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Alan R.M. Jones Enough With the Candles and Tears

Either France and the rest of us can continue on as we have, with every day Ground Hog Day in Guernica and no response better than an impotent snivel, or Western civilisation can summon the righteous anger necessary to win, not merely endure.

After the next-to-last Islamist massacre in France, Premier Mike Baird fittingly ordered that the Opera House be lit in the Tricolour. It was a moving tribute and our family went down to Circular Quay to see it, and I dutifully posted a picture of it on my Facebook page, as we do these days.

To post that picture today would, I think, only mock the 80 Bastille Day dead.

The head of France’s security and intelligence service has warned of waves of such attacks and that the Fifth Republic is itself at risk (what could be the marginal cost in version 6.0?). President Hollande said after the last atrocity that France was at war, and he has now abandoned the White House’s pointlessly nebulous ‘violent non-state actors’ charade – are there any sentient souls left on the planet who doubt what this is about? — and is calling it a spade.

But other than a few, highly publicised bombing sorties to blow up some sand dunes, there hasn’t been much evidence of that war except for the slaughter of more innocents.

In his essay, “Inside the Whale,” George Orwell referred to Aldous Huxley’s “Dream of Phillip the Second,” in which Huxley wrote that the people in El Greco’s pictures always look as though they were in the bellies of whales:

For the fact is that being inside a whale is a very comfortable, cosy, homelike thought. The historical Jonah, if he can be so called, was glad enough to escape, but in imagination, in day-dream, countless people have envied him. It is, of course, quite obvious why. The whale’s belly is simply a womb big enough for an adult. There you are, in the dark, cushioned space that exactly fits you, with yards of blubber between yourself and reality, able to keep up an attitude of the completest indifference, no matter what happens… Short of being dead, it is the final, unsurpassable stage of irresponsibility.

Either France and the rest of us can continue on as we have, Jonah-like, where every day is Ground Hog Day in Guernica, or Western civilisation can start getting all Sonny Corleone about it and summon the righteous anger necessary to win, not merely endure.

Ned Levin and Yeliz Candemir :The Turkish Coup That Wasn’t – Erdogan Reasserts Control After Attempted Coup Death toll from violence surrounding coup attempt reaches 90

ISTANBUL—Turkey’s elected government moved to reassert control Saturday morning after an attempted coup by factions of the military rocked the country and killed dozens late Friday, with officials saying the situation was now largely under control.

Ninety people were killed and more than 1,000 were injured in the events surrounding the coup attempt, the state-run Anadolu news agency reported. A total of 1,374 military personnel were detained across Turkey as part of an investigation into the coup attempt, the agency said.

The head of Turkey’s national police told Anadolu that police were in control of Istanbul, but that the situation in Ankara, where gunfire was still heard on live television Saturday morning, was still challenging. Helicopters and airplane hangars had been bombed, said Celalettin Lekesiz, the head of police.

Istanbul, where troops had blocked two bridges over the Bosphorus and tanks appeared at the main Atatürk Airport on Friday night, was calm Saturday morning. The bridges were functioning normally, television footage showed. Turkish Airlines, the country’s flag carrier, said it was operating normally on the request of Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan.

Islamic State Claims Responsibility for Attack in Nice, France Attack killed 84 people

http://www.wsj.com/articles/islamic-state-claims-responsibility-for-attack-in-nice-france-1468659227?mod=BNM

Islamic State on Saturday claimed responsibility for the attack in Nice, France on Thursday that killed 84 people.

French investigators have been trying to establish whether a Tunisian resident of this city was acting as part of a wider network when he used a rented truck to mow through 8 crowds lining the seaside promenade to celebrate France’s national holiday.

Authorities have identified the driver as Mohamed Lahouaiej Bouhlel, a 31-year-old Tunisian who was shot dead by police after carrying out the rampage.

French Lesson: Guns not Critical To Jihadi Violence by A.J. Caschetta

Originally published under the title “French Lessons.”

The Bastille Day attack in Nice, France last night should cause the Democrats to reconsider their gun control approach to counterterrorism. After San Bernardino and then Orlando, Obama, Chuck Schumer and others have been citing jihadi terror attacks to support their domestic legislation agenda.

France is about as close to a national gun-free zone as you can get. Lesson number one from France is that gun laws will not stop jihad terror.

