Invasion of Europe, creation of a caliphate, so tell me again why we don’t believe what they say! Hat tip: Kyle
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Another sign read:
“Multiculturalism is a utopia, don’t open the borders”.
Some of these countries have a better understanding of totalitarianism and thus want no part of Merkel’s form of it (or the Islamic version of it either)?
BRATISLAVA: Thousands of people joined anti-migrant protests in three eastern European capitals on Saturday after leaders from the Czech Republic, Poland and Slovakia opposed an EU scheme to fix refugee quotas.
In the Polish capital Warsaw, nearly 5,000 people, many chanting anti-Islamic slogans, marched through the city, an AFP correspondent said. “Islam will be the death of Europe”, one of the banners said.
Organisers claimed the demonstration drew 10,000 people but police refused to confirm the figure.
“We’re here so that the government hears our voice and abandons any plans to welcome Muslims,” shouted one of the organisers after starting the march with prayers which identified the participants as Roman Catholics.
Members of far-right fringe parties and football supporters chanted “Poles against migrants” and “Migrants today, terrorists tomorrow”.
And go here for our ‘Invasion of Europe’ archive.
RELATED VIDEO:
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Leggeri said: “Faced with the influx, registration systems are overwhelmed. We have an idea of nationalities, but not a clear picture of who is entering and the real profile of these migrants.”
Indeed. How many jihadis are among them? No one knows, and many think it is “Islamophobic” to raise the question.
“Economic migrants FAKE being Syrian to claim EU asylum and head for Britain,” by Rebecca Perring, Express, September 10, 2015:
A huge influx of shameless migrants have lied about their nationality to be sure they have a better chance of crossing the European borders into countries including Britain and Germany.
And passports buried in bushes just metres away from Serbia’s border with Hungary provides evidence that migrant’s fleeing poverty are dumping their own documents and, instead, posing as refugees fleeing raging war and persecution in Syria as the surest route to asylum.
It comes after Prime Minister David Cameron announced the UK would accept up to 20,000 refugees from Syria over the next five years.
Mr Cameron suggested Britain would not be taking refugees currently making their way through the Balkan states or across the Mediterranean to Europe – but people from existing refugee camps in neighbouring countries such such as Turkey and Jordan.
Concerns over the regulation of registering migrants at the main entry points into Europe are growing amid the revelation dubious markets selling fake Syrian passports have sprung up across Turkey.
Serbian border police say that around 90 per cent of those arriving from Macedonia, around 3,000 per day, claim they are Syrian – although they have no documents to prove it.
Border police officer Miroslav Jovic said: “You can see that something is fishy when most of those who cross into Serbia enter January 1 as the date of their birth.
“Guess that’s the first date that comes to their mind.”
The head of Europe’s border agency Frontex said that trafficking in fake Syrian passports had increased.
Fabrice Leggeri called for more guards to help register migrants at the main entry points.
He said: “There are people who are in Turkey now who buy fake Syrian passports because they know Syrians get the right to asylum in all the member states of the European Union.
“People who use fake Syrian passports often speak Arabic. They may come from North Africa or the Middle East but they have the profile of economic migrants.”
Mr Leggeri added: “Faced with the influx, registration systems are overwhelmed. We have an idea of nationalities, but not a clear picture of who is entering and the real profile of these migrants.”…
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Click on the image for a printable copy of the policy analysis.
The CATO Institute’s Michael D. Tanner and Charles Hughes in their comprehensive policy analysis titled “The Work versus Welfare Trade-Off: Europe” report:
If welfare benefits become too generous, they can create a significant incentive that encourages recipients to remain “on the dole” rather than to seek employment. Benefits in European Union (EU) countries vary widely, but in many of them, benefits are high relative to what an individual could expect to earn from a low-wage or entry-level job. For example, for a single parent with two children in 2013—
Many European countries have recognized the problem and have begun to reform their welfare systems to create a better transition from welfare to work. In fact, the United States is falling behind some European countries with regard to welfare reform.
Countries that are serious about reducing welfare dependency and rewarding work should consider strengthening work requirements, establishing time limits for participation, and tightening eligibility. Perhaps more important, countries should examine the level of benefits available and the effective marginal tax rates their welfare systems create, with an eye toward reducing disincentives and encouraging work.
Read the full policy analysis buy clicking here.
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Just as it threatened to do. Authorities should not dismiss this claim lightly. After all, European officials are doing absolutely nothing to determine if there are jihadis among the refugees.
“‘Just wait…’ Islamic State reveals it has smuggled THOUSANDS of extremists into Europe,” by Aaron Brown, Express, September 6, 2015:
AN OPERATIVE working for Islamic State has revealed the terror group has successfully smuggled thousands of covert Jihadists into Europe.
The Syrian operative claimed more than 4,000 covert ISIS gunmen had been smuggled into western nations – hidden amongst innocent refugees.
The ISIS smuggler, who is in his 30s with a trimmed jet-black beard, revealed the ongoing clandestine operation is a complete success.
“Just wait,” he smiled.
The Islamic State operative spoke exclusively to BuzzFeed on the condition of anonymity and is believed to be the first to confirm plans to infiltrate western countries.
Islamic State, also referred to as IS and ISIS, is believed to be actively smuggling deadly gunmen across the sparsely-guarded 565-mile Turkish border and on to richer European nations, he revealed.
There are now more than 4,000 covert ISIS gunmen “ready” across the European Union, he claimed.
The operative said the undercover infiltration was the beginning of a larger plot to carry out revenge attacks in the West in retaliation for the US-led coalition airstrikes.
“If someone attacks me,” he said “then for sure I will attack them back.”
Islamic State extremists are taking advantage of developed nation’s generosity towards refugees to infiltrate Europe, he said.
The lethal ISIS gunmen use local smugglers to blend in and travel amongst a huge tide of illegal migrants flooding Europe.
More than 1.5million refugees have fled into Turkey alone – desperate to escape the bloodshed in Syria.
From Turkish port cities like Izmir and Mersin, thousands of refugees venture across the Mediterranean aiming for Italy, he said.
Then the majority make for more welcoming nations like Sweden and Germany, turning themselves over to authorities and appealing for asylum.
“They are going like refugees,” he said.
Two Turkish refugee-smugglers backed up the claims made by the ISIS Syrian operative.
One admitted to helping more than ten trained ISIS rebels infiltrate Europe under the guise of asylum seekers.
He said: “I’m sending some fighters who want to go and visit their families.
“Others just go to Europe to be ready.”
The Syrian operative, a former member of his nation’s security forces, said ISIS had ambitious plans ahead.
“It’s our dream that there should be a caliphate not only in Syria but in all the world,” he said “and we will have it soon, God willing.”…
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In FrontPage today, I discuss how “refugees” are colonizing Europe.
Approximately 104,460 asylum seekers arrived in Germany during the month of August, setting a new record. That makes 413,535 registered refugees and migrants coming to Germany in 2015 so far. The country expects a total of around 800,000 people to seek asylum in Germany this year. And that’s just Germany. The entire continent of Europe is being inundated with refugees at a rate unprecedented in world history. This is no longer just a “refugee crisis.” This is a hijrah.
