RUTHFULLY YOURS

Mistaken Identity, Not Aboriginal Heroes

Depicted as martyrs in the cause of Aboriginal resistance, convicted killers Tunnerminnerwait and Maulboyheenner are to be honoured with a statue in Melbourne’s CBD. Once again, popular myth is about to trump documented history

The Melbourne City Council has decided to erect a memorial to commemorate the two Tasmanian Aborigines who were hanged in Melbourne on January 20, 1842, in the first public executions at Port Phillip. The decision coincided with its publication of a thirty-nine-page booklet by Clare Land entitled Tunnerminnerwait and Maulboyheenner: The Involvement of Aboriginal People from Tasmania in Key Events of Early Melbourne (2014). It is a beautiful booklet, in full colour with numerous illustrations, on glossy paper, obtainable from the Melbourne City Council and available, free, online. If the intent was to pay respects to the two executed Tasmanians, then it is successful.

Our problem with it is that it is history-lite, based mainly on secondary sources, with little primary research. It reads as an argument that Tunnerminnerwait and Maulboyheenner were resistance fighters deserving of memorialisation. Our research, based only on primary sources, demonstrates conclusively that they were not resistance fighters: on their own personal testimony, they shot and killed two whalers by mistake.In the late 1830s and 1840s, these two Tasmanians were known to society in Melbourne, and recorded in contemporary accounts, as Bob and Jack, so, without intending any disrespect, we follow the usage by which they were recorded in the primary sources at the time, and use their European names in this account. On the same principle, we sometimes use the term “blacks” because that was the language of record. “Blacks” is not a pejorative term, but today’s more respectful consciousness usually uses “the Aboriginal people”. But to apply today’s heightened sensitivity to the records of a distant past amounts in our view to a distortion.

Are imams advocating that the faithful focus on the nice Meccan part of the Koran, rather than the advocacy of violence in the nasty Medinan part? It would be nice to have that questioned answered, but the only responses we hear are sophistries and dissembling
Seek them here Seek them there Are there moderates anywhere?

Mark Durie in Islam, Human rights and Public Policy (2009) refers to a poll taken in 2006 which found that 58% of Indonesians believed adulterers should be stoned to death; up from 39% in 2001. Apparently the polled respondents in this “moderate” Muslim nation were not asked whether adulterers should simply get a damn good thrashing. I assume there would have been even greater support for that. In 2010, the Pew Research Centre found that 84% of Egyptians, 86% of Jordanians and 76% of Pakistanis favoured death for apostasy.

In early 2011, the governor of the Punjab province in Pakistan, Salmaan Taseer, was assassinated. He was killed for opposing blasphemy laws which had resulted in a Christian woman facing execution. Pope Benedict publicly opposed the laws. A number of Pakistan’s political leaders, including then-Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani, made it clear that the Pope had no business interfering in Pakistan’s internal affairs and that the blasphemy laws would remain in place. Thousands were reported to have showered the alleged assassin with rose petals.

Clearly, Enlightenment thinking is a little way off in Pakistan and in other Islamic states. But then, if that is the case, where are those moderate Muslims that I keep hearing about? Where are they hiding out? Andrew Bolts seems to be in the know. He attests, presumably as a result of some kind of revelatory insight, that “the vast majority of Muslims reject [terrorism]”; in other words, a jihad interpretation of Islamic scripture (Herald Sun, 6 October). Hmm, I wonder, wherever they are, what is going on? Have their imams told them to concentrate on the nice Meccan part of the Koran and ignore the later words of Allah in the nasty Medinan part? Are there large numbers of foolhardy imams preaching this heresy?

Perhaps it is a question of definition. What is a moderate Muslim? Can he or she be identified? One problem in coming from a Christian background is the absence of a contemporary reference point in the Christian world for moderates.

As I pointed out in “Moderate Muslims are the Problem, Not the Solution” (Quadrant, May 2013): “Christians don’t go around bombing people in the name of Christianity or envisioning a restored Christian empire, akin to a caliphate, in the Western world.” Without an immoderate and warlike comparison, the term “moderate” has no meaning. Christians don’t go around axiomatically describing themselves as moderate. It would be silly. Not so with Muslims.

In return for receiving taxpayer funds for foreign regional studies, universities must agree, according to Title VI of the Higher Education Act (HAE), to conduct “public outreach” programs aimed at K-12 teachers and the general public.

