The Most Thorough Screening

Australians occasionally wonder how thorough the screening processes of various governmental agencies and departments are; here are a few recent transcripts released by concerned insiders viâ Lippiweaks.

A recent examination at the Border Control area of a major Australian airport:

Junior Border Control Officer: Have you any dangerous or illicit items to declare.
Recently Arrived Non-Citizen: No.
Junior Border Control Officer: I shall ask a second time. Have you any dangerous or illicit items to declare.
Recently Arrived Non-Citizen: No.
Junior Border Control Officer: I shall ask you yet again. Have you any dangerous or illicit items to declare?
Recently Arrived Non-Citizen: Well, yes, I have some explosives and opiates—oh, I mean, No. Damn! You got me bang to rights.
Senior Border Control Officer (to the visiting Minister): Ha! The third question gets them every time.
Minister for Immigration: What would happen had he said “No”.
Senior Border Control Officer: No one can answer thrice falsely. If someone say “No” for a third time we immediately allow them entry, of course.
Minister for Immigration: Of course. Rightio. Carry on.

A recent interrogation at the border control station near a minor Australian seaport:

Junior Immigration Officer: Are you a real refugee, one fleeing genuine persecution?
Unlawful Non-Citizen: Umm. Not really.
Junior Immigration Officer: Look, if you want to enter this country under our refugee programme you need to say “Yes”. Now, I’ll ask you again. Are you a real refugee, fleeing from persecution?
Unlawful Non-Citizen: No.
Junior Immigration Officer: Let’s try this another way. I’ll ask a question and you just say “Yes” to anything I ask, right?
Unlawful Non-Citizen: Yes?
Junior Immigration Officer: That’s the way. Well done. Okay. Are you a real refugee, fleeing genuine persecution, and entering this country without any seditious or terrorist intent, just wanting to enjoy our free way of life including generous welfare payments and the like? Say “Yes”.
Unlawful Non-Citizen: Well, I do have plans to—
Junior Immigration Officer: The correct answer is “Yes”.
Unlawful Non-Citizen: Yes.
Junior Immigration Officer: Welcome to Australia. Here is your free cell ’phone. Oh, you already have one. Never mind, here’s another. Here are your brochures and vouchers. Just head to that door marked “Completely Vetted Refugees”. Bye!

A recent hearing at the Parole Board of a large Australian prison:

Parole Officer: I see that you have been convicted of conspiracy to commit a terrorist attack, murder of witnesses, kidnapping, rape, sedition and arson, that you have served only six months of a six-year sentence, and that you still have to face trial on other serious charges once the public prosecutor finally collates all the evidence against you and your accomplices. If you are released on parole will you promise to be of good behaviour?
Convicted Terrorist: I shall, of course, behead all those who insult the Prophet (PBuH) and generally smite all unbelievers, which I consider to be fairly good behaviour—
Parole Officer: Just say “Yes”.
Convicted Terrorist: Yes, you filthy pig.
Parole Officer: Good. Here are you papers. Off you go.

Effective Fatwas

A few rulings from scholars will soon put an end to terrorism, surely.

In an apartment, somewhere in the West:

