The Importance of being Urban

 Writer Andrew Urban, lives up to his famous namesake, Pope Urban II (1088-1099), in his warnings that evil thrives when good people look on impassively (The Spectator 1 July 2017).

The peace loving Muslims are as irrelevant to these times as they were in the time of that medieval pope.

That world of Urban II, was vastly different to the world of 2017, in so many aspects, yet there is one constant: the threat of Islam.

The Crusades, were defensive wars to halt the aggression of the Muslims and the loss of Christian lands. Recognition of that threat led a desperate Urban II to make one of history’s most important speeches in his to call to the faithful to defend the faith. His speech at Clermont, in response to a plea from the Byzantine Emperor, has not survived but five written accounts speak of its power.

Francis, the current ‘flibbertigibbet Pope,’ (to quote Hal Colebatch, in the same edition), has simply taken ‘refuge in denial,’ of the existence of Islamic terrorism.

In contrast, Pope Urban’s letter, of December 1095, following his stirring speech, called on all the faithful to rally against ‘a barbaric fury’ that had ‘deplorably afflicted and laid waste to the churches of God.’

This was a time that people in the West believed in the Church, in contrast to the era of post modernism that has rendered the inhabitants of the Lands of Plenty incapable of understanding anything longer than the latest twitter message or defending anything other than an attack by a gnat!

As Greg Sheridan, the Foreign Editor of The Australian asked, ‘how long can the west live off the moral capital of religious conviction that it is now abandoning?’ (12/3/15).

Answer: not long, unless some real political and church leadership is shown against Islam –a cult with a consistent 1400 year history of murder, mayhem and terror but as Corrine Barraclough points out, (The Spectator 1/7/17), ‘Western liberalism’s attitude towards radical Islam is insane.’

First, consider the situation that confronted Urban II and led to his call to Christendom to defend the faith.

Long before the great Protestant Reformation, the Church had split into Western and Eastern Divisions in the great schism of 1054 when the future pope was a mere 12 year old boy.

As a learned man, Urban, as pope, looked at the centuries, after the death of Mohammed (632 AD), and saw the trail of destruction that Islam had wrought, (what has changed?).

Spain had been controlled by Muslims from 711 and would remain so until 1492 –the year Columbus sailed the Blue; the mad Caliph Al-Hakim had destroyed Christendom’s most holy church in Jerusalem in 1009, after earlier attacks on Christian pilgrims, in acts that would become increasingly familiar over centuries.

 Palestine, Libya and Egypt, once great Christian centres, quickly succumbed to the new barbarism. North Africa and Spain were conquered in the eighth century; but in 732, at the Battle of Tours, the Muslims were defeated in today’s France, by an army led by Charles Martel, in an epic battle that saved Western Europe from being over-run while today Angela Merkel waves them through.

However, by the 11th century- Urban’s era – the Byzantine Empire had been reduced to little more than Greece; Asia Minor (Turkey), Christian since St Paul, was lost.

In desperation the Emperor at Constantinople appealed for help from Western brethren.

Urban could have washed his hands of the Christian ‘heretics’ of the East. However, as two-thirds of Christian territory had fallen to Islam in the preceding four centuries the 159^th Pope recognised the dangers, hence his inspired speech on 27 November 1095 when he rallied Western Christendom to action.

It was not an appeal to greed. The men who would lead the various Crusades were men of land and wealth, not vagabonds and their chief motivation was to help protect Christians in far- away places being brutalised.  These were men who were not setting out to pillage but rather to gain treasure that rusts and moths could not spoil.

There were certainly excesses by the Crusaders, abusing the stated goals of Urban who was calling on the Crusaders to bring relief to Christians being attacked and to liberate Jerusalem.

The attacks on Jews, en route, by one force led by Count Emicho of Leinegen, are as indefensible now as they were then. Church leaders of the time, like historians, condemned such atrocities.

However, to condemn the entire Crusades for that is like condemning the entire Allied War effort because of the Allied obliteration bombing of Dresden between 13-15 February 1945.

The First Crusade (1096-99) was really the only successful one. Jerusalem was taken (and later lost) but Urban died just before hearing of the success.

