RUTHFULLY YOURS

From my friend Nidra Poller journalist and novelist: ”
“One of t most interesting details were the Facebook pages of Driss Oubakir Soprano. Anti-Zionist with a vengeance! Including the business about how the Jews kill Palestinian children. And Zionism lets them kill Christians like dogs.The panel truck ended its 500-meter killing spree right next to a kosher restaurant, the Maccabi. It couldn’t drive into the restaurant, it smashed into a kiosque. And here is more about a linked attack in Cambrils…..N.Poller

BARCELONA, Spain — The Catalan government said an attack in the seaside resort town of Cambrils was linked to the vehicle attack on a popular Barcelona promenade that killed 13 people, as a new arrest was made amid a manhunt for the driver in the first attack.

The region’s Interior Minister Joaquin Forn told local radio RAC1 early Friday that the Cambrils attack “follows the same trail. There is a connection.”

He did not explain what connected the attacks. He confirmed the driver in the Barcelona attack remains at large.

Forn told Catalunya Radio later Friday that a third person was arrested in connection with the Barcelona van attack that killed at least 13 people.

The suspect was taken into custody in the northern Catalan town of Ripoll, he said.

The Cambrils attack involved five suspects who carried bomb belts. Police shot and killed the suspects and detonated their explosives in a controlled blast.

Media reports said a car crashed into a police vehicle and nearby civilians and police shot the attackers, one of whom was brandishing a knife.

Police did not immediately say how the attack was carried out.

A police officer and five civilians were injured; two were in serious condition.

Police are working on the theory that the Cambrils and Barcelona attacks are connected, as well as a Wednesday night explosion in the town of Alcanar in which one person was killed.

Mayor Cami Mendoza said the suspects centered their attack on the narrow path to Cambrils’s boardwalk.

Meanwhile, a manhunt is continuing for the driver in the Barcelona attack who drove his van onto a sidewalk along the popular Las Ramblas boulevard, killing 13 and injuring over 100.

One need not go back centuries to the Muslim conquest of the Christian late classical world — the medieval Barbary corsair raids, the Ottoman yoke in Central and Eastern Europe or the slave markets of Kaffa in Tatar Muslim Crimea — to understand that this violence clearly predates the European colonial era, the creation of the modern state of Israel, or the issue of climate change.

Countries such as China, Nigeria or Kenya that are not Western, not “imperialist”, not whatever the excuses that Islamists make, are still spectacularly attacked by similar stabbings. Month on month, there seems almost nowhere that Islamic terror did not strike.

Volumes of revered Islamic texts establish in great detail the grounds of violence and oppression of non-believers and those deemed heretical. These supposed grounds — made alive daily in madrassas and mosques across the world before being acted upon by religiously-trained terrorists — are childishly dismissed by Western liberals as immaterial.

The first step towards a solution is to question the received knowledge tirelessly dished out by media pundits in the West. What is lacking is simply seeing a huge body of evidence of theological justification for Islamist terror.

How thin can excuses wear every time an atrocity is committed in the name of Islam?

When 13 people were killed and scores more injured this week in a vehicle-ramming attack in Barcelona, Spain, and stabbing men shouting “This is for Allah!” on London Bridge and in Borough Market in June, what the victims least cared about was the Western elite pontificating that the latest atrocity “had nothing to do with Islam”.

British Prime Minister Theresa May said, “It is time to say enough is enough” and promised a review of her country’s counter-terrorism strategy.

In the absence, however, of an honest and tempered look at the root causes of this terrorism, sacred or not, and a painful soul-searching by Muslims themselves of the grounds in their religion that give rise to such violence, it will never be “enough”.

On June 4, British PM Theresa May said, “It is time to say enough is enough” and promised a review of her country’s counter-terrorism strategy. In the absence, however, of an honest look at the root causes of this terrorism, and a painful soul-searching by Muslims of the grounds in their religion that give rise to such violence, it will never be “enough”. (Photo by Leon Neal/Getty Images)

One need not go back centuries to the Muslim conquest of the Christian late classical world — the medieval Barbary corsair raids, the Ottoman yoke in Central and Eastern Europe or the slave markets of Kaffa in Tatar Muslim Crimea — to understand that this violence clearly predates the European colonial era, the creation of the modern state of Israel, or the issue of climate change.

