I stopped doing the regular This Week in Jihad update because: A.) It took a lot of damn time, and B.) Sites like JihadWatch were doing it better.
But since the Paris attacks, a metric ton of Jihad-related links have come streaming out of the firehose, so here’s a new This Week In Jihad just so a I have a place to put them all:
When the Allahu Akbar boys opened fire, Paris was talking about the climate-change conference due to start later this month, when the world’s leaders will fly in to “solve” a “problem” that doesn’t exist rather than to address the one that does. But don’t worry: we already have a hashtag (#PrayForParis) and doubtless there’ll be another candlelight vigil of weepy tilty-headed wankers. Because as long as we all advertise how sad and sorrowful we are, who needs to do anything?
Snip.
What it is is an attack on the west, on the civilization that built the modern world – an attack on one portion of “humanity” by those who claim to speak for another portion of “humanity”. And these are not “universal values” but values that spring from a relatively narrow segment of humanity. They were kinda sorta “universal” when the great powers were willing to enforce them around the world and the colonial subjects of ramshackle backwaters such as Aden, Sudan and the North-West Frontier Province were at least obliged to pay lip service to them. But the European empires retreated from the world, and those “universal values” are utterly alien to large parts of the map today.
And then Europe decided to invite millions of Muslims to settle in their countries. Most of those people don’t want to participate actively in bringing about the death of diners and concertgoers and soccer fans, but at a certain level most of them either wish or are indifferent to the death of the societies in which they live – modern, pluralist, western societies and those “universal values” of which Barack Obama bleats. So, if you are either an active ISIS recruit or just a guy who’s been fired up by social media, you have a very large comfort zone in which to swim, and which the authorities find almost impossible to penetrate.
Over nine years, as I witnessed the neighborhood become increasingly intolerant. Alcohol became unavailable in most shops and supermarkets; I heard stories of fanatics at the Comte des Flandres metro station who pressured women to wear the veil; Islamic bookshops proliferated, and it became impossible to buy a decent newspaper. With an unemployment rate of 30 percent, the streets were eerily empty until late in the morning. Nowhere was there a bar or café where white, black and brown people would mingle. Instead, I witnessed petty crime, aggression, and frustrated youths who spat at our girlfriends and called them “filthy whores.” If you made a remark, you were inevitably scolded and called a racist. There used to be Jewish shops on Chaussée de Gand, but these were terrorized by gangs of young kids and most closed their doors around 2008. Openly gay people were routinely intimidated, and also packed up their bags.
Cracked writer reads every issue of the Islamic State’s full-color magazine Dabiq. On the one hand, there’s some useful information here. (“Attention Internet: People who celebrate pictures of civilians they’ve killed as well as pictures of their own friend’s murdered corpses don’t give a shit what you call them.”) On the other, the writer seemed to go into the assignment painfully ignorant of some of the most basic facts about the Islamic State (like their radical hatred of Shiites).
The first, and most obvious, difference: There was no international conspiracy of German Jews in the 1930s attempting to carry out daily attacks on civilians on several continents. No self-identifying Jews in the early 20th century were randomly massacring European citizens in magazine offices and concert halls, and there was no “Jewish State” establishing sovereignty over tens of thousands of square miles of territory, and publicly slaughtering anyone who opposed its advance. Among Syrian Muslims, there is.
“Ending a fight means our will must be stronger than our enemies’ – and I’m not convinced that right now, we as a nation are up to it. ISIS isn’t convinced either, and until we convince them by killing them, this will not end well for us.”
“I would be darned to listen to all three of those candidates to discern a clear Democratic line of how you’re actually going to fight terrorism. They were very vague, very non-specific, and I think they have a lot of work to do.” Hard to fight radical Islam if you’re unwilling to even speak its name…
Hey, remember how the plight of #SyrianRefugees was suddenly The Most Pressing Moral Issue Since Cecil The Lion? At least among your liberal friends on Facebook and Twitter?
Never mind that right up until the moment Obama announced he wanted to distribute these teaming masses across America, most of those same liberals had never uttered a peep about America’s “duty” to take in Syrian refugees.
But a funny thing happened on the way to the intersection of Righteous Indignation and Moral Preening: After the Paris bombings, a whole lot of people are getting cold feet about the whole idea. Polls show that Americans oppose settling Syrian refugees by at least a 2-to-1 margin.
Among those coming around to more rigorous screening procedures: elected Democrats, especially those up for reelection in 2016.
Even Hillary’s top donor* is balking at the idea of bringing in more Syrians.
One reason Obama and other Democrats were able to win elections was that they made just enough noises about national security for independents not paying attention to go “Eh, good enough.” But Jack and Jill America, already angry about unchecked illegal immigration and made nervous by jihad attacks here and abroad, are starting to get angry at standing in line to get groped while Democrats insist on importing potential jihadists by the tens of thousands.
