RUTHFULLY YOURS

The Islamic State has released a gruesome new video showing children executing captured Kurdish and Syrian soldiers.

Children of foreign fighters reportedly hailing from Britain, Egypt, Tunisia, Kurdistan and Uzbekistan pull out handguns and place them behind their captives’ heads before taking aim and opening fire in a video published by ISIS jihadis based in the group’s de-facto capital of Raqqa, Syria.

One juvenile executioner’s gun appears to lock up briefly, but he smiles smugly before coldly completing the execution. One of the victims appears to be a teen himself.

Known as ‘cubs of the Caliphate,’ children in the Islamic State have been assigned advanced roles in ISIS propaganda movies.

The Islamic State has also systematically used children both in active jihad and in recruitment practices, encouraging many of them to leave their families and join ISIS.

Fighting alongside adults, children under ISIS control attend child soldier training facilities and are used to carry out executions and suicide bombing missions.

At the end of the video, another set of executions take place. This time, the executioners are old men, likely further jihadi propaganda suggesting that from the young to the elderly, anyone can participate in jihad.

The core strategic problem we face is two conflicts with two ideologies that operate subversively until they are in power. That is, instead of stating their agenda openly, Islam and the left operate as false fronts maintaining a friendly moderate image while pursuing a far more radical agenda.

The distinction between moderates and radicals is at the heart of the debate about Islamic terrorism. Much as it used to be at the heart of the debate about Communism and its fellow travelers. Everyone will concede that there are indeed radicals, if only ISIS and Stalin. What they will deny is the extent of the complicity and, more significantly, the fact that the radicals were pursuing the same ends as the moderates, an Islamic Caliphate or a Communist dictatorship, only more rapidly and ruthlessly.

The thing that must be understood is that moderates do not disavow radicals. Rather they bridge the gap between the radicals and the larger society, justifying their ends, and eventually their means, while pretending to disavow them. Radicals reject any dialogue. Moderates emphasize dialogue.

Moderates will verbally reject the means with which an end is pursued. Accordingly they will reject terrorism. They may even claim to reject the ends, such as an ideological dictatorship, but they will, in good fellowship, ask you to accept their premise which inevitably leads to the acceptance of both the ends and the means.

For example, moderates on the left and in Islam will ask you to accept that terrorism is caused by American foreign policy. Once you have accepted this premise, then you have partially justified terrorism and paved the way for accepting an “Arab Spring” that eliminates the consequences of American foreign policy by properly Arabizing and Islamizing the governments of the region.

Nation-building has become a very controversial term. And with good reason. Our conviction that we can reconstruct any society into another America is unrealistic. It ignores our own exceptionalism and overlooks the cultural causes of many conflicts. It assumes that a change of government and open elections can transform a tribal Islamic society into America. They can’t and won’t.
But it’s also important to recognize that what we have been doing isn’t nation-building, but Islam-

building.

Nation-building in Germany and Japan meant identifying a totalitarian ideology, isolating its proponents from political power and recreating a formerly totalitarian state as an open society. That is the opposite of what we did in Afghanistan and Iraq, never mind Egypt, Libya, Tunisia, Yemen and all the rest.

We did temporarily pursue de-Baathification in Iraq. But the Baathists were just Saddam’s cult of personality. Saddam was a problem in Iraq. But he wasn’t the problem in Iraq. His rule was a symptom of the real problem which was the divide between Sunnis and Shiites. The real problem was Islam.

Because we failed to recognize that, de-Baathification failed. The Baathists just folded themselves into ISIS. The Sunni-Shiite war went on even without Saddam. Today Sunnis and Shiites are still killing each other in Iraq much as they had for a long time. We have boiled this war down to ISIS, but ISIS, like Saddam is just another symptom of the political violence and divisiveness inherent in Islam.

Instead of secularizing Iraq, our efforts at democracy only heightened divisions along religious lines. The “Lebanon” model for Iraq with power sharing arrangements between Sunnis and Shiites was doomed.

Iraq’s first election was dominated by the Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq. If that name rings a bell, it should. It came out of Iran. You know, the original Islamic Revolution. The “free” election had given a boost to an Islamic terror group whose goal was the creation of an Islamic State in Iraq.

The bloodiest days of the Iraq War actually came when two sets of Islamic terror groups fighting to create an Islamic State began killing each other… and us. We know one of those groups today as ISIS. The other group is the Iraqi government. And a decade later, they’re still killing each other.

