As IF Times

Source: Islamic State threatens to carry out attacks in Russia ‘very soon’

As the ISIS terrorist group has stepped up their activities, it looks more and more as if they really have no endgame other than mayhem and terror for its own sake.  The targets for their mayhem are of course the west in general,  with the Americans, the French and likely Israel near the top of the list.   But they’ve also kicked the Russian Bear, normally an enemy of the U.S, by claiming to have blown up a Russian airliner.  It’s not clear that they have supporters in the Middle East either, at least not overtly.  The Iraqis and Syrians disavow them and in fact are shooting them.   Though they claim a Muslim basis of justification for their actions, moderate Muslim groups have distanced themselves from ISIS.  They’ve isolated themselves from most everyone.

So what is the endgame? All the violence is notionally in the name of some interpretation of the Koran, but anyone who has a passing knowledge of the Koran knows that there is scant justification for the havoc being perpetrated in its name.  In the Christian Bible, there’s a well known passage about an eye for an eye, but you  don’t see Christians running around going all Aqib Talib every time they suffer a personal slight.

No, this is just pure evil, it seems to be murder for the sake of murder…as sport…that’s the endgame.   Up until ISIS came to notoriety, the first group of infamous evil guys were the Taliban.  Then along came Al Qaeda personified by Osama Bin Laden.  For a while, they were the main progenitors of fear and terror as demonstrated by the 9-11 World Trade center takedowns.  Boko Haram got into the mayhem business in Nigeria by kidnapping school girls, committing piracy on the high seas and blowing up hotels.  Now, some new Islamist group, Al Mourabitoun has claimed responsibility for a terror attack in Mali, taking over 30 lives.   These Islamist groups are appearing out of nowhere like bird droppings on a statue.  Some news sites are comparing the deaths attributed to each group as if they were football stats.  Apparently Boko Haram is now leading.

The west has fallen for the propaganda issued by all of these groups; the nonsense notion that the west has encroached upon Muslim sensibilities and therefore retribution is warranted.   The American president is apparently not too concerned about ISIS and ironically ISIS is not too concerned about the American president.  The west has been careful not to inflame religious sensibilities and  even avoid connecting the word Muslim with the word terrorist.  To this day, there are still idiots who think that the closing of Guantanamo Bay is necessary because its existence only serves to be a recruiting tool for those who would otherwise be peace loving pilgrims minding their own business.  Somehow the imprisonment of Islamist  thugs causes their blood to boil enough to go out to make someone else boil in blood.  There are those who still think that American foreign policy is responsible for the rise and spreading of these terror groups.  Those are the ones who flunked out of history class, where they otherwise would have learned that Muslims have been killing Christians for hundreds and hundreds of years.

Here’s the reality.  All of these groups do not consider their victims to be human.  The victims’  lives are no more consequential to them than flies on a dung pile.  The civilized world had better figure that out in order to fight the various incarnations of these groups properly; they need to adopt the same mindset.  A while ago, when Boko Haram kidnapped a bunch of schoolgirls, the west’s response was a social media campaign to “Bring Back Our Girls” as if an impassioned plea with thousands of likes would do the trick.  Not making that up.

How about civilized society puts together a crack team of the best video gamers in the world and assign them the task of executing kill programs as directed by intelligence agencies.  The various Islamist groups can’t be hard to find.  It’s a matter of political will to pull the triggers.  The Islamists think nothing of killing their victims like video game targets and so neither should there be any guilt by the civilized world in doing the same given the chance.  No second guessing, no hand wringing,  just sprites on a video screen.  We can even name this avenging group… we’ll call them El Kabong!  If it’s a deadly game, we should do our best to win. This is a better idea than those in charge now who think that reasoning, song singing and job offers will get the Islamists to stop killing.  The delusion has to stop. We need more Ah-nold and less Urkel. Bring on El Kabong.

Source: Marine Le Pen: How France Will Conquer the Enemies of Liberty | TIME

There’s a joke going around which goes, ” How many extremists will it take to destroy America? Answer, none; the liberals will do it from within”.

In the aftermath of the Paris terrorist incident, we observe the usual indignation of the public through the usual people.  Journalists or politicians are always available to publicly express their defiance and indignation.  It all looks familiar especially since this same show of defiance was demonstrated after the Charlie Hebdo shootings earlier this year.  There’s hand holding, candlelight vigils and well meaning brave speeches about living life without fear as a rebuke to those that would curtail their freedoms.  But it’s all self indulgent breast beating along with the expected bromides.  What would really make a difference is a change in mindset to address how to minimize forever the probability of this kind of thing from happening again.

That there would be sad consequences to the carte blanche policy of ‘freedoms’ associated with an open and liberal society have been demonstrated again and again…and again.  We have come to the point that people are so afraid to appear intolerant that conspicuously intolerant activities directed against them are acceptable.  People have become so brainwashed to appear tolerant and accepting that they are obligated to accept even that which is brazenly and unapologetically harmful to them.  It’s as if you welcome  a guest to dinner even though they have clearly informed you that they will murder you sometime between the crème brulee and the  coffee.  There may as well be a suicide gene that has infected western society.

Though the tragedy in Paris carries the headlines, this same mindset that gave rise to the vulnerability of the French to the consequences of  blind liberalism  has taken seed in the U.S.  The most recent manifestations ironically come from the campuses of American universities, the quintessential institutions of free speech, tolerance and liberalism. Except that they have morphed grotesquely into caricatures of themselves.  Incidents such as those at Mizzou and others and here  demonstrate the perverse twisting of the open hand of idealized freedom of expression into the heel of bullying oppression.

As is likely the case in France, the regular folk here are probably not ok with the perversion of what is acceptable behavior in the name of freedom and liberty. However, those that are in positions of influence insist that to raise a voice against anti social behavior is, well,  anti social.  The consequence of course is to encourage more anti social behavior as groups get emboldened and opposing voices get progressively meeker. (If this reminds anyone of the global warming charade, it’s not a coincidence).  The enablers are the political and media class who sanctimoniously invoke tolerance and acceptance when really, they push stupidity.  Come to think of it, that also describes Global warming.

There is a quote attributed to the French philosopher Voltaire which goes, ” I do not agree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it”.  It all sounds good on paper, but personally, I doubt that he would have carried through with this statement of bravado,  especially not these days when extremists vow to kill him at the first opportunity.  To paraphrase another famous quote, “it’s all fun until someone loses an eye”.