RUTHFULLY YOURS

Immune to the plagues of hack academics that annually erupt to deplore what they insist is Anzac Day’s celebration of militarism, racism, sexism, you-name-it-ism, there towers the figure of the man who, more than any other general, brought the slaughter to an end.
In a paper written in the wake of the 2009 Victorian bushfire disaster, I drew a pointed analogy. The failed and failing bushfire policies and management strategies in Australia these days have a parallel with the disastrous military strategies adopted by the generals in the early years of the First World War. Both were designed in such a way that they must invariably fail, both ignored the lessons of history, and both resulted in terrible and unnecessary losses of lives.

In my paper I also drew attention to the role played by the Australian General Sir John Monash, who engineered the breakthrough on the Western Front in the final year of the war. Monash conceived and implemented a winning strategy. I called for a new Monash to lead a renaissance in modern Australian bushfire management. Since then I have been asked several times to explain World War One strategies and Monash’s role. I had taken it for granted that most people understood all this. The questions have come especially from Americans, who generally lack the intense interest in WW1 history felt by Australians — especially Australians of about my generation, most of whom had a grandfather or uncle who fought and died at the Dardanelles, or in Flanders.

So, a potted history for those who came in late. The war on the Western Front (that is, western Europe) fell roughly into three phases. The first was brief, taking only a few weeks in August and September of 1914, as the German army swept through Belgium and into France, taking all before it. The third phase was also brief, lasting only from about August to November of 1918, when the allied armies broke through and began the rout which led to the war’s end. In the long years of the in-between phase, the British, French and Germans dug in and confronted each other across a narrow no-man’s land over a ‘front’, stretching from the North Sea to Switzerland. This phase was characterised by a series of largely static and horrible battles, with the British and French flinging themselves repeatedly at the German defences. The position of the frontline scarcely changed for three years. Millions died. The Generals on the Allied side knew only one strategy: headlong attack by infantry, following an intense artillery bombardment of the German frontline trenches.

I have always been proud that it was an Australian who engineered a new strategy, and Australian troops who largely provided the strike force to carry it through.

Australians had started arriving at the Western Front[1] in late 1915, following the withdrawal from the disastrous Gallipoli campaign. Although the Australians had their own field commanders, they reported to British Generals and to the British Commander in Chief Field Marshal Douglas Haig. This highly unpopular arrangement was the result of some political argy-bargy between the British and Australian governments.[2] It meant that in 1916 and 1917, Australian troops were forced to follow a disastrous strategy, i.e., attack at all costs against well-defended positions and hardened German troops with expertise in the use of enfilading machine gun fire. Consequently, Australian infantry suffered shocking losses on the killing fields at Passchendael, Fromelle, Pozieres, Villers-Bretonneux and Messine Ridge[3].

The climate deal negotiated in Paris and signed in New York Friday is not a treaty. It is not enforceable against the U.S. or anybody else. It waves vaguely at the idea of a $100 billion adjustment fund for poorer countries, to be filled in later by somebody else, maybe.

Like all such international agreements, it’s a giant PR exercise designed to put a global imprimatur on what domestic politicians want to do anyway. In China and India, that’s grow their energy output any way they can. In President Obama’s case, it’s continue to dish out green mandates and subsidies that please his entourage.

Economist Bruce Yandle coined the term bootleggers and Baptists for political coalitions of true believers and their more self-interested fellow travelers. The climate movement is the ultimate example.

Having ginned up a climate “crisis” in the first place, it’s almost as if the movement has ginned up a fake victory to keep the game going. This week’s signing was preceded by an outpouring of fishy studies in the press about how renewable energy is on the verge of solving the problem.

The most paradoxical claim, regularly aired in the New York Times, is that the fate of the planet depends on how you vote in the U.S. presidential race because solar power is falling rapidly in cost and is now competitive with fossil fuels.

Well, then it doesn’t matter how you vote. Cheaper solar energy will displace fossil energy for purely economic reasons.

The fragment of truth here is that the cost of solar collectors has come down thanks to Chinese production, but this represents a small fraction of the actual cost of integrating solar into the power system.