Instead of nation-building in Iraq, we practiced Islam-building. Iraq’s constitution made Islam the official religion and the fundamental source of legislation. Its first real law was that, “No law that contradicts the established provisions of Islam may be established.” The new Iraq we had built was an Islamic State.

A suicide car bomb attack on an army training camp in Yemen’s second city of Aden killed at least 60 people on Monday, medical sources said.

A security official told AFP that the attacker drove his vehicle into a gathering of new recruits at the camp in northern Aden.

The assault killed 60 people and wounded 29 others, medical sources from the three hospitals where the victims were taken told AFP.

Security officials had provided an earlier toll of 11 dead.

The port city, the temporary base of Yemen’s Gulf-backed government, has seen a wave of bombings and shootings targeting officials and security forces.

Attacks in Aden are often claimed by jihadists from either Al-Qaeda or the Islamic State, which have both taken advantage of the chaos in Yemen to make gains in southern and southeastern regions.

But no group claimed immediate responsibility for Monday’s attack.

Yemeni authorities have trained hundreds of soldiers in Aden over the past two months to as part of operations to retake neighbouring southern provinces from jihadists.

Earlier this month, Yemeni government forces backed by a Saudi-led coalition entered Abyan’s provincial capital Zinjibar.

Troops retook other towns across Abyan but have been met by fierce resistance in key Al-Qaeda stronghold, al-Mahfid, a town which lies further east, security sources said.

The militants are still present in areas surrounding the recaptured towns and control large parts of the neighboring Shabwa province, the sources say.

The Arab coalition, which backs the Yemeni government against Iran-backed rebels, has also been providing troops with air cover throughout their war against the jihadists.

The coalition intervened in Yemen in March last year and has helped government troops push the rebels out of Aden and four other southern provinces.

But authorities have been struggling to secure these provinces.

More than 6,600 people, mostly civilians, have been killed in Yemen since March 2015 and more than 80 percent of the population has been left in need of humanitarian aid, according to the UN.

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The Minister for Immigration Affairs himself, repeatedly stated that 50% to 70% of migratory flows to Greece were illegal migrants and the rest were refugees. The illegal migrants come from 77 different countries.

If it is a “racist crime” for a citizen to express accurately the percentages of refugees and illegal migrants entering the country, what will come next, the Thought Police?

The real reason for prosecuting Bishop Markos, it seems, is that the government expects that Turkey’s migration deal with the EU will collapse, and that if it does, the migrant flows in the coming months will increase dramatically. The government, according to some members in the opposition, has no friendly way to manage illegal migration and therefore prefers to impose restrictions on freedom of speech and prosecute anyone who objects.

The government might scare the Bishop of Chios Island by pressing charges against him and trying to stigmatize him as a racist. But the government will still not scare the angry majority of Greeks.

In coalmines, from 1911 to 1986, canaries operated as an early warning system for the leakage of hazardous gases. Whenever the birds showed signs of distress, the miners knew trouble was coming.

Greece has deep problems. Greece is presently in the “coalmine” of an endless economic and immigration crisis.

This month, for the first time, there was a request to activate an anti-racist law, passed in September 2014, against a Greek citizen who also has institutional status.

The coalition government of Alexis Tsipras (SYRIZA) and Panos Kammenos (Independent Greeks) asked the district attorney to prosecute the Bishop of Chios Island, Markos Vasilakis, because he dared to say, during a sermon, that the thousands of people who recently arrived from Turkey on the island of Chios are illegal migrants, and not Syrian refugees.

“We will show the Armenians and the Christians who we are… We have been ordered not to leave any Armenians in the area.” — Islamic rebels, Aleppo, Syria.

Thousands of Christians are fleeing Eritrea due to extreme persecution. A report describes Eritrea as “one of the world’s fastest emptying nations” and the “North Korea of Africa.” The majority of the 40,000 who fled to Italy last year are Christians.

“The government of Iran continues to engage in systematic, ongoing, and egregious violations of religious freedom, including prolonged detention, torture, and executions based primarily or entirely upon the religion of the accused.” — Report by the United States Commission on International Religious Freedom.