Little has changed with Islam over the centuries –it remains, as it has always been, a death cult that over the period has been responsible for, conservatively, 270 million deaths since its inception.

It has no restraint and the litany of horrors, since the attacks on America in 2001, make for grim reading. In 2013 nearly 18,000 people died as a result of Islamic intolerance. In 2015, of 452 suicide bombing attacks only two were not by Muslims.

William Kilpatrick, writing in Crisis Magazine (10^th August,  2016) took the current pope, Francis, to task because of his fatuous declaration that the murder and mayhem is only the work of a small group of fundamentalists.

Kilpatrick argues that such dangerous naivete is contrary to the sweeping reforms the church took in the wake of sexual abuse scandals. Why act on one and not the other?

Francis fails to look at the damning evidence of the support these murdering ‘small group’ of barbarians have in Islamic communities as documented in an extensive list of polls by The Religion of Peace and Jihad Watch, including:

*20% of UK Muslims having sympathy with the 7/7 bombers and 16% of young Belgian Muslims consider terrorism acceptable

* an Al Jazeera poll shows 81% of respondents approve ISIS;

* in Saudi Arabia 92% of Saudis say ISIS conforms with Islamic law

* 40% of of British Muslims favour Sharia law over British law

* in Denmark,   41 per cent of Somalian men were convicted of a crime in 2012

* some 62% of Muslims in Canada want Sharia law; 51% in the US

* apparently 63% of Egyptians are happy with terrorism attacks on US embassies and young Muslims living in major western countries  approve of it by margins varying from one-fifth to over 40 per cent

*Jews are legitimate targets in the UK, according to 37% of British Muslims, and 45% say that clerics preaching violence is ‘mainstream Islam’

* while two thirds of British Muslims would not report a terror plot to police

This mind set resulted in the murder of a Scottish Muslim, Ashad Shah, in Glasgow just before Easter. His ‘crime’ was wishing Christians a happy Easter?

This mind set was also revealed by the complete contempt the Saudi Arabian soccer side showed in a match, against Australia, following the murder of two lovely young Australians, Kirsty Boden and Sara Zelenak, during the London Bridge massacre in June 2017. While the Australian side lined up to pay tribute, the barbarians, they were about to beat, simply continued with their warm-up. The lack of outrage by Australian Muslims was epitomised by their deafening silence!

 In various eras Islam has been a threat. The Battle of Lepanto (1571) and the Siege of Vienna (1683) were just two further crucial battles fought against Muslim marauders.

The actions of the popes, who were in office, during those famous wars, Pius V (1566-72) and Innocent XI (1676-89) are instructive. The West owes these two pontiffs much because they certainly had the spirit and resolve of their earlier predecessor, Urban II.

Pius V promoted the Holy League and a fleet of the Catholic maritime states decisively beat the Muslims, off the coast of Greece. Innocent XI was known as the Saviour of Hungary and he was an enthusiastic supporter of the Holy League which brought together the German states and King John III of Poland, a man who hastened to relieve Vienna from marauding Turks. (Innocent XI was an interesting pope who was sensitive towards the Jews and favoured the Protestant Dutchman, William of Orange, over his father-in-law, the Catholic English king, James II).

A century ago the now forgotten Armenian Genocide of 1915 started. Yet today shallow politicians like the Australian foreign minister, Julie Bishop, choose to not just ignore it but question whether it even happened!

More importantly, it has also been forgotten by all Turkish governments – political liars who also brazenly deny the atrocity happened. In 1900 some 32% of Ottoman Turkey’s population was Christian. By 1927 the figure was down to 1.8%. 

Islam is always the problem. It has never been a religion of peace but rather one of bigotry, hatred and violence. Its holy scriptures, unlike any other religion, invokes its followers to murder non-Muslims as accepted practice.

This has been carried out to the letter in North, East and West African States. The beheading of 21 Christian workers in Libya; the Nigerian enslavement of over 219 female school children by Boko Haram while 10,000 other pupils have been prevented from schooling;  the murder of 148 Kenyan university students by cowardly Islamists is another in the long list of atrocities; and in Pakistan a Christian couple were thrown live into a furnace. It never ends.

