The rape of Sweden 4
Pat Condell tells Sweden the truth about itself again.
(Sweden, like most of Western Europe only more so, is letting itself be raped. Even, as a nation, insisting on it.)
When money smells bad 153
Hillary Clinton did no good and a lot of harm when she was Secretary of State. The chaos that is Libya is her most notorious “achievement”.
But she did manage to use her position to make a great deal of money.
Now we have nothing against money. On the contrary, unpopular though it apparently is among the moralists of Hollywood and Silicon Valley, global warming “scientists”, and Democratic candidates for high office, we like it.
So it is not the riches of the Clintons we are against. It is how they acquired them.
The Romans used to say, “Pecunia non olet” – money doesn’t stink.
But the Clintons’ money actually does. It stinks of corruption.
The Clintons used the State Department as their own private team of enablers for their artful dodging.
The Washington Times reports:
Back when they occupied the White House, Bill and Hillary Clinton boasted that Americans “got two for the price of one”. The folks in Ireland have a good sense now what that actually costs.
As Irish businesses were arranging for Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton to make one of her last official visits to Ireland in December 2012, her husband, Bill, suddenly landed a half-million speaking gig for his foundation on the Emerald Island, according to newly released emails from the conservative group Citizens United that show the business of State and the business of Bill were often intertwined.
A review of Mrs. Clinton’s official travel and the former president’s for-pay speechmaking, in fact, found several instances like Ireland in which the couple passed through the same foreign country — one for government business, the other for profit or charity — within a few short weeks of each other.
We looked into the Clintons’ “charity”. How much of the Clinton Foundation’s revenue goes to charity? And what charities? For answers, put these titles into our search slot: Touched by the Clintons; What needs to be known about the Clintons’ charities; Floating up now from a sewer called Clinton; The great good works and wonky dilemmas of William J. Clinton.
For example, Mr. Clinton gave a speech to a prestigious nonprofit in Sweden for $425,000 in May 2012, and Mrs. Clinton visited the country less than a month later to promote a Clean Air convention. On the same trip, Mr. Clinton made a stop in Denmark to give a paid speech to World Management Limited. Mrs. Clinton visited Denmark the following month for a Green Partnership for Growth event.
In June 2012, Mr. Clinton gave a $450,000 speech to YPY Holdings in France. Less than a month later, Mrs. Clinton was in the country for official business. In August of that year, Mr. Clinton made a trip to Brazil and pocketed $850,000 for two days’ work at two different venues. Mrs. Clinton was in the country two months earlier for a United Nations conference on sustainable development.
The amount Mr. Clinton commanded for speeches seemed to rise after Mrs. Clinton became America’s top diplomat.
Of the 13 speeches for which Mr. Clinton personally collected $500,000 or more each, 11 were while Mrs. Clinton served as secretary of state, according to federal disclosure records. Others, such as the donation Mr. Clinton scored while in Ireland, went directly to the Clinton Foundation.
State officials on government time also spent a significant amount of time vetting Mr. Clinton’s private activities, raising a question of what benefit taxpayers received in return.
Mrs. Clinton’s inner circle at State, including Chief of Staff Cheryl Mills and Deputy Chief of Staff Huma Abedin, often were involved in the discussions, emails show.
For instance, Mr. Clinton scheduled a trip to Africa several weeks prior to Mrs. Clinton, on official business to promote the foundation’s charitable works there. The trip was cleared through the State Department, which had to check with its embassies to ensure there would not be any problems.
“Cheryl: our embassies in both Kampala and Pretoria have informed me that they see no/no problems (with their host governments or otherwise) with President Clinton’s visit to Uganda and South Africa two/three weeks before the Secretary,” Johnnie Carson, a State official, wrote to Ms. Mills.
Ms. Mills forwarded the email to Amitabh Desai, a Clinton Foundation official, who replied: “Thanks. I also think we need a talking point for the media who ask about the timing of their trips.”
For paid speeches that presented bad optics, Mr. Clinton would ask the State Department whether the money could be donated to his charity rather than taking it personally.
In June 2012, Mr. Desai wrote an email to Ms. Mills and Ms. Abedin, along with other top State Department officials asking whether Mr. Clinton could give a speech in Congo — which included a photo line with past dictators — for $650,000.
“This did not clear our internal vet, but [Mr. Clinton] wants to know what state thinks of it if he took 100% for the foundation,” Mr. Desai wrote.
That same month, Mr. Desai wrote the same group at State a similar email, concerned that a group that invited the former president to give a speech for $200,000, the Luca International Group on behalf of the U.S. China Energy Summit, didn’t check out.
“Would [the State Department] have any concerns about [Mr. Clinton] taking this and directing the proceeds to the Clinton Foundation?” Mr. Desai asked. “Don Walker is concerned about the host and agrees with us it’s strange we can’t get any more information on this host and they have no track records of prior events.”
Mr. Clinton never made those speeches, but it serves as an example of ways Mr. Clinton thought of skirting State Department ethics determinations for foundation gains. The foundation also asked in May whether the State Department would have any concerns about an invitation he received on behalf of North Korea.
“Decline it,” Ms. Mills abruptly wrote to Mr. Desai. But that didn’t stop a follow-up question.
“This came via Tony Rodham [Mrs. Clinton’s brother]. So we would be grateful for any specific concerns that we could share, beyond just saying it would be concerning for [the State Department],” Mr. Desai wrote.
“If he needs more, let him know his wife knows and I am happy to call him secure when he is near a secure line,” Ms. Mills wrote back.
The Ireland trips included a fascinating web of private and public interests.
In 2012, Mrs. Clinton’s final year in office, Irish racing executive JP McManus was looking for a high-profile keynote speaker to help him hand out the All-Ireland Scholarships his charity donates annually at Limerick University. He considered Mr. Clinton to be the perfect choice.
Mr. McManus secured Mr. Clinton’s interest “with the help of friends”. “I got a friend of mine to make an inquiry,” he told the Limerick Leader in an article published Nov. 20, 2012, a few days after Mr. Clinton’s arrival. Mr. McManus’ charity also donated as much as $1 million to the Clinton Foundation, to secure the endeavor, records show.
One of Mr. McManus’ friends is Kieran McLoughlin, CEO of the Ireland Funds, who was set to host Mrs. Clinton as a keynote speaker at one of its events the following month in Belfast. It was Mrs. Clinton’s last trip to a foreign country as secretary of state.
Not only did Mr. McLoughlin attend Mr. Clinton’s speech in Limerick, according to press reports, but in the months prior, Mr. McLoughlin and Mr. McManus also celebrated in Chicago to kick off the Ryder Cup, and in Morocco, where Mr. McManus was honored by the Ireland Funds for his charitable work.
Request for comment from Mr. McManus’ charity went unreturned. A spokeswoman for the Ireland Funds said Mr. McLoughlin attended the Limerick University speech as a guest and had no involvement whatsoever in the organization of the event. The charity did give Mr. McManus a $100,000 grant in 2011 to support the work of the Limerick Enterprise Development Partnership, of which the McManus Foundation is a lead supporter. None of the funding given to Mr. McManus was used to help attract Mr. Clinton to the Limerick event, the spokeswoman said.
(Our emphasis.) So the $1 mllion that Mr. McManus’s charity donated to the Clinton Foundation (ostensibly to go through it to some other charity which the McManus charity could easily have donated to directly) came from a different compartment of Mr. McManus’s charity’s cash box? Money not after all being fungible? So no one is lying?
At the same time Mr. Clinton’s speaking engagement in Ireland was being arranged, Irish interests were pursuing Mrs. Clinton for two other opportunities: an official state visit in December 2012 and a women’s forum in 2014, after she left government.
The web of connections between the Clintons’ public and private interests was complicated throughout the Ireland conversations.
