Archive for the ‘Europe’ category

Cruz Hits Trump on NATO ‘Surrender’ in Wake of Brussels Attacks

March 22, 2016

Cruz Hits Trump on NATO ‘Surrender’ in Wake of Brussels Attacks, Newsmax, Sandy Fitzgerald, March 22, 2016

(At least he didn’t blame the Trump rallies for the violence in Brussels. — DM)

Cruz vs Trump(AP)

GOP presidential candidate Ted Cruz said Tuesday that Donald Trump was engaging in a “pre-emptive surrender” to Islamic terror by calling for a “withdrawal” from NATO on the eve of the Brussels terror attacks.

On Monday, Trump told CNN that the U.S. should greatly reduce its support of NATO.

“It’s too much and frankly it’s a different world than it was when we originally conceived of the idea,” Trump said of the US-European security alliance.

Cruz said he found it “striking” that the terror attacks occurred on the day after his rival candidate Donald Trump called for reducing the U.S. role NATO.

“We see Brussels where NATO is headquartered as the subject of a radical Islamic terrorist attack,” Cruz said in a press conference from Washington D.C.

“Donald Trump is wrong that America should withdraw from the world and abandon our allies. Donald Trump is wrong that America should retreat from Europe, retreat from NATO, hand Vladimir Putin a major victory, and while’s he’s at it, hand ISIS a major victory.”

Instead, said the Texas senator, NATO would be crucial in any United States effort in “utterly destroying ISIS.”

“And I would note that NATO  is ready to act in a way our president is not,” said Cruz.

“Donald Trump’s proposal to withdraw from the world, to withdraw from NATO and Europe is sadly consistent with his statement that he intends to be neutral between Israel and the Palestinians.”

Cruz also said Trump’s approach was similar to Obama’s.

“We have seen for 7 years a president that cannot distinguish between our friends and enemies. A president that cannot distinguish between the nation of Israel and Islamic terrorists who seek to murder us, and it would be a mistake to elect another president who buys into the same left-wing moral relativism that equates the terrorist blowing himself you have and murdering innocent civilians to the brave soldiers and law enforcement officers risking everything to keep us safe.”

Cruz was not alone for criticizing Trump on his stand on NATO.

Ohio Gov. John Kasich, appearing on Fox News Tuesday morning, said Trump’s plan for downsizing the U.S. role in NATO was dangerous as we confront the grave threat of Islamic terrorism.

Trump: We have to be very careful who comes into our country

March 22, 2016

Trump: We have to be very careful who comes into our country, Fox News via You Tube, March 22, 2016

War in Europe

March 22, 2016

War in Europe, Front Page MagazineRobert Spencer, March 22, 2016

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At least 28 are dead in Tuesday morning’s jihad attacks in Brussels. Enough.

It’s time for votes of no-confidence. Parliamentary systems generally allow for votes of no-confidence that trigger new elections. It’s time for the governments of Britain, France, Germany, Belgium, the Netherlands, and more to fall. I’m not talking about violent revolution. There are mechanisms for the peaceful replacement of governments in most European nations at times when the existing government is seen widely to be inadequate for the task at hand. It is time to put those mechanisms to use. The existing governments are responsible for policies that have turned Europe into a war zone, and that war is just beginning. The political and media elites have failed Europe and the free world, and put Europe on a course toward civil war and bloodshed unseen on the continent since the days of Hitler.

A new Hitler is in Europe. It is not Donald Trump. It is not the “right-wing.” The new Hitler is very much like the old Hitler: he hates Jews. He has contempt for the historical patrimony of Western civilization. He means to rule by an iron fist and subordinate every other power to his will. He respects only strength, and despises weakness. The new Hitler is not just one man, but millions — millions who believe in an ideology that teaches warfare against and subjugation of free people under its heel.

Historically, Europe saw the threat that the men who held to this ideology posed, and shed blood to resist their advance. Now, the sons and heirs of those who gave their lives to make sure their children and their children’s children would live free have flung open the gates and invited in those who would enslave them. They have invited them into their countries in massive numbers, and vilified and ostracized anyone who dared note the lessons of history and the content of the invaders’ ideology.

This morning, as a result of these policies, Brussels is engulfed in chaos and the grief of blood shed in war. There will be much, much more to come of this.

It is time to sweep them out. All of them: the multiculturalists, the cultural relativists, the internationalists, the levellers, the elites who have brought this death and destruction upon Brussels today, and Paris yesterday, and the rest of Europe tomorrow. Europe, if it is to survive as a home of free people, must turn out its entire political and media establishment. This can still be done peacefully, and must be done quickly. If Europe is to survive as a home of free people, it needs governments who recognize that the “refugees” storming into their countries now include an untold number of jihad murderers who mean to kill their people and destroy their societies, and who have the courage to stand up and stop that refugee flow, and turn it back. Saudi Arabia has tens of thousands of air-conditioned tents for hajj pilgrims, and not one refugee. Why? Because they have noted, correctly, that there are jihad terrorists among the refugees.

Can Saudi Arabia protect itself and Europe cannot?

This is a war. It is a war for survival. It is a war that will determine whether Europe (and North America is not far behind) will live in freedom or slavery. The present European political and media elites are inviting the slavery of their people. They must be soundly repudiated. Too much is at stake to continue to countenance their self-delusion and fantasy. Those who are struggling to survive cannot afford to be unrealistic about what they’re facing. In the United States also, we need leaders who will speak honestly about the nature and magnitude of the war we’re in. Surely there are some people in Europe who are both able to lead and willing to tell the truth. It is time for them to be peacefully installed in power — before it’s too late, as it very soon will be.

John Kerry to the World: Let’s Gang up on Israel

March 18, 2016

John Kerry to the World: Let’s Gang up on Israel, Stephen M. Flatlow, March 17, 2016

netanyahu-kerry-bibi-300x178 (1)Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu with US Secretary of State John Kerry. Photo: GPO.

JNS.org – John Kerry has a new strategy for achieving Mideast peace: mobilize the international community to gang up on Israel.

That was the essence of the secretary of state’s disturbing remarks in Paris on March 13. Kerry declared that the Obama administration is “looking for a way forward” to bring about creation of a Palestinian state. He said that Palestinian statehood is “absolutely essential.”

Not just “an idea worth exploring;” not just “something to be considered’.” Rather, “absolutely essential.” Kerry and President Obama have made up their minds and will not consider any alternatives. They have decided that establishing an independent Palestinian state is the only solution to the Arab-Israeli conflict. It’s just a question of how to make it happen.

The administration’s attempts to pressure Israel into creating a Palestinian state obviously have not been successful so far. So Kerry is looking for new ways to harangue the Israelis. Standing next to a group of European foreign ministers at the Paris press conference, Kerry said: “There’s not any one country or one person who can resolve this. This is going to require the global community, it will require international support.”

Significantly, Kerry’s quest for an international alliance to pressure Israel comes on the heels of France’s recent announcement that it will try to convene an international conference to resolve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The French said that if the conference failed to produce a Palestinian state, they will go ahead and unilaterally recognize such a state. That’s the French idea of “negotiations.”

