Archive for July 2016

France: The Coming Civil War

July 16, 2016

France: The Coming Civil War, Gatestone InstituteYves Mamou, July 16, 2016

♦ For French President François Hollande, the enemy is an abstraction: “terrorism” or “fanatics”.

♦ Instead, the French president reaffirms his determination to military actionsabroad: “We are going to reinforce our actions in Syria and Iraq,” the president said after the Nice attack.So confronted with this failure of our elite who were elected to guide the country across nationals and internationals dangers, how astonishing is it if paramilitary groups are organizing themselves to retaliate?

♦ “Western elites, with a suicidal obstinacy, oppose naming the enemy. Confronted with attacks in Brussels or Paris, they prefer to imagine a philosophical fight between democracy and terrorism, between an open society and fanaticism, between civilization and barbarism”. — Mathieu Bock-Côté, sociologist, in Le Figaro

♦ In France, the global elites made a choice. They decided that the “bad” voters in France were unreasonable people too stupid to see the beauties of a society open to people who often who do not want to assimilate, who want you to assimilate to them, and who threaten to kill you if you do not.

♦ Similarly, the British took the first tool that was given to them to express their disappointment at living in a society they did not like anymore. They did not vote to say: “Kill all these Muslims who are transforming my country or stealing my job or soaking up my taxes”. They were just protesting a society that a global elite had begun to transform without their consent.

♦ The global elite made a choice: they took the side against their own old and poor because those people did not want to vote for them any longer. They also made a choice not to fight Islamism because Muslims vote collectively for this global elite.

 

1697French police shoot dead a Tunisian-born Islamist terrorist who murdered 84 people in Nice, France, July 14, 2016. (Image source: Sky News video screenshot)

“We are on the verge of a civil war.” That quote did not come from a fanatic or a lunatic. No, it came from head of France’s homeland security, the DGSI (Direction générale de la sécurité intérieure), Patrick Calvar. He has, in fact, spoken of the risk of a civil war many times. On July 12th, he warned a commission of members of parliament, in charge of a survey about the terrorist attacks of 2015, about it.

In May 2016, he delivered almost the same message to another commission of members of parliament, this tme in charge of national defense. “Europe,” he said, “is in danger. Extremism is on the rise everywhere, and we are now turning our attention to some far-right movements who are preparing a confrontation”.

What kind of confrontation? “Intercommunity confrontations,” he said — polite for “a war against Muslims.” “One or two more terrorist attacks,” he added, “and we may well see a civil war.”

In February 2016, in front of a senate commission in charge of intelligence information, he said again: ” We are looking now at far-right extremists who are just waiting for more terrorist attacks to engage in violent confrontation”.

No one knows if the truck terrorist, who plowed into the July 14th Bastille Day crowd in Nice and killed more than 80 people, will be the trigger for a French civil war, but it might help to look at what creates the risk of one in France and other countries, such as Germany or Sweden.

The main reason is the failure of the state.

1. France is at War but the Enemy is Never Named.

France is the main target of repeated Islamist attacks; the more important Islamist terrorist bloodbaths took place at the magazine Charlie Hebdo and the Hypercacher supermarket of Vincennes (2015); the Bataclan, its nearby restaurants and the Stade de France stadium, (2015); the failed attack on theThalys train; the beheading of Hervé Cornara (2015); the murders at a school in Toulouse (2012); the three week torture and murder of young Ilan Halimi (2006); the assassination of two policemen in Magnanville in June (2016), and now the truck-ramming in Nice, on the day commemorating the French Revolution of 1789.

Most of those attacks were committed by French Muslims: citizens on their way back from Syria (the Kouachi brothers at Charlie Hebdo), or by French Islamists (Larossi Abballa who killed a police family in Magnanville last June) who later claimed their allegiance to Islamic State (ISIS). The truck killer in Nice was also French, of Tunisian descent, living quietly in Nice until he decided to murder more than 80 people and wound dozens more.

At each of these tragic episodes, the head of state, President François Hollande, refused to name the enemy, refused to name Islamism — and especially refused to name French Islamists — as the enemy of French citizens.

For Hollande, the enemy is an abstraction: “terrorism” or “fanatics”. Even when the president does dare to name “Islamism” the enemy, he refuses to say he will close all Salafist mosques, prohibit the Muslim Brotherhood and Salafist organizations in France, or ban veils for women. No, instead, the French president reaffirms his determination for military actions … abroad: “We are going to reinforce our actions in Syria and Iraq,” the president said after the Nice attack.

