Europe Submits To Islam
Life is being transformed in Europe, and not in good ways.
How many events will be cancelled due to fears that Muslims will answer Islam's calls for them to slaughter "the infidel"?
The latest (huge) cancellation is "La Braderie," in Lille, in France.
Hugh Fitzgerald blogs:
The mayor of Lille, in northeast France, has just announced the cancellation of La Braderie, the largest flea market in Europe, with 10,000 exhibitors and, last year, 2.5 million visitors. Martine Aubry, the mayor, and a Socialist stalwart, said that the safety of visitors could not be assured - "there are risks we cannot reduce." By this she meant, of course, risks of an attack by Muslim terrorists. Only once before, during the goose-stepping German occupation, has La Braderie ever been called off. The cancellation of this gigantic event is a severe economic blow to those exhibitors from all over France who depend, for a significant portion of their year's profit, on that Lille market, but also a blow to those ancillary businesses -- cafés, restaurants, and hotels - that benefit from exhibitors and visitors alike. Thus do Muslim terrorists manage to inflict great damage on Western economies without firing a shot or swinging a scimitar.Of course, the same Islamic threat exists for every large public event in France. And like the Mayor of Lille, other officials, with other fairs, will not want to be held responsible for deaths from terrorist attacks. Since it is clear that the security services cannot possibly protect people always and everywhere, especially when there are large gatherings (and in Lille, officials say, the delivery trucks that would have had to negotiate the fairground's labyrinth of lanes was a particular worry), it is better, from the politician's point of view, to err on the side of caution - that is to say, of cancellation. Grumbling over lost sales can be overcome, but fury over lost lives cannot.
The calling-off of La Braderie likely signals a new phase in the war against the Infidels. Will the open-air Christmas markets also become targets? There's no need to ask, because they already have been -- a plot against the Christmas market in Strasbourg was narrowly foiled back in 2000. And in 2014, an allahu-akbaring driver ran over people at the Christmas market in Nantes (the police still call the case "inconclusive"). And last year, the Christmas festivities in many places in France, including those that took place along the Champs-Elysees, were not cancelled outright, but considerably curtailed in time and space (and on the same boulevard, at New Year's Eve, a video of fireworks, rather than fireworks themselves, was shown). Christmas markets are clearly a target for ISIS and its willing collaborators, for not only are they symbols of hated Christianity, but they conveniently attract large numbers of potential victims to one place.
And what about Germany, where Christmas markets play such a large role in the economy, and in the nation's sense of itself? These Christmas markets actually run almost a month, opening in late November and closing only on Christmas Eve. So far, they have taken place without any change. Certainly none have been cancelled. But there is anxiety in the air. The fact that they are so much a part of German and Christian identity makes them, for that very reason, especially antipathetic to the Islamic State.
...The economic impact from the mere threat of Islamic terrorism is staggering. The cancellation of La Braderie affects 10,000 exhibitors, 2.5 million visitors, with attendant losses to ancillary local businesses that would have served visitors and exhibitors alike. Similarly, when a sports event, a music festival, an observation of a national holiday, is cancelled, or a whole city put on lockdown (as happened in Brussels after the 2015 Paris attacks), the circle of losses widens. When La Braderie was called off, tourists took note of the Lille Mayor's admission that "there are risks we cannot reduce." This led to plane and hotel reservations in France being cancelled, or in some cases, apparently not being made in the first place (judging by what could be predicted from last year's figures). The French government has just announced that for all of France, the number of hotel stays has dropped 10% over the past year. The luxury Parisian hotels have been the hardest hit, so the reduction in hotel revenues is far more than 10%. And that figure was arrived at before the truck massacre in Nice on July 14 and the decapitation of the elderly priest in Rouvray. By this fall, we should know the full effect on French tourism of those latest Muslim atrocities; it won't be good.
I'm grateful that I got to spend time in Paris for many years before it turned into a battleground for Islam's takeover of Europe and the world.
"By this she meant, of course, risks of an attack by Muslim terrorists. Only once before, during the goose-stepping German occupation, has La Braderie ever been called off."
Oh, no, there must be another reason - I've heard that only our hostess fears those peaceful religious people!
Radwaste at August 11, 2016 10:47 PM
We'll always diverge over your obsession with Islam as the source of all this evil, as if it's too inconvenient (or unpleasant) for you to read about all the sources of wretchedness in these people's lives. Yeah... Primitivism, illiteracy, political monstrosity and abject terror haven't done much for these refugees either. But perhaps you like to think you could change their religion as if throwing a switch, and then they'd be totally nice young men.
Your laserlike focus on Islam is a backhanded affirmation of Christianity as the source of decency in Western Civ... Women's rights, education, science all of it.
