sharp focus the high cost of Tehran’s involvement in Syria, which according to the powerful Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) leadership, was meant to ward off terrorist attacks at the home front. With an economy that has barely recovered from sanctions imposed on it by the international community, the Iranian regime of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei can hardly justify the huge cost to the treasury of exporting its revolution and backing Assad in Syria with Iranian cash, if not in blood.

Given the Sunni-Shiite conflict engulfing the Middle East, it was inevitable that IS will ultimately strike at Iran – the patrons of Shiite-Islam. The antecedents of IS in Iraq proved that the Sunnis who ruled in Iraq albeit, as a minority with a Shiite majority, won’t easily allow Shiites to disenfranchise them. In Syria however, the Sunnis are the majority, and have been ruled for almost 50 years by the Alawite (Shiite) clan of the Assads. It was never a question of whether or if IS will strike at Iran but rather when. The array of Shiite militias fighting IS, and non-Islamist Sunni militias, under the command of Maj. General Qasem Soleimani, the head of the Quds Division of the IRGC, is clear enough reason why Iran is, and will continue to be a target.

To expand its influence throughout the Middle East region, and extend the Shiite Crescent, the Ayatollahs’ regime in Tehran has devoted huge resources to protect its turf in Syria, and maintain it as a bridge to Lebanon and the Mediterranean Sea. In essence, it means the preservation of the Bashar Assad, Alawi-led (Alawites are an offshoot of Shiite Islam) regime. The Syrian dictator who has now earned the moniker “the butcher of Damascus” can count on the Iranian ‘Foreign Legion’ made up of Shiite fighters from Lebanon (Hezbollah), Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Yemen. They provide the manpower that serves the Iranian agenda in Syria. Besides Hezbollah, there is the Afghan “Fatimiyoun and Khadem el-‘Aqila Brigades; the Pakistani Zainebiyoun Brigade; Yemeni Houtis “Liwa Al-Saada Brigade, the Iraqi Shiite militia Al-Nujaba Movement. The Iraqi Shiite contingent is the largest force engaged in the defense of the Assad regime. It is estimated to number around 40,000 fighters.

According to the Qatari based outlet, Al-Jazeera (1/22/2016), “Some 20,000 Afghan Shia fighters alone are said to be fighting alongside Iran to help save the government of the Syrian President Assad.” Iran, the publication pointed out, recruited tens of thousands of Afghan Shiite fighters, offering them salaries to join the fight to save President Bashar Assad. The Afghan Shiites are refugees from the ongoing war in Afghanistan between the government of Ashraf Ghani and the Taliban. They escaped to Iran due to economic and political hardship, and sought asylum there. Given the inability of young Afghanis to find work in Iran, they are easily manipulated into being cannon-fodder for the Iranians. Unlike an Iranian fighter, an Afghan illegal migrant killed in action would not be a burden on the Iranian treasury. Moreover, its foreign mercenaries provide Iran with deniability with regards to their intervention in Syria.

The case of Eric X. and his 23-year-old rape victim has exposed, once again, the systemic failure by German authorities to enforce the law and to ensure public safety: a failure to secure borders; a failure to vet incoming migrants; a failure to prosecute and imprison criminals; a failure to deport failed asylum seekers; and a failure by police to take seriously the migrant rape crisis engulfing Germany.

Germany’s migrant sex-crime problem is being exacerbated by its lenient legal system, in which offenders receive relatively light sentences, even for serious crimes. In many instances, individuals who are arrested for sex crimes are released after questioning from police. This practice allows criminal suspects to continue committing crimes with virtual impunity.

In Berlin, a court acquitted a 23-year-old Turkish man of rape because his victim could not prove that she did not give her consent. The court heard how the man shoved the woman’s head between the steel bars of the headboard of a bed and repeatedly violated her over a period of more than four hours. The woman cried “stop” and resisted by scratching the accused on the back, but at some point she stopped resisting. The court asked: “Could it be that the defendant thought you were in agreement?”

Two German police officers have been removed from their posts after they failed properly to provide emergency assistance to a woman who was raped by a migrant in Bonn.

The lack of attention by the police has added to the perception that German authorities are not taking seriously a rape crisis in which thousands of German women and children have been sexually assaulted since Chancellor Angela Merkel allowed in around two million migrants from Africa, Asia and the Middle East.

