European Union Countries More Reluctant to Cut Off Russian Energy Imports (VIDEO)

Well, deal with the devil, you know?

Look how that's turning out. Under Moscow's thumb.

At Deutsche Welle, "European leaders wary of cutting off Russian oil and gas":

Quickly cutting off energy revenues with oil and gas embargoes would hit Moscow where it hurts. But European leaders have argued for a phased approach, openly admitting their dependency on Russian energy supplies.

The leaders of Germany, the United Kingdom and the Netherlands on Monday said Europe was too dependent on Russian energy supplies to stop imports overnight as part of any eventual sanctions package in response to the invasion of Ukraine. Energy exports are a key source of income for Russia, and there are growing calls for oil and gas embargoes to increase pressure on the Kremlin.

However, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz said that although Berlin supported tough measures against Moscow, Russian energy supplies remained "essential" for daily life in Europe.

"Europe's supply with energy for heating, for mobility, power supply and for industry cannot at the moment be secured otherwise," Scholz said in a statement.

Russia is the largest supplier of natural gas to Germany, currently accounting for more than half of imports, according to the government. Gas accounts for around a fifth of German power production.

A 'step-by-step' process

On Monday, British Prime Minister Boris Johnson said cutting dependency on Russian oil and gas was "the right thing to do," however it must be done in a "step by step" process.

"We have got to make sure we have substitute supply. One of the things we are looking at is the possibility of using more of our own hydrocarbons," Johnson told a press conference following talks with his Dutch and Canadian counterparts in London.

Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau announced a halt to Russian oil imports last week. However, Canada is the world's fourth-largest oil producer and its imports from Russia were comparatively negligible.

Although the UK relies much less on Russian gas than other countries in Europe, Johnson said it was important that "everyone moves in the same direction."

"There are different dependencies in different countries, and we have to mindful of that," he said. "You can't simply close down the use of oil and gas overnight, even from Russia."

Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte told the press conference that weaning Europe off Russian energy would "take time" and it was a "painful reality" that Europeans were still "very much dependent" on Russian gas and oil...

 

Belgian Model Marisa Papen Slammed by Religious Leaders for Posing Nude at Israel's Western Wall

At Haaretz, "Belgian Model Poses Nude in Front of Western Wall as Part of Art Exhibition."

They posted the full picture with little doilies covering up her most private parts.

And also at Maxim, "MODEL SLAMMED BY RELIGIOUS LEADERS FOR POSING NUDE AT ISRAEL'S WESTERN WALL: Globe-trotting beauty Marisa Papen was also arrested for getting naked outside the pyramids."

How Rukmini Callimachi Uses Social Media to Get Inside the Minds of Islamic State

Rukmini's way cool.

At Wired:

I interviewed @rcallimachi https://t.co/ptOGTgCz6P, an incredible reporter on the most important beat in the world.

— Caitlin Roper (@caitlinroper) August 3, 2016

Belgium Launches Terror Investigation as Islamic State Claims Machete Attack

Following-up from Saturday, "Machete Suspect Screams 'Allahu Akbar' in Latest Belgian Jihad Attack (VIDEO)."

At WSJ, "Belgium Launches Terror Probe as ISIS Claims Machete Attack":

BRUSSELS — Belgian authorities have opened a terrorism probe following a weekend machete attack on two police officers in the city of Charleroi, the latest assault in what has become a relentless summer-long barrage.

The assailant, who was fatally shot during the attack, was identified Sunday by the authorities as a 33-year-old Algerian man who had been living in Belgium illegally since 2012.

Authorities didn’t disclose any indications of accomplices or large-scale planning behind Saturday’s attack, which left one of the officers with serious injuries to her face and neck. The assailant wasn’t carrying explosives or any other weapon, and while he was known to authorities because of his illegal status in the country, he wasn’t known to have any terror links, federal authorities said. They released his initials, K.B., but not his name.

Islamic State’s news agency Amaq claimed the attack was carried out by one of the group’s “soldiers” in response to strikes by the U.S.-led coalition fighting against it in Iraq and Syria.

Belgian Prime Minister Charles Michel said federal prosecutors had opened a probe into “attempted terrorist murders,” assigning an investigative judge specialized in terrorism cases.

“The terrorist track is the possibility which is under analysis at this point,” Mr. Michel said, adding that at this early stage it was important to be “extremely prudent” in drawing any conclusions.

The slashing was the most recent in a string of attacks claimed by the Sunni Muslim extremist group that have left scores dead, in what Mr. Michel described as a “new reality” in Europe.