A new study claims that as many as 40,000 Christians — including Muslims who wish to convert to Christianity — are being attacked and harassed by Muslims in migrant homes. According to the report, “Now in European asylum homes they are finding more and more that they are in as much danger from radical Muslims in Europe as they were in their home countries.”

More reports of the brutal treatment that Christians and other minorities experienced at the hands of the Islamic State (SIS) emerged during May. One account told of a couple who, after their children were abducted by ISIS militants, answered their door one day to find a plastic bag on their doorstep. It contained the body parts of their daughters and a video of them being brutally tortured and raped.

Another Christian mother from Mosul answered the door to find ISIS jihadis demanding that she leave or pay the jizya (protection money demanded as a tribute by conquered Christians and Jews, according to the Koran 9:29). The woman asked for a few seconds, because her daughter was in the shower, but the jihadis refused to give her the time. They set a fire to the house; her daughter was burned alive. The girl died in her mother’s arms; her last words were “Forgive them.”

The Islamic State reportedly beheaded another Christian leader on February 18. No media reported it, except for one Italian paper in May: “There are reliable reports are that Father Yacob Boulos, was beheaded by the terror group’ militants after he prayed on the altar of his church. He was punished for his faith.”

According to another report,

“One of the principal building blocks of our civilisation is the primacy of reason — to think, to understand and form logical judgments on the basis of experience, evidence and facts. Twist experience, evidence and facts to suit a political narrative and reason fails, sophism prevails. We now have many such sophistries plaguing and undermining our values and culture.”

The ‘stolen generations’ myth is a small clue to puzzle, but a vital piece it is. The Left’s game is to erode the foundations of our civilisation until it crumbles, which explains why false and destructive narratives emerge. The bigger question is why we allow them to attain such purchase?

In the minds of most people the story of ‘the stolen generations’ evokes images of large numbers of part-Aboriginal children being systematically and unjustifiably taken from their families and put in institutions or fostered out. At the same time, in a separate and distinct compartment of their minds, these same people will agree that at some extreme point of parental neglect, or abandonment, children, whatever their ethnicity, have to be removed for their safety and wellbeing.

South Australian Bishop Chris McLeod was a visiting preacher at my Anglican church a short time ago. In his sermon he explained that his mother had been part of ‘the stolen generations’. She had been taken from her family and cared for in an Anglican orphanage and, subsequently, in an Anglican household. He did not elaborate further.

I don’t want to comment on the Bishop’s position. I knew nothing about him until hearing his Sunday sermon and know very little now. I know nothing about the feelings of his mother.

What I want to comment on is the likely reception of the Bishop’s remarks by the congregation. I might be wrong but I doubt anybody besides me would have read Keith Windschuttle’s Fabrication of Aboriginal History (Volume III). To a man and woman they would have slotted the Bishop’s remarks into what they ‘know’ to be a cruel and racist part of Australia’s past; ditto for almost any group of Australians.

All Australians are aware of Kevin Rudd’s apology. Why apologise for something that didn’t happen? The story of ‘the stolen generations’ has become an historical fact or, more correctly, a factoid.

Iran said Sunday that it had arrested a person involved in the negotiations of its nuclear deal with six world powers last year and accused him of spying.

An Iranian judiciary spokesman, Gholam Hossein Mohseni Ejehi, said the accused was detained and released on bail after a few days, but didn’t identify him by name.

The spokesman also didn’t say when the arrest occurred, which country the person was accused of spying for or what sensitive information he may have disclosed.

“If this charge…is proved or not is another matter, because there is a difference between pursuing someone on a warrant and the charge being proved,” Mr. Ejehi said, according to the official Islamic Republic News Agency.

While details were scarce, the arrest is an unexpected turn of events in the wake of a nuclear deal that was hailed by its proponents as a springboard for friendlier relations between Iran and the world.

Under the deal last July, Iran agreed to scale back its disputed nuclear program in exchange for relief from international sanctions that crippled its economy. The deal formally took effect in January.

Reports by hard-line Iranian news outlets said last week that Abdolrasoul Dori-Esfahani, a financial expert who played a role in the nuclear talks, had been detained on suspicion of espionage. Tehran’s top prosecutor also said this month that an Iranian dual-national had been arrested and accused of having contacts with British intelligence. CONTINUE AT SITE

Turkey is living through a 24/7 state of emergency. The latest alarm came Thursday with an assassination attempt on the leader of the secular opposition. Kemal Kilicdaroglu was traveling the country’s northeast when his convoy came under fire. A member of his security detail was killed in the shootout, but Mr. Kilicdaroglu was unharmed and evacuated by helicopter. The perpetrators escaped, though Mr. Kilicdaroglu’s aides say his bodyguards may have killed one of them.

