Biden Lies To America, Tells the Truth To China

Biden Lies To America, Tells the Truth To China

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Qatar and Its Al-Jazeera Network: ‘Voice for Terrorists

Qatar and Its Al-Jazeera Network: ‘Voice for Terrorists

  The long-term agenda looks as if the US and Qatar intend to try to elbow Israel out of any say in what “humanitarian aid” is eventually be brought into Gaza.The US More »

Hashobora kuvuka igihugu gishya hagati ya Tanzania,Uganda,Rwanda,na DRCongo

Hashobora kuvuka igihugu gishya hagati ya Tanzania,Uganda,Rwanda,na DRCongo

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Igihugu cya Kenya kirageraniwe mu by’ubukungu

Igihugu cya Kenya kirageraniwe mu by’ubukungu

Igihugu cya Kenya kirageraniwe mu bijyanye n’ubukungu aho abanyenganda (investors) bamaze guhunga icyo gihugu berekeza mu bihugu by’abaturanyi. Ariko inkuru dukesha inama nkuru yabanyenganda bakoranye na Leta ya Ruto batangaje ko benshi More »

Biden’s Pier Is a Gift to Hamas Terrorists

Biden’s Pier Is a Gift to Hamas Terrorists

There are mounting concerns that the Biden administration’s pier plan could ultimately boomerang, especially, as Netanyahu himself has warned, if the US aid and the port itself end up in the hands More »

 

European Union Caving to Turkey’s Blackmail? by Burak Bekdil

  • When Turkey’s Constitutional Court ruled that the detention for 92 days of two journalists, Can Dundar and Erdem Gul, constituted a breach of their basic rights, President Recep Tayyip Erdogan did not hide his anger, and said he would not obey the supreme court’s ruling.

  • Turkish courts, controlled by Erdogan’s government, put the newspaper Zaman, one of the last remaining media critics of Erdogan, under state control. A court actually appointed administrators to run the newspaper. Editor-in-chief Sevgi Akarcesme said that this was effectively the end of media freedom in Turkey.
  • Turkey ranks 149th amongst the 180 countries in the Reporters Without Borders’ World Press Freedom Index 2015.
  • Quite realistically, Nigel Farage, a British opposition figure, accused Turkey of “blackmailing” the EU over the Syrian refugee crisis and its proposed EU membership.

Turkey has been sliding into an ugly Islamist despotism. Yet its relations with the European Union (EU) which it aspires to join has rarely been better. Some call it a mutually “transactional” improvement: “pragmatism.” Others, in less diplomatic language, call it Turkish blackmailing on the back of the refugee crisis. Even Turkey’s Prime Minister Ahmet Davutogu admitted that his latest round of negotiations with Europe’s leaders was a fine bargaining “a la Kayseri,” a Turkish city famous for its tough-bargaining merchants.

In reality, modern Turkey has never been this galactically distant from the core values enshrined by the European civilization and its institutions, including even the EU.

When Turkey’s Constitutional Court ruled that the detention for 92 days of two journalists, Can Dundar and Erdem Gul, constituted a breach of their basic rights, President Recep Tayyip Erdogan did not hide his anger. He said he would not respect or obey the Supreme Court’s ruling.

The journalists had been charged with espionage and terrorism after their secular newspaper, Cumhuriyet, ran photos and a story about Turkish intelligence sending trucks full of arms to jihadists fighting in Syria. Prosecutors demand life sentences for the prominent journalists.

Erdogan does not mind playing the supreme leader beyond the check on power of law. In a March 11 speech, Erdogan said:

“The Constitutional Court has to be one of the institutions that should be the most sensitive about the interests and rights of the state and the people. But this institution and its president have not hesitated to rule against the country and its people on one of the most concrete examples of a massive attack towards Turkey in recent times.”

Turkey is now a country where the elected president publicly says that he will not obey a ruling from the Supreme Court.

