Hillary Clinton is not only morally, but also physically, unfit for the presidency:

A rebel group in Syria cut off the head of a poor, emaciated, hungry, sick boy named Abdullah Issa, aged between eleven and thirteen.

They claimed he was a “spy”, but they most likely seized him in order to make their gleeful snuff-film (which you can watch here if you have the stomach for it).

The group has been lavishly supported by Obama.

When questioned about the official reaction to the atrocity, the State Department spokesman expressed indignation that such groups (in that chaotic bloodbath!) were  ”not obeying the laws of armed conflict”.

From the (pacifist) New American, by Alex Newman:

As if Americans needed another reason to rein in the out-of-control government in Washington, D.C., jihadist Syrian “rebels” backed and “vetted” by the Obama administration and neocons in Congress beheaded a 12-year-old boy. The barbaric beheading of the impoverished child was perpetrated on video that surfaced this week, with smiling jihadists funded and armed by the U.S. government shouting “Allahu Akbar” as they sever the child’s head. According to the Obama-backed terror group behind the horror, the boy was suspected of being a “spy” for the government. The group, which received heavy military equipment and funding from Obama, claimed it was “investigating” the gruesome child beheading.

The latest atrocity perpetrated by Nobel Peace Prize Laureate Obama’s allegedly “moderate” Syrian rebels, one faction in the globalist-fueled civil war, follows years of similar horrors. … Obama-backed jihadists have engaged in … a seemingly never-ending stream of horrific war crimes. …

The specific group behind the latest beheading of a child, which sparked a global outcry and headlines worldwide, is known as Nour al-Din al-Zenki. … The U.S. government supplied the terror group with American tax dollars and even BGM-71 TOW anti-tank missiles … As many as 1,000 Zenki jihadists were reportedly on the payroll of the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency …

The writer points out that the group was approved as “part of the ‘well-vetted’ jihadist alliance” by Senator John McCain (R-Ariz.) and Senator Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.).

The terror group also worked closely with the self-styled “Free Syrian Army”, the jihadist umbrella group loudly promoted by Obama  … It was also reportedly a regular ally of al-Qaeda’s Syrian affiliate, known as Jabhat al-Nusra. …

According to the terrorist group, the 12-year-old boy from a poor family was originally arrested near Aleppo for serving as an alleged “spy” for al-Quds, a group that supports the Syrian regime. The accusation led the jihadist group to decapitate the boy using a small knife on the back of a pick-up truck. The video of the murder, which was posted online, has caused a worldwide uproar. It shows the apparently prepubescent boy laying down in the truck surrounded by five adult jihadists with huge smiles on their faces. In the beheading footage, one of the men can be seen severing the boy’s head … [and then] holding the head up in triumph. …

As the beheading of the child and the Obama administration’s links to it became a global scandal, the John Kerry-led State Department was forced to respond. “We strongly condemn this type of barbaric action, no matter what group is responsible,” the State Department was quoted as saying. “We do not comment on which groups are funded by the United States. We do, however, routinely vet the groups we work with and support and their human rights record figures prominently in that. We do not support groups that condone this sort of barbarity, period.”

State Department spokesperson John Kirby noted that “al-Zenki has identified some of its own members as being responsible for this appalling act”. He also said that, according to a statement, the terror group had supposedly arrested those allegedly responsible for the beheading. “We encourage al-Zenki to investigate the incident and expect all parties to comply with their obligations under the law of armed conflict,” Kirby was quoted as saying by the far-left Daily Beast. “Regardless of who may be culpable, we strongly condemn what appears to be the brutal murder of a minor.” Other reports suggested that Obama had recently stopped funding the terror group, reportedly less than a year ago.

As The New American has documented extensively, however, the Obama administration has been lawlessly showering funds and weapons on practically every faction involved in the conflict — including the Shia militias out of Iraq fighting alongside Assad’s forces …  Other factions benefiting from American largess include multiple terror groups officially designated as terrorist organizations by the U.S. State Department. … There appears to be no warring faction that has not at some point been receiving U.S. government aid — a major violation of federal law, which does not provide exceptions for government officials in criminalizing support for terror groups.

Clint Eastwood: Preparing To Say Good-Bye 

My Twilight Years at 84

If you realize each day is a gift, you may be near my age. As I enjoy my twilight years, I am often struck by the inevitability that the party must end.  

