England is alive

Ah, finally a sign of live from the dead island...

Working class British men are coming out and protecting their own neighbourhoods.

Osama bin Laden dead: what to do now?

Whither US policy now that OBL is dead

Now that Osama bin Laden has been declared killed by the U.S. what should be their next step?

Snouck's answer: this is a good time to declare a victory and get the hell out of the quicksands of the Middle East and Afghanistan.

However the attack Obama instigated NATO attack on Libya shows the American government has not learned that attacking Muslim countries is a bad idea. The West's greatest problem these days seems to be the inability to learn lessons, caused by the dogmatic belief in human equality.

Osama bin Laden dead, war is over

Obama kills Osama

The news today is that a group of 24 US Seals under guidance of the CIA killed Osama bin Laden in a compound in Islamabad, Pakistan today.

There are some doubts that this is true. The timing of the news is suspicious with the American President increasingly under suspicion because of his refusal to show his proof of being born in the USA.

Global Jihad and the Counter-Jihad

Another question, what will the effect be on the global Jihad and the forces opposing Jihad?

If Osama bin Laden was truly killed in Islamabad this is not the end of the Jihad. Jihad, holy war to impose sharia law on the world is mandated by the core texts of Islam. The death of a warlord does not change that.

Right now waves of migrants are leaving North Africa and entering Europe. These Muslims will strengthen the Muslim colonies which have already been established. These colonies will be the new bases from which the struggle to establish Sharia in Europe will continue.

Multiculturalists will argue that the struggle has ended and seek to weaken the claims of Counter-Jihadist and anti-sharia groups such as the Danish People's Party and the Freedom Party in Europe. They want to go back to the time before 9-11 when Multiculturalism was unchallenged.

It will not happen.

Ethnic Dutch and Muslim youth polarizing

Esther at the IslaminEurope - News blog has written an abstract of a internet survey commissioned by a Dutch anti-terror bureaucracy (NBTc) on radicalisation of Muslim youth and ethnic Dutch youth. You can read the article on group radicalisation here.

Brussels, Capital of Europe, Capital of Anarchy

Video with an interview of two Brussels policemen on the impossibility of maintaining law and order in a city with large Muslim population groups.

Afghanistan: Karzai has nothing to work with

The centre cannot hold

If a country, a nation is to become one, achieve unity it needs a centre. Afghanistan, has in its history never really had national unity, it was an empire dominated by Paytans since its conception in 1770.

After the northern tribes, represented by a bunch of warlords together with the CIA and the USAF defeated the Taliban a tribal head named Karzai was made President of Afghanistan.

But Karzai does not have a power base. In the struggle between the Taliban and the pro-western Afghan "government" the only real power are the Taliban. This is brought out by a fragment of a long article on Karzai in the New York Times by Elisabeth Rubin. At some point Kabul is rocked by 6 hours of riots against foreigners and the U.S. Forces there and an abservers is quoted to say:

I felt really bad for him,” Jawed Ludin recalled. Karzai was so alone. He continued to watch the riot footage in his back room, trying to glean the plot. “I realized that, at that time, he had no dependable instrument of power,” Ludin said. “He didn’t have the money, the police, the intelligence. He had nothing.

Things fall apart.

And this in a nutshell is why the pro-western alliance in Afghanistan will fail.

Hells Angels Holland demand damages

The Dutch state recently suffered a defeat against an emerging non-state actor. The Dutch chapter of the Hells Angels. In my words "the Hells Angels have become untouchable". Now the Hells Angels are following up their success:

Hells Angels want €2.2m in damages

Twenty-four Hells Angels are demanding a total of €2.2m in compensation from the Dutch state for damages suffered as a result of the legal action that was taken against them, report various media on Thursday.

Lawyer Bram Moszkowicz is asking for one-third of the total sum (€800,000) for his client Harry S who was detained by police for two months before being released without being charged.

On Thursday 12 cases were heard by the Amsterdam court. The first 12 came before the court six weeks ago.

In total 35 members of the Hells Angels club are asking for damages. In 11 cases The Hells Angels and prosecution service reached an agreement.

The public prosecution department fought a long-running legal battle to get the Hells Angels banned but has been unsuccessful.

German Army takes off Red Cross

(HT Politically Incorrect) Doctors and Medics take Red Cross insignia off their vehicles. The internationally recognized symbol, was created to separate life saving personnel from fighting personnel. To shield the former from attack. This symbol has become the preferred target of attacks by Muslims in Afghanistan.

