RUTHFULLY YOURS

The truck was loaded with explosives and hand grenades as it plowed into a crowd celebrating Bastille Day in Nice, France, Thursday night. It was no accident: Nice authorities emphasized that it was a terror attack, which was fairly clear already from the fact that the driver exchanged gunfire with police after he rammed into the crowd.

At least eighty people are dead and 68 wounded, and Nice Mayor Christian Estrosi calls it “the worst tragedy in the history of Nice.” But given the harsh realities of the contemporary world, it probably won’t be the worst for long.

Jihadis have had their eyes on France for quite some time. The Islamic State issued this call in September 2014:

So O muwahhid, do not let this battle pass you by wherever you may be. You must strike the soldiers, patrons, and troops of the tawaghit. Strike their police, security, and intelligence members, as well as their treacherous agents. Destroy their beds. Embitter their lives for them and busy them with themselves. If you can kill a disbelieving American or European — especially the spiteful and filthy French — or an Australian, or a Canadian, or any other disbeliever from the disbelievers waging war, including the citizens of the countries that entered into a coalition against the Islamic State, then rely upon Allah, and kill him in any manner or way however it may be….If you are not able to find an IED or a bullet, then single out the disbelieving American, Frenchman, or any of their allies. Smash his head with a rock, or slaughter him with a knife, or run him over with your car, or throw him down from a high place, or choke him, or poison him….

Yes, “run him over with your car.”

Then again from the Islamic State in May 2016:

“The French must die by the thousands…. Towards paradise, that is the path….Come, brother, let’s go to paradise, our women are waiting for us there, with angels as servants. You will have a palace, a winged horse of gold and rubies….With a little rocket-launcher, you can easily get one of them… you do something like that in the name of Dawla (Islamic State), and France will be traumatised for a century.”

The French are already traumatized. The BBC reported last week that “more than 5,000 French police will be deployed at key venues in and around Paris ahead of the Euro 2016 football final between France and Portugal,” and that “there will be no victory parade if France win.” Why not? For fear of jihad terror attacks.

Jihadist Advice For Vehicle Terror: “To Achieve Maximum Carnage, You Need to Pick Up As Much Speed As You Can”
The tactic of vehicle ramming in terrorist attacks, used to such deadly effect in Nice on Thursday night, has become more prevalent with Islamic jihadists in recent years, actively encouraged in terrorist groups’ online propaganda as a simple yet effective way to kill people.

Until the attack in the southern French city, in which at least 80 people were killed when a truck plowed into crowds watching a Bastille Day fireworks display, previous such attacks have taken a far smaller toll, although some have proven fatal, especially in Israel.

In recent years the world’s two most notorious Sunni terrorist groups, Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS/ISIL) and al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP), have both drawn attention to the tactic in their respective propaganda magazines.

In a December 2014 edition of its publication, Dabiq, ISIS praised, among others, Martin Couture-Rouleau, a jihadist who ran down and killed a Canadian soldier in Quebec two months earlier.

“At this point of the crusade against the Islamic State, it is very important that attacks take place in every country that has entered into the alliance against the Islamic State, especially the U.S., U.K., France, Australia, and Germany,” it said.

More pointedly, AQAP’s Inspire magazine in a fall 2010 edition dedicated an entire article to the use of vehicles to kill.

“It is a simple idea and there is not much involved in its preparation,” the article said. “All what is needed is the willingness to give one’s life for Allah.”

Under the headline “The ultimate mowing machine” and a picture of a pickup truck the writer, identified as Yahya Ibrahim, explained in graphic terms how jihadists should pick their targets and rig their vehicles “to achieve maximum carnage.”

Last night, at least 84 people were murdered in the French city of Nice by a Tunisian-born Islamist terrorist, with dozens more victims wounded.

Whether you are pacifists or warmongers, gays or heterosexuals, atheists or Christians, blasphemers or devout, French or Iraqis, jihadi terrorism does not discriminate. Every one of us is a target: Islamist terrorism is genocidal.

When Islamist terrorists target Muslim dissident bloggers, faraway Yazidi women or Israeli girls, it should concern us in the West. Islamists are just sharpening their knives on them before coming for us.