Problem is, as shown in research by Campus Watch and others, the Middle East studies centers betray a relentless bias in their Outreach programs against the United States and its allies, especially Israel, while showing a willful blindness to radical Islam. Three examples:

Gilbert Achcar of the University of London began a lecture at the University of California, Berkeley, in October 2011 by declaring, “Don’t expect me to take a pro-Israel view. I’m an Arab.” Achcar went on to declare that “The Shoah [Holocaust] ended in 1945, but the suffering of the Palestinians is never-ending.”
Ilan Pappé of the University of Exeter in the U.K. spoke at UCLA in February 2012 and charged Israel with being a “settler-colonial state” that engages in “criminality” by its very existence. He also offered this apologia for Palestinian terrorism: “Peace is not the only means of bringing an end to an oppression, in this case colonization, dispossession, and ethnic cleansing.”
Sherman Jackson of the University of Southern California said at Harvard in November 2013 that the U.S. Constitution “can be challenged, modified or even abandoned” to conform to Islamic law, or Shariah.

If trains and buss are no longer safe places for soldiers on their way to work, surely they are no longer safe for ordinary citizens either.

“The best thing you can do is to make an effort to kill any infidel, French, American, or any of their allies… Smash his head with a rock, slaughter him with a knife, run him over with a car throw him from a high place, choke him or poison him.” — Mohammed al-Adnani, ISIS spokesman, September 2014.

Instead of telling their soldiers to hide themselves, Western governments should tell their soldiers to show themselves to make clear to the jihadists, and to frightened citizens, that we in the West are not afraid of terrorists. On the contrary, we will root them out and come down on them with all our military might.

Earlier this week, Timon Dias wrote on these pages that the Dutch authorities have ordered Dutch soldiers not to wear their uniforms when they are using public transport on their way to the barracks. But the Dutch are not the only cowards in the West. Unfortunately, the Netherlands is not the only country that, for fear of attacks by Muslim extremists, has advised its military to no longer wear their uniforms in public. Apparently, Australia, Belgium, Britain and France have done the same.

As Dias wrote, the order in the Netherlands was a response to a threat by a Dutch jihadist known as Muhajiri Shaam, who is currently fighting in Syria with al-Nusra, the Syrian branch of al-Qaeda. After the Netherlands announced that Dutch F-16s would participate in the allied offensive against ISIS in Iraq, Shaam tweeted that the Dutch people had now become a target for jihadists.

In Belgium, a country that has also sent F-16s to participate in the attacks on ISIS, soldiers have also been advised not to wear their uniforms when using the Belgian public transport system. According to General Tom Middendorp, the Dutch supreme military commander, the British and French authorities have made similar recommendations. In May 2013, after the murder of Lee Rigby — a British soldier hacked to death by two Muslims outside his military barracks in London — the British military commanders already told their troops not to wear their uniforms outside their bases.

We’re used to cerebral soldiers. Every American generation has given us a sprinkling. Contemporary generals are expected to be tough and irrepressible. They are also expected to be thoughtful and, increasingly, humane. Not so our cops—or at least not until very recently. If an American police chief has had a philosophy, it has been the stuff of no nonsense, one with which he has presided over an armed workforce that keeps order in a Manichaean world.

Last week I attended a memorial service for a man—a cop—who was a glorious exception, a philosopher-policeman. He was Joseph D. McNamara, a man who had been chief of the San Jose Police Department from 1976 to 1991. He retired from the force just days after calling for the resignation of Daryl Gates, chief of the Los Angeles Police Department, four of whose officers had savagely beaten an unarmed black man named Rodney King —an act of violence, caught on tape, that came to be seen as the nadir of American policing.

McNamara had been one of a very few senior American police officials who had condemned Gates in public. In an op-ed on these pages, written in April 1991 while he was still running the San Jose Police Department, McNamara said that “the videotape of the LAPD brutality affects the credibility of all police officers. It has cast a cloud over policing that won’t be lifted until police chiefs drop their own code of silence and speak out against one of their own’s peculiar philosophy of policing.”

McNamara died on Sept. 19, of pancreatic cancer. He had, in the time since his retirement in 1991, been a fellow at the Hoover Institution at Stanford (where I was his colleague for the past seven years). He wrote prolifically—op-eds for newspapers, this paper in particular, and crime novels of a lively (and sometimes best-selling) flavor. His obituary in the New York Times recognized him as the “father of community policing” in this country, which he was indisputably; but he was also much more.

In an email to me, Ray Kelly , until recently the chief of the New York Police Department, described McNamara as “a visionary leader in law enforcement at a time when they were in short supply. Starting as a beat cop in Harlem in the 1950s, he became a scholar and an advocate for progressive policing throughout the country. Never afraid to speak his mind, he was the most influential police officer-academic of his time.”