Solar is free; the sun does not send us a bill. But solar is only competitive to the extent that fossil-fuel plants remain on hand to provide backup power when the sun is not shining. Unfortunately, fossil-fuel plant economics deteriorate rapidly when plants must stop and start to make up for fluctuating wind and solar. CONTINUE AT SITE

LONDON—Two British men convicted of plotting Islamic State-inspired shooting attacks on the streets of London were each handed life sentences by a judge on Friday, concluding a high-profile case that was among the first to show how extremists returning from Syria were targeting European cities.
The sentencing came as U.K. authorities warn of an unprecedented threat posed by hundreds of fighters on foreign soil who have started to return to their homes, some intending to carry out mass atrocities like those in Paris and Brussels.
Tarik Hassane, a 22-year-old former medical student nicknamed “The Surgeon,” and Suhaib Majeed, 22, an Iraqi-born physics student, were last month found guilty of planning to kill a police officer or soldier with a silencer-equipped pistol.

“It is shocking, tragic and deplorable that you, two British young men, educated through the U.K. system, undertaking university courses, should be so influenced by the bloodthirsty version of Islam presented by ISIS and other similarly minded groups, that you decided to take up arms against your fellow British citizens and those charged with protecting them in the streets of your own city,” said Judge Alan Wilkie.

The plan by the self-styled “Turnup Terror Squad,” as the men named a WhatsApp group where they discussed their plans, was foiled when authorities arrested them in the fall of 2014.

Police and security sources have said the plot was among the most serious that they had uncovered in recent years, and one of the first to be linked to the conflict in Syria.

Mr. Hassane, who is of Saudi Arabian and Moroccan origin, said he traveled to the war-torn country in 2013, where he associated with foreign fighters. Authorities say they believe he received training there. Mr. Hassane admitted in a pre-sentencing submission to the court that he had handled firearms while in Syria. CONTINUE AT SITE

This is what happens when the inmates are running the asylum. And the refugee policy.

Some child brides are living with older husbands in asylum centers in Scandinavia, triggering a furor about lapses in protection for girls in nations that ban child marriage.

That ban child marriage currently. How long will that hold up? It’s all about the numbers. As it is there are layers upon layers of special exceptions for Muslims. Case in point…

Authorities have in some cases let girls stay with their partners, believing it is less traumatic for them than forced separation after fleeing wars in nations such as Afghanistan or Syria.

Would child rape victims from Denmark or Norway be allowed to stay with their rapist because it was deemed less traumatic for them? That seems to be a special rule for Muslim refugees. And how did the authorities determine this? Were they able to talk to the girls directly, without an interpreter or their “husband” in the room? Did they even bother to try?

Both these issues have caused unease in Scandinavia, where critics say that the authorities risk complicity in child abuse.

Risk complicity? They are complicit. If you house a girl together with her abuser, you are complicit.

“Minors seeking asylum are in a difficult situation where they have left their homeland, family and friends, and the partner they have traveled with can be the only person they know and trust in Norway,” said Heidi Vibeke Pedersen, a senior UDI official.

It comes as no surprise that the honchos in Ramallah are welcoming the French initiative to hold a summit of world foreign ministers to discuss and plan an international Israeli-Palestinian peace conference.

The Palestinian Authority knows full well that “peace” is a euphemism for complete Israeli capitulation to Palestinian demands, with nothing but bloodshed in return. Indeed, if PA President Mahmoud Abbas and his henchmen were actually interested in bringing about an end to conflict with Israel, they could do so in a split second — you know, by putting a stop to their own behavior. This includes, but is not restricted to, glorifying and funding the families of terrorists, particularly those who die for the cause in the process of killing Jews.

Contrary to what those who are either not paying attention or who hate the Jewish state for their own reasons may believe, Abbas’ ultimate goal is neither peace nor its companion misnomer, a “two-state solution.” No, his aim is to retain an international stamp of legitimacy as a world leader, to protect him from assassination on the one hand and oblivion on the other, and to keep the dollars and euros flowing.

Palestinian statehood is therefore not in his interest. But pretending to strive for it while portraying himself and his people as victims of Israeli “occupation” and “brutality” is what he’s really after. Meanwhile, he benefits from the West’s ostrich syndrome — the very phenomenon responsible for the nuclear deal with the Islamic Republic of Iran, the greatest state sponsor of global terrorism; the one that keeps Palestinian murder machines like Hezbollah in clover. And armed to the teeth.

This is all very old news, as is the fact that an ever-declining Europe and the United States under President Barack Obama would prefer to abdicate all political, moral and military superiority to Third World Islamist thugs than call the shots. It is this Western trait that is at the root of hostility to Israel, which — in spite of its all-too-Jewish inclination to follow suit — dares to defend and steel itself to the Cheshire Cat smiles of its sworn enemies and wagging fingers of its alleged friends.

