We have all seen the video of ISIS's recent horrific beheading of 21 Egyptian Christians in Libya.
Mr Obama, how many Christian terrorists have beheaded Muslims? How can you compare violence in Islam with violence in Christianity?
US State Department Deputy Spokesperson Marie Harf was interviewed by Chris Matthews on MSNBC’s Hardball about the atrocity.
She mantained that “we cannot win this war by killing them [ISIS], we cannot kill our way out of this war”.
I don't know if it's possible to respond to an enemy that kills, beheads and burns people alive without the spilling of blood.
Harf went on to argue:
[The video of ISIS] underscores to people that it isn’t just a fight in Iraq and in Syria and that it’s not just a fight about dropping bombs on terrorists. It’s really how we stop the causes that lead to extremism in a place like Libya, the fact that there’s no governance, and there’s no opportunity for young people, it lets groups like ISIL grow there and flourish there, which is what you saw with this awful situation with these Egyptians that you just mentioned, but this is a longer fight, it’s fighting them on social media…they’re using social media to get converts to their cause and to spread their hatred all over the world. This week, we’re going to have over 60 countries here in Washington to talk about how do we combat this violent extremism together in the long-term, not just in the short-term fight.
Right now, what we’re doing is trying to take their leaders and their fighters off the battlefield in Iraq and in Syria, that’s really where they flourish…we’re killing a lot of them and we’re going to keep killing more of them, so are the Egyptians, so are the Jordanians they’re in this fight with us. But we cannot win this war by killing them, we cannot kill our way out of this war. We need, in the longer term, medium and longer term, to go after the root causes that leads people to join these groups, whether it’s lack of opportunity for jobs…
[W]e can work with countries around the world to help improve their governance, we can help them build their economies, so they can have job opportunities for these people. You’re right, there is no easy solution in the long-term to preventing and combating violent extremism, but if we can help countries work at the root causes of this, what makes these 17-year-old kids pick up an AK-47, instead of try to start a business? Maybe we can try– try to chip away at this problem, while at the same time going after the threat, taking on ISIL in Iraq, in Syria, and helping our partners around the world.”
This is a particularly absurd version of the old socialist position: it's the economy, stupid!
From Karl Marx to Bill Clinton, socio-communists believe that everything in human society is governed by the economy and every problem can be solved by trowing money at it.
"What makes these 17-year-old kids pick up an AK-47, instead of try to start a business?" is an especially ridiculous way of putting the question, in the context of Muslim jihadists. Materialists don't attach any importance to what people believe in, what doctrines and ideals inspire and motivate their behaviour.
That's why they're so badly equipped to deal with the Islamic threat, deriving as it does from a faith and frame of mind.
Harf's half-baked theory about how to address the big problem posed by ISIS echoes the "liberal" proposed elimination of crime in Western societies by getting rid of poverty and unemployment as its "root causes".
The Facebook page Australia says NO to Islam Sharia Law has the graphic above.
While Western kids learn how to avoid offending even the slightest sensibilities of all ethnic groups - except Whites - and religions - except Christianity -, Muslim children are taught different lessons: how to slaughter conscious animals and next how to slaughter humans, as the next video illustrates.
At a Muslim school for children, stuffed animals were used to accustom the youngsters to blood and violence, as the horrid (visually and acoustically) video below shows. The little ones are trained to slaughter sheep and other animals, including men.
They'll be ready for animal sacrifice, halal slaughter, beheadings and, if the worst comes to the worst, burning people alive.
Muslims fight for something. We fight against that something.
This is the big difference. We are fighting purely in defence. We don't have the same passion.
They are fighting for Islam. We don't like it, but we must admit that it is a whole system of living one's life, guiding a state and establishing its laws.
What are we fighting for? The ability to believe in nothing, pursue as many material possessions as we can, dissipate our lives and use as many swear words as is humanly possible. Big deal! That is really going to put fire in our belly, certainly.
People can be prepared to die only for something they believe in with all of themselves.
That's why Christian martyrs are legions while it's difficult to come up with many secular martyrs.
And people can fight with courage and ardour only for something that excites their imagination.
That's why Christian Europe was capable of repeatedly defeating Islamic enemies and remain free, while post-Christian Europe is doomed.
T.S. Eliot said, to defeat a religion, you need a religion.
