Europe: Jihadists Posing as Migrants
"More than 50,000 jihadists are now living in Europe."

by Soeren Kern • September 3, 2017 at 6:00 am

More than 50,000 jihadists are now living in Europe. — Gilles de Kerchove, EU Counterterrorism Coordinator.
Europol, the European police office, has identified at least 30,000 active jihadist websites, but EU legislation no longer requires internet service providers to collect and preserve metadata — including data on the location of jihadists — from their customers due to privacy concerns. De Kerchove said this was hindering the ability of police to identify and deter jihadists.

Masked Spanish policemen in Madrid arrest a man suspected of recruiting jihadists to fight for the Islamic State, June 16, 2014. (Photo by Gonzalo Arroyo Moreno/Getty Images)

German authorities are hunting for dozens of members of one of the most violent jihadist groups in Syria, Jabhat al-Nusra, but who, according to Der Spiegel, entered Germany disguised as refugees.

The men, all former members of Liwa Owais al-Qorani, a rebel group destroyed by the Islamic State in 2014, are believed to have massacred hundreds of Syrians, both soldiers and civilians.

German police have reportedly identified around 25 of the jihadists and apprehended some of them, but dozens more are believed to be hiding in cities and towns across Germany.

In all, more than 400 migrants who entered Germany as asylum seekers in 2015 and 2016 are now being investigated for being members of Middle Eastern jihadists groups, according to the Federal Criminal Police (Bundeskriminalamt, BKA).

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The Europe We Want
Speech from the Ambrosetti Conference

by Geert Wilders • September 3, 2017 at 5:00 am

Thank you for having me here today. I applaud the fact that you invite someone who does not share your enthusiasm for the European Union. Or your European dream, as Euro commissioner Frans Timmermans just called it. To be honest: his dream is my nightmare.

I realize that my views are different from those of the many members of the European establishment in our midst, but I am an optimist.

I believe in a positive future for Europe as a community of independent, sovereign and democratic nations -- working together without a supranational political union -- a Europe without the European Union.

I believe that true democracy can only exist and flourish within a nation state. National sovereignty combined with domestic culture gives us our identity. As does control over our own borders and budget and the right to decide how to use it ourselves as a nation

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Khomeini or Kim? Khamenei's Real Teacher

by Amir Taheri • September 3, 2017 at 4:30 am

North Korea's old embassy in Tehran, Iran, circa 2011. (Image source: Kransky/Wikimedia Commons)

According to the initial narrative of the Khomeinist ideology, the "perfect state" which Muslims should aspire was the brief period during which Ali Ibn Abi-Taleb exercised the Caliphate against a background of revolts and civil war. However, it now seems that Khomeinist zealots have found another "ideal model" outside the world of Islam.

That model is the People's Democratic Republic of Korea, better known as North Korea, which Khomeinists present as living paragon of heroic resistance against the American "Great Satan." The daily Kayhan, believed to reflect the views of "Supreme Guide" Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, recently ran editorials praising North Korea's "brave defiance of Arrogance" by testing long-range missiles in the face of "cowardly threats" by the United States. In one editorial last month, the paper invited those who urge dialogue with the US to learn from North Korea's "success in humiliating the Great Satan."

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A Grim Portrayal of Syria at War

by Amir Taheri • September 3, 2017 at 4:00 am

The Assad terror machine in Syria has been broken and, even with Russian and Iranian support, cannot be restored to its previous strength. Pictured: Syrian President Bashar al-Assad is greeted in Moscow by Russian President Vladimir Putin, October 20, 2015.

The blurb of Destroying a Nation: The Civil War in Syria presents the author, Nikolas Van Dam, as an experienced Dutch diplomat with a direct knowledge of the Middle East.

Having served as Holland's Ambassador to Egypt, Turkey and Iraq, Van Dam also had a stint (in 2015-16) as his country's Special Envoy for Syria. In that last assignment Van Dam monitored the situation from a base in neighboring Turkey.

Van Dam's diplomatic background is clear throughout his book as he desperately tries, not always with success, to be fair to "all sides" which means taking no sides, while weaving arguments around the old cliché of "the only way out is through dialogue".

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