In one of its boldest moves against free speech, Turkish courts, controlled by Erdogan’s government, put the newspaper Zaman, one of the last remaining media critics of Erdogan, under state control. A court actually appointed administrators to run the newspaper. Editor-in-chief Sevgi Akarcesme said that this was effectively the end of media freedom in Turkey. She said: “The media has always been under pressure, but it has never been so blatant.” The New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) said in a letter to Turkish Prime Minister Davutoglu that press freedom in Turkey is “under siege.”

Unsurprisingly, Turkey ranks 149th amongst the 180 countries in the Reporters Without Borders’ World Press Freedom Index 2015.

It’s not just the press. Prosecutors also detained four prominent businessmen who run a multibillion-dollar conglomerate for alleged ties with Fethullah Gulen, a Muslim cleric who was formerly a staunch political ally of Erdogan. Gulen’s followers broke with Erdogan after the two groups entangled in a power-sharing struggle in late 2013.

The newspaper Zaman too, was a Gulenist outlet critical of Erdogan’s undemocratic practices. After its seizure by the judiciary, the newspaper now features a distinctly pro-government slant. One of its front pages after take-over featured a picture of a smiling Erdogan.

Against such a gloomy background, the EU’s ties with Turkey, instead of going into the deep-freeze, are flourishing. Two ministers from German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s government have voiced support for Turkey’s EU membership bid in an apparent praise for Turkey’s potential “usefulness” in Europe’s efforts to deal with a pressing refugee crisis. “I am for the opening of the chapter on justice and human rights, finally,” German Justice Minister Heiko Maas of Social Democrats (SPD) told German magazine, Spiegel, in an article published on March 11. Defense Minister Ursula von der Leyen said: “It is right to accommodate further the negotiations on Turkey’s EU membership now.”

Such praise came when Turkey and the EU are in negotiations over a re-admission agreement in which Turkey will take back some of the illegal Syrian migrants who reach Greek shores –-and then travel to central Europe—in return for a visa-free travel regime for 79 million Turks and speeding up Turkey’s several decades-long membership process. After the latest round of talks with the EU, Davutoglu proudly told reporters of a “Kayseri-style bargaining” not hiding his pleasure at tricking the Europeans by the notorious business cunning and acumen of the people of Kayseri.

Quite realistically, Nigel Farage, a British opposition figure, accused Turkey of “blackmailing” the EU over the Syrian refugee crisis and its proposed EU membership. The Ukip party leader told the European Parliament it was “outrageous” that Turkey had been offered concessions on joining the bloc in exchange for doing a deal to accept more refugees and migrants.

Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan (left) recently said angrily that he would not obey a supreme court order to release two journalists after 92 days of detention. Nigel Farage (right), a British opposition party leader, accused Turkey of “blackmailing” the EU over the Syrian refugee crisis and its proposed EU membership.

None of what has been going on in Turkey is surprising. By a popular vote, the country has been dragged into an Islamist tyranny. Yet it is only by a grotesque irony that the European leaders might surrender.

Burak Bekdil, based in Ankara, is a Turkish columnist for the Hürriyet Daily and a Fellow at the Middle East Forum.

European Temper Trumptums Europe Holds “Panic Dinner”

  • The arrogant claim to the moral high ground by European elites has no basis in reality.There is no respect for freedom and democracy on a continent where citizens, such as the politician Geert Wilders, are arrested and prosecuted by in a court of law for speaking their minds freely about topics that the authorities find it expedient not to debate in public.

  • Freedom, respect for the rule of law, and people’s race, religion and gender have never been less respected and protected in Germany during the post-WWII era than under Merkel. German authorities have completely failed to protect women, Christians and others from the chaos unleashed by the mass, unvetted, immigration of mainly Muslim migrants from Africa and the Middle East. The rule of law is anything but “respected” in Germany.
  • Not everyone is “panicking”. UK Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson, rejected the invitation and told his colleagues to end their “collective whinge-o-rama” about the U.S. election result.
  • Critics of the U.S. election omitted, however, the runaway lawlessness, divisiveness and corruption that American voters declined to reinstate.