Hijrah, or jihad by emigration, is, according to Islamic tradition, the migration or journey of Muhammad and his followers from Mecca to Yathrib, later renamed by him to Medina, in the year 622 CE. It was after the hijrah that Muhammad for the first time became not just a preacher of religious ideas, but a political and military leader. That was what occasioned his new “revelations” exhorting his followers to commit violence against unbelievers. Significantly, the Islamic calendar counts the hijrah, not Muhammad’s birth or the occasion of his first “revelation,” as the beginning of Islam, implying that Islam is not fully itself without a political and military component.
To emigrate in the cause of Allah – that is, to move to a new land in order to bring Islam there, is considered in Islam to be a highly meritorious act. “And whoever emigrates for the cause of Allah will find on the earth many locations and abundance,” says the Qur’an. “And whoever leaves his home as an emigrant to Allah and His Messenger and then death overtakes him, his reward has already become incumbent upon Allah. And Allah is ever Forgiving and Merciful.” (4:100) The exalted status of such emigrants led a British jihad group that won notoriety (and a shutdown by the government) a few years ago for celebrating 9/11 to call itself Al-Muhajiroun: The Emigrants.
And now a hijrah of a much greater magnitude is upon us. Evidence that this is a hijrah, not simply a humanitarian crisis, came last February, but was little noted at the time and almost immediately forgotten. The Islamic State published a document entitled, “Libya: The Strategic Gateway for the Islamic State.” Gateway into Europe, that is: the document exhorted Muslims to go to Libya and cross from there as refugees into Europe. This document tells would-be jihadis that weapons from Gaddafi’s arsenal are plentiful and easy to obtain in Libya – and that the country “has a long coast and looks upon the southern Crusader states, which can be reached with ease by even a rudimentary boat.”
The Islamic State did not have in mind just a few jihadis crossing from Libya: it also emerged last February that the jihadis planned to flood Europe with as many as 500,000 refugees. Now the number is shooting well beyond that in Germany alone. Of course, not all of these refugees are Islamic jihadis. Not all are even Muslims, although most are. However, no effort whatsoever is being made to determine the refugees’ adherence to Sharia and desire to bring it to their new land. Any such effort would be “Islamophobic.” Yet there are already hints that the Islamic State is putting its plan into effect: jihadis have already been found among the refugees trying to enter Europe. There will be many more such discoveries.
Eight hundred thousand Muslim refugees in one year alone. This will transform Germany, and Europe, forever, overtaxing the welfare economies of its wealthiest nations and altering the cultural landscape beyond recognition. Yet the serious public discussion that needs to be had about this crisis is shouted down by the usual nonsense: the Washington Post Wednesday published an inflammatory and irresponsible piece likening those concerned about this massive Muslim influx into Europe to 1930s Nazis ready to incinerate Jews by the millions. Hollywood star Emma Thompson accused British authorities of racism for not taking in more refugees – as if British authorities haven’t already done enough to destroy their nation.
And so it goes. If you don’t accept the brave new world that is sure to bring more jihad and more Sharia to Europe, you’re a Nazi and a racist. Meanwhile, no one is bothering even to ask, much less answer, one central question: why is it incumbent upon Europe have to absorb all these refugees? Why not Saudi Arabia or the other Muslim countries that are oil-rich and have plenty of space? The answer is unspoken because non-Muslim authorities refuse to believe it and Muslims don’t want it stated or known: these refugees have to go to Europe because this is a hijrah.
This is also Europe’s death knell.
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Emma Thompson: Britain is racist for not taking in more refugees
The most extraordinary aspect of the refugee crisis gripping Europe’s newspapers right now is that everyone is fixated on the symptom of the problem – mass migration – rather than the cause.
While economic migration has always been a pull factor for those leaving the developing world for the developed, this has been exacerbated by the strong push factor, particularly in Syria, that life has become unliveable under the twin terrors of the Assad regime and ISIS advance. It stands to reason therefore that in order to diminish that push factor – which taking in ever-increasing numbers of migrants will do nothing to resolve – we will need to address what is going on overseas, rather than pretend it has nothing to do with a problem now knocking on our doors.
Indeed, if ever there was a demonstration of the perils of non-intervention, the Syria crisis is it. We have stood by and watched as a country of 23 million has lost half of its population, to death, injury, internal displacement and external flight. We deluded ourselves that stopping Assad – who is responsible for the conflict – mattered little to us, even when he broke international norms by using chemical weapons. ISIS took advantage of his murderous regime to mount a ‘resistance’ movement that accounted for its initial growth, before it expanded into Iraq. ISIS recruitment today still features Assad’s atrocities as its major call to action for Muslim youth in the West to join its jihad. Assad, in turn, uses ISIS as a justification for the need to keep him in power as a bulwark against radicalisation. It would not be an exaggeration to term their relationship symbiotic, particularly as there have been many cases of collaboration between Assad’s regime and ISIS over issues like oil sales.
We had the chance to intervene against Assad in 2013 and blew it. We are now no more than half-heartedly engaged in strikes against ISIS. The result has been the destruction of a country, and the importing of the human misery this has caused to our shores. Those legislators who voted against intervention on the grounds that it would lead to contagion have been proven wrong. As others such as ourselves suggested at the time, contagion was likelier to occur because of non-intervention. As it now has done.
So we can continue debating how many refugees we wish to take in a sticking plaster type of solution. Or we can decide that a crisis of this nature requires more drastic action. Because until Assad and ISIS have been beaten, not one refugee is going to return to Syria. And we can be guaranteed that hundreds of thousands more will be ready to follow them here.
FROM THE DIRECTOR’S DESK
When the Henry Jackson Society was first founded, it possessed a different tagline to its logo than it does today. Instead of “Democracy. Freedom. Human Rights” this read “Project for Democratic Geopolitics”. I was reminded of this when we hosted the former Sky News Diplomatic Editor Tim Marshall this week on the subject of his new book, Prisoners of Geography: Ten Maps That Tell You Everything You Need To Know About Global Politics.
Geopolitics is the study of the effects of geography on international politics and international relations (IR). For many years, it has been an underrated discipline in IR circles, with academics being more interested in theories of IR behaviour than in practical-led examinations of why international crises occur and flashpoints develop. As Tim Marshall reminded us, and we have expounded for some time, some crises are more obvious than others, and geography offers a clue as to why they have developed.
An obvious example would be the Russian seizure of Crimea. With the Russian Black Sea fleet being based at Sevastopol – leased to Russia but in Ukraine – there was an obvious geographical and strategic advantage to seizing this permanently and securing a base that might have been at the mercy of others. Equally, the reason that Israel so desperately requires a security guarantee in any two state solution with the Palestinians, and a demilitarized Palestine, is because the geographical features of a semi-mountainous ridge in the West Bank would otherwise allow the bulk of Israel’s population to be targeted by missiles or artillery.
In short, geography matters when we consider the conduct and course of IR. But the nature of regimes is important too, which is why we originally added “democratic” to our tagline. After all, the Russians didn’t need to invade Crimea to seize a base that was theirs by lease and which they would have had no need to fear losing had they not been run by the paranoid and autocratic Mr Putin. As we have stated many times: wouldn’t the world be a safer and better place if there were more liberal democracies in it?
Dr Alan Mendoza is Executive Director of The Henry Jackson Society
Follow Alan on Twitter: @AlanMendoza
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The ‘Invasion of Europe’ continues today…
If one judges by the photos, it sure looks like young men are the problem in the flood of supposed refugees from the Middle East swarming into Europe. A picture is worth a thousand words. A lot of pictures like those here at the Daily Mail are worth much more!
