French response to terrorism

Terror has come to the Toulouse. How did the French response to the massacre? In a way that reinforces the unfortunate stereotypes of French as great talkers.

A recap of the facts: a French national of Algerian descent, Mohamed Merah, murdered seven people in cold blood, including three Jewish children and a rabbi.

First of all, French have had many warnings of Merah's radicalism, as well as his criminal behavior. Merah has trained in al-Quada camps and was arrested in Afghanistan by the U.S. forces. The French authorities were aware that Merah distributed radical Islamist literature in Toulouse, after the mother of one of the teenagers Merah approached talked to the police. The police did nothing. Merah beat up the teenager and his younger sister, prompting the concerned mother to talk to the police again - to no avail.

As the mother of the teenager said, “All these people had to die before they finally arrest Mohamed Merah. What an enormous waste. The police knew this individual was dangerous and radicalized. I complained to the police twice about Mohamed Merah and tried to follow up several times.”

Melah's older brother Abdelkader told the police he was "proud" of his brother's actions, admitted helping him steal the scooter used in the murders, but claimed he was not aware of the deadly plot. The lawyer for Abdelkader girlfriend, Guy Debuissou, said that Abdelkader "celebrated" the death of his brother. The police have wised up and charged Abdelkader as an accomplice. Has justice been served? I wish the answer was "yes".

The French authorities are reluctant to admit the danger of rising antisemitism, and their attempts to whitewash the reality, reduce the likelihood any meaningful action is taken.

Consider the response of authorities in this case - they initially tried to pin the blame for the Toulouse massacre on Nazis, and when they reluctantly acknowledged Merah’s jihadist identity, they also provided his justification for murder. Speaking to reporters, French Interior Minister Claude Gueant said that Merah was associated with al-Qaida and he was upset about what he referred to as Israel’s “murder” of Palestinian children.

You can't help but be reminded of the fact that many Europeans view terrorism against Jews as justified by Israeli politics. After Anders Breivik's attack against his fellow Norwegians, including the government sponsored camp where young people terrorism role-played being Hamas, the Norwegian Ambassador Svein Sevje on Israel gave to an interview to Maariv, where he said "We Norwegians view the occupation as the reason for terror against Israel. Many Norwegians still see the occupation as the reason for attacks against Israel. Whoever thinks this way, will not change his mind as a result of the attack in Oslo."

Toulouse victims.

Imagine an ambassador to your country hypocritically tells it that terrorism against you is justified because you're bad (while terrorism against us makes no sense). How does he remain ambassador after that? As far as I'm concerned, Norway government is a sympathizer and an ally of Hamas. That's a damning statement, and by using ambassador's own logic the killing of Norway's children by Breivick is justified.

I've pointed out before that some parts of Europe are conducting a war by proxy against Israel. After the murders of Jewish children and a father of two of them, the EU foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton's moral obtuseness and evidence of anything but upright impartiality. Ashton compared the murder of three Jewish children in Toulouse on March 19 to the incident involving a crashed bus full of children and the suffering in Syria and Gaza. “Such disgraceful equation reflects an incredibly twisted value system coupled with total blindness in the face of global and Mideastern reality”, writes Ygal Walt in conservative daily Yediot Aharonot:

It is no wonder that Hamas rushed to praise Ashton for her statements, thereby highlighting Europe’s moral confusion. […] The European Union’s embarrassing “clarification,” which did not deny Ashton’s remarks but merely claimed she did not mean to compare Toulouse to Gaza, made no difference. If anything, it further demonstrated Europe’s spinelessness and the tendency to shift positions and appease different groups, without adhering to a credible, enduring moral compass.

All that remains now is to watch the deterioration of the “old continent” into a new, murky horizon. On the one hand, Islamization trends are expected to grow, while on the other hand, radical nationalistic parties will continue to gain strength. Europe of the late 20th Century, which vowed to uphold the banner of tolerance and liberalism, will slowly turn into a chaotic, angry region where various groups are fighting each other while shunning genuine moral values. In any case, Ms. Ashton need not apologize for or clarify her remarks. After all, her words accurately reflected the mood of her decayed, dying continent.

Clearly, Ashton's speech is at a minimum a proof of “Europe’s spinelessness”, if not moral complicity, although some apologists for its behavior argue that Israel is "playing victim".