The French approach, which Secretary Kerry now seems to be moving towards, is reminiscent of similar proposals that were made back in 1985. Alarmed, then-Defense Minister Yitzhak Rabin flew to Washington to try to head off the convening what was being called an “international umbrella” for Mideast negotiations.

“Whenever anyone mentions umbrella, it reminds me of Chamberlain and Munich,” Rabin declared. For Rabin to invoke the memory of Chamberlain selling out to Hitler at Munich — and for Rabin to use those words at a press conference in Washington — vividly illustrates how dangerous he considered the ‘international’ proposal to be.

It’s not hard to understand why Rabin in 1985 opposed such a proposal, and it’s not hard to see why Israel’s leaders today oppose it, too. If Kerry succeeds in his strategy, such an international conference or umbrella would consist of a dozen or more Arab and European countries ganging up on Israel and demanding that the Israelis make unilateral concessions to the Palestinians. Knowing the Obama administration’s pro-Palestinian slant, one must assume that the US would side with the Arabs and Europeans.

The French — evidently with Kerry’s tacit approval, or perhaps even his encouragement–are pushing forward. French diplomat Pierre Vimont will be visiting Israel and the Palestinian Authority this week to promote France’s initiative. French Foreign Minister Jean-Marc Ayrault, appearing alongside Kerry at the press conference: “The conflict is getting worse and the status quo cannot continue.”

The conflict is getting worse? No, it’s not.

The status quo cannot continue? Yes, it can.

I am the last person in the world to minimize the reality of Palestinian terrorism. But there’s no way anybody can say the current attacks are worse than the weekly bus bombings of the 1990s. Israel’s strong military response put an end to the suicide bombings — which shows that if Israel does not fight with one hand tied behind its back, it can beat the terrorists.

And the status quo may not be the ideal solution, but show me a better one that’s feasible. Withdrawing to indefensible borders? Setting up an armed or soon-to-be-armed Palestinian state just a few miles from Jerusalem and Tel Aviv? In 1976, people were saying “the status quo cannot continue.” They were saying it 1986 and 1996 and 2006, too. Yet here we are, nearly 50 years after the 1967 war — and it has continued, because the alternatives have been worse.

Of course, what Kerry and French call the “status quo” is not at all the same as the status quo of the 1970s or 1980s. In 1995, Rabin withdrew from the areas where 98% of the Palestinians reside. For the past 21 years, the Palestinian Authority has functioned as a de-facto state in a large portion of Judea-Samaria. The only thing the PA lacks is a full-fledged army and the ability to import tanks and planes. And from Israel’s point of view, that’s not such a bad status quo.

So maybe it’s time for Kerry and his gang of would-be interveners to step back, take a deep breath, and face the fact that the slogans and ideas of the 1980s — “status quo,” “international umbrella” and the like — are just not suited to today’s reality.

Syrian Refugees a Threat to the West?

March 18, 2016

Syrian Refugees a Threat to the West? Religious Freedom Coalition, Editors, March 15, 2016

Syrian immigrants

“Europe is a basket case” and “it is going to get worse in 2016,” stated former House Intelligence Committee chairman Pete Hoekstra at a February 29 Center for a Secure Free Society (CSFS) panel in Washington, DC, on Middle East refugees.  He and his fellow panelists gave critical analysis of various dangers faced by Western societies responding to the humanitarian crisis caused by sectarian violence in a disintegrating Iraq and Syria.

Center for a Secure Free Society Senior Fellow J.D. Gordon introduced the panel by noting that four million Syrians, about half the country’s population, have fled the country.  Such numbers placed in perspective the 10,000 Syrian refugees President Barack Obama’s administration intended to resettle in the United States, as mentioned in the event literature.  Center for a Secure Free Society International Fellow for Canada Candice Malcolmsimilarly noted that Canada had fulfilled the very day of the panel a campaign pledge by recently elected Prime Minister Justin Trudeau to accept 25,000 Syrian refugees.

Yet the panel focused on Europe, where an estimated 900,000 Syrian refugees had entered Germany alone, as noted by panel moderator and Daily Caller opinion editor Jordan Bloom.  American career diplomat Ambassador Alberto Fernandez described this human stream by which Europe voided its own entry rules as a “massive, unplanned exercise in virtue signaling by the European Union.”  Bloom worriedly noted the recent announcement by German authorities that they had lost track of 130,000 refugees.

“Germany is lying,” Hoekstra responded to Bloom amidst audience laughter, “there is no way that they are still tracking 770,000, that they have only lost 130,000.  They only know that they have lost 130,000.”  Hoekstra described television coverage during a recent Europe vacation of thousands of refugees in the Budapest train station where he and his wife had just transited.  He speculated that perhaps another 50-70,000 refugees had entered Germany without any official knowledge.

“If you don’t think that they are seeded with ISIS [Islamic State in Iraq and Syria] people, you are crazy,” Hoekstra said of these refugees while predicting for Europe as well as Canada a “security nightmare.”  “We have no idea who these people are.  The Canadians have no idea who these people are,” he stated while suggesting that half the refugees entering Europe actually came from Afghanistan.  Fernandez discussed a Syrian friend living in Belgium who went to visit 90 supposed Syrian refugees in her community but only discovered five; the rest of the individuals hailed from various places like Afghanistan or Eritrea.

Malcolm cited worrying statistics such as those of a British polling firm that found 20 percent of Syrians in general and 13 percent of Syrian refugee camp residents in particular having a positive view of ISIS.  A Lebanese cabinet minister had estimated that two percent of Syrian refugees were ISIS sympathizers/members, approximating nonetheless 20,000 dangerous individuals among Lebanon’s 1.2 million Syrian refugees.  Yet for Syrian refugees “Europe has absolutely no selection criteria whatsoever.  It is a first come, first served free-for-all.”

Malcolm described strict Canadian security controls similar to America’s designed to screen such dangers among refugee resettlement applicants.  Canada only accepted Syrian families, no single men, from United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) camps and applicants could not have infectious diseases or criminal records.  Any inconsistency in an applicant’s story immediately stops security checks involving an interview.

Nonetheless, Malcolm noted that ISIS had seized passport production facilities in Syria’s failed state, a factor among others like stolen identification that would stymie even Canada’s precautions.  Reliable Syrian officials for local background investigations no longer existed, she noted, while Hoekstra observed that “by definition, trying to get information from a failed state means you are going to get failed information.”  While Canadian intelligence has already identified Islamic terror cells in every major Canadian city, Malcolm stated, ‘it just takes one to get through to create a national security threat.”  This should also concern Canada’s American neighbor across a basically open border.

While Trudeau’s refugee pledge initially helped him on the campaign trail, Canadian public opinion has “totally flipped” on further refugee resettlement, Malcolm observed.  “After the [November 2015] Paris attacks, people in Canada started to realize that there was a threat” and overwhelmed Canadian refugee aid organizations want a pause in admitting refugees.  While Trudeau has called for resettling another 25,000 refugees, 70 percent of surveyed Canadians disagree with his policy and 43 percent want no more.

