Archive for the ‘Religion’ Category

Orlando was primarily about radical Islam not about gun availability

June 13, 2016

Common sense is the victim when political correctness reigns. Gun controls are much stricter in Europe than in the US, but that didn’t stop Paris or Brussels or London.

Those in the US who don’t wish to confront radical Islam are spinning the Orlando event into a gun control issue. I perceive a tendency among the (mainly liberal) media to ignore both the shooter’s declared allegiance to ISIS and ISIS’ claim of responsibility. There is a reluctance to address the shooter’s path to radicalisation and, at 28, he was no spring chicken. The influence of his father and his support for the Taliban is given very little space. His being interviewed three times by the FBI gets some attention but not much. It is seen as more important not to blame the vast bulk of moderate Muslims than to confront the radical elements within Islam. Political correctness is clearly in the camp of cowardice.

Instead of blaming radical Islam there is a clear effort to blame the availability of guns. But this spin rings hollow. The politically correct sections of European media (BBC, The Guardian ….) are also closing their eyes to the influence of radical Islam and focusing on gun availability. After Paris and Brussels they should know better. Obama has made his standard speech after a mass shooting for the 14th time during his time in office. His words stand out because of his reluctance to pin the blame on radical Islam and not for his empty – and now largely discounted – boilerplate words about love and hate.

Orlando now joins San Bernadino and London and Paris and Brussels and Bagdad as victims of terrorism inspired by radical Shia Islam – and probably ordered (loosely) by ISIS. The US will have to get used to the fact that radicalised Muslim maniacs are now among them and many of them were born in the US. For someone with an agenda, stricter gun control laws are unlikely to be any kind of a deterrent.

For both Europe and the US, it is of little value to ignore the fact that among the millions of refugees on the move from the Middle East and North Africa there are going to be significant numbers of proponents of radical Islam and “terrorists”. Political correctness and molly-coddling radical Islam for fear of being labeled Islamophobic will not change that.


 

Is it fear of Saudi Arabia which stops Obama from calling it “Islamic” terror?

June 12, 2016

The Orlando mass murderer called 911 to claim allegiance to ISIS before the massacre.

IS have come out with a statement claiming responsibility. They declared 3 days ago that they would target Florida.

The shooter, Omar Saddiqui Mateen, was an Afghani American and a Muslim. His father reckons religion had nothing to do with the massacre. Just a coincidence no doubt – again. He was also a Florida registered Democrat. He was also being watched by the FBI. Not many Muslims are terrorists but a remarkably large number of terrorists  (currently) are Shia Muslims. And that is not entirely coincidence.

And still Barack Obama cannot bring himself to call it “Islamic” terror.

Politico:

President Barack Obama on Sunday declared the worst mass shooting in U.S. history “an act of terror and an act of hate.”

“Today, as Americans, we grieve the brutal murder, a horrific massacre, of dozens of innocent people,” Obama said Sunday. “We pray for their families, who are grasping for answers with broken hearts. We stand with the people of Orlando, who have endured a terrible attack on their city.”

“Although it’s still early in the investigation, we know enough to say that this was an act of terror and an act of hate, and as Americans we are united in grief, in outrage and in resolve to defend our people,” he continued. 

A man armed with a handgun and an assault rifle rampaged through a gay nightclub in Orlando, Florida, early Sunday, killing at least 50 people and leaving more than 50 hospitalized.

The shooter was identified as Omar Saddiqui Mateen, who died in a gunfight with SWAT officers after initially firing shots into the club and eventually taking hostages.

The death toll is now upto 53. still 50 but some of the injured are in an acute condition.

I note that Saudi Arabia blackmailed the UN and Ban Ki-Moon into removing the Saudi-led coalition from the blacklist of organisations committing atrocities against children in Yemen. I note that the CIA now states – under Saudi pressure – that confidential documents will absolve Saudi Arabia of any involvement with 9/11. That may technically be correct as far as the government of Saudi Arabia is concerned, but it was Saudi money and Saudi nationals led by a Saudi fanatic who were involved.

Is it fear of Saudi Arabia (and the undoubted Saudi based support for ISIS and other Shia fanatics) which stops Obama from calling Islamic terror Islamic? Even when it is? Or is it his fear of being considered an Islamophobe?