“A world is collapsing before our eyes”, tweeted the French ambassador to the United States, Gerard Araud, as it became clear that Donald Trump had won the US presidential election. Although he later apparently deleted the tweet, the sentiment expressed in his tweet encapsulates the attitude of the majority of the European political establishment.

Deutsche Welle (DW), Germany’s international broadcaster, described the reaction to Trump’s victory across Germany’s political spectrum as “shock and uncertainty.” Defense Minister Ursula von der Leyen described Trump’s win as a “heavy shock.” German Justice Minister Heiko Maas tweeted: “The world won’t end, but things will get more crazy”.

Green party leader Cem Özdemir called Trump’s election a “break with the tradition that the West stands for liberal values.”

Chancellor Angela Merkel’s deputy chancellor, Sigmar Gabriel, said:

“Trump is the trailblazer of a new authoritarian and chauvinist international movement. … They want a rollback to the bad old times in which women belonged by the stove or in bed, gays in jail and unions at best at the side table. And he who doesn’t keep his mouth shut gets publicly bashed.”

In a fine touch of irony, EU Commissioner Guenther Oettinger, who recently referred to the Chinese as “slanty eyed,” told Deutschlandfunk radio that the U.S. election was a “warning” for Germany: “Things are getting simplified, black or white, good or bad, right or wrong. You can ask simple questions, but one should not give simple answers.”

In France, the media reaction was summed up by the left-leaning newspaper, Libération:

“Trumpocalypse… Shock… The world’s leading power is from now on in the hands of the far-right. Fifty percent of Americans voted in all conscience for a racist, lying, sexist, vulgar, hateful candidate.”

Critics omitted, however, the runaway lawlessness, divisiveness and corruption that American voters declined to reinstate.

President François Hollande described Trump’s victory as marking the start of “a period of uncertainty.” Previously, Hollande had said that Trump made him “want to retch.”

European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker, one of the most powerful men in Europe, told students at a conference in Luxembourg, “We will need to teach the president-elect what Europe is and how it works”. He also claimed that, “The election of Trump poses the risk of upsetting intercontinental relations in their foundation and in their structure.” He added that Americans usually have no interest in Europe.

Chancellor Angela Merkel herself offered to work closely with Trump only “on the basis that shared values, such as democracy, freedom, respect for the rule of law and people’s race, religion and gender are respected” — the overbearing implication being that Trump cannot be expected to respect these concepts.

Just how hysterical European political leaders’ reaction has been to Trump was manifested in the fact that they felt compelled to hold an informal “crisis meeting” — some diplomats called it a “panic dinner” — on Sunday evening, to deal with the “shock” of the presidential election. “We would never have had a similar dinner if Hillary Clinton had been elected. It shows just how much we’re panicking,” said a diplomat from one of the smaller EU states.

Not everyone is “panicking.” UK Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson rejected the invitation and told his colleagues to end their “collective whinge-o-rama” about the U.S. election result.

There is indeed an unmistakable infantility about the reactions of European political elites to the election of the new US president, which are reminiscent of a young child lashing out after being denied candy. More significantly, the reactions reveal an overbearing disrespect for the American people’s free and democratic choice of a leader. Most important, however, is that the arrogant claim to the moral high ground by European elites has no basis in reality. It simply is not true that, as Merkel claimed, freedom and democracy, rule of law and respect for people’s race, religion and gender are at the foreground of European policies.

In fact, there is something deeply ironic about Angela Merkel mentioning freedom, the rule of law and so on. In fact, freedom, respect for the rule of law, and people’s race, religion and gender have never been less respected and protected in Germany during the post-WWII era than under Merkel. German authorities have completely failed to protect women, Christians and others from the chaos unleashed by the mass, unvetted, immigration of mainly Muslim migrants from Africa and the Middle East. The rule of law is anything but “respected” in Germany, where large pockets of Muslims live in parallel societies, or no-go zones, where police are too afraid to enter, where the residents impose their own rules, such as polygamy, and where committing social benefits fraud is rampant while German authorities turn a knowing blind eye.