Mahmud Mahummed: Okay, our vests are primed, our guns are loaded, our knives are sharpened, and the van is fully fuelled; let’s go out and slaughter some infidels for the glory of Allah.
Mahommad Mahmoud: Wait, wait; I’ve just read a ruling from some scholars which affirms that “suicide attacks, armed insurgency against a state, and use of force in the name of imposing Shariah” is forbidden.
Mahmud Mahummed: Yeah? Who are these clowns when they’re home?
Mahommad Mahmoud: Thirty-one noted scholars at a seminar at the International Islamic University in Islamabad.
Mahmud Mahummed: And does our own Iman endorse this so-called ruling?
Mahommad Mahmoud: Not so much.
Mahmud Mahummed: And does anyone in our community ever pay any attention to the International Islamic University in Islamabad?
Mahommad Mahmoud: Not that I can recall.
Mahmud Mahommed: Right. Well, I guess we’ll stay home today and watch the… Wait, why should we not go out and slaughter immodestly dressed infidels and thereby deliver ourselves straight to a rather nifty paradise?
Mahommad Mahmoud: It seems our terror group does not belong to the true Muslim faith.
Mahmud Mahummed: What moron asserts that?
Mahommad Mahmoud: Umm, some infidel on Facebook.
Mahmud Mahommed: Uh huh.
Mahommad Mahmoud: You don’t think we should heed infidels on Facebook?
Mahmud Mahummed: Now, what do you reckon? Perhaps you’d prefer that the interpretation of the holy scriptures come not from your own constant reading thereof, or from the wise lessons of our learned Imams, but from some emasculated atheist who is too scared to arm himself and announces that we should all co-exist. Perhaps you’d rather just spend an entire lifetime doing really good deeds in the vague hope that you might somehow work your way into a slightly inferior paradise instead of immediately entering the paradise for martyrs. Perhaps you like the idea of a world ruled by infidels yelling that people may dress and dance and drink as they please and that the true religion is just like their own effete, incoherent set of contradictory beliefs which consists mainly of saying only nice things about everyone and giving every runner in every race a participation certificate instead of rewarding the actual winners. Perhaps you’d rather we just sauntered down to the local pub dressed like infidels and have a few pints, instead of doing Allah’s mighty work, eh? Perhaps you reckon it’s perfectly fine to sit back with a few cold ones whilst young girls and sodomites freely dance to the so-called music of a young celebrity cavorting like a semi-naked, devil-worshipping whore. Perhaps—
Mahommad Mahmoud: Yeah, yeah, I get it. Nonetheless, I do think we should stay home and be nice to our godless neighbours.
Mahmud Mahummed: All right then.

As in the Blitz!

In the wake of yet another attack (which had nothing to do with Islam, obviously, by a deluded lone wolf), some people (the same folk, for the most part, who blether of tolerance and the pressing need not to blame our Mahometan neighbours who are, as ever, the real victims here) urge Britons to carry on as normal—as in the Blitz!—in order to defy evil terrorists.  Of course, though Londoners, for example, did do their best to live their lives as normally as possible during World War II they did so whilst their military forces were actually fighting the Axis powers by, say, constantly bombing the enemy.

Things would be very different if the politicians of today had been in power during WWII:

BBC announcer: Here is the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, speaking from the smoking ruins of the Palace of Westminster.
Prime Minister: Good evening. I speak to you tonight, grief-stricken by the horrid events of this day. As you are probably aware, waves of aeroplanes of the Luftwaffe, Nazi Germany’s airforce, again dropped thousands of bombs over south-east England today, many over the great city of London, and many hundreds, if not thousands, of innocent civilians are dead and many, many more are grievously injured.  There has been great destruction of property, including damage to our most beloved buildings of outstanding cultural worth.
But we cannot allow loss of life and heritage—which is just part and parcel with living in a modern city, really—to fill our minds with hate.  Not all Germans are Nazis, and not all Nazis are evil.  Furthermore, National Socialism is a great political ideology, with many peaceful adherents, and a long and rich history.   Nazism has absolutely nought to do with war or terrorism.  Many (or, at least, some) Nazis, according to reliable surveys, are quite moderate and are not entirely supportive of the total abolition of democracy, the brutal repression of “non-Aryan” peoples, and the pitiless extermination of Jews.
We ought to send only good wishes to our enemies, as we send our thoughts and prayers to those in sorrow, and we must let Nazi Germany know that we shall welcome them all, with loving, open arms, not with force of arms, whenever they choose to visit our rich and hospitable, borderless land.  We shall welcome the Nazis on the beaches, we shall welcome them on the landing grounds, in the fields and in the streets, we shall welcome them in the hills; we shall never surrender to hate.  The way to stop conflict is to refuse to participate in conflict!  We must shew the good people of Germany, in word and deed, that we shall not stoop to similar acts of destruction and intolerance.  Instead, let us send messages of peace and good will to the ordinary people of Germany whilst shewing those who attacked us that they cannot triumph over us.
We will live our lives as if Herr Hitler and his arrogant but wrong-headed cohort of intolerant National Socialists had not declared war on peaceful democracies and completely subjugated the citizenry of France and Poland and several other countries which few have heard of.  We will keep our streets well lit, we will impose no curfew, we will continue to work and play as if nothing untoward occurred and, in short, we will bravely carry on as usual.
It won’t be long before the leadership of Nazi Germany realises that diversity beats uniformity, open-hearted liberalism overcomes narrow-minded provincialism, tolerance defeats intolerance, and love vanquishes hate and no one ever achieved anything with violence.
Good night from what was, once, the House of Commons and the home of representative government.