Western secular leaders are inept and frightened of tripe words like Islamophobic. Who cares what Islamophiles label the silent majority?  Democrats, everywhere, have had enough of Muslim arrogance, crimes and demands? The age of the Popes organising the West is well and truly over but determined secularist leadership is still sorely needed, as is church leadership.

Democracies are entitled to protect themselves. Both Lincoln and FDR showed what US war time presidents were prepared to do with the suspension of habeas corpus and internment, respectively, to protect the Union.

The taxpayers in Australia are not interested in showering millions of dollars in education programs for Muslim troublemakers.

Instead, as Andrew Urban argues, there should be mandatory life sentences for all terrorism related offences, with no bail and no parole; frequent anti-radicalisation checks on Muslim schools, mosques, imans and communities; detention and interrogation of all those under ASIO investigations, cancellation of funding to Muslims organisations that transgress; and curtailing Muslim immigration. the same rules should apply to any group that may threaten security and social cohesion.

Indeed, we could even go further and contemplate the ban of Muslim migration to this country. As Law Professor Augusto Zimmermann said, “there is nothing in our Constitution which prevents a ban of individuals who pose a threat to our national security as well as the preservation of fundamental rights and freedoms. To the contrary, the escalation of global tensions may eventually force our federal government to face this extremist religion more squarely and to make the bold and courageous decision to ban the immigration of Muslims to Australia.”

Those fighters returning from the Middle East should be charged with treason; at home, the Halal certification needs to be legislated against and exposed as an outrageous preference given to a religion that has little national support; while Sharia law must be outlawed with severe penalties for those trying to circumvent Australian law.

Accordingly it is time the ‘Urbanisation,’ not the Islamisation, of Australia took place as the first duty of government is to defend its people.

The words of two Urbans, a millennium apart, should be heeded.

History/Politics

VERWOERD LOOKING BETTER 

The late Allister Sparks (1933-2016), veteran political reporter and book author, in the year before he died, reflected on some of the smart politicians he had seen in his long career, including Dr HF Verwoerd (PM 1958-66).

The sky fell in on Sparks for including Verwoerd in his list of ‘smart politicians.’ in much the way Helen Zille, the current premier of the Western Cape, has been recently pilloried for saying that colonialism was not all negative.

In fact only a fool would disagree with Sparks and Zille, on both counts.

With the current situation in the RSA at highly combustible levels the western media has shied away from the vicious racism being conducted by the ruling ANC against the eight per cent white minority.The reason is that while they demanded instant majority rule, in the 1980s and early 1990s they are no longer interested in reporting on the bitter harvest they helped sow.

In fact, Verwoerd and other Nationalist leaders shine in comparison with the current socially, economically, corrupt regime and its president, Jacob Zuma.

Verwoerd, as Native Affairs for eight years before occupying the premiership of, the then, Union of South Africa, in 1958, supported a concept of separate development (apartheid) because he likened the racial groups as being at different stages of development. He considered that separation ensured good neighborliness. He argued every nation had a right to survival without being overwhelmed numerically by others of a different culture. It was not a view that found favour, internationally, as the western world started to insist all cultures were equal-something now being proved daily to be incorrect, particularly with the Islamist scourge.

Verwoerd was not having any of it. He remembered South African history, including the brutality of the murderous Zulu Mfecane (crushing) in the hinterland, where perhaps over a  million perished under Shaka and Mzilikazi, before the Voortrekkers established their two republics in the Transvaal and Orange Free State; and the period before the second Anglo-Boer War (1899-1902), when British miners (Uitlanders, or outlanders) flooded into the Transvaal and threatened the existence of the South African Republic (ZAR), by demanding the vote.

The then ZAR president Paul Kruger resisted such a policy. It resulted in the defeat of the two Boer republics-Orange Free State was the other- by a British occupying army.

However, by 1910 Britain ceded control and the Union of South Africa was established under Boer or Afrikaner leadership until 1994. The common denominator of all those governments was they were not prepared to surrender to a majority of the population they deemed unfit to govern a unitary state.

But , despite his critics, Verwoerd was no murderous despot and he conceived and introduced homeland governments, for the different African groups outside of the central government so that each group could develop and care for ‘its own tree,’ instead of becoming ‘envious of the tree in another man’s garden.’