The irony is that Abbas, like the ayatollahs in Tehran, would be the first to agree with this assessment. Indeed, it is the one thing on which Israel and the Palestinians agree, though the latter would never admit it in any language other than Arabic. Nor do PA apologists bother to believe the translations of such sentiments into English, French or German. They would rather spend their energy interpreting the forked-tongue dialect of parties with whom they insist on engaging in diplomacy.

The Fairfax press today features the ghost-written profile of a young Muslim woman we are urged to see as a victim of Australia’s endemic intolerance and bigotry. Shocking stuff! How could anyone feel anything but a empathy for a woman who idolised an Islamist mass murderer?
On the western flood plain of the Maribyrnong, the lesser of Melbourne’s two brown rivers, Buddhists have built themselves a handsome temple and, most arresting, a gigantic golden statue of their guiding philosophy’s founder (left). It is quite the spectacle and well worth a glance as your Werribee-bound train approaches Footscray station. But unless you have a particular interest in the sound of one hand clapping, a glance is all it’s worth — and, obligingly, Buddhists don’t see any need for grants and government programs to promote “understanding” of their creed. Alas that another religion were so content to mind its own business. As Fairfax Media demonstrates today with a series of profiles — Australia’s Muslims Speak Up — it seems that one cannot be regarded as a fair and unbiased citizen without an obligatory knowledge of Islam, its adherents, their agonies and the bigotry we are told yet again makes the lives of Australia’s faithful so very difficult.

That, at any rate, is the series’ intent. The end result, however, is the polar opposite. Unwittingly, wrapped in its gush of multi-culti pablum, at least one of the profiles illustrates why one doesn’t need to be a peddler of prejudice to find Islam more than somewhat alien and not a little unsettling.

The subject of this extended plea for understanding and empathy is 32-year-old Aisha Novakovich, described as “community advocate, law student and mother of two”. Her first-person story, ghost-written by Fairfax’s Beau Donelly, professes to be an account of “Islamophobia and anti-Muslim discrimination in Australia” by one who has been its victim. This is where, like so many Fairfax stories, a hefty measure of cognitive dissonance is required to accept the politically correct premise.

Obama is there now to take part in a conference of Arab Gulf countries, all of whom see Obama as betraying their alliance with the US. Again, in Arab lands, actions matter. Words are vey secondary.

Today the Gulf conference opened. The Saudi government media did not mention Obama’s presence at the conference. Ignoring somewhat important is culturally a terrible slap in the face in the Arab lands (and in Turkey and Iran).By his submission to Iran – their mortal enemy – Obama has betrayed them.

What the Arabs want to see is American actions, not words. There is a phrase in Arabic “Haka Fadi” meaning empty words. It is a terrible “put down.” That is how they view Obama.But of course, the US Administration either chooses to ignore this or just doesn’t know enough after the culture to understand the Arab message.

PARIS—France plans to convene a meeting of international powers at the end of May to restart peace talks between Israel and the Palestinians, seeking to head off an escalation in tensions that resonate across the Middle East and Europe.

French Foreign Minister Jean-Marc Ayrault said he is inviting foreign ministers from Europe, the U.S., the Middle East and Asia to Paris on May 30 to lay the groundwork for a new round of peace talks.

The goal is for major world powers to forge a common strategy for the negotiations without the presence of either Israeli or Palestinian officials, Mr. Ayrault said.

If the ministers make progress, Mr. Ayrault said he would host an international conference later this year that would include the Israeli and Palestinian leadership, at which talks would begin in earnest.

France’s attempt to restart the talks highlights mounting fears that a steady spate of attacks and killings by Palestinians and Israeli security forces could erupt into another full-scale conflict between the two sides in the coming months.

“The current situation is explosive,” Mr. Ayrault said. “There is urgency to act.”

Israeli officials had no immediate reaction, but they have sharply opposed an international peace conference, arguing that direct negotiations between the two sides are required to advance a peace agreement. A spokesman for the Palestinian Authority couldn’t be reached for comment.

Mr. Ayrault said the only solution to the long conflict remains a deal that would allow Israel and an independent Palestinian state to coexist peacefully side-by-side. But continued violence and Israel’s construction of settlements in the occupied Palestinian territories could deal a fatal blow to the peace process, he said.

“The possibility of two states, the only possible solution, is under threat,” Mr. Ayrault said. “It’s threatened by settlements, but also the absence of the prospect of negotiations.” CONTINUE AT SITE

Swedish law only allows the government to operate border controls six months at a time, and there is a two-week waiting period before the controls can be reinstated. The two-week lapse is scheduled for July 4-17; many fear that tens of thousands of migrants will seize the opportunity to enter Sweden during this time.