There will be a clear, cold morning when there isn’t any “more”. No more hugs, no more special moments to celebrate together, no more phone calls just to chat.  

It seems to me that one of the important things to do before that morning comes, is to let every one of your family and friends know that you care for them by finding simple ways to let them know your heartfelt beliefs and the guiding principles of your life so they can always say, “He was my friend, and I know where he stood.”  

So, just in case I’m gone tomorrow, please know this: I voted against that incompetent, lying, flip-flopping, insincere, double-talking, radical socialist, terrorist excusing, bleeding heart, narcissistic, scientific and economic moron currently in the White House!  

Participating in a gun buy-back program because you think that criminals have too many guns is like having yourself castrated because you think your neighbors have too many kids.  

Regards, Clint

Political parties in the Western world are undergoing dramatic and permanent change.

In America, Donald Trump has changed the Republican Party. It will not go back to being what it was before he became its most popular candidate for the presidency.

The Democratic Party was always a racist cabal, and now it’s a criminal racket under the dictatorship of the Clintons. They have been “nudged” towards the wilder shores of Leftism by the surprising popularity of the  “democratic socialist” Bernie Sanders, who stood against Hillary Clinton for the presidential candidacy – but was not allowed to win, of course.

The Libertarian Party’s support is growing. There is even talk of it replacing the Republican Party. In any case, the Libertarians want the two-party system to fade away and new parties – chiefly their own – to enter the competition for power with a fair chance of winning.

Gary Johnson, the Libertarian Party’s nominee for the presidential elections, says: “I think 30 million people here are up for grabs that are probably Libertarian; it’s that they just don’t know it.”

In Europe, new parties are emerging and old ones re-emerging in new forms and with new policies, in response to the governing elites’ disastrous immigration policies, by which millions of Muslims have poured into the continent from the Third World, bringing their customs of violence and misogyny with them.

In Britain, the established political parties are showing signs of disintegration and possible re-alignment.

Our British contributing associate, Chauncey Tinker*, writes:

Jeremy Corbyn, the present unpopular leader of the Labour Party, will cling on to power until he feels a suitable loony leftie has appeared who can replace him. Corbyn is not having a great time being the leader but he cares about the loony left’s future in politics and he is not going to hand power back to the centrist Blairite arm of the party in a hurry. He repeatedly says he has the mandate of the “party membership”, and he actually really seems to feel duty bound not to disappoint them. I do think winning general elections is not the biggest priority in his mind, its much more about representing the real loony left. 

The former leader, Ed Miliband, made a disastrous decision to open the membership to anyone with £3 to spare, so changing the party membership, allowing the proper lefties to take over (and there are suggestions that some mischievous Tories also pitched in) and I don’t think they can easily undo this, without splitting the party in two. They are still joining at an astonishing rate apparently, even though the membership fee has been increased to £25 to try and stop this. But it looks as if it will ensure a majority vote for Corbyn.  

Could the party split in two? There has been quite a lot of speculation about it. The Blairite / loony left ideological split has been going on since Tony Blair arrived on the scene.  However I can’t help feeling that the Blairites have just lost faith in their own cause. Corbyn’s chief rival for the leadership, Owen Smith, seems in many respects to be not really that far away from Corbyn; but – so far at least –  without the tendency to seem like a supporter of Islam. And I have yet to hear him suggest that the government should print money and give wads of it to poor people. As such he maybe doesn’t deserve to be thought of as a loony leftie, just a normal leftie. There’s a short clip of him talking in the Telegraph (see here). He would certainly win the votes of the “always voted Labour, always will” types, and might even stand a chance in a general election – although apparently he has hinted in favour of a second referendum on Brexit, which might well be a vote loser considering at least 52% voted to leave the European Union.   

If they did split Labour it would be a huge breath of fresh air for UK politics, and give the United Kingdom Independence Party (UKIP) a chance to get a foot in the door with more MPs. I think UKIP’s chances right now would be good if it were not for the fact they are also in disarray. Nigel Farage has resigned the leadership, and I don’t find the frontrunner Steven Woolfe impressive. But maybe he will improve.  

Overall its just deeply uninspiring on all fronts, and the new Conservative Prime Minister, Theresa May,  looks almost unshakeable with this rabble of an opposition.

