RUTHFULLY YOURS

They certainly are a smart bunch at the Australian Academy of Science, where great minds can hold two contradictory opinions at the same time. Two years ago the goal was an end to planet-wrecking growth. Now they want more taxpayer dollars to promote it
The federal electoral urgings of the Australian Academy of Science are pretty much what you’d expect. It wants more funding for science, technology and engineering. This will ‘drive innovation and growth into the future’, it says.

The Academy is oh-so-keen on economic growth. It says, “More than three decades of exponential growth in Australia’s per-capita GDP is tapering, and if nothing changes Australia will fall out of the G20 within 15 years.”

But wait! Wasn’t this same Academy sponsoring a Green anti-growth agenda as it cranked up its Fenner Conference on the Environment less than two years ago? The conference, at the University of NSW, was titled, “Addicted to Growth? How to move to a Steady State Economy in Australia.” The Academy approves, brands and seed-funds these annual Fenner gigs at up to $10,000 a time.

The conference flier reads: “Novelist Edward Abbey once noted that ‘Growth for the sake of growth is the ideology of the cancer cell’. Our economy is meant to be a ‘servant of society’, not its master, yet is this true today? On a finite planet nothing physical can keep on growing forever – yet that is the ideology of the ‘endless growth’ neoclassical economics that now dominates the thinking of most governments and business. This has led to a rapidly worsening environmental crisis that degrades the nature on which we all depend. We cannot keep avoiding talking about this issue – hence the need for such a conference…”

The Academy has no economics expertise. But it promotes the eco-catastrophism of the global warming religion, having failed to notice that there has been negligible warming for two decades,[i], contrary to all the scary stuff from the IPCC computer modelling.

When common-sense flew out the Academy windows, the leadership became suckers for any variety of green ideology, such as divestment last year of its fossil fuel shares (but continued unprincipled use of fossil-fuel-powered electricity).

Following Tuesday’s multiple suicide bombing at Istanbul’s Ataturk Airport, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan called on the world — the West in particular — to view the event as a “milestone for the joint fight against terrorist organizations, a turning point.”

He also said the attacks, “which took place during the holy month of Ramadan, show that terrorism strikes with no regard for faith and values.”

If 42 innocent people had not been brutally killed, along with hundreds of others seriously wounded, his words would be cause for a global guffaw on the part of friend and foe alike.

In the first place, as an authoritarian leader of a previously modern and democratic Muslim country, which he has spent the 14 years since his election turning into an Islamic state where critics in the press and political system are thrown in jail for any hint of opposition, he has more nerve than sense to pretend that he is in the same boat as the United States and Europe.

Secondly, as someone who is strongly tied to the Muslim Brotherhood and Hamas, he has shown that it is only certain terrorists he wants eradicated; the others are his allies, who do the dirty work he welcomes and supports.

It was thus ironic that, on the morning after the airport attack, the Israeli security cabinet approved the reconciliation agreement it had reached with Turkey the day before. As is typical of any deal Islamist leaders ultimately sign with the Jewish state, this one is much more advantageous to the undeserving party.

According to the agreement, which has been negotiated since 2010 — when Turkey sponsored and dispatched a flotilla of armed, pro-Hamas activists to provoke an international incident by violating Israel’s naval blockade of the Gaza Strip — Israel will hand over $20 million to the families of the perpetrators killed and injured on the Mavi Marmara ship by IDF commandos who shot at their assailants in self-defense. In exchange, Turkey will cease its legal proceedings against Israeli forces connected in any way to what happened on that ship six years ago.

http://www.memritv.org/clip/en/5542.htm
Egyptian author Sayyid Al-Qemany, speaking at the first convention of the
Adhoc organization, a London-based “secularist, modernist, pluralist”
international NGO, warned about the dangers of Islamic fundamentalism,
saying: “Any Muslim who believes that his religion is suited to all times
and places is a terrorist by definition.” Al-Qemany said that “all scorpions
sting” and that the only difference is that some have not yet had the chance
to perform “the best act that brings you close to Allah” by carrying out the
duty of Jihad. The convention, titled “The Roots and Causes of Islamic
Violence,” was held in Brussels on May 22, and Al-Qemany’s address was
posted on the YouTube account of the “I Think” Magazine.

