RUTHFULLY YOURS

German successes against Denmark, Norway, Belgium and France were a product of the geopolitical situation, thanks to the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact which gave Hitler a free hand in the west. Dunkirk was a defeat, that’s true. But Churchill’s resolve to fight sowed the seed of victory.

The appearance and success of the film Dunkirk have added to the list of war films that are both impressive and harrowing, but the film has not done much to explain the significance of the episode. Indeed, precisely because of the film’s overwhelming focus on the beach and on the immediate military conflict, there is a failure to consider the wider military context let alone the political one.

In 1940, the world was provided with its greatest geopolitical crisis of the last century, one that was even graver than that in 1917-18, serious as that was. In 1918, the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk between Germany and Russia posed the threat of a new alignment, one that would enable Germany to turn all its efforts on the Western Allies (Britain, France and the United States), while Bolshevism was able to establish itself with German help. In January 1918, Arthur Balfour, the British Foreign Secretary, suggested that the Allies help anti-Bolshevik movements in Russia that “might do something to prevent Russia from falling immediately and completely under the control of Germany … while the war continues a Germanised Russia would provide a source of supply which would go far to neutralise the effects of the Allied blockade. When the war is over, a Germanised Russia would be a peril to the world.” The challenge was not ended by the close of the war. Indeed, in July 1919, the British General Staff argued, “taking the long view, it is unquestionable that what the British Empire has most reason to fear in the future is a Russo-German combination”.

The threat recurred in 1940, but in a more acute form. By the end of 1939, Germany was allied with Japan, Italy and the Soviet Union, and had co-operated with the Soviet Union in conquering Poland and determining spheres of influence in Eastern Europe, which left the independent states there with few options. The United States was neutral. Britain and France, while supported by their mighty empires, were reduced to dubious hopes of long-term success, in particular through a blockade that was in practice not going to work due to the Russo-German alignment.
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German successes in early 1940, first against Denmark and Norway, and subsequently against the Netherlands, Belgium, France and Britain, were a product of the existing geopolitical situation, because Germany was able to fight a one-front war and thus maximise its strength. In short, Stalin was the root cause of the German triumph in the West in 1940. In 1939, by allying with Hitler, Stalin had followed Lenin in 1918 by joining the cause of international communism to that of state-advancement in concert with Germany.

This process was greatly facilitated by a shared hostility to Britain and its liberalism. This hostility stemmed from a rejection of liberal capitalism as a domestic agenda for liberty and freedom, but also hostility to it as an international agenda focused on opposition to dictatorial expansionism. Just as Britain had fought to protect Belgium in 1914, and had intervened in favour of Estonia and Latvia in 1919-20, so it went to war in 1939 in response to the invasion of another weak power, Poland.

The past rarely repeats itself, as comparisons between the German offensives in 1870 and 1914, and 1918 and 1940 indicate, or, indeed, between the Russo-German combination in 1939–41 and more recent relations between the two powers. German success in the field in 1940 owed much to the serious deficiencies of French strategy and planning, especially the deployment of mechanised reserves on the advancing left flank so that, in practice, they were not available in a reserve capacity, and, linked to this, the absence of defence-in-depth. French failures magnified German efforts at innovation, efforts which were subsequently in the war to be revealed as inadequate against defence-in-depth.

And so to Dunkirk. The problem with war is ultimately that of forcing opponents to accept your will. That is the outcome sought. Output, the “boys and toys” of killing and conquest, is important to the process, but only if linked to a political strategy that will deliver the outcome. That strategy involves maximising international advantages, as the Germans did in 1939 and continued to do in 1940 with Italy’s entry into the war, and dominating the political agenda of your opponent’s society.

Perhaps the most astonishing thing about Angela Merkel is her immunity to the political consequences of her decisions. Contrary to all promises, the cost of power has soared, yet this has not impacted her popularity. As to the 1.5 million migrants she has admitted, they haven’t budged the polls at all

In Barack Obama, Merkel had found a younger partner sharing her basic views about climate and social values, a man of mostly talk and little substance. Merkel increased the resources for a government-funded network, WBGU (Scientific Council to the Government, for Global Environmental Policy). The goal was set of a global transformation of the capitalist system in the ecological direction. The Germans on the board included Joachim Schellnhuber, Nebosja Nakicenovic, Ottmar Edenhofer and Claus Leggewie, all well -known to be left-wing.