Fernandez noted that security concerns can extend beyond the first generation of resettled Muslim refugees.  “Second generation immigrants are an at risk population,” as unlike the parents who show gratitude towards asylum countries, the children “grow up confused, they grow up with identity issues.”  As an example he cited the 2013 Boston marathon bombers, the offspring of Chechen asylum seekers, while Malcolm mentioned Ottawa’s 2014 Parliament Hill shooter, a Canadian-born man whose father was involved with Libyan jihadists.

Himself a Cuban refugee, Fernandez worried about Muslim refugee assimilation in a Europe now having an “acute crisis of identity.”  He emphasized the necessity of a “confident, clear-minded culture, society, and state who understands who they are, what they are, what their values are, what they stand for, to be able to assimilate others.”  The demand to assimilate foreign-born individuals into a society begs the question “assimilate into what?”

Amidst all these concerns, Fernandez noted in Syria the “tremendous irony that the countries that are not responsible for this debacle are the ones being called upon to do much” to help.  Iran, Qatar, Russia, and Saudi Arabia had given the most aid to the Syrian conflict parties, yet the single largest humanitarian donor to Syrian refugees was the United States, a non-Muslim-majority country.  Malcolm meanwhile noted that 90 percent of Syrian refugees originally offered sanctuary in Canada refused, demonstrating how many refugees wanted to stay in the region.  Many things would be simpler for all concerned if only they could satisfactorily fulfill this wish.

The Israel-Bashing Industry’s “Intellectuals”

March 16, 2016

The Israel-Bashing Industry’s “Intellectuals” Gatestone Institute, Giulio Meotti, March 16, 2016

♦ These novelists hold a deep, uninformed, irrational hatred. Instead of backing the only country that gives full rights to all its citizens, they are instrumental in attacking not only Israel but the Jewish people.

♦ What is notable is that every single time, these most illustrious writers “forget” to say why Israel built those fences, checkpoints and roadblocks in the first place.

♦ Saramago, while he was visiting Ramallah, chose not to see and talk about the Israeli restaurants, malls and hotels turned into carpets of human bodies. The wholesale slaughter of Jews was the only reason Israel had to send tanks and soldiers back into the Palestinian cities after the Oslo Accords. Saramago did not mention the context; he preferred to give credence to a distorted, demonizing vision.

What is the only country about which can be said that its very existence is disputed? Clue: Not Zimbabwe, not Tuvalu, not even overrun Tibet. Which country’s boundaries, bought with blood in wars initiated by others, are challenged by all nations, who now seem determined to destroy it through boycotts, unjust defamation and purported “laws” that are applied to no other nation?

Which country fully respects the rights of women and every kind of ethnic, religious and sexual minorities, notwithstanding that it is condemned at the United Nations for being “the worst violator of women’s rights” — worse than Syria, Afghanistan, Somalia, Pakistan, China, Saudi Arabia, Iran and Sudan?

Which country provides its own enemy with water, electricity, food and medical treatment? Its military, to avoid enemy civilian casualties, warns its enemy to evacuate buildings before attacking them, and — instead of simply carpet bombing the enemy as all other nations do, including most democracies — sends its own soldiers possibly to die in ground operations?

The country is Israel — the only country that even famous writers, intellectuals and Nobel laureates target, demonize and criminalize.

There was a time when Nobel laureates for Literature, such as the German Heinrich Böll, the French Jean-Paul Sartre and the Italian Eugenio Montale, rushed to denounce injustice. Earlier, in the name of best Europe’s values — justice, freedom and solidarity — they condemned the threats to the State of Israel’s existence.

But today, these novelists hold a deep, uninformed, irrational hatred towards the same place. Instead of backing the only country that gives full rights to all its citizens, they are instrumental in attacking not only Israel but the Jewish people. In Germany, Hitler’s Mein Kampf is the new best-seller. In Europe today, you can even find a great number of books that wipe Israel off the map. And a provincial council near Glasgow, West Dunbartonshire, banned Israeli books from local libraries.

In the chorus of those who speak from journals, poems and novels, there have been a few noble exceptions. The Albanian writer Ismail Kadaré, a Muslim candidate positioned every year to win the Nobel Prize for Literature, turned down a request to boycott the tiny Jewish State. Israel, he says, faces “the threat of disappearance,” and he compared Israel to Albania under Nazi occupation. Also the author of the Harry Potter books, JK Rowling, refused to add her name to the list of Israel’s boycotters.

Their brave, solitary gestures highlight the sluggish, uninquiring conformity of the “intelligentsia’s” campaign to pile unmerited calumnies on Israel.

Worse, supposed “intellectuals” often spout raw anti-Semitism while giving a pass to the truly barbarous people among us. If the Nobel Committee had any decency, it would revoke the prizes it awarded for “Peace” to such “humanitarians” as Fidel Castro and Yasser Arafat. It is painful to watch the Nobel Committee make a fool of itself year after year, and it is painful to watch these so-called intellectuals be so unaware and filled with prejudice against the people who least deserve it.

An Italian writer, Dario Fo, a laureate of the Nobel Prize for Literature, just gave an interview to the newspaper, La Repubblica. Fo, talking about the Jewish patriarch, Moses, said: “Moses was killing women and children because they worshiped idols.” Mr. Fo went on blaming “the Jews’ brutality against those who follow other religions, as it happens today.” Excuse me? Is it the Jews who are burning people alive, drowning them in cages, slitting throats or crucifying anyone for following a different religion?

Mr. Fo’s comparison is as wrong as it is ghastly. It is not the Jews who suicide-bomb Palestinian buses, cafes, wedding halls and discotheques. It is not the Jews who now try to mow down Palestinians with cars or stab them in the street. It is the reverse — and has been for years.

The daily newspaper La Stampa charged Dario Fo with “recycling anti-Semitic stereotypes.” Fo is not new at this. In the 1970s, in one of his theatrical operas, “Resistance: Italian and Palestinian people speak,” the future Nobel Prize laureate compared Nazism to Zionism and the Palestinian fedayeen terrorists to the anti-Fascist partisans.

A few days after the 9/11 attacks, Fo also said that,

“the great speculators wallow in an economy that every year kills tens of millions of people with poverty — so what is 20,000 dead in New York? Regardless of who carried out the massacre, this violence is the legitimate daughter of the culture of violence, hunger and inhumane exploitation.”

Who gave this famous writer the right to defame, earlier, not only Israel’s name but also 9/11’s victims?

Another Nobel prize-winning novelist, Mario Vargas Llosa, as well as the Pulitzer Prize winner Dave Eggers, are among a group of international novelists who will contribute to a book of essays next year about “50 years of Israeli occupation” that will be published by Harper Collins, one of the publishers that wiped Israel off the map.

The book is part of an initiative by Breaking the Silence, a non-governmental organization (NGO) which makes sweeping charges against the Israeli army “based on anonymous and unverifiable hearsay ‘testimonies.'” while refusing to disclose the names of the Israeli soldiers who “testified.” Worse, it is being funded specifically “to incriminate the IDF” (Israel Defense Forces) and, was explicitly directed by European charities to prove that Israel acted improperly. In an article entitled, “Europe to Breaking the Silence: Bring Us As Many Incriminating Testimonies As Possible,” the watchdog group NGO Monitor disclosed that:

Contrary to BtS’ claim that “the contents and opinions in this booklet do not express the position of the funders,” NGO Monitor research reveals that a number of funders made their grants conditional on the NGO obtaining a minimum number of negative “testimonies.” This contradicts BtS’ declarations and thus turns it into an organization that represents its foreign donors’ interest, severely damaging the NGO’s reliability and its ability to analyze complicated combat situations.