If we do not speak out today, we will be punished for our indolence tomorrow.

Last night, at least 84 people were murdered in the French city of Nice by a Tunisian-born Islamist terrorist, with dozens more victims wounded. The attacker drove a 19-ton truck into a large crowd of people celebrating Bastille Day, France’s national holiday, running down men, women and children over a 2km stretch of road and sidewalk.On July 2, nine Italian citizens were butchered by Islamists in the assault at a restaurant in Dhaka, Bangladesh. They were tortured and killed with “very sharp blades” wielded by smiling terrorists who spared the life of those who knew the Quran. For almost a year already, poor Bangladeshis have been experiencing similar shocking massacres. But hose victims were not wealthy non-Muslim foreigners — they were anonymous Muslim bloggers, accused of “blasphemy” and murdered out with “sharp blades” — five victims in 2015 and a law student in 2016, as well as a Christian priest hacked to death.

The same cycle took place in Syria, where the beheaders of the Islamic State first targeted many Western journalists, then expelled and killed Christians in Mosul, and then landed in Paris to exterminate Western civilians.

Two weeks ago, a 13-year-old Israeli girl was stabbed to death while sleeping in her bed. As in Bangladesh, the Palestinian Arab terrorist used a knife to kill Hallel Yaffa Ariel. That is not a simple act of murder; it is a slaughter that wrongly equates building a home with murdering a child. Italian newspapers even deprived her of identity. Il Corriere della Sera, Italy’s second largest newspaper, wrote: “West Bank: 13-year-old American killed”.

1. The Bloody Gift for the National Day

On July 14, 2016, in the Mediterranean city of Nice, at approximately 10:40pm local time (4:40pm EST), at the 227th anniversary of Bastille Day, its national day, France witnessed yet another terrorist attack, resulting in over 80 dead and more than 100 injured. The attacker, a truck driver, drove his vehicle at a high speed into a large crowd of people gathered on the Promenade des Anglais of the French Riviera city for a fireworks display. The driver, who was eventually killed by the police, was zigzagging his vehicle for 1.2 miles (over two kilometers) at the crowd, so that he could hit as many people as possible, and was firing on the crowd as he drove. The authorities found the truck loaded with arms and grenades.

2. Some Good Stats to Wake Us Up

This attack continues a long list of terrorist attacks in France since the beginning of the 21st century.

From 2001 to 2016, France has been confronted with 18 terrorist attacks on its territory, 16 of which were related to Islamist terrorists and two to European radical groups (the National Liberation Front of Corsica, in 2003, also in Nice, and the Basque ETA separatist group, in 2007, in Capbreton, near Biarritz). The majority of the attacks, organized by Muslim jihadist militant individuals or groups, have increased in a geometric progression frequency and number of casualties year after year.

Between 2004 and 2013, there were 3 attacks (1 bombing, 1 shooting, and 1 stabbing), with a total number of victims of 7 dead and 16 injured.

During 2014, there were 3 attacks – all in December, around Christmas (1 stabbing, and 2 vehicle ramming), with 1 dead and 24 injured.

During 2015, there were 6 attacks (2 shootings; 1 shooting and stabbing; 1 event involving shootings, hostage taking, and suicide bombings [the November 13-15 Paris attack], 1 stabbing, and 1 beheading), with 152 dead (including 130 in the Paris November attack) and 383 injured (including 352 in the Paris November attack).

During this first half of 2016, there were 4 attacks (2 stabbings and 2 vehicle ramming events, including the Nice attack), with at least 83 dead (including 80+ in the Nice attack) and at least 103 injured (including 100+ in the Nice attack).

The figures from the Nice attack are not final. But obviously, in terms of number of dead and injured (80+ dead and 100+ injured, respectively), the Nice attack is in solid second place, after the Paris attack in November in the Bataclan club, the national stadium Stade de France, and elsewhere in the city and surpassing the other Paris attack, on January 7-9, at the Charlie Hebdo satirical magazine office.

It has become noticeable also that some attacks have been scheduled during major celebrations (national days and Christmas).