In 2009, a conference was held in Essen ‘The Great Transformation’. In addition to German ministers, Obama’s Chief Councelor John Podesta and William Antholis from the Brookings Institution were in attendance. Lord Giddens, one of Tony Blair’s closest ideologists, was a speaker. The conference was about values ​​and lifestyles in a globalized interdependent world – how governments through ‘nudge’ could reprogram their people’s brains to make them choose a ‘sustainible lifestyle’. The conference was summarized thus:

Decarbonization of the whole society, through use of renewable energy.
Implementation of the Öko-Soziale Markwirtschaft (a euphemism for a planed economy)
People should avoid using private cars, travel as little as possible.
A vegetarian lifestyle was proposed, proteins from insects are more sustainable than eating meat. Eat bugs.
Organize society more like ant heaps – it’s resilient.
It is doubtful if this vision of the future would be possible to implement in a democratic society. It would be necessary to consider appointing a global expert council who can make important long-term decisions without risking disturbances of short-term populist ideas.

The conference had 500 participants, including four ministers, but had almost no impact at all in the media. Only four journalists attended.
Part I of this series: click here

In the 2009 elections, the FPD (Free Democrat Liberal Party) won more than 15%, becoming the natural coalition partner for CDU, instead of the Social Democrats. The FDP had promised significant tax cuts and a reassessment of the former nuclear-decommissioning policy by 2022. They also wanted to limit wind and solar development because the exorbitant cost of subsidies (EEG). In 2000 it was claimed that the EEG would cost the typical household the equivalent to one scoop of ice cream per month, or 3.5 cents per kWh. Merkel promised not only that the EEG would not only not rise any further, it would be capped and subsequently lowered. That promise was false. Today, in 2017, the EEG is expected to cost about 6.88 cents per kWh. The total cost of Energiewende in Germany until 2030 is estimated at least EUR 1,000 billion. It seems to be an economic apocalypse. German households now, next to Denmark, have the world’s highest electricity costs. At the same time, carbon dioxide emissions have not decreased at all over the last three years. Fossil fuel power is always needed as back-up.

Even as Germany is increasingly cracking down on criticism of Islam, it appears prepared to give a genuine Islamic terrorist group the opportunity to win seats in its parliament.

In a remarkable decision taken at the end of August, Germany’s Interior Ministry declined to bar the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) — listed as a terrorist organization by the US, Canada, the European Union, and Australia — “from campaigning as a political party in the September general election to the Bundestag.”

Yes, the PFLP — on a joint list with the Marxist-Leninist Party — plans to field candidates in this month’s elections in Germany and run for Parliament.

What is the PFLP? Formed shortly after Israel’s Six-Day War through the merger of three militant groups — The Young Avengers (Palestinian nationalists), The Heroes of the Return (based in Lebanon), and the Palestinian Liberation Front (which operated largely out of Syria and the West Bank) — it is today, after Fatah, the second largest faction in the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO). Described variously as a blend of “Palestinian nationalism with Marxist ideology” and as “a Palestinian nationalist organization with different ideological outlooks at different times (from Arab nationalist, to Maoist, to Leninist),” it has called for Israel’s destruction and international communist revolution.

Considered more radical than Fatah, it has, ever since its founding, routinely targeted civilians without remorse. During its early days, it was on friendly terms with Germany’s Red Army Faction (the Baader-Meinhof Gang) and received funding from the USSR and China. In recent years the PFLP has been chummy with Iran.

Coming soon to Germany’s Parliament?
Pictured: Terrorists of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) in Jordan, in 1969. (Image source: Library of Congress/Thomas R. Koeniges/LOOK/Wikimedia Commons)

Half a century ago, the PFLP specialized in hijacking planes — it was the first Palestinian group to do so, and the first successfully to commandeer an El Al plane. That act, in 1968, is widely considered to mark the beginning of the modern era of international Islamic terrorism. On a single day in September 1970, its members hijacked three passenger flights headed from European airports to New York. In 1972, a PFLP member took part in the Lod Airport Massacre, in which 28 people were murdered at what is now called Ben Gurion International Airport. In October 2001, it assassinated Israeli Tourism Minister Rehavam Ze’evi in retaliation for Israel’s killing of its top leader at the time, Abu Ali Mustafa (after whom the group’s militant wing is now named).

