RUTHFULLY YOURS

During his visit to Washington, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s security guards harassed and physically assaulted journalists trying to cover the event; they also forcibly attempted to remove several journalists, although they were on the guest list.

An American reporter attempting to film the harassment received a kick in the chest.

Against this backdrop, Erdogan kept on adding to his own ridicule. “I am not at war with the press,” he said in an interview with CNN International. Then he went on: “We have never done anything to stop freedom of expression or freedom of press.

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s increasing Third-Worldish authoritarianism is taking new turns: it is now visible outside Turkey.

At the same time as Erdogan was heading for Washington for a nuclear security summit, the two journalists who he asserted last year “will pay a heavy price” had to stand trial at a second hearing on charges of espionage and terrorism, and with life sentences hanging over their heads. Their “espionage and terrorism” activity concerned a story they ran in May 2015 detailing how Turkish intelligence was transporting weapons to Islamist fighters in Syria.

“This is a tug of war between Turkish democrats and autocrats,” Can Dundar, one of the “spy/terrorists” told The Wall Street Journal. “The Western world has been supporting Erdogan for years and we were telling them that this was the wrong decision, not only for Turkey, but also for the Western world.”

The case had already turned into a diplomatic row between Turkey and a number of European Union nations, after Erdogan lashed out at the foreign consuls-general who attended the first court hearing in a show of solidarity with the journalists.

Tony Abbott’s invocation of “Team Australia” inspired an immediate pile-on, his comments hurled onto the heap of reasons why, or so it was said, he had to go. Sure enough, as Malcolm Turnbull re-endorsed all the coy circumlocutions, Australia’s jihadis kept reporting for duty.
As PM, Tony Abbott drew a lot of flak for his stance on homegrown Islamic terrorism, not least for his use of two rhetorical strains. On August 18, 2014, he said “my position is that everyone should be on Team Australia”, and on February 23, 2015, he went further: “I’ve often heard Western leaders describe Islam as a religion of peace … I wish more Muslim leaders would say that more often and mean it”. These comments marked a departure from the tone and language chosen by senior politicians over most of the previous decade. And they sparked the inevitable round of hand-wringing and denunciations.

Unsparing in their hyperbole, The Guardian called them “damaging and dangerous” while The Age condemned them as “reckless”. In similar vein, Labor’s deputy leader Tanya Plibersek said they were “at risk of being counterproductive”. Notwithstanding the inanity of such claims, Abbott’s foray into tough language was short-lived. His enemies hurled it onto the pile of reasons why he had to go and, sure enough, the old ways were conspicuously restored by Malcolm Turnbull.

For present purposes, let’s call Abbott-style discourse hard rhetoric and the alternative soft rhetoric. Usually in the form of a mollifying post-atrocity sermon, the soft line combines four elements:

Terrorism has nothing to do with true Islam, which is a religion of peace.
The overwhelming majority of Muslims are peaceful and law abiding, and should not in any way be judged by the actions of a few.
The Muslim community and its leaders are as horrified by terrorism as the rest of us, and do all they can to prevent it.
Those who blame the Muslim faith and Muslims in general for terrorism have no place in our inclusive multicultural society.

However much it may represent conventional practise for progressives and the political class, as a strategy to prevent terrorism, soft rhetoric is a pretense. Its real purpose is to prop up official multiculturalism by diverting attention from a troublesome minority onto the supposedly racist mainstream. These are Australians who, we are lead to believe, will lash out at innocent Muslims on the slightest provocation. Never mind that this hardly ever happens. On the other hand, Abbott’s hard talk actually was about preventing terrorism, by making Australian Muslims and their leaders publicly accountable for developments in their community.

Years ago I had a chat with three young Muslim men as we waited in a Heathrow airport lounge to board a flight to Islamabad. I was going to Pakistan to report on the fallout from a devastating earthquake in Kashmir. They were going there to do what they vaguely described as “charitable work.” They dressed in white shalwar kameez, wore their beards in salafist style and spoke in south London accents.

I tried to steer the conversation to the earthquake. They wanted to talk about politics. Had I seen Michael Moore’s “Fahrenheit 9/11”? I avoided furnishing an opinion about a film they plainly revered. The unvarnished truth about Amerika—from an American. Authority and authenticity rolled into one.
Noam Chomsky (left), speaks to Hezbollah leader Sheikh Nabil Qaouq (right) at the former Israeli jail in Khiam, southern Lebanon, May 13, 2006. ENLARGE
Noam Chomsky (left), speaks to Hezbollah leader Sheikh Nabil Qaouq (right) at the former Israeli jail in Khiam, southern Lebanon, May 13, 2006. Photo: AFP/Getty Images

I think of that exchange whenever the subject of Islamist radicalization comes up. There’s a great deal of literature about how young Muslim men—often born in the West to middle-class and not particularly religious households—get turned on to jihad. Think of Mohammed Emwazi, the University of Westminster graduate later known as Jihadi John. Or Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan, of Fort Hood infamy. Or Najim Laachraoui, who studied electrical engineering at the prestigious Catholic University of Louvain before blowing himself up last month in Brussels. Or Boston’s Tsarnaev brothers and San Bernardino’s Syed Farook.