For instance, Ms. Abedin, Mrs. Clinton’s deputy chief of staff, was arranging the December 2012 trip for the secretary to speak before the Ireland Fund on behalf of the State Department as part of an official trip. At the same time, though, she also was working for a private firm, Teneo Group, that was involved in the event, emails show.
The Women in Business in Northern Ireland group, seeking to get Mrs. Clinton to speak at a forum in 2014, was simultaneously talking with President Clinton’s foundation about getting more involved in its charitable work.
During those conversations, executives of the women’s business lobby asked a top official of Mr. Clinton’s foundation whether they could arrange to be invited to Mrs. Clinton’s December 2012 trip so they could “share our ambitions” with the secretary.
“Just wondering if you had any more information on the Clintons trip to Ireland,” one executive wrote the foundation. “We would really like to get involved at some level so your help here, if possible, would be great.”
The foundation’s solution? They forwarded the women’s group’s request to Ms. Abedin at the State Department.
The circular chain linked together the State Department, Mr. Clinton’s private charity and Mrs. Clinton’s future private speaking engagement.
Kent Cooper, a former federal election regulator and respected political ethics analyst, said the blurred lines between State and the foundation in the Clinton world validated the axiom that “there are many pockets in a politician’s coat to line”.
“There are the official pockets, the political pockets, in this case the foundation’s pockets and then their own private pocketbooks, and you can see how special interests subtly work all of them with invitations, pressure and money to try to get what they want,” he said.
“There seem to have been no ethical boundaries or double checks on conflicts of interest between the activities of the secretary of state as a government official, the fundraising of a private foundation, the fees of a private consultant, and the personal income of a former government official, that being the former president.”
The end of the liberal democratic nation state 103
So this man, Barack Hussein Obama, the son of an American hippie and a Communist member of the Luo tribe of East Africa …
educated for a few years in an Indonesian madrassa …
then in America promoted through affirmative action to position after position beyond his abilities …
all the way to being elected to the presidency of the United States of America, and so nominally to the leadership of the free world ….
has had, as a result of his inadequacy of understanding, his pusillanimity of character, his political puerility …
an enormous effect on the direction history is taking.
He has not just voluntarily but insistently surrendered the West to the mullahs of Shia Iran, empowering and enriching them to such an extent that millions of Sunnis are fleeing their homes and making for Europe in fear of them.
And the Europeans have no idea what to do about it. They dither about being humane, welcoming refugees, sharing what they have with their Muslim brothers and sisters. Christian-style. Self abnegation. Self-sacrifice. Not resisting evil. Forgiving. Not being racist. Caring. It makes them feel good. They probably even expect gratitude …
… And, as nations, they are dying.
Already ISIS, who seized territory from the erstwhile and short-lived states of Iraq and Syria, has announced that Sweden will be the first European country to come under its caliphate.
This drift of populations, this overwhelming of the liberal democracies, is no longer hypothetical. It is WHAT IS HAPPENING.
And it is not only changing geopolitical conditions, but also the very ideas on which Western political order and civilization are built.
The European leaders who are letting it happen, are all at sea. They don’t know what they’ve done or what the consequences will be.
Nothing anyone says will change their minds. But reality will. Reality has a nasty way of continuing to accrue consequences regardless of whether it is reckoned with or not. The result is the end of the liberal democratic nation-state.
Who are the people who have let this happen?
They are the bien pensants, the Great and the Good; climate alarmists plotting world government; and the people who meet at Bilderberg get-togethers (like Peter Sutherland, the man we wrote about and quoted yesterday), who believe that they are the natural movers and shakers, the best qualified to steer the good ship Mankind.
They have steered it to shipwreck.
Sweden sinks 288
Do European governments know what they are doing, letting millions of aliens into their countries? Do European leaders have a clear understanding of what the policy entails, and a purpose they judge to be good for their countries, even if they do not explain to the people what the policy is and why it will be good for them?
No.
There could not be better proof that the “thinking” behind this immense historical change is totally irrational, than this incoherent speech by the Prime Minister of Sweden when pressed to explain just why he is letting his country be swamped by Muslim immigrants:
Yes, well first of all we, we are in the middle of what I mean seriously when I’m saying, when I express a, a big thank you to all the people doing such a great job, because it is a humanitarian effort, it’s just as the Minister for Justice and Migration just said. What we are actually doing is that we are saving lives when people who come from bombs, from, from killing, from oppression, their lives are shattered. We, we help them and that is a, that is a great humanitarian effort, and of course now that we can see the number of people who need it, that are seeking protection, then it is one of the greatest humanitarian efforts. And that we are facing a crisis situation, that is in part why I, we are outlining today that we are also preparing for a situation where we may need to house people in tents, because we stand up with the humanitarian refugee policy, right of asylum, but we can now also see that we cannot close our eyes to the fact that there are more coming than ever in such a short time, and we need to provide a roof over their heads. Then it is – other things may be required.
This is from Gatestone, by Ingrid Carlquvist:
Sweden is fast approaching a complete collapse. More and more municipalities are raising the alarm that if the migrants keep coming at this pace, the government can no longer guarantee normal service to its citizens.
In addition, ominous statements from government officials have left Swedes in fear of what tomorrow may bring. If the migrant wave keeps coming, in 10-15 years, Swedes will be a minority in their own country.
And even if no more come than are there now, Sweden is set to be lost to the Swedes.
At a press conference October 9, Prime Minister Stefan Löfven said that Sweden is in a state of crisis. However, when asked to clarify what he meant by this, Löfven was unable to produce a single coherent sentence.
Three ministers appeared by the Prime Minister’s side at the hastily summoned press conference, which came on the heels of an extraordinary government meeting. The purpose of the press conference seems to have been to convey two messages:
- To explain to the world and the Swedish people that Sweden is facing “one of the largest humanitarian efforts in Swedish history”.
- That there is no more housing available, and migrants should be prepared to live in tents.
During the question period after the ministers’ speeches, journalist Tomas Ramberg of Ekot Public Radio asked: “You say that Sweden is preparing for a crisis situation, what do you mean by those dramatic words?”
Stefan Löfven’s reply was incomprehensible …
He gave the speech we’ve quoted above.
However, the fact that the government is now talking about housing migrants in tents, may be a signal that Sweden, despite everything, may not want to be on the front lines of the “humanitarian” battle anymore, after all. The prospect of spending an ice-cold Swedish winter in a tent may make migrants choose countries other than Sweden. If not, a complete collapse of the Swedish system is imminent.
In 2014, the Danish historian and social commentator Lars Hedegaard prophetically remarked in the book “Farliga ord“(Dangerous Words), that the economic breakdown of a nation always happens quickly and unexpectedly:
If there is any lesson to be drawn from history, it is that what you do not think will happen, does. Time and again. The final consequence of the West and, above all, Sweden’s immigration policy is that the economy will collapse – because who is going to pay for it all? And economic breakdowns, once they happen, always happen very fast.
Right now, the Swedish government is borrowing money abroad to pay for immigration. But that amount is not enough. …
The government is also raising (already high) taxes.
High-ranking politicians and officials are also saying the situation is extremely grim.
On October 1, Minister for Home Affairs Anders Ygeman said that the current wave of immigrants will lead to “huge economic strains“; and a few days later Immigration Service Director General Anders Danielsson explained that “within the framework of the system we all know, we are now approaching the end of the road”.
Statements such as these have never been heard before in Sweden, especially in connection with the “sacred” issue of migration. Until now, Swedes have perpetually been told that we live in a rich country that has no problem handling all asylum seekers who want to come here.