What sort of men are these? Instead of running to Mama Merkel for comfort, why aren’t they fighting to save their own countries?
I thought of this post—some Syrians are opportunists—when I saw these photos.
Disgusting in Budapest earlier today:
Go here for our complete archive on the invasion.
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Five men arrested attempting to cross the Bulgarian-Macedonian border with decapitation videos and Islamic State propaganda on their phones. The terrorist suspects had been posing as refugees.
UKIP leader Nigel Farage warned: “I fear we face a direct threat to our civilisation if we allow large numbers of people from that war torn region into Europe.”
The Obama-caused Muslim migrant apocalypse continues its assault on Europe.
“Islamic State terrorists caught crossing into Europe posing as refugees,” by Liam Deacon, Breitbart News, September 1, 2015:
Five men have been arrested as they attempted to cross the Bulgarian-Macedonian border with decapitation videos and Islamic State propaganda on their phones. The terrorist suspects had been posing as refugees.
Bulgarian authorities near the Gyueshevo border checkpoint detained the five men, aged between 20 and 24, late on Wednesday, Bulgarian broadcaster NOVA TV reported.
The men were stopped by a border guard, who they attempted to bribe with a “wad of dollars.” However, they were searched and Islamic State propaganda, specific Jihadists prayers and decapitation videos were found on their phones.
In a move that suggests how seriously authorities are taking the case, the Bulgarian State Agency for National Security (DANS) has now taken control of the investigation under the supervision of the regional prosecutor’s office in Kyustendil.
The men chose to cross in a wooded area, local media have reported, and took a car from an accomplice who had crossed legally from Macedonia with the vehicle.
Bulgaria has recently completed a 15-foot high razor wire clad fence along 50 miles of its south-eastern border with Turkey to control the mass movement of migrants from the Middle East and Asia into Europe via the so-called Balkans route.
However, the Gyueshevo border checkpoint where the men crossed sits on Bulgaria’s western border with Macedonia. It is likely the men chose to enter there to avoid the new strict border controls on the other side of the country.
Following the recently foiled terror attack on an Amsterdam–Paris train, where the heavily armed terrorist was able to travel freely, European governments have been considering amending the Schengen border code, which eliminated systematic border controls across most of Europe.
In February, the Turkish intelligence service warned police in an internal memo that up to 3,000 trained jihadists are seeking to cross into Turkey from Syria and Iraq, who could then travel through Bulgaria and Hungry into western Europe. And in May, a Libyan government adviser warned Islamic State operatives were being “smuggled to Europe in migrant boats.”
At the time of the comments, UKIP leader Nigel Farage warned: “When ISIS say they want to flood our continent with half a million Islamic extremists they mean it, and there is nothing in this document [Common European Asylum Policy] that will stop them.
“I fear we face a direct threat to our civilisation if we allow large numbers of people from that war torn region into Europe.”
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EDITORS NOTE: The featured image is of Bulgarian border patrol agents.
Invasion of Europe News…..
VDARE has pointed us to this Powerline post by Steven Hayward today entitled ‘Camp of the Saints, Revisited.’ I recommend this now over 40-year-old eerily prescient novel to all of you for your summertime reading ‘pleasure.’ Warning! It is not for the squeamish or faint of heart!
Hayward says what we have been saying and why we post as often as possible on the ‘Invasion of Europe’—the American media is not paying attention to the growing migration crisis in Europe.
From Powerline:
If you want to see the immigration crisis getting completely out of control, check out northern France, where several thousand “migrants”—as the press describes them—are trying to charge through the Channel Tunnel to Britain, where, they suppose, the welfare state will take care of them.It hasn’t been receiving much media coverage in the U.S., except for the Wall Street Journal, which notes today that the disruption at the Channel is bad for business.
As the Wall Street Journal quoted one aspiring client a few days ago:
“Here, no one looks after me,” the teenager said. “In the U.K., I can be a big man.”
No one looks after me. The Telos of the welfare state, in five words. More revealing is this passage:
“Stopping them is becoming very difficult since they’re just not afraid of the police anymore,” a French police officer said.
It looks more and more like Jean Raspail’s controversial 1973 novel, The Camp of the Saints, come to life.
See our extensive archive on the ‘Invasion of Europe’ by clicking here.
RELATED ARTICLE: Rainbow Nation news from PBS: Black South Africans continue persecution of other black Africans
EDITORS NOTE: Readers may download a free PDF version of Jean Raspail’s 1973 novel The Camp of the Saints here.
This is a round-up of sorts of some migration news coming out of Europe….
Deutsche Welle tells us: Google recently pulled a controversial map showing the location of all refugee homes in Germany for fear it could fuel right-wing violence.http://www.dw.com/en/attacks-
From the Christian Post:
Syrian Christian refugees living in Sweden say they were forced out of their asylum house by Muslim refugees who demanded they hide their crosses and banned them from using communal areas in the home they shared.
The Christians, comprised of two families, were seeking asylum after fleeing from the Islamic State in Syria. And the place they were staying at housed around 80 people with many being Syrian Muslims.
While Swedish police said they weren’t notified about the harassment, immigration officials visited the residence to outline the government’s rules for those who continue to live in asylum housing.
[….]
The violence of ISIS against Syrian Christians and other citizens who refuse to obey Islamic law knows no bounds.
The article goes on to tell us of some of the horrors facing the remaining Christian population of Syria.
Also from Sweden, see Gatestone on the ‘unaccompanied refugee children’ situation there where everyone knows the “children” are mostly young men over 18 years old.
See Breitbart News:
Denmark’s capacity to admit migrants is near breaking point. With 12,000 refugees searching for a place to live, nearly a third of the nation’s struggling municipalities say that they have little to offer newcomers.
In the Czech Republic, Syrian and North African refugees are not welcome, but more Czechs willing to take in Ukrainians.
From Ceskenoviny:
The Czech Republic should not accept any refugees from Syria, this is the view held by 71 percent of Czechs. When it comes to the refugees from North Africa, the figure stands at 72 percent.
The view that some immigrants from Syria and North Africa should be accepted is held by 26 percent and 24 percent of Czechs, respectively.
Ireland goes along with EU plan and will double its refugee intake.
From Big News Network.com:
DUBLIN, Ireland – Ireland is to more than double its intake of refugees as part of a European Union plan to relocate up to 40,000 refugees which is being coordinated in response to the unprecedented migration crisis in the Mediterranean.
Under the EU plan, a number of ‘hotspots’ in Italy and Greece will be established where migrants will be registered and fingerprinted. Individuals who are identified as likely to be genuine refugees can be put forward for relocation to another EU country where they will be given the opportunity of protection, while irregular migrants will be returned to their home country.
Ireland has agreed to relocate 600 people over the next two years. This is in addition to the country’s previous commitment to resettle 520 refugees directly from areas affected by conflict, and the humanitarian search and rescue missions undertaken in the region by the Naval Service which saved more than 3,300 refugees.
The Slovak government: we will only take Christian refugees as permanent residents.