It’s a long list. And in many cases investigators are able to identify an agent of radicalization. Maj. Hasan corresponded with extremist cleric Anwar al-Awlaki. Laachraoui seems to have come under the spell of a Molenbeek preacher named Khalid Zerkani. The Tsarnaevs took their bomb-building tips from “Inspire,” an online English-language magazine published by al Qaeda’s branch in Yemen.

But the influence of the Awlakis of the world can’t fully account for the mind-set of these jihadists. They are also sons of the West—educated in the schools of multiculturalism, reared on the works of Noam Chomsky and perhaps Frantz Fanon, consumers of a news diet heavy with reports of perfidy by American or British or Israeli soldiers. If Islamism is their ideological drug of choice, the political orthodoxies of the modern left are their gateway to it. CONTINUE AT SITE

It’s not a leak, it’s a tidal wave. The documents (illegally) obtained from the Panamanian law firm Mossack Fonseca by the grandiosely-named “International Consortium of Investigative Reporters” comprise about twelve million documents going back about forty years. It’s some 2.6 terabytes of information. (The entire Library of Congress consists of about fifteen terabytes of data.)

The size of the leak is less important than the content. Mossack Fonseca specializes in forming offshore corporations, trusts, foundations, and other legal entities. In many cases, they are entirely legal. They may be created legally to do business overseas and keep earnings and savings away from domestic taxation authorities. Mossack Fonseca insists it has vetted its clients to ensure their businesses are legal. But among the hundreds of governments, companies, and people involved is almost certainly a massive amount of corruption.

Many, if not all, of these business arrangements are created in the most complex manner possible to conceal the true owners and beneficiaries. Like Russian matryoshka dolls — any number of figures, one inside another, each one progressively larger — each layer has to be taken apart to get to the people who are profiting.

So far, Sigmundur Gunnlaugsson, prime minister of Iceland, has resigned over the Panama Papers revelations. UK Prime Minister David Cameron took the extraordinary step (for a Brit politician) of publishing his tax returns after it was revealed he’d benefitted from offshore deals his father had made.

Even those closet capitalists in Communist China are implicated. Relatives of Chinese President Xi Jinping — including his brother-in-law — were revealed to own, or have owned, secret offshore companies set up by the Panamanian lawyers. The Chinese government has written the whole matter off as another Western plot against them but took the trouble to make it impossible to search the term “brother in law” in the Internet.

The Russian government had the reaction you’d expect. Russia’s president, Vladimir Putin, said that because he wasn’t named in the documents, there was nothing to talk about. And, of course, he said that, “In this connection, attempts are made to weaken us from within, make us more acquiescent,” painting the whole Panama Papers leak as another American plot against him.

The United States is facing a humiliation of the first order resulting from almost comically provocative Iranian test launches of nuclear-capable ballistic missiles earlier this month and the lack of any real response from Washington, save for largely symbolic sanctions. For the Obama Administration, a recent interview suggests it sees this humiliation and loss of credibility not as a serious problem, but as a successful application of the “Obama Doctrine.”

Iran’s missile launches violated the spirit of UN Security Council Resolution 2231, which lifted international sanctions on Iran when it agreed to the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) regulating its nuclear program. This suggests that the Ayatollahs in Iran have no intention of getting “right with the world” as Obama once suggested, and intend to continue their revolutionary goals. Lest anyone fail to grasp that point, the missiles were inscribed with the words “Israel must be wiped off the Earth,” in Hebrew.

Iran’s ayatollahs have no intention of getting ‘right with the world,’ as Obama once suggested.

Yet the Russians are blocking any attempt to invoke 2231 to sanction Iran on the grounds that its language does not explicitly forbid this behavior. They’re right. Paragraph 3 of Annex A of 2231 states, “Iran is called upon not to undertake any activity related to ballistic missiles designed to be capable of delivering nuclear weapons, including launches using such ballistic missile technology” for a period of up to eight years after the JCPOA goes into effect. Resolution 1929, a previous Iran sanctions resolution, did explicitly forbid it, stating, “Iran shall not undertake any activity related to ballistic missiles capable of delivering nuclear weapons.”