We have no religion; we have an ideology—secular democracy. But the Muslim world rejects secularism and will use democracy to free itself of us and establish regimes that please Allah.
In the struggle between democracy and Allah, we are children of a lesser God. “The term ‘democracy,’” wrote Eliot, “does not contain enough positive content to stand alone against the forces that you dislike — it can easily be transformed by them. If you will not have God … you should pay your respects to Hitler or Stalin.”
Germany used democracy to bring Hitler to power. Given free elections from Morocco to Mindanao, what kind of regimes would rise to power? Would not the Quran become the basis of law?
If Charlie Hebdo were a man, not a magazine, he would be torn to pieces in any Middle East nation into which he ventured. And what does a mindless West offer as the apotheosis of democracy?
Four million French marching under the banner “Je Suis Charlie.”
Whom the gods would destroy …
The first comment on Buchanan's article shows the shallowness of the materialistic view:
Napoleon once said “God is on the side of he who has the strongest battalion.” Not: “The strongest ideology”. History is littered with the corpses of intense oddball gangs that tried to hit way above their league and were crushed. Bullets and bombs are ruled by mere physics, not fervor.
There are indeed many more cases in history of armies or armed groups who defeated stronger forces. If combatants are not motivated, they will flee or surrender.
It's people who fight, with whatever is in their minds egging them on. Weapons - even the most sophisticated - don't fight. The laws of "mere physics" can do nothing in war without a desire to utilise them.
In the case of our decadent Western societies, in which living a comfortable and easy life is a primary goal, fighting whatever or whoever threatens this cosiness defeats the object. So, given a choice between losing comforts and security in the future for not having defended them or losing them now in order to defend them, people prefer to wait and see if any possible danger will disappear as if by magic. When they are convinced that it won't, it will probably be too late to put up a resistance.
But hey!, at least we have protected - by doing nothing - our desire to believe in nothing.
Yesterday a global warming protest set for this weekend at Yale University was cancelled because of the frigid weather and snow.
Fossil Free Yale, a pressure group that wants the Ivy League university to divest itself from fossil fuels, said the protest will be indefinitely postponed.
As this reporter writes this article, the weather in New Haven, Connecticut where Yale is located stands at -9 degrees Fahrenheit with wind chill. Saturday is expected to have weather in the low 30s with snow and Sunday will be 20 degrees with snow and rain, according to the Weather Channel.
This is not the first time that the weather doesn't play ball with the climate change brigade.
Many global warming events in the past have been held at sub-zero temperatures.
It's unlikely, though, that even the worst weather will make believers in Anthropogenic Global Warming theory reconsider their views: when in 2013 the UK suffered its coldest March in 50 years, they saw that as a sign of global warming.
This is what philosopher of science Sir Karl Popper calls "ad hoc hypotheses": in plain language, excuses to keep afloat a debunked theory.
I think that there are two prominent phenomena which will soon make people aware of the fundamental importance and extent of the Jewish question in the present world.
The first phenomenon is the existence of Israel, a prime signal of Jewish ethnocentrism’s inevitable double standard when compared to the ethnically and culturally pluralist attitudes of Diaspora Jews in the West.
The second phenomenon is the exposure of how easy it is for Jews to ally themselves with (or taking the side of) Muslims, if it suits their interest either in their war against the White Gentiles - their perceived main Western enemies - or in other ways.
Among major examples of this tendency are European Jewry’s “heightened empathy and sympathy for Islam” and invention of the myth of Islamic tolerance; and the Jewish collaboration with Muslims during the invasion of Christian Spain.
Both phenomena are on display in the Middle East’s current events.
I'm referring to the recent UN documents revealing Israel’s support for ISIS and al-Qaeda in Syria.
The Syrian ambassador to the United Nations, Bashar Ja’afari, has long complained of a conspiracy of Zionists and Syrian rebels to overthrow the country’s President Bashar Assad. Mr Ja’afari has declared that the extremists have an “undeclared alliance with Israel and are engaged in a secret agreement” with its regime.
Now, a United Nations report seems to vindicate his claims. It reveals that Israel has been doing more than simply treating wounded Syrian civilians in hospitals, and details direct regular contacts between Israel Defense Forces (IDF) officers and armed Syrian opposition fighters, working closely together in the Golan Heights since the spring of 2013.
