RUTHFULLY YOURS

The heroes of our nationhood were not resistance leaders or freedom fighters, but politicians and statesmen, most now forgotten or only half-remembered. Their creation is an achievement worth celebrating.
An amazing, but little remarked, fact in the current concern about securing Australia’s borders – cue ‘Operation Sovereign Borders’ – is that they are entirely maritime. We have no land borders, and Australia is the largest country in the world not to have any any. According to Geoscience Australia, we have a coastline of almost sixty thousand kilometres (mainland plus islands). The perimeter of our territorial waters is probably longer, and the outer edge of our exclusive economic zone (EEZ) longer again. Back on shore we have, of course, state borders, and we once built a rabbit-proof fence over thousands of kilometres of outback, but only at sea do we share international borders with other countries (PNG Indonesia and East Timor).

Australia is the only inhabited continent that is not criss-crossed with international boundaries and a patchwork of nation states. Not for us razor-wire fences, concrete barriers, guard-posts, check-points, manned border-crossings, heavily armed border patrols, disputed terrain. We are one country, one nation, spanning an entire continent and its offshore islands. The shape is so iconic, so much the image of our country, that we take it for granted.

It is pertinent to ask how this happy situation came about. It was not, it must be said, anything to do with the first inhabitants, the Aborigines and Torres Strait islanders. Whilst they had spread across the entire continent and adjacent islands, and shared a nomadic hunter-gatherer existence, they were divided into around 250 separate tribal groups, each with its own traditions, customs, language and territory, with which it had a strong and deep affinity. Whilst there was, of course, contact between adjacent groups, it is doubtful whether there was any knowledge of, or affinity with, groups beyond this range of contacts, with those living on the other side of the continent. Nor is it likely that the first inhabitants had any concept of the country, of the continent, of Australia, in its entirety. This awareness could only come in the modern era.

It was the British, at the end of the eighteenth century, who changed all that. It was an Englishman, Arthur Phillip, who with a small ceremony on the shore of Botany Bay on 26 January, 1788, began the annexation of the continent for the British Crown. It was another Englishman, Matthew Flinders, who first circumnavigated the continent and revealed in detail its size and shape, and it was he who bestowed upon it the name Australia. In just a mere 113 years after Arthur Phillip established the first British settlement at Sydney Cove, Australia became a united sovereign nation, taking its own place in the world. This it achieved freely, and with the encouragement and consent of Britain. There was no ‘throwing off of the British yolk’, no need for an independence struggle. The heroes of Australia’s nationhood were not resistance leaders or freedom fighters, but politicians and statesmen, most now forgotten or only half-remembered.

The section of the Quran that a Muslim student recited at the church service points out the Islamic belief that Jesus was not the Son of God. Even in today’s Britain, this does not seem quite the view that leaders of the national church are supposed to propagate.

“The justification offered that it engages some kind of reciprocity founders on the understandable refusal of Islamic communities to read passages from the Gospel in Muslim prayers announcing the Lordship of Christ. It never happens…. apologies may be due to the Christians suffering dreadful persecution at the hands of Muslims in the Middle East and elsewhere. To have the core of a faith for which they have suffered deeply treated so casually by senior western clergy such as the Provost of Glasgow is unlikely to have a positive outcome.” — Reverend Gavin Ashenden, The Times.

“I resigned in order to be able to speak more freely about the struggle that Christianity is facing in our culture. I had no idea that there were plans afoot by a Scottish Cathedral to ‘reach out to Muslims’ by scrapping a Bible reading from their worship on the Feast of the Epiphany (when Christ’s Lordship is celebrated as the Light of the World) and replacing it with a part of the Koran that denied Jesus was the Son of God…. it represented one more step along a road, which if the Church continues to follow, will speed up the destruction of Christianity in our country.” — Reverend Gavin Ashenden, The Times.

In a nation much in need of heroes, an Anglican Reverend has stepped forward, putting his sincere and serious beliefs ahead of the unserious and insincere pieties of our time. Everybody — secular or religious — has cause to feel enormous gratitude.