Only a fortnight ago, 29 Christian Copts were killed for refusing to say, “There is no god but Allah, and Muhammad is his prophet” while on a trip to an Egyptian monastery on May 26. Separately, an unconfirmed number of Christians were killed and taken hostage by a mix of Saudi, Pakistani, Chechen, Moroccan and local jihadists in the southern Philippines during the past few weeks. In addition, 90 people were killed in a bombing in Kabul on May 31, and 26 people were killed at an ice cream parlor in Baghdad during Ramadan. None of these massacres had anything to do with “Bush’s war” in Iraq or U.S. President Donald J. Trump’s proposed “Muslim ban”.

Here are the latest updates:

Spanish Prime Minister Marian Rajoy said the attack was “jihadi terrorism.”
A few hours ago, Spanish police killed 5 suspected terrorists in Cambrils, 120km south of Barcelona. They were reportedly wearing explosives and believed to be plotting a follow-up attack. Six civilians and one police officer were injured.
Two suspects are under arrest but neither is believed to be the driver of the van who ran down the pedestrians in the Las Ramblas shopping district popular with tourists. One is from Morocco, the other from Melilla — a Spanish enclave across the Strait of Gibraltar.
Reports reveal that victims of the attack come from 18 different countries. At least one fatality has been confirmed to be a Belgian tourist.
One of the terrorists, Moussa Oukabir, had posted on social media: “Kill all the infidels and leave only Muslims.”
His brother, Driss Oukabir, claims that Moussa stole his identity to rent the vans and that he wasn’t involved.
The explosion at a house yesterday in Alcanar which killed two is believed to be related to the attack. It was originally attributed to a gas line explosion, but police are saying the house was being used as an IED factory. Twenty-plus gas canisters were found at the scene. The premature explosion may have prompted the terror cell to act earlier than planned. Two VBIEDs could have killed considerably more.
ISIS’ Amaq news agency claimed its “soldiers” committed the attack. They are encouraging more vehicle attacks via their official social media channels.
The CIA had reportedly told Spanish police that Las Ramblas was a likely terror target two months ago.
Fog of war: Early reports that the terrorists had taken hostages in a restaurant proved to be false. A driver who drove through a police checkpoint injuring two police officers before being shot and killed is not believed to be involved in the terror attack.

This is the sixth Islamic terror attack since July 2016 in which civilians were targeted by terrorists driving vehicles: Nice, France; Berlin, Germany; Stockholm, Sweden; and twice in London.
As I reported here at PJ Media earlier this month, there have already been **eight** terror attacks this year in France.
Barcelona has been an active hub of jihadist activity in Spain. More than 30 percent of Spanish ISIS supporters radicalized and detained are from the Barcelona area. In January 2008, a major terror cell plotting to target Barcelona’s public transit system was disrupted by police.

China’s crackdown on Hong Kong’s opposition escalated Thursday as a court jailed student pro-democracy leaders. By imprisoning the three popular figures, the government is blocking them from running in the next legislative by-elections and it marks another step in the slow but relentless strangulation of Hong Kong’s freedoms.

Joshua Wong, Nathan Law and Alex Chow received sentences of six to eight months for leading hundreds of thousands of protesters who occupied the city’s downtown for 75 days in late 2014. Hong Kongers were angry that Beijing reneged on its promise to allow the city to elect its chief executive by universal suffrage. Instead of allowing an open system of nominations, Chinese authorities wanted to pick a lineup of candidates based on their loyalty to the central government.

For their role in the civil disobedience, the student leaders were sentenced last year to community service and a suspended jail term by a lower court. They completed their punishments and the case seemed to be closed. But then this year the government appealed to the High Court for tougher sentences, including jail time.