Thanks to the American intervention which got rid of Saddam Hussein - and ultimately to the US Jewish neoconservative movement and Israel lobby that instigated it ideologically and politically -, Iraq, once the strongest supporter of Palestinians (yes, contrary to popular Zionist assertions, they do exist), is weak and divided.
So it’s time to turn to another stable player in the region and potential enemy of Israel: Syria. The protracted civil war on the Syrian government is depleting the country’s army and devastating its infrastructure; rebuilding them will preoccupy Syria for a long time and defuse any military threat from it to Israel. Covertly, Israel is a crucial key player in prolonging this war and is the major beneficiary of maintaining what the Israeli pundit Amos Harel called the “stable instability” in Syria and the region.
But several recent developments have exposed Israel’s no longer discreet role, among which the UN documentation.
The new report was the work of the UN Disengagement Observer Force (UNDOF), UN observers in the Golan Heights, and was submitted to the 15 members of the UN Security Council at the beginning of December 2014.
The UNDOF 1,200-strong observer forces - contributed by six countries - have been monitoring since 1974 a buffer zone between Israel and Syria on the Golan Heights, stretching about 70 kilometers from Lebanon in the north to Jordan in the south.
Reports by the UNDOF are regularly submitted to the UN Security Council, and since March 2013 have started to show that Israel admits wounded Syrians into the country for medical treatment in hospitals.
Initially the IDF claimed that this was only for medical assistance for civilians, but then UN observers witnessed direct contact between IDF forces and ISIS fighters.
The UN reports said that 89 rebels were transported into the Israeli-occupied zone between March and May 2014, while activists in southern Deraa province and in Quneitra quoted in media reports claim that communications increased between rebels and the Israeli military before the eruption of heavy clashes in the area.
Israel’s health ministry says about 1,000 Syrians have been treated in Israeli hospitals.
In answer to a question by i24News on whether Israel hospitalises members of al-Nusra Front (the al-Qaeda terror group in Syria) and Daesh (the Arabic acronym for the Islamic State, or ISIS), an Israeli military spokesman’s office admitted: “In the past two years the Israel Defense Forces have been engaged in humanitarian, life-saving aid to wounded Syrians, irrespective of their identity.”
Syria maintains that it has “information indicating that there were undercover agents among the wounded Syrians recently treated by Israel”:
She further claimed that Israeli officers are operating in Syria and monitoring the fighting in the war-torn country…
Assad himself told an Argentinean [sic] newspaper a few months ago that Israel is assisting the rebels fighting to topple his regime.
“Israel is directly supporting the terrorist groups in two ways,” he claimed. “Firstly it gives them logistical support, and it also tells them what sites to attack and how to attack them."
UN observations have been cut short, in part due to attacks on UN monitors by the very terrorists Israel is suspected of associating with, attacks that managed to prevent any further documentation.
Israel’s ties to militants have long been documented. In November 2014 members of Israel's Druze minority published a statement accusing the Israeli government of supporting all factions fighting against the Syrian government, including al-Nusra - the militant group loyal to al-Qaeda - and the Islamic State, not only by offering them medical care but also by supplying them with weapons. The Druze group had issued similar warnings in the past.
Whenever Israel strikes at Syria, it strikes at the only viable nation fighting ISIS in the region.
The main – if not only - force providing a defence for regional minorities, including Christians, Jews, Druzes and Muslims of all sects, is the Syrian Arab Army. Attacking it undermines its ability to curb what can otherwise become uncontrolled genocide carried out by extremists.
The UN and other reports have described transfer of crates of unspecified supplies from the IDF to militant rebels, sightings of IDF soldiers meeting with Syrian insurgents, and cases of Israeli soldiers opening up the fence to allow Syrians through who didn’t appear to be injured.
Witnesses on a late December’s RT TV documentary said they had seen Israeli forces in talks with armed, militant anti-Assad fighters.
Ehud Yaari, an Israeli fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy and an expert on the Golan Heights, said that Israel is supplying Syrian villages with medicines, heaters, and other humanitarian supplies. The assistance, he said, has benefited civilians and insurgents.
This is part of a continuing process. In early December 2014 Syrian officials demanded the UN impose sanctions on Israel after Tel Aviv conducted airstrikes in the areas of Dimas, known to contain military bases and research centres, and of Damascus International Airport, damaging some facilities. This was the seventh major unprovoked air strike of its kind since 2011 and the fifth in the previous 18 months on Syrian defences.