Once again, Islamic terrorists attack yet another Western city. This time in France.

A truck crashed into a crowd of people celebrating Bastille Day in the city of Nice on July 14, 2016. In my opinion, Islam is the problem, because there are Muslims who take its scripture as gospel and carry out its divisive and deadly provisions.

The barbarity and variety of actions of Islamic extremists are seen daily around the globe, committed under the banner of Islam, and have become so commonplace that the world has come to view them as part and parcel of a troubled humanity. From time to time, the world is shocked into a passing and momentary realization of the evil deeds these Islamist robots commit…and quickly gets over it and does nothing to seriously address this affliction of humanity.

The Islamic State – also known as ISIS, ISIL, and Daesh, has taken credit for a number of unconscionable, brutal attacks. “ISIS has actually killed more Muslims than certainly members of any other religion,” noted Democracy Now via Amy Goodman after the Paris attacks. Muslims are the victims of “Between 82 and 97% of Terrorism-Related Fatalities,” according to the U.S. government.

Based on the above premises, a Muslim has a greater chance to become prey of ISIS than to join it, and the huge majority of the group’s victims are fellow members of the belief. This is due to the political motivations behind ISIS rather than religious ones, where it’s receiving arms and funding from nations like Saudi Arabia and the Persian Gulf sheikhdom. Can the incomparably larger number of Muslims in the world who are so rightly terrified today come together with their own vision – which includes denouncing the extremists? I don’t know.

A common and repeated mantra among experts is that Muslims haven’t bluntly condemned the extremism committed in Islam’s name. How many times we have heard “Where are the moderate and peaceful Muslim voices in condemnation?” “Why aren’t Muslims speaking up against extremists like ISIS?”

If Muslims want to live in peace and harmony with the infidels, they must work together and respect our laws. Let us not forget that religious high authorities play a critical role in steering the masses toward or away from hate. Fatwas – religious decrees – by Islamic muftis and ayatollahs carry considerable weight with their respective followers. Sadly, most decrees and adjudications of these high Islamic authorities are exclusionary and even hostile toward the out-groups.

People are familiar with Islam’s classification of the world into the Dar-ul-Solh, the house of peace, meaning the house of Islam, and the Dar-ul-Harb, the house of war, meaning the house of non-Islam. Ironically, the self-proclaimed house of peace, from its early years, has waged war against the house of war.

Also there is a little-known third “house” according to Islam: Dar-ul-Aman, the non-Islam house of safety where Muslims find refuge. We already know which of the three houses America is to al-Qaeda, the Iranian mullahs, the Taliban, the Muslim Brotherhood, and their ilk.

Supporters of Islamic State on social media cheered the truck attack in the southern French city of Nice that killed at least 80 people, though the extremist group hasn’t yet claimed responsibility for the attack.

Late on Thursday, a truck driver slammed into a crowd packed with families that had come to see the Bastille Day celebratory fireworks at the seaside promenade, killing and injuring scores of people. President François Hollande said the attack had “undeniable traits of terrorism.”

Pro-Islamic State accounts on social media celebrated the attack, according to SITE Intelligence Group, which monitors extremist activity. Related messages—many of which were made in a coordinated fashion—expressed the belief that the extremist group was responsible for the attack, though the attack has so far not been claimed by any group, SITE said.

As it suffers setbacks in its self-declared caliphate in Syria and Iraq that have made it harder for recruits to join the group on the battlefield, Islamic State has increasingly called for more attacks elsewhere. In recent weeks, supporters with suspected or confirmed ties to Islamic State have launched deadly strikes in Turkey, Iraq and Bangladesh.

The attack in Nice came after a series of deadly terrorist attacks in France over the last two years, including one of the bloodiest assaults in the country’s history in November, when a series of attacks in Paris left 130 people dead. Last month, a man who pledged allegiance to Islamic State killed a police captain and his companion in a suburb of the French capital.

