RUTHFULLY YOURS

Two weeks after the failed coup and President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s subsequent mass purge, three facts seem clear. Turkey has ceased to be a democracy in any conventional sense. The army’s reputation and cohesiveness have suffered a massive blow, with uncertain consequences for its operational effectiveness. Most importantly, Turkey’s foreign policy and regional security strategy will become more difficult to predict and less amenable to Western interests.

The military that has long served as a trusted unifying force for the country is deeply divided, diminished and discredited. Hundreds of its senior officers are under arrest. Almost 1,700 have been dishonorably discharged, including 40 percent of all active-service generals and admirals. That once staunchly Kemalist army, which had been for nine decades one of the key institutions of the Turkish state and society, is gone. It is likely to emerge from the purge as a pliant instrument under Erdogan’s direct control—a hundred reliable colonels have already been promoted to generals—and not a suprapolitical institution accountable to the prime minister’s office as before. This change requires a constitutional amendment, which may well pave the way for the new constitution which would grant Erdogan unprecedented executive powers.

Some operational consequences of the purge are already apparent. James Clapper, the U.S. director of national intelligence, said on Thursday at the Aspen Security Forum in Colorado that it is hindering Turkey’s cooperation in the U.S.-led fight against Islamic State. He and head of U.S. Central Command General Joseph Votel said that many Turkish officers who cooperated with the American military in anti-ISIS operations have been removed or jailed. The future of the key Incirlik Air Base, from which the U.S. conducts attacks against Islamic State targets in Iraq and Syria, is uncertain. Already last year security concerns caused Air Force commanders to restrict movement of U.S. personnel to a small area surrounding the base. This year the voluntary departure of family and dependents became mandatory. Air attacks were temporarily suspended or reduced following the coup, the base was left without power for almost a week, and its commander was taken off the premises in handcuffs. Of immediate concern was the fact that some 50 B-61 hydrogen bombs are stored in Incirlik’s underground vaults, NATO’s largest nuclear storage facility. Having those 170-kiloton weapons in a volatile region, with many of the trusted officers in Turkey’s military purged or jailed, and Erdogan in full charge in Ankara, presents a security risk. To put it mildly, as former NATO Supreme Allied Commander James Stavridis did in a Foreign Policy article on July 18, “this poses a very dangerous problem”:

Unfortunately, it is likely that the military in the wake of the coup will be laser-focused on internal controversy, endless investigations, and loyalty checks—and simply surviving as an institution. This will have a chilling effect on military readiness and performance. While some operations have resumed at the crucial Incirlik Air Base, cooperation is already frozen across many U.S. and NATO channels.

After many years of a gradual erosion of the secular state, the Turkish government has been sprinting towards Islamist tyranny since the failed coup attempt. The response of Donald Trump to this new reality is unsettling, to say the least.

He declined to commit a potential Trump administration to opposing the Erdogan government’s crackdown, using the Islamist line that the U.S. lacks the moral authority to criticize other countries’ human rights abuses.

In an interview with the New York Times after the coup failed, Trump said he “give[s] great credit to him [Erdogan] for being able to turn that around” and marveled at the scenes of protestors stopping the involved military personnel. Hillary Clinton opposed the coup while standing by criticism of the Turkish government.

The reporter pointed out to Trump that Erdogan has used the coup as a pretext for a massive crackdown, arresting 50,000 people, removing major elements of the judiciary and suspending thousands of teachers.

Clarion published a stunning accounting of the purge. Now, the regime just shut down another 130 media outlets and kicked out 1,700 members of the military.

Trump did not speak out against these purges and said that opposing the Islamist tyranny in Turkey would not be a part of his administration’s agenda. He did, however, say there “may be a time when we can get much more aggressive on that subject…We’re not in a position to be more aggressive. We have to fix our own mess.”

Amina al-Jeffrey was born in Swansea, UK, and taken at age 16 to Saudi Arabia by her father, who disapproved of her Western lifestyle.

Now 21, she is fighting a court battle in the High Court in London against her father to be allowed to return to the UK.