A new report on migrants in Sweden, based on interviews with 1,100 students in Stockholm (90% of respondents were Muslims) found that immigrant youths live in a different world from their Swedish peers. 83% of the girls are not allowed to have male friends, 62% of the boys are not allowed to have female friends.

After several sexual attacks on women in Östersund, the local police issued a warning that women are not safe outdoors after dark. Since February 20, eight women have been sexually assaulted or raped in the town.

A bus driver was suspended from work after sharing posts on Facebook that were critical of immigration. A wave of public criticism of the bus company then led them to reverse the decision. The company admitted that the driver had never treated anyone badly.

The Swedish Security Service has identified at least 60 asylum seekers as terrorists and a threat to the country. However, the Immigration Service refuses to deport them.

In early March, the Swedish government announced that the country’s tighter border controls at the Öresund Bridge might remain in place for the foreseeable future, and that they may even become permanent. The problem, however, is that this summer, a two-week lapse will occur. According to the current law, the government can only operate border controls six months at a time, and there is a two week waiting period before the controls can be reinstated. The gap will occur July 4-17, right in the middle of the European vacation period. Many people fear that tens of thousands of migrants will seize the opportunity to enter Sweden during this time. When the migration wave peaked in the fall of 2015, Sweden received 9,000 migrants per week. So far this year, the number has been steady at 600-700 per week.

The Palestinians argue that security cameras on the Temple Mount would be used by Israel to identify and arrest Muslim worshippers who protest against visits by Jews. What they seem to have forgotten is that these “protesters” regularly harass Jewish groups and individuals touring the Temple Mount.

While Mahmoud Abbas claimed he was in favor of the plan to install the security cameras, his Islamic clerics and Palestinian Authority (PA) officials continued to incite against the plan

The straw that broke the Jordanian back was a leaflet that was distributed at the Temple Mount during Friday prayers two weeks ago. The leaflet urged Muslims to smash any cameras installed at the holy site.

In one blow, Palestinians have managed to undermine Jordan’s historic role as “custodian” of the holy sites in Jerusalem and humiliate King Abdullah, who was the mastermind of the camera plan.

Succumbing to Palestinian intimidation, Jordan has dropped its plan to install surveillance cameras at the Haram Al-Sharif (Noble Sanctuary), or Temple Mount.

The cancellation of the plan is seen as a severe blow not only to Jordan, but also to U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry, who, in October 2015, brokered the agreement to install the cameras at the site.

Kerry announced then that Jordan and Israel had agreed to round-the-clock video surveillance, with the goal of reducing tensions at the Temple Mount.

Since then, however, the Palestinians, who have unleashed a wave of violent attacks on Israel in a purported response to Israeli “provocations” at the Temple Mount, have been campaigning against the plan to install the security cameras there. This week, it turned out that this campaign of intimidation was not in vain.

The Palestinians argue that the cameras would be used by Israel to identify and arrest Muslim worshippers who protest against visits by Jews to the Temple Mount. What they seem to have forgotten is that these “protesters” regularly harass Jewish groups and individuals touring the Temple Mount. The “protesters” are known as murabitoun (the Steadfast) and their main mission is to stop Jews from touring the Temple Mount. Some are affiliated with the Palestinian Authority (PA), while others are on the payroll of the Islamic Movement in Israel.

How Kerry will respond to this spit in the face remains to be seen. Not a sound was heard from him throughout the months of the Palestinian campaign to scuttle the plan.

With the U.S. deafeningly quiet on the subject, the Jordanians were left alone to deal with the Palestinian intimidation.

As the Palestinian threats intensified, Jordan’s King Abdullah dispatched his foreign minister, Nasser Judeh, to an urgent meeting with Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas in Ramallah.

At the meeting, Abbas did his old bait-and-switch trick. Claiming that he was in favor of the plan to install the security cameras at the Temple Mount, his Islamic clerics and Palestinian Authority officials continued to incite against the plan.

Abbas’s foreign minister, Riad Malki, denounced the plan as a “new trap.” He warned that Israel would use the cameras to arrest Palestinians under the pretext of “incitement.”

Malki is here referring to the male and female Muslim worshippers whose mission is to harass and intimidate Jewish visitors to the Temple Mount. Thus, the PA foreign minister wishes to maintain the right to threaten Jews at the Temple Mont without being documented or caught on camera.