It seems possible that she could even reunite the Conservative Party after the deep divisions within it over Brexit. But for how long?

—

* Chauncey Tinker was a computer programmer for many years.  He writes: “I had always had a keen interest in current affairs but around 2012 my interest turned to real alarm.  I began to read about the Islamic religion and became increasingly troubled by what I learned, especially in view of the ever increasing presence of Islam in the West.  By 2013 I was beginning to realize just how much the mainstream media is dominated by a certain warped and narrow way of thinking (far away from my own fairly libertarian views), how freedom of speech was being eroded and stifled by “political correctness”.  More alarmingly still I also began to notice how governments were beginning to pass laws that could actually criminalize views that dissented from theirs. Determined to challenge this trend, I left my computing career and began to study current affairs full time. I began my blog late in 2015.”

From the National Review:

The point of Dinesh D’Souza’s new book, Hillary’s America: The Secret History of the Democratic Party, is that the Clinton/Rodham party is little more than a criminal racket.

We believe it. This trailer of the movie of the book indicates that there’s a lot of proof.

Bill and Hillary Clinton are described frankly and accurately as “depraved crooks”.

Vanderbilt University professor Carol Swain, who plays a big role in Hillary’s America, the movie …  takes on the racist roots of the Democratic Party … with great authority. Her straight-talk indictment of the party’s historic influences (the KKK), its role in fighting against civil-rights legislation, its thrill to white supremacy … is a focal point of the film.

The trouble is that those who will watch it already know that the Democratic Party is a criminal racket, and those who don’t know won’t watch it; or if they watch it, they won’t believe it; or if they believe it, they won’t give a damn.

What are European leaders thinking when they fanatically destroy European civilization by importing millions of devotees of that supremacist totalitarian ideology, Islam?

We are afforded a revelation of the thoughts of Federica Mogherini, a Red from her youth who bears the grandiose title of “High Representative of the European Union for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy”, in a speech she made at the “Call to Europe V: Islam in Europe” conference, June 24th, 2015.

The idea of a clash between Islam and “the West” – a word in which everything is put together and confused – has misled our policies and our narratives. Islam holds a place in our Western societies. Islam belongs in Europe. It holds a place in Europe’s history, in our culture, in our food and – what matters most – in Europe’s present and future. Like it or not, this is the reality.

Her vocabulary constantly reveals her Leftism. “Narrative” is one of the buzzwords of the Left. We’ll come upon more of them. “Narrative” means their spin; their attempt to substitute a preferred account of events for what actually happened. It does not work, of course. But failure does not deter the Left. They ignore it.

Islam has a long history of invading Europe and sometimes succeeding in conquering parts of it. It is a history of fierce onslaughts, cruel subjugation, and desperate counter-attacks – because Islam most definitely did not belong in Europe. (Remember Lepanto, Poitiers, the Gates of Vienna …) Only in that sense, “Islam holds a place in Europe’s history”. But it is not a place to celebrate. Europe learnt bitter lessons from Muslim invasions, but some Europeans are choosing to forget them. Either the High Representative does not know the history – which seems unlikely – or she is deliberately distorting the nature of the Islamic effect on Europe, making it sound nicely integrated and enriching and delicious by putting it into the context of “our culture” and even “our food”. Why? Because she and her elite comrades want to destroy the existing order and build their fantasy world, their utopia, their paradise-on-earth in its stead. And they have some confused ideas of how to go about it, including the flooding of Europe with Muslims from the Third World.

Certainly Islam has a place in Europe’s present – but as a threat, a terror, a horror, a dread; of which the High Representative and her like-minded colleagues are pertinaciously doing all they can to ensure a continuance well into the future.

As Europeans, we should be proud of our diversity. The fear of diversity comes from weakness, not from a strong culture.

“Diversity” is the top favorite buzzword.

I shall be even more clear on that: the very idea of a clash of civilizations is at odds with the most basic values of our European Union – let alone with reality.

She means that the European Union was supposed to prevent war between European states. The original concept did not involve Muslim immigrants.

Throughout our European history, many have tried to unify our continent by imposing their own power, their own ideology, their own identity against the identity of someone else. With the European project, after World War II, not only we accepted diversity: we expressed a desire for diversity to be a core feature of our Union. We defined our civilization through openness and plurality: a mind-set based on blocs does not belong to us.