Are these “prestigious” writers aware of the organization’s predetermined bias which is going to fund their new book?

There is also, of course, the problem of double standards and hypocrisy. These writers did not decide to put their pen at the service of the Syria’s civil war victims or the Christians and Yazidi who are suffering a genocide in Iraq. No, these writers targeted Israel, the only democracy in the Middle East, and its supposed “occupation” — which they fail to disclose was backed by the Palestinians themselves in the Oslo II Accord of 1995, Chapter 3, Article XVII Jurisdiction [1], which in fact turned the Palestinian people into the most protected Arab population in the entire Middle East. Go to Ramallah and Jenin and you will see the difference between how they live compared to the people living in Aleppo, Sana’a and Mosul.

The most prolific novelists in the Israel-Bashing Industry are, sadly, the British. “Sadly,” especially as Iran has within the last month raised the bounty offered on the head of a British citizen, Salman Rushdie, by another $600,000, in addition to the $3 million issued by Ayatollah Khomeini in 1989. That brings the incentive for murdering a novelist to roughly $4 million. About that, the British government has been shamefully silent. The only condemnation so far seems to have come from the Iranian journalist, Amir Taheri, the British journalist, Douglas Murray and from PEN.

Another “intellectual,” John Berger, a Booker Prize winner, called for artists to decline being published by Israeli publishers and to undertake a boycott of the Jewish State. Harold Pinter, the late Nobel Laureate playwright, has gone so far as to declare Israel “the central factor in world unrest,” presumably forgetting about Pakistan, Afghanistan, Iran, and Sudan. Showing how thin is the line separating criticism and anti-Semitism, Tom Paulin, poet, essayist and academic at Oxford, said Jewish “settlers” in Israel “should be shot dead.” A Scottish National Poet, Liz Lochhead, also joined a group calling for the boycott of Israel.

Dozens of the world’s literary stars, including Nobel laureates in literature such as J. M. Coetzee, Herta Mueller, Orhan Pamuk and the late Irish poet Seamus Heaney, added their names to a petition against Israel’s “occupation’s giant, cruel hand.” What is notable is that every single time, these most illustrious writers “forget” to say why Israel built those fences, checkpoints and roadblocks in the first place.

Donald Trump wants to build a wall with Mexico, the Arab sheikhdoms are closing the border with Oman, Spain built fences to keep out Moroccans, India is walling off Bangladesh, South and North Korea share a fortified border, Cyprus is divided by walls and Belfast is a fenced city of barriers.

But only Israel’s fence — built for defensive, humanitarian reasons, merely not to get blown up — is condemned by the International Court of Justice and receives round-the-clock coverage on CNN and front page stories in the New York Times. Why? Because the security barrier that saves lives was perverted by unjust people into an unjust barrier, with no mention of what happened to Israelis before that fence was put up. To paraphrase attorney Alan Dershowitz: If you made a fair and objective list of all the countries in the world that comply with human rights, from best to worst, Israel would have to be near the top, among the best.

One of the most chilling accusations against Israel has come from a northern European writer, Jostein Gaarder, an ostensible humanitarian, whose book, “Sophie’s World,” was translated into 53 languages, and with 26 million copies sold. Penning an article in the Norwegian newspaper Aftenposten, Gaarder wrote:

“If the entire Israeli nation should fall … and part of the population must flee to another Diaspora, then we say: may their surroundings stay calm and show them mercy. Shoot not at the fugitives! Take not aim at them! They are vulnerable now — like snails without shells! … Give the Israeli refugees shelter; give them milk and honey!”

Gaarder envisages the expulsion of the entire Jewish people from their land, and again dependent on European charity — in recent years not exactly a commodity in great supply.

Israel has been humiliated also by a German writer and Nobel Prize for Literature, Günter Grass, who published a poem in several European newspapers, in which he treated Israel as the purveyor of all ills and the instigator of every type of disorder. According to Mr. Grass, it is Israel that threatens Iran with a nuclear genocide, not the reverse.

This sanctimony should not have come from that writer: Grass, in fact, served in Nazi Germany’s armed SS force and defined East Germany’s Communism “a comfortable dictatorship.”

After a visit in the Palestinian Authority’s de facto capital, Ramallah, during the Second Intifada, after there were about 1,500 Jewish dead from terrorism, another winner of Nobel Prize for Literature, José Saramago, stated that the Israeli blockade of Ramallah was “in the spirit of Auschwitz” and “this place is being turned into a concentration camp.” A year later, Saramago commented that the Jewish people no longer deserve “the sympathy for the suffering they went through during the Holocaust.”

1512Nobel laureates who demonized: German novelist Günter Grass (left), who served in Nazi Germany’s armed SS force, claimed that Israel threatens Iran with a nuclear genocide. Portuguese novelist José Saramago (right), gave credence to a distorted, demonizing vision that culminated in the perverse comparison between Hitler and Israel.

Mr. Saramago, while he was visiting Ramallah, chose not to see and talk about the Israeli restaurants, shopping malls and hotels turned into carpets of human bodies. The wholesale slaughter of Jews was the only reason Israel had to send tanks and soldiers back into the Palestinian cities after the Oslo Accords. Saramago did not mention the context; he preferred to give credence to a distorted, demonizing vision that culminated in the perverse comparison between Hitler and Israel, and the transformation of the Jewish State — the historical home of the Jews for nearly 4000 years, and lately the only sanctuary not to turn away Jews being persecuted or rounded up for death — into an “imperialist base.”

It is by repeating lies that Europe even accepted the big Mohammed al-Dura lie: a boy supposedly riddled to death with Israeli bullets, but there was not one drop of blood! Not only that, but after he was dead, he moved his hand to look out. Quite a feat. For a time, the lie even became the favorite table conversation for Europe’s upper classes.

This is how millions of Europeans have been persuaded to see Israel as the aggressor and the Palestinian terrorists as the victims. They read the inverted, Orwellian revision of history every day on the front pages. Look at what is happening now during this “Third Intifada”: it is filled with knives, stabbings of Jews, even charts on the internet showing where to stab a Jew to do the most damage. The many dead Israeli civilians and soldiers have totally disappeared from the television screen, but when Israeli soldiers shoot a Palestinian in the process of stabbing a Jew, they are labelled by a corrupt and racist media as “illegal executioners.”

What would these supposed intellectuals do if citizens were being stabbed in London, Rome or Berlin? The “intellectuals” and the media seem to be trying to make the Jews unable to defend themselves. The “intellectuals” and the media are preaching for Israel’s destruction.

_____________________

[1] From the Oslo II Accord — Israeli-Palestinian Interim Agreement on the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, September 28, 1995, CHAPTER 3 – LEGAL AFFAIRS, ARTICLE XVII
 — Jurisdiction:

4. a. Israel, through its military government, has the authority over areas that are not under the territorial jurisdiction of the Council, powers and responsibilities not transferred to the Council and Israelis.

b. To this end, the Israeli military government shall retain the necessary legislative, judicial and executive powers and responsibilities, in accordance with international law. This provision shall not derogate from Israel’s applicable legislation over Israelis in personam.

