The New Left, born in riot and blood in 1968, worked at taking over the institutions of the free West, and succeeded, eventually capturing the pinnacle of power with the election of Barack Obama to the presidency of the United States. Those institutions which they could not dominate and turn – most importantly police forces and the military – they vilified and weakened.

Islam, assisted by the Left, has penetrated even those bastions of Western freedom. The Left made the accusation of “racism” so terrible a label, that politicians, journalists, and most private citizens would do anything to avoid being stuck with it. Islam (intensely intolerant itself) invented the idea that to criticize it was to be racist (though Islam is not a race). So while Muslims do much to make non-Muslims fear them – terrorizing them with mass slaughter – they cry that they are the victims of “Islamophobia”.  And non-Muslims are so intimidated that they are submitting to Muslim domination.

In Rotherham and other cities, Muslims “groomed” hundreds of  English girls in their early teens to be prostitutes, and the police would not act to save the girls for fear of being labeled racist. The British police submitted.

Now the British army …

This is from Breitbart:

British Army officers have visited and prayed at a ‘fundamentalist‘ mosque that has been linked to the 7/7, 9/11, and San Bernardino terrorist attacks, Breitbart London can reveal.

Tablighi Jamaat (TJ) – whose leadership once hosted an Al-Qaeda associate of Osama bin Laden, [and] who call on British Muslims to wage jihad against Western troops – became the focus of international scrutiny last year after San Bernardino terrorists Syed Farouk and Tashfeen Malik were found to have attended their mosques.

TJ is an offshoot of the radical Deobandi sect, founded in colonial India specifically to oppose Western culture. Their global Headquarters is in Dewsbury, England – a town that produced the leader of the 7/7 London bombings, several ISIS suicide bombers, and even Britain’s youngest convicted Islamist extremist.

The Deobandi school of thought also ‘gave birth‘ to the Taliban in Afghanistan. As British forces battled Taliban insurgents in 2001, with nearly 500 losing their lives, the Indian headquarters of the movement, the Darul Uloom Deobandi, continued to offer its explicit support to the terrorists.

“Brigade officers visit to the Zakaria Mosque. The officers were introduced to the ritual washing of hands, face and feet by Molana Farook Yunus, the project manager of [the Islamic charity] Kumon Y’All, before entering the prayer room”, announced the 4th Infantry Brigade of Catterick, North Yorkshire, on their Facebook page.

The Deobandi Zakaria mosque that the officers chose to visit sits in the Savile Town area of Dewsbury, which is 98.7 per cent South Asian and has been described as “the most segregated area in the UK“.

Another Facebook post revealed how, “the soldiers also visited the Institute of Islamic Education, a boarding school and darul uloom (Islamic seminary) in South Street”, which is located within the TJ’s headquarters.

TJ is commonly referred to as the “Army of Darkness”, and has been linked to high profile Muslim cabinet ministers, as well as being the group that Zacharias Moussaoui, a convicted 9/11 plotter, associated with.

Mr. Moussaoui was defended by the new London mayor Sadiq Khan. …

Breitbart London contacted the army to ask why they had chosen to visit Tablighi Jamaat …

An Army spokesperson [replied]:

It is vital that the Army reflects the society from which it is drawn. To do that we need to engage with all our communities and break down the myths about what the Army does and who we are. The visit to Dewsbury did exactly that and was part of a wider strategy of demonstrating that service with the British Army is entirely consistent with Islam.

It is not. Or should not be. The British army exists to protect Britons from enemies such as Islam, which exists, and has existed from its inception, to conquer the world and make all peoples submit to its savage rule.

In 1993, Tablighi Jamaat’s UK leadership hosted an Al-Qaeda associate of Osama bin Laden, who spoke to numerous future terrorists as he toured 42 TJ mosques and madrassas across Britain.

Cleric Masood Azhar spoke at three mosques in Dewsbury and Batley in West Yorkshire, including one sermon, “From jihad to jannat [paradise]”, which was heard by a “huge crowd”.

At a separate talk, he said the aim of all true Muslims must be the “elimination of the oppressive and infidel system by the blessing of jihad” and promised those who died for the cause would be guaranteed “Houris [Virgins]” who “yearn badly for martyrs”.

But the British army ignored all that. They preferred to take a rosier view of what the jihadis are about:

“The [Tablighi Jamaat] school provides a full-time education as well as training Imams, Islamic studies teachers and scholars in order to benefit the communities to which they return”, explained the 4th Infantry Brigade on Facebook.

The visit was organised by the Islamic charity Kumon Y’All. A project manager for the charity, Maulana Farook Yunus, told Pulse 1 Radio:

The Army is a lot of very powerful people and I am very passionate about tapping into that resource and using it for the betterment of society. I feel really happy that today they have come, we have met and had a few hours together. I feel that our relationship is getting better and stronger and we can use that for what we want to achieve.

Indeed!

There are plans for the Army to take part in the annual football tournament in Savile Town in July, and for a future visit by the Kumon Y’All charity to the Catterick barracks.

Colonel Butterwick of the 4th Infantry Brigade said: “It has been a fantastic day – we have learned so much and we have been warmly welcomed by everybody we have talked to. “What it does is bust myths and the more myth-busting we can do, the more we understand each other.”

They have allowed themselves to be bamboozled much. And they are enormously helping their colonizing conquerors to propagate myths.

If ever Islam allows itself to laugh, it has great cause to do so in triumph and Schadenfreude now.

(Hat-tip to our Blog Roll associate Chauncey Tinker)

It is too late to save Europe from Islamization. In this century, the majority of the population will be Muslim, ruled by Sharia law.

Islam is cruel, supremacist, and totalitarian. Sharia law is inseparable from Islam:

There is no dispute among Muslims that the Qur’an is the basis of the Sharia and that its specific provisions are to be scrupulously observed. The Hadith and Sunna are complementary sources to the Qur’an and consist of the sayings of the Prophet and accounts of his deeds. The Sunna helps to explain the Qur’an, but it may not be interpreted or applied in any way which is inconsistent with the Qur’an.

Sharia is spreading through the West, as land after land is colonized by the Muslims.

This is from Inquisitr:

Supporters of sharia zones have been harassing drinking establishments in Copenhagen, Denmark, to discourage the consumption of alcohol. This creeping phenomenon, which has Danish bar-owners up in arms, is also manifesting itself across Europe, Canada, and the United States.