“Blocs”? The European Union is a “bloc”. Nation-states are what the Left hates. They like forming blocs  such as the European Union – with a view to eventual world (socialist) government.

Some people are now trying to convince us that a Muslim cannot be a good European citizen, that more Muslims in Europe will be the end of Europe. These people are not just mistaken about Muslims: these people are mistaken about Europe – that is my core message – they have no clue what Europe and the European identity are.

“They” have no clue what Europe and the European identity are? It is typical of the Left to accuse their opponents of the very thing they are guilty of themselves. Again the High Representative, with her false account of European history, chooses to overlook the fact that the indigenous European populations are dying out; that the immigrant Muslim populations are increasing rapidly; that the inevitable result must be Muslim majorities throughout Europe. And above all she chooses not to notice that however much the Europeans want to mingle the Muslims in with them in an enriched and delicious new European culture, the Muslims themselves desire no such thing. Their aim is to impose their law, their culture (and their halal food) on Europe. That means the enslavement of women, the execution of homosexuals, the abolition of the wine industry, the tearing down of paintings from the walls of the art galleries, the end of freedom of speech, freedom of worship, freedom of the press – to name but a few of the effects of Islamic rule.

The High Representative, who joined the Communist Youth early in life and has remained steadily on the Left, is of course a feminist, and is all for gay marriage. She cannot admit even to herself that there is a contradiction between those ideals and the doctrines of Islam. It is to be doubted that she would ever bring herself to read the Koran and the hadith. The Islam she wants to welcome into Europe is simply colorful, cooks exotic meals, worships quietly in its mosques – and why should not Europe tolerate that, enjoy the meals, admire the turbans, the fezzes, the burkhas? It’s a travel-brochure picture of Islam that sits in her pretty little head. And the less pretty heads of almost all the leaders of Europe.

This is our common fight: to make this concept accepted both in Europe and beyond Europe.

Make it accepted “beyond Europe”. Where can she mean? Could she be intending to exert her efforts at imposing huge quantities of colorful and delicious Islam on  – America?

For Europe and Islam face some common challenges in today’s world. The so-called Islamic State is putting forward an unprecedented attempt to pervert Islam for justifying a wicked political and strategic project.

Ah! She has noticed that the Islamic State is not colorful and delicious. Therefore, in her perfect logic, it cannot be Islam. Real Islam faces the Islamic State as a “challenge”, just as the non-islamic world does. She says nothing about the age-old conflict between Sunni and Shia. She pays no attention to the diversity within Islam – accompanied by passionate hatred, total intolerance.

Now she switches to the Arabic word for the Islamic State, the word its Muslim opponents use for it: “Da’esh” – in hope of reinforcing her claim that it is not truly Islamic.

Talking about Da’esh, the king of Jordan told the European Parliament a few months ago: “The motive is not faith, it is power; power pursued by ripping countries and communities apart in sectarian conflicts, and inflicting suffering across the world”

Western media like to refer to Daʼesh with the word “medieval”. This does not help much to understand the real nature of the threat we are facing. Daʼesh is something completely new. This is a modern movement, reinterpreting religion in an innovative and radical way. It is a movement that, rather than preserving Islam, wants us to trash centuries of Islamic culture in the name of their atrocities.

Islam does not derive from medieval times. Worse – it arose in the Dark Ages.

There is nothing new about it. It is not “interpreting religion” – by which she means “interpreting Islam”  – in “an innovative and radical way”. It is doing what Muhammad commanded Muslims to do.

Da’esh is not a State, and it is not a State for Islam. The Grand Imam of al Azhar, Ahmed el Tayeb, argued: “There is no Islamic State, but a number of Islamic countries that the terrorists are trying to destroy.” This is the reality we face and we don’t say this often, but we should do so to dismantle their narrative. Sometimes, by describing the atrocities of Da’esh, we do them a favor: atrocities are part of their propaganda. The more we describe them as evil, the happier they are. Daʼesh is Islam’s worst enemy in today’s world. Its victims are first and foremost Muslim people. Islam is a victim itself.

This is not to say that we should overlook the ideology of Daʼesh. If we want to fight it, we need first of all to know it and to understand it. We need to know where it comes from, and how it got to be what it is.