Trump and the Left’s Accusations of Fascism

March 16, 2016

Trump and the Left’s Accusations of Fascism, Front Page MagazineBruce Thornton, March 16, 2016

trump

Donald Trump’s success in the primaries and his rhetoric have sparked troubled meditations about an awakening of fascist impulses among his supporters. Bret Stephens has drawn an analogy with the Thirties, “the last dark age of Western politics,” and compared Trump to Benito Mussolini. On the left, Dana Milbank, in a column titled “Trump Flirts with Fascism,” wrote about a campaign rally at which Trump was “leading supporters in what looked very much like a fascist salute,” a scene New York Times house-conservative David Brooks linked to the Nuremberg party rallies.

Much of the rhetoric that links Trump to fascism or Nazism is merely the stale ad Hitlerum fallacy used by progressives to demonize the candidate. They did the same thing when they called George W. Bush “Bushitler.” This slur reflects the hoary leftist dogma that conservatives at heart are repressed xenophobes and knuckle-dragging racists lusting for a messianic leader to restore their lost “white privilege” and punish their minority, immigrant, and feminist enemies. As such, the attack on Trump is nothing new or unexpected from a progressive ideology whose totalitarian inclinations have always had much more in common with fascism than conservatism does.

What Auden called the “low dishonest decade” of the Thirties, however, is indeed instructive for our predicament today, but not because of any danger of a fascist party taking root in modern America. Communism was (and in some ways still is) vastly more successful at infiltrating and shaping American political, cultural, and educational institutions than fascism ever was. But the same cultural pathologies that enabled both fascist and Nazi aggression still afflict us today. These pathologies and their malign effects are more important than the reasons for Trump’s popularity–– anger at elites, economic stagnation, and anti-immigrant passions–– that supposedly echo the “waves of fear and anger” of Auden’s Thirties.

The most important delusion of the Thirties still active today is the idealistic internationalism that had developed over the previous century. A world shrunk by new communication and transportation technologies and linked by global trade, internationalists argued, meant nations and peoples were becoming more alike. Thus they desired the same prosperity, political freedom, human rights, and peace that the West enjoyed. Interstate relations now should be based on this “harmony of interests,” and managed by non-lethal transnational organizations rather than by force. Covenants and treaties like the Hague and Geneva Conventions, and institutions like the League of Nations and the International Court of Arbitration, could peacefully resolve conflicts among nations through diplomatic engagement, negotiation, and appeasement.

The Preamble to the First Hague Convention (1899) captures the idealism that would compromise foreign policy in the Thirties. The Convention’s aims were “the maintenance of the general peace” and “the friendly settlement of international disputes.” This goal was based on the “solidarity which unites the member of the society of civilized nations” and their shared desire for “extending the empire of law and of strengthening the appreciation of international justice.” Two decades later, the monstrous death and destruction of World War I should have shattered the delusion of such “solidarity” existing even among the “civilized nations.” Despite that gruesome lesson, Europe doubled down and created the League of Nations, which failed to stop the serial aggression that culminated in World War II.

But the League wasn’t the only manifestation of naïve internationalism. The Locarno Treaty of 1925 welcomed Germany back into the community of nations with a seat on the League of Nations council. Nobel Peace prizes, and wish-fulfilling headlines like the New York Times’ “France and Germany Bar War Forever,” were all that resulted. The Kellogg-Briand pact of 1928 “condemn[ed] recourse to war for the solution of international controversies, and renounce[d] it as an instrument of national policy” in interstate relations. The signing powers asserted that “the settlement or solution of all disputes or conflicts . . . shall never be sought except by pacific means.”

All the future Axis Powers signed the treaty, and they all soon shredded these “parchment barriers.” In the next few years, Japan invaded Manchuria, Hitler remilitarized the Rhineland in gross violation of the Versailles Treaty, and Italy invaded Ethiopia. By the time Germany annexed Austria, and Neville Chamberlain’s faith in negotiation and appeasement handed Czechoslovakia to Hitler, all these treaties and conventions and conferences were dead letters, and the League of Nations was exposed as a “cockpit in the tower of Babel,” as Churchill suggested after the First World War.

However, such graphic and costly evidence showing the folly of “covenants without the sword,” as Hobbes put it, did not discredit this dangerous idealism over the following decades. Indeed, it lies behind the disasters of Obama’s foreign policy. Just consider his “outreach” to our enemies, his acknowledgement of our own “imperfections,” his reliance on toothless U.N. Security Council Resolutions, his preference for non-lethal economic sanctions to pressure adversaries, and his belief that negotiated settlements and agreements can achieve peace and good relations even with our fiercest enemies. All reflect the same failure to recognize that our adversaries in fact do not sincerely want to reach an agreement, for the simple reason they are not in fact “just like us,” and so they do not want peace and prosperity and good relations with their neighbors and the “world community.”

The catalogue of Obama’s failures is long and depressing. The “reset” with Russia and promise of “flexibility,” the empty “red line” threats against Bashar al Assad, the arrogant dismissal of a metastasizing ISIS as a “jayvee” outfit, the alienation of allies like Egypt, Saudi Arabia, and Israel, the cultivation of the jihadist Muslim Brotherhood, the ill-conceived overthrow of Muammar Ghaddafi, and the rhetoric of guilt and self-abasement are just the most noteworthy failures. The nuclear deal with Iran, of course, is the premier monument to this folly. Yet despite the increasing evidence of its futility­­––Iran’s saber-rattling in the Gulf, capture of U.S. military personnel, genocidal rhetoric, and testing of missiles in blatant violation of a U.N. Security Council resolution–– Obama still clings to this internationalist delusion.

A recent article in The Atlantic on Obama’s foreign policy shows, despite his protestations of hardheaded “realism,” that he has not learned from his failures. Thus he still thinks that the vigorous use of force is usually an unnecessary and dangerous mistake, and that verbal persuasion and diplomatic engagement are more effective. He also still believes that “multilateralism regulates [U.S.] hubris” of the sort that George W. Bush showed when he recklessly invaded Iraq, and that American foreign policy has frequently displayed.

Obama’s delusional faith in rhetoric, especially his own, comes through in his rationale for the infamous 2009 Cairo speech: “I was hoping that my speech could trigger a discussion, could create space for Muslims to address the real problems they are confronting—problems of governance, and the fact that some currents of Islam have not gone through a reformation that would help people adapt their religious doctrines to modernity.” The idea that Obama’s mere words could start a “discussion” that would transform 14-century-old religious doctrines fundamentally inimical to liberal democracy, human rights, and all the other Western goods we live by, is a fantasy. Obama’s self-regard recalls Neville Chamberlain’s boast after his meeting with Hitler at Bad Godesberg that he “had established some degree of personal influence with Herr Hitler.”