Very occasionally — even in contemporary Britain — some good news arrives. No single piece of news has been more invigorating than the discovery that a member of the clergy of the Church of England has found a vertebra.

In recent years, the British public have become used to a steady succession of bad-news stories from the purveyors of the Good News. This has taken every imaginable form, from the former Bishop of Oxford suggesting in the House of Lords that the Quran could be recited at the next coronation service, to the former Archbishop of Canterbury — Rowan Williams — notoriously suggesting that a place should be found for Islamic sharia in the law of the land.

So the place in the British national comedy reserved for the type of vicar unwilling to take the side of his own faith in any argument has darkly morphed. The failure of the Church of England to defend its own beliefs or its own followers when they are facing persecution around the world, has become an unamusing stain on the reputation of the church. Its representatives increasingly look as though they are willing to defend anything — including the most intolerant expressions of the world’s most intolerant religions — rather than argue for their own faith or the faith of their own congregants.

One example that emerged earlier this month appeared to epitomise the trend. At a service in the Cathedral of St Mary in Glasgow to mark the Feast of the Epiphany, the Cathedral thought it wise to invite a Muslim student to read from the Quran. The aim — according to the leader of the Scottish Anglican church, Bishop David Chillingworth — was to try to improve relations between Muslims and Christians in the city. If that were indeed the intention, it was singularly ill-advised. And as though the decision were not already poorly enough thought through, the section of the Quran the Muslim student recited at the service was the section of the Quran about Jesus. The section in question points out the Islamic belief that Jesus was not the Son of God. Even in today’s Britain, this does not seem quite the view that leaders of the national church are supposed to propagate.

There was a small rumpus when this story broke. During it, the ray of hope came in the form of a letter in The Times of London. Written by the Reverend Gavin Ashenden, it pointed out that:

“Sanctioning a key passage from the Koran which denies the divinity of Jesus to be read in Christian worship has been widely criticised as a rather serious failure. The justification offered that it engages some kind of reciprocity founders on the understandable refusal of Islamic communities to read passages from the Gospel in Muslim prayers announcing the Lordship of Christ. It never happens.

“Quite apart from the wide distress (some would say blasphemy) caused by denigrating Jesus in Christian worship, apologies may be due to the Christians suffering dreadful persecution at the hands of Muslims in the Middle East and elsewhere. To have the core of a faith for which they have suffered deeply treated so casually by senior western clergy such as the Provost of Glasgow is unlikely to have a positive outcome. There are other and considerably better ways to build “bridges of understanding”.

It is not a lie to say that on reading this letter the heart sang. And not just for the contents and for the fact that the signatory was a Reverend but for what was listed beneath as his title: “Chaplain to Her Majesty the Queen.” It may be pointed out that there are several dozen people who hold this title, and so the Revd Ashenden is not the sole spiritual adviser to Her Majesty. But nevertheless, this made the letter a statement of considerably more significance. The Queen is the Head of the Church of England who swore at her coronation that she would be the “Defender of the Faith.” Here was one of her Chaplains standing against the prevailing trends of the age and actually defending the faith which his employer swore to uphold. In a struggle this complex, such stands — even, or especially when they should be statements of the obvious — stand for a great deal.

Many of the Kurds affected by these ruling powers did not want to separate, but simply to be able to live a peaceful and stable life; the push for a state was the creation of the states themselves, through their oppression of the Kurds.

Kurdistan offers an opportunity for all its citizens to look towards an inclusive, pluralistic society where religious freedom is not only tolerated, but encouraged.

Kurds respect both the Sunnis and the Shiites within their territories and have strong ties with the only Jewish state in the Middle East. A Kurdish state has the potential to bring amity to an otherwise unstable region.

Many international bodies including the United Nations, the European Union, and the Arab League continue to push for a Palestinian state, while ignoring calls for a Kurdish one. For far too long, the Arab, Turkish and Iranian peoples and leaderships have used the Israeli-Palestinian issue as justification for their own problems.