In the shadow the 1.5 million migrants expected to arrive this year in Germany, the EU’s largest country (population 81 million), migrants are also pouring into a rather smaller Sweden. Geographically Sweden is large, but consists mainly of forests and wilderness, and fewer than 10 million people live in the country. Until 2010, Sweden took in about 25,000 migrants a year. However, in 2010, then Prime Minister Fredrik Reinfeldt made a deal with pro-immigration Green Party, (Miljöpartiet) — by his own admission to punish voters for allowing the anti-mass-immigration Sweden Democrats party (Sverigedemokraterna) into parliament.
Ah, so Swedish voters elected a party that was against mass immigration – and their will was frustrated by a coalition. A Green Party tilted the balance away from common sense and national self-preservation. No surprise there.
Reinfeldt’s deal opened the immigration floodgates. In 2014, 81,000 people sought asylum in Sweden; and 33,500 were granted asylum. However, as many of the immigrants subsequently brought over their relatives, that figure substantially increased. Last year, 110,000 people were granted residency status in Sweden. One should add to this figure an unknown number of illegal aliens.
There is now talk of 180,000 asylum seekers coming to Sweden in 2015. That number is more than twice as many as the year before. If half of them are granted asylum, and they each bring over three relatives, we are talking about 270,000 new immigrants to Sweden – within one year. Over 8000 people arrived just last week, 1,716 of whom were so-called “unaccompanied refugee children”.
Swedes who only follow the mainstream media get the impression that all the migrants arriving are war refugees from Syria, but the number of Syrians is actually less than half of the total: 2,864 people last week claimed to be from Syria. 1,861 claimed to be from Iraq, and 1,820 from Afghanistan. Clearly, many people from countries that are not at war are taking their chances and applying for asylum in Sweden; but this is something about which the mainstream media does not see fit to inform its followers.
… The Swedish economist Tino Sanandaji (of Iranian-Kurdish descent, and therefore tougher than most Swedes, who, if they criticize the immigration policy, are immediately accused of racism) writes on his blog that Swedes could soon be in the minority in their own country:
1,000-1,500 asylum seekers a day for 15 years equals 5.5 to 8.2 million asylum seekers. At the end of 2014, the Statistical Central Bureau, SCB, calculated that 21.5% of the Swedish population were of foreign descent: 2.1 million, out of 9.7 million. The number of people of Swedish descent – born in Sweden with two parents born in Sweden – has been stable at about 7.7 million and is expected to remain stable or increase slightly due to birth surplus. If those of foreign descent increase their number by about 5.6 million, they will become the majority.
One of the municipalities that has been flooded with migrants is Trelleborg (population 43,000), located on Sweden’s southernmost coast. Over 100 “unaccompanied refugee children” arrive from Germany via ferry on a typical day. During the last two weeks, more than 1000 such youths have been registered; more than half of them have now vanished and are listed as missing. No one knows why, or where they have gone. Add to this 13,000 adult asylum seekers.
Impromptu temporary lodgings have been created in sports centers, ice rinks, and at the Sturup airport hotel, to name a few.
Trelleborg has written a desperate letter of appeal for help to the government, just as, a few weeks ago, the Örkelljunga municipality did in vain. The mayor and the Municipal Director of Trelleborg, who signed the letter on October 1, wrote:
In the past, many asylum seekers have taken the route through Denmark to Malmö, but this changed about two weeks ago. From September 10 until the morning of October 1, 14,100 asylum seekers arrived in Trelleborg by ferry. There is no indication that the pace is slowing; if anything it is continuously increasing. On Tuesday, September 22, Trelleborg received word from the Immigration Service that the municipality where children and young people arrive is by law the authority that is required to provide housing, care and living expenses, until such time as the Immigration Service decides upon a designated municipality. … Trelleborg has quickly ended up in a situation where the regular services to the community are at great risk of being affected. … By writing this letter, we would like to bring to your attention the enormous strain we now find ourselves under.
Apparently, the Minister for Justice and Migration, Morgan Johansson, has since been in contact with Trelleborg’s mayor via telephone to discuss possible solutions. On October 9, the Immigration Service decided that Trelleborg should be exempt as a designated municipality for unaccompanied children. However, it is unclear how this will alleviate Trelleborg’s plight as far as the new arrivals go. The only concrete help so far has come from some of the neighboring municipalities, who have opened up facilities to house some of the Trelleborg migrants.
Malmö, about 18 miles from Trelleborg, is also in dire straits. For the last few weeks, the central train station in Sweden’s third largest city has been overrun with migrants, and the volunteers that showed up for the first few days with food, water and clothes now seem to have lost interest. The daily Sydsvenska Dagbladet summed up the desperate situation in Malmö, where even the city’s empty jail was considered (and rejected) as possible housing for refugee children. It now looks more like a possibility for adult refugees.
The Social Democratic mayor of Filipstad, Per Gruvberger, also recently raised the alarm that his municipality of 6,000 people will not be able to provide schooling and childcare for the 1,100 asylum seekers now assigned to his municipality.
The reply of the Minister for Justice and Migration, Morgan Johansson, to this cry for help was: “If need be, Filipstad will just have to expand its operations.”
This insensitive statement from Johansson caused the Mayor of neighboring Årjäng, Daniel Schützer, to go ballistic. He wrote about his fellow party member on Facebook:
“Pardon my French, but Morgan Johansson is totally f—ing stupid. ‘Expand,’ he says. It is not f—ing bricks and planks that we are lacking, it is teachers!!!!”
The Immigration Service, which is tasked with reviewing the asylum seekers’ reasons for immigrating, is understandably swamped with work. Even before the latest “refugee crisis” – and despite 1,200 new employees being hired last year – its staff is struggling. The employees’ union is now raising the alarm, concerning more and more incidents of violence, vandalism and suicide attempts – this year (up to August), 1,021 such incidents were reported. …
While all this plays out, large portions of the Swedish people watch in horror from the sidelines and wonder when the unavoidable collapse will occur. At the same time, a surprisingly large portion of the citizenry still overconfidently believe that “Daddy State” will make everything all right. This a very Swedish view, like the wishes of children, that Peter Santesson, head of polling institute Demoskop, wrote about on the website Dagens Opinion. Santesson states that the Swedes have an unusually high level of trust in the social order, and that they are convinced that “somewhere higher up, there is always someone smarter and more informed, taking responsibility and making sure everything works.” If the government officials turn out to be incapable of handling the refugee chaos they themselves have created, it could be disastrous.
Santesson continues,
Responsible decision makers need to ponder the trust the people have now bestowed on them, and they need to handle this trust with care in this difficult crisis. If the people’s confidence is betrayed by them turning out not to be able to handle the situation – if “Sweden” turns out to be insufficient as a miracle cure and the crisis becomes too much to handle – the outcome could be political and social consequences reaching far beyond the issue of immigration.
What consequences might those be? Insurrection? Armed rebellion?
If so, they could find themselves clashing not only with Swedish governent forces – who are probably a pushover – but with trained terrorists:
The blogger Johan Westerholm, a Social Democrat who is critical of the government … writes that the situation in Malmö is “out of control,” and states that we do not have any idea who those arriving in Sweden are:
A very large group of administrators [at the Immigration Service] do not even know the designated terror organizations, and then there are the sympathizers – people who, on principal, would never file a report to the Immigration Service security department, for ideological reasons. A large group consists of those who are scared into silence. In an organization characterized by fear and stress, to do nothing is a surefire way to keep your job. If a report of suspicion is filed anyway, typically nothing happens. If the life and health of the terrorist is threatened, as is often the situation, the person gets to stay. Initially he is given a temporary residence permit, but in practice, this turns out to be permanent.
The 152 asylum seekers reported to the Security Service so far this year as possible threats to national security, are thus most likely just the tip of the iceberg.
The Swedes who have already lost faith in the authorities and the politicians are now preparing for the unthinkable – that their once so secure society is about to collapse.
