I must start reading Gates of Vienna more often. They do a lot of reporting on Europe with emphasis on Muslim activity. GoV has developed over the years an extensive network of volunteer European 'citizen journalists' who translate into English relevant newspaper reports in Europe that are rarely published in English-language European press outlets.
But for the last three weeks I've been glued to Sputnik, waiting to snap up situation reports on the war in Syria. The news agency also carries many stories about terrorism and jihadi activity in Europe. Some of the stories about Germany strike me as odd.
What does Sputnik mean by "the infamous Salafist scene in Dinslaken-Lohberg, North Rhine-Westphalia?" What infamous scene? I thought the German security apparatus had everything under control. Is this Londonistan all over again?
From another story at Sputnik, I suppose I should be asking what's going on in my own country. Oh drat, now the report is gone. This happens a lot at Sputnik, I've noticed. Now you see it, now you don't, although it can pop up later. Anyhow, the headline is about Islamic State activity in America.
The quote about the Salafist scene is featured in an October 21 report, ISIL Stormtroopers Torture Secrets Revealed by German Jihadi Defector.
A companion piece is today's report, German Gangs Rob Churches to Fund Islamic State Terrorists. They also robbed schools.
I guess because of German political correctness the press can't refer to the thieves as, say, Moroccan-German. They refer to them as German, which creates some cognitive dissonance, at least for this reader.
Although it's a little off topic I note Sputnik carried a report yesterday headlined, Qatar threatens military intervention in Syria.
Monkey-see, Monkey-do. First they copied America's pussyfooting style but now that they're seeing the direct approach used by the Russians, of course they're going to get in jets and go bomb Syrian Army ground forces in the name of peace.
Qatar who has been a major sponsor of jihadist groups fighting in Syria for years, now is actively considering a direct military intervention in the country, according to its officials.
Throughout Syria’s bloody civil war, the government of Qatar has been an active supporter of anti-government militants, providing arms and financial backing to so called "rebels." Many of these, like the al-Nusra Front, were directly linked to al-Qaeda. That strategy has, of course, done little to put a dent in terrorist organizations in the region.Hello, Sputnik; it's not a civil war and never was. And of course it hasn't made a dent. Wikipedia notes that Qatar's emir -- an absolute monarch -- is tight with the Muslim Brotherhood.
Moving along:
But as Russia enters its fourth week of anti-terror airstrikes, Qatar has indicated that it may launch a military campaign of its own.
"Anything that protects the Syrian people and Syria from partition, we will not spare any effort to carry it out with our Saudi and Turkish brothers, no matter what this is," Qatar’s Foreign Minister Khalid al-Attiyah told CNN on Wednesday, when asked if he supported Saudi Arabia’s position of not ruling out a military option.
"If a military intervention will protect the Syrian people from the brutality of the regime, we will do it," he added, according to Qatar’s state news agency QNA. [...]Syria's government had a few choice words in response.
Syrian Deputy Foreign Minister Faisal Mekdad was fast to warn the Middle Eastern monarchy that such a move would be a disastrous mistake with serious consequences.
"If Qatar carries out its threat to militarily intervene in Syria, then we will consider this a direct aggression," he said, according to al-Mayadeen television. "Our response will be very harsh."
Still, Attiyah stressed that Qatar is also considering a more diplomatic solution to the crisis in Syria. ...He'd better stress a diplomatic solution. Syria's military has turned into a very effective fighting force. That's what happens when foreign fiends attempt to overthrow a government and destroy the country's sovereignty. Civil war, my foot.
From the Independent (UK)
... Syrian commanders are now setting the coordinates for almost every Russian air strike. They were originally giving between 200 and 400 coordinates a night. Now the figure sometimes reaches 800. Not that the Russians are going after every map reference, of course. The Syrians have found that the Russians do not want to fire at targets in built-up areas ...
More good news from Sputnik, from a report yesterday:
MOSCOW, (Sputnik) — Yazidi militias are preparing the operation to liberate the city of Sinjar in the north-west of Iraq, captured by the Islamic State (ISIL) militants in August 2014, Lukman Ibrahim, a commander of the Yazidi forces told Sputnik Tuesday. ...If it's news to you that the Yazidis, heretofore a very nonviolent religious sect, have sprouted militias, that's what happens when fiends attempt to wipe out a people who never did harm to anybody.
Blowback. Which returns me to Europe, and Germany. A decade ago Michael Leeden told me the Europeans were a bunch of wimps in the face of the Muslim threat. This caused me to wonder aloud if he had cheese tostitos for brains because he very well knew the history of Europe.
One can't confuse wimpiness with a great determination to refrain from warlike behavior. But the Europeans are very warlike peoples. The Muslims from MENA who've been shoving them around the past couple decades don't know this. They, too, see a bunch of weaklings.
So I got a chill the other night when John Batchelor mentioned a big PEGIDA torchlight rally in Dresden and worriedly told Steve Cohen that this was an unsettling echo. I think most in John's audience would understand the reference, although I'm not sure it's the same for the American general public, especially the younger generations. And few Middle Easterners would recognize it, certainly not the types that have flooded into Europe.
The photograph at the top of this post is from film footage of a Nazi torchlight rally in Nuremberg.
The combined forces of the Russian and Syrian military in Syria are the last best hope to halt the Syrian diaspora, and with this comes the last best hope to avert the hardest turn to the political right in Europe since Nazi Germany.
Even now it looks as if Marine Le Pen will be France's next president, but her political party is a bunch of bleeding-heart liberals next to what will materialize in Europe if the migrant and refugee onslaught isn't stemmed.