Without acknowledging the “Kurdish question,” which spans four major states — Iraq, Iran, Syria, and Turkey — the Middle East will have trouble achieving stability.

The goal of solving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict has long been used by Arabs, Turks and Iranians in the Middle East as a cover to deflect criticism away from their own indifferent leadership. The 22 existing Arab States, along with Turkey and Iran, can easily establish a homeland for the Palestinians, but they are not interested in doing so. The goal of these states is not to create another Arab state, but to eradicate an only Jewish state.

Giving the Palestinians a state will not solve the Syrian civil war, the Sunni-Shiite divisions in Iraq will remain, the destructive Islamist path of Turkey’s President Erdogan will continue, the world will see continued Iranian aggression against Israel, Sunnis, and Kurds, and the hold hat both Iran and Saudi Arabia have on Islam will only strengthen.

The Kurds are large in number (an estimated 40-50 million) and have a unique language, culture, and identity that differs markedly from their neighbors. The main problems in the region center around Islam versus Islam (Arab-Arab, Arab-Iran, Arab-Turk, Iran-Turk) or Islam versus minorities, including Christians, Yezidis, Chaldeans, Alevis, Jews, etc.

Kurds embrace Western values such as gender equality, religious freedom and human rights.

The Kurdish people have continually suffered in the Middle East.

The Turks, under the Ottomans killed tens of thousands of Kurds in massacres in Dersim and Zilan. By the 1990s, more than 3,000 Kurdish villages were destroyed. According to Human Rights Watch, 378,335 Kurdish villagers had been displaced in Turkey.

ISIS supporters on social media were boasting that the terror group now has an air force after the Islamic State released today their first video showing weaponized drones being used against Iraqi forces.

ISIS has previously used drone photography in videos to capture aerial shots of battles, and they have also been using drone IEDs that have progressively gotten more advanced.

The 38-minute video, posted on YouTube and other content-sharing sites, had been teased for a day with a trailer released by ISIS. It largely features suicide bombers in vehicles, including one young teenager who can barely see over the wheel of the armored car. ISIS uses drone photography to follow the suicide bombers and film the attacks from the air.
(ISIS video screenshot) (ISIS video screenshot)

The video uses photography from another drone to show a weaponized drone flying toward its target, and cameras on the weaponized drone itself show the impact from dropping an IED on a group of people in a street. When vehicles start to respond to the scene, a suicide bomber in a car drives in and detonates in a follow-up attack.

(ISIS video screenshot) (ISIS video screenshot)

ISIS continues to show a variety of other explosive drops from a drone’s vantage point, mostly targeting individual parked vehicles or small groups of people.
(ISIS video screenshot) (ISIS video screenshot)

The blasts produced by the explosives are akin to grenades, appearing to inflict some injuries when aimed directly at people but seeming to have little effect when dropped on tanks.
(ISIS video screenshot) (ISIS video screenshot)

A reporter and a cameraman for U.S.-funded Al-Hurra were injured last week in an ISIS drone attack on eastern Mosul.

Iraq’s defense ministry announced that their forces are in control of eastern Mosul — a city divided by the Tigris River — and have begun planning operations to retake smaller but more densely populated western Mosul.

In mid-October, just after the Mosul operation began, Maj. Gen. Gary Volesky, commander of Combined Joint Forces’ Land Component Command for Operation Inherent Resolve and commander of the 101st Airborne, told reporters that ISIS drones were in use.

First, the red caps.
They’re what the smart gals in Yemen’s capital, Sanaa, have been wearing on top of their niqabs, while taking part in a mass parade and military display in support of the Houthi movement. Brandishing weapons, this chapter of the Israel-hating Sisterhood chanted: “Death to America! Death to Israel! A curse upon the Jews!” Second, the “pussy hats”.