Appealing to their government for help, bar operators in the Nørrebro suburb of Copenhagen, claim that advocates of sharia zones demand money, and throw stones through windows of targeted establishments. …  Heidi Dyrnesli of Cafe Heimdal recently told local Radio24syv, that some young men just walked into her bar and ordered all guests to leave.

Supporting the propagation of sharia zones to prepare the world for an Islamic caliphate, Iraqi-Canadian Abdul-Adhim spoke at Mohawk College in Ontario, on November 28, 2015, about the need for Muslims to band together under a united Islamic state. During his 40-minute lecture intended to address the Syrian refugee crisis, Abdul-Adhim digressed and instead promoted the building of an Islamic caliphate under sharia law, “the best system that exists on earth”. According to the Toronto Sun, He stated his case from a podium beside the banner of Hizb ut-Tahrir, a symbol of all Muslim countries as one caliphate.

The society (in Syria) has risen up as a society and says that we want Islam as our way of life. And the West will not have it and this is what we are seeing. … And therefore, how do we support the people of Syria? We must send money and help the refugees that are coming here in every way that we can.

In a roundabout way, Abdul-Adhim revealed the oft-repeated pattern of Syrian refugees gaining a foothold with a host country for the establishment of sharia zones, and setting the stage for a caliphate. …

Some American states and a Canadian province have taken measures to protect themselves from Sharia law; but in the United Kingdom, Sharia is now a parallel system with British law.

As of 2014, seven states in the U.S. “banned Sharia law”,  or passed some kind of measure that “prohibits the states’ courts from considering foreign, international or religious law”, although Muslims continue to operate their sharia zones in private. In 2006, the province of Ontario, Canada, banned arbitration of family law disputes under any body of laws except Ontario law, although arbitration under religious laws is said to flourish in Canada’s unregulated Muslim enclaves. In 2014, around 85 “sharia courts” were said to be openly functional in the U.K. under two rival services, Islamic Sharia Council and the Muslim Arbitration Tribunal.

According to U.K.’s The Sun, Abu Izzadeen, the self-styled “Director for Waltham Forest Muslims”, campaigned in 2011 to make London’s Borough of Waltham Forest the first of Britain’s sharia zones. He painted a picture of what it would be like to live under Quranic law.

“Women would have to cover up. It should be forbidden that they are not. Thieves should have their hands cut off.” …

As the Danish people wring their hands, sharia zones proliferate across Europe and other parts of the world.

When Sharia is the predominant  law of Europe:

Sharia forbids the consumption of alcohol, so will not the European wine industry be abolished? Beer prohibited?

Sharia forbids the depiction of the human form or any natural thing. Will the art galleries not be emptied, paintings and sculpture destroyed?

Will the libraries not be emptied, books destroyed?

Will theaters, opera and concert halls not be closed?

Will women not be compulsorily veiled in public?

Will homosexuals not be sentenced to death?

Will there not be polygamy, slavery, child marriage?

Will there not be public amputations, stoning, crucifixion, beheading? 

It would be a mistake to imagine that “most Muslims” will not permit this to happen “because they are moderates”.

From Wikiislam:

A Gallup survey carried out in early 2009 found that British Muslims have zero tolerance for Homosexuality. Not even a single British Muslim interviewed believed that homosexual acts were morally acceptable. Also according to a Zogby International poll of American Muslims taken in November and December of 2001, a massive 71 percent opposed “allowing gays and lesbians to marry legally”. Another worrying statistic to be found among Muslims in the UK, is that although they comprise just 2% of the total British population, they commit 25% of all anti-Homosexual crimes. So, with the rise of Islam in the UK and the rest of the world, we also see the inadvertent return to the morality of seventh-century Arabia, with Muslim gangs on the streets of England carrying out violent attacks on gays and mosques labeled as “moderate” calling for the murder of homosexuals at the hands of their congregation.

What will become of the once great schools and universities of the West?

What will be left of our culture?

What will be left of our civilization?

We admired General David Petraeus when he led the “surge” of American military force that subdued the chaos in Iraq.

He was the last man we would have thought of as a coward.

But now it emerges that that’s what he is: a moral coward.

As such, he is typical of Western man faced with the savage onslaught of Islam.

This is from the Daily Caller:

In an op-ed for The Washington Post published Friday, former CIA Director David Petraeus said increasing anti-Muslim rhetoric in the United States threatens to drive more “moderate” Muslims to terrorism.

For Petraeus, the rapid increase of ugly rhetoric against Muslims and Islam threatens to engulf even “moderate” Muslims.

“Ugly rhetoric”? No. Necessary outcry.

We approve of the writer’s putting the word “moderate” in quotation marks. Who are “moderate” Muslims? How do they only moderately obey sharia law – which is inseparable from Islam? Do they only half “kill the infidel”? Only partly throw homosexuals from heights to murder them? Only slightly subjugate women? Do not totally sever limbs?

The summary of Petraeus’s views goes on:

This is exactly what terror groups like al-Qaida and the Islamic State want, as it supports their vision of the world as one divided between the forces of Islam and the forces of the decadent, satanic west. These groups then seize on a sort of “clash of civilizations” rhetoric to drive recruitment and push moderate Muslims into their ranks. Muslims in the West are apparently so at risk of joining up with al-Qaida, that Petraeus thinks we need to police our own speech, so as not to offend them and face the potential consequence of a growing, violent fifth column taking shape in the West.

So we must go silent to our subjugation or our graves, and make not a peep of protest as our civilization is destroyed?

“Rather than making our country safer, they will compound the already grave terrorist danger to our citizens,” Petraeus wrote. “As ideas, they are toxic and, indeed, non-biodegradable — a kind of poison that, once released into our body politic, is not easily expunged.”

“Setting aside moral considerations … 

Why? That would hand victory to them! 

… those who flirt with hate speech against Muslims should realize they are playing directly into the hands of al-Qaeda and the Islamic State,” Petraeus added. “The terrorists’ explicit hope has been to try to provoke a clash of civilizations — telling Muslims that the United States is at war with them and their religion.”

