Memes for a hot and sticky Monday

Walt: Faith but it's hot out there!

Ed.: How hot is it?!

Walt: What do you think this is, the Johnny Carson show? I'm too hot to come up with a snappy answer.

Ed.: What about yon blog, then?

Walt: Put up a couple of memes...

Walt: That's a good wan. Have ye any more?

Ed.: Any questions or complaints should be directed to the folks at Charlie Hebdo, where this first appeared.

Walt: Sure, I don't unnerstand it meself.

"Allahu akbar!" in Paris - second Islamic terrorist attack in three weeks

I've been concentrating on American politics and the 2020 election, so didn't get around to posting this story until today, but thought I'd better do so in case you missed it.

With the trial of the Islamic terrorists who perpetrated the massacre at the offices of the French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo under way, attacks by mad Muslims have become so commonplace that it's possible to conflate them. Don't. Last week's murder of an innocent schoolteacher was the second in three weeks. Expect more.

Here's the story. On Friday, Samuel Paty, a history teacher, was killed in Conflans-Sainte-Honorine, a commune in the northwestern suburbs of Paris. He was beheaded. Decapitated. Had his head severed from his body.

The perpetrator, shot dead by police soon after the atttack, has been identified just today as Aboulakh Anzorov, an 18-year-old "refugee" from Chechnya, a part of the Russian Federation located in the North Caucasus. It should be noted that Chechnya is predominantly Muslim, and Islamic terrorism is a persistent problem for the Russians.

French authorities figure the unnamed teen was the one who did the deed because he posted on social media a photo of the victim and a text claiming responsibility. The investigating prosecutor said these were found on the suspect's phone. He also confirmed that a Twitter account under the name "Abdoulakh A" [not "Mohammed"? Ed.] belonged to the suspect. That's where a photo of the decapitated head was posted minutes after the attack, along with the message, "I have executed one of the dogs from hell who dared to put Muhammad down."

Aha! There's the motive! Police officials say M Paty's discussion with his class of caricatures of the Prophet Mohammed had led to threats. The teenager had approached pupils in the street and asked them to point out his victim, they said. The suspect had been seen at the school asking students about the teacher, and the school's headmaster had received several threatening phone calls.

According to police, the suspect's half-sister joined the Islamic State group in Syria in 2014. They didn't give her name, and apparently don't know where she is now. However, in the classic French ploy of rounding up the usual suspects (see Casablanca), the anti-terrorism prosecutors have now arrested nine suspects, including the teen's grandfather, parents and 17-year-old brother.

French President Emmanual Macron is usually painfully politically correct about these things, so I'll give him full marks this time for denouncing, while visiting the school Friday night, what he called an "Islamist terrorist attack." He urged the nation to stand united against extremism. 

Said M Le Président, "One of our compatriots was murdered today because he taught...the freedom of expression, the freedom to believe or not believe." 

Walt's thought for the day: Standing up for freedom of expression seems like a good idea to me. Of course no-one in North America is going to be beheaded for doing so... right? Not by Muslims, anyway. See "Conservatives staging free speech rally attacked by critics" (read: Antifa), APNews, 18/10/20.

Telling the truth about mass migration is "hateful conduct", sez Twitter

Let's start with a report on CBC News of a speech made recently by Emmanuel Macron, the tiny perfect leftist President of France, about the problem of Islamic terrorism in his country.

The chief surrender-monkey blames it all on the failure of the French people to welcome and accommodate the millions of Muslims who have flooded into his country to take advantage of the French spirit of Liberté, Egalité, Fraternité. 

M Macron gave his speech during the first major terrorism trial in Paris after the attacks against the satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo and a Jewish grocery store in January 2015, the co-ordinated killings in cafés and the Bataclan theatre in November 2015, and finally the truck assault in Nice on Bastille Day of 2016. 

The combined death toll from these Islamic terrorist attacks (I'm saying it again lest we forget) was more than 230. Most of the attackers were French-born, but all saw themselves as Islamist jihadis. What will France do with them? Send them to the shitholes of the Middle East and North Africa from which they came? Errr, no. Too late for that.

The Muslims are there now, there to stay. What to do with the 1000s of Islamic extremists now entitled to remain in Europe forever is a real problem for France -- but not just France. "Mass migration absolutely destroyed Europe. Italy, France, Sweden and Germany took in tons of migrants who never assimilated. Rapes, murders, and other heinous crimes abound."

That's not Walt speaking, although I agree. Those are the words of Lauren Witzke, the Republican candidate contesting one of the Senate seats in Delaware. Ms Witzke went on to say "I will end ALL immigration into the US for ten years." For this sin against political correctness, Twitter locked her account! Messages like that, the social media giant says, are "hateful conduct". Well, at least they didn't call it "hate crime". Not yet, anyway.

Twitter went on to warn warning the Senate candidate that repeated violations would result in the termination of her access to the platform. In a comment to Breitbart News, Ms Witzke promised swift action on the issue of tech censorship if elected to the Senate. Said the Senate hopeful, "This is yet another example of Twitter, which is partially owned by a Saudi Arabian prince, interfering in American elections."

Sez Walt, good on yer, Lauren! If I lived in Delaware, you'd have my vote!