In addition to orchestrating large-scale attacks, directed at least in part from abroad, Islamic State has also encouraged sympathizers to carry out lone-wolf attacks targeting civilians, which authorities have acknowledged are much harder to prevent. In some cases, authorities haven’t been able to corroborate claims of responsibility by the group.

Some of the more recent attacks linked to Islamic State in Europe have been carried out away from the more heavily guarded capitals—including the July 14 attack in Nice, in southern France; the July 24 suicide bombing in Ansbach, Germany, and the July 26 killing of a French priest in Normandy...

More.

Belgium's national elections are scheduled for 2019. Still a ways off, and thus plenty of time for Islamic invaders to launch further rounds of jihad attacks.

Brussels is the capital of European jihad. It's out of control.

Machete Suspect Screams 'Allahu Akbar' in Latest Belgian Jihad Attack (VIDEO)

The daily jihad attacks are back.

Watch, at Euronews, "Two policewomen wounded in machete attack in Belgium."

And at the Telegraph U.K., "Belgian police officers injured in machete attack."

BONUS: Flashback, "Postcard from a Failed State? Attacks Cast Light on Belgium's State Crisis."

General Michael Hayden: The Terrorist Threat Today vs. September 11 (VIDEO)

Via the American Enterprise Institution:

Has the World Learned Anything Since Brussels?

I don't think so.

At Blazing Cat Fur:

It has become alarmingly clear since the Brussels terror attack that the West either doesn’t understand the nature of Islamist terrorism or doesn’t want to. President Obama denies that the Islamic State poses an existential threat, belittles those who disagree, and seems more vested in undermining allies and political opponents than fighting terror. Whether acting out of ideology or naiveté, he refuses to admit the role of religious doctrine and instead blames terrorism on generic criminality, violent extremism, gun violence, or global warming. He fails to address the jihad and genocide being waged against non-Muslims in the Mideast and beyond, does not speak honestly about the Islamist threat, and portrays those who do as hatemongers.

More.

Paris Attacks Suspect Mohamed Abrini Arrested in Brussels (VIDEO)

At the BBC, "Paris attacks: Key suspect Abrini arrested in Brussels."



More, at London's Daily Mail, "'Man in White snared': Dramatic footage ‘captures the moment Paris and Brussels terror suspect Mohamed Abrini is arrested by gun-toting anti-terror police’."

Identitarianism

This is a great piece, from Jamie Kirchick, at National Review, "Why White-Nationalist Thugs Thrill to Trump":

"Identitarianism” is a newfangled euphemism for white supremacy. Coined around the start of the 21st century by the intellectual wing — such as it is — of the French far right, it has since been adopted by white nationalists the world over. Last October, I attended a conference in Washington convened by the identitarian movement’s American division, the National Policy Institute (NPI). It was fitting that the gathering would occur on Halloween, as about 150 ghouls filled the ballroom of the National Press Club. The crowd was almost entirely male, many of them (apparently taking advantage of the under-30 registration discount) young. A conspicuous number sported the Hitler Youth–inspired hairdo known as an “undercut,” short on the sides with a long part on top. In between encomia to the recently deceased anti-Semitic newspaper publisher Willis Carto and a recitation of pagan reveries by a white-separatist folk musician, attendees perused bookstalls featuring the conspiracy-mongering American Free Press newspaper and the Holocaust-denying Barnes Review...

I obviously don't care for genuine hardcore white nationalists, as they're usually completely open about their racist positions. But I think it's a mistake to blow off the larger ideological framework developing on these issues, because lots of regular folks are going to identify with identitarianism and be completely free of the slightest bit of genuine white supremacist racist inclinations. Indeed, the sad part is that leftists will continue to attack regular folks worried about the Muslim invasion as racist "Islamophobes" when they're nothing of the sort. Notice all the articles in Europe about "far-right" protests and you get the picture (see USA Today, for example, "Clashes feared at banned anti-Islamist rally in Brussels").

More.

Europe's Muslims Hate the West

From Leon de Winter, at Politico (via Robert Spencer).

Read it all at the link; it's good.

Brussels Attacks Cast Light on Belgium's Identity Crisis

At Der Spiegel, "Postcard from a Failed State? Attacks Cast Light on Belgium's State Crisis":

Postcard from a Failed State? Attacks Cast Light on Belgium's State Crisis https://t.co/v5zJaajxmk #BrusselsAttacks

— SPIEGEL English (@SPIEGEL_English) March 27, 2016

With bombs set off in the airport and the subway system, the deadly Islamic State attacks on Brussels have struck the heart of the European Union. Belgium, once the nucleus of Europe, will now have to combat its reputation as a failed state.