 

The Easter timeline suggests Judas was eliminated

March 27, 2016

“Påskkärringar” 2008 and 1958 (Wikipedia)

It is Easter Sunday, Resurrection Sunday, today. In Sweden it is not possible to avoid painted eggs, chocolate eggs, little girls dressed up as witches, reruns of “Jesus Christ – Superstar” and marathon sessions of “Poirot” and “Wallander”. But I have always been a little doubtful about the way in which poor Judas Iscariot is portrayed. It is not just coincidence that Easter week is a week of mystery.

Without the Resurrection, Christianity could still be a religion and a body of teachings with Jesus as a “great teacher”. But he would not then have demonstrated his divinity. He would not qualify to be the Son of God.

The capture of Jesus, in the plot of the Bible story, is a fundamental and necessary step for the Passion and the Crucifixion and the Resurrection. The role of Judas is utterly crucial to demonstrating the divinity of Jesus, but the Bible story is not very forthcoming as to his motivations. He is a traitor who “fingers” Jesus because Satan enters him. In some Gnostic writings he is a great soul who sacrificed himself for the necessary capture of Jesus – necessary for Jesus’ purposes. Judas was the cashier for the apostles and was entrusted with keeping all their monies. That thirty pieces of silver would be the motive for the betrayal does not convince.

The Bible story is somewhat unsatisfactory also in its details of the death (usually presumed to be suicide) of Judas. From the Bible story he either hanged himself or he fell into a field and burst such that he was disembowelled. The Gospel of Judas – found in the 1970s and dated to 280 AD – is considered a Gnostic text and is not accepted as being part of the Bible. Here Judas has visions of being stoned to death by the other apostles. It is only in the Gospel of Judas that we are told the story from the viewpoint of Judas and that Judas was actually acting on instructions from Jesus.

Consider the timeline of Holy Week in the Bible story.

  1. Day 1: Palm Sunday: Jesus triumphantly enters Jerusalem with all his apostles, riding humbly (?) on a donkey. Spends Sunday night at Bethany a little to the east of Jerusalem at the home of Mary, Martha and Lazarus.
  2. Day 2: Monday: Returns to Jerusalem. Along the way he curses a poor fig tree because it had failed to bear any fruit. The tree withers. He enters the Temple to find it filled with money changers (forex dealers since the Temple only accepted Tyrian shekels) and merchants selling animals for sacrifice. He chases them out with much ado. He returns to Bethany to spend the night.
  3. Day 3: Tuesday: Jesus returned to the Temple in Jerusalem and played hide-and-seek with the priests who challenged his authority and tried to apprehend him. But he evaded them. In the afternoon he and his disciples climbed the Mount of Olives and he made prophecies about the destruction of Jerusalem. He spent the night again in Bethany. Matthew reports that Judas negotiated his deal with the Sanhedrin on this day.
  4. Day 4: Wednesday: The Bible is silent about this day. It is presumed Jesus and his disciples stayed in Bethany and took it easy.
  5. Day 5: Thursday: Jesus sent Peter and John to “prepare” (presumably to reserve it as well) the Upper Room in Jerusalem (The Cenacle) for the Passover feast which would begin at twilight and continue on Friday. At twilight he washed the feet of his disciples and then began the Passover meal – the Last Supper. He prophecies that he will be betrayed by one of his disciples – which they each in turn deny. He identifies the traitor as being Judas by giving him a piece of bread soaked in the dish and as soon as he does so,  “Satan enters Judas” (?). From the Upper Room they all went to the Garden of Gethsemane. Here, late that evening, he is betrayed by Judas and arrested by the Sanhedrin and taken to the home of Caiaphas where the Sanhedrin Council have gathered.
  6. Day 6: Friday: Early on Friday morning, Judas is found dead. By the 3rd hour (9 am) the trial of Jesus has started. He is found guilty and forced to carry his cross to Calvary where he is crucified. By the ninth hour (3 pm) he is dead. Around the 12th hour (6 pm) his body is removed from the cross and is laid in a tomb guarded by Roman soldiers.
  7. Day 7: Saturday: The tomb is guarded by Roman soldiers all through the Sabbath day until dusk (12th hour – 6 pm). When the Sabbath ends, his body is anointed and prepared for burial by Nicodemus (himself a member of the Sanhedrin Council which found Jesus guilty).
  8. Day 8: Sunday: Early on Sunday several women went to the tomb and found it open and Jesus missing. He “appears” to five people during the day providing “proof” that he has been resurrected.