Note from Ed.: Am I the only one to notice a strong resemblance between Lauren Witzke and People's Party of Canada star Laura-Lynn Tyler Thompson? How come the lefties can't get good-looking women like this to run for them? Am I being sexist to point this out?

"Allahu akbar!" near old Charlie Hebdo office. Terrorism suspected?

Did you think the jihadis would let the fifth anniversary of the Islamic terrorist attack at the offices of the French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo pass unobserved? Nosiree Mohammed! 

Reports reaching us this morning (Walt's time) say that a man wielding a machete or a meat cleaver [possibly a scimitar? Ed.] attacked and injured four people -- two seriously -- at the same site today. "At least" two people are said to have been arrested, one at the scene and one on the steps of the nearby Opera Bastille. 

No information about the suspects has been released, and the motivation for the attack has "yet to be determined", according to politically correct French government officials, but it's noteworthy that 14 of the suspects in the 2015 attacks at the Charlie Hebdo offices are currently on trial.

The attacks were supposed to be punishment, according to the will of Allah, for the magazine's publication of satirical cartoons depicting the Prophet Mohammed. This is a developing story. Walt will try to bring you an update as soon as the names of the radical Muslims [Hey, don't jump to conclusions! Ed.] have been released. 

Further reading:

"Western leaders finally admit Muslims are waging jihad against us", WWW 10/1/15; 

"Steyn and Murphy on the Charlie Hebdo massacre and free speech", WWW 10/1/15. 

UPDATE ADDED 27/9/20: This story has complete disappeared from the mojo wire overnight. How can that be? Is it possible that the lamestream media are not doing any follow-ups for fear that the assailants may turn out to be Mooselims? Just askin'... 

Further update from AP: French authorities now say they have taken seven people into custody after the stabbing outside the former offices of Charlie Hebdo, including the suspected assailant. And... wait for it... they have described the incident as an Islamic extremist attack! 

According to the French Interior Minister, the suspected assailant in Friday's stabbing had been arrested a month ago for carrying a screwdriver but for some reason was not on police radar for Islamic radicalization. The suspect arrived in France three years ago as an unaccompanied minor, apparently from Pakistan, but, the minister said, his identity iss still being verified. Might be one of those rare Pakistani Christians, you know!

Mark Steyn is "Islamed out"

It would be easy enough for me to post, every day, a great quote from SteynOnline, the excellent blog written by Mark Steyn, author of America Alone, After America, The [Un]documented Mark Steyn and other books which I've praised here in the past. See "USA 'the brokiest brokey broke nation in the history of the world'": WWW 11/11/13 -- great to read after the Prez's State of Disunion speech.

I don't do it -- quote Mr. Steyn every day, I mean -- only because Ed. accuses me of laziness often enough as it is. Today, though, I must risk Ed.'s wrath to give you a snippet from "Hold the Mohamed Salad", Mr. Steyn's trenchant comment on crimes committed by guys named "Mohamed" in Germany, Norway, Sweden, Canada...maybe even the USA.

Mr. Steyn writes: I've spent the entirety of this no longer new century writing about [the Islamization of Europe and the decline of the West]. The remorseless demographic transformation of the western world is the biggest story of our time, so why wouldn't a writer want to write about it? Apart from anything else, once you're aware of it, it haunts your dreams.

But most of us still aren't aware of it. I've been fortunate enough to get a couple of bestselling books out of the subject, but that's no comfort if, by the time they're my age, my children are living in a post-western world. And, of course, you can have a "bestseller" and 99.999999999 per cent of the population need never know of it. Every day I get letters from people who come here via a link from someone or other beginning in effect: "What do you mean, 'the Islamization of Europe'? It's the first I've heard of it."

Really? Why did the Charlie Hebdo guys get killed? Because they provoked Islam. Why is Europe's political class so willing to trade away free speech and women's rights? Because they're desperate to appease Islam. Why did the same young secular childless German women who supported Angela Merkel in her multiculti delusions spend the New Year getting groped and raped by the young men they so generously opened the doors of their country to? Because when you appease Islam you provoke Islam.

I'm pretty Islamed out, because I don't have a lot to say I didn't say ten years ago.

Further reading: "Mark Steyn on the Middle East and our 'societal suicide'": WWW 18/11/15.

Don't tell us the San Bernardino massacre isn't the work of terrorists!

I started writing this about 1 PM yesterday, watching (on CBS-TV) the live coverage of the "incident" in San Bernardino CA. 14 innocent civilians killed, 17 wounded. By whom? By one crazy "lone wolf" with some kind of hatred for "developmentally disabled" people or civil servants? Or???

One eyewitness said that from her office window she saw three (3) attackers, dressed from head to toe in black, carrying "long guns" (the police chief's description) and extra ammunition. She wasn't sure, but had the impression the shooters were white, athletically built, and though that, while two were men, one might have been a man or a woman -- hard to tell, in the heat of the moment.

In the first presser, shortly after 2 PM, the San Berdoo police chief carefully avoided the use of words like "terrorists" or "terrorism" or "Muslims", In response to questions, he would only say that the authorities had no idea of what the motive might have been, and "weren't ruling out" terrorism.

