RUTHFULLY YOURS

A new Al-Shabaab video features ISIS-style threats to strike at the West and uses George W. Bush quotes to try to lure western Muslims to jihad.

The video, an installment of a series called “Mujahideen Moments,” begins with Al-Shabaab members fishing in a river. It then cuts to a group of camouflage-clad jihadis with their faces obscured.

“Firstly I would like to send my greetings to all the Muslims around the world in general and to the Muslims who speak Swahili in specific,” says a light-skinned jihadist in the center, his face blurred. “The time has come for Muslims to wake up and fight the kuffar [disbelievers]. By Allah, we cannot return our long lost glory until we take up weapons and arm ourselves.”

“I swear by Allah, my dear brothers, the feelings of honor and dignity that we the mujahideen feel are indescribable. Even if I wanted to explain it to you I would not be able to do so,” he continues, chiding would-be recruits to “not be content with living a life of oppression under the rule of the kuffar.”

“Make hijrah [pilgrimage] and come to the lands of Islam so that you can defend this religion. We, your brothers here, are proud that we came to one of the lands of jihad, the land of Somalia, where we met with our brothers who trained us how to fight and taught us the art of war.”

Then the message takes another turn reminiscent of ISIS’ video released last weekend of the Paris attackers threatening the West.

Canadians have long thought of themselves as morally superior to the supposedly vulgar and abrasive Americans. According to the self-justifying Canadian mythos, we embody a more enlightened and humane outlook on the world. In addition to oil, maple syrup, and lumber, our most valuable export — our gift, we imagine, to our southern neighbors — is our vision of a sustainable and irenic future. Let us examine the most current incarnation of that vision.

Canada is essentially a socialist country, closer to the increasingly decrepit European welfare and statist paradigm than to the (now faltering) classic American model of individual self-reliance. Canada instituted social programs like state-funded medicine relying on major tax hikes long before it became an issue in the U.S., and gambled on multiculturalism as a viable national project, in effect, as a kind of political eschatology. There is no question that the Canadian temper has always been more politically Arcadian than the American.

The current refugee question in particular has become a pivotal and collective expression of this temper, with citizens opening their wallets, hearts, and homes to a migratory influx from the Islamic world. Our self-congratulatory generosity is amply demonstrated in the writings of celebrated Constitutional lawyer Julius Grey. Pontificating in the Montreal Gazette, Grey urges the welcoming of thousands of Syrian migrants as we proceed “to create a society which has, on the one hand, citizens of myriad origins and, on the other, no barriers between them.”

The problem that Grey refuses to confront or even identify is that immigrants and refugees from historically backward, theocratic, anti-Semitic, Sharia-dominated, and terror-sponsoring nations are precisely the ones who are creating “barriers,” such as purpose-built ghettos, no-go zones, closed neighborhoods, special privileges and spaces, an atmosphere of threat, and who have no interest in Western-style “individual autonomy and freedom” — Grey’s chosen vocabulary. Grey is the lawyer for the Muslim-friendly socialist New Democratic Party, but there is not much sunlight between the NDP and the governing Muslim-friendly Liberal Party.

Gene Poteat is a retired CIA senior scientific intelligence officer and president emeritus of the Association of Former Intelligence Officers.

Vladimir Putin killed Aleksandr Litvinenko. The November 2006 assassination was no rogue hit. Putin had the motive, means, opportunity, and power to see that this human irritant received his comeuppance. I’ve said what everyone knows but officially hesitates to declare — until now. It took gutsy British judge Robert Owen, after a long inquiry, to say publically that former KGB operative Litvinenko was killed with a dose of Polonium 210 as part of a KGB/FSB assassination. And based on the rarity of the radioactive poison used to kill him, “probably” under orders from Vladimir Putin.

Litvinenko’s assassination is only one of several. The earlier deaths included journalist/Putin-critic Anna Politkovskaya in October 2006 and opposition leader Boris Nemtsov in February 2015. Both were on the wrong side of Putin, and both suffered standard KGB eliminations – apparently “random” street shootings. This was especially easy since their deaths took place in Russia, where Putin’s cronies pulled all the investigative strings to round up the usual suspects. Which means these were in no way as thoroughly investigated as the Litvinenko case, which took place in London.