Or consider Obama’s take on Vladimir Putin:

He understands that Russia’s overall position in the world is significantly diminished. And the fact that he invades Crimea or is trying to prop up Assad doesn’t suddenly make him a player. You don’t see him in any of these meetings out here helping to shape the agenda. For that matter, there’s not a G20 meeting where the Russians set the agenda around any of the issues that are important.

A “player,” in Obama’s foreign policy universe, is a leader who uses “smart power” like diplomacy and negotiated deals, and recognizes that the use of force will backfire and lead to costly “quagmires.” As Secretary of State John Kerry suggested, Putin is using outdated “19th century” instruments of foreign policy like military force in a world that presumably has evolved beyond it.

In contrast, a genuine “player,” as Obama fancies himself, attends summits and conferences, such as the useless climate change conference in Paris, and “sets the agenda.” And like his rationale for the Cairo speech, as the leader of the world’s greatest power, his rhetoric alone can be a force for change. Thus just saying that Syria’s “Assad must go,” while doing nothing to achieve that end, is still useful, and refusing to honestly identify the traditional Islamic foundations of modern jihadism will build good will among Muslims and turn them against the “extremists.”

Meanwhile, Putin and Iran fight and bomb and kill in Syria and Iraq, and now they are the big “players” in a region that the U.S. once dominated, but that now serves the interests of Russia and Iran. I’m reminded of Demosthenes’ scolding of the Athenians for refusing to confront Phillip II of Macedon: “Where either side devotes its time and energy, there it succeeds the better––Phillip in action, but you in argument.”

In other words, for Obama as for Chamberlain, appeasing words rather than forceful deeds are the key to foreign policy––precisely the belief that led England to disastrously underestimate Hitler until it was too late. And that same belief has turned the Middle East into a Darwinian jungle of clashing tribes, sects, and nations.

Obama wraps his foreign policy of retreat in claims to “realist” calculations of America’s security and genuine interests, and buttresses his claim by citing his strategically inconsequential drone killings. But such rhetoric hides an unwillingness to risk consequential action and pay its political costs. And it reflects a commitment to the internationalist idealism that gives diplomatic verbal processes an almost magical power to transform inveterate enemies into helpful partners. Europe tried that in the Thirties, and it led to disaster. That’s a much more important lesson from that sorry decade’s history than the lurid fantasies about fascism coming to America on the wings of Trump’s rhetoric.

ISIS Now Possesses Anti-Aircraft Missiles; Can Reach Europe

March 13, 2016

ISIS Now Possesses Anti-Aircraft Missiles; Can Reach Europe, Clarion Project, March 13, 2016

Islamic-State-10-IP_1An Islamic-State fighter with a shoulder-held missile. (Photo: Islamic-State video screenshot)

The U.S. and U.N. have confirmed the Islamic State (ISIS/ISIL) in Libya now possesses shoulder-held missiles capable of downing civilian or military aircraft.

The admission puts planes in North and West Africa as well as all of Europe in danger.

The Islamic State’s stock of MANPADs (man portable air defense systems) originated from the stockpiles of weapons looted after Libya’s dictator Muammar Gaddafi was overthrown by rebels in 2011.

Gaddafi was believed to have possessed 20,000 MANPADs (Russian-made SA-7 and SA-16 models) by the time of his demise. An American team, acting in Libya after the coup, managed to locate and destroy 5,000 of the missiles.

The team leader, speaking on the condition of anonymity told The Independent, “There’s a large number still there in Libya, where some of the larger militia groups still maintain the stocks that they originally took control of back in 2011.” He acknowledged that others have been smuggled to extremist groups fighting in the Sinai, Syria, Nigeria and Mali.

“We might never know where they went,” he added.

After the Sept. 11, 2012 attack on the American consulate in Benghazi, which also housed a secret CIA post, intelligence sources — crucial to tracking these weapons – were lost. Two years later, the team pulled out of Libya entirely, as the deteriorating security situation turned into a full-fledged civil war and made operating there too dangerous.

This video (Courtesy: Dutch Safety Board) shows how an advanced surface-to-air missile hit Malaysian Airlines Flight 17 over Ukraine in 2014. This is a different launch system but shows the potency of such missiles.

(Video at the link — DM)

Analysts question why the weapons, which are clearly in the hands of terrorists have not been used to date, save for one confirmed instance in January 2014, when (according to Egyptian and Israeli officials) Ansar Bayt al-Maqdis used the weapon to shoot down an Egyptian military helicopter in the Sinai, killing five soldiers.

However, in February, the Islamic State in Libya claimed to have shot down a Libyan government MiG-23 fighter jet west of Benghazi while it was bombing an Islamist militia. While the Libyan government claims the plane went down due to “technical problems,” an analysis of a subsequent ISIS video of the incident by U.S. intelligence officials proved the Islamic State’s claim was most likely correct. The Islamic State also claims to have downed two other planes that the Libyan government said crashed since January because of technical problems.

In Libya, other warring factions each have good reason not to use the weapon, which would certainly stop flights in and out of the country and mean lack of supplies for each side. Arms smugglers also have reason to want the airports left open, with each missile selling for $12,000 on the black market.

But the real wildcat in this conflict is the Islamic State, which now controls a 150-mile swath of territory on Libya’s Mediterranean  coast, including the city of Sirte, a perfect place for the terror organization to regroup if defeated in Syria and Iraq and a base from which to expand into Europe, North and Sub-Saharan Africa.

Trump and Jihad

March 13, 2016

Trump and Jihad, American ThinkerJames Lewis, March 13, 2016

Donald Trump just broke another PC taboo by telling the truth, and he put it in just a few words: “I think Islam hate us.”  

By now American Thinker readers are familiar with the overwhelming evidence on that point, while the American victims of the One Party Media still have their heads buried under camel droppings.

(“But what about the children? What about the children? What about the children?” said Cokie Roberts three times, talking with Trump about waves and waves of illegal and hostile Obamaesque immigrants, including Sinaloa gang killers who recently took 30,000 lives in Northern Mexico, using long guns and ammo from Obama’s Federales.

My respect for Roberts instantly dropped way below the Rio Grande, heading south. What about our children, Cokie? The real goal of bringing in vast numbers of illegals is to manufacture more lifelong Leftists, guided by La Raza, in collusion with MS-13 and Sinaloa (the biggest drug gang in Chicago). But Cokie only “cares” about the children… While in fact ensuring horrors for those very same children.

Well, do you really think those teenage thugs massing at the border, along their much younger would-be victims, are heading for a better life? They are being used and abused by the Obama Left, in collusion with radical Islam and Mexican gangs. Maybe some will be better off. But many are in immediate danger of becoming victims of abuse in our inner cities.

Nobody seems to know where the incoming flood have ended up going. In the world of the Charlie Chaplin’s Great Dictator we understand why the media are not interested in telling us. Or do you really think that most of those children will be adopted by nice, wealthy moms in DC, like Cokie Roberts? Have you ever heard of child slavery in the Third World, which we are importing en masse at this very moment?

Which brings me to Trump and Islam.