Hells Angels become untouchable

This blog recently featured a post on the Danish Hells Angels. The Dutch Chapter of the Hells Angels are the HQ for the European Hells Angels organisation. The Hells Angels are believed to be an important crime syndicated trading in drugs, involved in prostitution and in assassinations.

The last few years the Office of the Public Prosecutor (OM)has made very serious efforts to dissolve the organisation and have it declared outside of the law.

These efforts are now coming to an end with the Dutch Supreme Court coming to the aid of the Hells Angels:

Hells Angels win another Dutch legal battle

The Dutch Supreme Court refused Friday to outlaw a local branch of the Hells Angles in the motorcycle club's latest legal victory.

The country's highest judicial panel said prosecutors failed to prove their claim that the Harlingen Hells Angels chapter in the northern Netherlands is a threat to public order and should be disbanded.

The Supreme Court's ruling upheld two lower courts' decisions.

It said the club may be involved in undesirable and possibly criminal activities, but they are not serious enough to merit a total ban.

A ban "is a serious infringement of the freedom to gather that is at the foundation of a democratic state," the court said in its written ruling.

The court also rejected prosecutors' attempts to link the Harlingen chapter to alleged criminal activity of Hells Angels elsewhere in the Netherlands and the rest of the world, saying links between the local chapter and other groups were not close enough.

Dutch Hells Angels have won a string of cases against prosecutors trying to ban them, but Friday's was the first in the country's highest court.

A parliamentary inquiry in 1995 found the Hells Angels was a criminal organization involved in the drug trade and smuggling women for prostitution, but no action was taken to ban the group.

The Harlingen chapter's club house was raided in 2005 as part of a large-scale investigation into allegations of extortion, intimidation, weapons and drugs trafficking.

That investigation followed the murder of three members of the gang in the south of the Netherlands in 2004, allegedly by fellow bikers.

The Hells Angels in the court room reacted with great show of happiness to the verdict of the judge falling in each others arms like Russian soldiers in a 1940ies Soviet War movie.

Legitimacy and nuclear massacre

Achieving legitimacy

According to the theories of military experts such as Mr. Martin van Creveld and Mr. William Lind, wars between states are replaced by conflicts where non-state actors are involved. This is the theory of non-Trinitarian War of Fourth Generation Warfare (4GW). Non-state actors are organisations such as religious organisations, criminal gangs, ethnic groups and other forms of social organisation. Non-state actors are competing with the states for legitimacy in the eyes of the populations they serve. As the story of David and Goliath illustrates the underdog has a greater possibility to win legitimacy than the giant. In any conflict it is therefore important to appear to be an underdog. Use of heavy weapons to achieve goals has to be avoided. Heavy weapons give a contender the appearance of a Goliath. In addition heavy weapons have a tendency to cause unintended victims amongst civilian populations. Good weapons in the effort to win legitimacy are light, precise and easy to hide.



New leadership for European societies

In the previous post "Hells Angels on the March" this blog feature a commentary on a piece by Baron Bodissey of the GoV blog. The piece by Baron Bodissey is titled "Drawing the Line" on Biker War in Denmark and draws an anology on the beginning of the feudal era in Europe and the present day conditions. The idea is that groups like the Hells Angels can be the new leadership of European society, due to their willingness to provide security for the Europeans against Muslims. This while the authorities are losing their legitimacy in the eyes of their populations as they are unwilling to enforce law and order, especially not against non-muslims.

This fits in well with the theories of non-Trinitarian and 4th Generation Warfare.

Still many people cling to the idea of state militaries delivering the West by its fire power. One commenter at GoV called Zenster uses the comment thread on Bikers and Feudal Europe to start advocating his idea of a takeover of the USA by the military. After the coup the military must:

Conduct simultaneous nuclear strikes against Cairo, Damascus, Tehran, Islamabad, Sana'a and Riyadh. Possibly with Jakarta and Kuala Lumpur thrown in for good measure. Then, while Muslims crawl out of the ashes, inform Islam that there's plenty more where that came from while setting about the fortification of Western civilization.

This scenario has nothing to do with Biker gangs providing security to Europeans. But it is also a real bad strategy to gain legitimacy. So I wrote back:

This is an argument for a effortless massacre of mostly civilians.There is a difference between a massacre and war. War has a aspect of a duel and personal sacrifice, which is absent in massacre.