Before we lift the veil from the identity of the two "suspects" (out of three) who have now been killed, let's consider the attacks on innocent civilians perpetrated in Paris not so long ago.

On 7 January 2015, two men dressed in black, carrying assault rifles and other weapons, forced their way into the Paris office of the French satirical weekly newspaper Charlie Hebdo They killed 11 people and injured 11 others in the building, then killed a French police officer outside the building as they fled, shouting "Allahu akbar!" Another 5 people were killed and 11 wounded in related attacks in the Île-de-France region around Paris. The gunmen, Saïd and Chérif Kouachi, identified themselves as belonging to Al-Qaeda's branch in Yemen.

On the 13th of last month, masked men dressed in black, carrying assault rifles, IEDs and other weapons, staged a series of coordinated terrorist attacks in Paris and its northern suburbs. Three suicide bombers struck near the Stade de France in Saint-Denis. Cries of "Allahu akbar!" were heard again, as this attack was followed by suicide bombings and mass shootings at cafés, restaurants and the Bataclan music hall in Paris proper.

The Islamic terrorists -- for that's what they were -- killed 130 people, including 89 at the Bataclan, where they took hostages before engaging in a stand-off with police. There were 368 injuries, almost 100 of them serious. Seven of the jihadists also died. The ringleader is still at large, believed to be with ISIS in Syria.

ISIS claimed responsibility for the attacks, saying it was in retaliation for the French airstrikes on IS targets in Syria and Iraq. French President François Hollande said the attacks were an act of war, and called for swift and terrible retaliation. See "War begets terrorism begets war begets terrorism... etc" (WWW 3/12/15)

Now, let's examine again the mass shooting perpetrated in San Bernardino yesterday. Three attackers, dressed in black, carrying "long guns" (= assault rifles), burst into a crowded conference hall where the San Bernardino County Public Health Department was holding its annual Christmas party. According to witnesses, they didn't say or yell anything, just opened fire on all and sundry, killing 14, wounding 17.

Who could or would do such a thing? Would it be
(a) crazy people
(b) a disgruntled civil servant who "went postal"
(c) Muslims
(d) terrorists
(e) some of the above
(e) all of the above
While Ed. is tabulating your response, Walt will tell you what we now know.

Around 4 PM yesterday, two bodies were pulled out of a black SUV which had been riddled with gunfire in a scene reminiscent of the finale to Bonnie and Clyde. They were clothed in black, and were wearing body armor. They were Syed Rizwan Farook and his wife, Tashfeen Malik. The late Mr. Farook was born in Illinois, of parents who had immigrated from Pakistan.

According to Canadian Press, Mr. Farook went to Saudi Arabia for about a month this past spring. About a month after he returned to the USA, he was joined by Ms Malik, whom he described as a pharmacist and introduced as his wife.

Why did Mr. Farook and his wife do it? We can't ask them because the police, in time-honoured American fashion, decided to exterminate them first and ask questions... well, not at all. All we know is that Mr. Farook joined his colleagues -- he worked for the County Public Health Dept. -- at the party, but, after staying only a short while, stormed out following some kind of dispute. He returned with his wife, both dressed in tactical gear and carrying assault rifles. You know the rest of the story.

The level of preparation -- they brought extra ammunition and also had pipe bombs in the SUB -- is one of the factors investigators are weighing as they examine a motive for the attack. San Bernardino Police Chief Jarrod Burguan told an evening news conference that the attack did not seem to be "a spur-of-the-moment thing". Great police work there, chief!

Also unanswered is the question of what happened to the third shooter... if there was a third shooter. If the police (and the sheriff, TSA, FBI, CIA, and dogcatcher) can identify and locate him (or her), will they kill him (or her) too? Why would they do that? Surely it wouldn't be to keep us from knowing that the attack had something to do with the jihad being waged against us. As the Prez sez, there's no such thing as Islamic terrorism... is there?

Footnote: The correct answer to our quiz is (e).

French round up the usual suspects (read: Islamic extremists)

Following up on "How about we fight back?!", Walt is pleased to report that Inspector Clouseau, is hot on the trail of some of the Islamic extremists who plotted and carried out the dastardly attacks which claimed the lives of over ten dozen French civilians.

In the round-the-clock coverage of the terrorist bombings and shootings, lamestream media and politicians on both sides of the Atlantic were at pains -- twisting themselves into pretzels -- to NOT blame Muslim jihadists. Mustn't but politically incorrect. Mustn't fan the flames of Islamophobia. All this as if people are stupid and didn't immediately draw the obvious conclusion, which turned out to be correct.

French military intelligence, having been stung by its failure to act on the warning signs which have been evident since Charlie Hebdo, immediately set about rounding up the usual suspects. Never was a movie cliché -- one of my favourites -- more apt, for as it turns out the alleged mastermind behind the co-ordinated gun and suicide attacks is none other than Abdelhamid Abaaoud, 27, a native of Morocco, now a Belgian citizen.

M. Abaaoud is, errr, a Muslim, and not one of those mythical moderate Muslims either! He was already known to police as an Islamic extremist after a raid on an ISIS cell following a gun battle in eastern Belgium in January. That's right -- January! Today, ten months later, he is described as being "on the run". So far he has managed to elude both Inspectors Poirot and Clouseau.