This pattern repeats itself endlessly in other European countries. In Britain, the police and social workers have turned a blind eye for years to Muslim gangs grooming, prostituting, and raping young white British teenagers in cities such as Oxford, Birmingham, Rochdale and Rotherham. How is that for “respect for the rule of law” and human rights?

There is no freedom, or respect for gender in Swedish women being told not to go out after dark, or German women being told to follow a “code of conduct” because local police authorities can no longer protect them from sexual assault.

There is no respect for religion on a continent where authorities have been unable to stem a tidal wave of anti-Semitism or to protect Christians who flee from the Middle East to Europe, only to experience similar prosecution from local or migrant Muslims.

There is no respect for freedom and democracy on a continent where citizens, such as the politician Geert Wilders, are arrested and prosecuted by national authorities in a court of law for speaking their minds freely about topics that the authorities do not find it expedient to debate in public.

Perhaps Europe can start preaching to president-elect Donald Trump once it gets its own house in order?

Judith Bergman is a writer, columnist, lawyer and political analyst.

European Parliament Censors Its Own Free Speech by Judith Bergman

  • The rule strikes at the very center of free speech, namely that of elected politicians, which the European Court of Human Rights has deemed in its practice to be specially protected. Members of the European Parliament are people who have been elected to make the voices of their constituents heard inside the institutions of the European Union.
  • The rule can only have a chilling effect on free speech in the European Parliament, and will likely prove a convenient tool in trying to shut up those parliamentarians who do not follow the politically correct narrative of the EU.

  • By lifting Le Pen’s immunity while she is running for president of France, the European Parliament is sending the clear signal that publicizing the graphic and horrifying truth of the crimes of ISIS, rather than being received as a warning about what might soon be coming to Europe, instead ought to be punished.
  • Where does this clearly totalitarian impulse stop and who will stop it?

The European Parliament has introduced a new procedural rule, which allows for the chair of a debate to interrupt the live broadcasting of a speaking MEP “in the case of defamatory, racist or xenophobic language or behavior by a Member”. Furthermore, the President of the European Parliament may even “decide to delete from the audiovisual record of the proceedings those parts of a speech by a Member that contain defamatory, racist or xenophobic language”.

No one, however, has bothered to define what constitutes “defamatory, racist or xenophobic language or behavior”. This omission means that the chair of any debate in the European Parliament is free to decide, without any guidelines or objective criteria, whether the statements of MEPs are “defamatory, racist or xenophobic”. The penalty for offenders can apparently reach up to around 9,000 euros.

“There have been a growing number of cases of politicians saying things that are beyond the pale of normal parliamentary discussion and debate,” said British EU parliamentarian Richard Corbett, who has defended the new rule. Mr. Corbett, however, does not specify what he considers “beyond the pale”.

In June 2016, Mahmoud Abbas, president of the Palestinian Authority, addressed the European Parliament in a speech, which drew on old anti-Semitic blood libels, such as falsely accusing Israeli rabbis of calling on the Israeli government to poison the water used by Palestinian Arabs. Such a clearly incendiary and anti-Semitic speech was not only allowed in parliament by the sensitive and “anti-racist” parliamentarians; it received a standing ovation. Evidently, wild anti-Semitic blood libels pronounced by Arabs do not constitute “things that are beyond the pale of normal parliamentary discussion and debate”.

Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas receives a standing ovation at the European Parliament in Brussels on June 23, 2016, after falsely claiming in his speech that Israeli rabbis were calling to poison Palestinian water. Abbas later recanted and admitted that his claim had been false. (Image source: European Parliament)

The European Parliament apparently did not even bother to publicize their new procedural rule; it was only made public by Spain’s La Vanguardia newspaper. Voters were, it appears, not supposed to know that they may be cut off from listening to the live broadcasts of the parliamentarians they elected to represent them in the EU, if some chairman of a debate subjectively happened to decide that what was being said was “racist, defamatory or xenophobic”.