They are at war with us. That is what jihad is all about. Since its earliest days, Islam’s mission has been world conquest. We should be engaging them in that war. We are mightier in military strength than they are. We could easily defeat them if we just had the will to do so.

Can Petraeus really believe that if we refrained from morally condemning Muslim terrorism and their jihad and their rhetoric against us; if we said nothing; if by our silence we submitted now to their dominance and their law – they would stop the jihad? Stop the terrorism?

Islam is winning because powerful people in the West – politicians, military commanders, churchmen, opinion formers in the media – think like that.

Will a President Trump save us? Will he stop more Muslim immigrants entering America? Will he crush ISIS as he said he will? There’s no one else we can look to.

*

One powerful Muslim shows how much David Petraeus’s advice is appreciated on the Muslim side. His own advice is the same – and he throws it directly at Donald Trump:

The new Muslim mayor of London has issued a warning to Donald Trump: Moderate your stance on Muslims, or they will launch more attacks against America.

Could it be because the sort of advice Petraeus is giving us serves the interests of Islam extremely well?

You’re about to graduate into a complex and borderless world.

So said  Secretary of State John Kerry, in a speech at a university commencement ceremony recently.

As long ago as August 2, 2009, we posted an essay by Jillian Becker titled World government – the ultimate nightmare. (Find it under Pages in our margin.) It defended the nation state.

Now that Kerry is preaching a “borderless world” – apparently believing that it actually exists or will exist very soon – the virtues of the nation-state with guarded borders need to be recalled.

So we quote from the essay:

Barack Obama declared himself, in Berlin, to be a ‘citizen of the world’. It was not a mere rhetorical flourish. He has a globalist agenda under which the US will enter into a series of treaties that would subject America to foreign rule over its wealth (redistributing it world-wide), its trade, its laws, its use of energy, and even its defense.

The United Nations, that ghastly powerhouse of corruption, hypocrisy, and injustice, is envisaged as the nascent institution of world government.

Liberal left opinion tends to be against the nation state. It is the opinion of approximately half the voters in the Western world. Half the people of the free West apparently want to destroy their nations, and are literally doing so. They may explain their hatred of the nation state by reference to ‘colonialism’, as if in many cases colonies were not more prosperous, just, and free than the independent tyrannies they have become. Or they may say that the wars and massacres in the last century resulted from “nationalism” so the nation must go; but their thinking would not be right, because the wars and massacres were the work of dictators, not democratic states of which the strongest opposed and defeated the aggressors.

Whatever their explanations, they have launched a movement for the suicide of Western nations.

All over the Western world men and women in national and international assemblies, ministries, academies, councils and committees devote themselves to the business of putting an end to their national identities. Patriotism to them is utterly absurd. Any manifestation of pride in their nation’s history, culture, traditions, institutions, even law, embarrasses if it doesn’t outrage them. In all the countries of Europe, and now under Obama’s leadership in the United States, they work towards their goal.

The very idea of the nation state they consider to be an anachronism; a nasty thing of the past much to be regretted. The more powerful and glorious the past, the more regretful they are. Filled with remorse for what their forefathers achieved, they will apologize to any foreigner who’ll listen to them. However hard their independence as a nation was won, their system of government developed, their individual freedom wrested from the fist of tyranny, they count it all worth nothing. Obama, whose ignorance of history should but doesn’t embarrass him, routinely apologizes for America to appalling little despotisms, and to countries that have survived as comparatively free nations only because America saved them from conquest by tyrannical powers. …

What will be lost if the nation state is lost?

For the most part, our countries have been identical with our nationalities. Our nationalities give us the inestimable gifts of an historical significance and a hopeful destiny beyond our individual lives; a meaning, a kind of immortality, a role in a drama, which, whether we are leading or bit-part players, involves us all. Just by existing as people of this or that country we may feel ourselves to be part of an endless story. Our nation is our greater self, the “we” that is a greatness for every “I”, whether the “I” be small or grand in personal achievement.  For many it is worth fighting and dying for. But now the story may end after all. For though it is possible for a nation to live on after its state is destroyed (the Jews did), the likelihood is that it will not. How many nations have disappeared from history with the loss of their settled, coherent, self-protected territory?  Top of the head guess – too many to count.

What else can endow us by birthright or adoption with that powerful plural identity which we seem to need and glory in? How will we fare as individuals without the nation state?  It places us in the scheme of things. It gives us a “local habitation and a name”. It defines us for ourselves and for others, clothing us in connotations derived from a certain history to intimate a special character. We inherit its language, which shapes our thoughts. It sets many of our goals, provides the chances for achieving them, holds a place for us, notes and records our existence. It protects us from foreign enemies and domestic assailants. It makes demands of us that we can fulfill with pride and delight, or chafe against. It provides the causes we may strive for or oppose. It is our home, our stage, our shelter, our fortress, our field, our base. Personified, it is our guardian, our teacher, our judge, and our avenger.

The nation state makes and enforces the rules that, at their best, allow us to live in freedom. It was one of the great steps forward of mankind when the city-states of ancient Greece embraced as citizens all those who would live in them not because they sprang from that particular soil but because they would accept a common law. The tribe was superseded by the state. (The great Spanish conservative Ortega y Gasset called it citizenship by virtue of  ius rather than rus – a commonality of law rather than of native soil.)  The citizens could have been born elsewhere, and could remain individual in their tastes and choices, but owed a common duty and allegiance to the state.  TheUnited States of America is the greatest development of that splendid idea.

And may continue to be – if it does not fall under another administration that delights in the dream of a “borderless world”. That’s what Communists dream of. And ISIS, and the Muslim Brotherhood – and Islam itself, since its inception.

No! No! Rather wake and scream: “Build that wall please, President Trump!”

Jillian Becker    May11, 2016

Paul Weston of Liberty GB deplores the election of Sadiq Khan, a blatant supporter of Islamic supremacy and the terrorist tactics of the jihadis, as Mayor of London.

“Do something”?

What can you do?

By the waters of the Thames sit down and weep.

It’s too late to save Britain.

Why is the West embracing the idea of its own extinction?

A very large number of human beings, the most enlightened, best informed, ever more productive, brilliantly entertained, comfortably accommodated – prosperous indeed beyond ancestral dreams – are choosing to give up existence. Is it simply because they cannot think of any reason to go on living? 