On the website 72timmar.se, the Civil Contingencies Agency informs the public on “our five most basic needs: Water, food, heat, sleep and security.” The readers are told to keep water and canned goods at home, and make sure they can stay warm.
So not insurrection. But laying in emergency supplies. Hunking down for a miserable, fear-ridden winter – that will last not for the usual six months of biting cold, but forever? Emergency supplies will run out soon – and then? Starvation? Freezing to death? Or will the Muslim guests finish off their hosts quickly with rape, pillage and mass murder?
Let socialists the world over (including, we hope forlornly, the Democratic candidate for the presidency of the US, Bernie Sanders, who holds Sweden up as a model for America), imagine all those thin shivering native Swedes expiring in their ideal socialist state!
But even the need for “prepping” in the face of the coming emergency does not seem to penetrate the heads of most of them:
“Prepping” is becoming more common in Sweden. Last summer, the daily Svenska Dagbladetran a story on the first Swedish online store for preppers, and that interest was huge. According to the polling institute Sifo, until recently, seven out of ten Swedes have been completely unprepared for a crisis that knocks out the power supply and thereby the infrastructure. The owner of the online store, Fredrik Qvarnström, told the paper that, in his estimation, the Swedes are the worlds most poorly prepared for a crisis:
… People seem to be aware that there are problems, but I do not think they know how vulnerable we really are. We rely on the state to take care of us, as it has in the past.
It will not be long until the Swedes realize that the state will not look after them. The country that just 20 years ago was considered one of the safest and most affluent in the world, is now in danger of becoming a failed state.
And not just failed. Finished. Extinct.
Sweden sinking 83
Yes, those are people. Huddled masses of Africans yearning to cross the Mediterranean to Europe, there to breathe free.*
If they can make it to Sweden, they will be paid by the Swedes to live there. Because the Swedes are nice people.
Nice people without a future.
Sweden will soon be so overloaded with migrants that it will sink – financially – beneath the weight.
But apparently the Swedes can’t see that. Or if they can, they are willing to go under rather than stop being nice people.
This is from the Sweden Report:
The past few weeks have been filled with debate about the deaths of migrants crossing over from Africa in search of a better life. Since the coast guard off the European countries are obligated to rescue ships in danger, the smugglers pack people onto unsafe wrecks and send them off to be rescued. Inevitably, some sink before the coast guard reaches them. … Is it Europe’s fault? …
Some argue that these are desperate people fleeing war. … . But when the person has reached safe haven in a peaceful country and yet continues to travel, the argument no longer holds water. For example, the number of people fleeing Gambia is on the rise. So they cross the border to Senegal, a democratic country at relative peace. But instead of stopping there, they choose to travel through Senegal, Mauritania, Algeria, and then get on a dinky boat to reach Europe. Are they still fleeing for their lives at that point?
For the yes-side of the European fault discussion, we have the honey pot aspect. Here is where Sweden plays a major role. Two years ago it became official policy that anyone claiming to be Syrian or Eritrean was owed automatic permanent residency with all welfare perks that come with it. ID is not required; you merely have to make the claim and present a semi-plausible story. It would be hard to come up with a better incentive to the world’s poor seeking a better life. All you have to do is get to Swedish soil, and you’re set for life with a standard of living previously unimagined. …
The number of confirmed deaths on the Mediterranean has quadrupled since 2008. This year is predicted to be a record-breaker, with an estimated million migrants waiting to cross on the African side. The first few months of 2015 has already clocked in 30 times the deaths of the same period in 2014. …
So Europe has a problem … [The solution could be] to increase coast guard presence in the Mediterranean to turn back boats to Africa, while removing the incentives for attempting the journey to begin with. Makes perfect sense to 28 of the 29 EU members.
But of course, the world’s Humanitarian Superpower doesn’t want anything to do with that approach. “Sweden shall fight for establishing legal ways into Europe!” said prime minister Löfven in the parliament EU committee. In other words, the Swedish government wants to open up for asylum application at the embassies and consulates around the world.
Now, combine this with [the fact] that Sweden now considers poverty a de facto grounds for asylum. Basically anybody worse off than a Swede in any way is to be let in, period. …
The rest of Europe wants to shut the door and remove the incentives for risking life and limb crossing the Mediterranean. Meanwhile, Sweden wants to open up for everybody in the whole world to apply for asylum, based on their generous criteria where almost everybody gets approved.
There are an estimated 2.5 billion people living in poverty in the world. India alone has a few hundred million living in absolute squalor. Perhaps Löfven should use India as a test balloon and start an airlift of, say, 100 Boeing 747s at 500 each per day. That’s 50,000 poor but happy Indians arriving at Arlanda airport every day to be absorbed by the country of less than 10 million.
Let’s give it a month. If everything works out, he can go global with this inspiring initiative to end the world’s ills by bringing them all to Sweden.
* The author of the article we quote, Caligula, has kindly informed us that this picture, which accompanied his article, is from the Balkan wars of the 1990s with people going to Italy.We apologize to our readers for our error, but will leave the photo in place because as a picture of too many people trying to get on a ship to go away from where they are and get to somewhere better, it is impressive.
The innocence of Swedes 122
It is particularly in the sphere of foreign relations that states need to be conservative. That is to say, they need to be cautious, thoroughly well-informed, and unswervingly realistic. There is no place there for romanticism. Policies must be formed to serve the interests of your State, your own State only, and nothing but its interests. Raison d’État rules supreme. Or should do.
But Sweden is romantic in its politics. Sweden has not been cautious or realistic in its dealings with the Arab and Islamic powers. Most of its politicians seem to have avoided knowing anything about Islam. Sweden welcomes huge numbers of Muslim immigrants – and has a severe rape problem as a direct result. It sells arms to Arab states. It thinks that Israel is being really rotten to those nice peaceful Palestinians who so desperately need a state of their own without any Jews in it. So they told Hamas and Fatah that as far as they, the Swedes, were concerned, there was just such a pretty state already in existence.
Or at least that’s the way it used to think and behave. It might have changed its national mind to some extent now. For the first time one of its bien pensant politicians came up in actuality, and rather surprising circumstances, against Real Arabs of Arabia, and the shock has been severe.
But maybe it has also been salutary.
This is from Gatestone, by Ingrid Carlqvist and Lars Hedegaard:
Sweden’s latest attempt to flex its muscles as a humanitarian and feminist superpower ended in a diplomatic disaster last week.
On March 9, the country’s Social Democratic Foreign Minister, Margot Wallström, was to address the foreign ministers of the Arab League assembled in Cairo.
Wallström had been invited by Arab League Secretary General Nabil el-Araby as a guest of honor. …The unusual offer to listen to a European foreign minister was made in the light of Sweden’s recent decision to recognize [a state of] Palestine.
Wallström never got a chance to speak. According to her own explanation, she was blocked from addressing the meeting after protests by Saudi Arabia. “They have reacted strongly to what we have said about democracy and human rights,” she told Swedish public radio. …
For it seems that Margot Wallström, unusually if not uniquely among Sweden’s leaders, had informed herself to some extent about the nature of Arab regimes:
It is unknown if the text of Wallström’s address was distributed to the Arab foreign ministers before the meeting. They cannot, however, have been unaware that she had previously spoken out against the flogging of the Saudi blogger, Raif Badawi, who was convicted of “insulting Islam”, and that she had criticized the status of women’s rights in the Gulf kingdom.
Back in Sweden, Wallström and Prime Minister Stefan Löfven had faced criticism for their decision to continue Sweden’s controversial weapons exports to Saudi Arabia.
On March 10, the Swedish Minister of Defense Peter Hultqvist announced that Sweden would not extend its agreement to sell arms to Saudi Arabia. The Swedish government claimed that the decision had been made several days before FM Wallström’s unfortunate experience in Egypt.