For France’s head of state, the deployment of soldiers on the national ground is for defensive actions only: a dissuasive policy, not an offensive rearmament of the Republic against an internal enemy.

So confronted with this failure by our elite — who were elected to guide the country across national and international dangers — how astonishing is it if paramilitary groups are organizing themselves to retaliate?

As Mathieu Bock-Côté, a sociologist in France and Canada says in Le Figaro: “Western elites, with a suicidal obstinacy, oppose naming the enemy. Confronted by attacks in Brussels or Paris, they prefer to imagine a philosophical fight between democracy and terrorism, between an open society and fanaticism, between civilization and barbarism”.

2. The Civil War Has Already Begun and Nobody Wants to Name It.

The civil war began sixteen years ago, with the second Intifada. When Palestinians invented suicide attacks in Tel Aviv and Jerusalem, French Muslims began to terrorize Jews living peacefully in France. For sixteen years, Jews — in France —were slaughtered, attacked, tortured and stabbed by French Muslim citizens supposedly to avenge Palestinian people in the West Bank.

When a group of French citizens who are Muslims declares war on another group of French citizens who are Jews, what do you call it?

For the French establishment, it is not a civil war, just a regrettable misunderstanding between two “ethnic” communities.

Until now, no one has wanted to establish a connection between these attacks and the murderous attack in Nice against people who were not necessarily Jews — and name it as it should be named: a civil war.

For the very politically correct French establishment, the danger of a civil war will begin only if anyone retaliates against French Muslims; if everyone just submits to their demands, everything is all right. Until now, no one thinks that the terrorist attacks against Jews by French Muslims; against Charlie Hebdo’s journalists by French Muslims; against an entrepreneur who was beheaded a year ago by a French Muslim; against young Ilan Halimi by a group of Muslims; against schoolchildren in Toulouse by a French Muslim; against the passengers on the Thalys train by a French Muslim, against the innocent people in Nice by a French Muslim were the symptoms of a civil war. These bloodbaths remain, still today something like a climatic catastrophe, a kind of tragic mistake.

3- The French Establishment Considers the Enemy the Poor the Old and the Disappointed

In France, who most complains about Muslim immigration? Who most suffers from local Islamism? Who most likes to drink a glass of wine or eat a ham-and-butter sandwich? The poor and the old who live close to Muslim communities, because they do not have the money to move someplace else.

Today, as a result, millions of the poor and the old in France are ready to elect Marine Le Pen, president of the rightist Front National, as the next president of the Republic for the simple reason that the only party that wants to fight illegal immigration is the Front National.

Because, however, these French old and poor want to vote for the Front National, they have become the enemy of the French establishment, right and left. What is the Front National saying to these people? “We are going to restore France as a nation of French people”. And the poor and the old believe it – because they have no choice.

Similarly, the poor and the old in Britain had no choice but to vote for Brexit. They took the first tool given them to express their disappointment at living in a society they did not like anymore. They did not vote to say, “Kill these Muslims who are transforming my country, stealing my job and soaking up my taxes”. They were just protesting a society that a global elite had begun to transform without their consent.

In France, the global elites made a choice. They decided that the “bad” voters in France were unreasonable people too stupid to see the beauties of a society open to people who often who do not want to assimilate, who want you to assimilate to them, and who threaten to kill you if you do not.

The global elites made another choice: they took the side against their own old and poor because those people did not want to vote for them any longer. The global elites also chose not to fight Islamism, because Muslims vote globally for the global elite. Muslims in Europe also offer a big “carrot” to the global elite: they vote collectively.

In France, 93% of Muslims voted for the current president, François Hollande, in 2012. In Sweden, the Social Democrats reported that 75% of Swedish Muslims voted for them in the general election of 2006; and studies show that the “red-green” bloc gets 80-90% of the Muslim vote.

4. Is the Civil War Inevitable? Yes!

If the establishment does not want to see that civil war was already declared by extremist Muslims first — if they do not want to see that the enemy is not the Front National in France, the AfD in Germany, or the Sweden Democrats — but Islamism in France, in Belgium, in Great Britain, in Sweden — then a civil war will happen.