They’re the specially knitted pink or red chapeaux with the little pointed ears that anti-Trump feministas (who typically say not one word of condemnation of Islamic misogyny but, rather, tend to be in the forefront of the Useful Idiot and anti-Israel movement) have been sporting at anti-Trump marches this weekend.

Why didn’t these women march in support of the sexually assaulted women of Cologne in January last year? Against the Muslim youths who have made Sweden the rape capital of Europe? Against the truly benighted patriarchal attitudes that Islam is introducing into Europe?

The hats can be seen at this march in Halifax, Nova Scotia, where the crowd is at least seemingly good natured (the video bears last year’s date in error).

How nauseating yet utterly predictable, given the Left’s proven track record of hypocritical absurdity, to see, here, “Hanoi Jane” smiling approvingly at Miley Cyrus, whose obscene stage acts have done more to degrade women and perpetuate the “sex object” stereotype than Trump’s admittedly appalling adolescent-level lewd boastings have!

Crazy feministas making hijabs for themselves (out of the American flag):

Malevolent madness in Merkeland: at Berlin march an anti-Trump feminist intones a certain Islamist supremacy phrase while other feminists listen enraptured!:

It seems that all ideas suspected of being “populist” — or simply those ideas without the blessing of the elites – will now be banned in Germany. This restriction applies to criticism of the government (especially regarding immigration and energy policies), of the EU, of Islam, of government officials and of the media.

As in communist dictatorships, the more obvious the failings of the government, the more aggressively the establishment attacks those who speak out about them.

Large companies such as Deutsche Telekom (T-Mobile), BMW, Mercedes-Benz and the supermarket chain REWE obeyed straightaway and promised to place “Breitbart” on the blacklist immediately and never to advertise there again.

A plucky little pizza delivery service that responded to the blacklisting demand by declaring that it was “not the morality police”. The company was denounced by Der Spiegel as “inept”, and after “protests from customers”, it ended up capitulating, as the newspaper reported with much satisfaction.

The elites and intellectuals are apparently now counted among the German minorities in need of protection.

Toward the end of last year, Germany experienced a previously unheard-of boycott campaign – funded by the German government, no less — against several websites, such as the popular “Axis of Good” (“Achse des Guten”). The website, critical of the government, was suddenly accused of “right-wing populism”.

The German government’s efforts at thought control seem to have begun the with the victory of Donald J. Trump in the US presidential election — that seems to set the “establishment” off. Germany’s foreign minister and the probable future federal president, Frank-Walter Steinmeier — one of the first to travel to Iran after the removal of sanctions there to kowtow to the Ayatollahs — called America’s future president a “hate preacher”.

Germany’s newspapers were suddenly littered with apocalyptic predictions and anti-American fulminations.

For hard-core Trump-haters, however, a witch hunt by itself is insufficient; they want activism! Since November, Germany’s left-wing parties have had a strong increase in membership, as reported by Der Spiegel. At the same time, the federal government evidently decided, at least regarding the federal elections taking place in 2017, that it would no longer count on journalists’ self-censorship. The German government, instead of merely hoping that newspapers would voluntarily — or under pressure from the Press Council — refrain from criticising the government’s immigration policies, decided that it, itself, would inaugurate censorship.
The Federal Government’s “Ministry of Truth”

To this effect, as reported by Der Spiegel, the Federal Interior Ministry, intends to set up a “Defense Center against Disinformation (“Abwehrzentrum gegen Desinformation”) in the fight against “fake news on social networks”. “Abwehr” — the name of Nazi Germany’s military intelligence agency — is apparently meant to demonstrate the government’s seriousness regarding the matter.

“It sounds like the Ministry of Truth, ‘Minitrue,’ from George Orwell’s dystopian novel 1984”, wrote even the left-leaning daily, Frankfurter Rundschau.

Frank Überall, national head of the German Association of Journalists (DJV), bluntly stated: “This smells like censorship.”

