Month: August 2022

France ended its nine-year military deployment in Mali on Monday as President Macron approved the official withdrawal of all French troops from the West African nation marred by political violence and a rise in Islamic extremism.

France initially sent 5,000 troops into the former French colony back in 2013 following the return home of insurgents and mercenaries who had helped topple Muammar Gaddafi in Libya, and remained determined to fight for the independence of Mali’s northern territory. The anti-insurgent mission was named Operation Barkhane.

Despite being initially welcomed by the locals, the reputation of the French military across the country diminished over time, and the frequency of terrorist attacks and guerrilla warfare conducted on Malian soil rose rapidly.

Critics of the French withdrawal, however, have accused President Macron of abandoning the country and relinquishing all control to the spate of terrorist organizations operating out of both Mali and the wider Sahel region. Parallels have been drawn to the disastrous military withdrawal of the United States and its allies from Afghanistan last year, and the return to power of the Taliban.

“Mali is now alone with its choices,” wrote Nicolas Barotte, the defense correspondent for French newspaper Le Figaro. “Faced with the jihadist groups of the RVIM, linked to Al-Qaeda, and the EIGS, affiliated with Daesh, Bamako will no longer be able to count on the support of the Barkhane force, which withdrew its last soldiers on Monday,” he added.

Following France’s lukewarm enthusiasm for the continued military operation in recent times, the Malian government resorted to cosying up to the Kremlin and private Russian military groups like Wagner, which has increased its significant presence in the country. Barotte explains in his analysis for Le Figaro that 1,000 Russian mercenaries are now stationed in the country, supporting the operations of the Malian armed forces. It is arguable, however, that their presence has merely antagonized locals and aided the recruitment drives of Islamic extremist organizations.

“The capacity for recruitment is infinite,” one source in the French military told the newspaper.

“It’s hard to see how the (Malian military) Fama and Wagner are going to prevent the tide from rising again,” they added.

As French soldiers packed up their belongings and dismantled military camps, the inevitable security deterioration of Mali has been evident to all. At the end of last month, Malian armed forces attempted to repel terrorist attacks in the towns of Sávaré, Sokolo, and Kalumba, which resulted in 54 casualties.

Further to this, 42 Malian soldiers died during an attack in Tessit at the beginning of August, the responsibility for which was claimed by the Islamic State in the Greater Sahara (EIGS), a terrorist group that has shown considerable signs of regeneration in the last two years.

On Monday, an affiliate of Al-Qaeda claimed responsibility for the deaths of four Russian mercenaries in an ambush in the town of Bandiagara in central Mali.

“The war (the Malian army) will have to wage against the jihadists promises to be violent,” Barotte wrote, warning that such a conflict will inevitably “result in many losses in the civilian population.”

https://rmx.news/france/has-president-macron-abandoned-mali-to-the-jihadists/

by Giulio Meotti

On September 26, 1988, the novel by the Anglo-Indian writer Salman Rushdie, “The Satanic Verses”, appeared at the Viking Penguin publishing house. Fifteen days later, the first death threats arrived.

In Bolton, UK, the book was burned in the square on December 2nd. On December 28th, package bomb threats arrived at the Viking Penguin offices.

The New Year passed without incident. Then 1989 changed everything. It was Valentine’s Day when Khomeini’s fatwa arrived from Iran: “I inform the proud people of Islam that the author of the ‘Satanic Verses’ who is against Islam, the Prophet and the Koran, and all those involved in its publication are sentenced to death ”.

On the same day Rushdie and his wife were taken from their home in Islington, north London by the British Secret Service, to be taken to the more than fifty “safe houses” in which the writer would live for ten years. The two were now protected by a gigantic and very expensive security apparatus, similar to that reserved for a head of state. For years no one knew where they lived. Rushdie disappeared, as in a cloud. It was the first time that, in the name of Islam, a writer was condemned to evaporate from the face of the earth, he and his book. Then Rushdie “re-entered” society.

Rushdie seemed to have escaped until when he was stabbed 15 times in the neck by an Islamist as he was about to give a lecture in New York. In New York the Islamists reminded us that their fatwas do not lapse.

This is why self-censorship is rampant … Already at the time of the fatwa, many Western publishing houses yielded to intimidation. Theo Van Gogh’s film “Submission”, due to which he was murdered, has disappeared from film festivals. The cartoons on Muhammad published by “Charlie Hebdo” have been hidden from the public sphere:since the massacre, and few media have republished them. The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York removed the images of Muhammad from an exhibition, while Yale Press published a book on the cartoons of the Prophet without reproducing them. “The Jewel of Medina”, a novel about Muhammad’s wife, has been censored. In Rotterdam, a work on Aisha, one of Mohammed’s wives, has been canceled. In England, the Victoria and Albert Museum has withdrawn a portrait of Muhammad. In Germany, the Deutsche Opera canceled Mozart’s “Idomeneo” because Muhammad was it.