At the very least, it's as if you credit the Beatle's haircuts as the propellant for their dominance.
But it's certainly true that Europe is not capable of dealing with this. I'm glad you visited when you did, and have lost any (weak) enthusiasm for visiting the continent that might have smoldered in my own heart. (Monaco, maybe, for Memorial Day.) In a hundred years, historians will have a clear view about whether it was America's generous providence of postwar security that caused EuroBalls to shrink so crisply. Meanwhile, I'll think about it while I drink...
And weep that Hillary will be every bit as suicidal as Merkel when the authority is hers.
See also.
Crid at August 11, 2016 10:58 PM
Strawman much?
I actually quite like it here. The Nurburgring is only 90 minutes away (Drove it again a couple weeks ago. Just sayin.) And Spa is even closer (going to drive it in October. Just sayin again.)
More seriously, Europe is very pleasant. Not great, maybe, in the way the US is, but still. Yes, it has its problems, but it doesn't have any Detroits, either. And it sure as hell didn't need a million people whose religion is completely and irretrievably antagonistic towards Western civilization.
Jeff Guinn at August 11, 2016 11:16 PM
> And it sure as hell didn't need
> a million people whose religion
> is completely and irretrievably
> antagonistic towards Western
> civilization.
...And yet there they are, settled or [Angie promises:] en route.
Crid at August 12, 2016 1:07 AM
Also!
> Strawman much?
Never!
When has she every ascribed any of the pain of these populations to anything but their religion?
Did I miss something? Provide links with teh Google.
Crid at August 12, 2016 2:28 AM
I think you are missing her point (if I may be so bold as to speak for her): The pain these populations are causing us is due exclusively to their religion.
If you have another reason, by all means clue us in.
As for the pain they are causing themselves, I don't recall Amy worrying about that overmuch, if at all.
Jeff Guinn at August 12, 2016 5:12 AM
The pain these populations are causing us is due exclusively to their religion.
Exactly. Thanks, Jeff.
As for this, "perhaps you like to think you could change their religion as if throwing a switch," I don't, and I explained the other day with a blog post on why Islam probably can't be reformed. It's a real problem, and I think Europe will be Eurabia before too long, with all the rules and Quran-commanded death that comes with that.
Amy Alkon at August 12, 2016 5:24 AM
Nature has shown time and again that all things can "learn" what is considered the "norm" for any location.
Europe just does not have the balls to do this either individually or via their government. (In fact their governments are fast disabling any means to object to newcomers behavior).
It's not rocket science but Bubba learns real quick that doing bad things to others either increases your status or kills you. It all depends on the environment.
One simple example is below:
1. Too many elephants there was a relocation only some of the female elephants and juvenile males. The bull elephants were too heavy to relocate.
2. Later on cameras showed the young chasing down the rhinos, knocking them over, and stomping and goring them to death with their tusks. The juvenile elephants were terrorizing other animals in the park as well. Such behavior was very rare among elephants. Something had gone terribly wrong.
3. What was missing from the relocated herd was the presence of the large dominant bulls that remained at Kruger. In natural circumstances, the adult bulls provide modeling behaviors for younger elephants, keeping them in line.
4. To test the theory, the rangers constructed a bigger and stronger harness, then flew in some of the older bulls left behind at Kruger. Within weeks, the bizarre and violent behavior of the juvenile elephants stopped completely. The older bulls let them know that their behaviors were not elephant-like at all. In a short time, the younger elephants were following the older and more dominant bulls around while learning how to be elephants.
http://thesestonewalls.com/gordon-macrae/in-the-absence-of-fathers-a-story-of-elephants-and-men/
Bob in Texas at August 12, 2016 6:12 AM
These are the "good" guys over there. Oh yeah. Let's bring 'em over here and hope for the best.
"Police and state security take their time to get to the scene, allowing the mob ample time to riot with impunity. It is not uncommon for authorities to arrive two or three hours after a mob attack commences—even when they are closely stationed."
"Authorities tell Christian leaders things like, "Yes, we understand the situation and your innocence, but the only way to create calm in the village is for X [the offending Christian and extended family, all of whom may have been beaten] to leave the village—just for now, until things calm down." Or, "Yes, we understand you need a church, but as you can see, the situation is volatile right now, so, for the time being, maybe you can walk to the church in the next town six miles away—you know, until things die down."
"Then they go through the village making arrests—except that most of those whom they arrest are Christian youths. Then they tell the Christian leaders, "Well, we've made the arrests. But, just as you say so-and-so [Muslim] was involved, there are even more witnesses [Muslims] who insist your own [Christian] youths were the ones who began the violence. So, we can either arrest and prosecute them, or you can rethink our offer about having a reconciliation meeting."
http://www.meforum.org/6186/egypt-muslim-christian-reconciliation-meetings
Bob in Texas at August 12, 2016 11:41 AM
> The pain these populations are
> causing us is due exclusively
> to their religion.
