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https://www.wsj.com/articles/europes-challenge-is-decline-not-trump-11550519599

The greatest mistake Europeans can make is to believe that their biggest problem is Donald Trump.

To be fair, it’s an easy error to make. In the long annals of American diplomacy, there’s no previous instance of an American president treating close allies with anything approaching the Trumpian mix of critique and contempt.

But it’s not only Mr. Trump and his supporters whose attitudes should worry Europe. Some of Europe’s closest friends are also increasingly discouraged.

The American intellectual class once rang with inspired and sometimes envious praise of a rising Europe. In 2002 an influential Atlantic essay argued that the “rising challenger” to American primacy was “not China or the Islamic world but the European Union, an emerging polity that is in the process of marshaling the impressive resources and historical ambitions of Europe’s separate nation-states.” It warned Americans to prepare for the emergence of a new superpower on the world stage.

This is not what Europe’s friends see today. Philanthropist George Soros—one of Europe’s keenest observers and strongest defenders—predicted last week that unless things change, “the European Union will go the way of the Soviet Union in 1991.” He is far from alone among the EU’s supporters in bewailing the bloc’s inability to master its growing difficulties.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/13750/post-caliphate-isis

This ISIS penchant for high-profile cruelty is likely to continue, even against Muslims who already account for most of its victims. ISIS justifies this brutality against fellow Muslims by judging them as insufficiently orthodox in their Islamic faith, a theological tactic of attacking a fellow Muslim’s commitment to Islam that is called “takfir.”
In the foreseeable future, ISIS, because of its loss of a territorial Caliphate, will likely limit its battlefield operations to guerrilla warfare. Nevertheless, the overall thrust of ISIS propaganda will probably remain oriented to appeal to young male Muslims who feel isolated or are searching for meaning in life.

The disintegration of the Islamic State’s Caliphate — which once included large portions of Iraq and Syria — may be a strategic defeat for ISIS, yet the jihadi terrorist group is very much alive. Its ideology, tactics and objectives have not altered. ISIS remains steeped in the ideology of “salafiya jihadiyah” (Salafi jihad), which requires every Muslim to wage “holy war” in some fashion against the “infidel.”

The ideological vision of ISIS and the extremist acts which flow from that vision, such as its iconoclastic destruction of graves, sacred shrines, and cultural sites, closely resembles that of Sunni Wahhabi extremism with origins in Saudi Arabia, the source of the ISIS’s ideological conflict against the values shared by freedom loving nations. An example of this ideological affinity is ISIS’ destruction of the alleged graves of the Prophets Daniel and Jonah in the area of Mosul, Iraq in July 2014. As early as 1802, Wahhabi marauders acted similarly, destroying many shrines, graves and sacred sites in Shia Islam’s holy city of Karbala, while massacring hundreds of Shia Muslims in the process. This behavior closely resembles the comportment of ISIS operatives throughout their Caliphate territories in Iraq, where they destroyed Christian churches in Mosul, Iraq and in Syria where they demolished ancient ruins in Palmyra.

Today, ISIS remains a most brutal jihadi terrorist network, known in the West for posting horrific execution videos online. The unearthing of several mass graves in regions of Iraq and Syria once under ISIS control underscores its willingness to murder large numbers of innocents. By spreading paralytic fear, they can presumably more easily control local populations.

https://www.nationalreview.com/2019/02/venezuela-crisis-historic-lessons-spanish-civil-war/

What history tells us about the future of the crisis in Caracas

Today Venezuela is at an impasse, a term allegedly coined by Voltaire to refer to a situation devoid of exits. It has infinite inflation, four immobilized branches of government, two presidents, and the worst humanitarian crisis to hit the Americas in decades. There is sporadic violence on the streets and in improvised prisons hidden away from YouTube. What today resembles a civil war without weapons could easily escalate into bloodshed. Yet it is foreign powers and not domestic actors that will determine the country’s fate.

The Bolivarian divide runs so deep that the republic now has two presidents: Nicolás Maduro and Juan Guaidó. Maduro, elevated to power by the late Hugo Chavéz, insists that he has begun his second constitutional term, sworn in by the Supreme Court, backed by the courts and, crucially, the country’s armed forces. Guaidó is recognized by the National Assembly, the unicameral legislature that Chávez himself created when he wanted to do away with a Senate keen on opposing his accumulation of power. Hundreds of thousands of exiled Venezuelans, including former Chavista officers and representatives, support him, too.