While many criticisms can be delivered at Verwoerd for not fulfilling the full recommendations of the Tomlinson Commission Report on homeland development, the fact is that African literacy rose from 37 per cent  (1956) to 57 percent in 1968, while African school attendance rose from 1 million to 2,150 million (1955-66). Overall there was a six percent growth rate, plus a two percent inflation rate with little unemployment, in that era.

If ever a party had a chance to prove they were morally superior to successive National Party governments (1948-94), it is the ANC. Instead, they have blown an opportunity, ignoring inclusiveness to display a vindictiveness and blatant discrimination against whites in employment, plus racial quotas in sporting teams and the cultural/historical denigration of important Afrikaner monuments and days.

Worse, President Zuma has openly incited genocide by dancing and singing, “kill the Boer,” and declared Christians are the cause of South Africa’s problems. In a parliamentary debate, this year, Duduzile Manana, MP (ANC) called out, “bury them deep,” when Dr Piet Groenewald MP was referring to the plight of white farmers. This is a disgrace and would have created demands for resignation anywhere else, except, of course, in the Muslim hell-holes of the Middle East, if that was said about a law abiding minority.

Some 4000 farmers have been murdered, many with atrocious cruelty, and there has been 15,000 attacks on farms, on the ANC’s watch, making SA farmers the most endangered workers in the world with more chances of being killed than US soldiers serving in Iraq or Afghanistan.

The ‘new Boer War’ has seen farming families slaughtered on their properties rather than being herded into British concentration camps as they were in the South African War (1899-1902).

While Australia gives recognition to its minority Aboriginal population (2 %), and their culture, the same cannot be said by the Black South African Government to its white minority (8%).

Employment and sporting quotas simply make a mockery of having a ‘level playing field,’ instead, reliving the past remains the raison d’etre for the ruling party; while Afrikaans remains under attack with attempts to remove the cultural importance to both white and non-white speakers of the taal, (language).

The irony of a Stellenbosch academic, Edwin Hertzog, arguing for ‘language pragmatism,’ at the citadel of Afrikaans, Stellenbosch University, as attempts are made to remove Afrikaans from the university, is light years away from  his famous namesake, JBM ( Barry) Hertzog fighting for a duel stream language  policy, in the early days of Union government. Barry Hertzog forsook an early ministerial career, to establish Afrikaans, but eventually won the fight and became a long serving prime minister (1924-39).

Even worse is the proposal, by the current Zuma regime, to engage in land theft which is what the ANC is considering. Theft is the only word that can be used when a government floats the idea of acquiring freehold land without compensation. It is the racist policy of Robert Mugabe writ large and will produce the same devastating social and economic results as in Zimbabwe, to wit, the destruction of commercial farming, the flight of capital, civil unrest and the exodus of people with skills.

The ANC has shown in 23 years of ineptness that Verwoerd’s fears about handing over to those motivated by the politics of envy is simply a recipe for disaster.

The destruction of Afrikaner culture, will, as predicted by President PW Botha, (1985), indeed see South Africa ‘drift into factional strife, chaos and poverty.’

However, western liberals have long since passed by, on the other side, to more fashionable cause celebres.

NO PIE IN THE SKY MATTER

The authoritarian attitude of Qantas CEO Alan Joyce has been challenged by Robin Speed, the President of the Rule of Law Institute of Australia and Dr Stuart Ballantyne,the CEO of  the international,  Sea Transport Corp (Australia, China, Hong Kong, US).

On May 9, Joyce received a lemon meringue, pie- in- the- face, at a business function in Perth, where he was the keynote speaker, from Tony Overheu (67), a retired farmer, aggrieved at the CEO’s high profile campaign in favour of redefining marriage.

Initial sympathy was, of course with Joyce, who came back to a standing ovation after cleaning himself up from the pie attack. Overheu subsequently unreservedly apologised for his actions but has subsequently been charged, as Joyce indicated at the time, and may face a jail term.

That should have been the end of the matter but the vindictiveness of Joyce and/ or Qantas has been revealed by Overheu having a worldwide lifetime ban imposed on him by Australia’s leading airline.

