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It was a perfect summer Saturday, as far as London’s notoriously fickle weather goes – sunny, warm, even balmy if you wish to stretch the definition. Seldom spoiled by Nature’s generosity, relaxed Londoners took to the parks, the markets and open-air bars in their tens of thousands. The city’s heart was on display that day, generously opened to any and all wishing to enjoy it. Tourists and locals, young and old, men, women and children were everywhere, coming and going amid centuries of history. I was among them, as it happens, taking a drink with friends in a wine cellar that has been doing business since the Guy Fawkes trial, admiring the replica of Francis Drake’s Golden Hind in its ferocious livery of black and gold, plus the changing of Her Majesty’s guard, of course, and stopping in at Churchill’s bunker to be reminded of Britain’s magnificent obstinacy. There are not enough hours in a tourist’s day to enjoy all of London. Perhaps not even those who call this city their home can ever have enough time to fully appreciate the city on the Thames.
But please, forgive me as I cut short the reverie, for I write not a tourist brochure but an accounting of envy and hatred. I write, in other words, of Islamic killers’ implacable determination to destroy everything we love, to destroy our freedom and our children’s futures. None of us has a future in their ideal world.
My wife and I, our son and his fiancée just happened to have passed through Borough Market on that most recent of terrible days. That day — Saturday, June 3, 2017 — saw three murderers kill at random, stabbing passersby as they strolled or lingered to enjoy a beer of coffee, taking in the sights, smells and bonhomie that blossom when people are free of fear and can savour the fruits of liberty and prosperity. Those who died weren’t combatants in any political quarrel, not that they understood as much, at any rate. All were unarmed and unable to protect themselves, other than with plastic chairs and pint-handled beer glasses.
We four were never in immediate danger, and for that I must thank a quirk of fate and timing. Had we stayed at the market just a bit longer we would have been in the thick of it. Luckily, feeling the effects of a jet lag, we decided to call it a day and get an early sleep.
There was no sleep, though, not that night as we watched the TV in our Kensington hotel. Dumbfounded, we recognized the very places in Borough Market we had left not an hour before. We saw people, obviously terrified, walking fast and trying hard not to run. They held their hands atop their heads, as instructed by the armed police, looking for all the wold like newly captured prisoners of war. They were demonstrating for all to see that they were helpless and unarmed, no threat to anyone, least of all those whose goal it was to kill them.
We saw the faces of ordinary people contorted by fear. They came to London from all over the world, as we did, to enjoy the freedom of travel and were suddenly caught in the murderous self-deceit of suicidal losers. Their killers were manipulated by Koran-quoting puppeteers, those who told them it was a religious observation to spill blood by way of revenge for non-existent grievances, to kill in the name of the long-dead wretch who married a mere child. This desert warlord cheated those who believed him to be a conduit of Divine revelation, which ordained that all who did not share his views must die or, short of that, pay protection in order to keep themselves alive, their women safe and children not taken into slavery. This illiterate, rapacious warlord, the London Market killers believed, was the perfect man
We watched the scared humans who did not know what to do, nor how to protect themselves and their loved ones. We watched what was the second horrific assault on civilisation in as many weeks. We saw fear and confusion, the submission of the free to the violently deluded.
We watched the head of Special Branch declare the killers were exterminated within the eight minutes of the first call for help. To my eyes the policeman appeared to be taking pride in such a quick and effective response. Really? Eight minutes? Effective? I beg to differ.
Eight minutes was all it took to kill seven people and leave 48 grievously wounded. What was he proud of? That it took eight minutes to kill three specimens of animated scum? Can we really call it a quick response? In terms of action and reaction, of covering a specified distance, of cocking weapons and squeezing triggers, yes, I suppose you might say it was speedy. But it was no “quick response” to the long-festering and malignant tumour of radical Islam’s war on freedom and the UK’s fading, former way of life? There was no comfort in that policeman’s words.