Seems so. They do not want to have children. Almost all Western countries – the great exception being the United States of America (fertility rate 2.06) – have fertility rates well below stability (2.1), which means they are dying out, each generation getting smaller. A strong indication that the present generation has no care for the future of the race.

Western intellectuals – in almost total unanimity in the academies – denigrate their civilization, find no value in it, even express disgust with it.

We have written about this annihilationist mood of Western intellectuals and elected leaders in a number of posts, among them these:

In “A vision of pure meaninglessness”  (December 14, 2008), we discuss the wish of environmentalists to protect the planet from human beings:

The environmentalists hold to the view, as little fact-based as all their views tend to be, that over-population is a threat, when in fact most countries, notably all of Europe and Japan, have precisely the opposite problem: birth-rates so low that the Italians, the Irish, the Spanish, the Portuguese (all predominantly Catholic countries, note) as well as the British, the Scandinavians, the Russians, the Japanese are literally dying out.

The environmentalist view is that human beings are messy creatures, doing more harm than good to the planet. The Green vision is of a clean, nay a pure planet. In truth, their ideal could only be realized by the total elimination of the filthy human species.

Fresh wild raw uninhabited world (January 2, 2012) deals with the same theme:  

The UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) [in] its infamous report … alleged that human beings, just by bumbling about their daily business in spots here and there in the vast empty spaces of the continents, were having a deleterious – worse, a drastic – still worse, a disastrous effect on the climates of the planet. Its fans have had it up to here with the human species. If they could have their way they’d be rid of every last one of the squalid two-legged contaminators, and let the planet, finally cured of human infestation, spin on round the sun forever fresh, a wild, raw, goodness-packed organic world.

And in To be or not to be (January 10, 2016) …

A professor of philosophy named David Benatar published, some eight or nine years ago, a book titled: Better Never to Have Been: The Harm of Coming Into Existence. 

He makes the case that to live is to suffer and so it is best not to live. Just coming into existence is “a serious harm”. People should not have children. All babies should be killed in the womb. Humanity should become extinct.

He argues that the pain living beings endure is always much greater than the pleasure they enjoy. So they should not live. To avoid pain is a good thing; to miss pleasure is merely not a bad thing. The harm must always outweigh the joy.

It would not matter – he contends – if the human race ceased to exist: human existence has no value. 

No value to whom? The only possible answer is “to human beings”.

And we constantly write about European governments inviting vast numbers of Muslims into their countries from the Near, Middle and Far East, and Africa, to share their cosy welfare states – even those which are most rapidly subsiding into poverty. The Muslim immigrants will breed prolifically, become a majority, and impose sharia law on Europe as soon as they can.

Today, Giulio Meotti – writing at Gatestone – describes how what’s left of the nation-states of Western Europe are lowering their defenses, depleting their militaries, finding no reason to protect themselves with force even should they come under violent attack.

Actually, in some cases, because they are coming under violent attack:

On March 11, 2004, 192 people were killed and 1,400 wounded in a series of terrorist attacks in Madrid. Three days later, Spain’s Socialist leader, José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero, was elected prime minister. Just 24 hours after being sworn in, Zapatero ordered Spanish troops to leave Iraq “as soon as possible”.

The directive was a monumental political victory for extremist Islam. Since then, Europe’s boots on the ground have not been dispatched outside Europe to fight jihadism; instead, they have been deployed inside the European countries to protect monuments and civilians.

“Opération Sentinelle” is the first new large-scale military operation within France. The army is now protecting synagogues, art galleries, schools, newspapers, public offices and underground stations. Of all French soldiers currently engaged in military operations, half of them are deployed inside France. And half of those are assigned to protect 717 Jewish schools. Meanwhile, French paralysis before ISIS is immortalized by the image of police running away from the office of the satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo during the massacre there.

You can find the same figure in Italy: 11,000 Italian soldiers are currently engaged in military operations and more than half of them are used in operation “Safe Streets”,  which, as its name reveals, keeps Italy’s cities safe. Italy’s army is also busy providing aid to migrants crossing the Mediterranean.

In 2003, Italy was one of the very few countries, along with Spain and Britain, which stood with the United States in its noble war in Iraq – a war that was successful until the infamous US pull-out on December 18, 2011.

Today, Italy, like Spain, runs away from its responsibility in the war against the Islamic State. Italy’s Defense Minister Roberta Pinotti ruled out the idea of Italy taking part in action against ISIS, after EU defense ministers unanimously backed a French request for help.

Italy’s soldiers, stationed in front of my newspaper’s office in Rome, provide a semblance of security, but the fact that half of Italy’s soldiers are engaged in domestic security, and not in offensive military strikes, should give us pause. These numbers shed a light not only on Europe’s internal terror frontlines, from the French banlieues to “Londonistan”.  These numbers also shed light on the great Western retreat.

US President Barack Obama has boasted that as part of his legacy, he has withdrawn American military forces from the Middle East. His shameful departure from Iraq has been the main reason that the Islamic State rose to power – and the reason Obama postponed a military withdrawal from Afghanistan. This US retreat can only be compared to the fall of Saigon, with the picture of a helicopter evacuating the U.S. embassy.

In Europe, armies are no longer even ready for war.

The German army is now useless, and Germany spends only 1.2% of GDP on defense. The German army today has the lowest number of staff at any time in its history.

In 2012, Germany’s highest court, breaking a 67-year-old taboo against using the military within Germany’s borders, allowed the military to be deployed in domestic operations. The post-Hitler nation’s fear that the army could develop again into a state-within-a-state that might impede democracy has paralyzed Europe’s largest and wealthiest country. Last January, it was revealed that German air force reconnaissance jets cannot even fly at night.

Many European states slumber in the same condition as Belgium, with its failed security apparatus. A senior U.S. intelligence officer even recently likened the Belgian security forces to “children”.

And Sweden’s commander-in-chief, Sverker Göranson, said his country could only fend off an invasion for a maximum of one week.

During the past ten years, the United Kingdom has also increasingly been seen by its allies – both in the US and in Europe – as a power in retreat, focusing only on its domestic agenda. The British have become increasingly insular – a littler England.

The former head of the Royal Navy, Admiral Nigel Essenigh, has spoken of “uncomfortable similarities” between the UK’s defenses now and those in the early 1930s, during the rise of Nazi Germany.