From the Slovak Spectator:
THE SLOVAK government remains reluctant to take in refugees within the proposed European schemes and has recently conceded to accept 100 people from Syria under the condition they are Christians, but has agreed to provide temporary shelter for migrants that have already arrived in Austria.
Based on a recent bilateral deal, some 500 refugees seeking asylum in Austria will stay in Slovakia temporarily, until their asylum process is finished and, based on the results, they will either move back to Austria or be deported from the EU.
In Germany there is more news accusing “rightwingers” of torching asylum facilities.
From Deutsche Welle:
The rate of violence perpetrated against refugee homes in Germany in 2015 has already outstripped the whole of 2014. The Interior Ministry has warned that right-wing violence is on the rise in the west of the country.
[….]
According to a statement from Germany’s Interior Ministry on Thursday, there have been more attacks on homes for asylum seekers in the first half of 2015 than in the entirety of 2014.
Read the article, there is an admission that a growing number of these cases are perpetrated by people with no known affiliation. Hmmm! Is that what happens when a government is so obviously not responsive to a large number of its citizens? By the way, the article also tells us that these arson attacks were originally confined to the Eastern parts of Germany, but have now spread into the West. Fascinating that we hear nothing of this in the US media.
I’m sure there is much more news from Europe. If I see something interesting as the day goes on, I’ll add it.
For our entire archive on the ‘Invasion of Europe’ click here.
This week’s Glazov Gang was joined by Ingrid Carlqvist, Editor-in-Chief of Dispatch International, and Nima Gholam Ali Pour, a Sweden Democrat Politician. They discussed How Islam is Conquering Europe, telling the uncensored truth about why Sharia is devouring a civilization.
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Feds to License Windfarm off Waikiki Beach?
by Henry Curtis, Ililani Media, May 15, 2015 (excerpts)
Ocean-based floating wind-generation facilities have been proposed AW Hawaii Wind LLC.
Each facility would consist of 51 floating eight megawatt (MW) turbines secured in place by anchors.
The Oahu South Project would be located approximately 17 miles south of Diamond Head in water depths of approximately 1,000 – 2300 feet.
The Oahu Northwest Project would be located 12 miles northwest of Ka`ena Point in water depths of approximately 2,300 ‐ 3,300 feet above an ocean floor plateau.
“The Southern area will be visible from Waikiki beach…. The eastern area is equally visible from the southeastern part of Oahu and will be part of the sunrise….” (Don’t worry. Its OK to gamble the entire tourism industry on this scheme.)
The U.S. Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM) has scheduled its third BOEM/Hawaii Intergovernmental Renewable Energy Task Force Meeting for Wednesday, June 3, 2015 from 9 am to 2:20 p.m.
The meeting will occur at the Homer A. Maxey International Trade Resource Center located at Pier 2, 521 Ala Moana Boulevard, near the makai end of Punchbowl.
The meeting itself is reserved for government conversations. BOEM and the Hawaii Department of Business, Economic Development and Tourism (DBEDT) will make presentations. At the end of the meeting the public can make comments….
read … Crackpot Idea Funded by Your Tax Dollars
Hawaii to be Guinea Pig for yet another Hare-brained Corporate Welfare Scheme
by Richard A Kessler, Recharge, March 20, 2015 (excerpts)
Danish developer Alpha Wind Energy (AWE) has submitted lease requests to the US Interior Department (DOI) for two proposed 51-turbine, 408MW floating wind projects in federal waters off Oahu, Hawaii.
The projects would be the first commercial application of floating wind technology in the US and be located in water depths at least five times those for conventional offshore projects under development along the east coast.
They would utilize Principle Power’s WindFloat semi-submersible, a three-legged triangular pontoon structure whose design allows onshore assembly and commissioning before towing to site.
AWE has formed a subsidiary called AW Hawaii Wind, LLC, based in Texas to carry out the projects. Its partners include Portuguese industrial group A. Silva Matos (ASM); wind energy consultant Energy and Environmental Data, and Danish energy management firm NEAS.
ASM has constructed the existing WindFloat, (Note the use of the singular here. There’s only one of these things.) which has been in operation off the coast of Portugal for more than two years…. (Translation: The floats are not a proven technology.)
Recharge reported in January that BOEM expects to complete and release for public comment its draft environmental assessment (EA) for Principle Power’s 30MW WindFloat Pacific pilot project off the coast of Oregon. (Translation: There are no offshore windfarms anywhere in the USA. There’s a reason for this. See next article….)
read … Nobody dumb enough to OK this scheme so they send it to Hawaii
Offshore wind farms are no public benefit
by Barbara Durkin, The Hill, December 6, 2014 (excerpts)
…While U.S. energy policy should address the needs of citizens for reliable energy sources that are commercially reasonable and reasonably safe, offshore wind has historically failed to deliver these public benefits to Europeans.
UK’s offshore wind energy projects’ results should serve as the catalyst for termination by the administration of its proposed ocean auction to wind limited liabilities corporations. U.S. rate and taxpayers are unacceptably exposed by this administration’s blind eye to the UK’s failed offshore wind program. Neither the ocean area the federal government holds in trust for U.S. citizens, nor U.S. citizens themselves, should be exploited by an industry that historically fails to deliver public benefits.
Germany’s flagship BARD Offshore I is a 400MW wind project intended to supply the energy needs of 400,000 households. But Bard Offshore 1 remains out of operation according to industry source Offshore Wind Biz (June 2014) citing: “frequent technical problems with the converter substation,” “a smoldering fire,” “failure of the system,” “five unplanned outages since the beginning of 2014” and “transmission problems.”
WindPowerOffshore (September 19, 2014) reports the Danish company Vattenfall is going to dismantle the Yttre Stengrund in Swedish waters after only 13 years of operation. “Only one in (5) turbines is currently operational.”
Europe’s offshore wind energy endeavors reveal the challenges of the harsh and corrosive marine environment. GE deployed the Cape Wind prototype GE 3.6 MW wind turbines at Arklow, the wind farm offshore of Ireland. GE subsequently “discontinued” the Cape Wind 3.6 MW wind turbine even while Cape Wind, the wind farm planned for offshore Massachusetts, was under permit review by the DOI. That review advanced Cape Wind as a “reliable” energy source.
Cape Wind changed specifications to Siemens 3.6 MW during their power purchase contract negotiations with the national grid. But Siemens is not boasting offshore wind success, according to the Wall Street Journal [1/08/14]:
“Siemens, the world’s largest manufacturer of offshore wind turbines, and its partners concede they underestimated the challenges behind offshore wind. The financial fallout from these challenges was highlighted on Thursday, when Siemens said it booked €128 million ($171 million) in new charges related to connecting offshore wind farms to the power grid. It blamed unexpectedly high costs for shipping, installing and starting up grid components.”
A Spiegel International article ‘Turbine Trouble: Ill Wind Blows for German Offshore Industry’says, “Operators of offshore wind farms depend on sufficiently high electricity prices to refinance their investments.” This runs contrary to public interest. Citizens need commercially reasonable energy sources that are reliable, while offshore wind energy technology is historically not reliable, yet its price is high.
The stunning and sobering candor of an executive of the “world’s largest” manufacturer of wind turbines, Vestas, would be comical if not for the serious context — billions in public funding along with the sacrifice of the thousands of ocean acres that DOI intends to grant to wind LLCs.