During the next few years, the PFLP focused on suicide bombings in Israel; more recently, it has kept busy firing rockets into Israel from the Gaza Strip.

In November 2014, two PFLP associates murdered six people in a synagogue massacre in Jerusalem. On June 16 of this year, it collaborated with Hamas on a fatal attack in East Jerusalem; on July 14, it murdered two Israeli police officers in Jerusalem’s Old City and bragged that its “heroic operation” had successfully broken through “the security cordon imposed by the Israeli occupation forces on the city of Jerusalem and Al-Aqsa, breaking the arrogance of the Zionist security which sees in the city and in Al-Aqsa an impenetrable fortress.”

The suspected Islamist terror attack on a restaurant in Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso, on August 14 made headlines briefly, until the carnage in Barcelona took center stage three days later. The killing of 18 people in the capital of the small francophone country was practically a mirror image of the terror attack that left 29 dead in a hotel in Burkina Faso in January 2016. Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM) claimed responsibility for that assault.

In both cases coverage focused on the infiltration of jihadist extremists who are prepared to shed innocent blood to keep Westerners and Western investment out of the country and who are committed to paving the way, in the manner of ISIS and Boko Haram, for the eventual establishment of an Islamic caliphate on the African continent

Meanwhile, flying well below the radar is what some call the “Arabization” of Burkina Faso and other poor and underdeveloped African countries with significant Muslim populations. It takes the form of scholarships offered to impoverished youth who are invited to study in Saudi Arabia, Qatar, or Kuwait. They return schooled in a far more rigid, intolerant form of Islam. It clashes with the tranquil, easygoing ways of the faith as it has developed in certain African cultures, where it has been shaped by the peaceful strands of Sufism and mixed with animist beliefs and practices. “Arabization” is an effort to purify Islam according to the strict standards of the Wahhabi and Salafi sects.

That push is evident also in the work of non-governmental organizations from the Arabian Peninsula that are active in Burkina Faso. Prominent among them is Qatar Charity, one of the biggest Persian Gulf aid organizations. It is active in numerous countries, including the United Kingdom and France. The U.S. government has accused Qatar Charity of financing al-Qaeda. In Burkina Faso, Qatar Charity and similar NGOs operate subtly: Development projects, such as the digging of wells, go hand in hand with bringing preachers into the country from Pakistan and Qatar; the NGOs also build Koranic schools and social centers that help promulgate Wahhabism.

NGOs provide funding for the repair and construction of roadways, with projects often undertaken on the condition that local authorities allow for the building of mosques every so many miles — mosques run by highly conservative if not radical imams who are chosen by the NGOs. These NGOs work on hundreds of projects each year, all of them designed to benefit only the country’s Muslim population.

This Arabization is not necessarily tantamount to radicalization, at least not at this relatively early stage. Nonetheless, the import of stricter forms of Islam poses a threat to the comity that has long existed between Burkina Faso’s Muslims, about 60 percent of the population, and its Christians, just under a quarter.