The international media have paid scant attention to Venezuela. With rare exceptions, the crisis has seemed far away, complex, and entirely domestic to the outside world. Yet that perception is misguided: Venezuela’s crisis is no longer a mere constitutional battle; it is a power struggle among international powers.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/u-s-ally-against-islamic-state-urges-trump-to-leave-troops-in-syria-11550520213

AN AIRBASE IN NORTHEAST SYRIA—The Kurdish commander leading the fight against Islamic State in Syria urged the U.S. to reconsider its decision to withdraw all its forces and instead leave a small contingent in the country.

Gen. Mazloum Abdi, the commander of the American-backed Syrian Democratic Forces, which has seized all but the last remnants of Islamic State-held territory, said on Monday that the U.S., France and Britain should aim to leave as many as 1,500 troops from at least double that now.

Such a residual force, Gen. Abdi said, could safeguard Kurdish forces from Turkey and help eliminate Islamic State militants, who are increasingly retreating underground. Turkey views the Kurdish YPG militia—a part of the Syrian Democratic Forces—as a threat.

“I feel that American forces must remain sided with us,” he told reporters. “We don’t want them to leave Syria, but in the end it is an American decision.”

Some Islamic State militants over the weekend sought to negotiate a deal for safe passage from their last remaining territory, as they held civilians hostage.

Since President Trump in December ordered all of the more than 2,000 American troops out of Syria, many observers have speculated that the SDF, feeling betrayed by the U.S., would seek to ally itself with the Syrian leader Bashar al-Assad’s regime or with Moscow.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/party-that-promised-to-clean-up-italian-politics-find-it-a-messy-business-11550574383

ROME—Italy’s 5 Star Movement rose from a grass-roots campaign against political corruption to an election-winning party. The realities of life in government since last summer, however, are putting it under growing strain.

A vote by the party’s members on Monday to block the criminal prosecution of far-right coalition ally Matteo Salvini posed a sharp dilemma: Preserve the 5 Star’s commitment to allowing the investigation and prosecution of politicians, or protect the governing coalition with Mr. Salvini’s League.

Prosecutors want to put Mr. Salvini, who is also Italy’s interior minister, on trial for allegedly kidnapping 177 undocumented migrants last summer, when he refused to let them disembark from a ship in a Sicilian port for five days. Italy’s Senate would have to lift Mr. Salvini’s immunity from prosecution for a trial to proceed.

A Senate subcommittee is expected to recommend Tuesday that Mr. Salvini keep his immunity. A full Senate vote is expected in March.

The 5 Star Movement, which holds the balance in the Senate, had passed the decision to its grass-roots activists, more than 50,000 of whom voted on Monday on a party website. About 59% heeded the call of 5 Star leader Luigi Di Maio to protect Mr. Salvini from prosecution. Mr. Di Maio argued that Mr. Salvini acted to protect the interests of the state.

https://www.nationalreview.com/2019/02/labours-split-corbyns-decline/

Seven anti-Corbyn politicians break from the Labour party over concerns of anti-Semitism — but Brexit implications lurk in the background.

Seven members of Parliament have quit the British Labour party, citing anti-Semitism, far-left thuggery, and Brexit mishandling under Jeremy Corbyn’s leadership. The Conservative party may be increasingly shambolic, but polling shows that Labour is even less popular. The seven defectors have named themselves the “Independent Group,” and they hope more MPs will join them. Time will tell.

“I cannot remain in a party that I have today come to the sickening conclusion is institutionally anti-Semitic,” said Luciana Berger, who has endured sustained anti-Semitic attacks and accordingly had a bodyguard at the party’s annual conference last year. Chris Leslie added, “We did everything we could to save it, but it has now been hijacked by the machine politics of the hard Left.”

Jeremy Corbyn expressed his disappointment “that these MPs have felt unable to continue to work together.” But even his own deputy, Tom Watson, conceded, “I love this party but sometimes I no longer recognize it.”

Since April, the Labour party has received 673 official complaints, according to its National Executive Committee, of anti-Semitism and has suspended 96 individuals. Much of this is visible at the grassroots level, for instance, in the movement Momentum (Jeremy Corbyn’s unofficial fan club), which was described last year by a Labour backbencher as “a party within a party” full of “Trots, Stalinists, Communists, and assorted hard-left” activists for whom “anti-Semitism and anti-Zionism is fundamental to their politics and their values.”