This is part of a wider effort to marginalize the opposition after September’s legislative election. Beijing was alarmed that opposition candidates, including some who called for greater autonomy for the city, won 58% of the popular vote and secured 30 of the 70 seats. The opposition had the votes and the mandate to filibuster legislation and pressure the government for more democracy.

In May, China’s third-ranking Politburo Member, Zhang Dejiang, said in a speech that Beijing was determined to consolidate its control over Hong Kong. First the National People’s Congress reinterpreted the city’s constitution, the Basic Law, to disqualify six opposition legislators, with eight more at risk of losing their seats.

With the opposition now lacking the votes to filibuster, pro-Beijing lawmakers changed the legislature’s rules to prevent future blocking of new laws. One Chinese official hailed these decisions as “the rainbow after the storm.”

Mr. Zhang also reiterated Beijing’s stand that the judiciary is subordinate to the executive branch and judges should “learn the Basic Law.” Other officials criticized Hong Kong’s use of foreign judges, who are supposedly too sympathetic to separatist elements.

Chinese officials have stepped up pressure for the city to pass antisubversion laws that would make advocating greater autonomy a crime. That would make it easier to suppress opposition politicians and their supporters.

Hong Kong now has its first political prisoners, and if Beijing has its way they will be followed by many more. That will force the city’s residents into a stark choice of whether to continue fighting for the rights China promised when it guaranteed 50 years of Hong Kong autonomy or accept that the former British colony’s special status is fading into history.

The latest European terrorist attack – by Barcelone wolves – hit a country that made a conscious choice thirteen years ago to opt for a quiet life. So much for that. One of the psychological changes that has happened since the Madrid bombings of 2004 is that Spaniards and other Europeans now accept, albeit mostly implicitly, that this is less to do with foreign policy, or foreign soldiering, than with domestic matters, such as immigration and multiculturalism.

I’ll have more to say on this subject with Tucker Carlson live on Fox News on Friday evening at 8pm Eastern/5pm Pacific. Meanwhile, here is what I had to say about the Madrid attacks in my bestseller America Alone: The End of the World As We Know It. I think most of it holds up. The mourners in the streets marched under placards bearing the single word “Basta” – “Enough”. They didn’t mean “enough” terrorism, but “enough” with Bush’s wars and being a fully participating member of the “coalition of the willing”. So the Spaniards caved, folded, walked away – and, as they learned today, for the Islamic supremacists it still wasn’t “enough”:

If the critical date for Americans in the new century is September 11th 2001, for Continentals it’s a day two-and-a-half years later, in March 2004. On the 11th of the month, just before Spain’s general election, a series of train bombings in Madrid killed over 200 people. That day, I received a ton of e-mails from American acquaintances along the lines of: “3/11 is Europe’s 9/11. Even the French will be in.” Friends told me: “The Europeans get it now.” Doughty warriors of the blogosphere posted the Spanish flag on their home pages in solidarity with America’s loyal allies in the war against terrorism. John Ellis, a Bush cousin and a savvy guy with a smart website, declared: “Every member-state of the EU understands that Madrid is Rome is Berlin is Amsterdam is Paris is London is New York.”

All wrong.

On Friday March 12th, hundreds of thousands of Spaniards filled Madrid’s streets and stood somberly in a bleak drizzle to mourn their dead. On Sunday, election day, the voters tossed out José María Aznar’s sadly misnamed Popular Party, and handed the government to the Socialist Workers’ Party. Aznar’s party were America’s principal Continental allies in Iraq; the Socialist Workers campaigned on a pledge to withdraw Spain’s troops from Iraq. Throughout the campaign, polls showed the Popular Party cruising to victory. Then came the bomb.

Having invited people to choose between a strong horse and a weak horse, even Osama bin Laden might have been surprised to see the Spanish opt to make their general election an exercise in mass self-gelding. Within 72 hours of the carnage, voters sent a tough message to the terrorists: “We apologize for catching your eye.” Whether or not Madrid is Rome and Berlin and Amsterdam and Paris, it certainly isn’t New York.