This was another enlightening Hudson Institute panel examining Tunisia’s unique, shaky experiment in Arab democracy.
Expert Eric Brown discussed the “historical convulsion which shows no sign of ending anytime soon across the region” in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) during a June 29 Washington, DC, Hudson Institute panel. In this upheaval, as his Hudson Institute colleague Samuel Tadros examined with the panelists, the sole democratic success of the “Arab Spring,” Tunisia, forms an unsteady “beacon of hope” amidst the region’s few positive developments.
Brown described MENA’s “implosion of the state-based order” following the 2011 “Arab Spring” outbreak of popular revolts against undemocratic regimes across the region. Washington Institute for Near East Policy expert Sarah Feuer particularly cited “how to cauterize Libya,” a failed state riven by sectarian fighting, as a key North African stability issue. As Tadros noted, one million Libyan refugees in neighboring Tunisia, about ten percent of the country’s population, have seriously strained housing and education resources there.
The “Arab Spring,” by contrast, “was relatively tame” in Morocco, Feuer stated, a country that has pursued under its monarchy a “tried and true preference for a very gradual type of reform.” She cited the expanded parliamentary powers and human rights provisions of the 2011 constitution, while Brown credited Morocco with MENA’s most “comprehensive Countering Violent Extremism strategy.” Morocco’s security sector, anti-corruption, and rule of law reforms demonstrate that the government has attempted to “find chinks in its armor” and “close the doors that predatory groups in the region have managed to use,” he stated. “The monarchy in Morocco has managed to stay ahead of the curve” of political unrest, Tadros concurred.

The panel focused on the problems confronting what others have previously described as Tunisia’s unique post-2011 “fragile success” in creating Arab democracy, described by Feuer as “tiny Tunisia hanging in there.” Despite Tunisian organizations having won a Nobel Peace Prize for their success in guiding the country’s democratic transition, “Tunisia is facing real trouble” and “serious divides within society,” Tadros stated. Tunisia’s coastal region, for example, is far more developed than the interior long neglected by Tunisia’s deposed dictator Zine al-Abidine Ben Ali.
Tadros and the other panelists particularly noted Tunisia’s conflict between secularists and Islamists like the Ennahda Party. Comparing Tunisia’s dictatorship with Iraq and Egypt, Brown analogized that Ben Ali “was much more of a Saddam Hussein than a [Hosni] Mubarak” and brutally tyrannized Tunisians, leaving behind deep societal distrust. During Brown’s recent visits to Tunisia, secularists referred to Ennahda members as “animals,” while they reciprocated by suspecting trade unionists of being French defense ministry agents.
Tadros noted improved cooperation between Tunisian secularists and Islamists while Feuer credited Ennahda with a stabilizing role by having “swallowed some very difficult decisions along the way” during Tunisia’s democratization. Yet he wondered whether the youth would follow the moderate path taken by aging party leaders like Ennahda’s Rashid Ghannouchi and Tunisian President Beji Caid Essebsi, head of the secular Nidaa Tounes party. He had attended Ennahda’s 2016 congress where Ghannouchi announced a party of “Muslim democrats.”

http://www.wsj.com/articles/terror-attack-in-nice-on-bastille-day-kills-dozens-1468569739

NICE—The death toll from the truck attack in the French Riviera rose to 84 people, with another 18 people critically injured, the interior ministry said Friday morning, as the nation reeled from its third major terrorist attack in the last 18 months.

The ministry said there were “several children” among the dead in Nice after a truck driver late Thursday barreled for more than a mile through a seaside promenade thronging with revelers celebrating Bastille Day. The promenade had been cleared of vehicles for a fireworks display.

Much of the waterfront was barricaded by police officers Friday morning, and the usually bustling beachfront was silent. Dozens of residents and tourists surveyed the area in shock, many in tears.

Young people sat wrapped in blankets outside the Centre Universitaire Méditerranéen, which had been used for psychological counseling overnight.

Gilles Giordani, a musician who performed at Bastille Day celebrations Thursday evening, said he had escaped the onrushing truck.

“I heard people screaming and running, and saw the truck coming behind me as the second band was starting to play,” he said. “I followed them. I ran and jumped onto the beach to save myself.”