This miscarriage of justice being orchestrated against Geert Wilders is merely one aspect of the many prosecutions being carried out under laws less about prevention and punishment of actual crimes, and more about criminalizing dissent against the demographic transformation of Europe.

After terror outrages in the name of Islam, its apologists perform defensive operations that try to render Islamic doctrine immune from scrutiny.

The eagerness with which social media giants, such as Facebook and Twitter, have imposed a policy of enforced silence — in concert with Europe’s leaders — is a further irony that will not be lost on future historians.

If the criminal justice systems of European nations continue to pursue charges against whoever questions or criticizes Islam, what hope is there then for the silent members of the Muslim community who might wish to speak out?

The spread of jihad is irreparably undermining Europe’s post-War reputation as a continent of security and peace.

In addition, free speech seems increasingly regarded by mainstream politicians as dangerous and archaic. Diversity of opinion often appears seen as an obstacle to multiculturalism, the objective of which, ironically, is diversity.

These dual trends are set to come to a head in the Netherlands next year, in elections set to follow the conclusion of the trial of Dutch MP Geert Wilders this November. Wilders is the leader the Netherlands’ Party for Freedom (Partij voor de Vrijheid, or PVV), which currently tops the country’s polls. He faces imprisonment on a charge of hate speech, for saying that the Netherlands could use “fewer Moroccans.”

As Wilders outlined in his opening statement to the court on March 18, the politically-motivated bias against him of one of the judges is a matter of public record. Moreover, despite ample demonstration by Wilders’s defense of the forgery of a group of the criminal complaints that initiated his prosecution, his trial nevertheless continues.

This miscarriage of justice being orchestrated against Wilders is merely one aspect of the many prosecutions being carried out under laws less about prevention and punishment of actual crimes, and more about criminalizing dissent against the demographic transformation of Europe.

Ayatollah Khamenei made clear that he would hold President Rouhani responsible for a failure to produce improvements in Iran’s economy. He implied that if Rouhani fails to adopt a “Resistance Economy” approach, it would negatively impact Rouhani’s aspirations for a second term.

Khamenei’s warning to conserve foreign-currency windfalls that result from the lifting of sanctions is probably a criticism of Rouhani’s recent visit to Europe, where he signed deals to purchase 138 passenger planes.

Rouhani’s management of the economy will be closely monitored by hardliners seeking a return to popularity and the presidency in the 2018 presidential elections.

Iran’s Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei last month used the Persian New Year holiday (Nowruz) to deliver his most comprehensive plan for Iran’s economy. His address, proclaimed from his hometown of Mashhad, outlined ten principles of the “Resistance Economy.”

From this speech, it is clear that Khamenei’s plan for Iran’s economic recovery is quite different from that of President Hassan Rouhani and his cabinet. Moreover, Khamenei threw down the gauntlet that he would hold Rouhani responsible for a failure to produce promised improvements in Iran’s economy. Left unsaid but implied was the threat that if Rouhani fails to adopt a “Resistance Economy” approach, it would negatively impact the President’s aspirations for a second term.

For a worldview that claims to be all about freedom and choice and “being oneself,” transgenderism sure is tetchy and intolerant. Consider what has just happened to the celebrated British novelist Ian McEwan. Last week, during a speech at the Royal Institution in London, McEwan took a genteel swipe at the politics of identity. He said identity politics is becoming increasingly consumerist, where we now pluck a ready-made “self” from “the shelves of a personal-identity supermarket.” The making up of one’s identity has gone so far that “some men in full possession of a penis are identifying as women and demanding entry to women-only colleges,” he said. Then came his killer line: “Call me old-fashioned, but I tend to think of people with penises as men.”

Can you guess what happened next? Yes, McEwan was subjected to a Twitch hunt, to that 21st-century bloodsport in which anyone who expresses an unpopular view or makes a less than PC utterance or simply misspeaks a little will be “called out” (shamed) by the bedroom-bound, Twitter-living, self-styled guardians of correct thinking. Twits went berserk over his apparently perverse linking of penises with maleness. They branded him a bigot, weird, a transphobe. Trans-rights activists put the boot in, too. Stonewall, the LGBT activist group, slammed McEwan for being “uninformed” and said his weird worldview doesn’t only “denigrate the trans experience, it denies its very existence.” Paris Lees, a trans woman and journalist, scolded McEwan, telling him his “ideas about penises are outdated.” He should apologize, the mob said.