She alleges that her father, Mohammed al-Jeffrey, put “metal bars” on her bedroom and described being a “locked-up girl with a shaved head.”

Still a judge in the High Court, Justice Holman, has asserted, “We have to be careful about asserting the supremacy our cultural standards.”

Holman also said that it is unclear whether or not Britain had jurisdiction in the matter since al-Jeffrey was an adult with dual Saudi and UK citizenship.

Al-Jeffrey said her father hit her, deprived her of water and forced her to urinate in a cup.

Although “metal bars are no longer in her room” according to her lawyers, “she is still locked up in the house” and “not allowed to use the phone or internet.”

“Steps need to be taken to ensure Ms. Jeffery is returned to the UK where her safety can be guaranteed,” the Foreign Office Forced Marriage Unit said in a statement.

“Her treatment has extended to depriving her of food and water, depriving her of toilet facilities, physical assault and control of her ability to marry who she wishes and creating a situation in which she feels compelled to marry as a means of escape,” Henry Setright, a lawyer acting on behalf of al-Jeffrey said in a statement.

Fr Jacques Hamel, murdered today by Islamists in Normandy, was 84, and in his life would have seen his country transformed, from the Occupation to the Thirty Golden Years and through to this modern unhappy age. I can’t imagine that a young priest in the age of the Piuses would have expected to end his life in such a manner, near to where Joan of Arc was martyred, but then Europeans are getting used to things that a few decades ago would have been absurd.

After the war, Europeans thought they could escape history, and retire to a secular, progressive world in which historical conflicts of identity would be a thing of the past. But instead of fascism and communism, even older, more retrograde ideologies have sprung up, and history goes on.

Christianity might be dying of indifference in western Europe but elsewhere it remains a living part of history, and that story includes persecution. Being a priest or a religious remains a dangerous task – earlier this year four nuns in Yemen were murdered, while a number of priests and bishops have been killed in Syria; likewise in Iraq, where some 60 churches were bombed during the conflict, the worst incident being the 2010 Our Lady of Salvation massacre where 52 men, women and children were slaughtered by a then little known outfit called the Islamic State of Iraq. The survivors were given asylum in France, which has always been especially generous towards eastern Christians.

In recent years the most dangerous place to be a priest has been Mexico, where the endless drug wars have put different types of bad guys in positions of power; but there is no doubting that Islamic intolerance remains the greatest threat to churchmen worldwide, as it does to Christians. Islamists have previously concocted plots to attack churches in France, but now that it has finally happened the future seems daunting.

France has several thousand churches still functioning to some degree or other (it has 40,000 in total, but population decline and secularisation put pay to many long ago) so it would be physically impossible to guard them in the way synagogues are now sadly protected in that country.

It’s hard not to be extremely pessimistic about the situation in Europe, for identity-based violence has a momentum of its own, and it is difficult to imagine we’ll get through this summer without more horror in France or Germany.

The irony is that many angry young Islamists are especially hostile to Christianity, yet this new wave of violence is a product of the very openness that Christianity brought to Europe. As Tom Holland explained in this magnificent essay:

‘Even today, with pews across Europe increasingly empty, the attempt to fashion an inclusive and multi-faith future for the continent remains shadowed by a paradox: that it has patently been grounded in Christian doctrines. The inheritance of Christendom, even when most assertively repudiated, has proven a hard one to buck. The Bible, for all that it might be deployed to mandate the violence of warrior-kings and crusaders, was not only a tool of the mighty. It served as well to endow the weak, the poor, and the needy with a value that they had never before possessed. “You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy.’ But I say to you, ‘Love your enemies . . .’” Such a command, like many that Jesus gave, might seem so counterintuitive as to appear impossible to fulfill; and yet for all that, and however little many may have paused to contemplate its ultimate derivation, it has provided elites across Europe, in their efforts to accommodate immigrants from outside the Christian tradition, with their moral lodestar.’