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National Socialism was not a phenomenon of the right. It was socialism with a corporate face, viz., fascism.
ReplyDeleteRightists who value freedom, limited government, and Western civilization can feel fury and hatred toward their enemies. Why does a patriotic uprising have to be leftist? A rightist reaction is vital to defeat the ultra left with its insane "no borders, no nations" obsession.
Good call; thanks. I might have used a better term. Although I think the fascism and ultra-nationalism in Nazi Germany are generally considered today to be right-wing. But no argument from me when you note that socialist economics is not right wing.
ReplyDeleteHowever, there is so much moving of the linguistic goalposts that political discourse has collapsed into chaos in the USA. The only way now to have a coherent political discussion is by avoiding labels in favor of enumerated points, of the kind you've outlined. That makes discussion long-winded, but until a less confusing political lexicon re-emerges, that seems to me the only workable option.
All this said, I am worried about what PEGIDA and similar movements in Europe represent, even though a report published at Gates of Vienna about PEGIDA's anniversary rally in Dresden described them as nonviolent and 'non-extremist.' Anarchists and 'extremists' showed up, but they were excluded from the rally.
Yet history tells us that angry moderates are easily shoved out of the way by highly organized thugs. It happened in Russia's revolution, and in 1930s Germany. It happened in Iran's revolution. It happened more recently with the 'Islamist moderates' who found themselves up against Islamic State. Those so-called moderates didn't stand a chance against Islamic State, which knows exactly how to quickly establish and maintain a totalitarian police state and uses Islam as window dressing.
The only viable discourse with thugs is to wipe them out as fast as possible. And the only viable way to prevent large numbers of law-abiding citizens from banding together in fear is to rectify situations causing their fear. The Germans who are drawn to PEGIDA clearly have legitimate fears. The government would do well to listen to them before something far more alarming than PEGIDA emerges.
Thanks, Pundita.
ReplyDeleteBtw, I've read some of your stuff on Syria. It is illuminating indeed.
I think it is imperative that we hold the line on semantic coherence and rationality. The words "fascism," "nationalism," and "ultra" are javelins of the left and it is not so much "generally considered" that fascism and ultra-nationalism are right-wing as that it has been one of the single most important objectives of the left in Europe and the U.S. to deflect attention from the crimes of the left in the last century, namely, the crimes of the communists and the National Socialists. Both were totalitarian powers and the National Socialists avoided the difficulties of total state ownership of the means of production by being fascists, namely, socialists with a corporate face. Both powers dominated and perverted the judicial system and there was no rule of law. All existed and all property was held at the whim of the Party or the rulers.
On any meaningful spectrum of total power on the left to consent of the governed, rule of law, limited government, and free markets on the right, it makes no sense to speak of fascism as right-wing. Nationalism is also dishonestly parked on the right to discredit it by being next to Nazis and fascists but they should not be there to begin with, as I have argued.
Nationalism is also sought to be discredited by equating it with National Socialism without reference to any spectrum. Nationalist, ergo Nazi. However, this is dishonest as well as decent people can have a love for their own people and place without ipso facto harboring a desire to kill Jews or acquire Lebensraum by military aggression. It's like arguing that a surgeon who cuts on people to achieve good ends is necessarily an axe murder. The left loves the "conservative, patriot, nationalist, anti-immigration citizen as powder keg/Nazi killer" idea.
cont'd . . . .
Consider the phenomenon of AntiFa and variants in Europe. They are "anti-fascists" yet they are in actuality today's Sturm Abteilung (ultra-left) employed by the elected sellout governments as unofficial shock troops and enforcers. That latter point is for another discussion but the importance of semantic clarity is clear when we realize that AntiFa is actually anti-democrat. PEGIDA is quite peaceful and enters the public square to exercise classic First Amendment rights in the American understanding of freedom of expression. It is the AntiFa scum who are the ones hurling rocks and concrete at the PEGIDA people. I have read no accounts of PEGIDA-initiated violence. None. If "Anarchists and 'extremists'" were excluded that is evidence of effective organizing. I rather suspect that the Anarchists and extremists were the counter demonstrators, who have an amazing ability to appear and concentrate when PEGIDA demonstrations occur. The were possibly not so much a excluded as controlled by the police, who have actually done their job well in these demonstrations.
ReplyDeleteI think you do a disservice to PEGIDA by seeing it as something sinister. If PEGIDA is so sinister, what would a popular movement to stop and reverse immigration look like? Should no movement be attempted for fear that thugs will inevitably take over? That is a bit like the heckler's veto in our First Amendment jurisprudence.
I am not well versed in the events leading to the downfall of the Provisional Government in Russia. I do understand that the non-communists were not shoved out of the way but that the army officers in Petrograd (?) were tricked, paid, or otherwise induced not to rally to the defense of the PG and so the field was left clear for the Bolsheviks. Many things are possible but it is not necessarily the case that a movement will be taken over by thugs. American money flowed into the hands of the Red Army after November 1917 and without it the advantage obtained through the chicanery in Petrograd would only have proved temporary.
I also think that the attempt to pick and choose among armed Islamic "rebels" is an exercise in futility. We can no more identify such in Syria any more than we can reliably identify "moderate" Muslims in our midst anywhere in the West. Is not the safer course to assume that Islam is not window dressing for some kind of a detached thuggery and power lust but rather the main course? The moderates don't not stand a chance. They don't care about "a chance" (no sarcasm) and are just different flavors of al Qaida who will go at it with ISIS when the time comes if they are not crushed now. U.S. policy is beyond stupid in thinking there are good jihadis and bad ones.