In France, there are 120 people under police protection due to Islamic threats. Simple students like Mila; Eric Zemmour, the bravest man in Europe, and the novelist Michel Houellebecq. But also dozens of professors, from Trappes to Grenoble. Many of them have seen their careers, lives and names destroyed.

Do they slaughter an English parliamentarian in a church? Let’s not talk about it.

Do they slaughter a doctor in front of a school in Marseille? Let’s not talk about it.

Do they burn churches, fill mass graves with Christians, select who to kill depending on whether or not they can recite the Shahada in Africa as in the Middle East? Let’s not talk about it.

Do they sentence Asia Bibi to death, so she has to hide like Rushdie in Canada? Let’s not talk about it.

Do they kill Jews in France? Let’s not talk about it.

The West is losing its war.

But the author of The Satanic Verses had foreseen it to some extent. “Within the progressive movement there is an acceptance that certain ideas should be suppressed and I think that is worrying,” Rushdie told the Irish Times. “Let’s put it this way: the kind of people who defended me through the bad years – in other words, people in the liberal and left-wing arts – may not be willing to do it now.”

For this reason, no bienpensants come to the defense of freedom of speech from the clutches of Islam anymore. Because they have already lost it. Islam has stuck its bony finger into the soft parts of Western intellectuals and found only cartilage.

I am afraid of Islamic violence, but also of the cowardice of these “respectable” intellectuals and journalists who, after the first blow, went under the radar to save their own skin. They have put us all in danger.

https://www.israelnationalnews.com/news/358339

Scandal at the European Championships in Munich: A security guard (19) gave the Israeli sports delegation the Hitler salute when they visited the memorial site of the terrorist attack at the 1972 Olympic Games. The man was immediately arrested. He is a German citizen with an Arabic name.

During the European Championships in Munich, a security guard (19) gave the Hitler salute to members of an Israeli delegation. The man was immediately arrested by a police officer who had witnessed the incident.

According to police, 16 officials and athletes from Israel were in Munich’s Olympic Park to visit memorials of the terrorist attack on the Israeli national team at the 1972 Olympic Games. Eleven Israeli athletes and coaches as well as a German policeman were killed in the attack by a Palestinian terrorist commando in Munich at the time.

At 7.20 p.m. they crossed the Hanns-Braun Bridge over the Georg-Brauchle-Ring. On its north side is the “lamentation beam” commemorating the dead. On the way there, the group passed four orderlies from a Berlin security service. During the tour, one of them was spotted by the officer showing the forbidden Nazi salute. The delegation itself is said to have noticed nothing of this.

The security guard, who is from Berlin, was charged with displaying unconstitutional signs and later released by the police. The suspect was banned from all further European Championship events by the organisers, as were his three colleagues. The state security department of the criminal police is now conducting further investigations. The newspapers “Bild” and “Süddeutsche Zeitung” were the first to report on the incident.

https://exxpress.at/bei-gedenken-zu-olympia-terror-in-muenchen-nazi-gruss-vor-israelis/

The judge at the Bonn jury court spoke very lucidly in the sentence against Tete D. (54): “The crime is reminiscent of torture like the burning of witches”. Eight years and three months in prison for attempted murder and aggravated arson!

The attack happened on December 27 in Morsbach: The truck driver intercepted his ex (44, twelve-year relationship) in front of her house, doused her with petrol, tried to set her on fire. She just managed to tear off her clothes and flee to the neighbours.

Then he spilled petrol in his ex’s living room. Tete D. asked the four common foster children (4 – 17) to go to the first floor beforehand. Then he set the house on fire.

The motive: After a violent assault, the Togolese-born man was not allowed to celebrate Christmas with his family for the first time.

https://www.bild.de/regional/koeln/koeln-aktuell/bonn-mann-nach-feuer-anschlag-auf-seine-ex-zu-knast-verurteilt-81028360.bild.html###wt_ref=https:/m.bild.de/

The Ministry of the Interior in North Rhine-Westphalia currently counts 189 Islamist dangerous persons. 25 of them are to be deported – yet they are still in the state.

The state of North Rhine-Westphalia cannot deport 25 so-called dangerous persons abroad, even though they are “obliged to leave the country”. This is not possible in each case for “factual or legal reasons”, according to a paper for the state parliament.

Since January 1, three dangerous persons have been deported. According to the Ministry of the Interior, there are currently 189 Islamist threats in North Rhine-Westphalia. Seven more come from the area of “foreign ideology” – which means, for example, foreign parties or movements banned in Germany.

The government’s answer to a parliamentary question posed by the AfD does not explain why the dangerous persons who are obliged to leave the country are not deported. Most recently, it was because the origin of the persons concerned could not be found out – or because dangerous persons were defending themselves in court.

https://www.dorstenerzeitung.de/regionales/gefaehrder-nrw-extremismus-abschieben-w1781970-4000587810/

My Encounter with Salman Rushdie – Will I be the next victim?  https://t.co/WsTzS4XZk8 pic.twitter.com/29UkckO0Os

— Robert Spencer روبرت سبنسر रॉबर्ट स्पेंसर 🇺🇸 (@jihadwatchRS) August 17, 2022