In Canada, military bases are now being used to host migrants from Middle East. Justin Trudeau, the new Canadian prime minister, first halted military strikes against ISIS, then refused to join the coalition against it. Terrorism has apparently never been a priority for Trudeau – not like “gender equality”,  global warming, euthanasia and injustices committed against Canada’s natives.

The bigger question is: Why does anyone choose to fight in a war? Civilized nations go to war so that members of today’s generation may sacrifice themselves to protect future generations.

But if there are no future generations, there is no reason whatever for today’s young men to die in war. …

Spain’s fertility has fallen the most – the lowest in Western Europe over twenty years and the most extreme demographic spiral observed anywhere. Similarly, fewer babies were born in Italy in 2015 than in any year since the state was founded 154 years ago. … Italy’s population shrank. Germany, likewise, is experiencing a demographic suicide.

This massive deployment of armed forces in our own cities is a departure from history. It is a moral disarmament, before a military one. It is Europe’s new Weimar moment, from the name of the first German Republic that was dramatically dismantled by the rise of Nazism. The Weimar Republic still represents a cultural muddle, a masterpiece of unarmed democracy devoted to a mutilated pacifism, a mixture of naïve cultural, political reformism and the first highly developed welfare state.

According to the historian Walter Laqueur, Weimar was the first case of the “life and death of a permissive society”. Will Europe’s new Weimar also be brought down, this time by Islamists?

By Islam, yes.

Because that’s what Europe wants – doesn’t it? How else explain what’s happening to it? What it is letting happen to it.

But why?

When WMDs were not found in Saddam Hussein’s Iraq, though they had been a compelling reason for the US invasion, the story coming through unofficial channels was that Saddam had hastily moved them to Syria, to be stored there for him until he had beaten back the President Bush-led onslaught.

Although the sources were unofficial, they had proved themselves to be generally trustworthy. So many of those who heard the story believed it. But the sources could not be cited.

When the story was largely confirmed to “defense reporters” by [then] Lt. Gen. James Clapper* in 2003, it was still not widely accepted.

Is it more likely to be accepted now? If so, it may be too late to be useful to those who have defended the invasion of Iraq, but not too late to be interesting to historians.

Today, May 2, 2016, Front Page is re-running an article by Bill Gertz that was first published in the Washington Times on October 29, 2003:  

Iraqi military officers destroyed or hid chemical, biological and nuclear weapons goods in the weeks before the war, the [US’s] top satellite spy director said yesterday.

Retired Air Force Lt. Gen. James Clapper, head of the National Imagery and Mapping Agency, said vehicle traffic photographed by U.S. spy satellites indicated that material and documents related to the arms programs were shipped to Syria.

Other goods probably were sent throughout Iraq in small quantities and documents probably were stashed in the homes of weapons scientists, Gen. Clapper told defense reporters at a breakfast.

Gen. Clapper said he is not surprised that U.S. and allied forces have not found weapons of mass destruction hidden in Iraq because “it’s a big place.”

“Those below the senior leadership saw what was coming, and I think they went to extraordinary lengths to dispose of the evidence,” he said.

Congress is investigating whether U.S. intelligence agencies overstated information indicating that Iraq had hidden its chemical, biological and nuclear weapons. The Bush administration has defended the intelligence agencies on prewar reports that the weapons were there.

Iraqi government officials “below the Saddam Hussein and the sons level saw what was coming and decided the best thing to do was to dispose, destroy and disperse [them]”,  he said.

So maybe it wasn’t Saddam himself who gave the order to transport the WMDs to Syria, but some authority did. (Was there an authority in Saddam’s Iraq other than Saddam himself?)

Gen. Clapper said he felt strongly that the satellite imagery of Iraq’s weapons facilities before the war was “accurate and balanced”. …

He also said the Iraqi government carried out operations after the fall of Baghdad in April to cover up the hidden weapons programs. The chaos following might have included both looting and “organized dispersal made to look like looting“,  he said. “So by the time that we got to a lot of these facilities, that we had previously identified as suspect facilities, there wasn’t that much there to look at,” he said.

Valuable documents on Iraq’s weapons were destroyed or lost in the chaos, which included burning of major government ministries.

Saddam began dispersing his weapons and sending elements of his chemical, biological and nuclear programs out of the country in the weeks before the war, he said.

The dispersal included moving both weapons and equipment as well as documents. …

As for shipping weapons out of Iraq, he said, there is “no question” that people and material were taken to Syria. …

Convoys of vehicles, mostly commercial trucks, were spotted going into Syria from Iraq shortly before the start of the war March 19 and during the conflict, he said.

It may be a sign of instinctive wisdom that people are inclined to believe what they overhear more than what they are told.

*James Clapper is now Director of National Intelligence.

We had hoped that if Britain leaves the European Union after the referendum to be held on June 23, it would have a chance of saving itself from the Muslim conquest of Europe. 

It was a forlorn hope. Britain is already lost to Islam.

Yahoo reports:

Sadiq Khan, a Muslim lawmaker from Britain’s opposition Labour Party, is the strong favourite to win London’s mayoral election on Thursday after a bitter contest marked by religious tensions and accusations of racism.

Polls show Khan, the son of a bus driver, is as much as 20 percentage points ahead of rival Conservative Zac Goldsmith in the race to run one of the world’s top financial centres. If he wins, he will succeed current Conservative mayor Boris Johnson to become the first Muslim to head a major western capital.

London’s population of 8.6 million is among the most cosmopolitan in the world and it is rare for identity politics to enter British campaigning.

Yet Goldsmith, with the support of Prime Minister David Cameron, has for weeks focussed on Khan’s faith and past appearances alongside radical Muslim speakers, accusing him of giving “platform, oxygen and cover” to extremists.* …

It is the political influence that comes with the post, the second-largest direct electoral mandate of any politician in Europe, that is perhaps most at stake.

“The soft power of the role is very important,” said Tony Travers a professor at the London School of Economics. “The mandate of a city as big as London gives the mayor a voice and authority which goes well beyond that formal mandate.”

Polling shows neither Khan, 45, nor Goldsmith, 41, is likely to slip easily into the shoes of the incumbent Johnson, whose outsized personality was widely recognised from regular TV appearances before he took office.