Popular democratic revolutions are all the rage, until they aren’t.

Remember the (inherently) progressive Establishment’s glee around the globe at the prospect of the Arab Spring?

Contrast its favorable reaction to the “democratic” jihadist takeover of the Middle East with the chaos and cringing that has ensued in the wake of Brexit.

What is clear is that regardless of the substantive impact of Great Britain’s referendum, its symbolic effect has been extraordinary.

Irrespective of #Leave’s implications on economics, immigration and national security, #Brexit is a direct rebuke to the bipartisan Establishment’s most cherished values and principles, and an indictment of its rule.

Too, by challenging the progressive status quo, Brexit has exposed some delicious double standards.

Here are just a few of them:
National Sovereignty and Self-Determination

As mentioned, recall that the Arab Spring was viewed by the global political class as an unalloyed good. Further, the political class always claims to be against meddling in the affairs of other nations, lest the West creates a 21st century wave of neo-colonialist blowback. And anyway, we are supposed to be non-judgmental. Who are we to tell others what is right and wrong?

The angered reaction of Western elites to #Brexit shows that the above is a farce. The Establishment believes in forcing its values and principles on others when it is in its political interest, in particular when it gives the Establishment more power and control. It is highly judgmental of those who do not toe its line and submit, as reflected in the stern warnings of Democrats and Republicans who lobbied for Brexit, and the talking heads exploding today.

Britain’s “Leave” camp argues that the deciding issue in the Brexit vote was sovereignty, not immigration. The two issues, though, inevitably will become linked. The continental members of the European Community, especially Germany, are on a slippery slope which will lead to mass absorption of migrants and eventually the free movement of many of those migrants within the European Community. Britain’s interests in the matter of migration differ markedly from Germany’s, and that divergence is the most pressing reason for Britain to leave the EC.

There are many differences between the UK and Germany, but the most important difference is that at present fertility rates the UK will be there at the end of the present century and Germany will not. That does not mean that Germany will disappear: it means that Germany requires many millions of immigrants to compensate for the fact that German women average 1.3 to 1.4 births over their lifetime. The chart below (from UN Population Program data) shows that during the present century, the number of German women in their childbearing years will fall by half to two-thirds, while the number of British women of childbearing age will remain stable or decline about 20%.

In my view, the best comparison is between the UK medium fertility scenario and the German low fertility scenario, because German fertility has consistently undershot the “Low” scenario in the United Nations forecasts.

The UK, in short, can cherry-pick immigrants by whatever criteria it adopts (education, professional qualifications, wealth), the way Australia’s point system does. It has time and leisure to decide what sort of immigration population it needs. Germany needs 5 to 10 million females of childbearing age, which implies an overall immigration of 10 to 20 million individuals. Where will they come from? Most of the immigrants to Germany during the past fifty years have come from Southern and Eastern Europe and Turkey. But those sources are drying up, for southern Europe suffers from fertility rates about the same as Germany’s, and Eastern European fertility is even lower.

A widely-publicised Iftar dinner, intended to show that Malcolm Turnbull gets what it means to be inclusive, ended badly after he was advised that one of his guests, Sheikh Shady Alsuleiman, had taught that Islam prescribes death for adulterers, and homosexuals spread diseases. No rogue maverick, Australian-born Alsuleiman is the elected national president of the Australian National Imams Council.

Although insisting that ‘mutual respect is absolutely critical’, Turnbull subjected this prominent Muslim leader to public humiliation. He regretted inviting him to dinner and counselled the sheikh ‘to reflect on what he has said and recant’. In the middle of an election, wanting to limit fallout from the dinner-gone-wrong, held only days after the Orlando massacre, Turnbull stated that his no-longer-welcome guest’s views are ‘wrong, unacceptable and I condemn them’.

Well may Mr Turnbull deplore Alsuleiman’s teachings, but the real challenge is that these were not merely his personal views. The sheikh’s teachings on homosexuality and adultery reflect the mainstream position of Islam, preached by many a Muslim scholar around the world today, and telling a sheikh to reject the sharia is like telling a pope to get over the virgin birth.