France, like Germany and Sweden, has a military and police strong enough to fight against an internal Islamist enemy. But first, they have to name it and take measures against it. If they do not — if they leave their native citizens in despair, with no other means than to arm themselves and retaliate – yes, civil war is inevitable.

 

France: Another truck bomb parked near Nice defused, Muslim arrested

July 16, 2016

France: Another truck bomb parked near Nice defused, Muslim arrested

ByPamela Geller on July 15, 2016

Source: France: Another truck bomb parked near Nice defused, Muslim arrested | Pamela Geller

While Western elites are flapping their tongues praising Islam and warning us to do the same, jihadis are setting the world on fire.

The blood is still in the streets of Nice and Muslim soldiers are setting off bombs.

“France: Another truck bomb parked near Nice defused, Muslim suspect arrested,” By Robert Spencer, July 15, 2016
All-out war. All-out jihad. But France, says its Prime Minister, is just going to have to get used to it.

“VID: Another Truck Bomb Parked near Nice Defused, One Suspect Arrested,” Al-Alam, July 15, 2016 (thanks to Lookmann):

The French Special Forces defused an explosive-laden truck parked on a highway near Nice, local media reports. A bomb disposal operation was conducted on a highway near Nice where a truck attack occurred Thursday night.

French police have detained one person during a search raid of the suspected driver’s house, who careened through crowds of people in Nice on Thursday night, iTele TV channel reports.

“We have seen policemen in masks take someone away, we don’t know who it was,” an iTele correspondent reported.

The correspondent also confirmed, that a bomb squad detonated a suspicious parcel while raiding a truck parked near the house…

Analyzing Turkey and the threat of lone wolf attacks

July 16, 2016

 

 

 

 

LIVE: BREAKING Attempted Military Coup Underway In Turkey

July 15, 2016

Update, 5:20 PM EST

U.S. military forces at Turkish airbases, including the main base at Incirlik, have been ordered to “Force Protection Condition Delta,” their highest alert level.

A broadcast on state TRT television has declared that “Erdogan’s rule has come to an end.” The military has imposed martial law, and is reportedly already at work on a new constitution.

Update, 5:15 PM EST

All flights from Istanbul’s Ataturk airport have reportedly been canceled. According to the UK Telegraphtroops have been seen at the headquarters of the state television channel, TRT, in Ankara.

A televised statement from the coup, whose exact membership is not yet known, announced that “the power in the country has been seized in its entirety.”

“A Turkish official who did not want to be named said soldiers had been deployed in other cities in Turkey, but did not specify which ones,” Reuters relates. “Dogan News Agency reported the national police directorate had summoned all police to duty in Ankara.”

Breaking !Turkey coup: military attempt to seize power from Erdogan as low flying jets and gunfire heard in Ankara and bridges across Bosphorus in Istanbul closed

July 15, 2016

Live Turkey coup: military attempt to seize power from Erdogan as low flying jets and gunfire heard in Ankara and bridges across Bosphorus in Istanbul closed

Source: Turkey coup: military attempt to seize power from Erdogan as low flying jets and gunfire heard in Ankara and bridges across Bosphorus in Istanbul closed

 

  • Coup attempt by parts of Turkish military against Erdogan
  • PM Yildirim: Nothing will harm Turkish democracy
  • Low flying jets and gunfire heard in Turkish capital
  • Both of Istanbul’s bridges across the Bosphorus closed

Auto update

9:55PM

Turkey’s currency plummets

Turkey’s currency has suffered its heaviest fall in two months as investors took fright at a coup by the country’s military, Ben Martin reports.

The lira plunged as much as 3.8pc to 2.9901 against the dollar as money managers took fright at reports Turkey’s army had taken control of Ankara, the capital.

US Treasuries, a classic safe-haven investment, were in demand on Friday evening, with yields on American debt falling four basis points to 1.552pc. Bond yields move inversely to prices.

Timothy Ghriskey, of Solaris Asset Management, told Bloomberg: “The financial markets react very quickly to headlines like these, and it’s all about reducing risk.”

 

9:53PM

All flights from Istanbul’s Ataturk airport reportedly cancelled

All flights from Istanbul’s Ataturk Airport have been cancelled, a Reuters witness said on Friday, citing a pilot, after the military said it had taken control of the government.