Mr. Giordani said he was waved into a beachfront restaurant, which the owners locked with dozens of people inside to protect them from the attack. CONTINUE AT SITE

Today, a year after President Obama announced his “legacy” nuclear deal with Iran (the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, or JCPOA), there is overwhelming evidence that the agreement is far worse than its critics believed. These concerns were recently exacerbated by a German intelligence report of efforts by Iran in 2015 to covertly acquire illicit nuclear technology from German companies. According to the report, “it is safe to expect” that Iran’s covert nuclear-procurement efforts are continuing.

The question now is how the next president should deal with the nuclear deal with Iran.

If Hillary Clinton wins the 2016 presidential election, I see no chance that she will tear up or renegotiate the Iran deal, since she owns it as much as President Obama does. Moreover, because of the divisive fight in Congress over the JCPOA last year, Clinton and the Democratic party are too invested in the nuclear deal to back away from it. Given how weak the JCPOA is and recent reports of Iranian cheating on the accord, I believe this means Iran would make substantial progress on its nuclear weapons program during a Hillary Clinton presidency.

Although Donald Trump has denounced the JCPOA as one of the worst international agreements ever negotiated, it is unclear how a Trump administration would deal with the Iran nuclear agreement. Trump has said he would try to negotiate a better agreement. Walid Phares, a top Trump foreign-policy adviser, reiterated this position in a recent Daily Caller interview in which he said Trump is “not going to get rid of an agreement that has the institutional signature of the United States.” According to Phares, Trump would renegotiate the agreement after consulting with his advisers and could send it back to Congress.

Other Republicans who have recommended that the next president not tear up the nuclear agreement include Jeb Bush, John Kasich, and Rand Paul.

Newt Gingrich, another senior Trump adviser, takes a different view. Gingrich said in a July 10 Newsmax interview that he would advise Trump to tear up the nuclear agreement with Tehran on his first day in the White House. John Bolton, Ted Cruz, Marco Rubio, Chris Christie, and many other Republicans share Gingrich’s position.

I give three reasons in my new book Obamabomb: A Dangerous and Growing National Security Fraud why the best course of action for the next president on the nuclear deal will be to terminate it on his or her first day in office.

With its decision to leave the European Union, the United Kingdom has a rare opportunity to turn away from isolationism and strengthen world trade. The Brexit vote was widely seen as a narrow choice between European collectivism and British nationalism. But a third choice exists for the U.K.: creating an alliance of northern European nations.

A new Northern Union trade and security alliance would include nations that, like the U.K., bristle at the E.U.’s suffocating bureaucracy and its endless demands for cash. Finland, for example, bleeds money to subsidize the E. U.’s spendthrift southern members and Brussels’s never-ending schemes for rescuing the Euro. The nearby Scandinavian countries wonder why they should stay in the E.U. if the U.K. is no longer in the club. In fact, one Scandinavian country already goes it alone: Norway has unrestricted free trade via the European Economic Area (EEA) and maintains its own currency, in high demand worldwide. Iceland followed Norway’s path until beginning negotiations to enter the E.U. in 2010, but the tiny island republic, just emerging from bankruptcy, has wisely broken off negotiations with Brussels. Iceland isn’t averse, however, to forming a security partnership—especially one that offers an alternative to joining a 27-state behemoth. The Dutch, like the Finns, grudgingly pay their ever-rising dues to the E.U. But what if the Dutch could find a way out of the Brussels trap? What if this new way were free of national chauvinism and consistent with a constructive strategy of global outreach?

Even Scotland’s separatist movement would lose much of its escapist appeal if Edinburgh were to join with Dublin, Belfast, Cardiff, and London in a Northern Union. Fresh courage is being felt in Ireland. American firms continue to take root there as they seek to avoid the high taxes back home that put them at a disadvantage against their East Asian competitors. Though Dublin has never been shy about pocketing European funds, Ireland fears that Brussels might wipe out its tax advantages.

Small nations, such as Estonia, along with regions of existing countries, such as Flanders in Belgium, might also find reason to join a Northern Union. How much more hopeful would Flanders be about its future if it could break away from the Belgian federation (and from clueless Wallonia) and join a new economic and security union?