Archive for the ‘Europe’ category

The Muslim World is a Permanent Refugee Crisis

May 25, 2016

The Muslim World is a Permanent Refugee Crisis, Front Page Magazine, Daniel Greenfield, May 25, 2016

syrian_refugees_having_rest_at_the_floor_of_keleti_railway_station._refugee_crisis._budapest_hungary_central_europe_5_september_2015

The permanent Muslim refugee crisis will never stop being our crisis unless we close the door.

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Forget the Syrian Civil War for a moment. Even without the Sunnis and Shiites competing to give each other machete haircuts every sunny morning, there would still be a permanent Muslim refugee crisis.

The vast majority of civil wars over the last ten years have taken place in Muslim countries. Muslim countries are also some of the poorest in the world. And Muslim countries also have high birth rates.

Combine violence and poverty with a population boom and you get a permanent migration crisis.

No matter what happens in Syria or Libya next year, that permanent migration crisis isn’t going away.

The Muslim world is expanding unsustainably. In the Middle East and Asia, Muslims tend to underperform their non-Muslim neighbors both educationally and economically. Oil is the only asset that gave Muslims any advantage and in the age of fracking, its value is a lot shakier than it used to be.

The Muslim world had lost its old role as the intermediary between Asia and the West. And it has no economic function in the new world except to blackmail it by spreading violence and instability.

Muslim countries with lower literacy rates, especially for women, are never going to be economic winners at any trade that doesn’t come gushing out of the ground. Nor will unstable dictatorships ever be able to provide social mobility or access to the good life. At best they’ll hand out subsidies for bread.

The Muslim world has no prospects for getting any better. The Arab Spring was a Western delusion.

Growing populations divided along tribal and religious lines are competing for a limited amount of land, power and wealth. Countries without a future are set to double in size.

There are only two solutions; war or migration.

Either you fight and take what you want at home. Or you go abroad and take what you want there.

Let’s assume that the Iraq War had never happened. How would a religiously and ethnically divided Iraq have managed its growth from 13 million in the eighties to 30 million around the Iraq War to 76 million in 2050?

The answer is a bloody civil war followed by genocide, ethnic cleansing and migration.

What’s happening now would have happened anyway. It was already happening under Saddam Hussein.

Baghdad has one of the highest population densities in the world. And it has no future. The same is true across the region. The only real economic plan anyone here has is to get money from the West.

Plan A for getting money out of the West is creating a crisis that will force it to intervene. That can mean anything from starting a war to aiding terrorists that threaten the West. Muslim countries keep shooting themselves in the foot so that Westerners will rush over to kiss the booboo and make it better.

Plan B is to move to Europe.

And Plan B is a great plan. It’s the only real economic plan that works. At least until the West runs out of native and naïve Westerners who foot the bill for all the migrants, refugees and outright settlers.

For thousands of dollars, a Middle Eastern Muslim can pay to be smuggled into Europe. It’s a small investment with a big payoff. Even the lowest tier welfare benefits in Sweden are higher than the average salary in a typical Muslim migrant nation. And Muslim migrants are extremely attuned to the payoffs. It’s why they clamor to go to Germany or Sweden, not Greece or Slovakia. And it’s why they insist on big cities with an existing Muslim social welfare infrastructure, not some rural village.

A Muslim migrant is an investment for an entire extended family. Once the young men get their papers, family reunification begins. That doesn’t just mean every extended family member showing up and demanding their benefits. It also means that the family members will be selling access to Europe to anyone who can afford it. Don’t hike or raft your way to Europe. Mohammed or Ahmed will claim that you’re a family member. Or temporarily marry you so you can bring your whole extended family along.

Mohammed gets paid. So does Mo’s extended family which brokers these transactions. Human trafficking doesn’t just involve rafts. It’s about having the right family connections.

And all that is just the tip of a very big business iceberg.

Where do Muslim migrants come up with a smuggling fee that amounts to several years of salary for an average worker? Some come from wealthy families. Others are sponsored by crime networks and family groups that are out to move everything from drugs to weapons to large numbers of people into Europe.

Large loans will be repaid as the new migrants begin sending their new welfare benefits back home. Many will be officially unemployed even while unofficially making money through everything from slave labor to organized crime. European authorities will blame their failure to participate in the job market on racism rather than acknowledging that they exist within the confines of an alternate economy.

It’s not only individuals or families who can pursue Plan B. Turkey wants to join the European Union. It’s one solution for an Islamist populist economy built on piles of debt. The EU has a choice between dealing with the stream of migrants from Turkey moving to Europe. Or all of Turkey moving into Europe.

The West didn’t create this problem. Its interventions, however misguided, attempted to manage it.

Islamic violence is not a response to Western colonialism. Not only does it predate it, but as many foreign policy experts are so fond of pointing out, its greatest number of casualties are Muslims. The West did not create Muslim dysfunction. And it is not responsible for it. Instead the dysfunction of the Muslim world keeps dragging the West in. Every Western attempt to ameliorate it, from humanitarian aid to peacekeeping operations, only opens up the West to take the blame for Islamic dysfunction.

The permanent refugee crisis is a structural problem caused by the conditions of the Muslim world.

The West can’t solve the crisis at its source. Only Muslims can do that. And there are no easy answers. But the West can and should avoid being dragged down into the black hole of Muslim dysfunction.

Even Germany’s Merkel learned that the number of refugees is not a finite quantity that can be relieved with a charitable gesture. It’s the same escalating number of people that will show up if you start throwing bags of money out of an open window. And it’s a number that no country can absorb.

Muslim civil wars will continue even if the West never intervenes in them because their part of the world is fundamentally unstable. These conflicts will lead to the displacement of millions of people. But even without violence, economic opportunism alone will drive millions to the West. And those millions carry with them the dysfunction of their culture that will make them a burden and a threat.

If Muslims can’t reconcile their conflicts at home, what makes us think that they will reconcile them in Europe? Instead of resolving their problems through migration, they only export them to new shores. The same outbursts of Islamic violence, xenophobia, economic malaise and unsustainable growth follow them across seas and oceans, across continents and countries. Distance is no answer. Travel is no cure.

Solving Syria will solve nothing. The Muslim world is full of fault lines. It’s growing and it’s running out of room to grow. We can’t save Muslims from themselves. We can only save ourselves from their violence.

The permanent Muslim refugee crisis will never stop being our crisis unless we close the door.

Matt Bracken: The Hybrid Vigor of the Coming European Islamic State

May 23, 2016

Matt Bracken: The Hybrid Vigor of the Coming European Islamic State, Gates of Vienna, May 21, 2016

(Here’s the video referenced in the article. — DM)

— DM)

Gates of Vienna introduction

The following essay and meme by Matthew Bracken were prompted by a cell-phone video from Germany of a culture-enricher assaulting a German teenaged boy. I won’t embed the video; I find it almost too unbearable to watch. To see a young man so unable to defend himself, so unwilling to stand up and be a man, is disheartening and dismaying.

Below are Matt Bracken’s thoughts on what all of this means.

Bracken article

bracken-dhimmi

This is heartbreaking to see, but very important.

This is how a dhimmi is created in a gun-free country, where armed self-defense is an alien concept. This is prison yard rules, and the young German is just fresh meat. This German kid will probably convert to Islam just to stop the pain and “gain the respect” of his new masters.

Note how the bully threatens to beat him every day just to harden him up and make him a man. A similar psychological process occurs in military boot camp with new recruits. He doesn’t know it yet, but his mother and sisters are now Moslem chattel property. He won’t lift a finger to defend German women; he is a dhimmi at best. Most likely he will just convert as a matter of bare survival, but he will always be a “second-class Muslim”, even if he submits. These IslamoNazi bullies will have him reciting the Shahada in less than a month, and after that, his sister is toast. Just fresh meat for the hijra jihadis.

This is how Islam has spread for 1,400 years: brute force, threats, intimidation, and using terror as an example of how far they are willing to go to force the spread.

