RUTHFULLY YOURS

“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

In its latest attack in Turkey, ISIS used a child suicide bomber to attack a wedding ceremony. More than 50 victims were killed, of whom 26 were less than 18 years old.

This is premeditated, officially-tolerated murder. Evidence? Two opposition parties appealed to parliament five times asking for a parliamentary investigation into ISIS and its activities in Turkey. All five requests were rejected by the votes of the ruling AKP Party, Erdogan’s powerful political machine.

The opposition claims SADAT International Defense Consultancy, which was established by soldiers dismissed from the military due to Islamist activities, offers ISIS operatives training in “intelligence, psychological warfare, sabotage, raiding, ambushing and assassination.” Erdogan this month appointed the owner of SADAT, retired Brigadier General Adnan Tanriverdi, as his chief presidential advisor.

Failing to name Islamic terror has cost Turkey hundreds of lives and will likely cost it hundreds more, as the country’s leaders — and many others, especially in the West — are still too demure to call Islamic terror by its name. Without a realistic diagnosis, the chances of a successful treatment are always close to nil, and Turkey’s leaders stubbornly remain on the wrong side of the right diagnosis.

President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s theory that “there is no Islamic terror,” coupled with his persistent arguments that Islamist radicals hit Europe because of Islamophobia in the Western world, are not only too remote from reality but have now become a curse in his own country.

As early as 2014, cars began to be seen in the streets of Istanbul sporting the black flag of the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS). The same year, Islamists opened a shop selling T-shirts featuring the same flag. ISIS-related magazines went ahead with open hate content even though, in March 2014, ISIS spilled its first blood in Turkey when an ISIS team ambushed a police checkpoint and killed one police officer, one soldier and one civilian.

In its first suicide attack on June 5, 2015, ISIS targeted a pro-Kurdish rally in Diyarbakir, killed four people and injured 279. It targeted, once again, a pro-Kurdish gathering in July 2015 in Suruc, a small town bordering Syria, killed more than 30 people and injured more than 100.

On this new special edition of Anni Cyrus’s “Top 10”, Anni focuses on The Top 10 Innocent Women Executed in Iran, asking us to never forget them — and to reflect on the true meaning of Sharia:

And make sure to watch another special Anni Cyrus Top 10 in which Anni discusses the Top 10 Facts About Pre-Islamic Iran, sharing why she is so proud to unveil these facts today — and why the Mullahs never will.

http://jamieglazov.com/2016/08/27/top-10-innocent-women-executed-in-iran-an-anni-cyrus-video/

In one generation, Europe will be unrecognizable.

Eastern Europe now has “the largest population loss in modern history”, while Germany overtook Japan by having the world’s lowest birth rate.

Europe, as it is aging, no longer renews its generations, and instead welcomes massive numbers of migrants from the Middle East, Africa and Asia, who are going to replace the native Europeans, and who are bringing cultures with radically different values about sex, science, political power, culture, economy and the relation between God and man.

Deaths that exceed births might sound like science fiction, but they are now Europe’s reality. It just happened. During 2015, 5.1 million babies were born in the EU, while 5.2 million persons died, meaning that the EU for the first time in modern history recorded a negative natural change in its population. The numbers come from Eurostat (the statistical office of the European Union), which since 1961 has been counting Europe’s population. It is official.

There is, however, another surprising number: the European population increased overall from 508.3 million to 510.1 million. Have you guessed why? The immigrant population increased, by about two million in one year, while the native European population was shrinking. It is the substitution of a population. Europe has lost the will to maintain or grow its population. The situation is as demographically as seismic as during the Great Plague of the 14th Century.

This shift is what the British demographer David Coleman described in his study, “Immigration and Ethnic Change in Low-Fertility Countries: A Third Demographic Transition.” Europe’s suicidal birth rate, coupled with migrants who multiply faster, will transform European culture. The declining fertility rate of native Europeans coincides, in fact, with the institutionalization of Islam in Europe and the “re-Islamization” of its Muslims.