There are many, many writings by Bible scholars about the whole week. There are many interpretations of the symbolism but there is little controversy about the timeline. It is the timeline itself which makes me think that Judas was murdered. He identifies Jesus for the Sanhedrin on Thursday night and by dawn on Friday he is conveniently dead.

Applying the little grey cells a la Poirot,

  1. Jesus needs that someone close “betray” him.
  2. He picks Judas for that role
  3. He announces to all the apostles that Judas is the betrayer to be
  4. Judas follows instructions and identifies Jesus for arrest
  5. Judas dies before Jesus has even been tried and sentenced

The betrayal, death and resurrection of Jesus was the prophecy that needed to be fulfilled. The story that Judas killed himself in a fit of remorse, before Jesus even came to trial, sounds implausible to me. The accounts of his death also differ too much. Hanging cannot easily be mistaken for falling into a field and bursting. Both hanging and being thrown off a cliff could just as well have been murder as suicide. The parsimonious narrative that fits is that Jesus had to pick somebody – anybody – to be a scapegoat from among his disciples. Just turning himself in would not do, since it would not create the perception of being a martyr to a cause. He chose Judas to be the “betrayer” and put upon him that burden. However, the martyrdom of Jesus needed a “clean” betrayal; not one in which he was himself complicit. Judas was chosen as the scapegoat and had to be sacrificed to the greater cause. Jesus may well have realised that whoever he chose would incur the wrath of the other disciples. Why else did Jesus identify Judas as the betrayer to  the other disciples in advance of being betrayed? And Judas duly betrayed Jesus and incurred the wrath of the others. Before the night was out, and very conveniently, he was dead and the story-line of the betrayal was secure. Possibly Judas had been murdered (executed without trial) by the other disciples for the betrayal and they did not even realise that the story-line required Judas to die.

And since the Bible story is said to be written by his disciples, it is hardly likely that they would either mention that Judas was sacrificed by Jesus or that they had killed Judas to ensure his silence and protect the story-line. So did Jesus manipulate Judas to be the betrayer or did Judas act in full knowledge of his role? Did Jesus manipulate the other disciples to make sure Judas was silenced after he had played his part? It is not surprising that the Gospel of Judas is not accepted within the Bible. For that would mean that Jesus had orchestrated his own capture.

Poor Judas. He may have just been a dupe chosen by Jesus to be the scapegoat. But if he knowingly sacrificed his life and accepted being remembered in perpetuity as the “betrayer” of Jesus, his was probably a very great soul.


 

The “niqab” is a pre-Islamic, Jewish tradition

March 10, 2016

I didn’t know that.

In Egypt, a Member of Parliament has introduced a bill to ban the niqab in public places and in government institutions:

Independent:

The Egyptian parliament is drafting a law banning women from wearing the niqab veil. The ban will apply to wearing the clothing in public places and government institutions, it has been reported.

……..

MP Amna Nosseir, professor of comparative jurisprudence at Al-Azhar University, who has backed the ban, said that wearing the veil is not a requirement of Islam and in fact has non-Islamic origins. She has argued that it is a Jewish tradition which appeared in the Arabian Peninsula prior to Islam and that a variety of Quran passages contradict its use. Instead, she has advocated that the Quran calls for modest clothing and covered hair, but does not require facial covering.

Jewish niquab image - Faisal Kutty

Jewish niqab (image – Faisal Kutty)

There are some Jewish sects which today use the niqab or something similar – a frumka, (a Haredi sect and some Sephardic women). There are references in the Old Testament which refer to women putting on a veil before meeting with strange men.

Certainly there seems to be strong evidence that the full-face veil was in use for at least a 1000 years before Islam was invented. Even in Islam, the Qur’an seems to call for modesty rather than specifying a particular mode of dress.


 

A Catholic Imam?

January 25, 2016

Idiots come in all shapes and all religions.

I suppose the only real long term solution is to ensure they don’t breed.

Church and State:

Catholic Archbishop says domestic violence is caused by women ‘not obeying men’

An archbishop caused fury in Spain by saying domestic violence happens because “women do not obey men”. The Roman Catholic Archbishop of Toledo, Braulio Rodriguez, told his congregation that wives could avoid being hit by doing what they are told.