Smug Americans who own firearms might laugh at the current plight of the Europeans, but they should not. The Europeans have been brainwashed by the “multi-kulti-uber-alles” Left to simply submit when the planned hijra invasion happened, which is happening now. The ordinary Euros were betrayed by Quisling traitors in high offices. From the Muslim point of view, the hijra invasion is moving from the dawah (preaching) phase to the jihad phase, using violence and threats of even greater violence to force a complete Muslim takeover. That German boy now understands who are the alpha males, and who are not: The Moslems are, and he isn’t.

But there is the long-term danger in this process even to America. If Islam wins in Europe, a well-known social/genetic dynamic will kick in. All of the German girls and women (even the man-hating radical feminists and lesbians) will be raped, enslaved, or “married” by force, but one way or the other, there will be a rising generation of Muslims in Europe who are half-German.

People should understand a genetic process called “hybrid vigor.” There is a reason the Ottoman Turks collected European boys to be raised as Janissaries. The Arab desert Muslims have terrible DNA after 1,400 years of first-cousin inbreeding, but when they impregnate their German conquest victims they will create generations of 100% full Muslims who are half German. Of course, this will happen in every European country, not only Germany.

Americans should not be smug about the collapse and Muslim conquest of Europe. Half-German “Super Muslims” will be a tough adversary. Remember the Ottoman Janissaries from history. They were fearsome fanatics, but also big, strong and smart.

Another crop of “Super Muslims” were the Berbers of Morocco, who provided most of the brains and muscle used for the invasion of Spain in 711 AD. The “desert Arabs” were a scrawny and pitiful bunch. Man for man, they were weaklings compared to the hearty Berber mountain folk. But the Berbers were divided, tribe against tribe, from one Atlas Mountains valley to another. The invading Arab armies picked off one tribe at a time, and forced them all to convert. These newly united Berber Super Muslims were imbued with ”convert zeal,” and ready to invade new worlds to spread the banner of Islam.

United for the first time in history, the Muslim Berbers of Morocco (under mostly Arab leadership) turned their natural war-lust against the Christians of Spain. Like the pre-Muslim Berber tribes had been before them, each Spanish Christian principality was divided from the others across the mountains of Spain. The united and newly converted Muslim Berber armies swept over the separate Spanish fiefdoms one after the other.

The point is that Muslim invasions have often succeeded against divided foes who were, man for man, much stronger and even smarter. A generation later, this invigorated hybrid population can be very dangerous, because after the consolidation phase where the invaded region is brought under united Islamic control, they will be straining to burst their borders and conquer new worlds, like the Super Muslim Berbers did in Spain. Think also of Iran in this context. United Arab Muslim armies conquered Persia, creating another brand of hybridized “Super Muslims.”

I shudder to think of what German Super Muslims will be capable of in thirty years, if Islam is triumphant in Europe. They would make the Earth shake

Islamic Words and Concepts that Americans Must Understand. Now.

May 22, 2016

Islamic Words and Concepts that Americans Must Understand. Now, Dan Miller’s Blog, May 22, 2016

(The views expressed in this article are mine and do not necessarily reflect those of Warsclerotic or its other editors. — DM)

Ten Islamic words and concepts — well understood by Islamic jihadists and others who strive to impose Sharia law on us  — define and articulate the Islamic quest for world domination. However, few charged with “countering violent extremism” understand their meanings and none are permitted to consider such “islamophobic” Islamic concepts when doing their jobs. Thank you, Obama, CAIR and related Muslim Brotherhood – linked Quislings.

Imagine that while learning to “counter violent extremism” on behalf of the Obama-CAIR collective, you encounter a ravenous lion intent upon eating you for dinner. You have been assured, repeatedly, that it, like adherents to “the religion of peace and tolerance,” is only a falsely-maligned, tame and starving kitten in need of food and that you must act accordingly. Don’t succumb to catophobia! What would you do? Become dinner? Run away? Shoot the lion?

A non-fiction article by Matthew Bracken, author of three novels about traitors, foreign and domestic, was recently published by Gates of Viena. The article focuses on these Islamic words and the concepts they embody: dawah, dhimmi, hijra, jizya, kafir, shaheed, shariah, takfir, taqiyya and ummah.

Bracken wrote,

[I]f you are a national security professional, senior military officer or political leader involved in any aspect of the “Global War On Terror,” AKA “Countering Violent Extremism,” these are ten words that should already be a part of your working vocabulary. If you can’t readily discuss their meaning, significance, and relationships, then you are worse than a fool, you are a disgrace to your office and a danger to your country.

He’s right. Obama, Kerry and their many followers are, indeed, dangers to our country as well as to Western Civilization in general. Rather than learn about Islam, they pretend that it is what they have been told, falsely, that it is. Those who understand Islam and want to prevent what it seeks for America from happening are disparaged as “Islamophobes.” Parallels could perhaps be drawn to “idealists” drawn to Communism as a peaceful and tolerant ideology, without bothering to learn about “Uncle Joe” Stalin and what he was doing. Uncle Joe knew what he was doing and thought it was good. Representatives of the fifty-seven Islamist Member nations of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) know the meanings of the words highlighted by Bracken and the purpose of Islam: to make Islam dominant throughout the world. They consider that good and act accordingly.

Mr. Bracken’s important Arabic words are used in context in the following quotations from his article.

[I]f you are an Army general or Navy admiral who, right here and now, without looking at your smart phone, cannot discuss how a kafir becomes a dhimmi, and what a dhimmi’s rights and options (if any) are under shariah, then you are as ignorant of your job as an European-theater Army general circa 1942 who did not know a panzer from a pancake, or a schutzstaffel from a schnitzel. A person as ignorant as you should be kept away from any responsibility for protecting our nation. You are incompetent, and you are a fool.

If you don’t know how to determine when a Muslim suicide bomber is a shaheed and when he is a terrorist according to the shariah, then you are as dangerous to our national safety as a North Atlantic ship captain who believes that icebergs are a fairy tale concocted by conspiracy theorists. Full speed ahead, Captain Smith!

If you don’t know takfir from taqiyya, and can’t discuss the meaning and importance of both, you are as useless as a WW2 intelligence officer who didn’t know the Kriegsmarine from the Luftwaffe, (but who thought that one of them was a private flying club, based on conversations that he overheard among his ever-helpful German cleaning staff).

If you cannot, right now, intelligently discuss the global ummah and its relationship to the OIC in the context of the GWOT, then you should be working for the Department of Parks and Recreation, and not the Department of Homeland Security. If you don’t know what the OIC refers to in this context, put on a dunce cap, and go stand in the corner. And if you don’t know whether your office is in the Dar al Islam or the Dar al Harb, please jump out of an upper-story window, and when you hit the sidewalk, ask any immigrant who is engaged in hijra. He’ll know the answer, even if you do not.

If you don’t know how dawah relates to jihad when faithful Muslims are engaged in long-term hijra, you should turn in your official credentials and take early retirement. You are as oblivious as a WW2 U.S. Army general who thought that the Geheime Staatspolizei were German motorcycle policemen much like our American state troopers, because a helpful German passer-by told him so.

If you don’t know what the three options are for a kafir who violates the shariah when living in the dar al Islam, then please get out of the national security business. If you don’t know why a dhimmi would care about jizya, please retire, and hand your duties over to someone who has the natural curiosity and personal integrity to conduct his own study of our actual enemies and their actual strategies. But in the meantime, you must immediately stop lapping up the false narrative being spoon-fed to you by hostile foreign agents, domestic traitors, useful idiots, and cowards who know better—but who won’t make waves while their pensions are beckoning.

If your job is national security, and you didn’t score at least an eighty on the ten-word quiz, then you have obviously swallowed the big lie that we can safely delegate the understanding of our Islamist enemies to the WW2 equivalent of “moderate Nazis.” Sounds insane, doesn’t it? But under President Obama, this is indeed our national policy for fighting the GWOT: allow a range of Muslim Brotherhood front groups to conduct America’s narrowly limited analysis of so-called “radicalized Islam,” and thereafter guide our policies toward Islam and Muslims in general.

Here is an important example straight from current events. Please tell us, oh national security professional, whom has the United Nations delegated the critical task of selecting and “screening” the Muslim “refugees” who are currently arriving in the USA at the rate of thousands per month? Any guesses? It is the same organization that the Obama administration has also optimistically granted the authority to choose our new Muslim “refugee” immigrants. If you don’t know the answer, please get out of the national security business.