Any nation who undertakes this action will utterly lose legitimacy in its own eyes. The spirit of this action is also against the spirit of the European knighthood, who took great pride in personal bravery and protection of the weak.

Zenster was not easily fazed, replying:

While you are talking about an "effortless massacre", perhaps you might pause and reflect upon the outcome if it was Islam that had all of the nuclear weapons and us in the West who did not.

Snouck: lets examine the record of a muslim country with nuclear weapons. Pakistan has had nuclear weapons since 1974. They have not used them.

Zenster continues:

Your talk of how, "War has a aspect of a duel ..." is sheer nonsense in the modern context of warfare. Were the concept still applicable, American soldiers would be engaging in hand-to-hand combat with the Taliban. A ridiculous notion at best.

Snouck: Zenster misconstrues my statement "war has aspect of a duel" that I think that war must consist of duels. What I mean is that there has to be a perception of equal and fair combat between opposing forces. When this is absent the weaker party feels it is not bound by the same rules since it is set up for defeat in a conventional fight.

Zenster continues:

As General Patton said about war:

No poor bastard ever won a war by dying for his country. He won it by making other bastards die for their country.

However coarse it might sound, war is about killing people. Islam absolutely refuses to field an army in uniform in its assault upon the West. There is a price that must be paid for such perfidy.

If Islam wishes its civilian population and warriors to be indistinguishable from each other, then we are not obliged to distinguish between them, now are we?

Snouck: Well, we are. That is if we wish our forces and our civilization to remain legitimate in the eyes of ourselves and our descendants.

What are the targets that Zenster wants to see nuked in muslim capitals?

Zenster:

The large Islamic capitals are not just "civilian populations". They are home to some of the most extensive terrorist facilities in the world. Cairo's El Azhar university is a prime example. This one institution alone continues to churn out jihadist imams by the hundreds.

Each of these Muslim seats of power represent a nexus of global terrorism. None of them have the least claim to innocence. All of them are actively funding international terrorism and their collective leadership remains one of the singular most enabling forces with respect to jihad.

Snouck: an agressive action of the magnitude of a nuclear strike must be effective in stopping the training of jihadist imams. I'll hencefort call them imams. Al Azar and the other centres must have the monopoly of imam production in order for the strike to have lasting results. But imam training is not monopolized by Al Azar. These imams can be produced anywhere where there are a few huts plus a few imams.

Zenster opinioned:

Islam is clearly fascist in nature and fascism is a bastion of elitism

It is true that Islam is elitist and that removing the most influential imams will leave a vacuum. But Islam does not have a clearly defined hierarchy. If the top imams are removed, imams with less prestige will take their place. They will continue to preach Sharia and Jihad. So a strike will not have a decisive effect. Meanwhile other powers will fear and hate the US for having attacked Islam with nukes. They will be assisted by a backlash against the military government by the population. Isolated at home and abroad the military government of the US will find it impossible to rule. Once they have been removed from power their actions will be the target of the propaganda by the media. The media will show the footage of destroyed muslim cities on TV for years, causing a storm of national self hatred.

I did not pursue the debate with Zenster due to lack of time and the fact that the post had moved beyond the weekly range of posts which is well read by visitors.

Zenster continues:

Furthermore, it would instantly remove from power a huge number of America's very worst enemies.

Snouck: Muslim manpower is the second target for Zenster's zestful nuke plans.

There are 1,3 Billion Muslims in the world. In order to just half their manpower 650 million muslims have to be killed. There is no way that the West would survive committing such incredible slaughter.

Loss of civilizational self confidence

An important cause for the loss of civilisation self confidence was the overstepping of the boundary between state violence against militaries and state violence against civilians. The massacres of civilians in the Soviet camps system, the carpet bombing of cities and the victims of the German camp system during the Second World War undermined the belief of Westerners in Western civilization. Thus the wanton killing of civilians goes against the interest of Western civilizations nation state system.

Better look like David

The interest of the West is best served by a strategy that hurts only the evil doers, such as the terrorists or the muslim criminals that prowl the streets of Europe. The less formidable the force that handles the terrorists the more advantegeous it is. Better look like a herdsman than like a mighty warrior.

Or as the Chinese strategist Sun Tzu said about the art of war:

O divine art of subtlety and secrecy! Through you we learn to be invisible, through you inaudible; and hence we can hold the enemy's fate in our hands

The military organisations of the future will not posess large bases, installations or expensive crew served weapons. They will blend in with the population. Disperse. They will not offer a target for nuclear weapons. That way they remain legitimate and the population will be prepared to support them with funding and recruits.