Some of the approximately two million migrants from Africa, Asia and the Middle East allowed into Germany by Chancellor Angela Merkel are shown arriving in the country, via Austria, on October 28, 2015 near Wegscheid. (Photo by Johannes Simon/Getty Images)

The incident occurred shortly after midnight on April 2, when a 23-year-old woman was raped at a campground at the Siegaue nature reserve. When the woman’s panic-stricken 26-year-old boyfriend called the police emergency number for help, a female officer answered the phone. The man said: “My girlfriend is being raped by a black man. He has a machete.” The policewoman responded: “Are you f**cking with me?” (“Sie wollen mich nicht verarschen, oder?”). The man replied: “No, no.” The policewoman responded: “Hmm.” After some moments of silence, she promised to dispatch a police car to investigate. She then said, “thank you, bye-bye” and abruptly hung up the phone.

A few minutes later, the boyfriend again called the police emergency number and another officer answered the phone. The man said: “Hello, I just called your colleague.” The officer replied: “What is it?” The man: “It’s about my girlfriend being raped.” The officer: “This is in Siegaue, is not it?” The man: “Exactly.” The officer then told the man to call police in Siegburg, a town north of Bonn. “They can coordinate this properly,” the officer said before hanging up.

The probe was to be conducted by the newly established “extremism analysis unit” of the Home Office, then headed by Theresa May, and its findings were due to be published in the spring of 2016. However, more than a year later, the investigation has yet to be completed.

Moreover, its contents might not be released to the public, due their “sensitive” nature, rumored to center on Saudi Arabia, Britain’s key ally in the Gulf. Since the U.K. recently approved £3.5 billion-worth of arms export licenses to Riyadh, it is possible — even likely — that any revelations about Saudi promotion of terrorism in the country could be problematic.

Mounting evidence suggests that British jihadis are not only groomed in Wahhabi mosques in the U.K., but many visit Saudi Arabia, where they work or study.

In the wake of the London Bridge attack on June 3, which came on the heels of the Manchester Arena bombing, Britain’s approach to combating terrorism has come under scrutiny at home and abroad. Judging by man-in-the-street interviews, it played a significant role in the June 8 general election, the outcome of which — a victory for Prime Minister Theresa May against Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn, yet a hung parliament — reflected a split in voter perception over whom was to blame for the country’s precarious security situation and which party is better suited to rectify it.

Although Corbyn has called terrorist groups, such as Hamas and Hezbollah, his “friends,” May not only has been holding the reins since the resignation of former Prime Minister David Cameron in September 2016 — after the Brexit referendum — but she had also served as Home Secretary for six years before that.

A few months earlier, in January, Cameron authorized an investigation into the foreign funding of radical Islamist groups inside Britain. According to a recent report in The Guardian, Cameron agreed to the inquiry, requested by the Liberal Democrat party in exchange for its support for British airstrikes against ISIS to Syria. The probe was to be conducted by the newly established “extremism analysis unit” of the Home Office, then headed by May, and its findings were due to be published in the spring of 2016.

However, more than a year later, the investigation has yet to be completed.

Moreover, its contents might not be released to the public, due their “sensitive” nature, rumored to center on Saudi Arabia, Britain’s key ally in the Gulf. Since the U.K. recently approved £3.5 billion-worth of arms export licenses to Riyadh, it is possible — even likely — that any revelations about Saudi promotion of terrorism in the country could be problematic.

During his election campaign, Corbyn attacked May for “suppressing” the report, and called for “some difficult conversations” with Saudi Arabia and other Gulf states, which have “funded and fueled extremist ideology.”

In a letter to Prime Minister May just over a week ahead of her re-election, Liberal Democrat foreign affairs spokesman Tom Brake urged that the inquiry be finished and its findings released:

“It is no secret that Saudi Arabia in particular provides funding to hundreds of mosques in the U.K., espousing a very hardline Wahhabist interpretation of Islam. It is often in these institutions that British extremism takes root.”

Brake was correct. Mounting evidence suggests that British jihadis are not only groomed in Wahhabi mosques in the U.K., but many visit Saudi Arabia, where they work or study.

One example is Khalid Masood, the British convert to Islam killed while perpetrating the terrorist attack on Westminster Bridge in March, and which left five innocent people dead. Masood, it emerged, had taken three trips to Saudi Arabia — two of them year-long stints to teach English and a third short visit to the country’s Islamic holy sites. Each time, he was given a visa by the Saudi authorities in Britain, despite having been convicted at least twice for violent crimes and lacking the required academic qualifications and experience for the job he was doing.