Women could also escape being physically abused by not asking their husbands for a divorce , Rodriguez said. He told churchgoers in his sermon: “The majority of cases of domestic violence happen because the woman’s partner does not accept them, or rejects them for not accepting their demands. … Or often the macho reaction comes about because she asked for a separation.”

He also said many relationship problems occurred because the couple were not in a ‘true marriage’, and he criticised the practice of ‘quickie divorces’. He said: “I don’t think our political leaders are worried about divorce figures when they have fought so hard to implement the so-called quick divorce.”

He made the comments during a mass held in Toledo Cathedral on December 27, and they were later published in the Our Father parish bulletin.

Perhaps the Archbishop could have expressed the obvious corollary that “all domestic violence would cease if only all men obeyed their women at all times”  but that would not have been quite macho enough.

 

The Cologne syndrome in Stockholm as police and media cover-up sexual harassment by “asylum seeker”, youth gangs

January 11, 2016

It is a “breaking news” in Dagens Nyheter today that it is commonplace for gangs of youths to sexually harass and molest young girls at the annual “We are Stockholm” festival. It showed up clearly in 2014 and again last year. The “scoop” in DN is that the police have knowingly, and regularly, played such matters down. But what DN does not spend too much time on is that journalists (including DN journalists) were generally informed that sexual harassment by “asylum seekers” was taking place, but they and their editors chose also to play it down. What DN does not reveal is the depth to which Swedish media are blind, devout followers of the religion of “political correctness”. Normally they play up even the most tenuous cases of purported or alleged sexism. But they have also been the most ardent supporters of multicultural (as opposed to multiethnic) societies.

Thus, they automatically play up anything that follows a “feminist” line except when the perpetrators are immigrants or immigrant gangs of, usually, supposedly Muslim youth. Even in today’s stories in all the newspapers about DN’s “scoop”, none of the mainstream media refers to the ethnicity or the religion of the youth gangs. From social media, even after discounting all the idiotic blather from the usual suspects (mainly right-wing, white-supremacist, often Sweden Democrat rabble), it is fairly clear that most – if not all – of the harassment in Stockholm was by gangs of young, male, “asylum seekers”, mainly from Afghanistan. There are those who claim it is not relevant and should not be reported, but I think that it is highly relevant that the perpetrators were nearly all culturally Muslim (and culture and religion are inextricably intertwined here). Their ethnicity is, I suspect, of less importance than their culture.

It is Cologne all over again. First the police play down such events. The media acquiesce in keeping things quiet since they don’t want to disturb the multicultural narrative. Then social media pressure leads to the news “breaking” in the msm – even though they are themselves heavily complicit in the cover-up in the first place.

We are Sthlm-festivalen i Kungsträdgården 2015.

We are Sthlm-festival in Kungsträdgården 2015. Photo: Alexander Tillheden/Stockholms stad (via DN)

Dagens NyheterFor two years, youth gangs have been molesting girls at Europe’s largest youth festival “We Are Stockholm”. The official police version is that conduct at the festival was “quiet” – but the DN’s investigation shows that the internal alarm reports were silenced.

The National Police Commissioner Dan Eliasson promised to investigate the cover-up.

DN has seen the daily internal memo during “We are Sthlm” that was sent to police chiefs and the Stockholm police media center. The first reports of sex crimes against female visitors came early on. “The problem with young men rubbing themselves up against young girls in the audience returned as in previous years,” it says in a memo from the first day of August last year. The problems arose as soon as the concert started.

But what DN does not mention is that they too knew about the harassment in August last year.

Expressen: Dagens Nyheter’s article about the police cover-up of sexual molestation during the music festival “We are Sthlm” has also led to a media debate.
The site, Nyheter Idag, which has connections to the Sweden Democrats has accused the newspaper of itself trying to cover-up the news. …… They claimed in an article published on Sunday that DN engaged in a cover-up and that the newspaper should have known about the molestation at the festival last summer. Information about the abuse had been received by one of DN’s journalists.

On Swedish television this morning, the journalists all pretend they knew nothing at the time and are happy to let the police take the blame. They still will not say that the gangs were mainly “asylum seekers”.