Really? Know and understand it? No. She doesn’t mean that. She already KNOWS what it is all about. It is about Muslims being poor and jobless and not getting enough help and understanding and welfare and love from us Europeans. If they don’t get enough of all that, they might rape hundreds of German women, run a truck over crowds celebrating Bastille Day in Nice, disembowel and castrate people watching a show in Paris, and gouge their eyes out. And it would all be our fault.

See? They went and did all those things, didn’t they? All because we weren’t nice enough to them.

First of all, I believe the Daʼesh propaganda fills a void, a vacuum. The terrorists are recruiting people who feel they do not hold a place in their own communities, that they do not belong in their own societies.

I was very much impressed, when I was visiting Tunis … Tunisia is a modern country and still is one of the countries with the highest number of foreign fighters in Da’esh. I asked a young girl, very engaged with civil society, why she believed so many people her age were joining Daʼesh. She told me something I will never forget: “You know, people my age in Tunisia feel they have no place in the organigram.

She said that? “The organigram”? According to our dashboard dictionary, an “organigram” is an organizational chart. So what organizational chart do young people in Tunisia feel they have no place in? Who drew the chart? Why? What the hell was she – what the hell is the “High Representative of the European Union for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy” – talking about?

They are looking for their own box, for a role, for defining who they are. They ask: where is my place? What is my role? This is the real challenge not only in the Arab world, but here in Europe.

Later she deplores the idea of people being in”boxes”. But consistency is the last thing to look for here.

That is why I believe the best way to prevent radicalization in Europe and in our region is not only education, but also employment. We have so many well educated and frustrated young people, with a lot of energy, a lot of willingness to find their place in their society and their community. And they have lost hope that they will be able to do so.

This does not justify the choice to turn to terrorism. People are responsible for their own actions and their own crimes. Still, if we look at ways to prevent radicalization we need jobs and good jobs. Not just a place in the “organigram”, but a good place.

Da’esh longs for people who have lost their place in society, their role, their sense of belonging and hope. We need inclusive societies. So many times we have heard a narrative opposing security and open societies. It is a false dilemma. We should start saying more clearly that a society can be stable and safe only when it is democratic.

Of course I know each country has a specific history, and needs to follow its own path towards democracy. Not so long ago, and still today, there are people in “the West” arguing democracy can be exported militarily. We have all realized – in this room for sure – how bad this idea was. This does not mean we are not ready to support democracy and democratic processes: quite the contrary. But we need to consider the specificity of each process.

While she would like to “make Islam accepted beyond Europe”, she would only export democracy to Islam by extremely sensitive means – sensitive to the point of inaction. In fact, if other countries are not democratic, we must “humbly respect” whatever they are for the sake of diversity.

We need to show some humble respect for diversity. Diversity is the core feature of our European history, and it is our strength.

It is so manifestly a disaster imposed on Europe by weak thinking, that this claim of hers is simply ludicrous. If she said that European culture was eclectic – that it traditionally chooses the best of everything from everywhere and absorbs it and uses it for its own purposes – she would be right. But she is referring to multiculturalism, which in effect is Islamization, terrorism, bloodshed and suffering.

She proceeds to get into an awful muddle of self-contradiction. Read the following quickly, don’t try to make sense of it. A quick read gives you the right impression. It is confused nonsense. And so typical of EU speeches that to anyone who has heard or read a few, it comes across as self-satirizing: 