To be sure, there were all kinds of Kerryesque footnoted nuances to that stark election result. One sympathized with those voters reported to be angry at the government’s pathetic insistence, in the face of the emerging evidence, that the bomb attack was the work of Eta, the Basque nationalist terrorists, when it was so obviously the jihad boys. One’s sympathy, however, disappeared with their decision to vote for a party committed to disengaging from the war. And no one will remember the footnotes, the qualifications – just the final score: terrorists toppled a European government.

We hadn’t traveled together outside the country—the country, in our case, being Norway—all summer, so a few weeks ago we decided to plan a brief, cheap trip to somewhere else in Europe. We put together a list of our favorite cities, plus a few we haven’t yet gotten to. We checked out airfares and hotel prices. And we consulted a color-coded map of Europe that I’d run across online. The darker the color of the country, the greater the likelihood, according to experts, that it will be a terrorist target in the near future. We love Berlin and Munich, but Angela Merkel’s madness has made those cities unappealing destinations, so we crossed them off immediately. We also love Paris, but the recent terrorist attacks there, not to mention the ever-worsening immigrant crime situation and the pictures we’d seen of refugees camped out on the streets, led us to cross it off our list.

Mind you, it’s not just a matter of not wanting to be blown up. It’s about the fact that places like Paris and Berlin just don’t feel the same. It’s also about not wanting to make even a piddling contribution to the economy of a country that has pursued irresponsible immigration and integration policies. London? No. I don’t want to spend my vacation money in a country that lets in jihad-preaching imams while banning Robert Spencer.

I’d go to any of these places for work reasons, but not for a vacation. Even a war correspondent doesn’t vacation in a war zone.

A sensible choice would have been Prague or Budapest: on the color-coded map, the nations of Eastern Europe, owing to their sensible border policies, are white or pale yellow, meaning very safe. But we just didn’t feel like Eastern Europe this time around.

So we decided on Barcelona. We’d been to Spain multiple times, but never its second most-populous city. It seemed a sensible choice: it didn’t come up often in discussions of possible terrorist targets.

We were planning to go sometime around now. We’d picked out a hotel and found a decent airfare. But at the last minute, we decided that we didn’t feel sufficiently adventurous. It would have involved long days of walking and visits to several must-see places, from the Sagrada Familia to the Picasso Museum. So we opted for Copenhagen, a more familiar, closer destination, where we could drop in to our favorite bars, wander around Tivoli, and have some nice dinners.

There’s an old Cole Porter tune called “Let’s Not Talk about Love.” It’s not one of his most delightful works, but it does fall into the ample category of Porter “list” songs. Here’s an excerpt:

Let’s talk about frogs, let’s talk about toads,

Let’s try to solve the riddle why chickens cross roads,

Let’s talk about games, let’s talk about sports,

Let’s have a big debate about ladies in shorts.

And so on. And on. And on. The point soon becomes clear: let’s discuss absolutely everything. Everything! With one single, solitary exception:

But let’s not talk about love.

I’ve been thinking about Porter’s song today while watching the TV coverage of the Barcelona terrorist attack. On the BBC, on Sky News, and on CNN (I live in Norway, and therefore was unable to watch the U.S. broadcast networks), reporters and newsreaders talked about the specifics of the carnage, caused by a truck whose jihadist driver deliberately steered it off the road and onto the pavement, killing at least thirteen pedestrians. The newsfolk displayed maps of Barcelona and explained in detail where La Rambla (also known as Las Ramblas), the location of the terrorist attack, is located in relation to other major spots in the city. They showed pictures of the body-strewn avenue itself, with the corpses themselves blurred out of respect for the dead.

They discussed the popularity of La Rambla as a tourist destination, and went into some detail about the nationalities of vacationers currently thronging the city. They noted that La Rambla is Barcelona’s chief tourist street, essentially its counterpart to the Champs-Elysées in Paris, the Kufürstendamm in Berlin, Fifth Avenue in New York – and, perhaps most significantly, La Promenade des Anglais in Nice, France, where, in July of last year, eighty-six people were killed in a similar jihadist atrocity.