Although Saudi consulates require background checks of all visa applicants, Masood was ushered through the process, which is known to be strict. By way of explanation, the Embassy of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia in London claimed that the reason Masood passed its vetting was that he did not have a criminal record in Saudi Arabia. This is, of course, a complete lie, which raises the question of whether Masood fell through the cracks through incompetence or collusion. Either way, the broader issue of Britons being radicalized both at home and abroad by Saudi Arabia urgently needs to be thoroughly examined and exposed.

ISIS terrorists have publicly executed 19 Yazidi women by burning them alive in Mosul, Iraq, local activists report.

The women were burned to death in iron cages because they refused to have sex with ISIS terrorists, the Kurdish ARA News agency reported.

“They were punished for refusing to have sex with ISIS militants,” Abdullah al-Malla, a local media activist, told the agency.

An eyewitness in Mosul told ARA News: “The 19 girls were burned to death, while hundreds of people were watching.”

“Nobody could do anything to save them from the brutal punishment.”

Thousands of Yazidi women were taken captive when ISIS terrorists seized control of Sinjar, in north western Iraq, in August 2014.

The terror group has been attempting to eliminate the Yazidi people as part of its ethnic cleansing efforts.

The moles who operated in ASIO are living in quiet retirement, but the agency’s official historians aren’t allowed to tell us their names. As long as ASIO insists on protecting its ‘reputation’ from the truth it will anger and disconcert those whose trust it most needs.

The January-February edition of Quadrant carried a substantial review of the third volume of the official history of ASIO: The Secret Cold War: The Official History of ASIO 1975–1989, by John Blaxland and Rhys Crawley. The reviewer, Harold Callaghan, was highly critical of the book and dismissed “official history” as an oxymoron. It would be unusual for the magazine to run two reviews of the same book and for that reason the following is offered not as a review of the third volume or of the history as a whole, but as a reflection on the critical issue of Soviet penetration of ASIO and the implications for our national security of this hostile penetration of our security intelligence body during the Cold War.

The official history should, in the nature of the case, have had the matter of Soviet penetration of the Australian intelligence services as one of its central preoccupations. It has failed the Australian public in that regard and it is important that this fact be registered as clearly as possible, now that all three volumes have been published and the official exercise finished. The final volume confesses that ASIO was in fact penetrated. It fails, however, to disclose anything of significance about the nature, extent or consequences of the penetration. This is disturbing. At the very least, the citizenry of this country deserve and should demand a clear account of the extent of the penetration and why it took so very long to discover it. As it is, the history remains lame and does a grave disservice to ASIO veterans by implying that treason does not matter and will go unpunished. Why, then, have an ASIO at all?

The three-volume official history had to cover and did cover an enormous amount of territory. Soviet penetration was only one of many things with which the small team of historians at the Australian National University were required to deal. The lead historian on the project, David Horner, before the project got under way, remarked that “there is much sucking of teeth at ASIO when you raise the question of penetration and we may not have a lot of room for addressing it”. This has been borne out in the published volumes—the whole problem of counter-intelligence and counter-espionage is poorly handled and the question of hostile penetration is not addressed adequately or honestly. The fault here lies with ASIO itself, which censored the official history and withheld the materials that matter most.

We need to be clear here. Hostile penetration of one’s security intelligence service vitiates both it and the other government functions it is intended to protect. Prevention of such penetration must, therefore, always be its highest priority. This subject is thus more intrinsically important than any other aspect of the official history. Complacency, indifference and secrecy about it make a mockery of our having a security intelligence service at all. Secrecy about what has happened does nothing to foil our enemies. It simply misleads the tax-paying public. This should be inadmissible, but it is what has happened. After Julian Assange and Edward Snowden, discussion of intelligence and security needs to be based on a clear premise: if these things are necessary at all, then hostile penetration of the agencies charged with such work must be prevented. This requires a highly professional counter-intelligence function. We now know that, throughout the Cold War, ASIO failed abysmally in this regard. We should not allow it to fail so badly again in the twenty-first century.