So who is it? It’s the fifty-seven-nation Organization of Islamic Cooperation, headquartered in Saudi Arabia, which I referenced above. The mission of the OIC is to promote the spread of Islam across the globe until there is no more dar al harb, and all of the kafirs have either been converted to Islam, killed, or forced into submission as dhimmis. If you didn’t know, dhimmis are formally and legally subjugated second-class citizens who must pay the special jizya tax as the price of their being allowed to live under shariah in the ummah.

But this special offer is only extended to Christians and Jews: all others must choose between conversion to Islam, and the sword. That is, if their Muslim conquerors grant them the option of conversion. According to the Shariah, the defeated kafirs may also be killed or enslaved, if either of these two outcomes would be considered more beneficial to the ummah, based on local conditions and needs. (Of course, the captured women and girls may be taken as sex-slaves.) Mohammed did all of the above, and he commanded that these practices be continued in perpetuity, and they are.

The charter of the OIC puts Islamic shariah law ahead of secular law. This means, for example, that the official position of the OIC is that Muslims who leave the faith should be killed, and that any faithful Muslim who kills an apostate ex-Muslim has done no sin, but instead should be thanked and congratulated for the deed. It’s the same with adulterers: they should die, and killing an adulterer is no crime.

Yes, that really is their position, and they really do believe it, and much more than that. The OIC is made up of fifty-seven Muslim nations, united by a common belief in the supremacy of Islam, and their mutual obligation to conduct both dawah and jihad until the Dar al Islam covers the globe, and Allah’s eternal and immutable shariah has supplanted godless democracy and all manmade laws. This dawah includes the practice of using taqiyya when making arrangements or having negotiations with as-yet unsubmitted kafirs in the dar al harb.

So it’s no wonder that ninety-nine percent of the “refugees” being “screened” by the OIC and transported into the USA are Muslim, even though the Christians and other non-Muslims (who until recently made up over ten percent of the populations of Syria and Iraq) are suffering a brutal genocide and holocaust at the hands of Islamic State kidnappers, mass-rapists and mass-executioners.

. . . .

Let me offer you another simple test that you may apply to your own national security work space and mission. If you have been ordered to purge the ten listed Arabic words (and others) from your official GWOT lexicon, and instead to hand over the task of analyzing “Islamic radicalism” to alleged “moderate Muslims,” then you are being played for a fool by our nation’s most implacable and devious enemies, both foreign and domestic.

. . . .

Today, we are literally outsourcing our intelligence analysis in the GWOT to the OIC and various Muslim Brotherhood front groups. Simply do a search for “Holy Land Foundation, Hamas, CAIR, and FBI” to begin your overdue education. Is it any wonder that the official “Countering Violent Extremism” narrative holds that there is utterly no connection between Islamic terrorism and Islam? That the Islamic State, which quotes chapter and verse of the Koran as justification for its every decision, is not Islamic? That Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the Caliph of ISIS, who holds a PhD in Islamic Studies from the Islamic University of Baghdad, knows less about Islam than President Obama and his American-trained national security staff? [Emphasis added.]

In 2016, ignorance of the reality of the Islamist threat is no longer an excuse. Many resources are readily available if you are willing to look unblinkingly at the light of truth. I would suggest the online video lectures given by Stephen Coughlin and Dr. Bill Warner as starting points. Those who need or desire to read an exhaustively researched (over a thousand footnotes) academic treatise on the present Islamist threat should carefully study Coughlin’s “Catastrophic Failure: Blindfolding America in the Face of Jihad.”

After 9-11, Mr. Coughlin was an acclaimed subject matter expert and frequent high-level lecturer at the CIA, the FBI, and the Pentagon, until 2008 when he was made persona-non-grata on federal property as an unwelcome “Islamophobe.” And who made the determination of Mr. Coughlin’s “Islamophobia?” The same Muslim Brotherhood front groups that our intelligence agencies now rely upon for their understanding of “violent extremism,” which, of course, we are assured has absolutely nothing to do with Islam.

We know this must be true, because President Obama has told us so. Unless, of course, he is practicing taqiyya on behalf of the ummah. Taqiyya is a bedrock principle of Islamic shariah, a ready tool for Muslims to use when they are dealing with kafirs. And not only radical Muslims, but ordinary, everyday, “moderate” Muslims. According to the shariah, it’s not a sin when a Muslim lies to a kafir in order to promote Islam. In that case, taqiyya is just a very clever form of dawah, helping to prepare the kafirs for the final Islamic jihad victory.

Conclusions

Obama, et al, complicit with CAIR and other Muslim Brotherhood-affiliated groups, require “our” Countering Violent Terrorism forces to assist, rather than fight against, Islamic terrorism.  That’s perverse and some (I am one of them) consider it treason.

As I observed here, Islamic terrorists torture and murder  — quite legitimately under Islamic doctrine — thousands of people. That’s deplorable. What Islamists and their modern-day Quislings have done even without chopping off heads, and continue to do to European nations, is even worse. They have moved in and have done a great job of Islamising entire nations. With the help of Allah, Obama and His band of Quislings, that’s what they are doing and hope to do more of to America.

“Our betters” lie to us, repeatedly.

Hillary Clinton lies even when it’s inevitable that her lies will be discovered. Many of her supporters are attracted, or at best not repelled, by her lying. At least she is consistent: the truth simply is not in her.

Islamists and their fellow travelers who are taking over Europe must be prevented from doing the same to our “land of the free and home of the brave.”

Obama and His followers seek to have us forget all about that as well as those who fought and died to create and then to preserve America. Shall we, must we, become dhimmis and yield to the OIC, Iran, CAIR and Obama’s other Islamist and Muslim Brotherhood friends by electing Obama’s soul mate, Hillary Clinton, as our next Commander in Chief?

Not on my watch, not on Trump’s watch and, I hope, not on your watch. Isn’t it time to make up your mind? The Muslims in the following video have already decided to support Hillary and have contributed funds accordingly.

According to this source, Ms. Clinton managed to collect “half-a-million dollars, making it one of the top five private fundraisers Clinton has had in this country.” She did not get Muslim money because of her charming personality.

Many of the Pakistanis at the event were pleased with Clinton’s vocal support of the Muslim religion.

Aisha Zahid said, “Talking about Muslims and favoring Muslims, so I really appreciate her whatever effort she is making against Islamaphobia, so I really think she needs to be the next President of the United States.”

If you haven’t already watched the following video, please do so. If you have, please watch it again. It makes more sense about “Republican principles” and why we need to honor them today than any other video I have watched.

If we want to continue to affirm these Republican principles, we need to keep a country in which to do it. America still is, and must remain, our country.

Although America remains our country, she is slipping away. How long do we have to stop and reverse the process of Islamisation which is, thus far slowly but inexorably, leading to America becoming part of the ummah? We the people must save her from Islamists, dhimmis and their fellow travelers.

Backlash in Europe: ‘Far Right’ Seethes Over Migrant Crisis

May 22, 2016

Backlash in Europe: ‘Far Right’ Seethes Over Migrant Crisis, Clarion Project, May 22, 2016

Spain-Anti-Migrant-Rally-IPAnti-immigration rally in Madrid (Photo: Screenshot video)

1. According to the latest news, Austria will elect as president the candidate from the far-Right Freedom Party in its upcoming elections. Analysts say Norber Hofer’s support (including, ironically some long-time immigrants) stems from voters frustrated by the two main parties over the immigrant crisis and its accompanying crimes, as well as unemployment.

Although the office is largely ceremonial, such a vote will be very significant, as analyst say that Hofer’s election may provide an impetus for populous change in Europe.

2. Wahhabism has taken root in Kosovo, just 17 years after America and its allies stepped in to free Muslims and prevent a total genocide at the hands of the Serbians. “Since then,” reports the New York Times, “much of that time under the watch of American officials — Saudi money and influence have transformed this once-tolerant Muslim society at the hem of Europe into a font of Islamic extremism and a pipeline for jihadists.”

Police say that over the past two years, per capita, more Muslims from Kosovo, have left to join the Islamic State, including suicide bombers, women and children.

3. Christians seeking asylum in Europe can be exposed to as much danger from Islamist extremists as those they fled from in the Middle East. A new survey shows that thousands of Christians in Germany have been attacked and harassed by fellow migrants and Muslim guards at asylum houses.