But we should also show respect for diversity when we look outside our borders. We need to understand diversity, understand complexity. This is difficult, but maybe a bit less difficult for us Europeans. We know diversity and complexity – especially here in Brussels – from our own experience. For this reason I am not afraid to say that political Islam should be part of the picture. Religion plays a role in politics – not always for good, not always for bad. Religion can be part of the process. What makes the difference is whether the process is democratic or not. That is what matters to us, the key point. We need to work for regional frameworks, in the Middle East and the Arab world, in which every one has a responsibility and a chance to contribute – Muslim, Christian, Jew or non-believer, Sunni or Shia, Arab, Kurd, whatever. One of the weaknesses of our policies so far has been to focus on dividing lines, as if everyone can fit in a box. People do not live in boxes. People live in communities and societies. The more open the communities and the societies are, the better it is for the democratic process. All communities should be granted with their own rights and their own responsibilities, with an opportunity to do their part for the stability and the security of their own country. This is the path we are finally trying to follow in some key Arab countries, like Iraq: we are finally understanding we need to put people together, not to tear them apart. Inclusiveness can be the key to our success – both when we talk foreign policy and when we deal with our home affairs. Sometimes we go out of our borders and preach, but then we look at ourselves and we falter. Enlargement processes involve us and our partners for years, but maybe we should also take time to brush up on the “acquis” with some Member States. We have a problem of internal coherence – when it comes to rights, to democracy, to the respect of diversity, when it comes to some of the difficult choices we make, including on migration policies. The battle for hearts and minds is not only a battle we need to fight in the Middle East, but also here inside our European Union. It is a difficult battle: this is not a popular argument, not an easy issue. After years of economic and political weakness, our societies are naturally afraid. When you are weak, the reaction is closing the door and pretending to solve issues with isolation. On the contrary, the only chance we have as Europeans is to be proud and strong of our basics: and our basics are respect and diversity. Let me say something more about migration. We have supported the “bring back our girls” campaign for Nigerian girls kidnapped by Boko Haram. There is such a contradiction between our solidarity when these girls are far away, and our lack of solidarity when they are at our door. This is impossible to sustain. In the coming days and months we need to find solutions not only for the girls in Nigeria, but for their sisters and mothers and daughters who are forced to flee by the very same radicalized movements. If we do not realize this, our whole message risks to sound empty. We need to pass a cultural message, to lay the basis for our political message: any attempt to divide the peoples of Europe into “us” and “them” brings us in the wrong direction. The migrants and us. The Muslims and us. The Jews and us, as anti-Semitism has not been defeated at all. The “other” and us. We learnt from our history that we all are someone else’s “other”. The fear of the other can only lead us to new conflicts.

The “other” is another of their buzzwords. Professor Edward Said, who found excuses for Palestinian terrorism, accused Westerners of seeing Muslims as the “other”. He did not notice that Muslims see Westerners as the “other”. Or recognize the plain fact of otherness inherent in all classification.

I hope we can work together to increase our self confidence. When we say we are European, we should also remember what is the root of our European culture: our diversity. That is our strength, and we should learn to be proud of it.

Such is the intellectual prowess of the elite who govern our lives. Their speeches are shallow, vague, inconsistent, self-contradictory, platitudinous, doctrinaire, under-informed and deceitful. Worse than dangerous, such thinking is a cause of the atrocities that Muslims are inflicting on Europeans – most recently in Paris, Brussels, and Nice.  

One must bear in mind that none of the EU bureaucrats and representatives have been elected to foist their insane policies on the peoples of Europe. The members of the elite choose them – not for intelligence, plainly, but for conformity with their own “politically correct” Leftist opinions.

The sooner the European Union disintegrates, the better for Europe. The sooner the proud-to-be-humble High Representatives shut-up and go home, the better for the world.

(Hat-tip to Chauncey Tinker for the link to the speech))

Numerous observers of the failed coup in Turkey – including some of our own readers – suspect that Erdogan staged the event in order to crack down on opponents of his Islamization agenda.

Rick Moran at American Thinker concludes in an article titled Did Erdogan Stage The Coup To Crack Down On His Opponents?, which explores the accusation:

The small number of troops involved, the incompetent prosecution of the coup, and the apparent lack of planning by the plotters suggest an extremely amateur attempt to overthrow Erdogan. But might Erdogan’s agents have goaded the plotters into taking action? It’s a seductive theory that has no evidence to back it up.

Even if there was an Erdogan plot, there must have been many participants in the uprising who knew nothing of it and strove sincerely for success.

What is certain is that Erdogan gained a significant victory, not just for himself but also for our enemy, Islam.  

Ralph Peters writes at Fox News Opinion:

Friday night’s failed coup was Turkey’s last hope to stop the Islamization of its government and the degradation of its society.  Reflexively, Western leaders rushed to condemn a coup attempt they refused to understand. Their reward will be a toxic Islamist regime at the gates of Europe.

Our leaders no longer do their basic homework.The media relies on experts-by-Wikipedia. Except for PC platitudes, our schools ignore the world beyond our shores. Deluged with unreliable information, citizens succumb to the new superstitions of the digital age.

So a great country is destroyed by Islamist hardliners before our eyes—and our president praises its “democracy”. 