In 2011, Anders Søe-Jensen, then president of the offshore division at Vestas said, “It’s a bit like buying an old crappy car. It’s starts cheap, but spends most of the time in the workshop costing you a fortune, so you didn’t drive much, and your cost per driven mile is staggeringly high. It’s the same with the cost of energy when you look at capital expense and operating costs with overall production.”
While President Obama’s energy goals should be to deploy energy sources that are commercially reasonable, reliable, and reasonably safe, based on the best science, offshore wind has miserably failed to deliver public benefits to Europeans….
read … No Benefit
The EU is in the midst of another refugee crisis in the Straits that separates Sicily from North Africa. The flash point of the humanitarian crisis is the Island of Lampedusa 297 kilometers offshore of Tripoli, Libya. 168 kilometers north of Lampedusa is the Island Republic of Malta which is also in the crosshairs of this crisis. Refugees from the Jihadist conflicts throughout the Middle East, North and Sub-Saharan Africa, even South Asia pack into a flotilla of overloaded vessels which make a bee-line for this Italian landfall with less than 5,000 full time residents, where heretofore they received a welcome. Off-shore of Lampedusa now sits a flotilla of EU coast guard vessels on rotating duty alert for distress calls escorting floundering vessels to port on the Italian island and hence to Sicily and the Italian mainland. Unfortunately, these days Italian and EU coast guard vessels also search for the bodies of illegal migrants washed overboard.
The illegal refugee crisis in the Mediterranean reached a new peak in late April 2015 when thousands of illegal ‘migrants’ attempted the perilous journey. They were seeking refuge and access to generous welfare and absorption benefits from the EU. In one tragic instance, an overloaded 66 foot fishing vessel capsized on Sunday, April 19th when migrants rushed to one side of the deck hailing a commercial vessel responding their distress call. The result was over 800 downed, less than 49 survived and 28 bodies have been pulled from the water so far. Another ship disaster last week claimed 400 lives off Tripoli. The picket line of Italian and other EU coast guard vessels were pressed into service endeavoring to recover the remains. That week, an estimated 8,500 made the crossing on questionable vessels arranged by human traffickers. In 2014 more than 1,600 died during turbulent crossings. So far this year more than 900 lives have been lost. Frontex data shows that migration across the Mediterranean in 2014 peaked to a level more than twice as high as its previous peak in 2011. 170,760 migrants crossed the Mediterranean in 2014, compared with 64,300 in 2011, 15,900 in 2012, and 40,000 in 2013.
Italian President Renzi and Maltese PM Muscat requested an emergency EU Summit to address these deadly illegal migrant ship disasters. It was quickly added to the agenda of the EU Foreign Ministers meeting in Luxembourg. According to a USA Today report Renzi said, “How can it be that we daily are witnessing a tragedy?” Muscat seconded Renzi calling “it the “biggest human tragedy of the last few years.” The illegal migration problem was discussed at the Informal meeting of the Foreign Affairs Ministers of the EU and the Southern Mediterranean countries held in Barcelona on April 13th to discuss the future of the European Neighborhood Policy.
However, there was a new development. In one illegal crossing, 12 Christians from Nigeria and Ghana were thrown overboard from a sinking raft by Muslim compatriots, because they wouldn’t recite the Shahada – the profession of faith or other Qur’anic verses. The perpetrators were arrested by Italian police. Onshore, ISIS followers in Libya beheaded 30 Ethiopian Orthodox Christians seeking to make the illegal passage across the Mediterranean, yet another outrage. That sparked anger from the Obama Administration. However, in the 20 months remaining of President Obama’s final term in office, the priority is engagement with Iran over its nuclear program via the P5+1 process hoping to deprive the Islamic regime of nuclear weapons. That priority leaves a legacy for his successor to deal with, a welter of crises.
Danish psychologist Nicolai Sennels in a 10 NewsDK blog post noted the scandal of EU cooperation with North African human traffickers:
Last weekend the EU coast guard transported 8,500 people from North Africa to Italy alone. EU says that it “saves” the “refugees” (many of them turn out to be jihadis or fake refugees) from the dangerous travel across the Mediterranean. However, it is the EU that lures millions to do this potentially deadly trip by promising Western welfare to those willing to take the chance. The EU should either start offering free transport from Africa to Europe or start sending all refugees back to local camps. I advise the latter option, and not just because it would make us able to give safety to more people for the same amount of money – which is more compassionate. But also because it would dissuade people from taking the deadly chance. Thereby nobody would die in the attempt to reach EU shores. That is how Australia does it – and since Australia introduced this policy, the amount of drowned boat-refugees decreased to zero.
It is obvious that the situation is unsustainable, but as long as our politicians continue to obey the EU and the UN, the human tsunami of refugees seeking the help of European tax payers will continue. According to humanitarian agencies “up to half a million migrants may try to cross the Mediterranean this year – a figure that would dwarf the 170,000 who reached Italy last year.”
According to a report from Express, North African Human smugglers are alerting EU authorities they are sending illegal people across the Mediterranean:
Trafficking gangs ferrying immigrants into the European Union are tipping off officials so Italian and EU coast guard vessels can pick up their boats. …
Gangs are so certain their boats will be picked up they’re even putting less fuel in the tank because naval vessels will pick them up, a former UK immigration manager has revealed.
Of the 270,000 migrants who arrived in Europe illegally last year, more than 220,000 of them came through North Africa.
Many of those attempting the dangerous crossing in overloaded un-seaworthy craft were propelled by sectarian conflicts in Libya, Syria, Iraq, Somalia, Nigeria involving ISIS, Al Qaeda in the Maghreb, Al Shabaab and Boko Haram. Muslims among these illegal migrants are being welcomed into what the scholar Bat Ye’or called Eurabia: the Euro Arab Axis. In her book, Bat Ye’or warned about the consequences of EU bureaucracies engaged in outreach to Muslim countries on the periphery of the Mediterranean via the Barcelona Process of the 1990’s. That led to the establishment of the Union for the Mediterranean (UfM) in Paris on July 13, 2008 at a meeting of 43 heads of Euro-Mediterranean States. Subsequently, Foreign Ministers of the UfM met in Marseilles in November 2008 and established a headquarters in Barcelona. In 2010, senior member states of the UfM approved the Statues and Barcelona Headquarters in accordance with Spanish Law. According to the website of the UfM its vision and mission/mandate are:
The UfM is a multilateral partnership aiming at increasing the potential for regional integration and cohesion among Euro-Mediterranean countries. The Union for the Mediterranean is inspired by the shared political will to revitalize efforts to transform the Mediterranean into an area of peace, democracy, cooperation and prosperity.
The UfM was promoted by former French President Nicolas Sarkozy as a means of contending with the problems of rejectionist émigré Muslim communities engaged in internal disturbances attributable to mass immigration. Add to that are the contemporary problems of thousands of EU Muslims traveling to Syria to join the Islamic State to fight and build the self-declared Caliphate. A Caliphate engaged in ethnic cleansing of infidels: Christians, ancient religious minorities and what are deemed heterodox Muslims.
Fjordman, Norwegian blogger Peder Jensen, author of Defeating Eurabia said in an email exchange:
While the Mediterranean is flooded with illegal immigrants, including Islamic Jihadists, the EU elites are creating a Union for the Mediterranean. Europe needs a Union for the Mediterranean just like it needs a beheading. This is, coincidentally, just what it might get. It is doubtful whether most Europeans want a Union with North Africa and the Middle East, but then the EU elites never cared about what ordinary Europeans think. There is no reason for them to start now.