They pondered the apparent lack of sophistication of this particular crime, the biographical background of the truck driver, the timeline of the atrocity, the apparent speed and weight of the truck itself, and so on. They talked about the wounded, about the degree to which they had been wounded, about how many had been sent to hospitals.

But they didn’t talk about Islam. They didn’t talk about jihad. CONTINUE AT SITE

Emmanuel Macron’s victory in France’s presidential election this year marked the triumph of a steady, centrist hand over the far-right nationalism of Marine Le Pen. His presidency, moreover, was supposed to be “Jupiterian,” characterized by an aloof, dignified posture designed to exalt his office in the eyes of legislators and the public. Yet the storms and harsh realities intrinsic to governing have damaged Macron’s image.

The young president’s popularity has dropped rapidly in opinion polls. One recent survey revealed only 36 percent of French citizens were satisfied with his performance. Macron is now “more unpopular than his predecessor Francois Hollande — himself very unpopular — was after the same length of time in office,” reports The Independent. His popularity has declined about 30 points since June. A separate poll, conducted by YouGov, also found his approval rating had fallen to 36 percent.

The Jupiterian president is learning that he can’t distance himself from the consequences of trying to enact reforms. On the contrary, Macron’s ambitious agenda is forcing him down from his throne.

Consider a structural reform that Macron is proposing for the French government: He wants to streamline the law-making process by cutting the number of delegates in both houses of parliament by one-third. “We need long-term perspective,” Macron said, “but we must also act quickly and swiftly, therefore the shuffle between the two houses of parliament must be simplified.” If necessary, Macron will put the reform up for a vote by the French people. Some see this as a sign of authoritarian tendencies.

Spending and tax cuts have proven just as controversial for Macron. While Macron had hoped to institute tax cuts soon after the election in order to boost the moribund French economy, financial realities have stood in the way. Macron also wants to reduce France’s budget deficit, but to do that and cut taxes requires spending cuts. He decided to cut defense spending, a move that has been met with the disapproval of many French citizens. France’s top general resigned, and another criticized Macron’s “juvenile authoritarianism.” As it stands, Macron’s tax cuts have been delayed, his spending cuts have met much consternation, and his relationship with the military has frayed.

Other reforms in Macron’s agenda have met concerted resistance. A proposal to cut a housing benefit, which would affect hundreds of thousands of French students, met vigorous opposition from students’ unions. “Disgruntlement among students is a thorny issue,” reports the Guardian, “because the government is seeking to avoid students joining potential protests against Macron’s proposed changes to labour laws this autumn.” Macron’s labor reforms are intended to make it easier to hire and fire employees by revising a complex set of regulations.

HONG KONG—A student icon of Hong Kong’s pro-democracy movement was effectively disqualified from running for political office for five years after being jailed over protests in 2014 that drew world-wide attention.

The imprisonment of Joshua Wong, who became the skinny, bespectacled teenage face of the 79-day demonstrations demanding freer elections, is the latest move by authorities here to sweep away opponents of Beijing’s tightening control over the city. Since the protests, Mr. Wong has co-founded a new political party and has become a focal point for democracy campaigners, especially among the city’s youth.

The Court of Appeal sentenced Mr. Wong to six months in prison for taking part in an unlawful assembly in 2014, when protesters scaled security gates to access a square outside government headquarters, sparking what became known as the Occupy protests. Mr. Wong was originally sentenced to community service, which he completed, before the city’s Department of Justice filed a rare appeal, arguing that the sentence was too lenient. The harsher sentence means Mr. Wong is barred from running in local government elections until at least 2022.

Two other student leaders, Nathan Law and Alex Chow, were sentenced to eight months and seven months in prison, respectively.

Hong Kong authorities are increasingly using the legal system to silence dissent, having successfully disqualified six other pro-democracy legislators in a separate case over oath-taking, damaging the bloc’s ability to veto legislation.

The moves pave the way for controversial laws to be enacted on national security, compulsory patriotic education for schoolchildren, and, for the first time, allowing mainland Chinese laws to be enforced in a new train station for a high-speed rail line connecting Hong Kong to the mainland.