Qantas (and subsidiary Jetstar) account for 60 per cent of all domestic flights in Australia, including WA,  so it is clearly a dominant market force, in aviation, with over 50 million passengers per year using the Flying Kangaroo. 

As Speed notes, ‘to prevent anyone from flying is a serious matter with serious consequences,’ ( News Weekly 17/6/17).’  Indeed, and as he further asks would the CEO of a hospital, thus treated, have the right to ban the alleged perpetrator from receiving hospital treatment? Hardly.

As it was not an airport incident, nor had anything to do with endangering plane safety then clearly it is not in the same realm as suicide bomber acting for Daesh, or any other murderous criminal Islamist organisation.

Speed says the ban is unlawful and that Qantas has an obligation under sections 20 and 21 of Australian Consumer Law to allow such travel and that Qantas has no reason for initiating such a ban on the grounds of changing the definition of marriage. Speed notes, that if it were otherwise the airline could demand each passenger declare their support for the change in the law and if they did not they could be banned from flying.

Ballantyne’s letter to the Qantas board informs them that as frequent flyer, with 40 years of patronage with Qantas, he was ‘ disappointed with Alan Joyce’s brazen support of SSM’ and that he was interested in ‘safety, service and scheduling,’ and  not the CEO’s opinion on social issues.

Ballantyne goes on to say Qantas ‘have peddled their internal policies with gay dating in their in-flight magazine for some time,’ including promoting Same Sex Marriage messages on boarding passes and black open rings for staff ( in support of the proposal).

Ballantyne in his letter to the Board argues that as Qantas is the only airline in the world that gives such overt support to SSM this may place Qantas customers at risk of terrorist reprisal and, further, he asked what happens to Qantas staff who do not support this SSM promotional activity? 

Ballantyne also invites the Board to look at Joyce’s performance as CEO since his appointment in late 2008 (his salary last year was almost $13 million per annum).

Ballantyne  notes , that Qantas has slipped from second to ninth in global rankings of airlines and described his recent flight  to the US was in an old, shabby plane; that average EBIT ( earnings before interest and taxes) have been 1.5 % while Air NZ has been 5.9%;  that  return on equity a ‘staggeringly low’ average of 0.5 % , Air NZ 10.6%; and dividend payout ratio 28%, compared to 100% for Air NZ.

Ballantyne writes that ‘recent improvement has only been achieved as the result of massive asset write downs, huge redundancies, and a very significant favourable shift in fuel prices.’ The ban on the pie man was both ‘petulant and hissy,’ Ballantyne writes, and concludes by telling Qantas that bans go both ways. His staff have now been banned from business travel with Qantas due to poor service, lack of value for money and the selective presentation of SSM ‘which we consider dangerous and unnecessary.’

This is not the first time that controversy has arisen on Joyce’s watch. Four years ago there was uproar over the airline’s decision to ban pork meals on flights to Dubai.

A veritable fire storm on social media ensured over this 2013 decision, with Qantas being dubbed, Al-Qantas, The Flying Mosque-a-roo and being asked  questions as to’ who owns Qantas.’

Given that homosexuals are thrashed or murdered in many Islamic countries ( being thrown from high rise buildings is one punishment) one might have thought the national carrier would represent Australian cuisine rather than pander to manic Muslims.

Essentially, what is starting to be seen is that the Qantas CEO is determined to have his way on what he deems the correct approach to social issues.

Sympathies that many conservatives felt for with him, over the pie affair, have now dissipated owing to his venal approach to Overheu. It takes a particular ‘quality’ to make someone like Overheu appear to be the victim but Joyce and his company have achieved that by the ridiculous ban they imposed on the former farmer.

Just as no-one denies Joyce the right to press charges against Overheu there will be little sympathy for Qantas if Overheu, takes similar legal action against the airline company should he be rejected as a customer, as even hardened criminals are not subjected to such bans, after serving their time.

Messrs Speed and Ballantyne are right to raise this arrogance of the Qantas chief because Joyce has clearly over played his hand and needs to be reminded that he does not control who uses the skies.

Neither does Joyce have the right to, pardon the expression, push gay marriage down our collective throats, because he thinks it is appropriate that Qantas promotes redefining marriage in his image.