Western civilization can flourish under those circumstances.

Hells Angels on the March

War that is not between states

In order to understand warfare as it is today military theorists such as Israeli Professor Martin van Creveld and American William Lind pioneered new concepts of war such as Non-Trinitarian Warfare and 4th Generation Warfare respectively. In these concepts wars are not just fought between states (Allies against Axis), but also between states and nonstate forces (Israel against Hamas) and sometimes between just non-state actors (Northern Alliance against Al-Qaida in Afghanistan in 2001).

The concept of Non-Trinitarian War as Martin van Creveld calls Non-Trinitarian Warfare is becoming more widely debated lately as evidenced by lively discussions on blogs such as Gates of Vienna recently. The subject is gangwars in Danmark.

www.islamineurope.net has previously featured two stories on the Amsterdam Hells Angels by Snouck, one of

11 april 2007 Hells Angels "Banished from Eden" and
23 april 2006 Hells Angels "Organized Crime in constant state of reorganisation"

The Hell's Angels are a important organized criminal force in Europe. In Denmark the local chapters of the Hell's Angels are under pressure from gangs of immigrants who are fighting with them for territory. The Hells Angels have started a new organisation AK 81 to recruit Danes and add musle to their force, without diluting the cohesion and standing of the core Hells Angels. The cement of the alliance is the notion that both non-criminal ethnic Danes and the Hells Angels are under threat from immigrant gang violence. The Hells Angels can provide leadership and organisation for Danes who want security from the violent ethnic gangs.

Propaganda is the key to win the support of the population

In order to influence public opinion an unnamed author wrote an piece on the danger of the gangs of immigrant thugs to Danish society. The article was published on the website of the Danish Chapter of the Hells Angels and is called the "Jackal Manifesto". It was translated by Henrik Raeder Clausen and the translation was published on the Gates of Vienna (GoV) blog.

Development of Non-Trinitarian Warfare in Denmark and the Future

Next GoV published a piece by the hand of Baron Bodissey titled "Drawing the line".

In "Drawing the line" the Baron draws a parallel between the rise of feudalism after the collapse of the Roman Empire and the rise of Crime Organisations who become protectors of the people.

The debate

I forecast that we will see many more of the ideas of Martin van Creveld debated in the future. The concepts that belong to wars between states do no provide a lot of insight in the conlflicts the West is finding itself in as a result of the actions of Jihadists. This is worsened by the effect on society of Muslim colonisation of Western land as a result of mass immigration.

Dutch police finds murderous connections to Fortuyn's assassin

Volkert van der Graaf, ideological killer

Dutch daily "De Telegraaf" published exerpts of a confidential police investigation report (Dutch), in which clues are put together adding up to a picture of Volkert van der Graaf's extra-legal activities as a animal rights activist. The report is remarkable because it is one of the very few police reports into the violent animal rights activists in The Netherlands. This report was composed by the Investigative Branch of the National Police (Nationale Recherche, Korps Landelijke Politie Diensten).

Volkert is the assassin of populist Fortuyn. He shot Fortuyn on 6 May 2002, at 18:00 hours in Hilversum, The Netherlands. Hilversum is a town near Amsterdam where most of the media have their national offices and their studios.



Not the first assasination

There have been suspicions that it is not the first killing Volkert carried out for a long time.

Chris van der Werken, a civil servant responsible for environmental policy in the North Veluwe, an agricultural part of the country, where both Volkert and van der Werken used to live and work. Volkert as an animal's rights and environmental activist subsidized by quasi-governmental organisations ("Postcodeloterij" and "Actie Kinderpostzegels").


Chris van der Werken was shot in the back when he was taking a stroll in a forest in 1996.

Volkert and Chris van der Werken had a conflict about a plan both their organisations were collaborating on. A plan to reduce the ammonia emissions of pig breeders. This was in 1995 and 1996. Chris van der Werken was a moderate.

The animal rights network, an infrastructure of the left

A bit of background: Volkert was working for the Environmental Offensive Foundation or VMO ("Vereniging Milieu Offensief"), a foundation he had founded himself and of which he was a administrator and paid employee. The organisation was funded by subsidies, alotted by sympathetic politicians. The organisation was a part of administrative bodies and councils that deal with environmental policy. A lot of his work consisted of lobbying provincial and municipal polities, in addition to starting up environmental complaint procedures against farmers who wanted to change or enlarge their operations.