Particularly at risk are those Muslims who have chosen to convert to Christianity. The survey was conducted by Open Doors, a humanitarian relief organization. One member of the group, Markus Rhodes, called the survey the “tip of the iceberg.”

4. A senior law enforcement official in Germany has proposed monitoring mosques to know “what is preached there.”  Emily Haber, the state secretary at the German Ministry of the Interior, further stated, “We cannot stay indifferent.

“We need to bring into view more on what is developing there. We need to move fast. It must also be clear who and from what country comes to Germany as imams. This scene must not remain unwatched and uncontrolled.”

5. Rallies against immigration were held in Madrid and Rome over the weekend. In Spain, under the title “Defend Spain, defend your people,” marchers called for an end to the “invasion,” chanting “Refugees no, Spanish yes.”  A Facebook post explaining the reason for the demonstration read in part, “Sometimes, we try to avoid the problem by closing our eyes, and looking the other way. That makes us believe that the problem goes away, but it’s not like that.

“Passivity, and silence as demanded by the politically correct, wants us to believe that we are free, but by staying still we are complicit in the decline of our people, our identity, of our ways. Looking the other way just accelerates our own destruction, and sells our freedom to the highest bidder.”

6. Pope Francis will meet Egypt’s top cleric, Sheikh Ahmed al-Tayeb, the grand imam of Cairo’s of Al-Azhar Mosque, considered the seat of Sunni Islam. The historic visit at the Vatican is the first since relations were suspended in 2011 after Pope Benedict XVI called for the protection of Christians after a church bombing in Alexandria.

Al-Tayeb, was appointed by former Egyptian President Hosni Mubrak and supported the popularly-backed military coup that overthrew former Islamist President Mohammed Morsi in 2013. At a conference against terrorism in Saudi Arabia, al-Tayeb blamed Zionism and its allies (i.e. the United States) for the current problems in the Middle East.

Algeria Refused to Hear Rape Complaint Because Victim Wasn’t Muslim

May 21, 2016

Algeria Refused to Hear Rape Complaint Because Victim Wasn’t Muslim, Front Page Magazine, Daniel Greenfield, May 21, 2016

muslim-slave-trade

Muslims constantly complain how much they’re discriminated against in Europe. Here’s a reminder of how they treat non-Muslims in their own countries.

In October a Cameroonian woman was gang-raped in Oran by a group of men that threatened her with a dog. When she tried to file a complaint with the authorities, she was rejected on two main grounds: She had no papers, and she wasn’t a Muslim.

The Marie-Simone case became a cause célèbre, and the victim, with the support of some Algerians, eventually obtained justice. But it remains an exception.

The author points out that Muslims in Algeria treat non-Muslims as subhuman even while condemning Europe.

Many black migrants, including those who are not Muslim, are deploying symbols of Islam to appeal to Algerians’ sense of charity. Why? Because poverty helps decode culture better than reflection does, and migrants, lacking shelter and food, are quick to realize that in Algeria there often is no empathy between human beings, only empathy between people of the same religion…

In Europe, migrants can try to play on the humanitarianism and guilty consciences of their hosts, but in Algeria these days, the Other is visible only through the prism of faith…

On the one hand, there are virulent articles about racism in Europe describing the “Jungle,” a migrant detention center in Calais, France, as something of a concentration camp, or presenting fallacious analyses: “No Work in France if You’re Arab or African,” said one headline in an Islamist newspaper in February. On the other hand, there is no shortage of Ku Klux Klan-worthy arguments about the threat posed by blacks, their perceived lack of civic-mindedness and the crimes and diseases they purportedly bring with them…

On the occasion of a soccer match between Algeria and Mali in November 2014, the Islamist daily Echourouk published a photograph of some of the Malian club’s black fans under the caption, “No greetings, no welcome. AIDS behind you,Ebola ahead of you.” But the prejudices of fundamentalists lead them to a different conclusion, simple and monstrous: Either the Other is a Muslim, or he is not at all.

Religious conservatives, like the secular elites, see blacks as victims of injustices perpetrated by white colonizers, but for them redress can only come through Allah. Their propaganda often refers to a precedent from the mythology of Islam’s early days: Bilal, the black Abyssinian slave whose religious conversion led to his emancipation.

Except that for every Bilal there are millions of other blacks, including converts to Islam, who have stayed trapped in servitude for generations. The very subject of slavery in Arab societies is still taboo today, or it is eclipsed by condemnation of Western slavery.

The fact remains that for blacks, embracing Islam is no guarantee of safety…

But these are subjects that largely can’t be discussed. The Western left has embraced some mythological solidarity of “brown people” that doesn’t actually exist. But it has no interest in addressing subjects like the Arab slave trade or ongoing racism in the Muslim world.

Sweden’s Holy War on Children’s Books

May 21, 2016

Sweden’s Holy War on Children’s Books, Gatestone InstituteJudith Bergman, May 21, 2016

♦ Taken to its extremes, the urge to cleanse a culture of elements that do not live up to the politically correct orthodoxy currently in political vogue unsettlingly echoes the Taliban and ISIS credos of destroying everything that does not accord with their Quranic views. The desire “not to offend,” taken to its logical conclusion, is a totalitarian impulse, which threatens to destroy everything that disagrees with its doctrines. Crucially, who gets to decide what is offensive?

♦ The question arises: How much purging and expiation will be needed to render a country’s culture politically correct?

♦ “When we have days of carnivals and music the goal is that these days should be experienced as positive by everyone. The Swedish flag is not allowed as part of carnival dress. … Positive and bright feelings must be in focus. … School photos must obviously be free of national symbols.” — Swedish school in Halmstad.

♦ Rome covered up its classical nude statues for a visit from Iran’s president, Hassan Rouhani, in January 2016. A decade ago, who would have even imagined such sycophancy?

In 1966, one of Sweden’s most popular children’s writers, Jan Lööf, published Grandpa is a Pirate, an illustrated children’s book, which featured, among other characters, the wicked pirate Omar and the street peddler, Abdullah. The book has been a bestseller ever since, and has been translated into English (as My Grandpa is a Pirate), Spanish, French and other languages. Ten years ago, 100,000 copies of it were even distributed to the Swedish public with McDonald’s Happy Meals, as part of an initiative to support reading among children.

Ah, but those were the days of yesteryear! Now, fifty years later, the book is no longer tolerable. The now 76-year-old author told Swedish news outlets that his publisher recently said that unless he rewrites the book and changes the illustrations, it will be taken off the market. The publisher also threatened to withdraw another of his books unless it is redone: it features an illustration of a black jazz musician who sleeps with his sunglasses on.

Lööf’s publisher, the Swedish publishing giant Bonnier Carlsen, says that it has not yet made a final decision and that it only views the rewriting and re-illustrating of the books as “an option.” There is no doubt, however, that they consider the books in question extremely problematic.

“The books stereotype other cultures, something which is not strange, since all illustrations are created in a context, in their own time, and times change,” said Eva Dahlin, who heads Bonnier Carlsen’s literary department.

“But if you come from the Middle East, for instance, you can get tired from rarely being featured on the good side in literary depictions. Children’s books are special because they are read over a longer period of time and the norms of the past live on in them, unedited. As an adult, one may be wearing one’s nostalgic glasses and miss things that could be seen as problematic by others.”

Dahlin further explained that the publishing house spends a lot of time reviewing older publications, to check if such “problematic” passages occur. She added that the publishing house does not check for only culturally sensitive passages:

“There are many female editors, and therefore we have probably been more naturally aware of gender-biased depictions than these type of questions. But now we have better insights and a greater awareness of these issues.”