There are about 6 million Muslims living in France, or  about 10% of the population. This demographic reality has a lot to do with French impotence in dealing with Islamic terrorism. The other part, as I have argued before is a culturally-ingrained, reflexive antisemitism.

Consider the horrific case from 2006 when a Muslim gang in led by Youssef Fofana kidnapped and tortured Ilan Halimi to death. They also took pictures of their handiwork that were clearly imitations of the photos that Daniel Pearl’s killers took of him before they chopped his head off. In the case of Halimi’s murder Paris police refused to view his abduction as a hate crime, despite the fact that Fofana and his followers called Halimi’s family and recited Koranic verses while Ilan screamed out in agony in the background.

France 2 TV channel gave French this century’s first anti-Semitic blood libel with its October 2000 tale of Muhammad al-Dura’s alleged death at the hands of IDF soldier. When Philippe Karsenty wrote on his personal website that the al-Dura story was a hoax, he was charged with libel. An appellate court in Paris in overturned a lower court’s libel ruling against the Internet activist in 2008. Last month, France’s Supreme Court overturned the appellate court’s ruling and ordered it to retry the case.

As far as the Supreme Court of France is concerned, the appellate court had no right to ask France 2 to provide evidence that its story was true. According to the court, the unedited footage which proved the story was a blood libel should never have been admitted as evidence. The truth should never have been permitted to come to light.

Yes, it's that bad. So, I repeat my charge - these examples demonstrate nothing short of a propaganda and proxy war against Jews and Israel. Although I consider the continent to be a lost cause - it is largely bankrupt morally and economically - it is important to shame the EU for it's outrageous stance, and not merely let it slide.

Unfortunately, Europe is not alone in it's hatred of the Jews. Similar to Ashton and other moral equivocators, the U.S.President Barack Obama engaged in outrageous libels when during his speech to the Muslim world in June 2009 he compared the Holocaust with Israeli treatment of the Palestinians.

Barack Obama has called on the U.S. to do some "soul searching" when a punk teenager was gunned down. It is already emerging that the teenager was an aggressor, and the police have considered the shooting to be justified self-defense. Jesse Jackson opined that "blacks are under attack". The horrific race-based attack in Toulouse is cause for "soul searching" because "Jews are under attack" for being Jewish. Yet, Obama chose to defend a black teenager who may have been a perpetrator of an assault rather than innocent Jewish children.

The knee jerk defense of a black boy, and the relative indifference of the White House to the clear horror Toulouse shows that Obama is a racist-in-chief. So, in defense of French incompetence in fighting the rising antisemitism I can say that they are not alone - despite claims of egalitarianism in the West racial biases are still widespread.

Puttin' an end to the Pussy Riot in Russia

It has been barely a month since a "punk service" of the group Pussy Riot in the Church of Christ the Savior in Moscow, the girls have become a lighting rod of criticism from self-professed defenders of the Russian orthodox church. Three of these girls are now in prison, and face up to seven years behind bars. Meanwhile, the church insists that they are facing a planed anti-religious and anti-Russian conspiracy, because there were journalists prepared to cover the event on hand.

The three faceless protesters who have been jailed.

I noted the over-the-top reaction of the Russian Orthodox Church after the punk service. The vehemence of the attack cannot be understood through the flawed logic of those representatives who used this occasion to favorably reflect on the Bolsheviks, who had blown up the original Cathedral in 1931. Recall, instead, that the title of the song performed in the punk service was "Holy mother, drive Putin out!". If the girls sang "Holy mother, save Putin"  the reaction of the church, I assure you, would have been muted. The girls have exposed themselves to Putin's revenge under the guise of defending the Russian Orthodox Church. 

This case is producing a strong resonance in Russia, and has invigorated the opposition, which has been depressed since Putin's comfortable reelection. In places as far as Novisibirsk (deep in Sioberia) the light-boxes for ads were filled with styled "icons" depicting the Holy Mother wearing a purple balaclva.

In Pussy Riot we trust in Novosibirsk.  The Holy Mother wearing
a balaclava in the style of Pussy Riot.

Prior to his reelection, Putin extending his maximum tolerance of the opposition. Now, however, the arrested girls are likely to pay a heavy price for their antics. Putin can make an example of them while supposedly keeping his hands clean - and letting the Church lead the prosecution.