In 2015, Portugal recorded the second-lowest birth rate in the European Union (8.3 per 1,000 inhabitants) and negative natural growth of -2.2 per 1,000 inhabitants. Which EU country had the lowest birth rate? Italy. Since the “baby boom” of the 1960s, in the country famous for its large families, the birth rate has more halved. In 2015, the number of births fell to 485,000, fewer than in any other year since the modern Italy was formed in 1861.

Eastern Europe now has “the largest population loss in modern history”, while Germany overtook Japan by having the world’s lowest birth rate, when averaged over past five years. In Germany and Italy, the decreases were particularly dramatic, down -2.3% and -2.7% respectively.

“We are living in a crazy time … in a world of total and absolute chaos … As a growth industry antisemitism has become immense … Europe is under siege … Jeremy Corbyn is promoting the worst form of leftist antisemitism and he himself is a primitive troglodyte … ”

That’s just part of Isi Leibler’s compelling introduction to Dr Manfred Gerstenfeld discussing “the British Disease”.

To quote the uploader of this long video, the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs:

“In recent months, a large number of extreme anti-Semitic expressions by elected representatives of the British Labour Party have come to light. The publicity has forced Labour, which is under the leadership of Jeremy Corbyn, to investigate antisemitism, Islamophobia, and racism in the party. The antisemitism issue is overshadowed by the many consequences of Brexit, which include a major crisis in Labour.

Dr Manfred Gerstenfeld is the former Chairman of the Board of the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs. His many books deal with European-Israeli and European-Jewish issues. He received the Lifetime Achievement Award by the Journal for the Study of Anti-Semitism, and the International Leadership Award by the Simon Wiesenthal Center.”

Last week, two Syrian government Su-24 airplanes bombed the Kurdish-held areas of the city of Hasakah. The attack was unexpected.

The Kurds have operated semi-autonomously in Syria because their pressure on ISIS has been helpful to Damascus, and because the Kurdish agenda has been primarily regional autonomy rather than deposing Assad. U.S. Special Forces on the ground assisting the Kurds were in the range of fire, prompting a warning to Russia and Syria from the commander of U.S. forces in Iraq and Syria.

It was unexpected, too, because Russian President Vladimir Putin had previously demonstrated strong support for Kurdish interests. Even before the decline in Russian-Turkish relations when Turkey shot down a Russian Sukhoi jet, Putin went out of his way to praise the Kurds and indicate Russian support for them. The Russians allowed the Kurdish administration in Syria to open an office in Moscow, signaling that Kurdish interests would be included in any settlement of the civil war.

Turkey, naturally, sees all Kurdish military activity as threatening, and found both Syrian and Russian – not to mention American – support for or “hands off” attitude toward the Kurds as a continuing aggravation. To change the dynamic, Turkish President Erdogan’s rapprochement with Israel included an apology to Russia. Erdogan then visited Moscow, leading some commentators to seize on the Hasakah bombing as evidence that Turkey and Russia have made a deal at the expense of the Kurds.

How do the Syrian, Russian, Kurdish, Turkish and American positions intersect?

The Syrian attack on Hasakah wasn’t in independent effort. It needed Russian backing because five separate Kurdish positions were targeted. Surveillance of sites so far north in the country would have needed airborne assets and satellites; the Syrian air force has neither, but Russia does. Notably, although U.S forces were in the area, they were not directly targeted; as far back as February the U.S. had provided Russia with information about the location of American forces.

Furthermore, the attack on Hasakah had almost no military significance for the Assad regime. Syrian forces were located far from the targets, and there is no tactical military benefit to Syria from flying a mission against a town that is firmly in Kurdish control. Other motives for the bombings, which killed a large number of civilians, might have been an overture by Russia to Turkey. Or a warning from Russia to the United States. Or a mistake by Russia.