The European Parliament is the only popularly elected institution in the EU. Helmut Scholz, from Germany’s left-wing Die Linke party, said that EU lawmakers must be able to express their views about how Europe should work: “You can’t limit or deny this right”. Well, they can express it (but for how long?), except that now no one outside of parliament will hear it.

The rule strikes at the very center of free speech, namely that of elected politicians, which the European Court of Human Rights has deemed in its practice to be specially protected. Members of the European Parliament are people who have been elected to make the voices of their constituents heard inside the institutions of the European Union. Limiting their freedom of speech is undemocratic, worrisome and spookily Orwellian.

The rule can only have a chilling effect on freedom of speech in the European Parliament and will likely prove a convenient tool in trying to shut up those parliamentarians who do not follow the politically correct narrative of the EU.

The European Parliament lately seems to be waging war against free speech. At the beginning of March, the body lifted the parliamentary immunity of French presidential candidate Marine Le Pen. Her crime? Tweeting three images of ISIS executions in 2015. In France, “publishing violent images” constitutes a criminal offense, which can carry a penalty of three years in prison and a fine of 75,000 euros. By lifting her immunity at the same time that she is running for president of France, the European Parliament is sending the clear signal that publicizing the graphic and horrifying truth of the crimes of ISIS, rather than being received as a warning about what might soon be coming to Europe, instead ought to be punished.

This is a bizarre signal to be sending, especially to the Christian and Yazidi victims of ISIS, who are still largely ignored by the European Union. European parliamentarians, evidently, are too sensitive to deal with the graphic murders of defenseless people in the Middle East, and are more concerned with ensuring the prosecution of the messengers, such as Marine Le Pen.

So, political correctness, now effectively the “religious police” of political discourse, has not only taken over the media and academia; elected MEPs are now also supposed to toe the politically correct line, or literally be cut off. No one stopped the European Parliament from passing this undemocratic anti-free speech rule. Why did no parliamentarian out of the 751 MEPs raise red flags about the issue before it became an actual rule? Even more importantly: Where does this clearly totalitarian impulse stop and who will stop it?

Judith Bergman is a writer, columnist, lawyer and political analyst.

European Governments Ignoring Security Warnings? by Judith Bergman

  • “We are importing Islamic extremism, Arab anti-Semitism, national and ethnic conflicts of other peoples, as well as a different understanding of society and law.” — From a leaked German intelligence document.

  • The mayor of Molenbeek, Belgium ignored a list she received, one month prior to the Paris attacks, “with the names and addresses of more than 80 people suspected as Islamic militants living in her area,” according to the New York Times. “What was I supposed to do about them? It is not my job to track possible terrorists,” Mayor Schepmans said.
  • In October 2015, Andrew Parker, director general of Britain’s Security Service, said that the “scale and tempo” of the danger to the UK is now at a level he has not seen in his 32-year career. British police are monitoring over 3,000 homegrown Islamist extremists willing to carry out attacks on the UK.

The head of the Norwegian Police Security Service (PST), Benedicte Bjørnland, was recently a participating guest at a security conference in Sweden, where she warned against further Muslim immigration.

One cannot,” she said, “assume that new arrivals will automatically adapt to the norms and rules of Norwegian society. Furthermore, new arrivals are not homogenous and can bring ethnic and religious strife with them… If parallel societies, radicalization and extremist environments emerge in the long run,” she added, “We will have challenges as a security service.”

The changes Bjørnland speaks of — parallel societies, radicalization and extremist environments — are nothing new; they have been proliferating throughout Western Europe for years. The Brussels suburb of Molenbeek, which was home to two of the perpetrators of November’s terror attacks in Paris, is known as a “terrorist den.” Yet the mayor of Molenbeek ignored a list she received, one month prior to the Paris attacks, “with the names and addresses of more than 80 people suspected as Islamic militants living in her area,” according to the New York Times. “What was I supposed to do about them? It is not my job to track possible terrorists,” Mayor Schepmans said. “That is the responsibility of the federal police.”

This statement is, in many ways, symptomatic of the European failure to deal with the security problems that Europe faces. The problem is always supposed to be somebody else’s.