That's goofy.
- No such expression has ever been apparent in her writings.
- That notion, grasped as it was from the thinnest air (or the tightest ass) in a desperation move, in no way excuses the ludicrous disproportions in her survey of events. There's simple no reason to hold religion accountable for such wretchedness.
- You're not just begging the question, you're doubling down on the willful ignorance and isolationism ("causing us") which has allowed these events to flare so violently, and which has nourished the detachment of fellow human beings who deserve consideration in any case. There's no reason to believe people living in similar poverty, detachment and oppression would be any nicer of only they were Buddhists.
Seekers, words have meaning... You can't just toss a bunch of them into the air and pretend a clever point's been made.Crid at August 12, 2016 3:14 PM
Well, not ALL the wretchedness... For every Euro-atrocity with someone screaming allahu akbar, there are 10 with no religious expression of any kind... (The NYE rapes come to mind.) This is, more than anything else, about uncivilized, oppressed young men set loose in modernity with no handhold in the culture.
Yes, many will turn to religion, because they remember there was that one religious guy on their block back in Tripoli.
No, there's nothing you can do about it. There's no switch to throw: Any doesn't get to decide whether other people (especially such distant ones) embrace religion, or which one they embrace. Nobody's asking.
Crid at August 12, 2016 5:07 PM
Her point is a mystery only to those wholly immune to the blindingly obvious.
Unfortunately, her "ludicrous disproportions" are reality.
Now, if it happened that the sorts of atrocities that Amy asserts are due to Islam happened all over the world, among the poor, downtrodden, isolated, colonialized, etc, then you might have a point.
But that isn't the case. There is exactly one group of people who insist their ideology is supreme and universal, and who insist that you are obligated to bow down before their religious sensibilities.
Take the Mohammed cartoons for a start. All other religions, especially in the West, but pretty much everywhere, take others' expressions of disbelief pretty much in stride: they do not attempt to impose their diktats upon non-believers.
Not so Islam. Muslims insist we bow down to their religion. Not just in Islamic countries, but in our own. Consequences? Riots, murders, people in hiding -- in the US -- books on the affair published without pictures of the very thing the book is about, newspapers and TV shows self-censoring.
So, yes, I will hold Islam accountable for that wretchedness, and see it as sufficient evidence that Islam is irrevocably antagonistic towards Western civilization.
Their are neighborhoods in France and England where Jews cannot safely go. Guess which ones.
I'm going to Oktoberfest. Any guesses about what security is going to be like? Any thoughts about how people are going to spend a great deal of time looking over their shoulders? Any guesses as to which religions adherents are responsible for all that?
My professional life has been completely upended since 9/11. I hold Islam wholly accountable for that wretchedness. Unless, of course, you can think of another religion, or concoct a way to let Islam off the hook.
And since, absent any coherent comment from you to the contrary, Islam is, in fact, wholly responsible for all of these things, then it is impossible to be disproportionate.
Now you are spewing nonsense. It would be a trivial task to list all manner of people living in poverty, detachment, and oppression.
However, none of the them would be in that state due to their religion (Compare how many books have been translated into Arabic in the last 300 years with the number translated into Spanish in the last year alone). And none of them are engaging in theologically murderous rampages, either.
Again with the moral equivalency. Only to analytically challenged leftists, and you, apparently, does the existence of other tragedies and atrocities mean discussing the theological horror show that is Islam is somehow off limits.
And you seem completely unaware of the fact that most, if not all, of the perpetrators weren't "set loose in modernity", unless you consider being born in Europe as being set loose.
You either know nothing about Islam, or suffer the post-modern delusion that religious belief doesn't matter.
Either way, there's nothing I can do about it; no switch to throw.
You never get past shouty.
Jeff Guinn at August 13, 2016 4:34 AM
Muslim no-go zones in England that have absolutely nothing to do with either Islam or Muslims.
Jeff Guinn at August 13, 2016 4:43 AM
Jeff, do not read my comments.
Crid at August 14, 2016 1:03 AM
(daFuq?)
Jeff Guinn at August 15, 2016 1:44 AM
"No such expression has ever been apparent in her writings."
"And a flag is down on the field, Bob."
"Yep, that's a personal foul. Amy has consistently cited the Koran, in particular The Verse Of The Sword, as the relevent passage commanding Muslims to maim and kill the infidel. The refs couldn't miss that call, it's so obvious."
Hey, it's almost football season.
Radwaste at August 15, 2016 2:25 AM
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