Those were his legal activities. Volkert was also a member of a group called the "Furious Potatoes" (De Ziedende Bintjes). This is a group that carries out illigal violent actions against fur breeders, companies that carry out animal tests and firms that operate in a way that is environmentally unsound. These groups are connected to the extreme leftwing squatter movement. Their activities are again often subsidised directly and indirectly by sympathetic politicians. Politicians hinder and disband police units investigating violent activities of animal rights and environmental activists. The activists are known to terrorize police investigators and their families. Biologist Margreet Jonker, a researcher into cancer treatment using test animals, was one of the few who dared to come forward to testify about the violence and threats against her and her family, by these governments sponsored left wing terrorists. Dutch judges are full of sympathy towards the terrorists and let them off with minumum sentences.

The new facts in the police secret file

The Investigative Branch (Nationale Recherche) report mentions:

1. a "Farmer B." who told police that Chris van der Werken had come to his farm in a state of shock because Volkert had threatened to kill him. This was a few weeks before he was killed.

2. witnesses who were walking nearby the liquidation on country estate "Welna" saw a red Opel Kadett, the car Volkert used at the time.

3. Both Fortuyn and Van der Werken were bravely shot in the upper back by multiple shots.

4. The landlord of Volkert of the house where Volkert was living at the time of the murder of the civil servant has declared that he entered the house unannounced during the tenancy of Volkert van der Graaf and found a pistol on the attic were Volkert slept. He identified the pistol as a Walter PPK.

5. Volkert has no alibi for the time of the murder of civil servant Chris van der Werken.

6. A friend of Volkert spoke with Volkert about obtaining a pistol, to commit suicide. Volkert had said that he knew how and with whom to procure pistols.

7. Both murders involved the use of ammunition that does heavy damage to the human body. Both used heavy automatic pistols (in van der Werken's case a Walter PPK and on Fortuyn a Star 9mm) and rapid fire hitting with all bullets fired. Achieving rapid aimed fire takes practise.

International co-operation hardening the Dutch scene

The Dutch animal rights and environmental activists have a working co-operation with like minded extremist British organisations as SHAC (Stop Huntingdon Animal Cruelty), a violent British organisation.

Again support in high places

One of the most shocking attacks is the abduction of Ferry de Vries, a fur trader. He was bound and gagged and beaten up by 10 masked animal activists. Later during the court case against the abductors the judge shows all kinds of sympathy for the abductors who go off scot free, no jail time, just corvee, maximum 200 hours. A symbolic punishment. The activists got all kinds of possibility to propagandize during the court hearings and even to show a propaganda film about fur breeding.

Volkert van der Graaf is an example of the way these organisations operate. They create legal entities. They do not fund raise or appeal for money from the public, but are funded by chums in the governments, provincial and municipal administrations and bureaucracies. Their activities are encouraged by mainstream environmental organisations as Lekker Dier and Greenpeace. They gather information (maps, registers, notes of meetings) using their legal fronts and use the information for attacks by the underground organisations, such as SHAC and the "Furious Potatoes/De Ziedende Bintjes").

In case of investigations by police they use their contacts in the Leftist parties Greens, Socialist Party and Labour to disband the Investigative Teams. In case of prosecution due to theft, destruction of property and accounting ledgers of firms the judges show their sympathy and give the activists very light sentences.

And so the violent environmentalists scene grew throughout the 70ies, 80ies and 90ies. A hairtrigger gun, just lie-ing about.

The aftermath of Fortuyn's murder

Let us now go to Fortuyn's murder. During the 2002 election campaign Fortuyn challenged the establishment political cartel. He received broad political support for the party he had joined, Livable Netherlands. Three months before the elections the establishment manage to have Fortuyn thrown off the Livable Netherlands party list. The challenge to the cartel has been fended off.

Pushed by Van Gogh Fortuyn starts a new political party. Lijst Pim Fortuyn (LPF). Soon he is again dominating the polls. Support levels are as high as 20-30 percent of the electorate again. Due to the fact that The Netherlands does not have a two party system, this translate in real political power. Municipal elections show a landslide in Rotterdam, home turf of the Left since 1945.

The establishment panics. Especially the Left because their organisations are so dependent on subsidies. Subsidies that Fortuyn says he will end.

A killer from the animal rights organisations network kills Fortuyn. Co-incidentially there is a car nearby with policemen with bulletproof vests and guns. They arrest Volkert within 10 minutes.