The Syrian Civil war displaced nearly 4 million registered refugees. UN High Commissioner for Refugee (UNHCR) administered camps in Turkey, Lebanon, Iraq, Jordan and Egypt hosting 3.2 million. 22 countries have agreed last December to accept 100,000 of the more than 320,000 Syrian refugees most at risk in 2016. The UNHCR has requested absorption of hundreds of thousands of Syrian refugees by major EU countries and even here in the US.
The consequences of these refugee and illegal migrant flows caused by sectarian Jihad warfare in the Muslim Ummah heartland are ironic. The Eurabian bureaucracies have in effect acquiesced to the Islamic doctrine of Dar al Hijrah – the land of immigration, a reflection of the Prophet Mohammed’s migration from Mecca to Medina that kick started the first grand Jihad. That has given rise to calls by center right parties in the Netherlands, Denmark, Germany, Austria, France, Sweden and the UK to reject further mass Muslim migration, whether legal or illegal. This is a reflection of rising concern over Muslim citizens traveling to join the cause of the Islamic State or Al Qaeda only to have some return to commit massacres like the Charlie Hebdo mass shooting and the Hyper Cacher Kosher Supermarket in Paris that killed 17 in January 2015. As both Sennels and Fjordman have stated, the EU citizens will pay the price of this massive wave of illegal Muslim emigration across the Mediterranean spawned by Jihad.
Geert Wilders’, leader of the Freedom Party (PVV) in the Netherlands, drew attention to this dilemma in a speech April 29, 2015 at the Washington, D.C. Conservative Opportunity Society:
The UN plan to resettle 1 million immigrants in Western nations will provide jihadis an opportunity to infiltrate Western countries, including the US. It will give terrorists the opportunity to settle in our countries without the extra scrutiny involved in obtaining a visa or a residence permit.
We should not do this. The vast majority of the European citizens disapprove of the way their governments are handling immigration. Moreover, there are plenty of other safe countries where immigrants bound for the West can go to, including the wealthy Gulf States that have almost zero asylum-seekers today.
Immigration, especially Islamic immigration, had devastating consequences. It has made our countries less safe.
Tunisian Captain and Syrian first mate of capsized fishing vessel off Libya, April 19, 2015.
Smuggler Profiteering of Illegal Migrant Trafficking
The massive surge in the deadly illegal migrant trade across the Mediterranean figured in the emergency meeting of EU Foreign ministers in Luxembourg. The loss of over 1,200 in two separate trafficking ship disasters spurred on deliberations requested by Italian President Renzi and Maltese PM Muscat. April 22, 2015 charges were brought in Italian courts against the 27 year old Tunisian captain and 25 year old Syrian mate of the 66 foot fishing boat that capsized off Libya with a loss of 800 crammed into the flimsy vessel. NBC news reported:
The Tunisian captain of the boat — 27-year-old Mohammed Ali Malek — was arrested along with a Syrian crew member, 25-year-old Mahmud Bikhit.
Sicilian prosecutors said Tuesday that Malek has been charged with culpable shipwreck, manslaughter and aiding and abetting illegal immigration. Bikhit has been charged with aiding and abetting illegal immigration, the statement from Catania’s prosecutors said.
The question is who benefits from this deadly smuggling business?
The answer is the jihadists in Libya who have profited from the turmoil in the region. A Wall Street Journal report revealed how profitable the business of trafficking illegal migrants is worth taking the risks involved as deadly as the results have been to their customers seeking refuge in the EU. This is the bottom line of the WSJ report: “Brazen, multi-million-dollar people-smuggling enterprise run by Libyan militias and tribesmen proves hard to combat.”
The WSJ wrote:
Various armed groups in Libya are aggressively advertising their services to would-be migrants from sub-Saharan Africa and Syrians fleeing conflict in their country, presenting the collapse of order in Libya as a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to secure safe passage to Europe, says Arezo Malakooti, the director of migration research for Paris-based Altai Consulting, a consultancy that works with the International Organization for Migration and other migration-related groups.
“The profits from human trafficking have consolidated a new balance of power in the Sahel and Libya,” says Tuesday Reitano, head of the Geneva-based Global Initiative against Transnational Organized Crime.
How a Saharan tribe profits:
The Saharan Tebu tribe, for instance, is now making “a killing,” according to Ms. Reitano, who estimates the tribe pockets some $60,000 a week by charging West African migrants for a seat on four-wheel-drive cars that take them to Agadez, a major city in Niger. From there, they ferry the migrants to the central Libyan city of Sabha and then proceed to northern Libya ahead of their sea journey to Italy and Malta.
The profits are such that tribes normally at war cooperate at times in getting migrants from one place to the next.
Mustapha Orghan, an activist who has worked with aid groups to track smuggler operations said:
Tebu and Tuaregs used to smuggle goods. The new alternative is human trafficking…and now both Tuaregs and Tebu are trying to get their share of the cake.
Mr. Orghan said Ghat, a southern Libyan town near the Algerian border where he lives, is the first entry point from Algeria for Africans. There, he said, “African migrants get sold from one smuggler to another.”
He said the trafficking business has become increasingly lucrative since chaos in Libya sharply reduced traditional sources of income in the region: heavily subsidized oil, food and other goods from Algeria.
“Farming” migrants to make profits:
In Sabha, African men typically spend months working as laborers, and women as housemaids, to earn the roughly $1,000 to pay for the crossing from Libya’s northern coast. If there is no demand for their services in Sabha, smugglers farm them out to cities further north and west for approximately 700 Libyan dinar, or about $500.
Discrimination among “customers” leads to deadly trips:
Ismail, an African migrant who declined to give his full name and nationality, tried to cross three times in recent weeks but was thwarted by overcrowding and breakdowns of the cheap plastic boat of the sort usually provided for Africans. Syrians, who can often pay more and aren’t discriminated against by the overwhelmingly Arab smugglers, typically make the crossing in sturdier wooden boats.
According to the Frontex agency the EU has arrested 10,000 involved in the illegal migrant trade, mainly truck drivers and many migrants involved in navigating the flimsy crafts. Italian authorities have arrested 1,000 smugglers since 2014. However of these, less than 100 have been convicted. They simply lack the resources in contending with the mushrooming human trafficking business as Libya devolves into a failed state.
Watch this WSJ video dramatizing the journey of an Eritrean illegal migrant across Africa to Libya and his perilous transit via smugglers to his ultimate destination in the Italian island of Lampedusa:
EU foreign ministers meeting in Luxembourg may have surfaced calls for safe and secure channels to reduce the deadly toll of illegal migrants, but going after the lucrative smuggling trafficking business at its source means contending with warring militias and the criminal activities of tribal groups in Libya. Note this ironic comment from the UN Human Rights Commission head:
“Europe is turning its back on some of the most vulnerable migrants in the world, and risk turning the Mediterranean into a vast cemetery,” said U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights Zeid Ra’ad Al Hussein Monday. “Migrant smugglers are the symptom, not the cause of this wretched situation.”