On Wednesday, March 11, Saudi Arabia recalled its ambassador from Stockholm.
Swedish Foreign Minister Margot Wallström wanted to lecture The Arab League on human rights. Saudi Arabia’s King Salman was not amused. (Image source: Wikimedia Commons)
A copy of what Margot Wallström intended to say to the Arab League has been published on a Swedish government website. In it, she made no specific reference to human rights violations in any particular Arab country. She referred to the predicament of women in particular and human rights in general …
The Foreign Minister appears to have been unaware that “human” and “women’s” rights are anathema in a great number of Arab States including Saudi Arabia. She also seems innocent of the 1990 Cairo Declaration on Human Rights in Islam, according to which any human right must be compatible with Islamic sharia law — meaning that there are no “human rights” as thought of in the West, but only human obligations as imposed by Allah and his prophet. Whatever is inside sharia law is a human right. Whatever is outside sharia law is not a human right.
After the diplomatic debacle in Cairo, Arab foreign ministers denounced Wallström in a statement: “Arab countries totally reject Wallström’s statement as irresponsible and unacceptable. … Saudi Arabia’s Constitution is based on the Sharia that protects the right of people and safeguards their blood, wealth and honor.” …
The Swedish government, parliament and mainstream media, as demonstrated throughout decades, seem to have no inkling of what sharia law implies. In their hearts, they evidently believe that we all think the same. As Sweden champions democracy, liberty and equal rights, the Swedish establishment apparently cannot imagine that others would think otherwise.
This belief has been the basis of Sweden’s foreign and immigration policies for many years. The Swedish “humanitarian superpower,” however, has now reached the limits of a policy based on love and understanding. …
Through its recognition of Palestine as a sovereign state, and following years of anti-Israeli propaganda, Sweden has made itself terra non grata in Israel – and now Saudi Arabia does not like it either.
An EU member state that sees itself as the universal purveyor of peace and love, without understanding what is actually going on the world, will of course lose credibility and influence …
One wonders where the Swedish government will go next to find takers for its uninformed, idealistic world policy.
Or maybe it has woken up. Time will tell.
Pat Condell thinks it is already much too late:
(Hat-tip to Frank for video)
A dark prophecy for Europe 72
Should our civilization collapse under Islamic aggression – aided by our own political correctness, cowardice, laziness – the only known place with intelligent life in this universe will be a dark and destroyed planet drifting through space, populated by billions of mostly inbred humans living in total misery, enslaved by the freedom-hating, death-loving, brutal, mind-numbing Sharia. What tragedy could be worse than that?
We quote from an article at 10news, by Nicolai Sennels:
Islam knows no borders and no mercy, and if our generation does not stop them, the next generation will not even have a chance to make the attempt. Our grandfathers defeated Nazism, our parents’ generation overcame Communism. The great challenge of our time is Islam – an enemy of freedom more present, fanatic and vast in numbers than any totalitarian system before it. This enemy is different than anything we have encountered before: You can not intimidate an enemy who loves death more than life.
Our police is already unable to uphold the law in many of the Muslim ghettos mushrooming everywhere, even in smaller towns. Ever more regular outbreaks of what can best be described as minor incidents of civil war give us a taste of what is waiting for us later this decade (according to Al Qaeda’s prophetic plan made in the 1990s, this will happen in 2016 – Arab governments should be toppled from around 2010 and an Islamic state was planned to be established from 2013 …).
Muslim dominated areas are increasing in numbers and boldness – encouraged by the lack of consequence from Western authorities – and it is only a matter of time before they evolve into permanently warring Muslim enclaves fighting for unconstitutional, religious rights. Through our self-inflicted invasion we are creating our own Gaza Strips, which are already spawning an unending stream of attacks against non-Muslims and the surrounding non-Islamic society. Muslim immigration is crushing our economy, undermining our hard-won safety, attacking free speech and increasingly changing physical areas of our cities into unrecognizable, dangerous no-go sharia-zones.
Muslims believing in jihad are neither extremists, nor a minority. Muslims believing in the obligation to wage jihad to fulfill their religious duty are following mainstream fundamentals of Islam as it is clearly written unambiguously and repeatedly in the Quran and Mohammed’s equally holy life story, the Hadiths. 75 percent of the roughly 56 million Muslims living in Europe believe that the Quran must be taken literally and 65 percent think that the Sharia is more important than democratic laws. 80 percent of young Turks in Holland believe that Jihad against non-Muslims is fine. 27 percent of all French youth and 14 percent of all British youths – presumably including the vast majority of young Muslims in these countries – support the Islamic State. What do these numbers mean? They mean that the countless Muslim ghettos eating up Western towns and cities are populated with hundreds of thousands, maybe even millions, of people supporting the jihadi doctrine. What will happen when they feel strong enough to destroy and overtake our societies? Will they remain passive and peaceful, or will they seize the chance? Many, surely, will do the latter.
Instead of being thankful for the safety and welfare provided by hard working Western tax payers, Muslims in Europe have raised an army of jihadis supporting Islam’s genocidal agenda.
What can we do? Or rather: What must we do, in order to prevail for the sake of humanity and future generations?
Through democratic means, we must mobilize the immense power and organizational talent that lies behind the creation of the most free, rich, and technologically advanced societies in world history and direct it towards our own survival. If we manage to awaken this sleeping giant before our countries are destroyed by barbarians – just like all other high cultures before ours – we will be able to defeat the hordes of inbred fanatics without panic or hate. During this crucial historical period we must not lose our human face and destroy the very values we are trying to protect. We must stay honest, outspoken and engage with realistic means and force, while staying focused on long term win-win solutions. By approaching the problem without fear, but only with mental surplus and a broad overview, we can succeed while creating only a minimum amount of unavoidable harm. Reacting with totalitarian measures such as banning Free Speech to protect “social cohesion” or succumbing to immature emotions for revenge alone will not benefit our cause.
Peaceful societies with social values and a high degree of morality have been exploited to a devastating degree – economically, culturally and demographically – by myriads of Muslim immigrants and refugees.
Modern welfare and decades of peace have put our survival instinct into hibernation. This makes it difficult for us to understand that we will not overcome this historical challenge without the use of real force. A gentle approach that might be affordable under healthy demographic conditions is suicidal when confronted with a weapon of mass-destruction like Islam. We have come to this point because for too long, we have taken freedom for granted. …
We can hate the system, but we can not hate the people. … Muslims are the first victims of Islam, as their system is full of rules and brutal punishments aimed at themselves. Muslims are the real islamophobes: only fear can explain peoples’ submission to such a joyless, unfree and painful system, forcing them to think and behave in ways that creates ever more suffering in their own lives.
Until Muslims free themselves from the chains of sharia, we must make sure that the trouble that their religion brainwashes and forces them to make, happens from a sufficiently safe distance. Therefore we must stop non-Western (Muslim) immigration, and make it as difficult as possible for followers of the religion of submission to live here by banning any kind of Islamization. If they want mosques, halal, prayer rooms, cousin-marriages, and Islamic holidays, they must settle elsewhere. We do not want any mosques or minarets, no public or foreign funding of Islamic organisations or imams. All Muslims coming to our lands must actively and publicly reject the violent and criminal passages of the Islamic scriptures. Performing or promoting jihad is treason and should result in loss of citizenship. This means that we would probably have to find ways to accommodate large [numbers] of people … in or near Islamic countries where they do not suffer from living outside their cultural circle. …
In this way can we save humanity from what is probably the greatest catastrophe in the history of mankind: a monstrous weapon of mass destruction that has already killed millions of people and destroyed countless cultures and societies before ours. A system that is robbing its own followers of the most basic human rights and which is forcing them to suppress and kill their own. A system that is aiming at subjugating all human beings – Muslims and non-Muslims – under barbaric, totalitarian laws. A system that calls itself a religion but is so much more than that. A system that praises death more than life. A system that knows no mercy and no borders.