I don’t know how many individual Muslims hate us, but we know that from day one, 14 centuries ago, Islam has preached Holy War (Jihad) against those who don’t bow to its primitive dictates. From ISIS’ point of view, they are agents of Allah’s compassion. They will cheerfully kill, abuse, exploit, enslave, torture, threaten, beat and terrorize children, women and men with real pride in a job well done. You can see it on ISIS snuff videos on YouTube. Which Cokie has apparently never watched.

ISIS follows Saudi (Wahhabi) orthodox war doctrine. The Wahhabi priesthood has acknowledged the Qur’anic correctness of ISIS sadism, a perverted example of the very worst that humans can do to each other — not in self-defense but as a deliberate act of unprovoked aggression. And yes, they are constantly promising to do the same thing to us.

On the Shi’ite side of the Gulf, the mullahs follow exactly the same war theology. They don’t mind killing the wrong person, because in Heaven or Hell Allah will know his own. It doesn’t really matter whom you kill.

This is elementary information about Jihad, the kind of thing Western children used to learn in their history lessons. Cokie Roberts, propaganda peddler for the Left, has never bothered to learn the truth.

So Trump was right that Islamic doctrine is all about killing us, and by telling the truth Trump freaks out all the good liberals who are actually colluding with a genocidal war theology. The Cokies are no different from Nazi or Stalinist collaborators. Literally. They may be useful self-deluded idiots, but at some point, willful idiocy becomes a moral choice. Or do you think Nazi and North Korean collaborators bear no responsibility for crimes against humanity?

Jihad theology preaches the destruction of high, creative, and tolerant civilizations; it has always done so, and the Jihadist destruction of Persian, Egyptian, Byzantine, Indian, and other admirable pre-Muslim civilizations is well-known, even in Muslim countries.

The Taliban’s theological decision to blow up world-renowned Buddha statues in Afghanistan is the norm in Jihad warfare, not the exception. The Saudis have also blown up precious archeological artifacts from pre-Muslim times in Arabia, because, like the Soviets, they must erase history at all costs.

ISIS is a deliberate throwback to the very worst behavior in human history. Its parallel with Stalinism is amazing. Muslim crimes against humanity are rationalized by the ultimate goal of Paradise on Earth under Allah’s mercy.

Utopian ideologies are a dime a dozen in history. The Nazis were utopians, promising peace and love after all the inferior peoples were dead.

Jihad has always been single-minded, war-mongering, rape celebrating and fanatical, starting in the Arabian desert more than a thousand years ago. Jihad is not some weird historical anomaly. It is a calculated doctrinal strategy, representing a consensus in the radical ‘ulema, the priestly hierarchy. Nothing about Jihad is happenstance.

And yet — much of the nominally Muslim world today is deeply torn between its non-Muslim history versus centuries of Shari’ah dominance. Because orthodox Islam threatens all Muslims with death for apostasy, many have learned to live double lives, one for the local imam and his enforcers, and one for their private truths. That is important, because it means that every Muslim country also has a Fifth Column — all those who secretly reject the warmongering priesthood.

Iranians take justified pride in the high civilization of the Persian Empire, before Jihad stomped out the intellectual diversity that fuels innovation. Fanatical ideologies kill off the freedom to think. We can watch it in North Korea under its atheist dynasty, just as we can see it in Saudi Arabia in the grip of Wahhabi fanatics. They are all brain-locked war cults. Only the hats and banners change, but all war cults stir up mass murder as part of their divine mission.

In Northern India, where Buddhism first emerged, the monasteries and their peaceful monks were murdered en masse in 1200 by the Ghurid Jihadis. The Buddhist genocide was much celebrated by Muslim historians. After Jihad conquered the Byzantine Empire — the Christian Roman Empire of North Africa and Anatolia — another civilization was frozen into silence.

Much of the nominally Muslim world lives a double life. That is a basic strategic fact in the Jihad War. It means that millions of people secretly yearn for better lives.

Just as in the USSR, ordinary people learn to mouth the Party Line, until the day when the whole fabric of lies falls apart.

One key to victory against Jihad is very fast-spreading shale oil technology. The OPEC monopoly is losing its most powerful weapon against the West. There are serious predictions that the Saudis and Iranian mullahs will not survive another crash in the international price of energy.

In Lebanon, ordinary people remember better days, before Hizb’allah took over on behalf of its Iranian masters. Pakistanis celebrate Urdu love poetry, with its ancient pre-Muslim roots. Iraqis take pride in centuries of high Mesopotamian civilizations. Egyptians remember three thousand years of pharaonic Egypt, long before Jihad made free thinking punishable by death. In Turkey, people in the cities remember half a century of modernist politics, before Obama’s good friend Recip Erdogan brought back Ottoman corruption and misrule.

It is only sane for the civilized world to defeat aggressive Jihad, the deadliest threat in the world today. Trump may not be your cup of tea, but he has just broken decades of PC taboo against telling the truth about Jihad. I believe that every GOP candidate must finally talk openly about what every sane person already knows in the privacy of their minds.

In a time of war, you may have to pick Ulysses S. Grant for president, even if he is a drunkard. Sometimes, in the face of worse, you have to make tough choices.

That is where we are today. This election could be a turning point for the better, but only if millions of Americans follow their honest convictions. PC is a Leftist intimidation game, and we have to have the courage of our convictions. The media constantly play mind tricks on us, like the Wizard of Oz. This PC intimidation campaign will go up in a puff of toxic smoke, if we stand up to it.

Donald Trump keeps challenging the fear of PC. He is therapeutic for millions of Americans who have been silenced for decades; he has beaten the mind games of the One Party media. So far, he has the cult of the Islamo-Left on the run, which is a very good thing. But they see politics as war, and it ain’t over ‘till it’s over. Expect a vicious election season, and if we win this one, expect more years of Islamo-Lefto-fascist struggle. They are an absolutist cult, and any means are acceptable for their goals

The Clintons and Obamas refuse to even name Islamofascist aggression, because they have forged a close alliance with oil-rich Gulf regimes, who constantly push fundamentalist invasions of the West. The Saudis just promised to double the number of mosques in Europe, with the obvious goal of controlling millions of Muslim “refugees” wherever they may end up living. This is all standard Jihadist tactics. Mass infiltration by “peaceful” Jihad is called Hejira, after Mohammed’s journey to Mecca with the secret intention of committing genocide against the infidels.

None of that war strategy could happen in the West without the active collusion of the Left. We see the same corrupt bargain in Europe and over here.

Oil money and power are the reasons why Obama and Hillary will never call Jihad the enemy. Obama has consistently misused American power and resources to curry favor with Jihad-preaching regimes — maybe because he’s buying UN votes from the “57 Muslim states” that might elect him as Secretary General. If Hillary or Sanders win, they could nominate Obama for the position. The Party Media would never oppose it. With 57 Muslim votes in the General Assembly, Obama’s has already planted the seeds.

Obama’s ego is ungovernable, and in his mind there’s only one future to fill that everlasting hole in his soul. The news now tells us that the Obamas will stay in Washington DC, “to keep their children in the schools.” Funny thing is that it also keeps them in personal contact with the levers of power they’ve planted in the U.S. government. If Americans ever bothered to study history they would see how the same kinds of people have done the same thing before.

Needless to say, Obama as President of the UN Socialist World would enormously empower Jihad and the hard Left. Imagine Obama and Hillary in charge of both the UN and the U.S. It’s their lifelong wet dream.