Bart De Wever doesn't have much faith in his country. In fact, you can hardly call it a country, this artificial construct created sometime in the 19th century as the result of an accident of history, a power struggle among major powers. The centralized Belgian state is "slow, complicated and inefficient," says De Wever, one of the most powerful men in Belgian politics.

He represents a party that went into the last election campaigning for an end to this centralized state, and for an independent Flanders, which it argued would be more viable than Belgium, a broken construct.
De Wever heads the strongest party, the conservative right-wing New Flemish Alliance (N-VA). He is not part of the government, but rather the mayor of Antwerp, and yet he knows that people in Belgium pay very close attention to what he says. He's sitting under chandeliers in the Gothic city hall, in a room with dark wooden wall panels. It's a sunny Tuesday in February, four weeks before the Brussels attacks. Salah Abdeslam is still on the run, and police haven't tracked him down in Brussels' Molenbeek neighborhood yet. The government is still searching for the sole surviving Paris attacker but have been unsuccessful so far. The government is trying, but it hasn't turned up much yet. Belgium is receiving poor grades, but so is Europe.

De Wever calls German Chancellor Angela Merkel's refugee policy an "epochal mistake," and he complains that integration in Belgium already isn't working today. "This is our problem," he says. "We were unable to offer them a Flemish version of the American dream." His message is that Antwerp is still better off than Brussels, which could be called a cesspool.

De Wever likens the way politics is done in Brussels to the manner in which workers renovate the city's crumbling art nouveau buildings: some new wiring here, something patched up there. "Politicians in Belgium often work like craftsmen in old houses: they putter away without any sort of blueprint." De Wever, sitting in his office on a spring day in Antwerp, has little faith in this country. He doesn't know yet that his lack of confidence will later be confirmed in the worst of ways.

The attack on Brussels, on March 22, 2016, came from inside the country. More than 31 people died and more than 270 were injured, and the victims included people from more than 40 nations.

In the apartment where one of the perpetrators, Ibrahim El Bakraoui, had lived, at Rue Max Roos 4 in the Schaerbeek neighborhood of Brussels, police found about 200 liters of chemicals, detonators, a suitcase full of nails, an Islamic State (IS) flag and 15 kilograms of acetone peroxide, an explosive material. Najim Laachraoui, 24, who also lived there, was apparently a bombmaker of sorts for IS. Forensic investigators found his DNA on two of the explosive belts after the Paris attacks. The two men took a taxi to Brussels' Zaventem Airport, where they allowed no one to touch their luggage. Then, at 7:58 a.m., they blew themselves up. A nail bomb was detonated at Gate B, near the American Airlines ticket counter.

Khalid El Bakraoui, 27, Ibrahim's brother, blew himself up in a subway car at the Maelbeek metro station, near the European Commission building. It was 9:11 a.m.

The killers chose places of transit, sites where anyone could be targeted. An airport and a metro station are places where everyone goes. No place is safe. Forget it. That was their message.

IS Infrastructure in Europe

The attacks were delivered four days after the arrest of Salah Abdeslam. Investigators now know that it was a mistake to assume that IS, which claimed responsibility for the attack, favored the "lone wolf" approach. Since the Brussels bombings, it is clear that Islamic State has created its own infrastructure in Europe, under the radar of most intelligence services, cells consisting of first, second and third-tier militants. If the first tier is unable to act, the second tier takes over and prepares the next attack. The Brussels bombers were already involved in the Paris attacks. There were logistics experts who provided them with apartments and weapons, there were explosives experts and there were people who maintained communications with IS in Syria.

It's clear that there was a network on which Salah Abdeslam could rely. Documents from the Belgian and French authorities paint a picture of a tightknit group in which everyone protected everyone else, and that made the Belgian security forces look like fools. Salah apparently moved about freely in Molenbeek, where he even went to a barber. The mayor of Molenbeek says there is an "omertà" in the community, a code of silence reminiscent of the Mafia.

The groups are part of international networks, and the terrorists had an advantage over security services: They were perfectly in command of cooperation across European national borders...

Keep reading.