“Beijing and the Hong Kong Secretary for Justice are licking their chops at the moment,’’ said Jerome A. Cohen, director of the U.S.-Asia Law Institute at New York University. “Of course they will be “political prisoners … Their actions were political, and so was the government’s prosecution.’’

Mr. Wong and his two fellow student protest leaders “were convicted not because they exercised their civil liberties but because their relevant conduct in the protest broke the law,’’ a spokeswoman for the Department of Justice said in an email. “There is absolutely no basis to imply any political motive on the part of the Department of Justice in this case.’’

Mr. Wong, who turns 21 in October, rocketed to fame in his teens by organizing a 2012 rally that led the government to shelve plans to introduce a pro-China curriculum in Hong Kong schools.

During protests that paralyzed city streets in 2014, Mr. Wong was one of the first to camp out on highways and was a fiery voice at nightly rallies. That year, he was also on the cover of Time Magazine—the week he turned 18—as “The Face of Protest.”

Turkey has now become the first and only NATO member state that teaches “jihad” in its schools. Although the Turkish government claims that “jihad” means a “spiritual inner struggle for salvation,” the official Turkish dictionary defines it as a “war fought in the name of religion.”

“Why would a young man, indeed a young woman, would want to return to a country where there are 50,000 people in prison, including 200 journalists, opposition media is gagged, women are second class citizens, and where Darwin’s theory of evolution has been taken off academic curriculum because it contradicts teachings of Islam? To these bright young kids, returning to Turkey must appear like hopping on H. G. Wells’s ‘Time Machine’ and travelling back a few centuries.” — Fuad Kavur, London-based Turkish-British film producer.

Turkey’s Islamist strongman, President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, draws such a rosy picture of his war-torn country that his audiences might think the world’s youth, in envy, should be flocking to Turkey to breathe an air of academic excellence and freedoms. On the other hand, however, he complains of a massive brain drain in the Muslim world, including Turkey, heading to the Western countries, which he explicitly despises. A gross contradiction? Just an Islamist’s usual ideological impasse.

In a recent speech, Erdogan said that the Muslim world has been losing students to the West in a brain drain, and that this intellectual emigration must be prevented:

“On top of that, we are transferring very serious amounts of money to Western countries for this. After these students complete their academic studies, we naturally expect them to return to their countries and serve their own people. But most of the time, those finishing their schools do not return to their homelands, but stay where they received education”.

Erdogan’s diagnosis is correct. According to Cumhuriyet, an independent Turkish daily newspaper, the number of Turkish students seeking study abroad has doubled every year since 2009. At Robert College in Istanbul, a private high school, 151 of 196 seniors recently applied to study abroad. And according to the state-run news agency Anadolu, some 90,000 Turkish students go abroad annually, and spend about $1.5 billion for education. Turkey ranks 11th among countries with students getting an education abroad, according to the World Bank. Top preferred education destinations include Britain, the United States, Malta, Canada, Australia and Germany — ironically, all of them non-Muslim countries. Turkey sends more students to the United States than any other European country.

At Robert College in Istanbul, a private high school, 151 of 196 seniors recently applied to study abroad. (Image source: Wikipedia)

That is hardly surprising in a country where average schooling is a mere 6.5 years. Qualitatively, too, education standards are extremely poor in Turkey. The results of the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) education test have revealed some of the most pressing problems in Turkish education. According to the PISA findings in 2016, Turkey dropped from 44th place to 49th (out of 72 countries surveyed), compared to the last test in 2012.

The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) found that the number of Turkish 15-year-olds who scored below average on the triennial PISA test is three times higher than the number of students who scored below average in more successful countries. Some 31.2% of Turkish students below 15 years of age underperformed in mathematics, sciences and reading. In contrast, only 10% of students in countries that neared the top of the list underperformed on math, sciences and reading. Between 2012 and 2016, Turkey’s ranking dropped from 43rd in science to 52nd, and from 41st in reading to 50th.

For Erdogan, however, education has hardly anything to do with science. In a 2015 speech, he boasted that since his government came to power in 2002, the number of “imam school” students had risen sharply from a mere 60,000 to 1.2 million.