On learning that 86-year-old Father Jacques Hamel had murdered in his own church in a village near Rouen by Islamist demons who stormed in during Mass and slit his throat, the president of the World Jewish Congress issued a heartfelt message of condolence:

“This morning, my thoughts and prayers are with the victims of yet another atrocious attack, and with the good people of France who sadly have become so familiar with the reality of terrorism in recent months.

Alas, there is no respite. Every day, these terrorists make it abundantly clear to the world that nothing is sacred to them, that they will not shy away from any execrable affront to the most basic values of our society.

Let’s be clear: this is not a war between religions, but between good and evil. We must stand as one in the face of this great threat. We must not be intimidated, but cherish our freedom, including the freedom to worship. We must speak out and not be silent. We must defend each other, and we must look after one another: one religious community after the other, one country after the other. This evil scourge won’t be defeated unless we are united in our resolve to defeat it.”

“Not a war between religions”.

Many might disagree.

Though perhaps not this chap Sutherland.
He’s one of the political elites who wants Europe to be ever more f*cked culturally enriched.

Remember this?:

And clearly not the Pope:

‘Pope Francis has warned that a recent wave of jihadist attacks in Europe is proof that “the world is at war”. However, he stressed he did not mean a war of religions, but rather a conflict over “interests, money, resources”. He was speaking ahead of his visit to Poland to reporters seeking his comments on the murder of a Catholic priest by French jihadists on Tuesday….’

He’s now at work on Polish youth, urging them to welcome “migrants”.

Or the repellent Merkel, who has dug her heels in regarding her asylum policy, despite conceding the other day what should have been obvious from the start:

On Tuesday morning, an 85-year-old man was forced to his knees while his throat was slit by Islamic fanatics. The murder of Father Jacques Hamel in the church at Saint-Étienne-du-Rouvray, near Rouen, has been recognised by western public opinion as an act of unspeakable barbarity. One could say that the facts speak for themselves. But for Catholics, this atrocity possesses a special horror.http://www.spectator.co.uk/2016/07/islamic-fundamentalists-have-a-special-loathing-for-christianity/

Father Hamel was killed while re-enacting the death of Jesus Christ on the cross. That is the essence of the Catholic Mass, which — unlike Protestant commemorations of the Last Supper — is presented to the faithful as the same sacrifice offered by Jesus.

To kill a priest who is saying Mass is therefore an act of unique desecration. You do not need to be a believer to grasp this point. Enemies of the church have understood it since the beginning: an early pope, St Sixtus, was beheaded during Mass in 258 ad by agents of the Emperor Valerian.

Islamists, who reach back to the Dark Ages for so many of their actions, have rediscovered this crime. Their intense (and very successful) campaign to cleanse the Middle East of Christians reached its symbolic peak on 31 October 2010, when Father Thaer Abdal was shot dead at the altar of the Syrian Catholic church of Our Lady of Salvation in Baghdad. Fifty-seven other innocent people, many of them worshippers, died with him.

The gunmen who broke into the church during Sunday Mass were heard to scream: ‘All of you are infidels… we will go to paradise if we kill you and you will go to hell.’ They were members of an Iraqi faction of al-Qaeda that had declared war on churches, ‘dirty dens of idolatry’, and in particular ‘the hallucinating tyrant of the Vatican’.

The motives of Islamic terrorists are sometimes hard to disentangle from their personal biographies and factional infighting. But sometimes they are obvious, and the only thing obscuring them is the politically correct preciousness of the liberal western media and commentariat.

Many Islamic fundamentalists, including those who don’t participate directly in violence, loathe Christianity with a poisonous passion reminiscent of medieval Christian anti-Semitism. Its practice must be suppressed — either without violence, as in Saudi Arabia, or amid carefully staged scenes of bloodshed, as in Baghdad or Rouen.