There are no gun show loopholes in France, because there are no gun shows. There are no mandatory waiting periods, and there is no debate about gun control. Everybody agrees that guns are bad, so only the police have them. Or at least that was the plan. But of course the people who don’t obey laws have guns. They are called criminals. Lately a lot of them happen to be Jihadis.

Lesson #1 from France: gun laws will not stop jihad terror.

Remember the touching father and son scene last November, after a jihad attack in France, where Parisians were consoling themselves in the modern fashion with flowers, stuffed animals and candles? A conversation between a reporter, a young father and his little boy was captured on French television and “went viral.” The boy was worried about all of the bad guys with guns. His father told him not to worry “They’ve got guns but we have flowers.” Lesson number two from France is when your enemy has guns, flowers will not suffice.

So another jihadi has used guns to kill French citizens. This one was also prepared to use grenades (also illegal in France). But he also used a truck, reminiscent of Mohammed Reza Taheri-azar who in 2006 drove his SUV into a crowd of people on the campus of the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill injuring nine.

Lesson #2 from France: when your enemy has guns, flowers will not suffice.

Banning firearms did not prevent the Nice, France attacker from finding and using firearms. It did not prevent the Bataclan killers, or the killers at the Charlie Hebdo offices, or the killer at the Hyper Kasher Deli, or the killer at the Jewish school in Toulouse. Nor did it prevent the Moroccan jihadi on the train in Paris, who would have done much more damage had it not been for the valiant efforts of three type-A, gung ho Americans with nerves of steel. While the crew of the French train ran away from the shooter, Spencer Stone, Alek Skarlatos and Anthony Sadler ran towards the gunfire and subdued him. Lesson number three from France is that only by fighting back can you survive.

JONATHAN TOBIN: IN NICE- A FAMILIAR FORM OF TERROR- BUT IGNORED WHEN ISRAELIS ARE VICTIMS

TREATING TERRORISM DIFFERENTLY

A Familiar Form of Terror By Jonathan S. Tobin
Commentary magazine
July14, 2016

At the moment we don’t know the identity or the motive of the person responsible for the Bastille Day terror attack in Nice, France. Speculation about whether this killer, who took the lives of scores of persons gathered to watch holiday fireworks, was a lone wolf terrorist inspired by ISIS is natural but premature. So, too, are any other theories. But while we mourn with the people of France and wait for more details to be released, it’s worthwhile pondering the terrorist’s choice of tactic: using a vehicle as a lethal weapon.
Viewing the horrifying videos being posted online or broadcast on television of the attack, there’s no doubt in anyone’s mind that the Nice killer was using a truck to murder people and that his actions are obviously an act of terror. But what that brings to mind is the fact that when Palestinians do the same thing, many in the international community and the media treat Israeli efforts to take out the potential killer as unjustified and often dispute whether the attack was a form of terrorism.

After the erection of Israel’s security fence in the West Bank, the wave of suicide bombings in which Palestinians affiliated with both the mainstream Fatah movement and Hamas killed hundreds of Jews inside Israel during the second intifada came to a halt. Faced with a more formidable challenge to their ability to inflict mass casualties on Israelis, terrorists resorted to new tactics. One of their more popular choices was vehicular homicide. In incidents in Jerusalem and at security checkpoints in the West Bank, Israelis have been subjected to numerous attempted hit and run attacks. At least three were killed in such incidents last year at the start of what is now known as the “stabbing intifada.”

But such attacks are rarely referred to as terrorism in the international media. Outside of Israel, the press has often either ignored them or treated the nature of the incident as questionable even referring to them as accidents rather than terror. They also denounce Israeli defensive measures that aim, as authorities in France did in Nice, to shoot or otherwise disable the terrorist as an unjustified attempt to execute a possibly innocent person.

Muslims Celebrate Bastille Day: 80 Dead, 68 Injured “The worst tragedy in the history of Nice” – but many more are to come. Robert Spencer

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.

THE TACTIC OF VEHICLE RAMMING : PATRICK GOODENOUGH

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.”

Jihadi Terrorism: You Think It’s Just the Jews? Think Again. by Giulio Meotti

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”.

After Nice: How can we be surprised by terrorist attacks anymore? By Tiberiu Dianu

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).

Where Are the Peaceful Muslims? By Amil Imani

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.