ASIO was formed, to begin with, because it was discovered in the 1940s that Canberra had been deeply penetrated by Soviet moles and spies. Those moles were not working at the margins of Australian society or confined to elements of the trade union movement. They were operating in the offices of the Minister for External Affairs (H.V. Evatt), the Secretary for External Affairs (John Burton) and on the staff of Paul Hasluck (in External Affairs and at the United Nations). The late Desmond Ball, doyen of Australian scholars on intelligence matters, went so far as to declare in his last years that he believed both Evatt and Burton had been knowing collaborators in this espionage in the 1940s. Both were resistant to the establishment of ASIO and to any vetting of External Affairs staff. Evatt notoriously remarked in the House of Representatives, in the mid-1950s, that there were no Soviet spies in Australia. He had asked the Soviet Foreign Minister Vyacheslav Molotov and been reassured of this, he told his astounded fellow parliamentarians.

What is notable is that France’s new Muslim party, the Equality and Justice Party (PEJ), is an element of a network of political parties built by Turkey’s President Erdogan and AKP to influence each country of Europe, and to influence Europe through its Muslim population.

What is their program? The classic one for an Islamic party: abolishing the founding secularist law of 1905, which established the separation of church and state; mandatory veils for schoolgirls; and community solidarity (as opposed to individual rights) as a priority. All that is wrapped in the not-so-innocent flag of the necessity to “fight against Islamophobia”, a concept invented to shut down the push-back of all people who might criticize Islam before they can even start.

“[The Islamist party’s] purpose is to conquer the world, not just have a mandate. Its mechanics were already established…. Islamists took power in the name of democracy, then suspended democracy by using their power…. Convert the clothes, the body, the social links, the arts, nursing homes, schools, songs and culture, then, they just wait for the fruit to fall in the turban… An Islamist party is an open trap: you cannot let it in. If you refuse it, your country switches to a dictatorship, but if you accept it, you are at risk of submission….” — Kamel Daoud, Algerian writer, in Le Point, 2015.

In the legislative elections that will take place June 11 and 18 in France, political parties are finalizing preparations: choosing their candidates, and printing posters and stickers. Business as usual? Not really.

(Image source: Rama/Wikimedia Commons)

One newcomer arose in the political spectrum: a Muslim party, the Parti Egalité Justice (“Equality and Justice Party”; PEJ). What is notable is that PEJ is an element of a network of political parties built by Trukey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and his Justice and Development Party (AKP), to influence each country of Europe, and to influence Europe through its Muslim population.
PEJ: A Pro-Erdogan Party in France

The PEJ was created in 2015 in Strasbourg, the de facto capital of eastern France, on the border with Germany. PEJ has already approved 68 candidates — not enough to cover the whole territory but enough to compete efficiently in districts where Turkish and Muslim populations are strongly represented. French citizens of Turkish origin are estimated to represent 600,000 people in France, out of a Muslim population estimated at 5-15 million, but official statistics do not exist.

Another Muslim party, “Français et Musulmans” (“French and Muslims”), is also quietly preparing to erupt on the political scene of the French legislative elections. “Français et Musulmans” originates from L’Union des Organisations Islamiques de France (UOIF) which has been rebaptized “Muslims of France”. “Français et Musulmans” is the French branch of Muslim Brotherhood.

The PEJ, is the first party in France established by Turks. PEJ already participated in elections of the Provincial General Assembly in March 2015, but was eliminated in the first round. According to the magazine Marianne: “PEJ is closely connected to Council for justice, equality and peace (Cojep), an international NGO which represents, everywhere it is based, an anchor for AKP”, the party of Turkey’s president, Recep Tayip Erdogan. According to L’Express “many managers of PEJ are also in charge in Cojep”.

What is their program? The classic one for an Islamist party: abolishing the founding secularist law of 1905, which established the separation of church and state; veils mandatory for schoolgirls in public schools; halal food for all schools; support for Palestinians; and community solidarity (as opposed to individual rights) as a priority. All that is wrapped in the not-so-innocent flag of the necessity to “fight against Islamophobia”, a concept invented to shut down the push-back of all people who might criticize Islam before they can even start.

According to the magazine Marianne, Mine Gunbay, responsible for women’s rights in the city council of Strasbourg, fearlessly and tirelessly denounced the metamorphosis of Strasbourg into “political laboratory of the AKP”. Strasbourg is the city where Erdogan was authorized by former president Hollande to hold an electoral rally in October 2015. Legally.

The files of the National Bureau for Vigilance Against Antisemitism (BNVCA) document that all of the anti-Semitic attacks committed in France for more than two decades came from Muslims and Islamists.The French authorities know this, but choose to hide it and look in another direction.