Nyheter Idag writes:

During a single night police and security guards had to intervene against around 90 younger males, but even adult men took part in the abuse, says an eye witness to Nyheter Idag. The eye witness has professional experience from working at the Stockholm Police Department as a psychologist. 

The psychologist who knew of what had happened in Kungsträdgården contacted journalist Hanne Kjöller at Dagens Nyheter, by, among other things, e-mail on August 17. The psychologist says he specifically turned to Kjöller because he knew that she had previously written about controversial topics.

“She was very interested and listened until I told her that all the boys and men that were apprehended were young asylum seekers (“unaccompanied” is the terminology used by Swedish authorities) from Afghanistan and Syria. I sensed that she changed the tone (of her voice). But she also said that she would contact the police”, he tells Nyheter Idag.

Kjöller got the phone number to one of the police officers who were on duty during the event in Kungsträdgården and could provide a recollection of the events. Nyheter Idag has talked with the police officer who Kjöller talked to in August, and he was eager to tell Dagens Nyheter about the massive cases of sexual assault against young girls in central Stockholm.

“She sent a text message to me once, early on, where she wrote that she was looking for me, she wanted to talk. After that, I tried to get in touch with her, but that was when things started to get awry. She answered sometimes, said she would get back to me. But it never amounted to anything. She was interested in it for half day or a day, then she wasn’t anymore”.

The officer explains that he worked for several evenings during this week in Kungsträdgården square. He tells of how he and his colleagues had to apprehend a large number of young men who sexually assaulted girls, in large part unaccompanied refugees from Afghanistan.

The fear of being labelled “racist” has led to the ridiculous consequence that “race” and “culture” have been equated. Multiculturalism has been made into a religion. Unacceptable cultural mores have been overlooked and excused – and even encouraged – just so as to avoid being called “racist”. I am more than ever convinced of my thesis that Europe’s future is inevitably multiethnic – but it is not multicultural. The integration of newcomers has to start with cultural integration not with cultural separation. And that starts with language.


Related:

A “society” – to be a society – can be multi-ethnic but not multicultural

The future of Europe is multiethnic but not multicultural


 

 

Mass sexual harassment in Germany – not race but surely due to culture or religion or both?

January 7, 2016

Keeping silent about differences due to culture or religion does not help. Pretending that the differences don’t exist won’t make them go away.

I don’t think Cologne  was an issue of race (ethnicity) but it certainly was not just due to “bad boys being bad”. Poverty and unemployment cannot be used as an excuse. The root cause was either culture or religion or – more likely – both.  I suspect it is both because the religion is Islam and here culture and religion are as intertwined as they are. Many of the religious leaders of Islam still have a world view of women and their place in it, which is a few hundred years out of date. In Germany it was thousands of young males of North African and Middle East origin behaving obnoxiously – but in a coordinated manner – across many cities. I am pretty sure that an overwhelming majority would have been Muslim. Yet the authorities kept silent until they had no choice but to respond to the anger and indignation on social media.

The Local (de)Germany’s authorities and media have been tiptoeing around the issue of sexual violence committed by immigrants and refugees for too long – giving the far right ammunition in their battle against the mainstream, argues Jörg Luyken.

The shocking sexual assaults that happened in Cologne during the New Year festivities – in which dozens of women were sexually abused and in one case raped by groups of young men – have an obvious parallel in events which took place in Cairo’s Tahrir Square during mass protests of the Arab Spring. …..

While there are differences between Tahrir Square and Cologne Cathedral – the Cologne attacks appear partly to have been diversions to enable theft – that men apparently of north African descent entered large crowds to sexually assault and even rape women – should set alarm bells ringing.

But no sober analysis of the influx of millions of people from the Middle East – the majority of whom are young men –  could fail to realize that certain behaviours prevalent there would be repeated here. ……

In the last few months, it has seemed that the authorities and the national media would rather sacrifice transparency for the sake of stability.

It was days before police gave full descriptions of the offenders in Cologne, despite a call for eyewitnesses. The national media also ignored the story until a wave of anger on social media made covering it unavoidable. …..

But there is a growing body of anecdotal evidence of sexual crimes committed by new arrivals bubbling up from Germany’s regional media.

In November a club in Bavaria started turning refugees away after a string of complaints of sexual harassment from female clients.

In Baden-Württemberg at least one hospital has hired guards to protect nurses who feel intimidated by the refugees they treat.