After Brussels, There's Really No Discussion of Who Our Enemy Is (VIDEO)

Here's Brian Lilley, at the Rebel Media. A great clip:

#BrusselsAttacks: Suspect Shot in Schaerbeek Raid (VIDEO)

See the live blog at Telegraph UK, "Images emerge of suspect from Schaerbeek raid being dragged away," and "Video purports to show man 'neutralised' in Brussels raid."

Also, "'Several explosions, man neutralised'."

Plus, at WSJ, "Two Shot as Belgium Intensifies Terror Sweep":

BRUSSELS—Belgian police carried out multiple raids and shot two people who resisted arrest on Friday as they broadened their investigations into the Islamic State terror network linked to the Brussels attacks and a plot foiled Thursday in France.

The Belgium prosecutor identified the second suicide bomber at the Brussels airport as Najim Laachraoui, a 24-year-old Belgian national of Moroccan descent who is believed to have been the bomb maker of both the Paris and Brussels attacks. His DNA traces were found on one of the suicide vests and one of the detonators used in Paris, as well as in the hideouts used by the Paris attackers before the assault.

Mr. Laachraoui traveled to Syria in 2013 and was charged in absentia in February for being a recruiter for Islamic State. U.S. officials said they were surprised that Mr. Laachraoui, one of the Islamic State’s most well known bomb makers, blew himself up in the Belgian attack. Some of these officials said they think he had little choice, and was clearly worried that authorities were moving in on him.

Officials said Islamic State has many experts in explosives and it isn’t clear how quickly another of their operatives will step into Mr. Laachraoui’s role.

The raids in Belgium on Friday followed the arrest of a man in France who had been convicted for terrorism and was said to be “in an advance stage” of planning an attack, in the latest example of the potential danger posed by the Brussels-based network responsible for the Brussels and Paris terror attacks.

French President François Hollande told reporters Friday that the network of terrorists that carried out the attacks in Paris and Brussels was “on the way to being destroyed” but there were “other networks” that constituted a threat.

“We have had results in tracking down the terrorists and, in Brussels as well as Paris, there have been a number of arrests made,” Mr. Hollande said.

On Thursday, French authorities arrested Reda Kriket, a 34-year-old Frenchman who was convicted of terrorism in absentia in Belgium last year, along with the suspected ringleader of the Paris attacks, Abdelhamid Abaaoud. French police found explosives and weapons in his apartment.

Belgian police detained two people on Friday in connection to the suspected French plot. One of the men, identified by the Belgian prosecutors, as Tawfik A., was also shot in the leg at the time of his arrest during a house raid. A second suspect, Salah A., was arrested without injuries on Friday.

In another operation, in the Schaerbeek neighborhood of Brussels, police ended up shooting and arresting a man near a tram stop with a backpack that authorities thought was suspicious. The Belgian prosecutor’s office didn’t identify the man, who was injured in the leg.

A Belgian government official described the captured man as a “big fish” and Belgian Prime Minister Charles Michel canceled a planned event with Secretary of State John Kerry just as the Schaerbeek operation began, officials said...

More.

We're Seeing the 'Awful Legacy' of Obama's Presidency

From Glenn Reynolds, at USA Today, "Bill Clinton's inadvertent truth" (via Instapundit):

Monday night in Spokane, Wash., former President Bill Clinton praised his wife, presidential candidate Hillary Clinton, by contrasting her to what he called "the awful legacy of the last eight years” under President Obama.

Although a Clinton spokesperson has since walked back Bill's apparent gaffe, that couldn’t have gone over well at the White House — or, at any rate, at the mansion in Cuba where President Obama was staying just then — but Clinton was right. Barack Obama has left an awful legacy, and the next president, whoever it is, will have a lot to deal with. Fortunately, the next president — whether it’s Hillary, Donald Trump or Ted Cruz, or even Bernie Sanders — will probably be a better president.

For one example of Obama’s “awful legacy,” we need look no further than the terror attacks this week in Brussels. These attacks, which killed dozens and injured close to 200, were perpetrated by the Islamic State, the group that Obama once disparagingly called a “jayvee team.”

Well, for a jayvee team, they’ve done a lot of damage, in the Middle East and beyond, and it’s in large part because of Obama’s premature withdrawal from Iraq, which fulfilled a political promise, but which had the effect of squandering a decade of blood and treasure, and costing many thousands of lives.

As late as 2010, things were going sufficiently well in Iraq that the Obama Administration was bragging about what a huge success they had going there. But in his 2008 campaign, Obama had promised to pull U.S. troops out of Iraq, and so it was essential that he do so before 2012, or his antiwar supporters would complain. So Obama pulled out. And that was a mistake...