Many Australian Muslims will be disappointed at the treatment meted out to Sheikh Alsuleiman. An event designed to honour the Muslim community ended up providing a platform to denigrate one of their most respected leaders for promoting Islamic doctrines. Several Australian Muslim leaders have since dug in their heels to affirm support for the sharia position on homosexuals. So much for recanting.

While Turnbull refused to pass judgement on Islam itself, saying ‘there are different views of different issues, as there are in all religions’, he also sent a message that he is prepared to disparage Australian Muslims’ religious beliefs. It was a bitter pill for Muslims to swallow that this came in the form of a humiliating invite-to-disavow game of bait-and-switch, conducted during a pre-election media storm.

The cognitive dissonance is startling.

The Berlin-based expert on Turkey, Ralph Ghadban, warns that the Islam being preached in Turkish-controlled mosques in Europe is a “Sharia Islam with strong Turkish-nationalist overtones” that calls for a “strict separation from Western individualistic values.”

In February 2016, the University of Vienna published study which found that Islamic kindergartens in the capital are dominated by “intellectual Salafists and political Islamists” who are contributing to the “theologically-motivated isolation” of Muslim pupils. The report calls into question claims by the IGGiÖ that anti-Western textbooks have been removed from Austrian schools.

Muslim students now outnumber Roman Catholic students at middle and secondary schools in Vienna, according to official statistics, which show that Muslim students are also on the verge of overtaking Catholics in Viennese elementary schools. The data confirms a massive demographic and religious shift in Austria, traditionally a Roman Catholic country.

The selection of an ethnic Turk to lead the Islamic Religious Community in Austria (Islamischen Glaubensgemeinschaft in Österreich, IGGiÖ), the primary representative of Muslims in the country, is being challenged by Muslim groups opposed to Turkey’s growing influence over the practice of Islam in Austria.

Ibrahim Olgun, a 28-year-old Austrian-born Islamic theologian with ties to the Turkish state, was quietly named on June 19 to replace 62-yer-old Fuat Sanac, who stepped down after serving as IGGiÖ president for five years.

Sanac, also a Turk, was reviled by Turkish authorities for helping the Austrian government draft a new Islam Law (Islamgesetz) that aims to promote an “Islam with an Austrian character.” The law, which was promulgated in February 2015, seeks to reduce outside meddling by prohibiting foreign funding for mosques, imams and Muslim organizations in Austria. It also stresses that Austrian law must take precedence over Islamic Sharia law for Muslims living in the country.

Observers worry that Olgun — a member of the Turkey-financed Turkish-Islamic Union for Cultural and Social Cooperation in Austria (ATIB), an influential group that has vowed to challenge the Islam Law at Austria’s Constitutional Court — will use his new position both to undermine the Islam Law and to increase further Turkey’s influence over Muslims in Austria.

At least eight Austrian Muslim groups (representing Albanian, Arab, Bosnian and Sufi Muslims) are challenging Olgun, who was selected by the IGGiÖ’s Shura Council (Schurarat), a rules committee (Shura is an Arabic word for consultation) whose five members all happen to be ethnic Turks.

IGGiÖ statutes require a person to be at least 35 years old to head the group, but the Shura Council secretly annulled that stipulation last December, according to Hassan Mousa, head of the Arab Religious Community in Austria (Arabischen Kultusgemeinde in Österreich). He said that Olgun’s selection was “undemocratic” and “illegal” and added that his ties to ATIB would shift IGGiÖ’s balance of power further in Turkey’s direction.

ATIB, an umbrella group that operates more than 60 mosques in Austria, is directly managed by the religious affairs attaché at the Turkish embassy in Vienna, and the imams of these mosques are Turkish civil servants. ATIB and its German counterpart, the Turkish-Islamic Union for Religious Affairs (DITIB), are financed by the Turkish government’s Directorate for Religious Affairs, known in Turkish as Diyanet.

If Britain can forgive America the slights of the Obama era, and if Australia can forgive Britain hers, now is our chance to get the whole family back together. Europe loved Britain when she was submissive. We who share a common heritage can love her once again, very nearly unconditionally
Many of Australians no doubt still cringe at the humiliation of flying into the United Kingdom and having to file into the ‘non-EU’ queue for immigration and customs. Talk about ingratitude. Almost 100,000 Aussies were killed defending Britain from the Second and Third Reichs. Now the Germans get to sail through Heathrow while the grandsons of Gallipoli endure the distinct possibility of a complimentary cavity search. In 2015 the Tory MP Andrew Rosendell called for the creation of a line exclusively for ‘subjects of Her Majesty the Queen’, which, of course, failed. That was at the height of Europhilia among Britain’s elites.