Turkish soldiers block Istanbul's Bosphorus Brigde on July 15, 2016 in Istanbul, Turkey. Istanbul's bridges across the Bosphorus, the strait separating the European and Asian sides of the city, have been closed to traffic
Turkish soldiers block Istanbul’s Bosphorus Brigde on July 15, 2016 in Istanbul, Turkey. Istanbul’s bridges across the Bosphorus, the strait separating the European and Asian sides of the city, have been closed to traffic Credit: Getty

 

9:44PM

Turkey’s top general ‘held hostage’

Reports on Turkish state news agency that the country’s top general ‘held hostage’ at military HQ.

9:42PM

Reports of clashes between police and army

Dorian Jones a British journalist based in Istanbul said:

“Tanks are seen in the streets. There are reports of clashes between the police and the army,” he told Sky News, adding there were also reports that police guarding the presidential palace had been disarmed.

“I have been speaking to various friends across the city, some are reporting that they are hearing gunfire in the streets.”

9:34PM

Turkish military claims to have overthrown Erdogan and taken control of country

In a statement, the Turkish military says the rule of law must remain the priority.

“The power in the country has been seized in its entirety,” said the military statement read on NTV television, without giving further details. The military’s website was not immediately accessible.

State TV TRT reportedly off the air.

tanks

 

9:28PM

Military jets over Istanbul

https://twitter.com/RudawEnglish/status/754045281214300160/video/1

9:28PM

Tanks on the streets of Istanbul

https://twitter.com/Ayyinemikeder/status/754046084805173248/video/1

 

9:27PM

‘The army are taking over everything’

Gabriel Turner, 23, a management consultant from north London, is on holiday in Istanbul and described how there had been heavy police and security presence throughout the day before the military coup got underway after sunset.

He told The Telegraph:

“Earlier today there were police everywhere. I thought that was normal but the two Turkish girls I was with told me  it wasn’t normal. We were walking around the centre of Istanbul, at the Grand Bazaar there were police at every entrance and exit with lots of guns.

“A police helicopter was flying very low  at sunset, it was about 8pm. It looked like it was searching for something. Later on, at about 10.30 I was in Karakoy, a bar area in the city centre and everyone started looking at their phones. A man who owns the bar told us that the army are taking over everything.

“Then we walked down towards the a quieter area by the sea. While we were walking, my friend said the army had closed brides across the Bosphorus. We could see army helicopters in the sky.

“We went inside a cafe and everyone was on their phones looking worried, texting. Lots of people were running to catch a ferry – because the bridges were shutting and people wanted to get home. Then policemen came out of the ferries on their walkie talkies, looking very alert.”

9:20PM

Turkish broadcaster NTV shows tanks at Istanbul Ataturk airport

 

Lots of flight delays:

 

9:16PM

Twitter, Facebook and YouTube reportedly blocked in Turkey

 https://twitter.com/TurkeyBlocks/status/754043966547431424?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw

 

9:07PM

“Attempt by part of muilitary’

Yildirim says “it would be wrong to call it a coup” but that there has been an attempt by “part of the military”.

He describes it as an “illegal attempt” to seize power.

Turkey would never allow any “initiative that would interrupt democracy”, he said, and promised the perpetrators “will pay the highest price”.

9:05PM

Turkey’s PM Yildirim: Nothing will harm Turkish democracy

Binali Yildirim has called for calm.

9:03PM

Update from Istanbul

The Bosphorus and Fatih bridges were closed by the gendarmerie – a branch of the Turkish military dedicated to internal security – for traffic travelling from Asia to Europe, NTV television said. Traffic was still moving in the other direction.

Meanwhile, Turkish military aircraft were heard flying low over Ankara, AFP correspondents in the capital also reported. There was no immediate explanation for the cause of the incidents.

9:02PM

Rumours that Turkey has declared martial law on Twitter

All unconfirmed at this stage.

Something going on in Turkey? Twitter chatter/rumor of martial law … and ETF just fell nearly 3% in a matter of minutes. Crazy times.

 

8:59PM

Lack of information coming out of Turkey

 

8:56PM

Gunfire heard in Turkish capital Ankara

Gunshots were heard in the Turkish capital of Ankara on Friday, a Reuters witness said, as military jets and helicopters were seen flying overhead.

Reuters witnesses in Istanbul, Turkey’s biggest city, also spotted helicopters overhead.

Broadcaster NTV reported that both of Istanbul’s bridges across the Bosphorus, the strait separating the European and Asian sides of the city, had been closed to traffic.