Anders Thornberg, the head of the Swedish Security Service (SÄPO), literally begged Swedish society for help: “The Islamist environments have grown considerably in the past five years,” he said “and tensions are growing between various population groups. We need all of society to help fight the radicalization, there are limits to how much faster a security service can run.”

Swedish Security Service chief Anders Thornberg recently said: “The Islamist environments have grown considerably in the past five years and tensions are growing between various population groups. We need all of society to help fight the radicalization, there are limits to how much faster a security service can run.”

These are sentiments that are rarely, if ever, voiced by official Norway or Sweden. Apparently, the fear of offending Muslim sensitivities has thus far overridden security concerns. But even Sweden, which sees itself as a “humanitarian superpower,” and up until recently had sworn to keep its doors open to all migrants and refugees, has had to reassess its policy. At the end of November 2015, Sweden’s Deputy-Prime Minister Asa Romson, reluctantly and in tears, said that the government had been “forced to take reality into account,” given the huge number of migrants that entering the country. Sweden (and Denmark) tightened their border controls a few weeks ago.

It is questionable, however, whether the warning cries of the Scandinavian security services will have any noticeable impact on the fundamental political course of their political leaders, especially if the latest statements by Swedish Prime Minister Stefan Löfven are anything to take into account.

In an interview at the World Economic Forum in Davos on January 21, Löfven declared that it was “wrong” to mix up either sexual assaults on European women or the threat of ISIS with the mass migration into Europe: “Sexual harassment is not automatically binding to migration and immigration. We have had sexual harassment in Sweden for many, many years, unfortunately,” Löfven told CNBC, thus pretending that the imported Middle Eastern pastime of Taharrush [collective sexual harassment] of thousands of women in Cologne and other European cities on New Year’s Eve had nothing to do with migrants.

“What it now takes is to be very clear that this is not appropriate, it is absolutely out of line and we need to take a very clear message now to show to these young girls and women they are of course entitled to walk in the city… without sexual harassment,” Löfven added.

No, the girls and the women are not the ones in need of a “clear message.” The men harassing and raping them are — especially in a country now known as the rape capital of the West.

The Swedish prime minister’s refusal to “deal with reality” — including that ISIS terrorists enter Europe together with the migrants — is disturbing and should be of immense concern to Swedish citizens. It also displays the huge gap in perception of the current situation between the Swedish Security Service and the Swedish government.

The head of the Swedish Security Service has every reason, it turns out, to beg Swedish society to help fight the security challenges Sweden is facing. Considering the current Swedish government, he is going to need all the help he can get.

The additional gap between the genuine concerns of various countries’ intelligence and security services on one hand, and governments’ fear of offending Muslim sensibilities and venturing beyond the politically correct “narratives” on the other hand, is not confined to Sweden, but evident across Western Europe.

European intelligence and security services have warned for a long time that — given the increase of mainly Muslim migration and the ensuing growth of parallel societies and extremist environments — they cannot keep up with the ever-increasing threats of jihadist terrorism, which in the past decade have grown exponentially.

In the Netherlands, the Dutch jihadist movement began a far-reaching process of becoming more professional in late 2010, and adopted propaganda methods developed by British jihadists. “The increasing momentum of Dutch jihadism poses an unprecedented threat to the democratic legal order of the Netherlands,” stated the Dutch intelligence service, AIVD, in the autumn of 2014.

In Germany, the intelligence agencies warned in the early fall of 2015 that, “We are importing Islamic extremism, Arab anti-Semitism, national and ethnic conflicts of other peoples, as well as a different understanding of society and law.”

Four major German security agencies made it clear that “German security agencies… will not be in the position to solve these imported security problems and thereby the arising reactions from Germany’s population.” Still, this dire warning, which was leaked to the German press, did not cause Germany’s Chancellor, Angela Merkel, to change her open-door policy. While Germany has introduced border controls, 2000 asylum claims are still processed there every day.

