RUTHFULLY YOURS

Izmir, Turkey — It’s a done deal: the military coup has failed. President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and his AK Parti remain in power and vow to take revenge against those behind the coup.

Or, perhaps better said: against those they say are behind it.

Now that the coup has clearly failed, we can conclude that this must have been the most incompetent attempted takeover in Turkey’s troubled history. When part of the military launched their offensive last night (Turkish time), I immediately checked news channels supporting President Erdogan. Surprisingly, none of them was taken over. The only broadcaster who was taken over was TRT Haber, the state news channel. But NTV and other channels supporting Erdogan were left alone.

That was remarkable, but what struck me even more was the fact that these channels — especially NTV — were able to talk to the president and the prime minister. That’s strange, to put it mildly. Normally, when the military stages a coup, the civilian rulers are among the first to be arrested. After all, as long as the country’s civilian leadership are free, they can tell forces supportive of them what to do… and they can even tell the people to rise up against the coup.

And that’s exactly what happened. Both Prime Minister Binali Yildirim and President Recep Tayyip Erdogan called into news programs and told their supporters to go out on the streets and fight back against the soldiers. A short while later, streets in the big cities (Ankara and Izmir) were flooded with Erdogan-supporters, who even climbed on top of tanks. Fast forward a few hours and it was officially announced that the coup had failed, and that Erdogan and his AK Party remained in power. About 1500 soldiers were arrested.

As I wrote on Twitter yesterday, there were three options:

The coup was staged by a small group within the military, which would severely limit their ability to strike.
The coup was staged by the entire military, which meant Erdogan’s chances of surviving politically were extremely small.
The coup was a set-up. Think the Reichstag fire.

The main argument against option number three is that there was some very serious fighting taking place, including massive explosions. Dozens of people have been killed. If this was a fake coup, it probably was the bloodiest one ever. That’s why many people are skeptical about this option, and believe it was just an incompetent attempt at a military takeover.

The general feeling in Izmir — a city with 3 million inhabitants who are generally not pro-Erdogan at all — is that it was a real coup attempt, but that the officers behind it were incredibly amateurish. Friends on the streets and cafés are literally telling me:

It was a real attempt, but they were stupid. CONTINUE AT SITE

The almost unthinkable has happened. In a clear sign that the global warming fraud has peaked and is on the decline, an actual government agency has been abolished because it was dedicated to global warming. Andrew Follett of the Daily Caller writes:

Britain’s new government abolished its Department of Energy and Climate Change (DECC) Thursday morning, ridding the country of its global warming bureaucracy.

Officials stated that the DECC has been abolished and U.K.’s environmental policy is will be transferred to a new ministry called the Department of Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy. Some former DECC’s functions will be outright abolished, while others will be handed back to the new ministry.

Follett provides good background on the failures of green energy policy in Britain that have led to this rejection of the mission of the agency.

The backlash against British wind power occurred when the country’s government was already forced to take emergency measures to keep the lights on and official government analysis suggests the country could have insufficient electricity on a windless or cloudy days to meet demand. Brownouts and blackouts caused by wind and solar power have already impacted the U.K. (snip)

Government green energy taxes currently account for seven percent of the average household’s energy bill, according to the UK’s Office of Gas and Electricity Markets. (snip)

Polling indicates that energy prices were so high that 38 percent of British households have cut back essential purchases, like food, to pay their energy bills. Another 59 percent of homes were worried about how they are going to pay energy bills.

Governments needing to cut expenditures can find ample pickings in green energy subsidies and global warming bureaucracies.

Before the massacres in Orlando and Nice, Daryl McCann considered the ramifications and likely response of the White House’s next occupant to the slaughter of another 14 innocents by an Islamist couple in San Bernardino. As France reels yet again, his insights are no less relevant.
On December 2, 2015, Syed Farook, an American-born citizen of Pakistani descent, and his wife, Tashfeen Malik, a Pakistani-born lawful resident of the United States, armed with semi-automatic pistols and rifles, murdered fourteen people in San Bernardino, California, and seriously wounded another twenty-two. The victims of this jihadist atrocity were attending a work-based Christmas—sorry, holiday—party/luncheon. The San Bernardino massacre and the proximate response to it by key public figures, from Democratic front-runner Hillary Clinton to the Republican front-runner Donald Trump, may have shaped the 2016 presidential campaign as much as any other single event.