It is at moments like that when I am glad that I can swear in Russian, my native tongue, because those who hear my eruptions of vulgarity will not know just how sulphurous my language can get, only that I am livid. That image of Britons scooting from danger with hands on heads hit me like a brick. Many, many of their grandparents slept in the Tube as bombs rained down, and their grandparents, too old to take on Rommel or risk the ultimate sacrifice at 20,000 feet, joined the Home Guard and steeled themselves to fight on beaches and from hedgerows when Germans crossed the Channel, as it seemed for a quite a while they surely must. Yet here were the British of only a few generations remove, hands held high, prisoners in their own country and culture!
They were prisoners at that moment of their own terror, but captives, too, of their culture’s own decency and ingrained respect for laws and tolerance –prisoners of a new invasive strategy that has no need for Stukas and Dorniers, prisoners cornered on the narrow and constricted battlefield of multicultural edicts that have at their core the oxymoronic commandment that we, as a society, must tolerate the intolerant.
Seven corpses and forty-eight wounded, all accomplished with an ordinary van and a cutlery drawer’s worth of knives? What if there had been more than three killers? Or what if these animals had come armed with AK-47s? With if, say, they had discharged hundreds of bullets, as did their fellow soldiers of Allah in 2008’s assault on Mumbai? And what of two or three grenades to boot? The maths is simple: at a crowd thickness of 2.5 persons per meter square — the density you might find in, say a bag-check queue at the MCG — and medium fire velocity of 600 bullets per minute, how many corpses would several killers amass in eight minutes? And yet here was someone, a guardian of public safety no less, telling me that eight minutes was a quick response!
Had I or someone else stood upon a soapbox to read aloud Winston’s Churchill’s lines from the River War — “…dreadful are the curses which Mohammedanism lays on its votaries!…” — I doubt my recitation would have been allowed to continue any longer than eight minutes before the uniformed enforcers of multicultural amity arrived with their gags and handcuffs. Don’t scoff, it has happened.
Ms Theresa May, the UK Prime Minister, declared ‘Enough is enough” after the London Bridge/Borough Market outrage, which came on the bloody heels of Manchester’s very own massacre. If she is really fed up with this war on the law and order, here are some thoughts which might stem the tide of fear and officially sanctioned impotence.
1. Our principal weakness is the enemy’s appreciation that we honour and revere the rule of law, an admirable societal trait they see as weakness and use to their advantage. Those who put themselves beyond the pale of human society must be deprived of the common law’s protection because they themselves reject it. Their cases must be adjudicated by court martial, with death sentences administered according to verdict. They have declared war on their host societies and regard themselves as soldiers. Treat them as such, with all that implies, up to and including execution.
As a further indication of our contempt for their values, bury them smeared with bacon grease. They display no respect for our values, let us not lend even faux respect to theirs.
2. Take up the Israeli example and punish not merely the perpetrators but their families and circles. Confiscate their abodes, auction their goods and chattels (with proceeds going to the victims), ban them from receiving welfare. If a mosque is the place where plots are hatched and weapons passed from supplier to perpetrator, bulldoze it.
I find it hard to accept the inevitable statements of terrorists’ families that they were shocked – yes, always shocked! — to learn the jihadi at the kitchen table was just that, a jihadi. If they didn’t know, they should have known. They deserve no less than immediate deportation for remaining so steadfastly ignorant.
3. At a time of heightened danger — today, right this minute, in other words — members of the armed forces, current and former police officers and other appropriate occupations, should be armed and assured they can use those weapons in the cause of public safety. Potential victims must have means of defending themselves and their loved ones from terror attacks.
Let those who recoil at recognising it has come to this gather in their blinkered knots to sing Imagine or light their endless candles. A citizen with a gun, the training and authority to use it might just save their lives. If we must wait eight minutes, at best, it is eight minutes too long. Would those killed in Paris’ Bataclan theatre have been so very numerous had there been even one of two armed and trained defenders on the premises?