As for Hillary, we now know she was behind the invasion of Libya, which brought down a stable Muslim regime, leading to another endless, bloody civil war that is still going on. I would hate to have that cruel blunder on my conscience. Invading Libya was unprovoked aggression — a genuine crime against humanity. Hillary’s idiotic slogan for that war was “We came, we saw, he died.” (Meaning Gadaffi, who was killed by anal impalement.) This is unmitigated evil, and a GOP challenger should use Hillary’s sadistic quote to expose her inner killer. Gadaffi posed no threat; in his later decades he was a source of stability. But at least Hillary’s War revealed her inner self to the world.

Apparently, in the Reign of the One, American foreign policy has lost any moral basis whatsoever. This is inexcusable.

Some reports suggest that Hillary stoked up the Libyan intervention to give herself a “foreign policy accomplishment” in time for the 2016 election.  If that is true, Hillary and Obama have knowingly blundered into Nuremberg Trial territory. It certainly seems that she has no conscience, and Bernie’s unrepentant Stalinist past shows he has none either. If Bernie had a Nazi past, he would never have been elected, even in New Hampshire.

Like it or not, those are the choices we face today.

Jihad is a strategic threat, and it demands a strategic response. A GOP president could lead that response. The Democrats are far too corrupt and brainwashed to do it.

The United States led the Cold War against Soviet imperialism because Europe was utterly incapable of self-defense, as we can see again today. Angela Merkel may be hunkering down after the rapefugee betrayal of Europe, hoping the Amis will come to the rescue again. But she is a Eurosocialist above all, and her goals are the same as the official EU Machine.

For sixty years Pax Americana protected the world without the suicidal danger of nuclear war. In their heart of hearts, millions of Europeans are looking again to the United States to pull their cookies out of the fire. The EU ruling class has simply brought one “yuge” disaster after another, but the unelected rulers are never blamed. Even the controlled Euromedia are starting to get it, but they still obey orders from the top. Merkel ordered the German media not to criticize her mad decision to bring in the rapefugees, and they followed orders: Jawohl, Frau Commandant!

Like Obama, Merkel represents the smiling face of a ruthless cult.

Today there is not a single leader of moral stature in Europe, because all decisions are made via group-think in EU committees. The EU is a political hierarchy, like the Soviet nomenklatura. Bureaucrats are taught to obey orders. EU governing committees are another version of the old Soviets (councils), which ultimately brought down the Soviet Empire.

Since the return of Jihad with OPEC, Jimmy Carter and Obama have dismantled the defensive alliances that contained global aggression in the Cold War. There certainly were painful proxy wars in Korea and Vietnam in the Cold War, but strategically we learned how to contain aggression without appeasement. The Democrats are not as ignorant as they pretend to be. They have knowingly sabotaged our successful Cold War strategy, constantly evading the obvious parallels between Soviet imperialism and Jihad.

Oddly enough, under Putin the Russians have switched sides, because of the greater threat posed by Jihad. Vladimir Putin is not our friend, but he thinks rationally.

Around the world our rejected allies must be thinking about a renewed alliance, to push a chaotic world back from the brink. Putin has suggested making common cause against Jihad, on the model of Soviet-American resistance to the Nazis. With real leadership, the civilized world could come together and beat oil-fed Jihad. In the Muslim Middle East, Egypt’s President El-Sisi would be a powerful ally, with major credibility among other Muslim nations, including Saudi Arabia. El-Sisi rescued Egypt from a Muslim Brotherhood (Jihadist) takeover, and he is now fighting a hot domestic war against the Nazi-era Broederbund.

Jihad is a global threat, and a worldwide defensive alliance has worked well since World War II.  India, Japan, the UK, Australia, the saner half of Europe, and many others share our strategic interests.

We know it can be done. What’s missing is leadership.

An entente cordiale with Russia can work, because Putin rose to power in response to Jihadist terror attacks in Moscow and Beslan. Like it or not, Putin wiped out the Chechnyan Jihadist rebellion in his usual ruthless way. Russia has a long, long history of coping with Jihad. But now Russia is the only major nation that is prepared to fight for strategic goals. Fantasy pacifism has gripped Europe, which is why Angela Merkel surrendered to the rape Jihad that is still victimizing women and children in Europe.

What we need today is an administration with a strategic vision, instead of a gaggle of delusional radicals and their Jihadist collaborators.

This is not hard. It takes common sense, something Americans have always been blessed with.

At least until now.

The election will show if we still have what it takes.

 

Libya Being Taken Over by ISIS was Everyone’s Fault Except Obama’s

March 11, 2016

Libya Being Taken Over by ISIS was Everyone’s Fault Except Obama’s, Front Page Magazine, Daniel Greenfield, March 11, 2016

crying-barry-obama

Nothing is ever Obama’s fault. Ever. Even when he did it.

Like the time he illegally invaded Libya by lying to everyone from the UN to Americans, leading to the killing of an American ambassador and Al Qaeda, the Muslim Brotherhood and ISIS taking over large parts of the country… as had been predicted. But it’s not his fault. Really.

But Obama says today of the intervention, “It didn’t work.” The U.S., he believes, planned the Libya operation carefully—and yet the country is still a disaster.

We did a good job… and yet we failed. It must be someone’s fault.

“The social order in Libya has broken down,” Obama said, explaining his thinking at the time. “You have massive protests against Qaddafi. You’ve got tribal divisions inside of Libya…. We worked with our defense teams to ensure that we could execute a strategy without putting boots on the ground and without a long-term military commitment in Libya.”

Who could have predicted that regime change in a country where the order had broken down, without putting boots on the ground, would lead to complete chaos? No one could have predicted it. No one.

“So we actually executed this plan as well as I could have expected: We got a UN mandate, we built a coalition, it cost us $1 billion—which, when it comes to military operations, is very cheap. We averted large-scale civilian casualties, we prevented what almost surely would have been a prolonged and bloody civil conflict. And despite all that, Libya is a mess.”

I poured gasoline on the haystacks. Then I started shooting off firecrackers. I tied torches to pigs and sent them running around the barn. And despite all that, the barn is on fire.

It was a great plan Obama had.

1. Lie to the UN

2. Build a coalition of countries willing to sign their names without doing anything

3. Spend $1 billion to let Islamic terrorists take over the country

4. Somehow the “prolonged and bloody civil conflict” you claimed to be trying to prevent is still going on and on…

And it’s not Obama’s fault. No way.

Mess is the president’s diplomatic term; privately, he calls Libya a “shit show,” in part because it’s subsequently become an isis haven—one that he has already targeted with air strikes. It became a shit show, Obama believes, for reasons that had less to do with American incompetence than with the passivity of America’s allies and with the obdurate power of tribalism.

“I’m not competent. All my allies suck. Also the tribal country we bombed is all tribal and stuff and who could have predicted that?”

“When I go back and I ask myself what went wrong,” Obama said, “there’s room for criticism, because I had more faith in the Europeans, given Libya’s proximity, being invested in the follow-up,” he said.

Yes, the only thing that Obama blames himself for… is passing the blame to Europe.