Blood, history, culture: all these hallmarks of a nation’s conservatism were sacrificed at the altar of David Cameron’s One Europe liberalism. Now Britain is bidding goodbye, adieu, auf wiedersehen, and vaarwel to the European Union and David Cameron.

Europe, for that matter, is bidding goodbye adieu, etc. to Britain. At the beginning of the Brexit campaign, EU President Jean-Claude Juncker told British ‘deserters’ that they would have to ‘face the consequences’ of striking out alone. Now he’s making good, insisting the they vacate the premises ‘as soon as possible, however painful that process may be’, and that there will be ‘no renegotiation’. The Leave campaign spent months reaffirming their love for Europe and promising to remain engaged with the EU. Juncker makes it abundantly clear that Europe’s love was altogether more conditional.

All Britain had to do was clear her throat and Junker began throwing her clothes out the window and changing the locks. Which, if anything, confirmed all of the Leavers’ suspicions: that Europe was only interested in them as a dumping-ground for migrant workers and a reserve bank for failed and failing states.

One can’t help but suspect that Australia played no small part in the Brits’ decision to dump Juncker and his cronies. The EU is an unhealthy relationship for all parties involved, but only the UK has any experience with healthy relationships. Of the European states, only the UK developed fruitful bonds with their former colonial possessions in Asia and the Americas – which is to say, only the UK belongs to a real international family rooted in a common history, common values, and, yes, sometimes, common blood. There was no one to be outraged at Germany when she gave special privileges to the British at her airports. No one ever loved Germany the way Australians – and Canadians, Americans, New Zealanders et al – love the United Kingdom, which is enough to feel slighted. Or, at least, no one loved them enough to tell them so.

Priests are afraid to talk about Jesus during mass. — Eva Hamberg, priest and professor, who in protest resigned from the priesthood and left the Church.

The Church of Sweden may be headed towards “Chrislam” — a merging of Christianity and Islam. Swedish priests, noting the religious fervor among the Muslims now living in Sweden, enthusiastically take part in various interfaith projects.

“There are reliable sources from Egypt, showing that the Saudi royal family is really a Jewish family that came from Iraq to the Arabian Peninsula sometime in the 1700s. They built an army with the aid of British officers fighting the Ottoman sultanate.” — Imam Awad Olwan, with whom a priest, Henrik Larsson, is cooperating in an interfaith project.

“The involvement that the Church of Sweden has shown for the vulnerability of Christian Palestinians, has been replaced with indifference to the ethnic cleansing of Christians in Syria and Iraq. In these countries, it is mostly Muslims who commit the atrocities, which is evidently enough to make the Church of Sweden concentrate on climate change and environmental issues instead.” — Eli Göndör, scholar of religion.

The Church of Sweden has departed from being a strong and stern state church. In the past, Swedes were born into it and, until 1951, no one was allowed to leave the church. These days, however, it is an institution that has very little to do with Christianity or Jesus. Sweden now, according to the World Values Survey, is one of the world’s most secular countries; every year a large number of Swedes leave the church.

It used to be that only atheists left the church; now it is the devout Christians that leave — in protest against the church’s increasingly questionable relationship to the Christian faith.

When, for example, the current Archbishop, Antje Jackelén, just before being appointed, participated in a question-and-answer session in the fall of 2013, and one of the questions was: “Does Jesus convey a more truthful image of God than Muhammad does?” surprisingly, the would-be archbishop did not immediately say yes, but instead involved herself in a long monologue about there being many ways to God. Evidently, this upset a lot of parishioners. A high-profile priest and professor, Eva Hamberg, resigned from the priesthood in protest and left the Church of Sweden.

“This made me leave faster,” she told the Christian newspaper, Dagen. “If the future Archbishop cannot stand by the Apostles’ Creed, but rather, rationalizes it, then secularization has gone too far.”