But they do not go to his house, to search for clues and a wider involvement.

Cover-up

A politician of the Greens in a nearby town of Wageningen, a hotbed of Green and animal rights activism, an acquaintance of Volkert hears the news that Fortuyn has been assasinated. His name is Jack Bogers and he is a Green Aelderman. He makes a phonecall within minutes after the assasination to a friend of Volkert, Sjoerd van der Wouw, working for the same organisation as Volkert. Sjoerd van der Wouw enters the house of Volkert and erases the hard disk of Volkert's computer.

Obviously Sjoerd and Jack suspect or know that Volkert is the killer of Fortuyn. At the time the identity of the killer is not known and there is widespread speculation that it is a Muslim.

Only the next day the police search the house. They still found some clues, amongst other things plans and blueprints of buildings and premises of targeted firms.

It looks as if Volkert was a tool for other people who knew what he was up to and what he was capable of and did not want him stopped. Fortuyn was threatened and had asked the Ministry of the Interior for protection against assasination. This protection was denied by the Minister himself, Labour politician Klaas de Vries. Fortuyn had also said on TV that if he would be shot the blood would be on the hands of the politicians denying him protection.

In conclusion: Klaas de Vries was in charge of the police, which had the arrest team ready to apprehend Volkert as he killed Fortuyn, but which did not search Volkert's house until at least some of the evidence had dissappeared.

And Sjoerd and Jack, the Green aiders of Volkert were never prosecuted.

Dutch Commandos battle Taliban in Afghanistan

Dutch Commandos (Dutch) are in Afghanistan as a part of the Deployment Task Force (DTF). The region where they operate is called Uruzgan. The task of the Dutch Commando's is to prepare the way for a Dutch Army force (1.400) which will deploy in Uruzgan for 2 years as a part of the US-led efforts to fight terrorism ("The War on Terror").

The Commandos (Dutch) killed dozens of Taliban fighters in the past few months. Amongst them was also an "important leader" according to kolonel Henk Morsink, the DTF Commander.

The Dutch Commandos had 6 heavy fights with fighters in the neighbourhood of the provincial capital Tarin Kowt. The Commandos were pinned down by Afghan fighters. With helicopter gunship support (Dutch Apaches) the Commandos managed to wipe out Taliban and hostile forces.



The most likely weapon to be selected by the Apache weapons officer is the M230 30 millimeter gun.


Using the Commandos in small groups to recconnoitre (recce) the country is a nice tactic. It encourages the Taliban to group themselves in a bigger group with more fire power thus forming a target that can be engaged with a heave weapon platform such as the Apache.

The Commandos had a few hairy escapes in their encounters with the Taliban. They thank their guardian angel.

The Dutch Ministry called the mission "do able", although it is admitted to be the hairiest mission in a long time. The present governing coalition gives the mission full support, but will be replaced in 2007, before the indicated end date of the mission.

Personally I do not see the point of the mission. The Netherlands or the West has no interests in Afganistan. The mission of Nato in Afganistan is to support the US in El Jorge's Great War on Terror.

This mission is doomed to fail. Obviously the West has to respond to Al-Qaida's terror. But invading countries in the Middle East is not a way to harm Al-Qaida decisively. Western Armies in their wars in the Third World since 1945 constantly defeat the enemies they face. And they constantly fail to translate the military victories in political gains.

It is time for the West to rethink the way it wages war.

Anti Quassam Missiles

Hamas, the Gaza Palestinian Jihadist force is firing Quassem missiles at Israel. The Mujaheed fired 4 missiles from the Gaza strip at a village and at the city of Asqelon on the Mediterrenanean Sea.

The Palestinians make the missiles themselves in little workshops in Gaza. They fire them from the yard of some poor Palestinian soul with few sons and connections at urban areas in Israel.

The Israeli's can fire back with artillery. But they will never hit the perpetrators, because they are long gone. The launch tubes use timers anyway, so even if you hit them 3 seconds after they were fired it is still too late. If the Israelis hit Palestinians civilians with artillery in revenge bombardment in order to make the terrorists unpopular with Gaza Palestinians the wounded and killed will be on European and USA television, which will be terrible for Israeli image abroad and increase hate for the Jews amongst Western Leftists and Muslims in the West.

Israel can do nothing. Then the population will get angrier with every attack and elect more and more badass Governments.