AFP reports that M. Abaaoud spent time fighting alongside ISIS. He even appeared in an ISIS video [Ed., can you find it on YouTube?], at the wheel of a car transporting mutilated bodies to a mass grave. French officials say he is connected with a foiled plot to attack a Paris church in April, and thwarted attacks on a Paris-bound high-speed train in August. The French newspaper Liberation also linked him to Sid Ahmed Ghlam, a French student charged with murder, attempted murder and terror offences. M Ghlam is also a follower of the Prophet.

Other French media report that M Abaaoud regularly attempted to recruit other western fighters to join Islamic State militants in Syria, even recruiting his own 13-year-old brother. VTM, a Flemish-language TV channel, said that he made calls from Greece to the brother of one of two heavily armed suspects killed during the counter-terrorism raids in January.

But why take the word of the French and Belgian media? M Abaaoud himself gave an interview to Dabiq, the IS magazine Dabiq, in which he boasted that he had been able to plot attacks against the west right under the nose of Belgian intelligence agencies, and that he was in Syria in February. He and two fellow jihadists travelled to Belgium, he said, "to terrorise the crusaders waging war against the Muslims."

Posing for the picture above, in which he holds an IS flag and the Qu’ran, the bearded terrorist told the magazine, "We faced a number of trials during the journey. We spent months trying to find a way into Europe, and by Allah’s strength, we succeeded in finally making our way to Belgium. We were then able to obtain weapons and set up a safe house while we planned to carry out operations against the crusaders. All of this was facilitated for us by Allah. There is no might nor power except by him."

But wait, there's more... M Abaaoud revealed he was stopped during the journey by "an officer" after a picture of him fighting for ISIS was published in Belgian media. However, he said, the officer "let me go, as he did not see the resemblance."

He boasted that he had been able to plan terror attacks against westerners while living in Belgium and being wanted by intelligence agencies when he travelled to Syria in January 2014. "I was able to leave...despite being chased after by so many intelligence agencies," he told Dabiq. "All this proves that a Muslim should not fear the bloated image of the crusader intelligence.

“My name and picture were all over the news yet I was able to stay in their homeland, plan operations against them, and leave safely when doing so became necessary. I ask Allah to accept the fruitful deeds of the [martyrs] who terrorized the crusaders of America, France, Canada, Australia, Germany, and Belgium."

How much longer, Walt wonders, will Western media and politicos -- Hello, Mr. Obama! Hello, M. Trudeau! -- persist in denying that the Islamists have declared war on the West? French President François Hollande himself admitted, after the dust had settled, that his is country at war.

If you're at war, what do you do to your enemies? Do you let them enter your country as "refugees"? Do you read them their rights and give them a fair trial? Do you ask them what wrong you have done to make them attack you? I don't believe real crusaders would have bothered with those niceties. But, bound as they are by political correctness, the crusaders of the 21st century cannot be real crusaders, can they....

Further reading: Mark Steyn: "The barbarians are already inside. There’s nowhere to get away from them". And yet, Walt adds, our leaders are promising to "welcome" thousands more! Suicidal stupidity!

Pope Francis needs to be reminded that Islam is a false religion

More fallout from the Charlie Hebdo atrocity and the reactions of Western politicians, "Christian" religious leaders and the lamestream media. Provoked by "Must free speech include the freedom to offend?", posted here yesterday, seldom-heard-from Agent 12 (welcome back!) sent us a link to "Pope Francis, blasphemy, Charlie Hebdo, and the punch".

The article, from a blog for Dallas-area Catholics -- real Catholics -- argues that there can be no real understanding of the whole controversy until there is an acknowledgement that Islam is a false religion -- one that is to be tolerated, to be sure, but false all the same.

With the last few popes -- JPII, Benedict XVI and Francis -- visiting and even praying in mosques, and generally pushing the enormous lie that is false ecumenism, we shouldn't expect any such statement from anyone except the remnant of traditional Catholics and fundamentalist Protestants.

The blogger writes: The Church used to know these truths: you cannot blaspheme against the Church and the Lord, because both are true. The second is, error has no rights. Thus, both Charlie Hebdo and the Islamic maniacs who attacked them are both violently wrong and to be repudiated.

I, for one, have been sickened by this outpouring of support for a magazine few had heard of and few cared about. Our modern culture likes to pretend that freedom of speech is a sacred right, but when the knife comes to the throat, vague notions about liberty are not enough to sustain a person in resistance.

Liberals will inevitably fall before religious conviction, and that is why the West is in collapse: the West has rejected the religion that built her. Dark ages seem to loom ahead.

Meanwhile, in Canada, Walt's post "West reacts to Islamist killing of Westerners... ONLY Westerners" seems to have attracted the attention of the CBC's Rex Murphy. [Either that or great minds think alike. Ed.] Like Walt, Mr. Murphy has difficulty understanding why the killing of a dozen cartoonists and four Jews has caused such furious breast-beating and rending of garments, yet the massacre of thousands of Nigerian Muslims by Islamic fanatics has resulted in... crickets... Check out "Why isn't the world rallying against Boko Haram?", as aired on CBC's The National last night.

Must free speech include the freedom to offend?