That tragically failed coup was a forlorn hope, not an attempt to take over a country. Turkey is not a banana republic in which the military grasps the reins for its own profit.  For almost a century, the Turkish armed forces have been the guardians of the country’s secular constitution. Most recently, coups in 1960, 1971 and 1980 (with “non-coup” pressure in 1997) saw the military intervene to prevent the country’s collapse.

Erdogan will use the coup as an excuse to accelerate the Islamization of his country and to lead Turkey deeper into the darkness engulfing the Muslim world. His vision is one of a neo-Ottoman megalomaniac.

Each time, the military returned the government to civilian rule as soon as that proved practical. …

Friday night, mid-grade officers led a desperate effort to rescue their country again. They failed. The West cheered. Soon enough, we’ll mourn.

The coup leaders made disastrous mistakes, the worst of which was to imagine that the absence of President Erdogan from Ankara, the capital, presented the perfect opportunity.  Wrong.  In a coup, the key is to seize the leaders you mean to overthrow (as well as control of the media).  Instead of fleeing into exile, Erdogan was able to return in triumph.

So who is the man our own president rushed to support because he was “democratically elected”? Recep Tayyip Erdogan is openly Islamist and affiliated with the Muslim Brotherhood, which President Obama appears to believe represents the best hope for the Middle East. But the difference between ISIS, Al Qaeda and the Muslim Brotherhood isn’t one of purpose, but merely of manners: Muslim Brothers wash the blood off their hands before they sit down to dinner with their dupes.

With barely a murmured “Tut-tut!” from Western leaders, Erdogan has dismantled Turkey’s secular constitution (which the military is duty-bound to protect).  His “democracy” resembles Putin’s, not ours. Key opposition figures have been driven into exile or banned. Opposition parties have been suppressed. Recent elections have not been held so much as staged.  And Erdogan has torn the fresh scab from the Kurdish wound, fostering civil war in Turkey’s southeast for his own political advantage.

Erdogan has packed Turkey’s courts with Islamists.  He appointed pliant, pro-Islamist generals and admirals, while staging show trials of those of whom he wished to rid the country.  He has de facto, if not yet de jure, curtailed women’s freedoms.  He dissolved the wall between mosque and state (Friday night, he used mosques’ loudspeakers to call his supporters into the streets).  Not least, he had long allowed foreign fighters to transit Turkey to join ISIS and has aggressively backed other extremists whom he believed he could manage.

And his diplomatic extortion racket has degraded our own military efforts against ISIS.

That’s the man President Obama supports.

And the leaders of the ill-fated coup? What did they stand for?  Mustafa Kemal Ataturk’s legacy and a secular constitution.  One of the great men of the last century, Ataturk (an innovative general by background) pulled Turkey from the wreckage of World War One, abolished the caliphate, suppressed fanatical religious orders, gave women legal rights and social protections, banned the veil, promoted secular education for all citizens of Turkey, strongly advocated Westernization and modernization … and promoted a democratic future.

The officers who led the collapsed coup stood for all those things. President Obama and Secretary of State Kerry opposed them.

By Saturday morning, it was clear that the mullahs and mobs behind Erdogan had won. Erdogan will use the coup as an excuse to accelerate the Islamization of his country and to lead Turkey deeper into the darkness engulfing the Muslim world. His vision is one of a neo-Ottoman megalomaniac.

NATO, which operates by consensus, will find itself embracing a poisonous snake.  New crises will reawaken old fears in southeastern Europe, which western European states will dismiss condescendingly, further crippling the badly limping European Union.  Syria will continue to bleed.  And educated, secular Turks will find themselves in a situation like unto that of German liberals in the 1930s.  We may see new and unexpected wars.

A desperate, ill-planned coup has failed in Turkey. Here comes the darkness. 

Yes – unless the West starts fighting back under new American leadership.

A nationwide curfew was imposed as a section of the armed forces claimed to have taken the country over. The coup leaders seized national television and the phone network. Gunfire was heard in Ankara and military jets flew low over Ankara and Istanbul where the bridges over the Bosphorus were blocked. In Istanbul, Turkish Gendarmerie and soldiers blocked entrances to bridges over the Bosphorus while tanks blocked Ataturk airport. A TV announcer read out a statement saying that a “peace committee” had taken over the country against autocratic rule and will write a new constitution restoring democracy, whose institutions have been eroded by autocratic rule, and restore secular law.