Israel can use pin point attacks against Hamas forces. They can try to find out who are important militants in Hamas organisation and kill them. This is much better. If it gets on Western TV nobody care about these terrorists and many will be happy that they were killed.

Israel can hit PLO-Palestinian Authority officials for allowing the attacks to continue. This can be a good idea. I am sure that the PLO people know who the Hamas people are so they are collaborators with anti-Israeli terrorism. And everybody hates the PLO types anyway these days apart from the idiots in the EU but they even want to continue the process to make Turkey an EU member, despite 60 percent dissaproval from European population.

The worst idea: Israel can make its own Quassem missiles and fire them at Gaza in retaliation. One of Sharon's Kedima buddies proposed this idea. Of course Israel can make such stupid missiles if they try. Is he crazy? What does he think? That Israel and the world sets the same standards for Israel as for the Palestinians?

Maybe they should just do it for once on Aprilfoolsday, by the way of joke. Just to make propaganda. Fire missiles at Gaza. Film it and give the film to the news agencies and say "Hell, we do not know where these missiles are going to land. Is that important?"

It would definately make a point. They could even load the missiles with wooden warheads, just to pull everyone's leg. I think they should do it. These days propaganda is more important that military strength.

Unpopular Message

The number of visitors to this blog rose steadily by about 10 percent per week. Yesterday the number of visitors took a 25 percent dent however, especially in visits from the USA. I guess my message about the lost war in Iraq was not a popular one.

Still I stand by my endorsement of Van Creveld's assessment.

The war in Iraq is not going well. There is no victory in sight. I saw some horrible footage yesterday from a film made by Jihadi's. It was shot of American soldiers on the streets in Iraq in armoured vehicles and humvees. They were getting shot by Jihadi snipers. The footage was accompanied by religious chanting in Arabic. The footage of well-equipped US soldiers with million dollar Equipment and sensors standing around seeing nothing is an illustration of the warnings of Van Creveld.

What to do against the Jihad against the West? The democratisation of the Middle East is not working. I have always maintained that it is impossible. Because Iraqi and most other Middle Eastern societies are too fractured along religious (Sunni, Shia) and tribal and ethnic lines to be able to live in a democratic society. Francis Fukuyama wrote a book "Trust" about the necessity of trust and understanding between citizens in a society in order for people to co-operate vulontarily. This is a necessary precondition of democracy. Middle Easterners do not trust one another. High levels of trust are only found in Europe, European derived societies such as Australia and Japan. That is why they need dictators to run societies. That is why civil wars break out.

That is why democracy in Iraq won't work. So if we pursue a defence against Jihad we must shed our illusions about the possibility of democratisation of reshaping the enemy in our own image. The US Army is not an instrument of social reform. Conservatives should understand this. There will be new terror attacks on Western targets. Globally. And something needs to be done. Otherwise people in Europe and the US will lose confidence in their governments and we get instability in our homelands.

A modern day prophet

Martin van Creveld is a Dutch born Israeli. He is widely regarded as an absolute expert on war in the modern era. It is obligatory to read his books on US military academies, although his idea's are make for depressing reading for any member of a modern military force.

Some of Mr. van Creveld's books conventional and take a more or less standard look at warfare, examples: "The Sword and the Olive" on the Israeli Defense Force and "Command in War".

However his "Transformation of War" and the "Rise and decline of the State" are ground breaking and have far reaching implications not just for todays and future warfare but also for the developments in societies world-wide.

We are going to take a look at what Martin van Creveld has to say on this blog in the weeks to come.

Piracy in African Waters

Tourists on a cruise ship in African waters witnessed the ultimate thrill. According to an article in The Christian Science Monitor there ship was pirated 100 miles off the Somali Coast. The pirates fired aussault rifles and and rocket propelled grenade (RPG).

a band of pirates careened toward the ship in inflatable boats, firing machine guns and a grenade launcher. One couple even had an unexploded grenade lodged in their stateroom's wall before the ship could escape.

Tourism to African destinations is on the rise. It is already the number 1 source of income for certain countries. But the violence that is endemic to Africa makes this source of income highly unreliable, as tourist tend to stay away from violent places:

Just to be safe, the cruise company diverted its ship to the Seychelles Islands, away from Kenya's main tourist port, Mombasa - a city where growing Islamism has also created more and more problems for tourists. In 2002, militants bombed an Israeli-owned hotel near Mombasa - and fired two missiles at an Israeli jet, but missed.