The Woman’s Council in Hesse claimed in an open letter to the state parliament in September that they have substantial evidence of sexual abuse, including forced prostitution, in refugee shelters.

In August a regional paper in North Rhine-Westphalia also reported police covering up a serious sexual crime. After hearing about the rape of a 13-year-old girl by a refugee, the paper enquired with police as to what crimes they knew of in the refugee shelters.

There are plenty of anecdotes about similar occurrences in Norway and Sweden. But authorities and media in Scandinavia are also in denial, and just as reluctant to openly confront the reality that Muslim youth (mainly newcomers) are more likely to sexually harass and commit sexual crimes. The reluctance is partly to protect the dead doctrine of multiculturalism, and partly out of the fear of being politically incorrect by seeming to refer disparagingly about race or religion or cultural differences.

It is the same toxic mix of religion and culture which can also be seen in the UK. It shows up in the grooming of young vulnerable girls, in”honour killings” and the treatment of women (especially vulnerable women) as “objects”, which are all not uncommon, even today, in many – supposedly devout – Muslim societies. In the UK it is more often Muslims of Asian rather than Middle East origin. But it is a similar behaviour as exhibited by the spoilt young oil-brats (male of course) who prey on women outside their own countries. Of course the treatment of women as objects happens with other religions and cults as well but usually only in fairly backward societies. For example it still happens in some parts of rural India where casteist racism, mixes with culture and Hinduism to create a most poisonous mix. (Casteism in India can be more virulently racist than any white supremacist movement). It happens even with the polygamous cults – ostensibly Christian – when they pop up from time to time. The common factor is a religion which views women as objects under the authority of a man, and a culture built on that foundation. But it is particularly Muslim cultures which seem to permit and legitimise violence by men against women.

It is my thesis that Europe has to have multiethnic, single culture societies, though the resulting culture prevailing will be dynamic and will change as newcomers are absorbed. Demographics require the influx of new ethnicities into Europe, but it is a fatally flawed concept to imagine that a society without a single overriding culture can avoid being a fractured and splintered society. Playing down the differences due to culture and religion contributes nothing to the creation of new viable societies.

What cannot (or will not) be seen, cannot be addressed.

Obama has become the best friend the gun manufacturers have

December 7, 2015

Beyond my previous post, this needs no comment.

Market Watch:

Shares of the two publicly traded gun makers rallied on Monday, a day after President Barack Obama gave a prime-time address calling for a modest reduction in the availability of firearms. Both Smith & Wesson SWHC, +7.64%  and Sturm Ruger & Co. RGR, +5.78%  rose over 7% on Monday. 

Smith & Wesson has climbed 116% this year and Sturm Ruger has jumped 69%.

Gun stocks spike after Obama’s speech (graphic – MarketWatch)

Obama’s empty speech should increase gun sales

December 7, 2015

Obama’s much heralded Oval office speech said nothing very much. He made it standing up rather than sitting down to show that he was a man of action. But then he didn’t mention any actions of any significance. Perhaps somebody should tell him that symbols of action are not the actions themselves. He was more concerned that innocent Muslims not be discriminated against, rather than that virulent, Muslim terrorists already embedded in the US be rooted out. If I lived in the US I would have to conclude that

  1. the State could not – and would not – protect me by preventing future San Bernardino events, and therefore
  2. I should acquire a weapon, some training on how to use it and take to carrying it.

I watched some extracts from his speech and have just read the transcript. What struck me was all that he didn’t say. He didn’t say

  1. that he would get Turkey to stop trading in ISIS oil,
  2. that he would get Saudi Arabia to stop sending funds to radical Sunni groups in Syria and Iraq,
  3. that he would get Saudi Arabia and the Gulf States to stop exporting funds and sick ideologies to mosques and madrassas abroad,
  4. that he would, and how he would, find the ISIS sleepers and the radicalised Muslim youth already embedded within the US,
  5. that he called on the Muslim communities in the US to themselves cease protecting such people hiding within their communities,
  6. that he would get the social media giants to use their undoubtedly, sufficiently capable algorithms to apply some ethical standards to radicalisation rooms,
  7. that he would work with Russia and Iran – even if Saudi Arabia or Israel opposed it – to leave ISIS with no territory in Iraq or in Syria,
  8. that he would prevent ISIS from developing an alternative base of operations in Libya.