1612One of Sweden’s most popular children’s writers, Jan Lööf, was recently told by his publisher that unless he makes his bestselling 1966 book, Grandpa is a Pirate, more politically correct by rewriting it and changing the illustrations, it will be taken off the market

Sweden is no stranger to “literary revisions” of this kind, or other cultural revisions in the name of political correctness. Both Pippi Longstocking and other children’s books have gone through assorted revisions or have even been taken off the market. In the Pippi Longstocking television series, a scene in which Pippi squints her eyes to look Chinese has been edited out altogether, so as not to offend anyone. In 2013, a popular, award-winning Danish children’s book, Mustafa’s Kiosk, by Jakob Martin Strid, was taken off the market in Sweden after complaints on Swedish social media that it was racist and “Islamophobic.” Ironically, the author wrote it in 1998, when he was staying in Indonesia, the world’s most populous Muslim country, as “an anti-racist statement.” Tellingly, the book had been on the Swedish market since 2002 with no complaints. In his response to the criticism, the Danish writer noted that an equal and non-racist society only comes about “when you are allowed to make (loving) fun of everyone.” “I also make fun of Norwegians,” he added.

In 2014, after complaints on Swedish social media that some of its candy was “racist,” the Haribo company decided to change one of its products, “Skipper Mix,” which consisted of candies shaped in the form of a sailor’s souvenirs, including African masks.

The question arises: How much purging and expiation will be needed to render a country’s culture politically correct?

That question raises an even bigger one: How high is the price of political correctness in terms of “cleansing” the past and present of perceived slights, anywhere, to just about anyone?

Taken to its extremes, the urge to cleanse a culture of elements that do not live up to the politically correct orthodoxy currently in political vogue unsettlingly echoes the Taliban and ISIS credos of destroying everything that does not accord with their Quranic views. The desire “not to offend,” taken to its logical conclusion, is a totalitarian impulse, which threatens to destroy everything that disagrees with its doctrines. Crucially, who gets to decide what is offensive?

What begins innocently enough, by taking out passages from books that may hurt someone’s feelings, can end up turning into something far more sinister, as it indeed has in Sweden. Former Swedish Prime Minister Frederik Reinfeldt famously stated in 2014 that Sweden belongs to immigrants, not to the Swedes who have lived there for generations. He thereby communicated that he believes the future of Sweden will be shaped by non-Swedes, showing a curious contempt for his own culture.

This contempt has spread fast throughout official Sweden. In 2014, a Swedish school in Halmstad forbade displaying the Swedish flag, after a student painted his face in the Swedish colors for a carnival. In its new rules, the school specified why:

“Most students look forward to school traditions. When we have days of carnivals and music the goal is that these days should be experienced as positive by everyone. The Swedish flag is not allowed as part of carnival dress. … Positive and bright feelings must be in focus. … School photos must obviously be free of national symbols.”

However, the “precedent” for such rules had already been set ten years prior, in 2004, at a school in Vaargaarda, when two girls had worn printed sweatshirts which happened to display the Swedish flag and the word “Sweden.” They were told that this kind of clothing was not allowed at school. One of the girls told reporters that singing the national anthem had also been forbidden at the school.

In 2012, two members of Sweden’s parliament suggested that statues of the Swedish Kings Carl XII and Gustav II Adolf should be removed, because they represent a time when Sweden was a great military power, “a dark time in our country as well as in other countries, which were affected by Swedish aggression,” as the MPs wrote in the motion. Instead, the MPs suggested, the squares of central Stockholm should be adorned in a way such that they “signal peace, tolerance, diversity, freedom and solidarity.”

In 2013, a Baroque painting of the nude goddess Juno was removed from the restaurant of the Swedish parliament, ostensibly to avoid offense to feminist and Muslim sensibilities.

The above should not be discarded as crazy practices peculiar to Sweden. On the contrary, they present a perfect case-study of the consequences of politically correct culture driven to the extreme.

Indeed, these consequences are already proliferating across the Western world. One particularly noteworthy instance took place when Iranian president Hassan Rouhani visited Rome in January 2016. To prevent Rouhani having “a hormonal shock and ripp[ing] up the freshly signed contracts with our Italian industries,” as one Italian columnist, Massimo Gramellini, wrote, Rome covered up its classical nude statues. Who would have even imagined such sycophancy a decade ago?

In Britain, students have recently campaigned for the removal of symbols of British imperialism, such as a statue of Cecil Rhodes at Oxford University. These students claim the campaign is not only about the statue itself, but that it is “…a campaign against racism at Oxford, of which the Rhodes statue is a small but symbolic part.” Already in 2000, the London Mayor Ken Livingstone suggested that statues of two 19th-century British generals should be removed from Trafalgar Square in London, based on his own ignorance:

“The people on the plinths in the main square of our capital city should be identifiable to the generality of the population. I haven’t a clue who two of the generals there are or what they did. I imagine that not one person in 10,000 going through Trafalgar Square knows any details about the lives of those two generals. It might be time to look at moving them and having figures ordinary Londoners and other people from around the world would know.” The problem with all this, of course, is that most of London’s wealth and greatness in terms of art and architecture is due largely to British colonialism, so the question is just how many buildings would be left standing in the British capital, if one were to take this issue and bring it to its logical conclusion.

The trouble with wanting to scrub the cultural and historical slate clean, as it were, is, of course, that countries cannot just press “delete” on their culture and history. Such a move would entail not just the removal of books, paintings and statues, but a complete purge. Those who truly care for history will know that this experiment has already been attempted, not once but several times over, by the various communist and Nazi movements of the twentieth century. While there is little comparison between those movements and the culture of political correctness, the impulse governing them all nevertheless remains the same: To forge and impose one singular “truth” on everyone, rooting out everything that does not fit the utopian mold. That is neither “diverse” nor “tolerant.”

Obama Admin Will Not Commit to Barring Iranian Access to U.S. Dollar

May 19, 2016

Obama Admin Will Not Commit to Barring Iranian Access to U.S. Dollar, Washington Free Beacon, , May 19, 2016

(On and on it goes; where it stops or if it will nobody knows. — DM)

U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry speaks during a media conference at NATO headquarters in Brussels on Thursday, May 19, 2016. NATO foreign ministers this week will discuss how the alliance can deal more effectively with security threats outside Europe, including by training the Iraqi military and cooperating with the European Union to choke off people-smuggling operations in the central Mediterranean. (AP Photo/Virginia Mayo)

U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry speaks during a media conference at NATO headquarters in Brussels on Thursday, May 19, 2016.  (AP Photo/Virginia Mayo)

The Obama administration will not commit to halting its effort to help Iran access the U.S. dollar, despite past commitments to do so, according to a new congressional inquiry obtained by the Washington Free Beacon into the Treasury Department’s refusal to uphold its promises.

Leading senators are threatening to block all consideration of Treasury Department nominees until the administration ends its bid “to enable Iranian access to U.S. dollars” throughout the international financial system, according to a letter sent Thursday to the Treasury Department by Sens. Marco Rubio (R., Fla.) and Mark Kirk (R., Ill.).

Potential Iranian access to the U.S. dollar has caused friction between Congress and the Obama administration, which initially vowed during negotiations with Iran that such a move was out of the question.

However, senior administration officials, including Secretary of State John Kerry, have publicly sought to encourage Europeans to reengage in business with the Islamic Republic following last summer’s comprehensive nuclear agreement.

“We want to make it clear that legitimate business, which is clear under the definition of the agreement, is available to banks,” Kerry said in London last week.

The administration has been intentionally side-stepping questions about methods to give Iran backdoor access to the U.S. dollar, according to senior congressional sources informed of the matter.

The administration has assured lawmakers it will not grant Iran direct access to the U.S. financial system. However, it will not discuss backdoor methods in which U.S. dollars are given to Iran via international banks, source said.

“Whenever the administration gets asked whether it’ll allow Iran’s terror-sponsoring regime access to dollarized transactions outside of the U.S. financial system, a transaction that some people are starting to refer to as ‘Z-turn’ transactions, it flat-out avoids the question and instead says it doesn’t plan to allow Iran to engage in so-called ‘U-turn’ transactions or direct access to the U.S. financial system, something which lawmakers already know,” the source explained.

“This is the equivalent of giving an answer about oranges when you’ve been repeatedly asked about apples, and doesn’t change the fact that the critical questions about ‘Z-turn’ transactions for Iran really need to be clearly answered by the Treasury Department, once and for all,” the source said.

The apparent shift in the administration’s rhetoric on the issue has deepened concerns on Capitol Hill about alleged White House efforts to mislead Congress and the American people about the contents of the nuclear deal.