On the East-African coast the population is mostly Muslim, a inheritance from the ages of slave trade with nearby Arabia and the Gulf states. The Muslims have mostly been quiet since the independence of most African countries in 1960.

This quiet has been shattered in the early 1990 when civil war broke out in Somalia. The easy victory of the Mujahedeen over American forces in Mogadishu in 1992 convinced people like Osama Bin Laden that the number 1 world power and guarantor of peace and order, the USA, was a paper tiger:

Bin Laden: The U.S. government went there with great pride and stayed there for some time with a strong media presence wanting to frighten people that it is the greatest power on earth. It went there with pride and with over 28,000 soldiers, to a poor unarmed people in Somalia. The goal of this was to scare the Muslim world and the whole world saying that it is able to do whatever it desires. As soon as the troops reached the Mogadishu beaches, they found no one but children. The CNN and other media cameras started photographing them (the soldiers) with their camouflage and heavy arms, entering with a parade crawling (on the ground) and showing themselves to the world as the "greatest power on earth". .......

.... After a little resistance, The American troops left after achieving nothing. They left after claiming that they were the largest power on earth. They left after some resistance from powerless, poor, unarmed people whose only weapon is the belief in Allah The Almighty, and who do not fear the fabricated American media lies. We learned from those who fought there, that they were surprised to see the low spiritual morale of the American fighters in comparison with the experience they had with the Russian fighters. The Americans ran away from those fighters who fought and killed them, while the latter were still there. If the U.S. still thinks and brags that it still has this kind of power even after all these successive defeats in Vietnam, Beirut, Aden, and Somalia, then let them go back to those who are awaiting its return."

This is how the inspirator of Islamic Resistance sees the strongest Western power. A force whose soldiers have a "low spiritual morale" compared even to the communist Russian forces they encountered in Afghanistan, whose empire collapsed in 1989 and whose population is shrinking.

Obviously the USA is proving itself more committed after the attack on the Twin Towers. Recent events however show that America is a giant on feet of clay. The American Army is still fighting like a blind man in Iraq, because its soldiers do not speak Arabic and do not know the local customs. The public is losing its confidence in a victory. The reason for the American presence is still mistifying observers. Democratisation of the Middle East is NOT a panacea against Islamic radicalisation. Democratic nations in Europe such as France, The Netherlands, The UK and in Scandinavia with Muslim minorities are under attack of Islamists. Libanon is a democracy.

Islamists are thriving in failed states. They found thriving in Bosnia and Afghanistan. In the Palestinian Authority and in Chechnia (listen!). Somalia and Soudan.

They are thriving in Malaysia. Malaysia is a successful modern Asian state. Other Asian states are more successful than Malaysia. But still.

Meanwhile Western states from Europe to South America to North America are in decline vis-a-vis the rest of the world excepting Africa.

So what does that tell us?

French riots - caused by crackdown in crime

The riots in the suburbs of Paris are caused by Interior Minister Sarkozy's crackdown on crime, according to the media and the French opposition:

According to Yahoo News:

Sarkozy, whose law and order policies have been criticized by human rights groups, launched a new offensive against crime this month, ordering specially trained police to tackle 25 tough neighborhoods in cities across France.

This is generally accepted to be the direct cause behind the riot. The police cracked down on crime following orders of Interior Minister Sarkozy. Three young boys fled for the police. They were guilty of something. The fury of the population of the suburbs as a result of the crackdown caused the Muslim youth to riot for ten days.

This shows that Islamic youth has a ethnic COMMITMENT to crime. Take their crime away and they respond, as if bitten by a snake. This is a graphic illustration of the relation between crime and ethnic minorities. Decendant fron immigrants from Africa and Middle Eastern countries have significantly higher crime rates than those who belong to the ethnic national core of Western nations. It is not politically correct to say so. Crime stats show it, but crime stats are surpressed. It is in Belgium even illegal to quote them. And crime stats are boring. Lot's of tables and figures. Worse than a balance sheet.

But these riots make the connection very graphic. Very interesting. And very clear. Muslim youth is saying: "Let us rob you. Or we will rise in arms."

French police under fire in suburbs

The French police is under fire during the riots in the suburbs of Paris.

The interior minister, whose open ambition to run for president in 2007 had been boosted by a decline in crime and delinquency on his watch, visited police in one of the embattled suburbs, Bobigny, overnight.

One officer told him that "two real bullets were fired" at riot police in La Courneuve but did not hit their targets. The riot squads themselves were using rubber bullets when they felt threatened by advancing mobs.