Democratic officeholders can certainly defy public opinion when they thinking they’re getting something concrete out of the deal (socialized medicine, graft opportunities, etc.), but aren’t so wild about losing elections for nothing more than moral brownie points. If Syrian refugees are the hill Social Justice Warriors really want to die on, we should let them, and let them take still more Democratic incumbents with them. I’m guessing most elected Democrats aren’t that eager for electoral martyrdom…
Islamic State sympathizers using social media to spread propaganda and recruit fighters are now drawing an increasing amount of return fire from activists who have been knocking some sites offline and infiltrating others.
The loose hacking collective Anonymous is the latest to draw attention to such campaigns, with members claiming credit this week for having thousands of pro-IS Twitter (TWTR.N) accounts disabled.
This is not the first time that Anonymous has taken down Islamic State Twitter accounts, as they did so on a wide scale in Operation #TangoDown back in May.
Will this effort actually damage the Islamic State? Well, slightly, which is to say it will do a damn site more than peace signs with Eiffel Towers or overlaying your icon with a French flag, meaningless feel-good displacement gestures liberals use rather than admitting to themselves they’re doing absolutely nothing to fight radical Islam…
Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal has dropped out of the 2016 Presidential race. While Jindal is much more qualified to be President than Donald Trump or Carly Fiorina, he was always a longshot, He exceeded expectations in that he outlasted Scott Walker and Rick Perry, but he never managed to gain any traction.
A few days after Syrian “refugees” helped killed 132 people (at last count) in Paris, and suddenly liberals are falling all over themselves to natter on about what a “moral duty” it is for the United States to take more of those same “refugees.”
So where was all this “moral duty,” indignation and outrage when the Islamic State was slaughtering Christians, Kurds and Yezidis?
This is just liberals engaging in a cheap form of moral preening, displaying their “tolerance” like a peacock displays its tail feathers. Muslims rank high on the Victimhood Identity Politics scale, so obviously liberals need to display “tolerance” by welcoming more of them here, never mind how many might be jihadists.
Obama is for resettling “refugees” containing Islamist jihadists, and Republican governors oppose it, so suddenly it’s a High Moral Cause for liberals, another chance for liberals to display how they’re “morally superior” to those ignorant redneck freaks of JesusLand. Also known as “voters,” who want fewer immigrants, not more.
Rio Grande Valley is the Democratic Party’s last stronghold outside a few urban cores. The Texas 15th Congressional District runs in a strip from the valley up to near San Antonio. The district was formerly held by John Nance Garner and Lloyd Bentsen, and has never elected a Republican. It’s an 80% Hispanic district.
A 2016 pickup target for Republicans? I think they’ll take a run at it, but it’s a tough nut to crack. Hinojosa won in 2014 with a solid, but not overwhelming, 54% of the vote, but garnered 61% in 2012’s Presidential election year. I could see Republicans sneaking a win if everything broke just right (having Ted Cruz or Marco Rubio on top of the ticket wouldn’t hurt), but this probably only takes it from Solid D to Leans D.
There are reports that the Islamic State took responsibility. Also reports that Belgium has closed their border.
This is not a “tragedy,” as so many mealy-mouth leftists are calling it. This was an act of war. And Europe’s current open borders policy on Middle East “refugees” almost certainly contributed to it.
Two exceptionally obvious courses of action present themselves:
All of Europe, not just Paris, should close their borders until adequate border controls are in place, and immediately start forcibly deporting illegal aliens from Muslim countries.
Paris should ask that Article 5 of the NATO treaty be activated, to be followed shortly by a broad coalition (including the United States) completely destroying the Islamic State and followed by a heavy, lasting multinational occupation of the territory formerly held by it.
For a long time, liberals have soft-peddled and downplayed Islamic terrorism so they could continue their moral preening about how enlightened and sophisticated they are. The time for people dying so liberals can avoid feeling bad about themselves is over. Either confront radical Islam with the force necessary to destroy it, or cede power to those willing to do so.
The big story this week has been the Children of the Corn running amok in Missouri. I hope to have a longer piece on that by and by. In the meantime, enjoy your Friday LinkSwarm:
Maryland’s “bullet fingerprint” database cost $5 million to set up and maintain. Number of criminals caught by it? Zero. (Hat tip: Instapundit.)
How much money each state is sending to the Presidential race. Texas is number one in SuperPAC money, and number two (behind California) in hard money.
Kafkatrap vs. Honeytrap. “If you are any kind of open-source leader or senior figure who is male, do not be alone with any female, ever, at a technical conference.”
Woman starts making documentary about Men’s Rights Movement. Funny things happens: When she starts making an actual, even-handed documentary, the funders who wanted a feminist hit piece drop her like a hot potato, but Kickstarter backers step up to the plate after a plug from Milo Yiannopoulos.