Rubio and Kirk are threatening to block all Treasury Department nominees from Senate consideration until the Obama administration answers questions about efforts to help Iran get access to U.S. dollars in the international marketplace, according to the letter obtained by the Free Beacon.

“We are disappointed that you ignored the request in the March 30th letter from Senators Rubio and Kirk to provide ‘assurances that the United States will not work on behalf of Iran to enable Iranian access to U.S. dollars elsewhere in the international financial system, including assisting Iran in gaining access to dollar payment systems outside the U.S. financial system,’” the senators wrote. “We do not support the consideration of Treasury Department nominees until our request is directly answered.”

Kirk and Rubio initially petitioned the Treasury Department in March to seek firm assurances that officials would commit to blocking Iranian access to the U.S. dollar.

The Treasury Department, in a May 11 response to Kirk and Rubio’s initial inquiry, declined to address specific questions regarding efforts to promote Iranian access to the U.S. dollar via foreign transactions outside the American financial system.

A month ago, the Obama administration launched a quiet push on Capitol Hill to reassure lawmakers that it would not grant Iran any access to the U.S. dollar or American financial markets, according to a Free Beacon report at the time.

That stance appears to have shifted in recent weeks, prompting concern from Iran deal critics such as Rubio and Kirk.

The Obama administration is now going above and beyond the purview of the nuclear agreement to help boost Iran’s economy, the senators allege.

“In its determined effort to provide Iran’s terror-sponsoring regime with benefits that were not expressly included in the ill-conceived Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, the Administration is on a path toward undermining the reputation of the United States as a global leader in antimoney laundering and countering terrorism financing,” they write.

“Access to the U.S. dollar is not an international right. But if Tehran wants access, the onus should be entirely on Iran to clean up its act—including by verifiably ending its sponsorship and financing of terrorism, its ballistic missile program, and its human rights abuses against the peoples of Iran and other nations—and reduce the risks that any financial transaction with Iran poses to the global financial community,” the letter states.

The outgoing Obama administration is waging a public campaign to encourage businesses to reenter the Iranian market place, which has been known as a key front for money laundering and terrorism funding, despite Iran’s continued pursuit of ballistic missile technology, which could carry a nuclear payload over great distances.

“Sadly, the Administration appears to be more focused in capitulating to Tehran than in forcing Iran’s terror regime to fundamentally change its behavior,” the lawmakers write. “It’s high time for the U.S. to stop making unreciprocated concessions and to start holding Iran fully accountable for continuing its dangerous and destructive behavior.”

The Senate Banking Committee is scheduled to hold two hearings on Iran next week and sources disclosed that this issue will be a primary focus for Congress.

EU-Turkey Migrant Deal Unravels

May 18, 2016

EU-Turkey Migrant Deal Unravels, Gatestone InstituteSoeren Kern, May 18, 2016

♦ “It can be expected that, as soon as Turkish citizens will obtain visa-free entry to the EU, foreign nationals will start trying to obtain Turkish passports … or use the identities of Turkish citizens, or to obtain by fraud the Turkish citizenship. This possibility may attract not only irregular migrants, but also criminals or terrorists.” — Leaked European Commission report, quoted in theTelegraph, May 17, 2016.

♦ According to the Telegraph, the EU report adds that as a result of the deal, the Turkish mafia, which traffics vast volumes of drugs, sex slaves, illegal firearms and refugees into Europe, may undergo “direct territorial expansion towards the EU.”

♦ “If they make the wrong decision, we will send the refugees.” — Burhan Kuzu, senior adviser to Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan.

♦ Erdogan is now demanding that the EU immediately hand over three billion euros ($3.4 billion) so that Turkish authorities can spend it as they see fit. The EU insists that the funds be transferred through international aid agencies in accordance with strict rules on how the aid can be spent. This prompted Erdogan to accuse the EU of “mocking the dignity” of the Turkish nation.

The EU-Turkey migrant deal, designed to halt the flow of migrants from Turkey to Greece, is falling apart just two months after it was reached. European officials are now looking for a back-up plan.

The March 18 deal was negotiated in great haste by European leaders desperate to gain control over a migration crisis in which more than one million migrants from Africa, Asia and the Middle East poured into Europe in 2015.

European officials, who appear to have promised Turkey more than they can deliver, are increasingly divided over a crucial part of their end of the bargain: granting visa-free travel to Europe for Turkey’s 78 million citizens by the end of June.

At the same time, Turkey is digging in its heels, refusing to implement a key part of its end of the deal: bringing its anti-terrorism laws into line with EU standards so that they cannot be used to detain journalists and academics critical of the government.

A central turning point in the EU-Turkey deal was the May 5 resignation of Turkish Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu, who lost a long-running power struggle with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan. Davutoglu was a key architect of the EU-Turkey deal and was also considered its guarantor.

On May 6, just one day after Davutoglu’s resignation, Erdogan warned European leaders that Turkey would not be narrowing its definition of terrorism: “When Turkey is under attack from terrorist organizations and the powers that support them directly, or indirectly, the EU is telling us to change the law on terrorism,” Erdogan said in Istanbul. “They say ‘I am going to abolish visas and this is the condition.’ I am sorry, we are going our way and you go yours.”

Erdogan insists that Turkey’s anti-terrorism laws are needed to fight Kurdish militants at home and Islamic State jihadists in neighboring Syria and Iraq. Human rights groups counter that Erdogan is becoming increasingly authoritarian and is using the legislation indiscriminately to silence dissent of him and his government.

European officials say that, according to the original deal, visa liberalization for Turkish citizens is conditioned on Turkey amending its anti-terror laws. Erdogan warns that if there is no visa-free travel by the end of June, he will reopen the migration floodgates on July 1. Such a move would allow potentially millions more migrants to pour into Greece.

European officials are now discussing a Plan B. On May 8, the German newspaper Bild reported on a confidential plan to house all migrants arriving from Turkey on Greek islands in the Aegean Sea. Public transportation to and from those islands to the Greek mainland would be cut off in order to prevent migrants from moving into other parts of the European Union.

Migrants would remain on the islands permanently while their asylum applications are being processed. Those whose asylum requests are denied would be deported back to their countries of origin or third countries deemed as “safe.”

The plan, which Bild reports is being discussed at the highest echelons of European power, would effectively turn parts of Greece into massive refugee camps for many years to come. It remains unclear whether Greek leaders will have any say in the matter. It is also unclear how Plan B would reduce the number of migrants flowing into Europe.

1607Thousands of newly arrived migrants, the vast majority of whom are men, crowd the platforms at Vienna West Railway Station on August 15, 2015 — a common scene in the summer and fall of 2015. (Image source: Bwag/Wikimedia Commons)

Speaking to the BBC News program, “World on the Move,” on May 16, Sir Richard Dearlove, the former head of the British intelligence service MI6, warned that the number of migrants coming to Europe during the next five years could run into millions. This, he said, would reshape the continent’s geopolitical landscape: “If Europe cannot act together to persuade a significant majority of its citizens that it can gain control of its migratory crisis then the EU will find itself at the mercy of a populist uprising, which is already stirring.”

Dearlove also warned against allowing millions of Turks visa-free access to the EU, describing the EU plan as “perverse, like storing gasoline next to the fire we’re trying to extinguish.”

On May 17, the Telegraph published the details of a leaked report from the European Commission, the powerful administrative arm of the European Union. The report warns that opening Europe’s borders to 78 million Turks would increase the risk of terrorist attacks in the European Union. The report states:

“It can be expected that, as soon as Turkish citizens will obtain visa-free entry to the EU, foreign nationals will start trying to obtain Turkish passports in order to pretend to be Turkish citizens and enter the EU visa free, or use the identities of Turkish citizens, or to obtain by fraud the Turkish citizenship. This possibility may attract not only irregular migrants, but also criminals or terrorists.”

According to the Telegraph, the report adds that as a result of the deal, the Turkish mafia, which traffics vast volumes of drugs, sex slaves, illegal firearms and refugees into Europe, may undergo “direct territorial expansion towards the EU.” The report warns: “Suspect individuals being allowed to travel to the Schengen territory without the need to go through a visa request procedure would have a greater ability to enter the EU without being noticed.”

While the EU privately admits that the visa waiver would increase the risk to European security, in public the EU has recommended that the deal be approved.