Walt has been silent for the last couple of days, pondering the ramifications of last week's atrocities in France and the implications for freedom of speech. My musings were concretized [Eh? Ed.] earlier today by an e-mail from one of our assiduous readers, who writes:

I initially felt that satirizing Mohammed was part of free speech. But then I thought how I was irritated years ago at some art exhibit that showed a crucifix sitting in urine or something like that. I felt it was tacky, unnecessary and insulting to Christianity, even to me an agnostic.

Now I am thinking, why are they going out of their way to insult Islam? What can be gained except alienating millions of fanatics who are just looking for an excuse to explode. Your thoughts please....

Walt had the same thoughts on seeing Andres Serrano's "Piss Christ". My initial reaction was that the "artist" should have been shot (or perhaps crucified), or at the very least prosecuted under anti-blasphemy laws. There are such things in several US states, in the Alsace-Lorraine region of France, and also in the Criminal Code of Canada, but, needless to say [Why say it, then? Ed.], no-one ever gets prosecuted nowadays.

The prevailing orthodoxy is that any organized religion is fair game... unless of course it's Islam! I disagree. So, it seems, does our reader. And we are in good company. Today the Pope himself put aside his who-am-I-to-judge and we-must-be-tolerant lines. Freedom of speech, he said en route to the Philippines is all well and good, but religions must be treated with respect, so that people's faiths were not insulted or ridiculed.

Walt is reminded of the old saw about freedom of speech not extending to the right to yell "FIRE" in a crowded theatre -- words which have become a popular metaphor for the dangers of complete freedom of speech. Those words were written by Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr., in Schenk v. United States, 1919 U.S. LEXIS 2223.

What has been lost, over the years, is the understanding that the result in that case was the affirmation, by the Supreme Court of the United States, of the conviction of Charles Schenk under a statue which, the appellant argued, was in violation of the First Amendment.

Justice Holmes' view, which he never changed, was that expressions of honest opinion were entitled to near absolute protection, but that expressions made with the specific intent to cause a criminal harm, or that threatened a clear and present danger of such harm, could be punished.

I think a good case can be made that the publication of cartoons intended to be offensive to members of a religion not known for its tolerance of disrespect to its prophet gives rise to the near certainty of violent retribution. That's exactly what happened in Paris.

Should I then rethink my criticism of the lamestream press for not showing the cartoons that brought down the wrath of the Muslim fanatics? Their excuse was that they didn't wish to further offend the Muslims. I'd buy that, except for a nagging feeling that if it had been Christians or Jews who had been offended, the response would have been quite different.

Further reading: "MSNBC's Maddow Shows ‘Piss Christ’ But Not Latest ‘Charlie Hebdo’", by Eric Scheiner on cnsnews.com.

West reacts to Islamist killing of Westerners... ONLY Westerners

It took the "public" beheading of a couple of Americans and a Brit to get the Excited States of America and its camp followers (hello, Australia, Britain and Canada... and France!) into the latest phase of the Oil Wars. As long as ISIS -- an extremist band of Sunni Muslims -- was beating up Shia Muslims, Kurds, and other denizens of the sandpit, who cared? Nobody! That's who!

Last week, Islamic terrorists -- which is what they were, no matter what the Prez says -- killed, ummm, 17 French people (including 4 Jews), and the world went nuts. As discussed here at length [great length! Ed.], suddenly we we're all Charlie. Some of us even proclaimed "We are all Jews"!

Sure, the killings in France were tragic, outrageous attacks on free speech and Western values, worthy of condemnation and outpourings of grief and determination to resist. But... did anyone notice that in the same week, Boko Haram killes literally 1000s of people -- all African, mostly Muslim -- in Nigeria? "See Meanwhile, in Nigeria, militant Islamists wipe out town of 10,000">

Today comes news that there were three -- count `em, three -- suicide bombings in the same part of Nigeria. 23 people were killed and dozens injured when three female suicide bombers -- one only 10 years old -- blew themselves up [or were blown up by remote control] in crowded markets. 23 dead, added to the 2000 or so killed in Baga. Are people in Paris, Washington, London or Toronto taking to streets with signs reading "We are all African Muslims!" Errr, no.

Most Rev. Ignatius Kaigama, the Roman Catholic Archbishop of Jos, accuses the West of ignoring the atrocities perpetrated by Boko Haram. Speaking on BBC-TV's Newsday, he said the world had to show more determination to halt the militant Islamists' advance in Nigeria. Why, he asked, doesn't the international community show the same spirit and resolve that it did after the attacks in France? Walt will supply the answer. It's because the victims aren't Westerners, so who cares...

Archbishop Kaigama said facing down Boko Haram requires international support and unity of the type that had been shown after last week's militant attacks in France. "We need that spirit to be spread around," he said. "Not just when [an attack] happens in Europe, but when it happens in Nigeria, in Niger, in Cameroon. We [must] mobilize our international resources and face or confront the people who bring such sadness to many families."

Good luck with that. And I'm not talking about Nigerian President Goodluck Jonathan [real name. Ed.] who is among those who doesn't seem to care. He has yet to comment on this week's violence, and BBC correspondent Will Ross says Nigeria's politicians appear more focused on next month's elections. Not like Western politicians, eh!