Like it or not, the federal courts should intervene in the state to uphold Americans’ First Amendment rights.

The criminalization of politics is bad enough—just ask Texas Gov. Rick Perry —but a new turn to target citizens as well threatens to permanently warp our political discourse. Like it or not, federal courts will have to intervene to uphold Americans’ First Amendment rights against win-at-any-cost politics.

Wisconsin is ground zero of this phenomenon. A partisan elected district attorney, John Chisholm, reportedly goaded on by his union-steward wife, Colleen, decided to take aim at Republican Gov. Scott Walker after his 2011 “Budget Repair Bill” cut back on public-sector collective bargaining within the state. But Mr. Chisholm didn’t stop there: After an aggressive criminal investigation failed to knock Mr. Walker out of office, the district attorney set his sights on the governor’s philosophical allies, an assortment of conservative citizen groups that supported Walker’s reforms.

The claim was that these groups illegally “coordinated” their speech on the issues with Gov. Walker’s campaign, thereby circumventing campaign-finance regulations. The evidence? Intercepted emails and phone records showing that some of the groups communicated with Gov. Walker’s campaign, mostly on policy issues. That wasn’t enough to bring charges, but it did allow Mr. Chisholm to launch an aggressive criminal investigation targeting Gov. Walker’s supporters, complete with home raids and everything-but-the-kitchen sink subpoenas.

These efforts had the intended effect: Funding for conservative policy advocacy dried up and Gov. Walker’s supporters were forced to redirect their energies from political activism to courtroom litigation.

This is not the first time the political left has used criminal law as a campaign device. It started with the prosecution of former Texas Republican Rep. Tom DeLay —who was finally exonerated in 2013 of trumped-up campaign-finance charges nine years after being charged. Another tactic has been to fund groups like the American Democracy Legal Fund, which has deluged Republican lawmakers with ethics complaints.

Yet the dubious innovation in Wisconsin was to target citizens, banking on the fact that they won’t or can’t fight back. The assumption held true for many groups. But not all of them.

http://freebeacon.com/politics/harvard-students-say-america-poses-bigger-threat-to-world-peace-than-islamic-state/

Students at Harvard University said that the U.S. is a bigger threat than the Islamic State, and that America is responsible for the extremists’ rise to power.

Campus Reform reporter Caleb Bonham asked Harvard students, “What’s a bigger threat to world peace—America or ISIS?”

“American imperialism and our protection of oil interests in the Middle East are destabilizing the region and allowing groups like ISIS to gain power,” one student said.

“As a western civilization we’re to blame for a lot of the problems that we’re facing now,” another student said. “I don’t think anyone would argue that we didn’t create the problem of ISIS, ourselves.”

One student speculated that Muslims in the Middle East may be drawn to fighting with the Islamic State because they do not understand how Westerners think.

“They have a skewed view of us, just as we have a skewed view of them,” the student said.

http://www.foxnews.com/us/2014/10/08/twisted-ivy-harvard-students-say-us-bigger-threat-to-world-peace-than-isis/

Twisted Ivy: Harvard students say US bigger threat to world peace than ISIS

They got most of their SAT questions right, but students at Harvard blew this lay-up posed by the college blog Campus Reform: Who is the bigger threat to world peace, ISIS or the U.S.?

Various students at the hallowed Ivy League school said they believe that America, not the Muslim fanatics who behead innocent people, is the biggest threat to world peace.

The students were interviewed on the quad by Campus Reform on Saturday, and the shocking video was posted on Tuesday.

“As a Western civilization, we’re to blame for a lot of the problems that we’re facing now,” one student said during an interview. “I don’t think anyone would argue that we didn’t create the problem of ISIS, ourselves.”

Most of the other students interviewed shared the same sentiment — that ISIS would not exist had it not been for the past actions of the U.S.

“American imperialism and our protection of oil interests in the Middle East are destabilizing the region and allowing groups like ISIS to gain power,” said another student.

Caleb Bonham, editor of Campus Reform, conducted the interviews and said that the students’ response is nothing new.

“This video demonstrates the absurdity behind the bash America fad,” Bonham told FoxNews.com. “Unfortunately, too many students think it is intellectual to try and piece together a reason why America is a greater threat than this terrorist organization trying to establish a caliphate through public executions, bombings and beheadings.”

The Islamic State is a splinter group of Al Qaeda that has occupied a large swath of Syria and the northern region of Iraq and has tried to establish a caliphate and rule all Muslims under Shariah Law.