On May 4, the European Commission announced that Turkey has met most of the 72 “benchmarks of the roadmap” needed to qualify for the visa waiver. The remaining five conditions concern the fight against corruption, judicial cooperation with EU member states, deeper ties with the European law-enforcement agency Europol, data protection and anti-terrorism legislation.

European Commission Vice President Frans Timmermans said:

“Turkey has made impressive progress, particularly in recent weeks, on meeting the benchmarks of its visa liberalization roadmap…. This is why we are putting a proposal on the table which opens the way for the European Parliament and the Member States to decide to lift visa requirements, once the benchmarks have been met.”

In order for the visa waiver to take effect, it must be approved by the national parliaments of the EU member states, as well as the European Parliament.

Ahead of a May 18 debate at the European Parliament in Strasbourg over Turkey’s progress in fulfilling requirements for visa liberalization, Burhan Kuzu, a senior adviser to Erdogan, warned the European Parliament that it had an “important choice” to make.

In a Twitter message, Kuzu wrote: “If they make the wrong decision, we will send the refugees.” In a subsequent telephone interview with Bloomberg, he added: “If Turkey’s doors are opened, Europe would be miserable.”

Meanwhile, Erdogan has placed yet another obstacle in the way of EU-Turkey deal. He is now demanding that the EU immediately hand over three billion euros ($3.4 billion) promised under the deal so that Turkish authorities can spend it as they see fit.

The EU insists that the funds be transferred through the United Nations and other international aid agencies in accordance with strict rules on how the aid can be spent. That stance has prompted Erdogan to accuse the EU of “mocking the dignity” of the Turkish nation.

On May 10, Erdogan expressed anger at the glacial pace of the EU bureaucracy:

“This country [Turkey] is looking after three million refugees. What did they [the EU] say? We’ll give you €3 billion. Well, have they given us any of that money until now? No. They’re still stroking the ball around midfield. If you’re going to give it, just give it.

“These [EU] administrators come here, tour our [refugee] camps, then ask at the same time for more projects. Are you kidding us? What projects? We have 25 camps running. You’ve seen them. There is no such thing as a project. We’ve implemented them.”

In an interview with the Financial Times, Fuat Oktay, head of Turkey’s Disaster and Emergency Management Authority (AFAD), the agency responsible for coordinating the country’s refugee response, accused European officials of being fixated on “bureaucracies, rules and procedures” and urged the European Commission to find a way around them.

The European Commission insists that it was made clear from the outset that most of the money must go to aid organizations: “Funding under the Facility for Refugees in Turkey supports refugees in the country. It is funding for refugees and not funding for Turkey.”

The migration crisis appears to be having political repercussions for German Chancellor Angela Merkel, a leading proponent of the EU-Turkey deal. According to a new poll published by the German newsmagazine Cicero on May 10, two-thirds (64%) of Germans oppose a fourth term for Merkel, whose term ends in the fall of 2017.

In an interview with Welt am Sonntag, Horst Seehofer, the leader of the Christian Social Union (CSU), the Bavarian sister-party to Merkel’s Christian Democrats (CDU), blamed Merkel for enabling Erdogan’s blackmail: “I am not against talks with Turkey. But I think it is dangerous to be dependent upon Ankara.”

Sahra Wagenknecht of the Left Party accused Merkel of negotiating the EU-Turkey deal without involving her European partners: “The chancellor is responsible for Europe having become vulnerable to blackmail by the authoritarian Turkish regime.”

Cem Özdemir, leader of the Greens Party and the son of Turkish immigrants said: “The EU-Turkey deal has made Europe subject to Turkish blackmail. The chancellor bears significant responsibility for this state of affairs.”

The EU’s Kiss of Death

May 10, 2016

The EU’s Kiss of Death, Gatestone InstituteJudith Bergman, May 10, 2016

♦ The European Union may yet come to realize that this latest ill-concealed jab at the Central- and Eastern European members of the European Union may signal the beginning of the unraveling of the European Union, an event which, considering the authoritarian structure of the organization, might be a good thing. The EU’s authority comes, undemocratically, from the top down, rather than from the bottom up; it is non-transparent, unaccountable and there is no mechanism for removing European Commission representatives.

♦ “We especially do not like it when people who have never lived in Hungary try to give us lectures on how we should cope with our own problems. Calling us racists or xenophobes is the cheapest argument. It’s used just to dodge the issues.” — Zoltán Kovács, spokesman for Hungary’s Prime Minister Viktor Orban.

♦ By persisting in pushing their agendas on European Union member states that still consider themselves sovereign and not merely provinces of the EU, Timmermans and his European Commission bureaucrats may just have given the European Union its kiss of death.

The European Union is hell-bent on forcing member states to take “their share” of migrants. To this end, the European Commission has proposed reforms to EU asylum rules that would see enormous financial penalties imposed on members refusing to take in what it deems a sufficient number of asylum seekers, apparently even if this means placing those states at a severe financial disadvantage.

The European Commission is planning sanctions of an incredible $290,000 for every migrant that recalcitrant EU member states refuse to receive. Given that EU countries such as Hungary, Poland, the Czech Republic, Slovakia and Austria have closed their borders to migrants or are in the process of doing so, it is not difficult to discern at whom the EU is aiming its planned penalties.

The EU may yet come to realize, however, that this latest ill-concealed jab at the Central- and Eastern European members of the European Union — if it passes muster by most member states and members of the European parliament — may just signal the beginning of the unraveling of the European Union, an event which, considering the authoritarian structure of the organization, might be a good thing. The EU’s authority comes, undemocratically, from the top down, rather than from the bottom up; it is non-transparent, unaccountable and there is no mechanism for removing European Commission representatives.

The migrant crisis has revealed a deep and seemingly irreconcilable rift between those countries that roughly two decades ago still found themselves on the wrong side of the Iron Curtain and have not forgotten it, and Western European countries spared from a merciless Soviet totalitarianism. The soft Western Europeans, instead, developed politically correct credos of “diversity” and “multiculturalism,” which they intractably push down the throats of those recently released from captivity, refusing to show the tolerance of which they themselves purport to be high priests.

In September, European Commission Vice President Frans Timmermans said,

“We should know more about Central European history. Knowing that they were isolated for generations, that they were under oppression by Moscow for so long, that they have no experience with diversity in their society, and it creates fear in the society.

“Any society, anywhere in the world, will be diverse in the future — that’s the future of the world. So [Central European countries] will have to get used to that. They need political leaders who have the courage to explain that to their population instead of playing into the fears as I’ve seen Mr Orbán doing in the last couple of months.”

Exactly because central Europeans were subjected to a totalitarian ideology for half a century, they are rather unenthusiastic about submitting to a new, increasingly totalitarian ideology, especially one which seeks to impose itself as the “only truth,” and in its intolerance is averse to any nonconformity — as Timmermans’ comments make condescendingly clear.

The European Union’s vision of an ideal “multicultural” and “diverse” society seems to be viewed by the central Europeans as humbug, perhaps because they have correctly observed that the “multiculturalism” on display in Western Europe is largely a monoculture of the Islamic variety.

If there is anything at which the Central Europeans became experts during their Soviet internment, it was deciphering the doublespeak of communist apparatchiks, which may account for their adeptness at deciphering the doublespeak coming from Eurocrats such as Timmermans. As the Hungarian Prime Minister’s spokesman, Zoltán Kovács, said in September, “… multi-culturalism in Western Europe has not been a success in our view. We want to avoid making the same mistakes ourselves.”

The magic that the European Union once held for Central European countries, which rushed to join the organization after the demise of communism — believing it to be the very antithesis of what they had just experienced under communist rule — is fast evaporating.

In February, Czech Prime Minister Bohuslav Sobotka said that, “If Britain leaves the EU, we can expect debates about leaving the EU in a few years too.” Three-fifths of Czechs say that they are unhappy with EU membership, and according to an October 2015 poll by the STEM agency, 62% said they would vote against it in a referendum.

In March, after the Brussels terrorist attacks, Polish Prime Minister Beata Szydło said, “I see no possibility at this time of immigrants coming to Poland.”