Johnson’s globe trotting star turns as London’s trade envoy have made him famous, not only boosting the city’s international profile but also making “Boris” one of the most influential voices in the upcoming EU referendum.

The capital of Great Britain will be handed over to Islam largely by ignorant voters who have no understanding of what is at stake: 

Around a third of people couldn’t even name the two mayoral candidates, and knowledge of their policies was even worse, said Laurence Stellings, director at polling firm Populus.

This is a tragedy for Britain and for the whole of Western civilization. 

* Stand f0r Peace, a British research institute, reported one year ago on May 1, 2015, in a paper titled: Counter-Extremism Guide to the 2015 Election:

Sadiq Khan – the shadow Justice Secretary. In 2013, Khan … was listed as a speaker at the Muslim Brotherhood’s Global Peace and Unity conference. Other speakers included Yasir Qadhi, who claims the Holocaust is a hoax; Jamal Badawi, a Muslim Brotherhood activist who describes suicide bombers as “freedom fighters”; and Yusuf Estes, who advises husbands to beat their wives. Khan is a prominent supporter and “friend” of Babar Ahmad, a British Islamist convicted on terrorism charges by a U.S. court in 2014. 

It is more than likely now that Donald Trump will be the Republican Party’s nominee in the presidential election this November.

It is therefore very likely that the Republican platform will be what he wants it to be. And many Republicans, especially the go-along-to-get-along pillars of the Grand Old Party, most prominently its leaders in Congress, do not like what he wants. They repudiate him and his ideas. They say he is unfaithful to conservative principles and will alter long-standing Republican policies. But if their choice is between changing principles and policies to those of Trump or breaking the Party asunder by thwarting the will of the millions of voters he attracts, they will accept – are slowly coming round to  accepting – Trump and his vision for America. (While probably still planning to knock it into a more familiar and acceptable shape.)

What do his conservative Republican critics object to in particular?

In an article hostile to Donald Trump, but accepting that he is almost certain to be the Republican nominee, Linda Chavez writes at Townhall:

Trump represents a repudiation of the Republican Party’s commitment to smaller government, free trade and an internationalist foreign policy.

Let’s consider these commitments one by one, and assess how far Trump is likely to change them, and how bad the change would be.

Smaller government is certainly a cherished principle of conservative Republicanism. We list it among our core conservative ideals, along with individual freedom, a market economy, and strong defense. Regretfully we admit that government is not likely ever again to be actually small, but does Trump not say anything that suggests he would reduce the hugely overblown bureaucracy oppressing Americans now? He does. He says he will lower taxes. Lower taxes must mean some shrinking of government. And that’s probably the most any conservative Republican could do.

It’s on free trade that we have a difference of opinion with Trump. He has indicated that he would match tariff barriers with tariff barriers. We think that’s counter-productive. But it’s not enough to induce us to call Trump a wrecker of American prosperity. In fact, most of his economic thinking is likely to increase American prosperity very considerably. He would stop foreign aid unless America got something back for it. He would make those countries that want American military protection contribute to the cost of it. And he has plans for job creation which we’re inclined to trust because, as an extremely successful businessman, he has done it.

As for the Republican “internationalist foreign policy” – we’re coming to that.

Here are some points from Charles Krauthammer’s syndicated column on Trump’s recent foreign policy speech. Much as we respect Charles Krauthammer, on this rare occasion we disagree with him.

On the Republican side … foreign policy has been the subject of furious debate. To which Donald Trump has contributed significantly, much of it off-the-cuff, contradictory and confused. Hence his foreign policy speech on Wednesday. It was meant to make him appear consistent, serious and presidential. …

Its major theme, announced right at the top [was]: America First. Classically populist and invariably popular, it is nonetheless quite fraught. On the one hand, it can be meaningless — isn’t every president trying to advance American interests? …

On the other hand, America First does have a history. In 1940, when Britain was fighting for its life and Churchill was begging for U.S. help, it was the name of the group most virulently opposed to U.S. intervention. It disbanded — totally discredited — four days after Pearl Harbor. …

The irony is … it is the underlying theme of [Obama’s] foreign policy — which Trump constantly denounces as a series of disasters. Obama, like Trump, is animated by the view that we are overextended and overinvested abroad. …

Both the left and right have a long history of advocating American retreat and retrenchment. The difference is that liberals want to come home because they think we are not good enough for the world. Conservatives want to wash their hands of the world because they think the world is not good enough for us.

That’s nicely put! Our disagreements will come below.

For Obama, we are morally unworthy to act as world hegemon. Our hands are not clean. He’s gone abroad confessing our various sins — everything from the Iranian coup of 1953 to our unkind treatment of Castro’s Cuba to the ultimate blot, Hiroshima, a penitential visit to which Obama is currently considering.

Trump would be rightly appalled by such a self-indicting trip. His foreign policy stems from a proud nationalism that believes that these recalcitrant tribes and nations are unworthy of American expenditures of blood and treasure.

At least Krauthammer calls it “a proud nationalism”. Linda Chavez, in her article, likens Trump’s nationalism to disreputable [?] European nationalist groups which are better described as tribal. She seems to forget that the United States has for centuries been a melting-pot, and the American nation has been – until very recently under Obama – the least tribal in the world. And Trump’s “nationalism” is better described as patriotism. That’s what an American’s “proud nationalism” really is.

This has been the underlying view of conservative isolationism … It is not without its attractions. Trump’s version, however, is inconsistent and often contradictory. After all, he pledged to bring stability to the Middle East. How do you do that without presence, risk and expenditures (financial and military)? He attacked Obama for letting Iran become a “great power.” But doesn’t resisting that automatically imply engagement?

More incoherent still is Trump’s insistence on being unpredictable. An asset perhaps in real estate deals, but in a Hobbesian world American allies rely on American consistency, often as a matter of life or death. Yet Trump excoriated the Obama-Clinton foreign policy for losing the trust of our allies precisely because of its capriciousness. The tilt toward Iran. The red line in Syria. Canceling the Eastern European missile defense. Abandoning Hosni Mubarak.

Trump’s scripted, telepromptered speech was intended to finally clarify his foreign policy. It produced instead a jumble. The basic principle seems to be this: Continue the inexorable Obama-Clinton retreat, though for reasons of national self-interest, rather than of national self-doubt. And except when, with studied inconsistency, he decides otherwise.