It was not immediately clear if the events were related.

More to follow

BREAKING !-Report: Military Coup Under Way in Turkey

July 15, 2016

Report: Military Coup Under Way in Turkey

by John Hayward

15 Jul 2016

Source: Report: Military Coup Under Way in Turkey – Breitbart

Reports began emerging from Turkey of a possible military coup on Friday afternoon.

The UK Telegraph reports that while Prime Minister Binali Yildirim urged the public to remain calm, and said “it would be wrong to call it a coup,” he conceded that “part of the military” was making an “illegal attempt” to seize power.

It sounds like a spirited attempt, judging from tidbits of information flowing onto social media:

 

 

 

 

Social media services Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube were reportedly blocked shortly before 11:00 PM local time.

Jihadi Terrorism: You Think It’s Just the Jews? Think Again.

July 15, 2016

Jihadi Terrorism: You Think It’s Just the Jews? Think Again, Gatestone InstituteGiulio Meotti, July 15, 2016

♦ Last night, at least 84 people were murdered in the French city of Nice by a Tunisian-born Islamist terrorist.

♦ Whether you are pacifists or warmongers, gays or heterosexuals, atheists or Christians, blasphemers or devout, French or Iraqis, jihadi terrorism does not discriminate. Every one of us is a target: Islamist terrorism is genocidal.

♦ When Islamist terrorists target Muslim dissident bloggers, faraway Yazidi women or Israeli girls, it should concern us in the West. Islamists are just sharpening their knives on them before coming for us.

♦ If we do not speak out today, we will be punished for our indolence tomorrow.

Last night, at least 84 people were murdered in the French city of Nice by a Tunisian-born Islamist terrorist, with dozens more victims wounded. The attacker drove a 19-ton truck into a large crowd of people celebrating Bastille Day, France’s national holiday, running down men, women and children over a 2km stretch of road and sidewalk.

1696The bullet-riddled truck that was used by a Tunisian-born Islamist terrorist to murder 84 people in Nice, France on July 14, 2016. (Image source: France24 video screenshot)

On July 2, nine Italian citizens were butchered by Islamists in the assault at a restaurant in Dhaka, Bangladesh. They were tortured and killed with “very sharp blades” wielded by smiling terrorists who spared the life of those who knew the Quran. For almost a year already, poor Bangladeshis have been experiencing similar shocking massacres. But those victims were not wealthy non-Muslim foreigners — they were anonymous Muslim bloggers, accused of “blasphemy” and murdered out with “sharp blades” — five victims in 2015 and a law student in 2016, as well as a Hindu priest hacked to death.

The same cycle took place in Syria and Iraq, where the beheaders of the Islamic State first targeted many Western journalists, then expelled and killed Christians in Mosul, and then landed in Paris to exterminate Western civilians.

Two weeks ago, a 13-year-old Israeli girl was stabbed to death while sleeping in her bed. As in Bangladesh, the Palestinian Arab terrorist used a knife to kill Hallel Yaffa Ariel. That is not a simple act of murder; it is a slaughter that wrongly equates building a home with murdering a child. Italian newspapers even deprived her of identity. Il Corriere della Sera, Italy’s second largest newspaper, wrote: “West Bank: 13-year-old American killed“.

When four Israelis were murdered last month in Tel Aviv’s Max Brenner restaurant, the whole foreign media again had “mistaken” headlines. From Le Monde to Libération, the French press used the word “shooting” instead of terrorism. CNN reported about the “terrorists” in quotation marks. La Repubblica, Italy’s largest newspaper, called the Palestinian Arab terrorists “aggressors”.

What do these distorted headlines mean? That we in the West naively believe that there are two kinds of terror: “international terror” that targets Westerners in Nice, Paris, Dhaka, Raqqa or Tunisia; and “national” terror, between the Arabs and Israel, in the face of which the Israeli Jews must retreat and surrender. There is also “faceless terror,” as in Orlando, where an Afghan-American Muslim massacred 50 Americans and everybody, as usual in America, refused to name “Islam.”

It is the reaction of the appeaser, “one who feeds a crocodile, hoping it will eat him last” according to Winston Churchill. The problem is that whether you are pacifists or warmongers, gays or heterosexuals, atheists or Christians, wealthy or poor, blasphemers or devout, French or Iraqis, jihadi terrorism does not discriminate. Every one of us is a target: Islamist terrorism is genocidal.