How is your Merkelsommer going? For now, Britain seems to be missing the worst. True, a couple of men of Middle Eastern appearance tried to abduct a soldier near his base in Norfolk for what was unlikely to have been an interfaith dialogue session. But Britain’s geographical good fortune, relative success in limiting weapons and our justified scepticism of the undiscriminating ‘open borders’ brigade mean that we have so far been spared the delights of what Angela Merkel’s growing army of critics refer to as her summer of terror.It is now a fortnight since Mohammed Lahouaiej-Bouhlel shouted ‘Allahu Akbar’ and ploughed a truck along the Nice seafront, killing 84 people. The following Monday Mohammed Riyad, who said he was from Afghanistan but almost certainly came from Pakistan, screamed ‘Allahu Akbar’ while hacking with an axe at his fellow passengers on a Bavarian train. The next day another Mohammed, this time Mohamed Boufarkouch, shouted ‘Allahu Akbar’ and stabbed a Frenchwoman and her three daughters (aged eight, 12 and 14) near Montpelier. Mixing things up a little, that Friday’s shooter in Munich was a child of Iranians called Ali David Sonboly. Skip forward a couple of days and a ‘-Syrian asylum seeker’ with a machete was hacking a pregnant woman to death in Stuttgart. The next day another ‘Syrian asylum seeker’, Mohammad Daleel, carried out a suicide bombing outside a bar in Ansbach, Bavaria. And a little over 24 hours later two men shouting the name of Isis entered a church in Rouen during Mass, took the nuns and congregation hostage and slaughtered the priest with a knife.

Although the public know what is going on, the media seems loath to find any connection between these events. Indeed, the same papers that blame an exaggerated spike in ‘hate crime’ on everyone who voted for Brexit seem unwilling to put the blame for these real and violent attacks on the individuals carrying them out. ‘Syrian man denied asylum killed in German blast’ was the Reuters headline on the Ansbach story, neatly turning the suicide bomber into the victim and the German asylum system into the perpetrator. As Reuters went on: ‘A 27-year-old Syrian man who had been denied asylum in Germany a year ago died on Sunday when a bomb he was carrying exploded outside a music festival.’ How terrible for him to lose his bomb in such a way.

The point is that the US aid deal is really a deal for Lockheed Martin, not for Israel. And we need to say no.On Monday, acting head of the National Security Council Yaakov Nagel will sit down with his US counterpart, Susan Rice, and try to conclude negotiations about a new, multi-year defense assistance package.

We must all hope that he fails.On Monday, acting head of the National Security Council Yaakov Nagel will sit down with his US counterpart, Susan Rice, and try to conclude negotiations about a new, multi-year defense assistance package.

We must all hope that he fails.No clear Israeli interest will be advanced by concluding the aid deal presently on the table.

Indeed, the deal now being discussed will cause Israel massive, long-term economic and strategic damage. This is true for a number of reasons.

First, there is the issue of the deal’s impact on Israel’s military industries, which are the backbone of Israel’s strategic independence.

Under the current defense package, which is set to expire next year, a quarter of the US aid Israel receives is converted to shekels and spent domestically.

Reportedly, the deal now under negotiation will bar Israel from using any of the funds domestically.

The implications for our military industries are dire. Not only will thousands of Israelis lose their jobs. Israel’s capacity to develop its own weapons systems will be dangerously diminished.

Then there is the problem of joint projects.

Today, Israel receives additional US funds to develop joint projects, including the Iron Dome and David’s Sling short range missile and rocket defense programs. These programs were undertaken in response to threats that weren’t foreseen when the current deal was negotiated a decade ago.

According to reports, the deal now being negotiated denies Israel and the US the ability to fund jointly new projects or to provide supplemental funding for existing projects. All funding for all projects will be covered by the lump sum that is currently being negotiated.

Not only does this preclude new projects, it prevents Congress from exercising oversight over administration funding of existing joint projects with Israel. President Barack Obama has consistently tried to slash funding of missile defense programs, only to be overridden by Congress. Under the deal now on the table, Congress will be denied the power to override a hostile administration.

Programed as they are in feminist myth-making, journalists, young and old, often ask incredulously, “Why would western girls travel to join ISIS fighters?” “ISIS men don’t believe in equality between the sexes.”

At heart, neither do women. Not when hormones rage.

Islamic State projects strength. Strength is an aphrodisiac. Women are biologically programmed to be attracted to powerful men. That’s one reason some girls willingly put on black nose bags and flock to become ISIS brides.