“Even though we are attacked, we will continue with determination in the path that we believe in,” Mr. Kilicdaroglu said in an interview Friday at the headquarters of the Republican People’s Party, or CHP. The separatist Kurdistan Workers’ Party, or PKK, took credit but said government security forces, not Mr. Kilicdaroglu, were the intended target.

In today’s Turkey such incidents capture headlines only to be overshadowed a few hours later by the next thing to go bang. Sure enough, hours after the Kilicdaroglu attempt, a truck bomb on Friday killed 11 Turkish police officers near the Syrian border. The PKK also claimed responsibility for that attack.

Life goes on. Men and women still gather in outdoor bars to sip raki, watch soccer and shoot the breeze. The margin of personal freedom remains wider than in most of the region. Even so, the mood is dark. With July’s failed coup, nearly three million Syrian refugees, a fresh PKK insurgency in the southeast and the menace of Islamic State, the Turks feel they can’t catch a break.

The Turkey emerging out of these manifold crises is more insular, paranoid and illiberal. This means Ankara may no longer be as solidly anchored in the West as it has been since the Cold War. Washington assigns the blame for this turn to President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, and rightly so in Turkey’s domestic sphere. But the president isn’t alone to blame for Ankara’s troubles abroad.

Mr. Erdogan’s project to concentrate power in the presidency was well under way before the coup attempt on July 15. Most serious observers here believe followers of the Pennsylvania-based cleric Fethullah Gülen organized the ill-fated coup. Few have forgotten that the Gülenists were the authoritarian handmaidens to Mr. Erdogan’s Justice and Development Party, or AKP, before the two Islamist camps turned on each other in 2013. In the mid-2000s, when Messrs. Erdogan and Gülen were still allies, well-placed Gülenists in the judiciary persecuted and sidelined a common enemy: the old secular establishment.

The failed coup has accelerated Mr. Erdogan’s will to power. But it has also rallied much of the country behind his grievance narrative. Turks, secular and pious, feel betrayed. The West lectures them about the post-coup purges, they complain, without acknowledging the deep trauma of the coup itself: the putschist pilots who buzzed their apartments, the tanks that rolled down their streets.

Meanwhile, pro-government media feed the population a steady diet of ever-nuttier propaganda suggesting U.S. involvement in the coup attempt. Mr. Kilicdaroglu, the opposition leader, says the ruling party’s dominance over media leaves little doubt that it is “guiding the public.” A Western diplomat puts it nicely: “The government shapes public opinion and then claims to be constrained by that same opinion.”

Then again, externalizing responsibility for one’s destiny is nothing new in this part of the world. The relevant question for the American national interest is how to prevent this strategically crucial country from drifting further toward Russia’s orbit and away from the U.S.-led security order—or what remains of it after eight years of President Barack Obama.

Here the Turks ought to be listened to. Not all of Ankara’s lashing out at Washington derives from Mr. Erdogan’s cynicism and ideological hubris. Some of it is in reaction to the same sudden shift in U.S. policy under Mr. Obama that has jolted allies world-wide. Leaders from Kiev to Jerusalem to Tokyo are familiar with Ankara’s discontent.

Turkey has felt the jolt most acutely in Syria. Mr. Erdogan took Mr. Obama at his word when the American said in 2011 that Bashar Assad “must go.” He also took seriously Mr. Obama’s red line on chemical weapons. Turkey’s much-maligned early policy in Syria included overt support for moderate rebels and a laissez-faire policy that enabled the movement of more hard-line jihadists into the country. Ankara expected that Washington would favor its traditional allies and disfavor others: namely the Iranian mullahs, Mr. Assad and their various Shiite proxies.

Mr. Obama scrambled that friend-enemy pattern. He awkwardly ignored the red line, and the U.S. carried out secret talks that would culminate in a nuclear deal with Tehran and tie America’s hands against Mr. Assad. Then came a second shock to the Turks. America increasingly relied on Syrian-Kurdish factions with close ties to the Turkish PKK as its main ground forces in the country. CONTINUE AT SITE