The European Commission Proposals
The Brussels meeting of the European Commission (EC) on April 23, 2015 proposed a number of temporary measures to deal with the migrant crisis in the Mediterranean. The EC recommended doubling of Southern European border–control missions of Spain, Malta and Italy from the present level of $3.2 million monthly to effectively “increase search and rescue operations.” The EC will also provide additional resources to Spain, Malta and Greece. Another EC proposal would provide assistance to Tunisia, Egypt and Niger in buttressing their land border controls. The EC proposed a pilot project to re-distribute 5,000 refugees who meet asylum requirements stranded outside the EU, as an attempt to fairly distribute the burden of asylees. That flies in the face of objections by major northern countries to further asylum quotas. In 2014, 626,065 refugees filed asylum claims, a 44% percent increase over 2013. As one example, Germany experienced a sharp rise is asylum requests over the first quarter of 2015 to 85,394, double over the same period in 2014. By contrast the U.S. received 47,500 asylum applications.
The majority of those asylum seekers hail from Kosovo, Syria and Albania. Germany currently has a backlog of over 200,000 applications. This has given rise to complaints by municipalities in Germany about the impact on facilities and community integration. In the most controversial proposal, the EC requested EU Foreign Relations Commissioner Federica Mogherini to develop rules of engagement enabling it to capture and destroy illegal smuggling vessels. Overall EC President Donald Tusk of Poland said the illegal migrant crisis is a” complex issue” that will “take time to tackle.”
However in the immediate future the southern tier of EU nations may yet see a further spike in illegal migrants. In the final Week of April 2015, more than 10,000 refugees from the conflict in Yemen fled in rickety boats across the Bab al Mandab to the Republic of Djibouti placing a further burden on the UN High Commissioner for Refugees. Djibouti borders Eritrea where a number of migrants have followed the smuggler network to Libya and the dangerous passage to Italy and Malta on fleets of unseaworthy boats.
Conclusion
Jihad conflicts in the Middle East and Africa are driving hundreds of thousands annually in desperation to pay top dollar for a deadly ride on those rickety boats whose owners mage large profits. Nature abhors a vacuum when chaos creates rich opportunities to rake in enormous wealth from trafficking illegal migrants. The successful smugglers even alert EU officials that they are bringing another shipload of hapless migrants to fatten their margins from this deadly trade. The EU and the Union for the Mediterranean proposals for dealing with illegal mass immigration will surely cost billions of Euros. In the meantime, Italian and other EU coast guards continue to provide a picket line of vessels daily monitoring these dangerous trips in flimsy craft across the Mediterranean from the failed state of Libya.
EDITORS NOTE: This column originally appeared in the New English Review. Also see Jerry Gordon’s collection of interviews, The West Speaks.
French Interior Minister Bernard Cazeneuve was on official business in Morocco when informed of the jihad attack against a free speech meeting in Copenhagen. He immediately flew to Denmark where he joined his personal friend François Zimeray, French ambassador to Denmark. Zimeray, who attended the “Art, Blasphemy, Freedom of Speech” event at the Krudttønden Café organized in reaction to the Charlie Hebdo massacre in Paris, put it succinctly: “I went to the meeting by bicycle and left in an armored car.”
All- news channels BFM TV and I Télé went into Special Edition, reporting on the attack non-stop from Saturday afternoon to Sunday night, and then some. Frequent zaps to other available stations—CNN, SkyNews, BBC, France24—yielded low to negligible interest in the story…aside from the BBC recording of Inna Shevchenko’s speech. The Ukrainian Femen, commenting on the current state of press freedom in the West, asked “Why do we say we have freedom of speech, but…?” As she repeated for emphasis the “freedom but” her words were brutally punctuated by the sharp crackle of gunfire.
French-Danish solidarity goes back to Charlie Hebdo’s publication of the original Jyllands Posten Mohammed cartoons in 2005. Few imagined, even one month ago, that this solidarity would turn into a ping pong of posters, bouquets, and memorial candles. We suspect the ceremonies will eventually wear thin from repetition. But, unless you followed the story on French media, you wouldn’t know the extent of this fraternity: vigils and presidential visits at the Danish embassy in Paris, the Paris mayor in Copenhagen, the Chief Rabbi of France, the president of the CRIF, leaders of political parties, special correspondents here and there, countless media debates …
When the story broke Saturday afternoon (Valentine’s Day no less!) the gunman was already on the run, one man– misreported as a passerby—was dead and two policemen were wounded. Tight-lipped Danish authorities gave the media little to chew on. The hunger for images had to be satisfied with the café’s plate glass window pocked with bullet holes.
We, the gawkers, knew that the assailant had not been able to get inside. The suspense came later in a sort of playback when participants told how it felt in real time. They thought they were going to die. The gunman and the potential victims—there were 30 to 40 people in the room– were following the same Charlie Hebdo scenario. “Copycat,” surmised a few French commentators, proudly sporting the trendy English term. No, mes amis, it’s something worse than copycat.
And the something, this time, was immediately identified as jihad. Yes, the linguistic tricks are still fluttering like coquettish fans — Islamism, radical Islam, hijacked Islam—but there is no taboo against “jihadi” or “jihadist.” And there was no beating around the bush on BFM TV and I Télé last weekend. Journalists and invited commentators recognized another three-pronged attack against liberty, law enforcement, and Jews…by a jihadi.
Suddenly, there he was, the killer, described by police as looking “North African,” wearing dark clothes and a stylish bordeau ski mask, captured by CCTV in all his punknificence. A bit of a surprise for us here in France, where authorities are notoriously skittish about letting the public know who is out there armed to kill. This led to tragic consequences in the case of Ilan Halimi (see the Alexandre Arcady film 24 Days, available in DVD). The police withheld the identikit image of one of the young women who had been trolling for Jews to kidnap. Ilan was already dead when they finally released it, immediately leading to the arrest of Fofana and his accomplices.
Some of the more knowledgeable anchors were absent when the Copenhagen story broke at the start of a two-week winter break. Was Agence France Presse slow in processing information from Danish sources? For this and other newscast reasons, journalists weren’t reading heat & serve press releases. There was a lot of improvisation and, consequently, less double talk and more wide-eyed ignorance. It reminded me of earnest five year-olds discussing serious issues with a mixture of childish honesty and an immature world view.
But the story was big, bigger in France than anywhere else but Denmark itself. As the hours went by, commentators streamed in and out of TV studios. The usual Islam-apologists were not among them. Are their words no longer comforting or convincing? No imams to tell us this brutal act has nothing to do with Islam. A simple consensus emerged: the jihadis are at war with us, they want to destroy our society, deprive us of our liberty, make our lives desperately miserable… And we aren’t going to let them get away with it. We won’t go overboard like the Americans—the Patriot Act is poison to French ears—but we have to change our strategy and face this challenge squarely. We are at war, this war is global, and our response has to be global–increased security cooperation with our European neighbors, the United States and, for example, Turkey. Granted, no one had the courage to mention Israel as a light unto the nations when it comes to fighting enemies within, without, and all about. But secretly they know it’s true.
I went off screen Saturday night wondering why the policemen assigned to guard that obviously sensitive meeting were wounded, while the gunman was able to shoot up the façade, jump into his car, and ride off to an unknown destination. Why didn’t they shoot him? For wont of that notorious American police “brutality” a dangerous killer was on the loose. Isn’t this a big part of the European problem? The late Charb had bodyguards, Lars Vilks, prime target at the Copenhagen event, has one or several bodyguards, but they seem to be guarding against bows and arrows, not assault weapons, not jihadis.