UPDATE I:  see “‘Dangerous Woman’ Meets Dangerous Man” by Mark Steyn:

“Carrying on exactly as before”, as The Independent advises, will not be possible.  A few months ago, I was in Toulouse, where Jewish life has vanished from public visibility and is conducted only behind the prison-like walls of a fortress schoolhouse and a centralised synagogue that requires 24/7 protection by French soldiers; I went to Amsterdam, which is markedly less gay than it used to be; I walked through Molenbeek after dark, where unaccompanied women dare not go.  You can carry on, you can stagger on, but life is not exactly as it was before.  Inch by inch, it’s smaller and more constrained.  […]
All of us have gotten things wrong since 9/11.  But few of us have gotten things as disastrously wrong as May and Merkel and Hollande and an entire generation of European political leaders who insist that remorseless incremental Islamisation is both unstoppable and manageable.  It is neither—and, for the sake of the dead of last night’s carnage and for those of the next one, it is necessary to face that honestly. Theresa May’s statement in Downing Street is said by my old friends at The Spectator to be “defiant”, but what she is defying is not terrorism but reality.  So too for all the exhausted accessories of defiance chic:  candles, teddy bears, hashtags, the pitiful passive rote gestures that acknowledge atrocity without addressing it—like the Eloi in H G Wells’ Time Machine, too evolved to resist the Morlocks.

On the supposed inutility of violence, see Starship Troopers by Robert A. Heinlein (New York, 1959), Chapter II:

One girl told [the teacher of History and Moral Philosophy] bluntly:  “My mother says that violence never settles anything.”
“So?”  Mr. Dubois looked at her bleakly.  “I’m sure the city fathers of Carthage would be glad to know that.  Why doesn’t your mother tell them so?  Or why don’t you?”
They had tangled before—since you couldn’t flunk the course, it wasn’t necessary to keep Mr. Dubois buttered up.  She said shrilly, “You’re making fun of me!  Everybody knows that Carthage was destroyed!”
“You seemed to be unaware of it,” he said grimly.  “Since you do know it, wouldn’t you say that violence had settled their destinies rather thoroughly? However, I was not making fun of you personally; I was heaping scorn on an inexcusably silly idea—a practice I shall always follow.  Anyone who clings to the historically untrue—and thoroughly immoral—doctrine that ‘violence never settles anything’ I would advise to conjure up the ghosts of Napoleon Bonaparte and of the Duke of Wellington and let them debate it.  The ghost of Hitler could referee, and the jury might well be the Dodo, the Great Auk, and the Passenger Pigeon.  Violence, naked force, has settled more issues in history than has any other factor, and the contrary opinion is wishful thinking at its worst.  Breeds that forget this basic truth have always paid for it with their lives and freedoms.”

UPDATE II (25 May):  Mark Steyn writes a sequel to his article quoted supra:

My thoughts yesterday did not meet with universal agreement.  Linda Cianchetti emails:

The killer was the queen of England’s clan.
Rothschild Soros club.
Stop zionist Israel jews from manufacturing all this illusion. They are the banking cartel around the world. Stop blaming everyone but the culprits, themselves. Or we will have no respect for journalists and the tales they put out.

Well, thanks for clearing that up.
I get a lot more of this than I used to.  I suspect Ms Cianchetti would blame “zionist Israel jews” and “the queen of England’s clan” whatever happened, but it’s a close call whether she’s any more detached from reality than, say, Newsweek fretting about “reprisals” against Muslims or the nincompoop diversicrat who serves as Chief Constable of Greater Manchester sternly warning that we must not “tolerate hate”—by which he means not the hate of people who shred little girls’ bodies with nail bombs but the mean-spirited Tweets of people who get angry at the people who shred little girls’ bodies with nail bombs
The Official Lies are getting more ludicrous, and (with respect to the investigation of Fleet Street columnists for entirely innocuous observations) dangerous and totalitarian.  One further danger of the Official Lies is that their obvious fraudulence bolsters the confidence of Ms Cianchetti and the similarly inclined in their derangements.