A system whose name means “submission”.
A system that bears the name Islam.
These opinions and prescriptions voiced by a spokesman of a group in Britain are similar to those of rebel groups growing in many parts of Europe. (For just a few of many reports see here, here and here.)
The Left dubs all of them “extreme right-wing” to raise connotations of twentieth century fascist and racist movements, and recalls their anti-Semitism to strengthen its case. Watch, if you have the stamina, this video and hear what the leftist pro-Islam pundits have to say. The irony is that Leftism is now the most virulently anti-Semitic ideology in the world, after Islam itself.
It is true that some of the new movements are fascist and racist and anti-Semitic, but not all of them. They are on the rise because Islam is truly a terrible enemy gaining power in the heart of Europe, and fiercely and insanely protected by European governments. Almost all the main political parties are still choosing to ignore the threat of Islam, or at best to play it down.
If many of the protest rebel groups turn out to be destructive of liberal democracy itself (which 1onews takes care to deny is any part of its own agenda), the establishments will have only themselves to blame. Most Western European countries are still not just allowing but encouraging more Muslim immigration, despite the carnage and crime that members of their present Muslim populations inflict on them continually and increasingly.
Many Europeans are predicting violent uprisings in their countries, and even civil wars – ever more plausibly.
A rise of nationalist sentiment in small nations is adding to the rebellious mood. (Here’s a video about it.)
So the peace that Europe boasts of keeping on its own soil since the end of Word War II – many Europhiles claiming that the European Union has made wars between the states impossible – seems almost certain to be shattered.
If there is little doubt that it will happen, the question is – how soon?
Europe is dying anyway, as its indigenous populations dwindle away. Civil wars will hasten its end in a welter of blood. Then, because of its peoples’ own folly, bleak cruel primitive Islam will inherit the continent, and undertake the holy task of destroying every last vestige of its high civilization.
A kaleidoscopic shift of the political pattern of Europe 198
New political parties have been rising in many European countries to oppose established policies of both leftist and conservative governments, particularly policies towards the European Union and immigration.
Most of the new parties are on the Right, but recently some have been formed – or have quite suddenly grown from being inconsequential groupings into forces to be reckoned with – on the Left.
The newly aggressive parties of the Left are mainly in the South, in countries at the receiving end of EU subsidies, angry that the subsidies are not substantial enough.
The new parties of the Right are mainly in the North, in countries at the paying end of the system, angry that they have to subsidize the failing economies of the South.
That sections of the Left should see how badly Europe needs a strategy for survival, should find fault with the EU, and object to unending immigration of dependents into their already hard-pressed welfare states, is a startling development. It means that new political patterns of alignment and opposition are emerging.
In the following article, which we quote from Gatestone, Peter Martino writes about the new parties’ concern with the adverse economic effects of EU membership. He only touches on immigration as a factor in the intensifying discontent which prompts the formation of new political organizations, movements and agendas, but it is in fact quite as hot an issue.
Last week, the United Kingdom Independence Party (UKIP) won a landmark victory in the Rochester & Strood by-election. With this win, UKIP secured its second Member of Parliament. The UKIP candidate, Mark Reckless, won 42.1% of the votes, thrashing the Conservatives (34.8%), Labour (16.8%) and the Liberal Democrats (0.9%). It was the first time ever that UKIP stood in Rochester & Strood. The party won votes from all the major parties. The Conservatives lost 14.4% of the votes, Labour 11.7% and the Liberal Democrats a whopping 15.5%.
UKIP is expected to do very well in the British general elections next May. Last month, a poll predicted the party could win up to 25% of the vote in these elections. In the 2010 general elections, the party had only 3.1%.
UKIP stands for the preservation of the Britain’s national identity. It opposes the European Union (EU) and wants Britain to remain a sovereign nation rather than become a state of a federal Europe. The party is also critical of mass immigration, in particular from Eastern Europe. Though Nigel Farage, the UKIP leader, carefully avoids the issue of Islam, the party has also become the refuge of voters who worry about Islamization. Above all, however, the party embodies the dissatisfaction of the electorate with the traditional political establishment.
As such, UKIP is part of a broad trend that can currently be perceived all over Western Europe.
In Spain, a poll this week said that Podemos, a brand new party that was established only nine months ago, is currently the largest party in the country with 28.3% of the vote. The governing conservative Partido Popular of Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy would finish second with 26.3% and the Socialist Party would get only 20.1%. Three years ago, in the November 2011 general elections, the Partido Popular won 44.6% of the votes.
Unlike UKIP, Podemos is a party that clearly belongs to the left of the political spectrum. Podemos (the Spanish for We can) was founded by “anti-capitalist” academics and trade unionists who want to “oppose the dominating EU politics from the left”. Unlike UKIP, Podemos does not want to abolish the EU. On the contrary, since Spain is receiving billions of euros in EU subsidies, a majority of the Spaniards clearly want their country to remain an EU member state.
However, the party opposes the austerity policies that the EU is imposing on Spain as a prerequisite for the continuation of the flow of EU subsidies. Both the Spanish Socialist Party and Prime Minister Rajoy’s Partido Popular are perceived by voters as implementing the same set of EU-prescribed policies.
In this regard, Podemos does resemble UKIP, which also accuses the British political establishment of simply implementing EU mandated policies. In Britain’s case, the dissatisfaction with the EU stems mostly from British taxpayers having to pay billions to the EU, which are then transferred to countries in the south of Europe [such as Spain -ed], where governments use them to fund welfare programs. In this sense, the rise of leftist tax-and-spend parties (or rather tax-other-countries-and-spend parties), such as Podemos, reinforces the rise of parties such as UKIP in the north of Europe.
Indeed, all along the Mediterranean, parties opposing the EU-mandated austerity policies are growing spectacularly.
One of the keynote speakers at Podemos’ recent first-ever party congress was Alexis Tsipras, the leader of Greece’s neo-communist party Syriza. In last May’s European elections, Syriza became Greece’s biggest party with 26.5% of the votes, ahead of the governing Nea Demokratia party of Prime Minister Antonis Samaras. Syriza draws on the same kind of sentiments as Podemos and is popular for exactly the same reasons.
The same is true of Italy’s Five Star Movement, led by the comedian Beppe Grillo, which, with 21.2% of the vote, became the country’s second largest party in last May’s European elections.
And the same is even true for the Front National of Marine Le Pen in France. Ms Le Pen claims that without the euro, the EU’s common currency, there would be “no need for austerity”. Drawing on anti-EU sentiments, the Front National became the largest French party in last May’s European elections with 24.8% of the vote.
The popularity of these parties is still rising. A recent poll in France revealed that Marine Le Pen might win the next French presidential elections, not just in the first round, but also in the decisive second round. It is the first time ever that the FN leads in a presidential poll against France’s two major parties, the Socialist PS and the Center-Right UMP.
In the countries to the north, however, the popularity of the parties opposing the EU subsidization of the southern countries is rising equally spectacularly.
In the Netherlands, the anti-establishment Party for Freedom (PVV) of Geert Wilders is currently the biggest party in the polls. Wilders has consistently opposed the bailing out of countries such as Greece and Spain with Dutch taxpayers’ money.
In neighboring Germany, the Alternative for Germany (AfD), a party established last year to oppose eurozone bailouts, is shaking up politics with its astonishing wins in recent state elections.
In Sweden, the Sweden Democrats (SD), opposing both immigration and the EU, won 13% of the vote in last September’s general elections, but their popularity keeps rising. Last week, an SD spokesman said the party is currently expected to win up to 18% of the vote.