Steyn and Murphy on the Charlie Hebdo massacre and free speech

A couple of days ago, writing about the Charlie Hebdo massacre and the PC-fed reluctance of the Western media to point the finger at Islamic jihadists, I said I could hardly wait for Mark Steyn to weigh in on the topic.

Well, now he has. Check out "#JeSuisCharlie - But You're Not". The post on Mark's own website includes a 28-minute dialogue between Mr. Steyn, Mohamed El Rashidy (director of the Canadian Arab Federation) and Evan Solomon on CBC-TV's Power and Politics -- well worth a look and a listen.

Walt also recommends "We are not Charlie Hebdo" by reliable Rex Murphy, in today's National Post. Sample: Why do we wallow in some shallow hollow of factitious guilt, moaning over our failings to “understand” after 9/11, after Mumbai, after London, after Ottawa, after Paris this week, rather than laying the guilt on the real perpetrators and the ideology that fires them? 

If we will not speak for free speech when it is shut down by special interests, protestors of the politically correct, on campuses and in newspapers, we manifest that we are not serious about free speech. There is no “we” after the killings. There are very few worthy of that claim … and, alas, under the shout of allahu akbar, 12 of them are now quite dead.

Right on, Rex!

Western leaders finally admit Muslims are waging jihad against us

In an unusually clear statement of fact, Canadian Prime Minister Harper said on Friday that the "international jihadist movement" -- yes, those were his words -- has declared war on countries around the world. But, he said, people around the world showed they won't be intimidated by "jihadist terrorists."

In his first public comments about yesterday's attack on the Paris office of the satirical weekly newspaper Charlie Hebdo, in which 12 people were murdered, Mr. Harper said "When a trio of hooded men struck at some of our most cherished democratic principles -- freedom of expression, freedom of the press -- they assaulted democracy everywhere. Yesterday, hundreds of thousands of people around the world and in cities across [Canada] openly demonstrated that we will not be intimidated by jihadist terrorists."

Walt trusts he was not including to the cowardly and politically correct English-Canadian media, which -- with the commendable exception of the National Post -- decided that discretion was the better part of valour, and refrained from showing or printing even one of the cartoons which the Islamic terrorists denounced as "insulting to the Prophet Mohammed". See "The religion that must not be satirized... on pain of death!", posted here on Thursday.

But I digress. As I fired up the old Commodore 64, my aim was to place this week's atrocities in context. In "The war against ISIS explained... again... seriously, this time" (WWW 14/11/14), I called the latest US-led invasion of Iraq another phase of the "Oil Wars". But there's more to this than the American imperialism which I condemned just this Monday in "Why the Middle East hates the West - Part III".

Mr. Harper's statement reminds me that I neglected to address, except in passing, the fact that the Paris attacks are merely the latest battle of a religious war. A "jihad" is a "holy war", and the three jihadists are (by their own choice) casualties of the war of Islam against all infidels, including Christians and (particularly) Jews.

France's president, François Hollande, rightly described the killing of Jewish hostages at a kosher grocery store as "an anti-Semitic act", which should remind us that the fundamentalist Muslims are sworn enemies of the earlier Abrahamic religions, Christianity and Judaism, against whom they have fought for control of the Holy Land... and the world... right from the beginning. Walt recommends [for the second time this week! Ed.] a column by the National Post's Christie Blatchford: When push comes to shove, isn’t it curious how it’s always about the Jews?

History -- if anyone is left to write it -- may struggle to pinpoint the date on which the Great Islamic Jihad began. Perhaps the Americans started it, with Operation Desert Storm, or the invasion of Iraq, or the invasion of Afghanistan. Or perhaps it goes all the way back to the Crusades, or earlier.

When the holy war against the West started doesn't matter. We are now in the middle of it, and the Islamic fanatics are bringing the battle from the sandpit of the Middle East to our very doorsteps. This is the burden of a message received today from the Fatima Center, which Walt thinks worth posting here. [Minor edits and emphasis are mine.]

A spray of bullets, the cry of “Allahu Akbar!”, and a scene of horror, with dead bodies giving their mute and gruesome testimony to the barbarism that is engulfing what were once the nations of Christendom – this was the scene in Paris on January 7 at the offices of Charlie Hebdo, a satirical publication that dared to mock Islam.

The usual and quite useless responses were forthcoming. The French Bishops Conference spoke of maintaining the “fragile fellowship” of a diverse society. Pope Francis observed that man can be cruel (no mention of Islam) and asked for prayers for the victims. And there were those who lamented the failure to respect the rights of free speech. There were even some who tentatively suggested that the dead were to be faulted for disrespecting a particular religious sentiment, while formally condemning the violence as nevertheless inappropriate or unjustified (but understandable). And, of course, there were cheers among the jihadists for another slaughter of the infidels.

The Fatima Center tells the plain truth that the world is unwilling to hear: We are engaged in a war, a final battle, between good and evil, with Our Lady opposed by Satan. If we wish to fight on the side of the good, we must do so under the banner of Our Lady of Fatima. We cannot defeat an implacable enemy by an appeal to tolerance or free speech or the desirability of diversity.