4. The Manchester massacre confirms the ineffectiveness of current crowd-management security measures. Fearing discovery had he entered the ground and perhaps been searched, the Islamist butcher simply waited outside. No pop concert these days is without sniffer dogs trained to locate illegal drugs, which tend to kill only their users and then not very often. Train the next litters of police pups to detect the scent of explosives and gun oil.
5. Muslim communities must declare their unequivocal support for the anti-terrorist measures. They should stop the obfuscation, the sophistry and avoidant responses, the use of ambiguous definitions, claims of mitigating circumstances, the palaver of “alienation” and “marginalisation” and all the other useful red herrings. Otherwise, the mainstream community will , inevitably, suspect Muslim citizens of the Western countries to have a hidden affinity with the aims and the methods of terror practitioners. We should not forget the regular treacheries of purported “allies” in Afghanistan who turn against their Western instructors.
If Muslim communities do not wish to be regarded as enemies within, clarity and condemnation are essential. Fear no doubt constricts the voices of those who might otherwise speak out, but such cowardice is morally inexcusable. All of us, our Western society as a whole, now live with fear as a companion. Those closest to the fountainhead of that fear, those who revere the same sacred texts but are more selective in their lessons, bear the burden to do the most.
6. Practices incompatible with the liberal, democratic, Judeo-Christian way of life, such as religiously endorsed manifestations of gender oppression, must be clearly and emphatically outlawed by national and state parliaments. This includes, but must not be limited to, female genital mutilation, enforced marriages, honor killings, polygamy, child-bride marriages and the covering of the face in all public spaces.
These are not our values. These are toxins. If you wish to live among civilised folk, be one of us. If not, we will help you to leave.
It is that simple, or should be.
Dr Michael Galak and his family came to Australia as refugees from the Soviet Union in 1978
I say ‘enough’ of these kinds of totalitarian sympathies at Quadrant.
We’re grown-ups here, and we understand the nature of what is going on with Islam. But I’ve had it with suggestions to impose draconian laws and increased powers of violence for the state. Quadrant online is becoming very boring.
If this kind of attitude is the only answer to terror then the battle was lost a while ago. What needs to change is the attitude of our society and particularly its elites. Unless that happens we will go from bad to worse, and end up living in an an Australia that executes its citizens and buries them shamefully. Ironically that sounds a lot like the Soviet Union in 1978.
I grant you the ‘shameful’ burial bit, but the Soviet Union had enemies of its own making. The draconian laws came first, the resistance second.
The Quadrant is a vehicle, admittedly it invites a persuasion, but it is still just a vehicle and not the various authors themselves, unless you’d like to see a bit of censorship become part of the mix. We are indeed grown ups and we can discontinue reading an article if it is seen to be pursuing a particular line, in which case we can show our disdain by not even bothering to respond.
But we are entering particularly difficult times, with a type of enemy few civilisations have seen before (a fifth column: an enemy within). And then we have an added problem, in that the greater enemy is not Islam itself, but its apologists, the ones of a neo Marxist persuasion. Turning the other cheek is no longer an option when the annihilation of an entire civilisation is under attack from a fascist Left and a fundamentalist ‘religious’ Right.
I wrote about this under a different pseudonym http://truthjournalism.com/2017/05/23/where-to-with-christianity/ and perversely responded to it, as Warty, taking the opposite point of view. But just let me say that changing ‘the attitude of our society and particularly its elites’, is unlikely to happen in our lifetime or that of our grandchildren. In the meantime I see ourselves re-entering the 7th Century, but not as the fundamentalist elites, but as the Jizya-paying caste of subservients.
We are already paying Jizya in the form of Halal labelling of our groceries. They are rolling about laughing at our dumbness.
Indeed they are, though my wife and I are alert to the products that seek impose that impost, and Cadburys is 90% sugar anyway.