Big mistake.

Keep reading.

#BrusselsAttacks: Is America Next?

From Daniel Benjamin, at Politco, "Is America Next?":

When a bomb goes off in Europe, Americans shudder as if rocked by the blast. Whatever the geographical reality, post-industrial Old Europe—in Donald Rumsfeld’s deathless phrase—is, emotionally speaking, our nearest neighbor and closest peer. So if an explosion propels shattered glass and broken bodies in a Brussels airport, we instinctively expect it to happen here next.

We shouldn’t. While the jihadist threat is genuinely global, it is by no means equally distributed. There is, of course, no such thing as perfect security, and as we saw as recently as the San Bernardino shootings in December of last year, there are individuals in the United States who are prepared to commit violence against other Americans. But the European context underlying the attacks at Brussels Airport and the downtown Maelbeek subway station—one of alienated, underemployed and ghettoized Muslims as well as subpar security—differs dramatically from anything found in the United States...

Meh.

He hardly broaches jihad at all. As long as Muslims cling to the Koran for inspiration, they'll continue to launch terrorist jihad.

More.

Can Jihad Terror Be Stopped?

Front page at the O.C. Register. What do you think? I'm not optimistic.

See, "Can it be stopped?"

#BrusselsAttacks Expose U.S. Airport 'Soft Targets' (VIDEO)

At CBS News This Morning:

Donald Trump Calls for Temporary Ban on Muslim Immigration — #BrusselsAttacks (VIDEO)

The attacks are only going to send his poll numbers skyward.

At Politico, "Will terror help Trump? ISIS attacks have fueled mogul's rise, and they keep coming."

And watch, at CNN, "Donald Trump: We have no choice but to ban Muslims."

Oh My! Charles Krauthammer Slams Obama's Adolescent Cuban Holiday 'While the World Burns' (VIDEO)

This is vintage Krauthammer, lol.

With Bret Baier earlier today, via Free Beacon:

Terror Attacks Fuel Debate Over Migrants in Europe (VIDEO)

I'm past worrying about when people are going to wake up.

There's actually no outrage in Europe. It's all daisy-chains and hippie candles (and calls for French fries, oddly enough). The Paris piano-man's going to be singing "Imagine" in Maelbeek any minute now, no doubt. "Solidarity" will see us through, you know. There's no time for the "hate."

It's Pollyanna all the way around.

At the New York Times, "Brussels Attacks Fuel Debate Over Migrants in a Fractured Europe":

LONDON — It did not take long. Almost as soon as the bombs went off in Brussels on Tuesday morning, the new act of terrorism in the heart of Europe was employed in the bitter debate about the influx of migrants from the Middle East and North Africa.

Even before the identities and nationalities of the attackers were known, there was an immediate association in popular discourse between the attacks on the airport and subway station in Brussels and the migrant crisis. Right-wing politicians and average citizens alike raised concerns that groups like the Islamic State, which claimed responsibility for the attacks, are slipping radicalized recruits, including European jihadists, through the vast migrant stream and into an unprepared Europe.

The murderous attacks in another European capital — just days after the Belgians finally tracked down the sole surviving suspect in a series of similarly coordinated attacks that killed 130 people in and around Paris in November — prompted new questions about European solidarity and security. And they came during a period of severe self-doubt about the European Union, with low growth, high unemployment, and the threat of a British exit from the bloc, to be decided in a June referendum.

“There is a growing perception among European public opinion that E.U. leaders are not in control of the Continent’s terrorist threat,” said Mujtaba Rahman of the Eurasia Group, a political risk and consulting company. “Combined, these attacks will increase xenophobic and anti-immigration sentiment across the E.U., which has already been rising in light of the E.U.’s ongoing refugee crisis.”

Right-wing parties all over Europe, and especially the Alternative for Germany party, “have and will continue to conflate refugees with terrorism,” Mr. Rahman said. “This will in turn put more pressure on incumbent governments and limit their space for policy action to address Europe’s multiple crises.”

Nigel Farage, a leader of the populist, conservative U.K. Independence Party, said: “I think we’ve reached a point where we have to admit to ourselves, in Britain and France and much of the rest of Europe, that mass immigration and multicultural division has for now been a failure.”

The attacks will also put more strain on the deal brokered last week by Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany with the Turkish government to restrict the migrant flow into Europe, in return for more liberal visa arrangements for travel into Europe by Turkish nationals. That deal was already being criticized as a security threat to Europe and had been questioned on humanitarian and legal grounds...

More.