Brainwashed to think biology is incidental, and that men and women are essentially interchangeable; younger readers will likely find it harder to grasp something as primordial and important as the male-female biological category.

Sheikh Muhammad Ayed has no such problem. Speaking in a deep, sonorous voice; in what sounds like classical Arabic, this imam can be observed on YouTube delivering a sermon from East Jerusalem’s Al-Aqsa Mosque. The object of Sheikh Ayed’s coruscating derision is the emasculated West. It is primed for a muscular, Muslim takeover, he argues.

Said Ayed (as translated by The Middle East Media Research Institute):

“But they have lost their fertility, so they look for fertility in their midst. We will give them fertility! We will breed children with them, because we shall conquer their countries—whether you like it or not, oh Germans, oh Americans, oh French, oh Italians, and all those like you. Take the refugees! We shall soon collect them in the name of the coming Caliphate. We will say to you: These are our sons. Send them, or we will send our armies to you.”

On its side, Islam has ascetic evangelists such as Ayed, who bow to no one.

On our side we have Father Michael Pfleger! He’s the too-hideous-to-behold, standard issue, Western preacher-cum-Obama idolater.

Pray tell: Who looks and sounds more impressive to the young and the impressionable? The impassioned, unapologetic, manly imam in flowing, Lawrence-of-Arabia robes, who channels the Word of his Prophet? Or, Father Pfleger, the soft face of the West’s ultra-liberal faith; a tool of liberal public administration; a man more eager to prostrate himself to Caesar than to serve a higher authority?

Pfleger’s ilk—the West’s priesthood—are in the four corners of the earth preaching hate for their own kind. Thus, in a week in which fifteen blacks wielding Kalashnikovs killed two white farmers in KwaZulu-Natal; another excuse-for-a-man—man-of-the-cloth Michael Vorster—was at a South-African pulpit puling about the controlling ways of “whiteness.”

Chancellor Merkel said she knows that Germans are worried about their personal safety: “We are doing everything humanly possible to ensure security in Germany,” she noted, but added, “Anxiety and fear cannot guide our political decisions.”

“The chancellor remains committed to her current course of action. A classic Merkel refrain follows: ‘There must be a thorough analysis.'” — Thomas Vitzthum, political editor of Die Welt.

“The country is split, its citizens deeply insecure? ‘We can do it!’ Sexual assaults on women in swimming pools and at festivals? ‘We can do it!’ Terrorist attacks by Islamists in Germany? ‘We can do it!’ Growing frustration and rising political apathy among the population? ‘We can do it!’ But who are the ‘we’? … Not a word to the citizens who for a year have had to deal with the consequences of the asylum onslaught. Not a word to the local communities that are unable to cope with the financial and burdens of accommodating asylum seekers.” — Editorial in the newspaper, Junge Freiheit.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel has rejected criticism of her decision to allow more than a million mostly Muslim migrants to enter Germany last year.

Speaking at an annual summer press conference in Berlin on July 28, a defiant Merkel ignored critics of her refugee policies and insisted there would be no change to her open-door migration stance. She also said she bears no responsibility for a recent spate of violent attacks in Germany.

Germany has been rattled by an axe attack on a train in Würzburg, a mass shooting in Munich, a machete attack in Reutlingen and a suicide bomb in Ansbach — all within a week.

The attacks, which left 13 dead, were all carried out by Muslims: Three of the attacks were carried out by asylum seekers and one by a German-Iranian who harbored a hatred of Arabs and Turks.

Merkel, who interrupted her summer holiday to attend the 90-minute press conference, which was pushed forward by a month, reiterated her credo: “We can do it!” (“Wir schaffen das!”). She has repeated the phrase over and over since Germany’s migration crisis exploded on September 4, 2015, when she opened up the German border to tens of thousands of migrants stranded in Hungary. She said:

“We decided to fulfill our humanitarian obligations. I did not say it would be easy. I said back then, and I will say it again now, that we can manage our historic task — and this is a historic test in times of globalization — just as we have managed so much already, we can do it. Germany is a strong country.”