Is Trump’s patriotism a “version of isolationism”?  Is it “inconsistent and often contradictory”? By “unpredictable” did he mean what Krauthammer is taking his words to mean?

What did Trump actually say?

We quote his speech in part (find all of it here):

America first will be the major and overriding theme of my administration. But to chart our path forward, we must first briefly take a look back. We have a lot to be proud of.

In the 1940s we saved the world. The greatest generation beat back the Nazis and Japanese imperialists. Then we saved the world again. This time, from totalitarianism and communism. The Cold War lasted for decades but, guess what, we won and we won big. …

Does he regret those American involvements? Not at all. He is proud of them.

Unfortunately, after the Cold War our foreign policy veered badly off course. We failed to develop a new vision for a new time. In fact, as time went on, our foreign policy began to make less and less sense. … We went from mistakes in Iraq to Egypt to Libya, to President Obama’s line in the sand in Syria. Each of these actions have helped to throw the region into chaos and gave ISIS the space it needs to grow and prosper. Very bad. It all began with a dangerous idea that we could make western democracies out of countries that had no experience or interests in becoming a western democracy.

With that we could not agree more strongly. It is not possible to turn states like Iraq and Afghanistan – Arab states, Islamic states – into Western style democracies.

And as for his comment on Obama’s actions – they have been “unpredictable” in that they make no logical sense. Krauthammer chooses them as examples of unpredictability to condemn Trump’s recommendation of it, when in fact Trump means something entirely different – as we shall see.

We tore up what institutions they had and then were surprised at what we unleashed. Civil war, religious fanaticism, thousands of Americans and just killed be lives, lives, lives wasted. Horribly wasted. Many trillions of dollars were lost as a result. The vacuum was created that ISIS would fill. Iran, too, would rush in and fill that void much to their really unjust enrichment.

They have benefited so much, so sadly, for us. Our foreign policy is a complete and total disaster. No vision. No purpose. No direction. No strategy.

Trump goes on to “identify weaknesses in our foreign policy” and to say how he would fix them. Among them (they are worth reading in full) is this:

We’ve had a president who dislikes our friends and bows to our enemies, something that we’ve never seen before in the history of our country. He negotiated a disastrous deal with Iran, and then we watched them ignore its terms even before the ink was dry. Iran cannot be allowed to have a nuclear weapon, cannot be allowed. Remember that, cannot be allowed to have a nuclear weapon. And under a Trump administration, will never, ever be allowed to have that nuclear weapon …

At the end of his analysis and outline of his intentions he promises:

 This will all change when I become president.

To our friends and allies, I say America is going to be strong again. America is going to be reliable again. It’s going to be a great and reliable ally again. It’s going to be a friend again. We’re going to finally have a coherent foreign policy based upon American interests and the shared interests of our allies. …

Does that sound isolationist?

We need a long-term plan to halt the spread and reach of radical Islam.Containing the spread of radical Islam must be a major foreign policy goal of the United States and indeed the world. Events may require the use of military force, but it’s also a philosophical struggle, like our long struggle in the Cold War.

Absolutely right! And no other politician, as far as we can recall, has said it before.

He goes on to speak of “working very closely with our allies in the Muslim world”, which is one of the few points on which we disagree. There can be no such thing as an American ally in the Muslim world, precisely because “the philosophical struggle” prohibits it. Islam is ideologically opposed to the West.

… And then there’s ISIS. I have a simple message for them. Their days are numbered. I won’t tell them where and I won’t tell them how. We must as a nation be more unpredictable. We are totally predictable. We tell everything. We’re sending troops. We tell them. We’re sending something else. We have a news conference. We have to be unpredictable. And we have to be unpredictable starting now. But they’re going to be gone. ISIS will be gone if I’m elected president. And they’ll be gone quickly. They will be gone very, very quickly.

So that is what Trump means by “unpredictable”. A commander-in-chief does not announce to his country’s enemy just when its army will stop fighting and when he will withdraw his troops – as Obama has done. It is a military absurdity!

He goes on to say “we have to rebuild our military and our economy”.

The Russians and Chinese have rapidly expanded their military capability, but look at what’s happened to us. Our nuclear weapons arsenal, our ultimate deterrent, has been allowed to atrophy and is desperately in need of modernization and renewal. And it has to happen immediately. Our active duty armed forces have shrunk from 2 million in 1991 to about 1.3 million today. The Navy has shrunk from over 500 ships to 272 ships during this same period of time. The Air Force is about one-third smaller than 1991. Pilots flying B-52s in combat missions today. These planes are older than virtually everybody in this room.

And what are we doing about this? President Obama has proposed a 2017 defense budget that in real dollars, cuts nearly 25 percent from what we were spending in 2011. Our military is depleted and we’re asking our generals and military leaders to worry about global warming.

We will spend what we need to rebuild our military. It is the cheapest, single investment we can make. We will develop, build and purchase the best equipment known to mankind. Our military dominance must be unquestioned, and I mean unquestioned, by anybody and everybody.

Does that sound “isolationist”?

But we will look for savings and spend our money wisely. In this time of mounting debt, right now we have so much debt that nobody even knows how to address the problem. But I do. No one dollar can be wasted. Not one single dollar can we waste. We’re also going to have to change our trade, immigration and economic policies to make our economy strong again. And to put Americans first again. …

But, he says …

I believe an easing of tensions, and improved relations with Russia from a position of strength only is possible, absolutely possible. Common sense says this cycle, this horrible cycle of hostility must end and ideally will end soon. Good for both countries.

Some say the Russians won’t be reasonable. I intend to find out. If we can’t make a deal under my administration, a deal that’s great — not good, great — for America, but also good for Russia, then we will quickly walk from the table. It’s as simple as that. We’re going to find out.

Fixing our relations with China is another important step — and really toward creating an even more prosperous period of time. China respects strength and by letting them take advantage of us economically, which they are doing like never before, we have lost all of their respect.

We have a massive trade deficit with China, a deficit that we have to find a way quickly, and I mean quickly, to balance. A strong and smart America is an America that will find a better friend in China, better than we have right now. Look at what China is doing in the South China Sea. They’re not supposed to be doing it. …

To be militarily strong again, and at the same time try to negotiate better relations with an aggressive Russia and China – is that “contradictory” or is it speaking softly while carrying a big stick? 

