GONE WAS THE SANCTITY OF PLACES
Tim Ritchie, Millers Pont
Someone called through the gathering storm.
Yes they did.
"We should have arrested him a long time ago."
"On what charge?
"Does it matter? Insurrection. Insubordination."
For letting loose the secret that the country's greatest threats came from within?
The perpetrators amply assisted by the taxpayer, by those who had gone to work in a factory.
The purveyors of democracy not as a participatory system aimed at representing the will of the ordinary, but as a criminal enterprise robbing the poor and giving to the rich.
The Voltaire prize for Free Speech went to a supporter of Sharia in the state of Victoria, where the previous year the Premier Kevin Andrews had endorsed a law which enabled the nation's secretive security agencies to hold 10-year-olds without charge for up to a fortnight.
Outspoken activist Yassmin Abdel-Magied, who spectacularly claimed to be the “most hated” Muslim in the country before moving to London last year, has won a prestigious prize for free speech.
Human rights group Liberty Victoria yesterday announced that Ms Abdel-Magied had been awarded the 2018 Young Voltaire Award for being a “role model” to young women, Muslims and migrants.
Actor and same-sex marriage activist Magda Szubanski has been awarded the 2018 Voltaire award, following in the footsteps of former Australian Rights Commission president Gillian Triggs, television presenter Waleed Aly and journalist David Marr.
Yassmin had risen to fame on the back of the taxpayer, and frequently insulted her adopted country, referring to Australia as "her abusive boyfriend".
A decadent society, courting its own ruin.
All the old tricks being played out around the world were being played out in Australia. Anyone who didn't support the radical deconstructionism supported by all those herds of the all-too-clever, the nation's half-educated, was a Nazi or a racist.
They learnt at the knees of their Marxist professors, and, amply feathered in their taxpayer jobs, went out to change the world.
Yassmin, too, had received significant support from the taxpayer, including well paid government jobs, consultancies and a world tour promoting her book.
She outraged Australians after insulting Australia's closest thing to a Holy Day, Anzac Day. She posted a message to Facebook that read: “Lest We Forget (Manus, Nauru, Syria, Palestine …)”. Her words were interpreted a dig at Australia’s veterans and disrespectful to the sacrifices diggers made in Gallipoli.
More than 60,000 mostly young Australians had been killed during World War One, a sacrifice increasingly unappreciated as the country underwent rapid demographic transformation a century on.
Wasted lives, wasted deaths, harvested from the towns and villages of Australia in support of the imperial power of Britain.
The went willingly, to service their country.
How naive they were.
After she had found herself mired in controversy, even more so than the country itself was mired in deceit, Yassmin sought the advice of Hizb ut-Tahrir, a group banned in much of the world as a terrorist group.
A group linked with every major terror related death in Australia.
The activist who proclaimed Islam was “the most feminist religion” reached out to the spokesman for anti-gay and anti-women group Hizb ut-Tahrir in the wake of her fight on ABC TV’s program Q&A for advice on how she could have framed her argument better.
Hizb ut-Tahrir spokesman Wassim Doureihi posted on his personal Facebook page that Muslims were more angry with independent senator Jacqui Lambie, who wants to ban the burka, instead of two other government MPs who “belong to parties that have bombed Muslims abroad, criminalised Muslims at home, and jailed Muslims seeking refuge from both”.
Mr Doureihi and others criticised Yassmin Abdel-Magied for arguing through a “secular lens” and not having the required deep knowledge of Islam to prosecute her case.
“Salams! Well, I am always happy to take feedback,” Ms Abdel-Magied wrote in response.
“What specifically was problematic and how can I do better in the future inshallah? I am young, and willing to learn, inshallah. Trying to do the best with the platform I can, Allah willing.”
Feminist activist Yassmin Abdel-Magied sought advice from Hizb ut-Tahrir, Rick Morton, The Australian, 20 February, 2017.
The Hizb, who dreamed of a universal Muslim caliphate, had for decades been actively advocating the overthrow of the Australian government in taxpayer funded town halls.
Yet this same government threatened, monitored and harassed journalists, free thinkers and those who dared step outside the government narrative.
Instead all those useful fools who advocated an internal revolution, an overthrow of the traditional culture, much condemned these days as patriarchal and racist, received all the support and accolades available for those who sang the party line.
The Hizb received support from some of the most senior Muslims in the land, including the Mufti. The people were blind. They were about to be destroyed.
A mosque would be built on the site of the old watering hole.
It was the perfect spot.
Millions in Saudi funding had already built mosques across the nation.
And the irony, of course, was that they, the ragtag group of perfectly decent workers and trades people were about to be rescued from their meaningless lives and given the gift of the ravishing, their lives imbued with meaning.
Instead of sitting around the pub relaxing over a beer after a hard day's work, laughing at idiot porn images on their smart phones, ribbing each other, for they had known one another since childhood, talking endlessly of football as they lit up yet another cigarette, they would live clean, moral, humble, compassionate lives.
They would, like all those fervent members the Hizb, become clean cut, not smoke, drink, take drugs or make crude jokes, they would be loyal to their wives and submissive to the will of Allah.
Their future selves. Other selves. The next generation.
The future, as always, was breaking into the present.
That day Old Alex worked in one of the local libraries on the South Coast, as was his wont.
Gone was the sanctity of places of learning, and they doubled, these days, as child minding centres.
He listened to the ceaseless multicultural propaganda being pumped into the pre-school kids.
We're all friends. We're from everywhere. China. Africa. Europe. My friends are fleeing war.
"Friends, friends," the children sang. "Australia Fair is for all to share."
No, it wasn't.
These teachers weren't promoting tolerance, diversity.
They were instruments in a greater destruction of the culture.
A perfect destruction, for the citizens themselves paid for it.
Of old fashioned national pride there was no more.
But you couldn't tell them that; they all thought they knew a greater good.
THE BIGGER STORY:
If there are any Australians who think we have anything to celebrate on the 15thanniversary of our invasion of Iraq and the start of our longest war, they must know something the rest of us don’t. In fact, there’s a lot nobody knows.
We’re not certain even about the date on which we invaded Iraq. The Americans say 20 March 2003, but that was 19 March Baghdad time, and Australian Special Forces proudly claimed to have pre-empted the 48-hour pre-attack ultimatum by 30 hours on 18 March.
We don’t know when the Howard government committed Australia to go to war. Thanks to the Chilcot Inquiry, we know that Tony Blair told President Bush nearly a year in advance that Britain would support the invasion. With no such inquiry of our own, all Australians know is that John Howard visited Bush at his Texas ranch in May 2002. He repeatedly denied having any plans for Australia to go war, and then revealed them fully formed in March 2003.
We do know that the reasons Australia went to war were false. When no WMD were found, Howard said our aim was to rid Iraq of its tyrannical ruler. But his bottom line was to show support for the US alliance, and win the next election. Thousands of protesters realised this.
We knew the invasion was contrary to international law. More than 50 Australian lawyers and legal academics published a statement saying so. UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan later told the BBC it was illegal. This means those who invaded could be accused of war crimes.
So why are Australian forces still in Iraq?
OTHER READING:
https://johnmenadue.com/alison-broinowski-happy-anniversary-iraq/
https://johnmenadue.com/paul-barratt-time-to-involve-parliament-in-decisions-about-sending-the-adf-into-combat/
https://johnmenadue.com/john-menadue-the-media-the-iraq-war-and-fallujah/