A Putinesque assassination on a grander scale was also examined recently by an exhaustive Polish Parliamentary inquiry. It examined the orchestrated 2010 plane crash in Smolensk, Russia, which [conveniently] killed Poland’s president and 96 members of the top echelon of his pro-Western government. The accident, ignored in the West as another airplane mishap, was reported later by the brave British judge as “probably” carried out under authority of Putin, yet of little significance.

If Liberals persist in endorsing the moral, cultural, and political nihilism of their current leader nothing is more certain than the emergence of an ardent movement intent on restoring the primacy of principle. Don’t believe your media courtiers, Mr Turnbull. The storm is gathering
Conservatism is in crisis. That is the conclusion drawn by leading commentators, reflecting upon the Turnbull coup in Australia, the electoral defeat of Stephen Harper in Canada, and the ongoing success of David Cameron, seen as Tory centrist. But are they right? Or are they suffering from the premature articulation of progressivist triumphalism?

According to Paul Kelly in The Australian (paywalled), writing in the afterglow of the coup, there is a powerful global trend against traditional conservative values “and Australia is a frontline test case”. Leading this alleged trend is Malcolm Turnbull, “a social progressive who champions same-sex marriage, serious action on climate change, a multicultural society, a repudiation of the monarchical trappings, and an economy, entrepreneurial and innovative, geared to aspiration.”

Kelly claims that this collection of trendy issues constitutes an alternative political platform “to that adopted by any previous Liberal Prime Minister”. It is, by his reckoning, a synthesis of “economic adaptability with social progressivity [sic], not the social conservatism of Howard and Abbott”, and Turnbull’s task, again according to Kelly, is to hold the conservative forces of the Liberal Party together while he remakes it in his own progressivist image.

While this leftward shift within the Liberal Party might lead to the disaffection of the party’s traditional conservatives at the grassroots level the line is that they have nowhere to go. Moreover, their loss will be compensated by Turnbull’s “appeal to feminists, gays, environmentalists, ethnics and youths”. Apparently these latter groups will now enthusiastically join Liberal Party branches, engage in fund-raising, and stand around on election days giving out how-to-vote cards for the newly-transformed, “progressivist” Liberal Party.

ISIS control of Libya’s Mediterranean coastline allows it not only to ship its operatives, together with Muslim refugees to Europe. ISIS expansion along the Mediterranean Seaboard of North Africa poses a growing threat to commercial shipping, cruise liners, and also oil rigging platforms offshore.

ISIS is not reported to have a navy, yet. But it does not need a large force with which to paralyze commercial shipping in the Mediterranean, or to cause tremendous ecological and environmental damage.

Vice Admiral Clive Johnstone, the UK’s highest naval officer in Nato, warned today that the ISIS jihadists are likely to use “a ‘very high-quality weapons system … quite capable Korean, Chinese and Russian hardware, to attack ships. This, he said, would have “extraordinary implications’ for the Western World.”

ISIS presence in Libya’s coastal area is not new. Nor is its growing threat to commercial navigation in the Mediterranean Seaboard of North Africa.

Last February, Seth Cropsey, a former Deputy Undersecretary of the Navy, warned in the Wall Street Journal; “ISIS’s prospects for significant naval power are remote. But small boats, fishing vessels, smugglers, and merchant craft that carry concealed weapons could hijack, sink, or rake commercial shipping, including cruise liners in the central Mediterranean.”

It is only now that the Obama administration has declared “Action in Libya is needed before Libya becomes a sanctuary for ISIS…[because] We don’t want a situation like in Iraq or Syria.” However, the steps offered by the administration are not encouraging.

According to the White House, “The president directed his national security team to continue efforts to strengthen governance and support ongoing counterterrorism efforts in Libya and other countries where ISIL has sought to establish a presence,”

It seems that Obama is not in a hurry to defeat ISIS, or stop its spread. Instead, he is said to be seeking, as always, “a political solution to get a military solution,” an unlikely outcome in Libya in the foreseeable future.