There is nothing new going on here. The entire history of the Hewbrews, for example, was one of self-destruction. However we should also remember that there was always the possibility of redemption, and that the great Jewish kings understood this.
I see the reversion to name-calling and shaming didn’t take long to arise. There is nothing that needs to be said about that.
You confuse censorship with what is becoming an extremely droll, navel-gazing groupthink. I can guarantee that if I were to write an article for Quadrant it wouldn’t be published. Is that censorship? Of course not. But I might take everyone’s advice and stop reading Quadrant altogether if this is to be the quality of argument from now on, which pretty much amounts to letting our emotions get the better of us and running into the street with clubs and firebrands.
Anyone who thinks violence and totalitarianism is an answer to domestic terror is kidding themselves. As if they will care that you make our society more like them, or that it will increase their sense of martyrdom. The only thing that will keep this at bay is a society that refuses to acknowledge the claims of Islam. The problem would then be melted away. We would, for example, have common cause to out-rightly reject and oppose sharia law. But this can’t happen in a secular society which has no counter-claim to truth and meaning.
Sometimes a state does need to fight against evil – that’s part of our human struggle. But violence is the last weapon to use, not the first, and it’s to be used with reluctance because it must be used in its totality for it to be effective. And oppression is never the answer to oppression.
If you think I’m possessed of some sort of tree-hugging mentality (Jody) then think again. My problem with Islam goes to the very core of its truth claims, how they came about, and who or what gave them to Muhammad in the first place. The violence and oppression is an inevitable symptom, and it’s only now that most people seem to be paying attention to the ‘religion of peace’. Our western society chose to let this in the door because it decided that The Bible was a book of myths, and that there would be no consequences to rejecting it. I accept the hard truth that the only way to remove the terrorists is to rid ourselves of the Islamic worldview, but unlike others here I’m also prepared to accept that only a common, willing sharing of the Truth has the power to ultimately defeat them.
Anyway that’s it from me, I doubt that anybody is interested. So go ahead, start the oppression, burn the house down. But you won’t win because you’re taking a stick to a gunfight.
Actually agree. Given Muslim Imams have admitted that Islam can only survive if ‘apostates’ are murdered, the solution is to focus on helping converts – whether to Christianity, atheism or pastafarianism – live safely. The only ‘Muslims’ we should be importing are those who are fleeing the religion.
And if some decide to ‘abandon’ Islam because they want the advantages of western society…good. That’s the sort of pragmatism that will serve them well in OZ. They may not be the sort of people who I’d want beside me in church, but they’ll be acceptable as fellow citizens.
Hear! Hear! I’m with pgang.
You are right prang we have seen enough useless and delusional suhhestions
You are right prang we have seen enough useless and delusional comments and suggestions in Quadrant and more particularly from the Government. The only effective answer is to remove the Qur’an, ban it, from our Nation. See Application at http://www.ttwsyf.net.
Sorry pgang I always seem to get your alter ego mucked up – something to do with motor cars?
Pgang,
Prang is a better name as you have no answer. Take a trip down to your local mosque and hug a burka-clad lady (at least it might be, but who knows?). If you survive, write a few notes on your experiences.
Michael is obviously upset, but his core argument is that we are being led to slaughter by ‘tolerating the intolerant’. If you know a gentle way of negotiating and dealing with thugs, the intolerant and killers who just want you (and the rest of us) dead, let’s have it. Alternatively, if you have no solution, train yourself to kill, because that is the only action death-cultists understand.
How do you discuss the violence with the Islamic State psychopaths?
“Under Islam, these devout Muslim fighters are entitled to these sex slaves. This horror is not their invention, but is codified and sanctioned under Islam.
Sex slavery is sanctioned under Islam. Sex slavery and rape of the infidel is sanctioned and rewarded under Islam, the rewards of jihad. Muslim clerics all over the world confirm the right to have sex slaves. It is in the Qur’an — the word of Allah.