In the immediate aftermath of the shooting, Hillary Clinton adopted the default position of the progressive-leftist narrative about mass shootings per se in America: “I refuse to accept this as normal. We must take action to stop gun violence now.” Fellow Democratic candidate Martin O’Malley also took pains to omit any reference to radical Islamic jihadism: “Enough is enough. It’s time to stand up to the National Rifle Association and enact meaningful gun safety laws.” Bernie Sanders had a similar message: “We need to significantly expand and improve background checks.” Clinton would later pillory Sanders in a television debate for voting against the Brady Handgun Violence Protection Act to establish a national criminal background check system.

However, scrutiny of the criminal or mental health record of the jihadist husband-and-wife hit team would not in itself have found anything amiss. There is some talk of Syed Farook experiencing a “troubled” childhood, but the twenty-eight-year-old municipal health inspector was characterised by colleagues and neighbours as a mostly polite and equable fellow. In travels abroad he met and wed twenty-seven-year-old Tashfeen Malik, a pharmacology graduate from an upper-middle-class family in Pakistan. The PC-compliant authorities vetted Malik on her arrival in America and—finding everything to be in order—granted her Green Card status in 2014; a baby daughter was born in mid-2015. One of the few times the “very quiet” Farook brought attention to himself was on the occasion that he argued a little too vociferously with a work colleague that Islam was “a peaceful religion”.

Either France and the rest of us can continue on as we have, with every day Ground Hog Day in Guernica and no response better than an impotent snivel, or Western civilisation can summon the righteous anger necessary to win, not merely endure.

After the next-to-last Islamist massacre in France, Premier Mike Baird fittingly ordered that the Opera House be lit in the Tricolour. It was a moving tribute and our family went down to Circular Quay to see it, and I dutifully posted a picture of it on my Facebook page, as we do these days.

To post that picture today would, I think, only mock the 80 Bastille Day dead.

The head of France’s security and intelligence service has warned of waves of such attacks and that the Fifth Republic is itself at risk (what could be the marginal cost in version 6.0?). President Hollande said after the last atrocity that France was at war, and he has now abandoned the White House’s pointlessly nebulous ‘violent non-state actors’ charade – are there any sentient souls left on the planet who doubt what this is about? — and is calling it a spade.

But other than a few, highly publicised bombing sorties to blow up some sand dunes, there hasn’t been much evidence of that war except for the slaughter of more innocents.

In his essay, “Inside the Whale,” George Orwell referred to Aldous Huxley’s “Dream of Phillip the Second,” in which Huxley wrote that the people in El Greco’s pictures always look as though they were in the bellies of whales:

For the fact is that being inside a whale is a very comfortable, cosy, homelike thought. The historical Jonah, if he can be so called, was glad enough to escape, but in imagination, in day-dream, countless people have envied him. It is, of course, quite obvious why. The whale’s belly is simply a womb big enough for an adult. There you are, in the dark, cushioned space that exactly fits you, with yards of blubber between yourself and reality, able to keep up an attitude of the completest indifference, no matter what happens… Short of being dead, it is the final, unsurpassable stage of irresponsibility.

Either France and the rest of us can continue on as we have, Jonah-like, where every day is Ground Hog Day in Guernica, or Western civilisation can start getting all Sonny Corleone about it and summon the righteous anger necessary to win, not merely endure.

ISTANBUL—Turkey’s elected government moved to reassert control Saturday morning after an attempted coup by factions of the military rocked the country and killed dozens late Friday, with officials saying the situation was now largely under control.

Ninety people were killed and more than 1,000 were injured in the events surrounding the coup attempt, the state-run Anadolu news agency reported. A total of 1,374 military personnel were detained across Turkey as part of an investigation into the coup attempt, the agency said.

The head of Turkey’s national police told Anadolu that police were in control of Istanbul, but that the situation in Ankara, where gunfire was still heard on live television Saturday morning, was still challenging. Helicopters and airplane hangars had been bombed, said Celalettin Lekesiz, the head of police.

Istanbul, where troops had blocked two bridges over the Bosphorus and tanks appeared at the main Atatürk Airport on Friday night, was calm Saturday morning. The bridges were functioning normally, television footage showed. Turkish Airlines, the country’s flag carrier, said it was operating normally on the request of Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan.

http://www.wsj.com/articles/islamic-state-claims-responsibility-for-attack-in-nice-france-1468659227?mod=BNM

Islamic State on Saturday claimed responsibility for the attack in Nice, France on Thursday that killed 84 people.

French investigators have been trying to establish whether a Tunisian resident of this city was acting as part of a wider network when he used a rented truck to mow through 8 crowds lining the seaside promenade to celebrate France’s national holiday.

Authorities have identified the driver as Mohamed Lahouaiej Bouhlel, a 31-year-old Tunisian who was shot dead by police after carrying out the rampage.