The hand of politically motivated justice can be heavy indeed. On March 17th, in Belarus a couple of random dudes were executed based on a highly dubious connection to a terrorist attack in the Minsk subway on April 2011. Someone has to pay for the sacrilege - an old Russian truism. As an added bonus, the Russians have the actual perpetrators, not mere scapegoats. Unless the public outcry grows stronger, these unorthodox protesters and their young children will pay a heavy price for desecration of Putin in a church.

Putin is puttin' an end to the Pussy Riot in Russia. 
Pray for for them, Holy Mother.

Insanity in Afghanistan

On 22 February several members of the U.S. armed forced stationed at the Bagram airfield in Afghanistan dropped some Islamic texts, including copies of the Koran, into an incinerator to be burned. Several Afghan garbage collectors at the base reported finding a number of charred books and quickly made this incident public.

The question of motivation (or sanity) of an American soldier who killed 16 civilians, including many women and children remains to be determined. The horrific story has important implications for the US-Afghanistan relation. It even affects the US presidential campaign.

Let's recall some basic facts. Bagram airbase is one of the largest American military bases in Afghanistan that was built by the Russians, who were despised by much of the local population, but were never on the receiving end of such protests.

Overcoming the language barrier. An Afghani protesting
outside besieged Bagram gives the Americans the finger.

The day after the incident Obama apologized to Karzai. Nevertheless, the unrest has resulted in at least 41 dead and 270 wounded in Afghanistan and Pakistan. Several American and French soldiers were killed by their Afghani counterparts. Nobody has apologizes to the U.S. for these deaths. When I googled "Karzai apologizes to Obama" the search engine suggested I had it backwards, giving me links to "Obama apologizes to Karzai". Apparently our Afghani allies consider copies of Koran to be more important than the  lives of servicemen of its US ally.

Let me suggest a possible diagnosis of the U.S. soldier who went on a murderous rampage in Afghanistan - his insanity lay in seeking revenge, and acting upon his frustrations. His actions also showcase the weakness and hypocrisy of the position of U.S. position -- which much be particularly hard to bear for a serviceman --  apologizing for unintentional burning of Korans, but not even attempting to defend the servicemen from murderous rage of the local barbarians.

In order to handle this political faux pas the U.S. is going to declare the serviceman who perpetrated this atrocity insane, regardless of the fact that he's on par with the rationality with many of the locals. The real insanity, as many are beginning to realize, lies in the very presence of U.S. forces in Afghanistan.

Pussy Riot desecrates Putin in a church

How will the newly empowered Putin handle civil unrest? We're getting a taste of it after Putin's re-election on March 4th. Two members of an all-girl punk band Pussy Riot have been jailed and may face stiff prison sentences for a prank-like performance inside Moscow’s main Orthodox cathedral last month.

Five members of the group filmed themselves dancing in front of the cathedral altar, playing electric guitars and singing a hymn-like punk song, “Holy Mother, Blessed Virgin, drive Putin out!”

Pussy Riot band member dancing in front of the altar.

Rocking up the church.

"Negative," was how Mr Putin’s spokesman Dmitry Peskov described Putin’s reaction to the scandal in an interview with Dozhd internet television channel. “Honestly speaking, as far as what happened in the cathedral, there's no other way than ‘disgusting’ to describe it, with all the consequences that implies,” he said.

Sign reads: "Freedom for
Tolokno"

While the girls managed to escape the cathedral of Christ the Saviour without being arrested, several members of the band were detained during the weekend, though all but two were released pending trial. The remaining two are possibly facing a stiff jail sentence. A number of bloggers have signed an internet petition asking for leniency for the two, other petitioners are bringing the issue to light by holding up signs in front of various government buildings.

The amusing thing is the reaction of the representative of the Russian Orthodox Church: "Even the Bolsheviks, in their time didn't allow themselves such sacrilege, which occurred during the punk-prayer," says Vladimir Legoyda. According to him the difference is that "the godless soviets at least ushered people from the church before attempting to destroy, or defile it", while the girls for Pussy Riot carried out their "protest" right in front of the congregation. What is really curious about this position, which implicitly sides with Putin in its harsh criticism of the protest is the language used by the relatively young (38-year old) Legoyda. The soviets did in fact remove people from the church before destroying it, quite literally.