It seems that all ideas suspected of being “populist” — or simply those ideas without the blessing of the elites – will now be banned in Germany. This restriction applies to criticism of the government (especially regarding immigration and energy policies), of the EU, of Islam, of government officials and of the media.

The Federal Agency for Political Education — the information agency of the Interior Ministry – is quite open about it: “Anti-elitism”, “anti-intellectualism”, “anti-politics” and “hostility toward institutions” are the “key characteristics of populism”.

Some Yazidi girls were “sold” for a few packs of cigarettes.

“Some of those women and girls have had to watch 7-, 8-, and 9-year-old children bleed to death before their eyes, after being raped by ISIS militia multiple times a day. ISIS militias have burned many Yezidi girls alive for refusing to convert… Why? Because we are not Muslims…” — Mirza Ismail, chairman of the Yezidi Human Rights Organization-International.

“This is genocide against women.” — Zeynep Kaya Cavus, leading Alevi activist.

Sadly, many of the organizers and participants of the “Women’s March” in Washington chose to ignore women being tortured and exterminated by Islamic terrorists, and in other parts of the world, not to receive an education or even leave the house without the permission of a male.

If only these women felt as motivated to protest about the enslavement, rape and torture of Yazidi women and children, as about the cost of tampons.

On January 21, some women’s rights groups organized “Women’s Marches” in many cities across the Unites States and around the world. The rallies largely targeted Donald Trump, the recently-inaugurated U.S. President.

There were many speakers and participants. One, an actress, Ashley Judd, read a poem in Washington D.C. that asked why “tampons are taxed when Viagra and Rogaine are not”.

As Mrs. Judd talked about her devastating tragedy, thousands of Yazidi children and women were being forced into sexual slavery in Iraq and Syria at the hands of Islamic State (ISIS), and available for purchase at sex-slave markets.

While actress Ashley Judd complained at a Washington D.C. “Women’s March” that “tampons are taxed when Viagra and Rogaine are not,” thousands of Yazidi children and women were being forced into sexual slavery in Iraq and Syria at the hands of Islamic State.

ISIS attacked the Yazidi (or Yezidi) homeland of Shingal in Iraq on August 3, 2014; more than 9,000 Yazidis were killed, kidnapped, or sexually enslaved. Yazidis are a historically persecuted religious minority in the Middle East.

The Islamic State has institutionalized a culture of rape and sex-slavery. ISIS is waging a literal war against women. It has even published a “price list” of Yazidi and Christian girls — as young as one to nine years of age.

Middle East scholar Raymond Ibrahim wrote about one Yazidi girl enslaved when she was 15 and endured months of captivity before she managed to escape:

“I remember a man who looked at least 40 years old coming and taking a ten-year-old girl. When she resisted him, he beat her severely, using stones, and would have opened fire on her if she had not gone with him. Everything against her will. They used to come and buy the girls without a price, I mean, they used to tell us Yazidi girls, you are sabiya [spoils of war, sex slaves], you are kuffar [infidels], you are to be sold without a price,” meaning they had no base value. Some Yazidi girls were sold for a few packs of cigarettes.

Prime Minister Rutte ran an election advertisement in today’s newspapers.
And I have a message to this prime minister.

Stop with the deceit of the Netherlands. Stop deceiving your own people.

There is absolutely no-one who still believes you.

It was you, who caused the loss of our freedom, our security, and our culture.
It was you, who governed with the Labor Party; you, who conducted dangerous open borders policy.
You, who even allowed terrorists to freely travel in and out of the Netherlands.
You, who have given Islam free rein.
Why don’t you talk about that?
Four years of Mark Rutte means four years of, every day, a little less Netherlands.

Why do you not talk about Islamization?
Why do you not talk about terror?
Why don’t we hear you about the billions that are spent every year on Africa, Brussels and all those fortune-seekers, rather than on our own people?
Why don’t you mention the hundreds of thousands of asylum seekers and immigrants whom you’ve allowed into our country?
That is the biggest threat to our country.
That is what you, as prime minister, should never have allowed to happen.
It is your fault and no-one else’s.
And if we continue the way you are doing now, then the Netherlands will soon cease to exist.
Then there will be only one standard in this country: Islam. And we will have lost our beautiful country.