Despite easy slogans such as “Je Suis Charlie”, very few in the West showed solidarity with the French cartoonists of Charlie Hebdo. Most Europeans thought those journalists were looking for trouble and found it. Or worse, as the Financial Times’ editor said, that they were “stupid“. But after January 7 came November 13. By then, no one still blamed cartoons of Mohammed for the terrorist attacks in Paris.

While the Islamic State was enslaving and raping hundreds of Yazidi girls, our intrepid feminists in the West were very busy fighting for an Irish referendum on gay marriage. They clearly did not care about the fate of their Yazidi and Kurdish “sisters”. Those victims were hidden away in the remote and exotic East, as were the murdered secular Muslim bloggers in Bangladesh.

It is time to remember the famous poem by Martin Niemöller, a German Christian pastor who was imprisoned in a concentration camp for 7 years by the German Nazi regime:

First they came for the Socialists, and I did not speak out —
Because I was not a Socialist.

Then they came for the Trade Unionists, and I did not speak out —
Because I was not a Trade Unionist.

Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out —
Because I was not a Jew.

Then they came for me — and there was no one left to speak out for me.

Similarly, when Islamist terrorists target Muslim dissident bloggers, faraway Yazidi women or Israeli girls — and they are enslaved, flogged, raped or murdered — it should concern us in the West. Islamists are just sharpening their knives on them before coming for us.

If we do not speak out today, we will be punished for our indolence tomorrow.

Nice Attack: Cut Down the Black Flag, Target Sharia

July 15, 2016

Nice Attack: Cut Down the Black Flag, Target Sharia, Counter Jihad, July 15, 2016

Former Special Forces Master Sergeant Jim Hanson, currently the Executive Vice President for the Center for Security Policy, has an answer to the problem of constant terror attacks.  First, though, he dismisses the strategy of attempting to prevent attacks by adding additional levels of security.  “Even in a police state, you couldn’t secure every gathering,” Hanson said, noting that this was just a simple delivery truck like any other.

“You have to look at the people who are conducting these terror attacks,” he told “FOX & Friends.”  A focus on methodology won’t work, as the truck attack plainly shows:  “It’s not guns, it’s not bombs, it’s not trucks,” but rather “the ideology of sharia and jihad that motivates them to kill.”

Hanson is the author of Cut Down the Black Flag:  A Strategy To Defeat the Islamic State.  Unsurprisingly, he believes that destroying the caliphate is an important part of the solution.  However, he argues that the caliphate is only a symptom — albeit a major one — of the real problem. “You start in the Islamic State.  You start with their caliphate, and you cut down their black flag there.  But… that’s not going to solve the problem, that treats a symptom.  The ideology of sharia, which calls for a holy war of jihad, is something we need to deal with.”

Citing a poll that sharia law enjoys large-scale support among Muslims worldwide, Hanson crossed into disputed territory.  CounterJihad has reported on this controversy before.

The central issue to empirical science is the ability of others repeating the experiment to replicate your findings.  If you replicate the same findings using the same methods, that’s telling.  If you replicate the same findings with both the same and different methods, that’s even more suggestive that you’re on to something.  Every poll of Muslim populations, regardless of its methodology, shows strong support for sharia.

Last summer, the Center for Security Policy commissioned a poll that found 51% support for sharia among American Muslims.  There were critics who pointed out that this poll was an online poll, and one that only surveyed those who opted in.  However, the Pew polling service found that half of American Muslims are recent immigrants, chiefly from countries in which their global survey of support for sharia tops 80%.  Three of the leading countries for Islamic immigration to the United States are Iraq, Pakistan, and Afghanistan.  The figures for those countries are 91%, 84%, and 99% respectively.

When you find the same thing no matter how you study the question, you’re probably finding something that’s really there.

Hanson’s solution of targeting sharia also enjoys strong support from the American people.  A recent poll conducted by a firm out of Atlanta found that more than seven in ten American voters think Muslim immigrants should be screened for the ideological belief in enforcing sharia law.  More than 80% of those who agreed say all immigrants ID’d as Sharia adherents should be barred from entering the United States.