Particularly at the village level, the unique bond between Catholics and Muslims has been expressed in their celebration of each other’s major feast days and other important occasions, such as the appointment of a new bishop. But since Arabization, a certain chill has begun to affect these bonds of friendship, particularly where the newly constructed mosques dot the cityscapes. This new wariness also reflects resentment that, although the Muslim majority holds economic power in the country, two Christians — President Roch Marc Christian Kaboré and Prime Minister Paul Kaba Thieba, both of them Catholics — steer the ship of state.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s decision to fling open the doors of Germany to more than a million migrants from the developing world baffled many. Although only a minority of these migrants were refugees fleeing persecution, with most of them seeking instead the chance of economic opportunities in Europe, it is widely believed that Mrs Merkel saw the presence of at least a proportion of Syrian refugees amongst their number as an opportunity finally to shake off the spectre of her country’s belligerent past and recast its reputation as a nation governed instead by conscience and compassion.http://www.melaniephillips.com/the-axis-of-destruction/
What she triggered, however, was political and social crisis. The migrants brought with them a disproportionate amount of violence, mainly sexual and directed at German women and girls. The political crisis was perhaps not so much in Germany, where she is ahead in pre-election opinion polling, but more widely in Europe where the combination of the Merkel gesture, the knowledge that many more millions were trying to get to Europe and the EU’s own free movement rule raised the spectre of an unmanageable flood of migrants causing social chaos and destroying European identity itself.
As Robert Curry points out sharply in this article: “In World War II, Germany’s conquest of Europe and subsequent defeat left the continent in ruins. This time, however, Germany’s actions seem designed to bring about Europe’s destruction by inviting conquest rather than by initiating it”.
Curry makes the equally sharp point that, far from being on the same historic page as Britain, France and America in the creation of modern western civilisation, Germany stood against it long before the horrors of Nazism. While Britain, France and America produced the Enlightenment, Germany produced the counter-Enlightenment.
Actually, there were significant differences within the Enlightenment itself in that, while Enlightenment thinking in Britain lay squarely within the context if Biblical morality, the French version was militantly atheistic, creating some of the distorted thinking in the west that passes for modern progressivism today. But most of that distortion can be traced back to German Romanticism that rejected Enlightenment thinking, and which led Germany to become such a problem for the west.
With Germany such a weak link in the chain, the enemies of the west understand very well that mass migration is the way they can destroy it through what might be called demographic colonialism. Turkey’s President Erdogan, who has said in terms that mass migration is the way to conquer the west for Islam, has his thumb on the migration spigot. He is threatening to release it and flood Europe with more Muslim migrants, thus blackmailing the EU to grant Turkey membership – and thus flood Europe with more Muslim migrants.
And now Dr Mordechai Kedar, the Middle East and Islam expert who thinks out of the box, has presented a yet more chilling scenario. He suggests that Iran and Russia plan to destroy western Europe, the US and Canada through a new wave of millions of Syrian Sunnis fleeing the Shi’ite takeover of Syria.
He writes that the millions of Syrian refugees who have fled the civil war will not be able to return once hostilities finally end, for two reasons: first, the place is in ruins, and second, they will be in justified fear of the new rulers of Syria – Shi’ite Iran.
“Iran has been moving Shiites from Iraq, Iran and Afghanistan to Syria for a long time in a clear attempt to change the demographic makeup of the country from the Sunni majority it had before the civil war broke out in 2011. The issue could not be more clear because it is no secret that the pre-civil war Sunni majority considered the Alawite rulers heretic idol worshippers who had no right to live in Syria, much less rule over it.

The nuclear confrontation between the US and North Korea entered a critical phase Sunday with North Korea’s conduct of an underground test of a thermonuclear bomb.

If the previous round of this confrontation earlier this summer revolved around Pyongyang’s threat to attack the US territory of Guam, Sunday’s test, together with North Korea’s recent tests of intercontinental ballistic missiles capable of reaching the continental US, was a direct threat to US cities.

In other words, the current confrontation isn’t about US superpower status in Asia, and the credibility of US deterrence or the capabilities of US military forces in the Pacific. The confrontation is now about the US’s ability to protect the lives of its citizens.

The distinction tells us a number of important things. All of them are alarming.

First, because this is about the lives of Americans, rather than allied populations like Japan and South Korea, the US cannot be diffident in its response to North Korea’s provocation. While attenuated during the Obama administration, the US’s position has always been that US military forces alone are responsible for guaranteeing the collective security of the American people.

Pyongyang is now directly threatening that security with hydrogen bombs. So if the Trump administration punts North Korea’s direct threat to attack US population centers with nuclear weapons to the UN Security Council, it will communicate profound weakness to its allies and adversaries alike.

Obviously, this limits the options that the Trump administration has. But it also clarifies the challenge it faces.

The second implication of North Korea’s test of their plutonium-based bomb is that the US’s security guarantees, which form the basis of its global power and its alliance system are on the verge of becoming completely discredited.

In an interview Sunday with Fox News’s Trish Regan, former US ambassador to the UN John Bolton was asked about the possible repercussions of a US military assault against North Korea for the security of South Korea.

Regan asked, “What are we risking though if we say we’re going to go in with strategic military strength?… Are we going to end up with so many people’s lives gone in South Korea, in Seoul because we make that move?” Bolton responded with brutal honesty.