But I heard none of that.

Instead he presented his empty,  already bankrupt, do-nothing, four-part “strategy”

  1. “First, our military will continue to hunt down terrorist plotters in any country where it is necessary”. (but not apparently in the US)
  2. “Second, we will continue to provide training and equipment to tens of thousands of Iraqi and Syrian forces fighting ISIL on the ground so that we take away their safe havens”. (and we have seen how $500 million managed to train a handful of fighters and provided ISIS with the weapons of a whole brigade).
  3. “Third, we’re working with friends and allies to stop ISIL’s operations”. (but not if Turkey or Saudi Arabia or Israel disapprove).
  4. “Fourth, with American leadership, the international community has begun to establish a process — and timeline — to pursue ceasefires and a political resolution to the Syrian war”. (we are prepared to have a ceasefire with ISIS but we will not talk to Assad).

In other words, “we will continue not doing what we are already not doing and which we are so good at not doing”. And then he waffled on about gun control. Does he really think that an ISIS, terrorist kill-squad would have any difficulty in obtaining clandestine guns and explosives?

There was one paragraph he got right.

That does not mean denying the fact that an extremist ideology has spread within some Muslim communities. This is a real problem that Muslims must confront, without excuse. Muslim leaders here and around the globe have to continue working with us to decisively and unequivocally reject the hateful ideology that groups like ISIL and al Qaeda promote; to speak out against not just acts of violence, but also those interpretations of Islam that are incompatible with the values of religious tolerance, mutual respect, and human dignity.

But then he even ruined that by shifting direction and emphasised the “avoiding of discrimination”

But just as it is the responsibility of Muslims around the world to root out misguided ideas that lead to radicalization, it is the responsibility of all Americans — of every faith — to reject discrimination.

He ends with the ridiculous statement “Let’s not forget that freedom is more powerful than fear”. 

The country was I think looking for Obama to show them that they could enjoy freedom without fear. Instead, he just provided all Americans with the freedom to fear. And with a perfect reason to go out and buy a gun.

ISIS mobilisation in America “unprecedented”

December 6, 2015

George Washington University’s Program on Extremism has just published a report “ISIS in America – from retweets to Raqqa”.

ISIS in America

ISIS in America George Washington University

ISIS in America – Full Report

Some extracts from the Executive Summary:

  • ƒ WHILE NOT AS LARGE as in many other Western countries, ISIS-related mobilization in the United States has been unprecedented. As of the fall of 2015, U.S. authorities speak of some 250 Americans who have traveled or attempted to travel to Syria/Iraq to join the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS) and 900 active investigations against ISIS sympathizers in all 50 states.
  • …….
  • Social media plays a crucial role in the radicalization and, at times, mobilization of U.S.-based ISIS sympathizers. The Program on Extremism has identified some 300 American and/or U.S.-based ISIS sympathizers active on social media, spreading propaganda, and interacting with like-minded individuals. Some members of this online echo chamber eventually make the leap from keyboard warriors to actual militancy. ƒ
  • American ISIS sympathizers are particularly active on Twitter, where they spasmodically create accounts that often get suspended in a never-ending cat-and-mouse game. Some accounts (the “nodes”) are the generators of primary content, some (the “amplifiers”) just retweet material, others (the “shout-outs”) promote newly created accounts of suspended users.
  • ISIS-related radicalization is by no means limited to social media. While instances of purely web-driven, individual radicalization are numerous, in several cases U.S.-based individuals initially cultivated and later strengthened their interest in ISIS’s narrative through face-to-face relationships. In most cases online and offline dynamics complement one another. ƒ
  • The spectrum of U.S.-based sympathizers’ actual involvement with ISIS varies significantly, ranging from those who are merely inspired by its message to those few who reached mid-level leadership positions within the group.

Membership of ISIS members within the US legal system is spread across the US but New York, Minnesota, California and Texas seem to be preferred states.

ISIS members in US legal system

ISIS members in US legal system

All religions operate in the space of Ignorance. So when members of one religion criticise a follower of another, it is essentially “my ignorance” claiming to be better than “your ignorance”. However, I don’t think it is just blind prejudice or “Islamophobia” to say that the teachings of Islam are inherently more suited to be perverted and to be used to glorify and inspire gratuitous violence against “non-believers”, than the teachings of any other, current, major religion.