Daniel Greenfield comments on how the authorities (East, West, South, and North) engage in tongue-twisting, mental gymnastics to avoid “offending” the Islamic Ummah by ascribing the latest stabbing, rape, or murder by a member of the Muslim flock to “mental illness” or lack of employment opportunities, and other external drivers. The Press complies with the explanations also for fear of raising the lice-ridden hackles of Muslims. The latest episode from Australia.

The media is describing the Muslim terrorist as a French man. Because if it’s anything the French are known for, it’s shouting “Allahu Akbar”. and stabbing random non-Muslims.

A French national allegedly shouted “Allahu akbar” during and after a stabbing attack that left a British woman dead and another Briton fighting for his life at a backpackers hostel outside of Townsville last night.

Possible extremist motivations for the attack are now being investigated by Queensland Police and the Australian Federal Police, with the man yet to be questioned by investigators.

Queensland Police Service Deputy Commissioner Steve Gollschewski said the 29 -year-old French man shouted the phrase following the attack at the hostel at Home Hill, south of Townsville, but police had not determined whether the incident was terror related.

Who knows? Maybe the “French” stabber was expressing his Francophonic distaste of Brits by shouting Allahu Akbar.

“While this information will be factored into the investigation, we are not ruling out any motivations at this stage, whether they be political or criminal,” he told reporters in Brisbane.

“Investigators will also consider whether mental health or drug misuse factors are involved in this incident.”

Many stones will not be overturned in the search for a motive, particularly those marked with the telltale symbol of “Islam.” We don’t want to offend Muslims by blaming Islam for horrendous crimes randomly committed by a “radicalized” Muslim. “Allahu Akbar” just might be his misspoken utterance of “I’m a little teapot!” and the fellow had a speech impediment that aggravated his emotional outbreak!

So, heads are being scratched in Australia – call it a kind of infectious, epistemological psoriasis – in France, Britain, Germany, and in the U.S. because, you see, anyone shouting “Allahu Akbar” as he stabs away at a “random non-Muslim” cannot be said to be a jihadi or an “immigrant” or a “refugee.” That would be a defamation of the man’s character, and would come automatically under the rubric of “hate speech” and/or “Islamophobia,” which is by PC definition a “crime.” But if the evidence is overwhelming concerning his “motivation” and individuals refuse to grant it any role in the crime, who is the actual mentally ill person? Or is he a kind of mental doppelganger of the criminal?

The mental illness being reported has two classes of the afflicted: Muslims, who are by definition mentally ill (who else but someone not in his right mind would exalt a killer, rapist, bandit, all in the name of AllahWall – Wallah for short – as a moral ideal, and expect everyone else to acknowledge and defer to the sanity of the insanity, or else), and the Mainstream Media (MSM) or the Massagers of the Seven Mongoloids.

On Sunday afternoon, as residents of southern Israel were enjoying the last days of summer before the start of the school year, a Qassam rocket struck a yard in Sderot. Miraculously, nobody was hurt.

Though the attack was not perpetrated by Hamas specifically, Israel made good on its oft-repeated promise to hold the organization that rules the Gaza Strip responsible for any terrorist activity aimed at the Jewish state from its territory.

This was among the first tests put to Israel’s new defense minister, Avigdor Lieberman, who recently announced the implementation of a “carrot-and-stick” policy toward the Palestinians.

Lieberman did not disappoint. Throughout Sunday night, the IDF bombarded terrorist targets in Gaza. It was, according to Israeli families living near the border, the largest military sortie since Operation Protective Edge two years ago.

The terrorist attack and retaliation took place two days after the Turkish parliament ratified the rapprochement agreement with Israel reached in June. Six years ago, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, a Hamas loyalist, sparked the diplomatic schism that ostensibly is being overturned now.

Yet, even as Jerusalem and Ankara began to prepare for the exchange of ambassadors, Erdogan’s Foreign Ministry ripped into Israel, “strongly condemning” its “disproportionate attacks, unacceptable whatever prompted them.”