“Until procedures to verify the refugees are put in action, we cannot accept them,” Rafał Bochenek, a government spokesman, told reporters.

“The priority of the government is the safety of Poles … We understand the previous government … signed commitments which bind our country. We cannot allow a situation in which events taking place in the countries of Western Europe are carried over to the territory of Poland.”

In Poland, 64 percent of Poles want the country’s borders closed to migrants.

1593The European Commission, led by Jean-Claude Juncker and Frans Timmermans (left), is hell-bent on forcing member states to take “their share” of migrants. In March, Polish Prime Minister Beata Szydło (right) bluntly stated: “I see no possibility at this time of immigrants coming to Poland.”

In Hungary, Prime Minister Viktor Orban’s spokesman, Zoltán Kovács, stated:

“Mr. Timmermans is right that we have not had the same experience as Western Europe, where countries such as Holland, Britain and France have had mass immigration as a result of their colonial legacies. But we would like to deal with our problems in a way that suits us. And we especially do not like it when people who have never lived in Hungary try to give us lectures on how we should cope with our own problems. Calling us racists or xenophobes is the cheapest argument. It’s used just to dodge the issues.”

Even among those Eastern European countries still waiting to be admitted to the EU, the enthusiasm for the EU seems to have dwindled. “The EU that all of us are aspiring to, it has lost its magic power,” Serbian Prime Minister, Aleksander Vucic said in February, “Yes we all want to join, but it is no longer the big dream it was in the past.”

The reactions of countries such as Poland and Hungary are the normal, healthy reactions of nations who wish to remain prosperous, sovereign and safe for the sake of their own citizens. In addition, entertaining no illusions about “multiculturalism,” they appear to have a justifiable apprehension about the detrimental effects of the current migration crisis on national security and finances.

It is not only the newest members of the EU that have begun to realize that is a bad idea to defer decisions about borders and national security to an unelected supranational entity, which appears completely oblivious to the concerns of its member states.

In Norway, the government announced that it will not accommodate any more migrants beyond the 1500 that the country has already agreed to take during the next two years, as part of the EU’s refugee relocation scheme. “We have set a quota for refugees from the EU. Increasing it is not of current interest,” Immigration Minister Sylvi Listhaug said in April. Norway, in fact, has begun paying asylum seekers to return to their own countries.

In Austria, the government is imposing border controls at the Brenner Pass, the main Alpine crossing into Italy, and erecting a barrier between the two countries.

In the face of such resistance from member states, the European Commission’s plan to penalize them for not accepting “their share” of migrants could not possibly be more ill-timed and out of touch. It comes across as a desperate attempt by the EU’s executive body to force its way of handling the migrant crisis onto disobedient EU member states, like an authoritarian parent disciplining its unruly children. There is, however, such a thing as bending something until it snaps. By persisting in pushing their agendas on EU member states that still consider themselves sovereign and not merely provinces of the European Union, Timmermans and his European Commission bureaucrats may just have given the European Union its kiss of death.

Pope Francis Blasts Europe Over Migrants

May 7, 2016

Pope Francis Blasts Europe Over Migrants, Front Page Magazine, Daniel Greenfield, May 7, 2016

02

Sigh.

Europe is struggling to live up to the vision of its founders, Pope Francis has said in a powerful speech that asked: “What has happened to you, the Europe of humanism, the champion of human rights, democracy and freedom?”

Speaking as he became the first pope to accept the prestigious Charlemagne prize for his work on behalf of European solidarity, the pontiff called for Europe to reclaim the principles that had been established after the second world war, above all by embracing integration and revamping its economic model to “benefit ordinary people and society as a whole”.

…Founded in 1950 by Dr. Kurt Pfeiffer, the Charlemagne Prize is “the oldest and best-known prize awarded for work done in the service of European unification,” according to the organization’s website.

Kurt Pfeiffer was a Nazi. There are debates about whether he was a reluctant Nazi or not, but he was certainly a member. Rodney Atkinson has spoken about this in the past, I don’t know that I accept the whole thing, but certainly there are valid questions to be raised here.

The Charlemagne Prize. The prize was originally founded by the Nazis, but was then re-founded in 1949 by the efforts of the Aachen textile merchant Kurt Pfeiffer. Pfeiffer, who had previously been a member of the Nazi Party and of five other Nazi organizations, maintained that he had always tended to be a fundamental believer in Europe. And the Charlemagne Prize Society was to be associated with the imperial idea Reichsidee of the Emperor Charlemagne. The post-war image of Charlemagne as unifier of the Christian west was preceded by his Nazi portrayal as a unifier of the German tribes. Charlemagne had been compared with Hitler, his Reich and Greater Germany. This is clearly exemplified by the career of the Aachen professor of philosophy Peter Mennicken, who took over the professorship previously occupied by an expelled Jew, and who after the war had authorized influence over the symbolism of the Charlemagne Prize and the liturgy of its award ceremonies.

But we’ll skip over to the speech about the ideals of the EU’s founders. Some of whom just happened to Nazi-ish.

He expressed his desire for a Europe “where being a migrant is not a crime but a summons to greater commitment on behalf of the dignity of every human being,” and where youth can “breathe the pure air of honesty” in a culture that is “undefiled by the insatiable needs of consumerism.”

“I dream of fa Europe that promotes and protects the rights of everyone, without neglecting its duties towards all,” he said, and voiced his hope for a Europe “of which it will not be said that its commitment to human rights was its last utopia.”

Except you can’t protect the rights of all. Sometimes you have to choose.

You couldn’t protect German sovereignty and Polish sovereignty at the same time. You couldn’t protect German and French civilians at the same time. You had to make choices. You can’t protect Muslim rights to migrate and the right of the Jewish population of Europe not to be terrorized or murdered.

You have to choose. You have to decide between good and evil rather than providing a fuzzy humanistic picture in which evil does not appear to exist except as selfishness in the face of social justice demands. In which evil is not going along with the latest horrible and disastrous scheme executed at your own expense.

Pointing to French statesman Robert Schuman, the Pope echoed his insistence at the birth of the first European Community that the continent couldn’t be built all at once, but “through concrete achievements which first create a ‘de facto solidarity.’”

Schuman was one of Petain’s ministers. Again, like Pfeiffer, his legacy is complex and mixed, but it’s interesting that so many key EU people are so tainted.

The Pope also stressed the importance of cultural integration, rather than merely resettling foreigners geographically, allowing European peoples to overcome “the temptation of falling back on unilateral paradigms and opting for forms of ideological colonization.”

Francis advocated for a culture of dialogue involving “a discipline that enables us to view others as valid dialogue partners, to respect the foreigner, the immigrant and people from different cultures as worthy of being listened to.”

“Today we urgently need to build coalitions that are not only military and economic, but cultural, educational, philosophical and religious,” he said, and encouraged the leaders to arm their people “with the culture of dialogue and encounter.”

How does the culture of dialogue work within Islam? It’s the old “nice doggie” until you find a big enough rock school of dialogue.

And what does cultural integration mean? It seems to involve listening to Muslim migrants, rather than them listening.

To create dignified, well-paying jobs “requires coming up with new, more inclusive and equitable economic models, aimed not at serving the few, but at benefiting ordinary people and society as a whole,” he said.

“It would involve passing from an economy directed at revenue, profiting from speculation and lending at interest, to a social economy that invests in persons by creating jobs and providing training,” he said, adding that “we need to move from a liquid economy prepared to use corruption as a means of obtaining profits to a social economy that guarantees access to land and lodging through labor.”

An economy is based on profit. A social economy is just a welfare state funded by profitability somewhere. Even Communist countries ended up needing to find a profitable venue. China did really well at it. The USSR was terrible at it and collapsed.

In an actual economy, social mobility and dignity may not be perfect, but they are available. A social economy is just feudalism with more buzzwords and depends entirely on the goodwill of insiders. No one has dignity in a social economy. They have no sense of worth. They depend entirely on charity dispensed by political barons which is stolen from the people who have been enslaved and denied the profits of their work.

Pope Francis closed his speech by voicing his dream for “a new European humanism” based on the welcome for foreigners, care for the poor, and respect for human life and dignity.

You can have two out of three. But if you turn Europe into Pakistan and Saudi Arabia, you’ll eventually have none of the above.