In Britain, the MI5 has openly declared that it cannot stop all terrorist attacks on English soil. In October 2015, Andrew Parker, director general of the Security Service, said that the “scale and tempo” of the danger to the UK is now at a level he has not seen in his 32-year career. He warned that while the threat to the UK from ISIS is on the rise, MI5 can “never” be confident in stopping all terror plots.

Little wonder. British police are monitoring over 3,000 homegrown Islamist extremists who are willing to carry out attacks on the UK, British security sources have warned. That is a 50% increase in less than a decade. Already in November 2014, Sir Bernard Hogan-Howe, the Metropolitan Police Commissioner, told an international terrorism conference that 25% of the population growth in the UK had arrived in London in the last 10 years, and poses big challenges for the police force, who could not keep up with the pace of immigration.

The difficulties in properly monitoring so many extremists and effectively preventing them from committing acts of terror has also become a tremendous challenge, compounded by the sheer volume of extremists. Dame Stella Rimington, former head of the MI5, estimated in June 2013 that it would take around 50,000 full-time MI5 spies to monitor 2,000 extremists or potential terrorists 24 hours a day, seven days a week. That would be more than 10 times the number of people currently employed by MI5.

The situation is not much different in many other European countries. In Germany, Hans-Georg Maassen, head of Germany’s BfV domestic security agency, claimed that his office was aware of almost 8,000 Islamic radicals in Germany. He said that all of these extremists advocate violence to advance their goals, with some trying to win over migrants, and that his office receives one or two ‘fairly concrete tips’ of planned terrorist activity each week.

Most European countries, such as Germany, Britain and France, are operating at their highest terror alert ever. The intelligence services are trying to cope with a situation beyond anything one could have imagined a decade ago.

The fight against the terrorist threat is never going to be won, however, only by pouring more financial resources and manpower into the counter-terrorism effort, although that is of course a necessary first step. As long as the national political leaders who give orders to the security and intelligence services refuse to openly address the threat without shrouding the issue in politically correct language, they will never be able to reduce it, let alone eliminate it.

Judith Bergman is a writer, columnist, lawyer and political analyst.

Europe: What Happens to Christians There Will Come Here by Giulio Meotti

  • “Be careful, be very careful. What has happened here will come to you.” — An elderly priest in Iraq, to Father Benedict Kiely.

  • Last year, more than 90,000 people chose to drop out of the Church of Sweden — almost twice as many as the year before. Meanwhile, in one year, 163,000 migrants, most of them Muslim, entered the country.
  • “Shouldn’t the issue of Middle Eastern Christians wake up European civilization to its core identity? Shouldn’t we in Europe and the West be telling ourselves that these attacks are also aimed at us?” — Mathieu Bock-Côté, in Le Figaro.

“I fear we are approaching a situation resembling the tragic fate of Christianity in Northern Africa in Islam’s early days”, a Lutheran bishop, Jobst Schoene, warned a few years ago.

In ancient times, Algeria and Tunisia, entirely Christian, gave us great thinkers such as Tertullian and Augustine. Two centuries later, Christianity has disappeared, replaced by Arab-Islamic civilization.

Is Europe now meeting the same fate?

In the Middle East, “Christianity is over in Iraq” due to Islamic extremism; in Europe, Christianity is committing suicide.

Within 20 years, more babies will be born to Muslim women than to Christian women world-wide; it is just the latest sign of the rapid growth that seems to be making Islam the world’s largest religion by the end of the century, according to a new study released by the Pew Research Center.

“Christianity is literally dying in Europe,” said Conrad Hackett, the head of the researchers who worked on the Pew report.

According to it, between 2010 and 2015, the Muslim population increased by more than 150 million people to 1.8 billion.

In Europe, how many Christians have been “lost”? Between 2010 and 2015, “deaths outnumbered births by nearly 6 million during this brief period”.

At this pace, Christianity will vanish in Europe.

In the same time frame, in most European countries — including Britain, Germany, Italy and Russia — Christian deaths outnumbered Christian births. “In Germany alone, for example, there were an estimated 1.4 million more Christian deaths than births between 2010 and 2015, a pattern that is expected to continue across much of Europe in the decades ahead”, Pew discovered. There are clear patterns of demographic trends, church attendance, closures of parishes and the declining number of priests.