The Syrians said the attack was a heinous crime against their sovereignty by a country which doesn’t hide its policy of supporting terrorism.
Israel claimed that it was a “defensive measure” as Syria was “hiding sophisticated weaponry destined for Hezbollah in Lebanon”.
It is odd, however, that Israel attacks what it’s called “regional threats” in Damascus while providing sanctuaries for terrorist groups like al-Nusra and ISIS by allowing them to maintain tanks and artillery along its borders.
That Israel’s aid to terrorist insurgents in Syria is not limited to medical assistance was also evident from what The Times of Israelreported in August 2014:
A Free Syrian Army commander, arrested last month by the Islamist militia Al-Nusra Front, told his captors he collaborated with Israel in return for medical and military support, in a video released this week…
“The [opposition] factions would receive support and send the injured in [to Israel] on condition that the Israeli fence area is secured. No person was allowed to come near the fence without prior coordination with Israel authorities,” Safouri said in the video.
…Following the meetings, Israel began providing Safouri and his men with “basic medical support and clothes” as well as weapons, which included 30 Russian [rifles], 10 RPG launchers with 47 rockets, and 48,000 5.56 millimeter bullets.
The Syrian opposition is willing to give up claims to the Golan Heights in return for cash and Israeli military aid against President Bashar Assad, a top opposition official told Al Arab newspaper, according to a report in Al Alam…
The Western-backed militant groups want Israel to enforce a no-fly zone over parts of southern Syria to protect rebel bases from air strikes by Assad’s forces, according to the report.
On 20 January 2015, Foreign Affairsinterviewed Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, who accused the IDF of conspiring with al-Qaeda. Asked what he thought Israel’s agenda is, he replied:
“They are supporting the rebels in Syria. It’s very clear. Because whenever we make advances in some place, they make an attack in order to undermine the army. It’s very clear. That’s why some in Syria joke: “How can you say that al Qaeda doesn’t have an air force? They have the Israeli air force [a reference to its attacks on regime and Hezbollah positions in Syria].”…
“The question that we have is, how much will does the United States have to really fight terrorism on the ground? So far, we haven’t seen anything concrete in spite of the attacks on ISIS in northern Syria. There’s nothing concrete. What we’ve seen so far is just, let’s say, window-dressing, nothing real. Since the beginning of these attacks, ISIS has gained more land in Syria and Iraq.”…
So are you saying you want greater U.S. involvement in the war against ISIS?
“It’s not about greater involvement by the military, because it’s not only about the military; it’s about politics. It’s about how much the United States wants to influence the Turks. Because if the terrorists can withstand the air strikes for this period, it means that the Turks keep sending them armaments and money. Did the United States put any pressure on Turkey to stop the support of al Qaeda? They didn’t; they haven’t.”…
So are you suggesting there should be U.S. troops on the ground?
“Not U.S. troops. I’m talking about the principle, the military principle. I’m not saying American troops. If you want to say I want to make war on terrorism, you have to have troops on the ground. The question you have to ask the Americans is, which troops are you going to depend on? Definitely, it has to be Syrian troops. This is our land; this is our country. We are responsible. We don’t ask for American troops at all.”…
The US has backed the Syrian insurgents since early in the civil war, and is planning to train over 5,000 “vetted” rebels. During the same interview Assad argued that such US plans are "illusory" as these rebels would eventually defect to the jihadists: “They are going to be fought like any other illegal militia fighting against the Syrian army.”
There are no “moderate rebels” in Syria. Even the groups and leaders considered moderate by the West openly admit that they are working closely with the extremists and the most radical, who always end up having control over the anti-Assad opposition. Terrorist al-Nusra and the “moderate” Free Syrian Army have collaborated in the battlefield against the Assad regime. In short, Israel is supporting ISIS and terrorists.
And, even if the fantasy of moderate rebels were reality, helping these people would mean distracting and using up Assad’s resources for the battle against them, thus weakening the only viable force fighting ISIS in the region.
As the Syrian government has been saying since 2011, Syria is engaged in a war not against its own people or “pro-democracy” forces, but against extremists and terrorists.
Last January’s Foreign Affairs interview with Assad quoted above has an interesting ending:
If you were able to deliver a message to President Obama today, what would it be?