All across Europe, the electorate is deeply dissatisfied and disillusioned with both the Conservative and the Social-Democrat parties of the political establishment. Voters no longer see much difference between the traditional political protagonists, who are perceived as imposing an EU agenda that, for various reasons, is seen as bad for the country.
In Europe judging by the polls, political landslides are on the way.
It’s not terrorism, it’s war 98
European governments cannot think of an effective way to deal with the jihadis in their midst.
Take the case of Sweden. We quote from an article in this month’s issue of Commentary by Annika Hernroth-Rothstein. It is titled A Local Story of Global Jihad:
Sweden has long functioned as a hub for international terrorism and has housed members of international terrorist organizations such as Hamas, the Armed Islamic Group, Al Shabaab, Egypt’s Gamaa al-Islamiyya, and the Islamic State. Because membership in foreign terrorist organizations is not illegal, these operatives have largely been left alone.
In some cases, the Swedish government has gone out of its way to help them. In 2002, Swedish jihadist Mehdi Mohammad Ghezali was captured in Afghanistan by American forces. Deemed an enemy combatant, he was incarcerated at Guantánamo Bay. Stockholm immediately launched a campaign to release Ghezali, and in 2004 he was let out. Five years later, he was arrested in Pakistan for collaborating with the Islamic State.
While other European countries have broadened their anti-terrorism policies in order to crack down on terrorist propaganda, Sweden has become a safe haven for websites and publishers that specialize in jihadist material. Additionally, Sweden is home to certain mosques that are funded by foreign countries and known to function as recruitment centers for terrorist organizations. On the island of Hisingen, for instance, the Gothenburg Mosque, in Sweden’s second-largest city, is financed by Saudi Arabia. The Islamic Center in Malmö, Sweden’s third largest city, is funded and owned by the World Islamic Call Society, an Islamist umbrella organization founded by Muammar Qaddafi. With 60,000 members, it’s the largest mosque in Scandinavia. And the Husby Islamic Center, in the Stockholm suburb, was funded by Qatar. The new mosque to be built in Rinkeby, a suburb of Stockholm, is a Qatari undertaking as well.
But Sweden’s most insidious enabling of jihad is achieved through its generous social-benefits system. According to the latest numbers from the Swedish Social Insurance Agency, the average immigrant family in Sweden, consisting of two parents and two children, receives $3,135 per month in benefits. What’s more, these funds are exempt from the country’s standard 33 percent income tax. This may not seem like a lot of money compared with the gargantuan sums we often hear about in cases of international terror financing, but it’s more than enough to do great harm. The Swedish Security Service concluded that the money Taimour Abdulwahab al-Abdaly [a suicide bomber who returned from the Middle east and blew himself up on a Stockholm street] and his wife were given in benefits and loans from the Swedish government was used to finance his trips abroad, where he received terrorist training. The family had no other source of income.
Abdaly, Ghezali, and the country’s approximately 200 other potential militants are manifestations of the larger problem of jihad in Europe. There is no shortage of nightmare stories to attest to this ballooning reality. British citizens who received al-Qaeda training in Afghanistan and Pakistan bombed the London subway in 2005. Mehdi Nemmouche, an ISIS member and French national, fought for jihad in Syria before opening fire on innocents at the Jewish Museum in Brussels this past May. The ISIS executioners who recently beheaded American journalists James Foley and Steven Sotloff and British aid workers David Haines and Alan Henning delivered their crazed overtures to human slaughter in native British accents. …
Western leaders are now aggressively pursuing ISIS in Iraq and Syria, but while they chase the bad guys from the edge of town, they risk leaving the door to the house wide open. Above all, it must be remembered that the jihadists’ long-term goal is to strike the West. The war they fight has no borders; the caliphate they seek has no geographic limits.
Europe is slow to connect the dots when they form a discomfiting image. For Sweden, a country that prides itself on the progressive values of openness and inclusivity, the steps necessary to fight a counter-jihad at home are almost too painful to countenance. The Swedish measures now in place amount to a kind of counter-radicalization therapy. … Muslim extremism in faraway lands is a suitable topic for discussion, but addressing the jihadists among us is political kryptonite.
Yet such considerations are meaningless to the jihadists themselves. As Abdaly himself put it: “The Islamic State has lived up to its holy promise; we are here in Europe, and in Sweden. We are a reality, not a fantasy.” In Sweden, Europe’s third-largest contributor to the jihad, we’d do well to take our enemies at their word.
Britain is floundering in a fog of of misdiagnosis just as Sweden is.
We quote from a recent article at Stand for Peace by Sam Westrop:
On September 30, Theresa May, the British Home Secretary, gave a speech at the Conservative Party’s annual conference, in which she outlined the threat posed to Britain by terrorism from abroad and extremism at home.
After giving the customary assurance that the actions of ISIS have no basis in Islam and proffering a quote from the Quran, May boasted of the Government’s record fighting fundamentalism, promised new powers to fight extremist groups and declared her gritty determination to uphold “British values”.
This grandiose speech revealed ambition – albeit mostly May’s own. It did not, however, demonstrate any real progress. The Home Secretary’s effusions were example of a government that has only half-heartedly responded to the problem of extremist ideology. It is a government that likes to talk but fails to act.
The Home Secretary then announced a series of weak measures to be taken in dealing with “extremism” in the organized charities, the media, the internet, schools, prisons, universities.
Sam Westrop rightly concludes:
It appears that the Home Office urgently needs to define “extremism.” This definition should include the smiling Islamist who attends interfaith vigils during the day but propagates anti-Semitism and expresses support for Hamas at night.
Extremism is a dangerous animal, but presently it is being given both the carrot and the stick. As long as we allow the human face of Islamist extremism to subsist, and even flourish, we will continue to churn out radicalized Muslim youth who will choose the Kalashnikov over a university degree. No one claims that the answer to Islamist extremism is easy. The question of extremism, however, is remarkably simple. If only the government would understand.
And the US government, under the leadership of a devotedly pro-Islam president, is trying to pretend that holy warriors are simply breaking US domestic law and need to be tried in civil courts.
We quote from the Guardian:
Irek Hamidullin was arraigned on 12 counts, including providing material support to terrorists, trying to destroy US military aircraft and conspiring to use a weapon of mass destruction. Half of the charges are punishable by up to life in prison. Attorney general Eric Holder chose not to seek the death penalty …
Hamidullin is the first military detainee from Afghanistan to be brought to the US for trial. His transfer represents the latest attempt by the Obama administration to show that it can use the criminal court system to deal with terror suspects – a move criticized by some Republican lawmakers who believe such cases should be handled by military tribunals.
US officials say Hamidullin is a Russian veteran of the Soviet war in Afghanistan who stayed in the country and joined the Taliban. He was captured in 2009 after an attack on Afghan border police and US soldiers in Khowst province. He had been held at the US Parwan detention facility at Bagram airfield before being brought to the US. … He became affiliated with the Taliban in 2001.
The indictment says Hamidullin commanded three groups of insurgents that attacked Afghan border police at Camp Leyza, one of six locations the Taliban had identified as possible targets. He directed insurgents armed with anti-aircraft machine guns to fire at US military helicopters responding to the attack, the indictment says, and later used a machine gun to shoot at US troops and Afghan border police assessing damage at the battle site.
Those are clearly acts of war. Hamidullin should be tried by a military tribunal.
What Western governments fail to understand is that their countries are not being subjected to “extremism”, or “terrorism”, but war.
The jihad is indeed global. Jihad means Holy War. Sure, it must be fought in Europe as well as in the Middle East. But it must be recognized as a war everywhere.
Even if European governments found a way to stop and punish jihadi violence in their own countries, the war would go on. At present they are all acting ineffectively. Instead of joyfully letting all Muslim citizens who want to go and fight with IS/ISIS/ISIL go, and refuse them re-entry, and deprive them of their citizenship (as Geert Wilders so rightly recommends), they try to persuade them not to go, and if they return they give them “therapy”, as if Islam were nothing but a nervous breakdown in a few gullible individuals.