These patterns are why Islamic leaders, such as Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, have been waging a demographic war against Europe. “Have not just three but five children”, Erdogan said to Muslims in the old continent. “You are the future of Europe”. This plan is called, in Islam, hijrah: expanding Islam by migration, based on Mohammad’s flight from Mecca to Medina in 622.

Christianity in Northern Europe has already been weakened by atheism, a trend possibly accelerated by modern gains in science and medicine. The American sociologist Phil Zuckerman, after spending more than a year in Scandinavia, published a book, Society Without God. Recently, after a nationwide advertising campaign by the Atheist Society thousands of people left the Church of Denmark. Norway’s state church lost more than 25,000 members in a month. Last year, more than 90,000 people chose to drop out of the Church of Sweden — almost twice as many as the year before. Meanwhile, in one year, 163,000 migrants, most of them Muslim, entered the country.

Christianity is also collapsing in the UK. Across Greater Manchester, 20 churches will soon close. According to some reports, Anglicanism will disappear from Britain by 2033. The Catholic Church’s Archdiocese of St Andrews and Edinburgh is planning to cut the number of parishes from more than 100 to 30. The Archdiocese of Glasgow, by far the country’s largest, will soon — within two decades — have only 45 priests and probably shut down half its parishes. Imagine, a huge Catholic community will close half its churches.

The Catholic Archdiocese of St Andrews and Edinburgh, headed by Archbishop Leo Cushley (right), is planning to cut the number of parishes from more than 100 to 30. (Image source: Lawrence OP/Flickr)

Catholics in the Netherlands are also embracing a “future without churches“. Cardinal Willem Eijk, Archbishop of Utrecht, announced that by 2025 about a thousand Catholic parishes would close. “We predict that a third of Catholic churches will be closed by 2020 and two-thirds by 2025”, he said.

Most churches in Brussels will be also closed– 108 of them. Vienna Archdiocese in Austria will also liquidate most of its parishes — 660 of them — in the next 10 years. Instead, the Archdiocese will merge them into 150 larger parishes.

One finds similar numbers everywhere in Europe, from Catholic Spain to the Protestant United Kingdom.

Father Benedict Kiely, a Catholic priest who founded nasarean.org, which helps persecuted Christians in the Middle East, recently met some Christians persecuted by ISIS in Iraq. As he left the country, another elderly priest, himself a refugee, gripped Kiely’s hand and told him in Arabic: “Be careful, be very careful. What has happened here will come to you”.

As the attacks against two Coptic Christian churches in Egypt on Palm Sunday reminds us, the war of extermination being waged against Christians in the Middle East is very real indeed.

Canadian philosopher Mathieu Bock-Côté writes in Le Figaro:

“The Western world has long gotten used to the persecution of Christians in the Middle East, as if their bad lot is inevitable and has to simply be accepted. Shouldn’t the issue of Middle Eastern Christians wake up European civilization to its core identity? Shouldn’t we in Europe and the West be telling ourselves that these attacks are also aimed at us?”

Europe has, for some time, been experiencing this war against Christianity on its own soil: the terror attack at a French church in Normandy, in which Islamic extremists murdered a priest before the altar; the terror plot against the Cathedral of Notre Dame; the threat by ISIS to turn Saint Peter’s Cathedral into a mosque; the deadly terror attack at a Christmas market in Berlin, to name just a few of them.

“The mother tongue of Europe is Christianity”, said the great German writer Johann Wolfgang von Goethe — not a Pope. Maybe that language will again be strong in the future. Maybe priests will keep Christianity alive in London, Brussels and Paris. Maybe. But that is not what happened in North Africa.

By now, Goethe’s “mother tongue” has, in Europe, been reduced to a barely-discernible whisper. Instead, one can hear, instead, the “Islamic tongue” getting stronger every year.

Giulio Meotti, Cultural Editor for Il Foglio, is an Italian journalist and author.

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