It was a great aim, a brave attempt – but it failed.

Now Turkey is less likely to be secular and democratic. 

DebkaFile, which we quoted above, assesses the event and analyses why the attempted coup failed:

The Turkish armed forces’ attempt to overthrow the authoritarian rule of President Tayyip Erdogan was largely extinguished Saturday morning July 16 after less than 24 hours – due to three major miscalculations:

1. They first seized the country’s power centers and state television when their first priority should have been to immobilize Erdogan who was out of the capital on vacation.

2. Although out of control in Ankara and Istanbul, he used his mobile phone to reassert his authority through a private television station and called on the people to take to the streets in protest against the plotters. Civilians responded by surrounding the tanks and tying them down until loyal troops moved in.

3. They relied too heavily on the air force to cow the regime, the jets zooming low over the two main cities while the two main airports were closed.

It was soon evident that control of Turkey’s skies was no guarantee of control of the ground. Indeed, the coup leaders did not prevent him from landing at Ataturk airport and declaring immediately that he was in charge, demonstrating that he was on top of events.

In the clashes that followed, Gen. Umit Dundar, the newly appointed acting chief of the general staff, said more than 190 people died in clashes: 41 police officers, two soldiers, 47 civilians and 104 people described as ‘‘coup plotters”. Dundar said officers from the Air Force, the military police and the armored units were mainly involved in the attempt.

At the same, the attempt by part of the Turkish armed forces to topple Erdogan in the name of democracy and the return of “secular law” was impressive and evidence of social and political malaise under his rule. It was led by at least half a dozen generals, as may be judged the arrest of Gen. Memduh Hakbilen, the chief of staff of Turkey’s command for the important Aegean region, among the more than 1,500 alleged plotters and the suspension of another five generals.

That elements of the air force joined the attempted uprising is unprecedented in Turkey, whose army is NATO’s second largest.

Erdogan will no doubt want to know why his MIT intelligence failed to scent the conspiracy afoot.

He will certainly lose no time in executing a massive purge of Turkey’s armed forces, and especially the air force and intelligence arms, after accusing the coup leaders of treason.

Erdogan has been steadily taking steps to re-create an Islamic state. He wants to reverse the modernizing reforms that Kemal Ataturk effected after Turkey, as an ally of Germany, was defeated in the First World War. He dreams of reviving the Ottoman Empire, perhaps seeing himself as Sultan (who was also titled Caliph). He has built himself a new palace in Ankara, and announced that it will be the center of government.

Predictably, President Obama is on the side of the would-be dictator against the side that reached for democracy. 

Erdogan’s new presidential palace in Ankara

President Erdogan in his new palace

President Erdogan among guards dressed in the uniforms of Ottoman soldiers

Europeans are at last growing angry with their ruling elites and forming groups of resistance.

Feeling themselves and their power seriously threatened, the elites – politicians, academics, media people, all of them on the left even if some of them call themselves conservatives – label the groups “far-right”.

Many voices are prophesying civil war.

We quote from an article at Gatestone by Yves Mamou, titled France: The Coming Civil War:

“We are on the verge of a civil war.”

That quote did not come from a fanatic or a lunatic. No, it came from the head of France’s homeland security, the DGSI (Direction générale de la sécurité intérieure), Patrick Calvar.

He has, in fact, spoken of the risk of a civil war many times. On July 12^th, he warned a commission of members of parliament, in charge of a survey about the terrorist attacks of 2015, about it.

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

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

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

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

The main reason is the failure of the state.

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

Most of those attacks were committed by French Muslims: citizens on their way back from Syria (the Kouachi brothers at Charlie Hebdo), or by French Islamists (Larossi Abballa who killed a police family in Magnanville last June) who later claimed their allegiance to Islamic State (ISIS). The truck killer in Nice was Tunisian but married with a French woman, three children together, and living quietly in Nice until he decided to murder …

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

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

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

So confronted with this failure by our elite … how astonishing is it if paramilitary groups are organizing themselves to retaliate? …

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

France, like Germany and Sweden, has a military and police strong enough to fight against an internal Islamist enemy. But first, they have to name it and take measures against it.

If they do not – if they leave their native citizens in despair, with no other means than to arm themselves and retaliate –  yes, civil war is inevitable.