I will not hesitate to deploy military force when there is no alternative. But if America fights, it must only fight to win. …

Our power will be used if others do not play by the rules. In other words, if they do not treat us fairly. Our friends and enemies must know that if I draw a line in the sand, I will enforce that line in the sand. Believe me. …

My goal is to establish a foreign policy that will endure for several generations. That’s why I also look and have to look for talented experts with approaches and practical ideas … We have to look to new people because many of the old people frankly don’t know what they’re doing …

No country has ever prospered that failed to put its own interests first. Both our friends and our enemies put their countries above ours and we, while being fair to them, must start doing the same. We will no longer surrender this country or its people to the false song of globalism. The nation-state remains the true foundation for happiness and harmony.  I am skeptical of international unions  … And under my administration, we will never enter America into any agreement that reduces our ability to control our own affairs. …

I will view as president the world through the clear lens of American interests. I will be America’s greatest defender and most loyal champion. …

The world is most peaceful and most prosperous when America is strongest. America will continue and continue forever to play the role of peacemaker. We will always help save lives and indeed humanity itself, but to play the role, we must make America strong again. … We have to and we will make America great again.

Where are the alleged “inconsistencies”? Where is the “jumble”. (We urge doubters to read the whole speech and tell us if they find any inconsistencies or contradictions that we have overlooked.)

The speech as a whole could be taken as a manifesto of the new Republicanism – what the Republican Party will stand for under the leadership of Donald Trump. He will take the Party forward, but not in the direction it has long wanted to go. It wanted to go, but did not move. He will make both good and bad decisions, as leaders generally do. But he will make them in the interests of a strong and prosperous America, and that is an America that is good for the world.

Today, Monday, April 18, 2016, the Boston marathon is being run.

Recalling the bombings at the April 19, 2013 marathon in the way the atrocity needs to be recalled, here’s Sam Westrop writing at Breitbart:

As Boston prepares for the 2016 marathon, memorials have been organized across the city. Three years later, however, have the authorities really learned anything from the horrors of the bombings?

Judging by the support for Muslim Brotherhood institutions in Massachusetts offered by politicians, law enforcement, and journalists, it would seem not.

Three years ago, Dzhokhar Tsarnaev lay wounded, hiding from police in the city of Watertown, a leafy suburb of Boston. On April 15, he and his brother, Tamerlan, had bombed the Boston marathon, murdering three and injuring hundreds. Over the next few days, Dzhokhar would kill MIT police officer Sean Collier, take a hostage, wound police officers in a firefight, and run over his dying brother.

By April 19, the injured Dzhokhar awaited his inevitable capture, bleeding in a Watertown backyard. As law enforcement closed in, Dzhokhar scribbled text on the walls of the boat where he hid.

For a terrorist who had just murdered in the name of Islam, some might expect his parting message to be a litany of Quranic verse. But the writings on the wall of the Watertown boat mostly comprised quotes from Islamist political tracts, written by the Islamist luminaries of the 20th century – Muslim Brotherhood and Jamaat-e-Islami ideologues such as Sayid Qutb, Hassan Al Banna, Fathi Yakan, and Abul A’la Maududi.

Dzhokhar’s justification for his killings came from the writings of Islamist movements who today control American Islam – Islamist groups who have, on the last few decades, found favor with America’s political and media elite.

Radical mosques such as the Islamic Society of Boston (ISB) remain a magnet for politicians, city officials, and journalists who want to express their love of American Muslims. Most recently, Boston Police Commissioner William Evans spoke at the mosque,declaring: “We’re all Muslims deep down. We all yearn for peace.”

This same mosque was founded by a prominent Al Qaeda operative; its trustees have included the included the Hitler-supporting spiritual leader of the Muslim Brotherhood; and, just in October, the mosque hosted an event with two preachers who advocate that Muslim men can acquire sex slaves and should be allowed to beat their wives.

Over the past few decades, in fact, twelve congregants, supporters, staff and donors of the ISB have been imprisoned, deported, killed or are on the run – all in relation to terrorist activity. This list includes the Boston bombers, Al Qaeda operatives Tarek Mehanna and Aafia Siddqui; Lashkar-i-Taiba fundraiser Hafiz Masood; and the prominent Islamic State official, Ahmad Abousamra.

Most importantly, the ISB teaches the very texts that Dzhokhar scribbled across the Watertown boat. These teachings are of a Muslim Brotherhood educational program known as “Tarbiya”. The ideological link could not be clearer. Dzhokhar left written confirmation — blood and ink that explained his actions.

The authorities, however, refuse to consider what terrorists themselves proclaim. Because to accept that Islamist ideology lead to Islamist violence would be to acknowledge that the self-proclaimed guardians of American Islam pose a serious threat to the security of the United States. It would be to acknowledge that America has fundamentally misunderstood Islam itself.

Rather than tackle radical Islamism, however, law enforcement and politicians instead attend peace rallies, interfaith dialogue dinners, and other feel-good events with the Islamists themselves, who are adept at expressing peace and love by day and inciting hatred against Jews and the West at night.

In 2015, US Attorney Carmen Ortiz further illustrated this government delusion when, astoundingly, she said of the Boston bombings: “There was nothing about this crime that was Islam associated.”

When pressed on the Tsarnaev’s Islamic invocations, Ortiz went so far as to define herself what makes a real Muslim, stating that the Tsarnaev’s ideology was “a skewed view of the religion of Islam. That is not what Islam is all about”.

Government officials and Islamists currently share something in common: they both believe they have the better right to define “true Islam” than ordinary Muslims themselves.

So three years since the marathon bombings, Massachusetts officials have not just failed to understand the threat; they refuse to accept that ideology plays any part at all.

The distinct refusal to acknowledge the ideological underpinning is rarely found elsewhere. Can you imagine a government official responding to neo-Nazi violence by attending a brunch with the Ku Klux Klan? …

Such is the strength of the “Islam is Peace” mantra, that, for politicians and law enforcement, the radicalization process is not hard to understand, but it does seem difficult to accept. Unless law enforcement and government start to examine and counteract the ideological Islamist network that has imposed its rule over much of American Islam, there will only be more bombings, more shootings, and more stabbings.

When will they learn?