None of the French organizations supposedly combating anti-Semitism talks about Muslim anti-Semitism: therefore, none of them combats it.

A survey carried out for the Institut Montaigne a few months ago showed that anti-Semitism is widespread among French Muslims. Apparently, 27% of them (50% of those under 25 years old) support the ideas of the Islamic State (ISIS).

Paris, April 4, 2017, 4:00 am. A Malian Muslim named Kobili Traore breaks into the apartment of one of his neighbors, Sarah Halimi. He knows she is a Jew. In the past, He has repeatedly uttered anti-Semitic insults at her. Halimi and her family had filed complaints and asked the police to intervene. Each time, the police respond that Traore has not committed a criminal act, and that they did not want to be accused of anti-Muslim prejudice.

That day, Traore decides to go from words to deeds. He beats Halimi violently. He tortures her. She screams. Neighbors call the police. This time the police do something — but not enough.

When they arrive at Halimi’s door, they hear Traore shouting Allahu Akbar, and shaytan (“demon”). In a jarring breach of duty, they decide to run away. They walk out of the building and call for reinforcements.

The reinforcements arrive more than an hour later, at 5:30 am. It is too late. Halimi had been thrown out the window by Traore a few minutes earlier. She is dead. Her body lies on the sidewalk three floors below. It is clearly an anti-Semitic murder committed by a Muslim who invoked the name of Allah.

“We need urgent, wholesale reform of human rights laws in this country to make sure they cannot be twisted to serve the interests of those who would harm our society.” — UK Justice Secretary, Chris Grayling, January 2015.

Swedish intelligence deemed him too dangerous to stay in Sweden, so the immigration authorities sought to have him deported to Syria. They did not succeed: the law does not permit his deportation to Syria, as he risks being arrested or executed there. Instead, he was released and is freely walking around in Malmö.

“It would simply never in a million years have occurred to the authors of the original Convention on Human Rights that it would one day end up in some form being used as a justification to stay here by individuals who are a danger to our country and our way of life…” — UK Justice Secretary, Chris Grayling, January 2015.

After the Manchester terrorist attack, it was revealed that there are not “just” 3,000 jihadists on the loose in the UK, as the public had previously been informed, but rather a dismaying 23,000 jihadists. According to The Times:

“About 3,000 people from the total group are judged to pose a threat and are under investigation or active monitoring in 500 operations being run by police and intelligence services. The 20,000 others have featured in previous inquiries and are categorised as posing a ‘residual risk”‘.

Why was the public informed of this only now?

Notably, among those who apparently posed only “a residual risk” and were therefore no longer under surveillance, were Salman Abedi, the Manchester bomber, and Khalid Masood, the Westminster killer.

It appears that the understaffed UK police agencies and intelligence services are no match for 23,000 jihadists. Already in June 2013, Dame Stella Rimington, former head of the MI5, estimated that it would take around 50,000 full-time MI5 agents to monitor 2,000 extremists or potential terrorists 24 hours a day, seven days a week. That amounts to more than 10 times the number of people employed by MI5. In October 2015, Andrew Parker, director general of the Security Service, said that the “scale and tempo” of the danger to the UK was at a level he had not seen in his 32-year career.

British politicians appear to have consistently ignored these warnings and allowed the untenable situation in the country to fester until the “new normal” became jihadists murdering children for Allah at pop concerts.

Given the prohibitive costs of monitoring 23,000 jihadists, the only realistic solution to this enormous security issue appears to be deporting jihadists, at least the foreign nationals among the 3,000 monitored, because they pose a threat. British nationals represent a separate problem, as they cannot be deported. Nevertheless, deportation has been an underused tool in the fight against Islamic terrorism: politicians worry too much about international conventions of human rights — meaning the human rights of jihadists and convicted terrorists, rather than the human rights of their own populace.

According to findings by the Henry Jackson Society in 2015 — as, unbelievably, the Home Office said it did not keep figures on the numbers of terror suspects allowed to remain in the UK by the courts — from 2005-2015, 28 convicted or suspected terrorists were allowed to stay in the UK and resist deportation by using the Human Rights Act. According to both the European Convention on Human Rights and the British Human Rights Act, individuals are protected against torture and inhuman or degrading treatment. As these 28 terrorists are all from countries with poor human rights records, they get to stay in the UK by claiming they would face torture if deported to their country of origin.