There is in liberalism, which has come to dominate the West, a refusal to recognize that certain things are irreconcilable. There are situations in which one has no choice but to fight or be vanquished. This desire to negotiate, to dialogue endlessly in the hope of reaching a mutually acceptable compromise is rooted in the illusion that there are no absolute truths. It is difficult for liberals to understand those who refuse to dialogue and would sooner kill you than negotiate a middle position.

Our Lady of Fatima came to tell us that we must choose: obey Heaven or reap the consequences. We have so far refused to obey, as the Consecration of Russia to the Immaculate Heart of Mary has yet to be performed. When it is performed by the Pope and the bishops, as Our Lady specified, we will have world peace. Scenes of carnage such as we just witnessed in Paris will be no more. Until then, we can only expect more horrors and suffering. The only practical course to follow at this point in time is to pray for the Consecration and to work for it in every way we can. Our Lady of Fatima is our only hope.

Charlie Hebdo shooter dreamed of being a rap star

Here, without editorial comment, are three paragraphs from a story that appeared on the Reuters wire earlier today.

Twelve years ago, one of the two brothers suspected of the shootings at satirical weekly Charlie Hebdo was a young man like many others in France, more interested in girls and smoking dope than defending the Prophet Mohammad.

But between 2003, when Cherif Kouachi delivered pizzas and dreamed of being a rap star, and Wednesday, when he and his brother were named chief suspects in the killing of 12 people in Paris, the French national went from punk to most wanted.

In a 2005 France 3 documentary, which includes footage taken at a Paris community centre, Kouachi is seen rapping in English, in jeans and a baggy sweatshirt, a baseball hat worn backwards on his head.

Note from Ed.: Walt told me there should be no editorial comment, but I can't resist asking who will be the one to sing "I shot the Chérif"?

Meanwhile, in Nigeria, militant Islamists wipe out town of 10,000

The world... well, the Western world, at least... is getting mightily exercised about the death of a dozen French men and women, executed by two Islamic extremists for "insulting the Prophet". Marine Le Pen, leader of the Front National, says there is no more time for denial and hypocrisy.

Fingers are being pointed at Islamic fundamentalism, and rightly so, but the problem of coping with millions of outsiders who do not (in spite of what François Hollande and the Pope keep saying) share our core values.

The politically correct message is that not all Muslims are like that. Maybe so. Maybe... maybe... 99% of the followers of the Prophet wouldn't arm themselves with AK-47s and go out hunting infidels. That would leave just 1% -- 50,000 residents of France -- who might threaten the peace of that country. Food for thought...

Meanwhile, the militant Islamists who call themselves Boko Haram -- it means "Western education is forbidden" -- are laying waste to great swathes of northern Nigeria. They control 70% of Borno, the state worst-affected by their insurgency.

Today, a senior government official in the area said that fleeing residents told him that the town of Baga, which had a population of about 10,000, was now "virtually non-existent".

Musa Alhaji Bukar told the BBC's Hausa service, the town had been burnt down. Those who fled reported that they had been unable to bury the dead, and hundreds of corpses littered the town's streets, he said, adding that Boko Haram is now in control of Baga and 16 neighbouring towns after the Nigerian military fled.

The people of northern Nigeria are predominantly Muslim. Most of the 2000 or so people massacred by Boko Haram last year were Muslims -- the peaceful, non-violent kind. The Muslims who have joined the ranks of the Islamic extremists is certainly less than 1%. More food for thought.

The religion that must not be satirized... on pain of death!

In yesterday's second post on the assassination of Charlie Hebdo, Walt drew attention to the craven refusal of the lamestream media to draw attention to the fact that the terrorists being hunted for the murders of a dozen people are Muslims of North African ancestry. Instead, all we hear is calls for brotherhood and unity, as if the massacre had nothing to do with the perps' ethnicity or religious motivation.

Why is the fact that the murderers are Islamic extremists being downplayed? Political correctness, of course! The Taliban, al-Qaeda and now IS have bullied Western politicians -- including Francis the Party Pope -- and media into fearing to say, let alone do anything which might possibly give offence to followers of the Prophet.

Such is the post-Christian, post-religious Western world today. It's OK to make fun of Christianity, particularly the Catholic Church and fundamentalist Protestants. Scientologists, Jehovah's Witnesses and Mormons have all been satirized in South Park and other TV comedies. Even Judaism is fair game. The Eastern religions -- Buddhism, Hinduism, Sikhism -- don't even get a laugh. But the one religion that can't be touched, or even mentioned, is... dare we name it... Islam!

Islam is untouchable because our "leaders" and chattering classes have got The Fear. This goes back at least as far as 1989 (before the word "Islamophobia" was coined), when Ayatollah Khomeini issued a fatwa (an order to Muslims to kill someone) against Salman Rushdie for writing The Satanic Verses. English writer Hanif Kureishi called the fatwa -- which is still in effect -- "one of the most significant events in postwar literary history."

The controversy over The Satanic Verses may be said to have divided Muslims from Westerners along the fault line of culture. The core Western value of freedom of expression -- that no-one "should be killed, or face a serious threat of being killed, for what they say or write" -- is now confronted by the Islamic fundamentalist commandment that no-one should be free to "insult and malign Muslims" by disparaging the "honour of the Prophet" Mohammed.