First thing Sunday morning I switched on the TV to see if they had found him. Yes. He was already dead. But not before he had killed a Jew. Mission accomplie. 37 year-old Don Uzan was on duty, protecting a bat mitzvah party in the annex to the synagogue. Two policemen were slightly wounded, the Jewish man was killed, and the gunman was on the loose again until dawn when, in a now familiar confrontation with SWAT-type forces, he was shot dead.
Was it foolhardy to go ahead with a bat mitzvah party when a jihad killer was on the loose? Then again, isn’t that what we do? Live our lives. Go to our places. Show our faces. Charlie Hebdo brought out an issue two weeks after most of the staff had been brutally gunned down. The Hyper Cacher at Porte de Vincennes is closed and deathly silent but Jews go to kosher delis, kosher restaurants, kosher synagogues. Policemen and policewomen direct traffic, answer domestic violence calls, arrest drug dealers. Dozens of jihadis have been detained this month in France.
A few days later the parents of the bat mitzvah girl, interviewed by the Algemeiner, say they felt safe under the protection of the late Dan Uzan. The rabbi wonders how the killer got through when the whole city was under police control. An unverifiable report claims the killer, now officially identified as Omar Hamid el-Hussein, got through the first line of police protection by pretending to be a drunken guest at the party, and reached the inner courtyard where he shot Uzan in the head.
If you remember, one of the Kouachi brothers left his ID card in the getaway car they abandoned shortly after killing 12 people at the Charlie Hebdo offices. Well, our Danish specimen abandoned his (stolen) getaway car and called a taxi! I repeat, he had just killed one man, wounded two policemen, shot up a café in an attempt to massacre a free speech meeting, and he calls a taxi and has the taxi drop him off at the door of a safe house…or maybe it was his home address. Add this to the profile of the soft-cheeked jihad killer of the Western world and you’ve earned your degree in criminology.
The taxi driver recognized Omar from the CCTV photo and notified the police but he was gone by the time they got there. Where did he spend the next five or six hours before executing a Jew? At the movies?
Documentary film maker Finn Noergaard–the man killed at the free speech event—had posted on Facebook last month the photo of a victim carried out on a stretcher from the Charlie Hebdo offices, with a comment on the horror of being killed for expressing oneself. Why was Noergaard in the line of fire when everyone else was behind closed doors? Had he arrived late for the meeting…stepped out of the room for a minute? What sealed his fate?
Special Editions on the second day focused on anti-Semitism without forgetting blasphemy. No journalist, no commentator, no invited guest, no public official underplayed or cast doubt on the Jew hatred that motivated the second attack. CRIF president Roger Cukierman took a slap at President Obama for tossing off the victims of the Hyper Cacher massacre as random targets.
It took fifteen years, but the lesson has been learned: anti-Semitism doesn’t only endanger Jews, it destroys a nation. Now there is a desperate last ditch effort to convince French Jews to stay. Sometimes it takes the form of perverse disdain for the Israeli prime minister’s outstretched hand. Repeating the welcome extended after last month’s jihad attacks in Paris, Netanyahu told European Jews that Israel is our home. And the invitation is still making waves and provoking pretzel dialogues. Jews in France and now in Copenhagen are asked if it was right for the PM to tell them to leave. Should European Jews move to Israel, will they really be better off, isn’t it more dangerous there, can they adapt to a “foreign” country …? Most often the sample Jew dragged into one of these baroque interrogations replies that one should make Aliyah for positive reasons… Jews shouldn’t flee in fear.
If you ask me, this is no time to judge whether Jews should stay and tough it out, leave on a spiritual cloud, or run for their lives! And what about European non-Jews? Where will they go if this relentless attack on our lives and liberty continues unabated?
One thing is sure. For all the talk about backlash against Muslims we haven’t seen them fleeing Europe to enjoy a better life in a country that beckons them to come home.
Round about midnight that Sunday, BFM editorialist Christophe Hondelatte is getting down with Frédéric Encel. The political scientist explains that the Mohamed caricatures are a pretext. Hondelatte: So… even if we stopped doing them, it wouldn’t change anything? FE: Right. Encel sketches out the nature and scope of this murderous hatred aimed at us no matter what we do. Hondelatte follows the logic: an army could rise against us in the banlieue? FE: Right … so… Suddenly the light dims. The moment of truth falls into the sociological trap, something about how we better start doing what’s necessary to make them feel wanted, give them the chance to succeed…
Like they do in Denmark, my friends? Reporters visiting the tidy housing project where Omar el-Hussein reportedly lived off and on with his Jordanian Palestinian father, encounter like-minded buddies who say he was a great guy. His stint in prison for savagely stabbing a young man on an urban train obviously doesn’t faze them. Fellow students in adult education classes noted his passionate defense of the Palestinian cause. And, of course, it is generally admitted that he was “radicalized” in prison. Did he have to go that far to find fuel to stoke his rage?
The inimitable, invaluable MEMRI brings us a video of a sermon delivered in a Copenhagen mosque on the eve of Omar Hamid el-Hussein’s jihad performance. The message is implacable: shun the Christians, kill the Jews, keep to yourselves and your Muslim ways– the whole world must submit to the will of Allah.
How ironical it is to even think of accepting the myth of exquisite religious sensitivity that moves Muslims to kill when their prophet is not respected and should consequently move us to at least partially accommodate them on the grounds of “respect for religion.” These exquisitely sensitive Muslims, after they kill free speechers and shoot at police, kill Jews.
Monday morning, Prime Minister Valls named the enemy as Islamofascism.
The debate ebbs and flows. At its worst it paddles in the shallow waters of socio-economic determinism. Underprivileged youths suffering from unemployment and racism stumble into crime and then, misguidedly seeking elevation, grab at undigested Islamism to give meaning to their lives. What do they know about the noble religion of Islam that has nothing to do with their sleazy lives and abject crimes?
What does the foot soldier know about military strategy? Did he graduate from St. Cyr?
Denmark is–or was?– something of a model in the business of de-radicalization. According to the Daily Mail the approach includes, “dialogue with a mosque regarded as a hotbed of extremism, after authorities found 22 of the young radicals who went to Syria had worshipped there. But those who return are not expected to renounce their support for radical Islamic goals.”
Hundreds of bouquets in front of the Krudttønden café, hundreds at the synagogue, and more than enough at the spot where el-Hussein died. Le Figaro reports, citing Agence France Presse, that one bouquet was offered by an elderly Danish woman who said the boy didn’t realize what he was doing. But the accompanying video shows immigrant youths paying floral tribute to the Copenhagen shahid. Another layer of meaning is added after nightfall. A dozen guardians of the faith toss the bouquets in the garbage because it’s against Islam to lay flowers where someone died. One of the brothers declares, “He wasn’t a terrorist. The terrorists are Denmark, the United States, Israel.” And they march off with a defiant allahu akhbar.
Radicalized? Moderate? Or simple garden variety Danish youths?
RELATED ARTICLE: Just Who Has to Adjust in the Name of Tolerance? by Phyllis Chesler
EDITORS NOTE: This column originally appeared in the New English Review.