Explosive demolition of Cathedral of Christ the Savior.
Moscow, 1931.

In 1931, almost a decade and a half after the November revolution, the Soviets decided to blow up the ancient church. The current church is a (cheap) reconstruction build in 1990's that already needs restoration to make up for the hasty construction of this replica. 

How short the memories are, even by people like Legoyda, who should know better and be more careful with their words. There is a saying: "The struggle of freedom against tyranny is the struggle of memory against forgetfulness." That also applies to Putin's nature. We already know what to expect from him - Putin is going to put an end to this Pussy Riot in Russia.

Muted opposition in Russia

In Russian elections, Vladimir Putin, the former KGB spy who has dominated Russian politics for the past dozen years  secure a comfortable victory in the first-round with almost 64per cent of the vote.

Putin's closest challenger, Communist leader Gennady Zyuganov, got slightly more than 17%, and the other three candidates -- including Mikhail Prokhorov, the owner of the New Jersey Nets basketball team -- were in the single digits.

The only surprise was Putin's tearful acceptance of the "people's trust". However, there were some irregularities, which the foreign and internal observers blasted denying Putin's resounding victory the cleanliness it needed to ensure stability.

Putin shed a tear during his victory celebration. 

As scheduled, on Monday after the elections the opposition held it's protest in the Pushkin square. About 20 thousand people attended the meeting, which commenced at 7pm; they came after work, to stand in the darkness and cold. The opposition leaders have vowed to continue protests alleging widespread irregularities in the voting, but there was a palpable resignation of the redundancy of their demands. The opposition already declared the Duma elections last fall to be illegitimate, and now they transition smoothly into disputing the latest election. They can even reuse their signs demanding fair elections. But, that also makes these signs and slogans seem trite. 

Opposition protest in the Pushkin square, March 5th.

"They robbed us. Putin is a thief," Navalny, a 35-year-old anti-corruption blogger.  "Who's the power?" "We are the power," he chanted with the crowd. Some of the special police brought in force into the capital muttered under their breath "we're the power here". And they proved it by detaining Navalny and 500 other protesters.

The show of democracy is over, challenges to the legitimacy of Vladimir Putin's victory in the presidential election will not be tolerated.

Sign reads: "Moscow doesn't believe in tears."

Meanwhile, the Russian protesters amused themselves, like this protester to the right who invoked a famous (and very good) movie "Moscow doesn't believe in tears" to express the feelings of the capital towards Putin. In Moscow only about 50% voted for Putin, and that figure includes the imported voters from the suburbs and the carousel voting and other fraud.

The truth is that Putin has outmaneuvered his Russian opposition. Despite the fraud, the fractured opposition has received a clear drubbing at the polls. In the national election liberal leaders are struggling to break double digits. The opposition's hopes that in a few months it could seriously challenge the Putin's machine was shown to be wishful thinking.

The cause of throwing Putin out of power seems lost. In the midst of general ennui and resignation there is no source of motivation required to wage a persistent battle against a strategist politician like Putin.

Election monitors in Russia

Kremlin is ready for the presidential election.

With almost 80% of precincts in Russia reporting Putin is on track to collect nearly 2/3 of the votes in the presidential election, easily winning in the first round over his hapless opposition. Although, according to the exit polls, in Moscow less than 50% voted for Putin.

So, in case the (rigged) voting is not sufficiently convincing Putin is ready to restore order by other means. Behold this assembly of military reinforcements outside of the Kremlin below. Similar reinforcements of army and regional police were brought to all major cities where there is a chance of protests by the opposition.

Obama's transformation of the U.S.

President Obama has been in full campaign mode for about nine months now. Foxnews noted the frequency of fundraisers:

The president has been engaged in somewhat of a fundraising frenzy lately, having held roughly 100 events this election cycle. That's twice as many held by former President George W. Bush at this point in his 2004 reelection battle, and more than three times former President Bill Clinton's total in the 1996 cycle.

In one of the latest fundraising events Obama invoked Mandela and Gandhi in appeal for second term. The surprise of Fox that "Obama compared himself to Gandhi, Mandela!" are anachronistic. Reporting that Obama arrogantly compares himself to great historical figures (Lincoln, FDR, Martin Luther King), is like a "dog bites man" headline - trite line, lacking in novelty.