The popularity of the solution does not mean that it will be enacted, at least not for the next few months.  A recent survey of US President Barack Obama’s calendar shows that he never met with former National Director of Intelligence LTG(R) Michael Flynn.  He and his administration’s top officials did meet with the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), which has been proven in Federal court to be linked to the Foreign Terrorist Organization Hamas.  In fact, CAIR has had hundreds of White House meetings.

Both of President Obama’s likely replacements have described the France attacks as acts of war, and both seem clearer-eyed than President Obama about the nature of the threat.  However, asked which one was more likely to take the threat seriously, Hanson gave the nod to Donald Trump.  Hillary Clinton would be too hamstrung by political correctness, he argued.  Only Trump was likely to move strongly against Islamic terror.

Nice attack: Why the terrorists are winning the intelligence war — Spengler

July 15, 2016

Nice attack: Why the terrorists are winning the intelligence war — Spengler, Asia Times,, July 15, 2016

The way to win the war is to frighten the larger community of Muslims who passively support terror by action or inaction–frighten them so badly that they will inform on family members. Frightening the larger Muslim population in the West does not require a great deal of effort: a few thousand deportations would do. Western intelligence services do not even have to deport the right people; the wrong people know who they are, and so do many of their neighbors. The ensuing conversation is an easy one to have. “I understand that your nephew is due for deportation, Hussein, and I believe you when you tell me that he has done nothing wrong. I might be able to help you. But you have to help me. Give me something I can use–and don’t waste my time by making things up, or I swear that I’ll deport you, too. If you don’t have any information, then find out who does.”

**********************

Yet another criminal known to security services has perpetrated a mass killing, the Tunisian Mohamed Lahouaiej-Bouhlel. Why did the French police allow a foreign national with a criminal record of violence to reside in France? Apart from utter incompetence, the explanation is that he was a snitch for the French authorities. Blackmailing Muslim criminals to inform on prospective terrorists is the principal activity of European counter-terrorism agencies, as I noted in 2015. Every Muslim in Europe knows this.

The terrorists, though, have succeeded in turning the police agents sent to spy on them and forcing them to commit suicide attacks to expiate their sins. This has become depressingly familiar; as Ryan Gallagher reported recently, perpetrators already known to the authorities committed ten of the highest-profile attacks between 2013 and 2015.

The terrorists, in other words, are adding insult to injury. By deploying police snitches as suicide attackers, terrorists assert their moral superiority and power over western governments. The message may be lost on the western public, whose security agencies and media do their best to obscure it, but it is well understood among the core constituencies of the terrorist groups: the superiority of Islam turns around the depraved criminals whom the western police send to spy on us, and persuades them to become martyrs for the cause of Islam.

Nice truckBullet impacts are seen on the heavy truck the day after it ran into a crowd at high speed killing scores celebrating the Bastille Day July 14 national holiday on the Promenade des Anglais in Nice, France, July 15, 2016. REUTERS/Eric Gaillard

These attacks, in other words, are designed to impress the Muslim public as much as they are intended to horrify the western public. In so many words, the terrorists tell Muslims that western police agencies cannot protect them. If they cooperate with the police they will be found out and punished.  The West fears the power of Islam: it evinces such fear by praising Islam as a religion of peace, by squelching dissent in the name of fighting supposed Islamophobia, and by offering concessions and apologies to Muslims. Ordinary Muslims live in fear of the terror networks, which have infiltrated their communities and proven their ability to turn the efforts of western security services against them. They are less likely to inform on prospective terrorists and more likely to aid them by inaction.

The terrorists, in short, are winning the intelligence war, because they have shaped the environment in which intelligence is gathered and traded. But that is how intelligence wars always proceed: spies switch sides and tell their stories because they want to be with the winner. ISIS and al-Qaeda look like winners in the eyes of western Muslim populations after humiliating the security services of the West.

As a result, western European Muslims fear the terrorists more than they fear the police. The West will remain vulnerable to mass terror attacks until the balance of fear shifts in the other direction.

As the Prussian army drove into France during the 1870 war with France, Germany’s Chancellor Otto von Bismarck sought the advice of the American military observer, none other than Phil Sheridan, whose cavalry had burned out the farmers of the Shenandoah Valley in the last stages of the conflict. What should Bismarck do about French snipers and saboteurs from villages along the Prussian route of march? Sheridan told Bismarck to burn the villages, leaving the people “with nothing left but their eyes to weep with after the war.” That, and hang the snipers, Sheridan threw in.