And he did. All the virtual tomato-throwing at this heretic who dared to say that people with penises are men had the desired effect. It elicited a public backtrack. In an open letter in the Guardian, McEwan accused some of his critics of being “righteous and cross,” yet he then bowed and scraped before the trans religion. Transgenderism “should be respected,” he said. Then, most strikingly, he obediently expressed the key tenet of the trans ideology: “Biology is not always destiny.” Remarkable. In the space of a few days, he went from raising interesting, awkward questions about trans identity to repeating in a national newspaper the trans mantra that “biology is not destiny.” For those of us who believe in freedom of thought, it was an ugly sight, reminiscent of those poor souls dragged before the Inquisition and set free only when they dutifully bought into their inquisitors’ belief system and publicly declared: “I believe in Jesus Christ.”

Anti-Zionism and anti-Israel sentiments in Sweden have morphed in recent times into blatant anti-Semitism. In the city of Malmo (known for its violent Arab and Muslim population), a Jewish teacher in a Swedish public school was fired last month for being Jewish. The teacher identified only as A, is an Israeli-Jewish woman who immigrated to Sweden 39 years ago with her native born Swedish husband who served with the UN Observers Force in the region. A claimed that her school principle warned her that the students “hate the Jews,” and added that she would be “abused by both the Swedish and the Arab students.”

A’s experience is not unique in 2016 Sweden, and not just in Malmo. Naomi Lind, another Israeli woman living in a Stockholm suburb, also encountered the same anti-Semitism as a teacher in Swedish public schools. Lind moved to Sweden from Israel in 1982, and taught computer science to adults and youngsters. She recalled that on one occasion a young female student who was upset by a grade Lind gave her, responded with “I hope Hitler would rise from his grave and finish his work.” Lind remembered the difficult situations in her work that compelled her to leave her job. “I always felt that the school administration felt uncomfortable with me because I was an Israeli and a Jew.”

Lind, a daughter of Holocaust survivors, pointed out that her school administration refrained from dealing with the anti-Semitic and hurtful remarks of the girl that invoked Hitler.

Visiting Sweden late last summer, this reporter witnessed the fear and discomfort Jews in Sweden now feel. In discussions with Swedish Jews, I was told of avoidance to wear Jewish identifying symbols such as a kippah or a necklace with a Star of David. Ralph, 29, a veteran of the Swedish army, put it plainly by stating, “There is no place for Jews in Sweden.” He added that he was planning to move to the U.S. Many young Jews have moved to Israel.

A synagogue in central Stockholm had its windows boarded to hide the fact that it was a Jewish place of worship. There was no sign at the entrance to mark it as a synagogue. This was not happening in a remote village but just a few miles from the seat of the Swedish government and its people’s parliament.

Gender equality is now so thoroughly advanced, thanks to Western men, that feminism’s latest wave is free to insist the hijab is no instrument of oppression but a symbol of choice and liberation! You’ve come a long way, baby. Once, only men were privileged to make public fools of themselves.

“Can a privileged white male like me talk about equality and diversity?” While clearly suffering from ‘white-male guilt’, former Victorian politician Rob Hulls, writing in the Fairfax press, grudgingly answered in the affirmative. Bully for him, but that he thought the question worthy of sweating over is instructive. White men are not the flavour of the times. Indeed, those supporting Donald Trump are often described in left-wing media (e.g., in The Huffington Post) as “angry white men” whose influence is dwindling in the racial mixing pot.

I take no personal credit as a white man but it seems queer to me, without in the least belittling other parts of humanity, that the very part of humanity which has made this modern West, in which gender equality and ethnic and sexual diversity can flourish, is the subject of scorn and derision. I will focus on gender equality.

Men and women are one in Christ (Galatians 3:28) and therefore equal; no ifs, buts or maybes. And, in any event, indubitably, life is better for everyone and infinity less mean spirited in societies in which men and women have equal status. But, as we all surely know, that something is closer to God’s intention and better, doesn’t necessarily mean it will hold sway. For most of history and in most places it hasn’t. To wit: bad things have happened, are happening in many parts of the world, and can happen in our part of the world unless we guard the ramparts.

Equality as a state of affairs is often misunderstood. Turning to arithmetic: two plus two makes four but, equally, so does one plus three. Being equal is not the same as being the same. When it comes to men and women there is one important and statistically significant difference across all ethnicities and cultures. Men, on the whole, and with few exceptions, are stronger and more aggressive than are women.

Throughout most of history women have occupied a secondary position to men – certainly outside the narrow confines of the home. Their childbearing role undoubtedly contributed to this. But, undoubtedly, their lesser physical strength and aggressiveness were defining. This hasn’t changed, yet women in the Western world now occupy positions of authority in all walks of life.