There was something important beneath the surface of Obama's words:

Around the world, Gandhi, Nelson Mandela–what they did was hard. It takes time. It takes more than a single term.

In addition to the sweeping arrogance of this comparison in Obama's appeal at the fundraiser the is a reference to his promise to "fundamental transform" the U.S.A made in 2008. Obama used Reverend Wright's words "A white man's greed run a world in need" in one of his books. In an unguarded moment before the election Obama opined that "when you spread the money around, it's good for everyone." In other words Obama believes in government redistribution, and a managed economy.

There's a bigger point here. A nod to the progressive Illuminati who came to the fundraiser that Obama believes the current system of government of the U.S. is fundamentally unfair and comparable to the colonialism in India or the apartheid in the South Africa.

That is the question that everybody fears to touch - is Obama's redistribution policies have a well-hidden racial motivation. Mandela, Gandhi - they were transformational emancipators who fought against dominance of the whites against blacks and Indians. This country has emancipated blacks. Women have received suffrage almost a hundred years ago. Gay, lesbian, transgender any many other groups have protection so solid it borders on over-zealousness. Who is left to emancipate? If we're not emancipating anyone, what are we transforming?

If there was a logical way to explain the preference for black over white by the Obama administration, including the U.S. Justice department (see black panther case) it would have been made already. Placing whites from the head of the line to its back is what "social justice" is all about for Obama.

What "social justice" pretends to be

Obama's rhetoric lends support to the view that he finds that he prefers "social justice" to plain, universal justice through equality before the law. He seems to be playing to the favoritism of progressives in general - including other groups, such as women, gays, "workers"/unions, etc.

Intelligently, Obama has not attempted to put this issue high on his agenda. In his second term Obama's transformation make take 'affirmative action' (I hate that lying euphemism with a passion) and pushing it towards reparations for slavery. It's unlikely Obama would overtly institute reparations in his second term (if we're so unfortunate as to deserve one), but he could certainly "spread the money around" in other ways, where "social justice" with racial overtones will dominate.

What "social justice" really is

What Obama promised was a completion of his socio-economic ;transformation based on redistribution, such as public investment in Fannie and Freddie, banks, automakers, and last, but not least - healthcare.

If my concerns about racial overtones of Obama's redistributional policies are overblown, where's the "fundamental transformation" if not in centralized planning of the economy?

Having been born in Moscow, I am a U.S. citizen by choice, and although I see many flaws nowadays, the system as envisioned and preserved by the U.S. Constitution is better than any other. The fundamentals are great. Market economies consistently outperform planned economies. The problem is the malignant growth of human corruption on this solid foundation that hides behind euphemisms like "social justice" and is driving this great country towards a socio-economic suicide.

As another aside, I live close to Salem, where the famous witch trials took place. That is an example of "social justice" from the 17th century. It is arrogant to think that modern "social justice" will be more just, however. Sure, we don't burn people these days. Still, "social justice" to "justice" what "mob rule" is to "rule" - each combination is a contradiction in terms. Rule of the mob is just cruel anarchy of a pack before it the stability of dictatorial rule of the strongest. There's another connection between the two pairs of terms above -"social justice" is "mob rule" in that it is the dictatorship of the majority (or the strongest faction) who hypocritically claim privilege the deny to others, and is the weak-point of any democratic system.

Dems says: "Social Justice is not
socialism" 

Obama's choice of leaders to compare himself with clearly shows he sees himself fighting against a fundamental social injustice, which in the USA is primarily racial injustice. The Democrats like to pretend that "social justice is not socialism". In case of Obama that is true to a degree: his "social justice" is more about racism than socialism.

Unfortunately for Obama, the U.S. Constitution, based of the foundation of plain "justice", without regard to the social niceties is in the way of his transformation. This summer, the U.S. see the first engagement in this epic battle over the country's soul and future when the Constitutionality of Obamacare is considered by the U.S. Supreme Court.

If Obama does get re-elected for a second term despite his performance he will be emboldened. How much further will he then go to make "social" justice the dominant form of justice in the U.S. when he no longer is limited by concerns over re-election?