The brutal execution of 19 Yazidi girls by burning them alive in an iron cage was carried out in an open area and in front of hundreds of people.”
It is boring and predictable reading about the islamic barbarism every day, isn’t it? Perhaps you would like to watch a few of their videos? If you have an alternative, let’s hear it.
I disagree with the heat of Michael’s suggestions, but here are mine.
1. All preaching to be in English.
2. All property belonging to anyone involved in acts of violence to be confiscated and they should be deported after serving time. Their immediate family should also lose everything and also be deported. The cries of the UN and the wails of the Leftards are a bonus. I note the sister of the Manchester Murderer said she is proud her brother has entered their mythical heaven. I also noted that she had nothing to say to the parents of the 8-year old killed by her brother. Sociopathic scum like her need to be deported to Syria (to Assad, not to IS).
3. No halal food served in prisons and no halal certification for general groceries, except by the government. Halal food, like kosher to to be segregated in stores.
4. Cease all immigration by family reunion, or by marriage (this would have affected me!) until the couple have been married and lived together overseas for 3-years (I comply with that!)
5. All sharia practices that do not conform to Australian Law to be outlawed and those who are found to be practising them to be deported to a better and more acceptable place.
6. No prayer rooms or work, ramadam or behavioural concessions to islam anywhere.
7. Any Imam who does not make a video and sign a contract that rejects the barbaric parts of the Quran (as set out in the contract) is refused a license to preach. They cannot draw social security or bring extra wives to Oz.
That will do for starters, but behind the scenes actions could also make it desirable to leave Oz. For instance, forcing them to work in remote areas or lose their Centrelink benefits.
Hear! Hear! Soft shoe shuffling has no place in this political climate.
I agree that the softly, softly approach has been a failure much like multi-culturalism has been a failure. Tough measures for tough times, a requirement for English as the only language would help. I remember when Mass was in Latin but the English translation was on the adjoining page so the Koran should also have the English translation. Let everyone see what is really going on, what Muslims are being taught.
So just ignore pgang?
QUADRANT ON LINE is manufacturing its own version of colour revolution, identity politics, sectarianism, political correctness, class warfare and general dumbing down of conservatives.
QUADRANT ON LINE is narrow and blinkered. There are mighty forces now unleashed in the world, but you would not know it if you confine yourself to QUADRANT ON LINE, a few issues demanding discussion:
Trump has unleashed a tsunami within the Middle East with the Muslim Brotherhood/Hezbollah at the epicentre;
who really funds ISIS;
Qatar V Saudis;
Brexit is challenged;
the fate of Euroland;
Germany’s third grab for hegemony;
OBOR (one belt one road);
end of the dollar;
the fate of Israel;
the left’s resurgence (Sanders, Corbyn. Melancthon);
the failure of Le Pen;
the unravelling of the Washington Consensus etc, etc.
QOL ho hum!
RIP!
This is a kind of heroic catastrophizing. Sure, the politics of the past are being replaced the world over by a new brand but I agree with Grace Collier; the water is drying up and the piranhas are destroying each other. We see that now in our own country, however it is not a problem in New Zealand. Consider why this might be so.
Australia and much of the western world has compounded our modern economic malaise with institutionalised marxism/socialism, which started with the substance-abusing hippies in the late 1960s. In the past there have been ‘fifth columnists’ like this but, if you remember, Menzies got rid of the “commies” and so did the USA. That fixed the problem at that time, but they regrouped into tree-huggers and dope smokers, preaching nirvana and pretending to be the benign friends of everybody who had the best interests of people and their environments at heart. Oh, where have I heard that before?