It is foolish and dangerous to go on calling every Muslim “holy” warrior a terrorist. It is even more foolish and self-deceiving to call IS/ISIS/ISIL a “terrorist organization”. They are one of the armies of Islam.
Islam is an ideology of world conquest. It is fighting a war against the non-Muslim world.
At the same time there are battles within Islam. Sunni versus Shia is a perpetual conflict. IS/ISIS/ISIL – the Islamic State – is Sunni. When Shia Iran becomes a nuclear power – which will be quite soon with Obama’s help – there will be a second Islamic force against the rest of the world, competing with the Islamic State for the victor’s crown.
Of course the Iranian force with its nuclear weapons will be a thousand times stronger than the Islamic State.
Even if the US-led “coalition ” were to defeat the Islamic State, the war would not stop. It will be kept going on the streets of Western cities in Sweden, Britain, France, Spain, America, until the nuclear bombs of Iran strike – first Israel and then anywhere else they choose.
How should it be dealt with? At the very least the West should treat Islamic states as it did the Soviet Union. Our long war with the USSR was called a Cold War, but there were many places where it was hotly fought. Persons in the West who were loyal to the enemy ideology were tolerated for the most part if they did nothing actively to aid the enemy. When they acted to help the enemy at the expense of their own country, they were put to death – as the Rosenbergs were.
That is the precedent for the West to follow in dealing now with the equally abominable ideology and aggressive intent of Islam.
Old states, new states, terrorist states, peaceful states … 313
… all add to the gaiety of nations.
As the world order disintegrates, its leaders and elites laugh and play merrily. We should all join the greatest party of all time.
If recognizing breakaway countries can stabilize the unstable Middle East, just think of how much stability it can bring to Europe. Now that Sweden has solved the problem of Muslim violence in the Middle East, perhaps a few breakaway republics will solve Muslim violence in Sweden.
Daniel Greenfield writes in the only way this subject – the absurd step Sweden has taken in “recognizing” a non-existent State of Palestine – deserves to be written about: with brilliant sarcasm.
And he puts forward a great plan to reward Sweden for solving the central problem of the world with the pronouncing of one magic formula.
On Thursday, Sweden finally solved all the problems in the Middle East by recognizing the State of Palestine.
For decades all the instability in the region had been blamed on the lack of a PLO state. Foreign policy experts stood in line to tell us all that the only thing that could end terrorism in the Middle East was a terrorist state. …
Our leaders kept the faith. The White House’s Middle East coordinator insisted that Israel’s obstinate refusal to create a Palestinian State, against the wishes of the unelected president of the Palestinian Authority who refuses to negotiate one or to stop the terrorism, was causing instability in the region.
Secretary of State John Kerry had denied that ISIS [the “Islamic State”] was Islamic, but blamed Israel for ISIS recruitment.
The Obama administration, and most other governments, also deny that ISIS is a state. But it has a government, a huge and growing army, it collects taxes and has a thriving economy from the sale of oil, it runs hospitals and schools, collects garbage, and maintains order by a system of instant decapitation for any head that pops up too far. True, it has no fixed borders, but then neither does “Palestine”.
But it wasn’t John Kerry who saved the Middle East from instability. Instead Sweden did it by recognizing a terror state whose leaders stopped bothering with the onerous duty of holding elections once they realized that the Eurocrats and Obama would keep shoveling money at them even if they chose their unelected terrorist leaders by playing Russian Roulette.
Sweden’s new Palestine not only dispensed with elections, routing the business of governance through its core PLO organizations, but also has no economy, instead employing an army of people who are paid not to run a country that doesn’t exist with money sent over by America, Europe and Japan.
Some would call that a scam, but it’s remarkably similar to how the European Union works.
In addition to lacking such luxuries as an elected government and an economy, the State of Palestine also doesn’t control Gaza, which is run by another terrorist group, Hamas. The international community has been ignoring that minor problem because it wouldn’t do for a bankrupt terrorist state which happens to be our last best hope for stability in the Middle East to be disqualified just because it’s actually two quarreling bankrupt terrorist states. …
With Sweden’s bold step, a bright future dawns over the Middle East. ISIS recruitment is bound to start falling as the Canadian and Swedish Jihadis with their Burqaed brides heading to kill as many Yazidis as they can will realize that there’s no more need for them to behave the way that their religion has for over a thousand years.
There’s a Palestinian State now. All their grievances have been met. A million cartoons and a thousand YouTube videos couldn’t outrage them now. Unless they were about Mohammed.
I wouldn’t be surprised if ISIS transformed into a humanitarian agency for gluing back all the Yazidi, Christian and Shiite heads that it cut off back on the bodies it beheaded. Even now, Sunnis and Shiites are hugging each other all over Iraq and only occasionally blowing themselves up in the process.
Sweden should be rewarded in kind:
Sweden has given a great gift to the world. It’s only a question of how to properly repay it and the answer is obvious. If Sweden recognizing a micro-nation inside Israel’s borders will stabilize the region, it’s only right for Israel, and all right-thinking people, to recognize a micro-nation inside Sweden.
Sweden ended the occupation of Norway, but it continues to occupy such embryonic nations as the Royal Republic of Ladonia and the Republic of Jamtland.
A “Royal Republic”? Hail, Ladonia, land of the brave and free!
While many of us might know Lars Vilks for his Mohammed cartoons, he also founded the Royal Republic of Ladonia after some of his other artwork was censored by Swedish authorities.
The Royal Republic of Ladonia was founded in 1996, three years after the Palestinian Authority, making it only slightly younger and a lot less violent than that micro-nation.
While Ladonia is only around a third of a mile in size, it has a government, a newspaper, a lot of citizens and almost as many nobles.
Queen Carolyn I rules over the constitutional monarchy while President Christopher Matheoss was recently elected by a wide margin over such candidates as Count Wrigley, Antonio Maria De Grandis and Alexander Nevzorov III.
Unlike Palestine, Ladonia holds elections making it a much more legitimate country. And unlike both Palestine and Sweden, Ladonia has freedom of speech and freedom of conscience.
Considering how many newly created countries lack either, the Royal Republic of Ladonia has more of a claim on existence for its mere willingness to extend these freedoms to all.
Israel should recognize the Republic of Ladonia. So should the United States. It’s the only hope for stabilizing Sweden which continues to experience outbursts of Muslim violence in its major cities.
A better case for independence can be made for the Republic of Jamtland, which unlike Palestine, has an ancient history and was an independent peasant republic before the Muslims even invaded Jerusalem.
It declared independence in 1963, a year before the PLO was founded …
Despite generations of Swedish occupation, the Jamtlanders have not turned to violence. At least not in several centuries. Ten of thousands gather for their Freedom Festivals. Their Jamtland Republican Army remains peaceful even when it sets up its own tolls and checkpoints. The only violence there can be seen from the Jamtland Republicans, a local American football team, vigorously playing on the field.
Jamtish, a dialect, is spoken. The flag of the Republic, blue for the sky, green for the forests and white for the snow, is waved. And the European Union and the Swedish government are denounced.
Considering the peacefulness and antiquity of the Republic of Jamtland, its sizable population and unique cultural heritage, recognizing this micro-nation would be the right thing to do. It’s time for Sweden to end the long occupation of Jamtland’s rivers and forests and for this brave republic to take its rightful place among the free and democratic nations of the world.
Sweden chose to recognize two terrorist states inside Israel’s borders. It would only be proper for nations of goodwill to recognize two wholly peaceful republics inside Sweden’s borders. …
Sweden saved the Middle East. Now maybe someone can save Sweden.