UPDATE III (25 May):  see “After Manchester: It’s Time for Anger” by Brendan O’Neill:

As part of the post-terror narrative, our emotions are closely policed. Some emotions are celebrated, others demonised. Empathy—good. Grief—good. Sharing your sadness online—great. But hatred? Anger? Fury? These are bad. They are inferior forms of feeling, apparently, and must be discouraged. Because if we green-light anger about terrorism, then people will launch pogroms against Muslims, they say, or even attack Sikhs or the local Hindu-owned cornershop, because that’s how stupid and hateful we apparently are. But there is a strong justification for hate right now. Certainly for anger. For rage, in fact. […]
The post-terror cultivation of passivity speaks to a profound crisis of—and fear of—the active citizen. It diminishes us as citizens to reduce us to hashtaggers and candle-holders in the wake of serious, disorientating acts of violence against our society. It decommissions the hard thinking and deep feeling citizens ought to pursue after terror attacks. Indeed, in some ways this official post-terror narrative is the unwitting cousin of the terror attack itself.  […]That the post-terror narrative is fundamentally about taming our passion and politics is clear from its sidelining of all issues of substance. We are actively warned against asking difficult questions about 21st-century society and why it has this violence in it, this nihilism in it. Question the wisdom of multiculturalism, of refusing to elevate one culture over another and instead encouraging people to live in their own cultural bubbles, and you’re racist. Wonder [whether] the obsession with combatting ‘Islamophobia’ might have given rise to a situation where some Muslims, especially younger ones, cannot handle ridicule of their religion, and… well, you’re ‘Islamophobic’. As for immigration:  this is the great unmentionable; you’re a fascist even for thinking about it. The post-terror narrative that barks ‘You must empathise!’ also says, implicitly, and sometimes explicitly, ‘You mustn’t think! […]
It is wrong to have core values in a society built on diversity, apparently, and we mustn’t ever suggest that any particular ideology poses a threat to those values, because that might involve ‘punching down’, singling people out, etc. We end up with a unity of shallow feeling, a union of highly individuated mourners, not a unity around real ideals and things and vision. Their cry of unity is a lie. The fact is there are people in our society willing to attack us, others who will think those attacks are justified, and others still who will apologise for those attacks by saying they’re a product of ‘Islamophobia’ or Western intervention overseas.  […]
Stop and think about how strange it is, how perverse it is, that more than 20 of our citizens have been butchered and we are basically saying: ‘Everyone calm down. Love is the answer.’ Where’s the rage? If the massacre of children and their parents on a fun night out doesn’t make you feel rage, nothing will. The terrorist has defeated you.  You are dead already.

“Proof We’re Not Violent: We Haven’t Slain All Our Enemies Yet”

Evidence which suggests that Mahometan scholars have not quite a full command of logic (or facts*) can be seen in propaganda from Islamic Online University:

Of course, Islam is a religion of peace because Mahomet hardly ever advocated bloodshed, there are very few Koranic verses endorsing violence, not all that many Mahometan governments have ever suggested exterminating Jews and annihilating Israel, and during Mahometan conquests in various countries over the centuries non-Mahometan populations were never totally exterminated or brutally forced to convert.

* A better estimate of the total number of Mahometans, for example, would be around 1,600,000,000 or about 23% of the world’s population. 

UPDATE I (29 September):  reasonable observers might find it remarkable that so many people who, one minute, loudly decry any prejudiced assumption that one group of Mahometans might typify the rest will also, next minute, readily assert that a Westerner who thinks ill of any Mahometan must be a bigoted redneck.

Similar Arguments

Very few serpents
are lethal; a fair man’s a
snake-disregarder;

and I’m no glutton
because I still have some food
left in the larder.

Ebola virus
can’t be very bad because
Africans survive,

and other plagues too
have had an unkind rap since
humans are alive.

Few Mahometans
are murderers; the rest are
unfairly hated

by folk around the
world who, so far, have not been
annihilated. 

Lions and jackals
can’t be carnivores because
zebras still exist,

and my neighbour is
so amiable he can’t
be a jihadist.

Anyone who thinks
Islam bad has been watching
too much Murdoch news;

the world’s real problem
is global domination
by prejudiced Jews!

UPDATE II (29 September):  A wilful ignorance of logic and facts can be seen in propaganda being spread all over the place wherein it is asserted that no one regards the Ku Klux Klan as representative of Christianity so no one should be so foolish as to believe that the murderers of the supposed Islamic State are obeying the commands of their holy texts.  See “Islamic State isn’t just like the Ku Klux Klan” by Aussie Madness:

While the KKK claimed it was based on Christianity, it was condemned by every Christian denomination, and the KKK would be very hard pressed to point to particular verses in the Bible to justify its actions.  Even if it could, Christianity has gone through many reinterpretations in the last 2000 years and there are very few denominations which still claim the Bible to be the literal word of god.
On the other hand, Islamic State is a perfect implementation of Islam as set out in the Qur’an, and their members are emulating the acts of Muhammad to the letter.
Unlike Christianity, Islam has gone through no reinterpretation or modernisation since its 7th century beginnings, and such a reinterpretation is strictly forbidden anyway.  The word of the Qur’an is the infallible and literal word of god, which can never be questioned or changed. There is no freedom to put any spin on it.  […]

There are literally hundreds of verses in the Qur’an which disparage and preach hatred for, and violence against, ‘infidels’.  And there are plenty of hadith which describe similar acts of Muhammad during the founding days of Islam, and since Muhammad is the ‘perfect man’, all Muslims must strive to emulate him.

UPDATE III (15 November, 2015):  Adam Hills (the very image of an intellectual comedic commentator for “progressives” who have little knowledge, imagination, humour or intellect), provides another instance of mischievously fallacious and duplicitous folly:

I shouldn’t mind wagering that, say, French cartoonists or Dutch film-makers could publicly insult peanuts, bees and the NHS without fear of lethal consequences.  Furthermore, I’m fairly certain that peanuts, bees and the NHS have seldom called publicly for the death of the West.

“Radical Islam
hasn’t killed all of us yet:
it can’t be a threat.

“We’re quite safe from harm!”
shout appeasers who, meanwhile,
feed the crocodile.

It is worth noting that Adam Hills is a fervent advocate for “gun control” and has lambasted the USA for failing to ban those rifles which he dislikes but, if semi-automatic rifles, for instance, “were really dangerous we’d all be dead right now.”  He has more chance of being killed by a bee sting, a peanut, or the NHS yet he wants to ban all “assault weapons” and “assault rifles”.

UPDATE IV (15 November):  an hilarious example of the comedic genius of Adam Hills:

Note that, whereas the Islamic State explicitly follows the official manual of Mahometanism—the Koran—, the alleged dumb extremist, Pauline Hanson, neither follows nor professes to follow a manual of Australianism.  Note also that Adam Hills endorses the learned opinion of that famed religious expert, Piers Morgan, who insists (on no evidence whatsoever other than wishful feelings) that people who obey the unambiguous and comprehensive, murderous instructions of Mahomet are somehow not real followers of Mahomet.

UPDATE V (18 November):  Adam Hills now asserts (based on nothing other than foolish hopes or mischievous duplicity) that the “vast, vast, vast majority of Muslims—around 99.997 per cent—disapprove of [ISIS].”

The “Progressive” Submission

The Greens have already lost their heads

With any trouble,
plight, mess or crisis which might
afflict our nation

The Greens know what to
do: plan yet another march
or demonstration.

Dr. Bandt* will write
a chant, and one having
a simple thesis:

the only way to
solve our problems with Islam’s
by proskynesis;

if any muslim
promise your immediate
decapitation

bow, bow, bow to all
demands whilst blaming Western
civilisation.

*  An example of Green silliness:

Greens MP Adam Bandt asked whether Australia’s deployment to the Middle East [were] making Australia less safe.
“We have to ask the serious question what is it that makes someone, a teenager, so disaffected with their own country that they want to kill people,” he told reporters in Canberra.

To answer Dr. Bandt’s question. Australia’s recent deployment to Iraq and Syria started Monday; Abdul Numan Haider’s plans to behead someone began at least three months ago.  Clearly, for a Government’s action to have an effect on someone’s “radicalisation” three months before it occurred, it must be really bad.

UPDATE I:  The Chant of Adam Bandt:

An some jihadist threaten you
blame, blame, blame your racist view,
and when your blood is on your chest
blame, blame, blame, the biassed West.
Should Muslims take away your head
blame, blame, blame yourself instead.
An Islam turn your life to shit
never blame the cause of it:
appease extremists!  let them slay!
Blame, blame blame the Western way.

UPDATE II:  see “Melbourne terror shooting: Numan Haider planned to behead Victoria Police officers, drape bodies in IS flag” by John Silvester in The Age:

Numan Haider used a small knife to attack an Australian Federal Police officer and a Victorian policeman before he was shot dead with a single shot.
When Haider was searched he was found to be carrying a larger knife and an Islamic State flag.
Police believe the plan was to follow instructions from the international terror group Islamic State and behead the officers, cover the bodies in the flag and then take photos to post via the internet.

Yeah, but it had nothing—nothing whatsoever!—to do with Islam, the Religion of Peace.