The USA took the “commie” menace seriously in the late 40’s, having seen Stalin’s tactics post WW2 and knowing that marxism came with a body count. Those bien pensants in the ‘entertainment industry’ who howled and screeched about their loss of liberty during the HUAC – and whose acolytes continue to do so – were neither cognizant of nor intelligent enough to realize that their dreamy communism came at a cost. Fortunately for wiser heads this group of lefties, who had the potential to disseminate their poison via mass media, were stalled in their long march. It took an authoritarian hand to keep America in a mode of post-war national hegemony and prosperity after the depredations of WW2. Those soldiers had been at the pointy end of totalitarianism and had been forced to count bodies. No wonder they were in no mood with bien pensants playing with communist ideologies.
That’s what we need today, despite what pgang says, because the past has shown that sometimes only a heavy hand provides answers.
An excellent summary Jody. The media class are “soft on drugs” probably because a lot of them are on the stuff and most are certainly left-leaning. There is a definite correlation between drug abuse and leftists. In the USA the MSM and universities are the main enforcers of the totalitarian left dogma.
Jody, you should enjoy this:
http://www.weeklystandard.com/camille-paglia-on-trump-democrats-transgenderism-and-islamist-terror/article/2008464
Thank you, it’s a great read. I hugely enjoy the very erudite and intelligent Camille Paglia, even though she tends to way over-talk (Jordan Peterson says the same thing about himself)!!! She’s got all this right, though. Thank God for people like her, Democrat or not.
This is for pgang and Don A. Veitch and whoever agrees with them:
First, why on earth do you continue reading QOL?
Second, shame on you!
Of course Michael is upset and rightly so and so should all right minded people be, and he happens to convey it brilliantly. His list of actions to take are perfectly appropriate in time of war, which is what we are experiencing. Could the Allies possibly have defeated the Nazis without temporary and appropriate war time laws and actions? Those who fail to appreciate that are ostriches with heads in the sand, easy picking for the jihadists. The problem is that our leaders also belong with that lot. The stupidity of statements like “we are not at war with Islam” and “Islam is a religion of peace” are starkly illustrated by the ever more frequent terrorist atrocities. Those who fail to share Michael’s anger ought to just but out and then quietly accept the fate of either dhimmis or victims of terrorism because with their “enlightened” attitude there will be no other options.
First, why on earth do you continue reading QOL?
Precisely. Argue the toss but don’t try to censor anyone lest you be censored yourselves.
PGA group
You are right of course in pretty much all you say about the descent into bitchiness and stupid name calling and shaming.
You are right about the descent into group think and the running about with cudgels.
You are right, somewhat. About the violence. However I think violence is best met with violence.
I think you might need to move a bit about totalitarianism. A dash is needed during war, and is best limited to those times.
Of course your alternative is dead right about not acknowledging the claims of Islam. But I think that in isolation toan appropriate violence and a limited totalitarianism is a more effective response. Outlaw the religion and come down hard on the bastards and their communities as well.
Oppression is an answer to rightly held beliefs. But what if those beliefs espouse intolerance? Ban the religion, destroying its centres, burning its books and giving its adherents the option to leave are appropriate.
Don’t you think?
I agree with your assessment of the history of Islam. Do I assume wrongly that you believe the west needs to base itself in either Christian or Judeo religions to combat ‘the religion of evil’. You’d find the bible is in fact myth. Epic of Gilgamesh etc.
I find that abhorrent. Do a similar assessment of the founding and development of those two organised religion as well.
You’d come to accept the ‘enlightenment ‘ is the proper course. Adopt the golden rule, forgiveness and love but have a secular body of laws we all accept is the best alternative.
Accept our values are based in truth, justice and liveable order,
Reject all else.
I see we see eye to eye on most things. Don’t dispair and leave. I’ve always absolutely appreciated your comments and ideas.
I’d suggest you read James Burnham to gather ideas of where the west has gone wrong in its thinking and especially its leadership.
The Machaeviallians’, The Managerial Revolution’ and the ‘Siicide of the West’.
Cheers.
If you leave
Farewell friend and fair winds.
Damn auto correct.
Prang