Like Gen. William Tecumseh Sherman, who burned a great swath through Georgia and the Carolinas, Sheridan believed that war is won not just by killing soldiers but by denying them support from a broader civilian population. There’s nothing particularly clever about this insight. One learns from James Lee McDonough’s new biography of Sherman how ordinary the great man was–a competent military officer without a minute’s combat experience before the war began, then an honest but unsuccessful banker. When the war came Sherman came close to a nervous breakdown, trying in vain to convince his masters that they would have to kill 300,000 Southern soldiers and devastate the Confederacy to win the war. He then distinguished himself in combat at Shiloh in 1863 and went on to become the scourge of the Deep South.

The Union always had more men and more resources; what it lacked was generals with the stomach for the job. That meant not only the grisly war of attrition waged by Grant, another middling commander with absolute resolve, but also retaliation against civilians: When snipers fired on Union soldiers from Tennessee or Kentucky villages, Sherman expelled residents, burned houses, and laid waste to crops. There are lessons here for what we used to call, quaintly, the Global War on Terror.

Destroying ISIS, al-Qaeda and other Muslim terror groups is not particularly difficult, far less difficult than Sherman or Sheridan’s task during the Civil War. It simply requires doing some disgusting things. Western intelligence doesn’t have to infiltrate terror groups, tap phones, mine social media postings and so forth (although these doubtless are worth doing). Muslim communities in the West will inform on the terrorists. They will tell police when someone has packed up and gone to Syria, and when he has returned. They will tell police who is talking about killing westerners, who has a suspicious amount of cash, who is listening to broadcasts from Salafist preachers.

They will tell western security services everything they need to know, provided that western security services ask in the right way. I mean in Phil Sheridan’s way. Like the victorious Union generals of the Civil War, the West does not have to be particularly clever. It simply needs to understand what kind of war is is fighting.

Most Muslims are peaceful people who disapprove of terrorism, but many are not.Opinion polls show a large and consistent minority  of 20% to 40% approves of at least some form of terrorism. Support for ISIS generally is low, but much higher for Hezbollah, Hamas and other terrorist groups. By any reasonable count there are a few hundred million Muslims who in some way approve of terror, although very few of them would take part in terror attacks. But they are the sea in which the sharks can swim unobserved. They may not build bombs, but they will turn a blind eye to terrorists in their midst, especially if those terrorists are relations. They also fear retaliation from the terrorists if they inform.

viveFlowers are seen attached to a fence to remember the victims of the Bastille Day truck attack in Nice in front of the French embassy in Rome, Italy, July 15, 2016. REUTERS/Max Rossi

The way to win the war is to frighten the larger community of Muslims who passively support terror by action or inaction–frighten them so badly that they will inform on family members. Frightening the larger Muslim population in the West does not require a great deal of effort: a few thousand deportations would do. Western intelligence services do not even have to deport the right people; the wrong people know who they are, and so do many of their neighbors. The ensuing conversation is an easy one to have. “I understand that your nephew is due for deportation, Hussein, and I believe you when you tell me that he has done nothing wrong. I might be able to help you. But you have to help me. Give me something I can use–and don’t waste my time by making things up, or I swear that I’ll deport you, too. If you don’t have any information, then find out who does.”

This approach to quashing insurgency has worked numerous times in the past. It is not characteristic of peacetime life in western democracies, to be sure, but neither was Phil Sheridan’s ride through the Shenandoah. We prefer to think about winning hearts and minds. Winning the hearts and minds of a people, though, isn’t difficult once they fear you.

Netanyahu in 2014: Terror will Come to France

July 15, 2016

Netanyahu in 2014: Terror will Come to France, Power LineScott Johnson, July 15, 2016

In a nearby post I explore President Obama’s attitude toward Islamic terrorism and its consequences. His attitude is superficially sophisticated and seriously misguided.

Obama of course detests Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who is in every way Obama’s better. Among other things, Netanyahu is rather more perceptive than Obama about the threats we face and how to deal with them. In the video clip below, he warns a French correspondent in August 2014 that “this terror plague will come to you.”

Paul links to the video via Yair Rosenberg’s Twitter feed in the update to his post on the Nice massacre, but I think it is worth consideration on its own this morning. Rosenberg calls it one of the eerier videos he’s seen. It’s really going to be Twilight Zone material when Iran announces it has nuclear weapons.