“Let me ask you this: how do you feel about dead Americans?” In other words, Bolton said that under prevailing conditions, the US faces the painful choice between imperiling its own citizens and imperiling the citizens of an allied nation. And things will only get worse. Bolton warned that if North Korea’s nuclear threat is left unaddressed, US options will only become more problematic and limited in the years to come.

This then brings us to the third lesson of the current round of confrontation between the US and North Korea.

The policy positions of Merkel and Schulz on key issues are virtually identical: Both candidates are committed to strengthening the European Union, maintaining open-door immigration policies, pursuing multiculturalism and quashing dissent from the so-called far right.

Merkel and Schulz both agree that there should be no upper limit on the number of migrants entering Germany.

Merkel’s grand coalition backed a law that would penalize social media giants, including Facebook, Google and Twitter, with fines of €50 million ($60 million) if they fail to remove offending content from their platforms within 24 hours. Observers say the law is aimed at silencing critics of Merkel’s open-door migration policy.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel, leader of the Christian Democratic Union (CDU), is on track win a fourth term in office after polls confirmed she won the first and only televised debate with her main election opponent, Martin Schulz, leader of the Social Democratic Union Party (SDP).

A survey for the public broadcaster ARD showed that 55% of viewers thought Merkel was the “more convincing” candidate during the debate, which took place on September 3; only 35% said Schulz came out ahead.

Many observers agreed that Schulz failed to leverage the debate to revive his flagging campaign, while others noted that Schulz’s positions on many issues are virtually indistinguishable from those held by Merkel.

Rainald Becker, an ARD commentator, described the debate as, “More a duet than a duel.”

“Merkel came out as sure, Schulz was hardly able to land a punch,” wrote Heribert Prantl, a commentator at Süddeutsche Zeitung. “The candidate is an honorable man. But being honorable alone will not make him chancellor.”

Christian Lindner, leader of the classical liberal Free Democrats, compared the debate to “scenes from a long marriage, where there is the occasional quarrel, but both sides know that they have to stick together in the future, too.”

Television presenter Günther Jauch, writing in Bild, said he had hoped to “at least understand what differentiates Merkel and Schulz in political terms. Instead, it was just a conversation between two political professionals who you suspect could both work pretty seamlessly in the same government.”

Radio and television host Thomas Gottschalk said that the two candidates agreed with each other too often: “They were both always nodding their heads when the other was speaking.”

Germany’s general election is scheduled for September 24. If voters went to the polls now, Merkel’s CDU, together with its Bavarian sister party, the Christian Social Union (CSU), would win 39%, according to a September 4 Politbarometer survey conducted for the public broadcaster ZDF.

Coming in second, Schulz’s SDP would win 22%; the classical liberal Free Democrats (FDP) 10%; the far-left Linke 9%; the Greens 8% and the anti-immigration Alternative for Germany (AfD) 8%.

The poll also found that 57% of respondents said they preferred that Merkel serve another term; only 28% favored Schulz to become the next chancellor. Nevertheless, half of Germany’s 60 million voters are said to be undecided, and some pollsters believe that the country’s huge non-voting population may determine the outcome.

Israel launched airstrikes on a military compound in Syria on Thursday, and the bombing should alert the Trump Administration as much as the Syrians. They carry a warning about the next war in the Middle East that could draw in the U.S.

Israel doesn’t confirm or deny its military strikes, but former officials said they were aimed at a base for training and a warehouse for short- and midrange missiles. The strikes also hit a facility that the U.S. cited this year for involvement in making chemical weapons.

The larger context is the confrontation that is building between Israel and Iran as the war against Islamic State moves to a conclusion in Syria and Iraq. Iran is using Syria’s civil war, and the battle against ISIS, as cause to gain a permanent military foothold in Syria that can threaten Israel either directly or via its proxies in Syria and Lebanon.

Tehran has helped Hezbollah stockpile tens of thousands of missiles that will be launched against Israel in the next inevitable conflict. If it can also dominate southern Syria, Iran can establish a second front on the border near the Golan Heights that would further stretch Israel’s ability to defend itself.