“I think the normal thing that you ask any official in the world is to work for the interests of his people. And the question I would ask any American is, what do you get from supporting terrorists in our country, in our region? What did you get from supporting the Muslim Brotherhood a few years ago in Egypt and other countries? What did you get from supporting someone like Erdogan?”
These policies’ advantage is not for the USA but seemingly for Israel: supporting the Muslim Brotherhood, like invading Iraq, served to destabilise the consolidated powers in the region. Assad continued:
“You [Americans] are the greatest power in the world now; you have too many things to disseminate around the world: knowledge, innovation, IT, with its positive repercussions. How can you be the best in these fields yet the worst in the political field? This is a contradiction. That is what I think the American people should analyze and question. Why do you fail in every war? You can create war, you can create problems, but you cannot solve any problem. Twenty years of the peace process in Palestine and Israel, and you cannot do anything with this, in spite of the fact that you are a great country.” [Emphasis added]
All this seems nonsensical and contradictory if you indeed start from the premise that US foreign and domestic policies are meant to benefit the US. But it immediately becomes rational if you see that American elites are at war with their own people and don’t act with their best interest at heart.
But in the context of Syria, what would a better policy look like?
"One that preserves stability in the Middle East. Syria is the heart of the Middle East. Everybody knows that. If the Middle East is sick, the whole world will be unstable. In 1991, when we started the peace process, we had a lot of hope. Now, after more than 20 years, things are not at square one; they’re much below that square. So the policy should be to help peace in the region, to fight terrorism, to promote secularism, to support this area economically, to help upgrade the mind and society, like you did in your country. That is the supposed mission of the United States, not to launch wars. Launching war doesn’t make you a great power.”
Assad’s suggested strategy is reasonable but is the opposite of what America is pursuing, because stability in the Middle East, by making Israel’s enemies stronger, is not in the interest of the Jewish state.
Which, while publicly condemning them, doesn’t hesitate to side with and help the terrorist groups capable of committing the worst atrocities, including beheading children, using women as sex slaves, and setting men on fire.
The new party Union of French Muslim Democrats (UDMF) is ready to present candidates in eight cities in the local elections to be held in France next month.
This week the UDMF has already submitted two candidates in the Paris suburb of Bobigny, and expects to do the same in seven other constituencies, including Marseille, Lyon and Nice.
Najib Azergui, who founded the UDMF in 2012, told the daily Le Parisien that his party wants to give voice to France's large Muslim community, which struggles to find representation in the traditional parties of the country.
According to Azergui, Islam is fully compatible with democratic values. I don't think that the reporter who intervewed him asked for any concrete example of Islamic democracy, luckily for Azergui.
The UDMF already has an elected councillor in Bobigny since last year, Hocine Hebbali.
The party wants an Islamic banking system, and investments in the halal food industry to create jobs. These jobs will obviously be only for Muslims, since the sole butchers allowed to slaughter animals to produce meat fit for Muslim consumption are the followers of Islam.
The party wants to repeal the French ban on headscarves in state schools and supports Turkey's entry into the European Union.
Most French voters ignore the existence of the UDMF.
Let's just hope that this is not one of the first steps towards the turning into reality of the fictional plot of French author Michel Houellebecq's latest novel Submission (the meaning of the Arabic word "Islam"), which envisions France ruled by a Muslim party in 2022 and sparked a media storm when it was published last year.
According to an SWG poll, 65% of Italians believe that the risk of Islamic terrorist attacks in Italy is high or very high. Of the remainder, 26% think that the risk is low, while 3% (perhaps the terrorists themselves) said that this possibility is nonexistent. 6% didn't answer.
More than half of Italians (55%) believe that immigrants (whether legal or illegal) should be rejected or Italy risks becoming the crossroads of terrorism. Only 33% are in disagreement with this statement, while 12% avoided giving an answer.
If you read the media, though, you'll think that everyone wants to welcome more immigrants. The disconnect between the country and the media is growing by the day.
Not to mention the government, where the minority - rather then majority - rule is followed.
According to another survey conducted by IXE for Agora, 63% of Italians think that Italy is not ready to deal with any terrorist acts. Of the remainder, 26% said that the country is able to respond to attacks, while 11% didn't answer. In addition, 61% of Italians said that the Muslim community is not doing enough to isolate extremists and terrorists, and only 16% believe that the Muslim community is taking a strong position of condemnation against extremists. 23% of respondents did not express an opinion.