Many politicians and members of the public have come to see Palestinians as the world’s underdogs, who, however ugly their behaviour, can do no wrong; and to portray Israel as a Nazi state that persecutes the Palestinians and “steals” the land — mystifyingly — of a people, the Jews, who have lived on that land for roughly 4,000 years.

“In a final resolution, we would not see a single Israeli — civilian or soldier — on our lands.” — Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas.

“The Day of Judgement will not come about until Muslims fight and kill the Jews, when the Jew will hide behind stones and trees. The stones and the trees will say, O Muslims, there is a Jew behind me, come and kill him. ” — Hamas Charter, Article 7.

“[T]his struggle will not cease unless the Zionist state is demolished and Palestine is completely liberated.” Article 19, — Fatah [PLO] Constitution, as of July 19, 2005.

The British parliament, on October 13th, may be debating whether or not to recognize a Palestinian state.

Recognizing what in all likelihood would quickly become yet another Islamic terrorist state can only set a precedent that could have a disastrous impact on future negotiations and international law, and lead to the establishment yet more launching pads for people dedicated to violent jihad, not just in Israel, but, as they now openly admit, worldwide, including Britain and Sweden.

On October 3, newly elected Swedish Prime Minister Stefan Löfven used his inaugural speech to announce a decision to recognize the “state of Palestine.” In what must rank as one of the most self-contradictory statements in political history, he declared: “A two-state solution requires mutual recognition and a will to peaceful co-existence. Sweden will therefore recognise the state of Palestine.”

North Korea says rights criticism a gay plot; no gays in its country

North Korea says criticism of its human rights record is a gay conspiracy, and that the lead author of a UN report is a “disgusting old [gay] lecher”. Witnesses to rights abuses were described as “human scum”

Led by a man, Kim Jong-un, who as a youngster is said by people who knew him to have taken delight in torturing pet animals, North Korea has responded to a recent report on its human rights record by describing it is a gay plot, adding that gays do not exist in the secretive communist country.

Rights activists say that in a perverse sense there could be said to be a certain truth to the last part of that statement, at least in so far as anyone accused of being gay is always found guilty — the secret police does not arrest innocent people, North Korea says — and then shot.

Last week, North Korea issued a 53,000 word “rebuttal” to a 2014 UN report accusing the regime of “unspeakable” attrocities. Overall, North Korea is estimated by the Black Book of Communism of having killed 2 million people since its inception.

In the regime’s rebuttal, as well as in wider state propaganda, it said that North Korea actually had the best rights record in the world. The anti-gay message has been central to rejection of the UN report since April and has been repeated in official circles ever since.

UN chief investigator Michael Kirby’s findings were all a result of the fact that he was gay. Kirby was called “a disgusting old lecher with a 40-odd-year-long career of homosexuality.”

“This practice can never be found in the DPRK (North Korea)… In fact it is ridiculous for a gay to sponsor dealing with others’.

Our politicians must end their fear and evasion on Islam

The fear of offending Muslims by speaking the truth is endemic in the mainstream British political class, and has been so for decades. We cannot afford politically correct evasions

The Home Secretary Theresa May has promised — or threatened, depending on your point of view — new measures to deal with increasing extremism in Britain. Everyone knows what she meant, but what she meant was not quite what she said.

What she meant, of course, was the urgent need to deal with Islamic extremism, but like most mainstream western politicians on this subject, Ms May, in her Conservative Party conference speech, became all culturally sensitive rather than speaking the blunt truth.

After the usual pre-emptive reassurances about Islam being a religion of peace etc, Ms May referred to the need for radical changes to personal freedoms that Britons have enjoyed for hundreds of years. She will introduce Banning Orders and Extreme Disruption Orders targeting, as she put it “neo-Nazism and other forms of extremism as well as Islamist extremists”.

Note the train of thought in that last sentence, “as well as Islamist extremists” takes third place to “neo-Nazism and other forms of extremism”, even though Islamism is by far her greatest worry.

The problem here is more than some linguistic sleight-of-hand. This generalising of the problem of Islamic terrorism to include “other forms of extremism” really could become a threat to freedoms we have always taken for granted.

For example, expressed opinions that are within the law could be banned on social media. The British National Party (BNP) and the English Defence League (EDL) could be virtually outlawed.

And this can happen because politicians are desperate not to offend Muslims by pointing out specific problems relating to their community. Instead, everyone, for reasons of “balance” and excessive deference to Muslim sensitivities must be tarred with the same brush.

Loss of freedom is too high a price to pay for failure to confront Islam and Islamism head-on.