Israel may have to make more such strikes in Syria because Iran isn’t likely to give up on this strategic opening. Iran’s Revolutionary Guards know they have Russia’s backing in Syria, and the U.S. is signaling that it is loathe to do anything to change that once Islamic State is routed from Raqqa.

“As far as Syria is concerned, we have very little to do with Syria other than killing ISIS,” President Trump said Thursday at a White House press conference with the emir of Kuwait. “What we do is we kill ISIS. And we have succeeded in that respect. We have done better in eight months of my Presidency than the previous eight years against ISIS.”

Great, but the problem is that the end of ISIS won’t bring stability to Syria, and American interests in the Middle East don’t end with ISIS. The danger of a proxy war or even a direct war between Iran and Israel is growing, and it will increase as Iran’s presence builds in Syria. Mr. Trump may not like it, but he needs a strategy for post-ISIS Syria that contains Iran if he doesn’t want the U.S. to be pulled back into another Middle East war.

The September 6 ruling, which has been hailed as a victory for European federalism, highlights the degree to which the European Union has usurped decision-making powers from its 28 member states. The ruling also showcases how the EU’s organs of jurisprudence have become politicized.

Many so-called asylum seekers have refused to relocate to Central and Eastern Europe because the financial benefits there are not as generous as in France, Germany or Scandinavia.

“Let us not forget that those arriving have been raised in another religion, and represent a radically different culture. Most of them are not Christians, but Muslims. This is an important question, because Europe and European identity is rooted in Christianity. Is it not worrying in itself that European Christianity is now barely able to keep Europe Christian? If we lose sight of this, the idea of Europe could become a minority interest in its own continent.” — Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán.

The European Union’s highest court has rejected a complaint by Hungary and Slovakia over the legality of the bloc’s mandatory refugee quota program, which requires EU member states to admit tens of thousands of migrants from Africa, Asia and the Middle East.

The European Court of Justice (ECJ) ruled that the European Commission, the powerful executive arm of the European Union, has the legal right to order EU member states to take in so-called asylum seekers, and, conversely, that EU member states have no legal right to resist those orders.

The September 6 ruling, which has been hailed as a victory for European federalism, highlights the degree to which the European Union has usurped decision-making powers from its 28 member states. The ruling also showcases how the European Union’s organs of jurisprudence have become politicized.

Opponents of the relocation scheme say that decisions about the granting of residence permits should be kept at the national level, and that by unilaterally imposing migrant quotas on EU member states, unelected bureaucrats in Brussels are seeking to force the democratically elected leaders of Europe to submit to their diktat.

The dispute dates back to September 2015, when, at the height of Europe’s migration crisis, EU member states narrowly voted to relocate 120,000 “refugees” from Italy and Greece to other parts of the bloc. This number was in addition to a July 2015 plan to redistribute 40,000 migrants from Italy and Greece.

Of the 160,000 migrants to be “shared,” nine countries in Central and Eastern Europe were ordered to take in around 15,000 migrants. Although the Czech Republic, Hungary, Romania and Slovakia voted against the agreement, they were still required to comply.

Since then, several states have refused to accept their assigned quotas of migrants. Poland, for example, has a quota of 6,182 migrants, not one of whom has been admitted. The Czech Republic has a quota of 2,691 migrants, of whom only 12 have been taken. Hungary has a quota of 1,294, none of whom has been admitted.

In the EU as a whole, so far only around 25,000 migrants have been relocated (7,873 from Italy and 16,803 from Greece), according to the EU’s latest relocation and resettlement report, published on July 26, 2017. Of the 28 EU member states, only Latvia and Malta have taken in their full quotas — a combined total of 469 migrants.

Many so-called asylum seekers have refused to relocate to Central and Eastern Europe because the financial benefits there are not as generous as in France, Germany or Scandinavia. Hundreds of migrants who have been relocated to Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania, which rank among the poorest countries in the EU, have since fled to Germany and other wealthier countries in the bloc.

Hungary and Slovakia, backed by Poland, argued that the European Union broke its own rules and exceeded its powers when it approved the quota system with a “qualified majority” — around two thirds of the bloc’s members. They also argued that the relocation scheme is a direct violation of the European Union’s Dublin Regulation, a law that requires people seeking refuge within the EU to do so in the first European country they reach.