But we will not allow that to happen, because this is the land of all those millions of Dutch whom you have let down.
The millions of people whom you have cheated and robbed of their own country.
But, together with them, we will reconquer the Netherlands from the elite, from Islam, and from you, Mr. Rutte.
It’s time that you leave.
And, on March 15th, the Netherlands will become ours again.

Given a choice, monsieur the diplomat, between two International Peace Conferences-Kazakhstan for Syria or Paris for the Middle East- which would you prefer? Would you like to plough your brain trying to sort out the Islamist rebels from the plain Islamists, finding someone less brutal to replace Assad and a few factions to support him, resisting pressure from the Russians, Iranians, Turks, Hezbollah and the like? Wouldn’t you rather sit around a table in Paris, rubbing shoulders with distinguished ladies and gentlemen, and repeating that it is urgent to settle the “oldest conflict” by finally implementing the oldest solution: two states side by side in security?

For low ranking journalists that didn’t have the chance to come anywhere near the delegations, “covering” the Conference meant receiving the elevated address of Foreign Affairs Minister Jean-Marc Ayrault who would present the conclusions reached by the diplomats united in a spirit of sincere friendship for the parties to the conflict. (The day after the Conference, that hasn’t generated much interest worldwide, documents in several languages and videos of some speeches were posted on the Ministry site. http://www.diplomatie.gouv.fr/fr.)

I easily found a seat in the second row. Most of the people around me were speaking Arabic. I don’t usually cover events in the ministries. My stamping ground is more in the neighborhood of the UPJF, the BNVCA, and defamation hearings at the Palais de Justice. I greeted Gideon Kuntz, didn’t see any familiar faces… until a woman took a seat on my left, turned to me, and said: “I know you.” Right. We met about ten days ago at a party thrown by a journalist friend. Hustle and bustle near the door. The minister will enter any minute. My fellow American gives me some inside information: “A little while ago I was sitting next to a Palestinian. He told me that the father of one of the female soldiers killed in Jerusalem wrote on his Facebook page, ‘What can you expect when we keep them cooped up like that?'” Brushing aside a dozen reactions that tumbled around in my mind, I answered like a good journalist: “Could be. We’d have to verify it.” She shrugs: “It’s Facebook.” And I say to myself: “It’s a Palestinian.” The minister walks in, accompanied by about 15 people that line up along the wall.

Busy taking notes in my red moleskin notebook with my real fountain pen, I don’t even have the fun of observing the audience. Except for the bald head of Harlem Désir, foreign relations secretary of the Socialist party, seated right in front of me. I wished I could remind him of his gallantry that day in 1990 when a momentous wind storm caught us on the top floor of the Arche de la Défense, during an encounter with delegates from Central Europe. Maybe they represented the new democracies? The wind forced open the sliding glass doors and came barreling into the hall. You could see the wind, it was light green and terrifying. After a long wait someone finally came to take us to an elevator that brought us down to an exit at the top of a long flight of stairs. The wind was too strong, it almost blew me away, I grabbed onto Harlem Désir who escorted me all the way to the metro entrance. Those were different times.

Today, too, the times have changed. The arrogant disdain for Israel that marked the first yeas of the century has morphed here into moderate, measured benevolence, all soft and gentle. Everything about the Conference, from the motivation, hopes, and concerns, to the final recommendations is dipped in the honey of sincere egalitarian friendship. Everything is unanimous, they are all united in the same spirit, they all condemned the horrible terror attack in Jerusalem and all forms of violence and incitement to violence. But. But resolution 2334 of the UN Security Council denounced the colonization; this decision is “stamped with international legality, it’s serious.” To show just how serious that condemnation is, the minister used a strange expression: “it is the voice of the world that spoke.”