"Death to those who insult the Prophet!" is what the Islamists preach, and their followers -- including the two North African Muslims who killed the journalists of Charlie Hebdo -- are walking the talk. With a vengeance. Literally!

These thoughts have occurred not just to Walt but to others, including numerous cartoonists, commentators, journalists and writers. But so far I've heard only one make the point that political correctness to the point of fear has silenced public discussion of the issue. The CBC's senior correspondent, Neil Macdonald, spoke out on last night's edition of The National. Click here to watch "Religion, satire, and where we draw the line". Bravo, Neil, for breaking the politically correct silence.

Walt also recommends: "Terrorists have cowed us all into a ridiculous self-censorship", by the deliciously un-PC Crusty Blatchford ["Christie", surely. Ed.] in the Notional Post. ["National Post", surely. Ed.] Sample: You want to talk about common or "shared values", as just about every Western leader has done since the attack? The value most shared in the West, and perhaps in this country in particular, is timidity.

RIP Charlie Hebdo: - casualty of the Islamic war on the West

The victims of today's massacre -- for that's what it was -- are casualties of the Islamic war against the West.

The BBC's religious affairs correspondent, Caroline Wyatt, writes:

These latest shootings may be the work of "lone wolves" but their consequences will ripple across Europe and provoke much soul-searching about the failure of integration over the past decades.

Immigrant communities are already being viewed with increasing suspicion in both France and Germany, with their significant Muslim populations, and even in the UK.

In all three, mainstream political parties are being forced to confront popular discontent over levels of immigration and the apparent desire of some younger, often disaffected children or grandchildren of immigrant families not to conform to western, liberal lifestyles - including traditions of religious tolerance and free speech.

Through all this, ultra-PC Western politicians and the lamestream press still shy away from speaking the truth, that the three men being hunted are Islamic terrorists. "They were French citizens", we are told, and "they spoke perfect French."

What we are not told is that they were of North African descent, three of the five million Muslims living in France. That's 7.5% of the French population, the largest Muslim population in Europe. They may be in Europe, but as followers of the Prophet, they are not of Europe. And that's the truth.

French satirical paper latest target of Islamic terrorists

As 2014 ends, so 2015 begins, with followers of the Prophet killing infidels in countries which insist on meddling in the Middle East. The USA, of course, Canada, Australia, and now France. Today in Paris, black-hooded gunmen shot and killed at least 12 people -- the body count still hasn't been finalized -- at the offices of Charlie Hebdo, a satirical publication similar to Britain's Private Eye or "America's Finest News Source", The Onion.

Two flics (French cops) are believed to be among the dead, and at least another 10 people -- they're still counting as Walt writes -- were injured in the "carnage." A police spokesthingy said the attackers escaped in two vehicles [In Paris traffic? How?! Ed.] and are still at large.

French President François Hollande, France's hugely ineffectual and unpopular president, ordered top government officials to convene an emergency meeting. "This is a terrorist attack, there is no doubt about it," he told reporters, "and we plan to harrumph about it very loudly indeed."

M Hollande also said French police have thwarted several other planned attacks "in recent weeks." He refrained, however, from identifying the attackers as Muslims. So why does Walt fearlessly call them "Islamic extremists"? Well, what do you think?

How about if I tell you that Charlie Hebdo was firebombed in November 2011 after publishing cartoons lampooning Muslim leaders and putting an image of the Prophet Mohammed on its cover. A year later, the magazine published more Mohammed drawings amid an uproar over an anti-Muslim film. The cartoons depicted Muhammad naked and in demeaning or mildly pornographic poses. As passions raged, the French government rebuked Charlie Hebdo for political incorrectness.

Today, the last tweet on Charlie Hebdo's account mocked Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the leader of ISIS, which has taken control of large swathes of Iraq and Syria. Witnesses to the massacre said they heard the gunmen shouting "We have avenged the Prophet Mohammed!"

The "radicalized Muslims" who have perpetrated the recent attacks in the USA, Canada and Australia have given the "war" on ISIS by America and its coalition of the somewhat willing as the motivation for their terrorist acts. ISIS has published several videos in which young, Western terrorist wannabes have said they're coming to get us, in our own countries and cities. As today's outrage demonstrates, they weren't kidding.

Walt is waiting to see what the French government will actually do to counter the threat of Islamic terrorism. Following today's shooting, the office of the French prime minister announced that the country has raised its anti-terrorism alert to its highest level. So what?

Thanks to political correctness and the "enlightened" immigration policies of its liberal governments, France is full of Muslims, some of them "moderate" and some of them, errr, not so "moderate". There's no getting rid of them, and there's no living with them in peace.

What we are seeing now, in France and the rest of the West, are the first shots in sectarian warfare -- Muslims vs "infidels" -- which can only get worse. The sad thing is so few of our political leaders had the vision to see this coming. See "Charles De Gaulle warns about Muslim immigration" (WWW, 25/8/12).

De Gaulle (1959) and Enoch Powell (1968) were denounced as alarmists and even racists. Today their warnings would be called "Islamophobic". But they were right! The warning bells have been ringing for over half a century. And still the likes of Hussein Obama, Tony Bliar, and Francis the Humble don't get it. Expect more terrorism... coming to your country, your city, perhaps even your neighbourhood... soon!