Mohamed Lahouaiej Bouhlel who killed 89 and injured hundreds on Bastille Day in Nice.

Mark Krikorian:

The local paper reports that the terrorist was “of Tunisian origin,” which surprises no one, of course. But since he was killed by police, President Obama may never know his real motive.

Heat Street:

A French government committee has heard testimony, suppressed by the French government at the time and not released to the media, that the killers in the Bataclan tortured their victims on the second floor of the club.

Police witnesses in Parliament said they vomited when they saw the disfigured bodies.

Wahhabist killers apparently gouged out eyes, castrated victims, and shoved their testicles in their mouths. They may also have disemboweled some poor souls. Women were stabbed in the genitals – and all the torture was, victims told police, filmed for Daesh or Islamic State propaganda. For that reason, medics did not release the bodies of torture victims to the families, investigators said.

But prosecutors claimed these reports of torture were “a rumor” on the grounds that sharp knives were not found at the scene. They also claimed that maybe shrapnel had caused the injuries.

Read the whole thing.

Michael Curtis, at American Thinker, explains that ISIS has adopted a classic Western military doctrine invented by the German military during the Napoleonic wars and fundamental to the philosophy of the US Marine Corps.

[A] February 2016 article in the French edition of the ISIS online propaganda magazine, Dar al-Islam, has explained its campaign to wage war against the West.

In a surprising revelation, ISIS’s article rediscovers the basis of German maneuver warfare. It says it is copying the 19th-century tactics of Auftragstaktik, a combat doctrine of the German army similar to Mission Command in the U.S. and U.K. That doctrine was adopted as a response by Germany after its military defeats by Napoleon.

The article cites a 1908 German infantry manual asserting that there is nothing more important in tactics than educating a soldier to think for himself. Though a little un-Germanic, it asserts that a soldier’s autonomy and sense of honor push him to do his duty even when it is not in front of his superiors.

The ISIS article explains that the terrorists plan three types of attacks. These include large-scale plots coordinated by the leaders, though these now seem a lesser priority. More important is a warning to the West that the attacks also include isolated actions of individuals who have no direct contact with ISIS but act in its name. This means that followers of ISIS will carry out terrorists attacks without them being traced to the central chain of command.

The concept of Auftragstaktik means a method by which leaders give subordinates a mission, a target, and a time frame by which it should be accomplished and allow those subordinates to carry out their tasks independently. This implies allowing the subordinates complete tactical autonomy and flexibility at the operational level. The leadership is not informed of tactical details of the “lone wolf” operators. The perpetrator adapts tactics to the local situation in flexible fashion.

The concept also means that the subordinates understand the orders, are given general guidance, and are trained to act independently. This means decentralized warfare, terror by autonomy, while following centralized orders.

Read the whole thing.

Czech President Miloš Zeman

The Guardian:

Czech president Milos Zeman, known for his fiery anti-migrant rhetoric, claimed on Sunday it was “practically impossible” to integrate the Muslim community into European society.

“The experience of western European countries which have ghettos and excluded localities shows that the integration of the Muslim community is practically impossible,” Zeman said in a televised interview.

“Let them have their culture in their countries and not take it to Europe, otherwise it will end up like Cologne,” he added, referring to the mass New Year’s Eve assaults on women in Germany and elsewhere.

“Integration is possible with cultures that are similar, and the similarities may vary,” pointing out that the Vietnamese and Ukrainian communities had been able to integrate into Czech society.

Zeman, a 71-year-old leftwinger and the first-ever directly elected president of the Czech Republic, has repeatedly spoken out against the surge of migrant and refugee arrivals in Europe.

Manneken

CNN

Which attacks, you know, really, are what we used to call An Act of War.

Personally, I think the Belgian Army, all by itself, would be quite adequate to march through all the territories controlled by ISIS, shoot all armed opposition, and generally do to that portion of the Fertile Crescent what Sherman did for a 50 mile-wide stretch of territory between Atlanta and Savannah. But Belgium is, after all, part of NATO, and the NATO Treaty says that attack on one NATO member state is an attack on all of them. So all of NATO ought to declare war, today, and start assembling Operation Sherman, the military expedition intended to make large portions of Northern Syria and Western Iraq howl.

Next time you watch Star Wars, I need you to remind yourself that all the dialogue you hear was recorded by a man in pink short shorts.

Milo Yiannopolis argues that everybody has got the good guys and the bad guys confused in the Star Wars movies. Jabba the Hutt, for instance, is a good example.

Jabba the Hutt is treated as this huge villain in Return of the Jedi, but this is simply unwarranted. Jabba is a responsible employer, entrepreneur, and philanthropist. He is a capitalist hero. In the case of Han Solo, he took reasonable steps to recover a debt from a known intergalactic criminal. His agent Greedo was acting within the law when he was shot down by the notorious outlaw Solo. Lucas had to edit in special effects to cover this accidental glimpse of the truth, by showing Greedo shooting first.

Jabba the Hutt was actually pretty progressive. He ran a melting-pot society with criminals of every race, colour, and creed working together in harmony. He even employed the differently abled, like the Rancor monster. He personally financed entertainment for the downtrodden masses of Tatooine; imagine the trouble they’d get into without pod races to watch. In fact, I believe America’s rash of midnight basketball programs were based directly on Jabba’s pioneering work in the field.

Jabba disposed of his waste in an extremely eco-friendly manner, feeding enemies to the Sarlaac beast he kept as a pet. Human bodies digested over 1,000 years are way better for the environment than straight burials. The fact is Jabba would fit right in at Burning Man. He’d have his sand barge — destroyed by the terrorists, of course — and would hang out with Elon Musk and maybe sign a few multimillion dollar deals.

Jabba the Hutt, or as I call him Jabba the Hero, was brutally murdered by a white woman. Why don’t I see a single #GreenLivesMatter protest? Jabba’s main crime as far as I can tell was being an invertebrate of size. Leia brutally slugshamed him. No doubt if he had survived his throttling he would have had PTSD and would have started a Tumblr, except being an entrepreneur he’s not a whining loser so maybe not.

Speaking of Leia, a straight white princess murdering a minority businessman with no repercussions is the ultimate example of white privilege.

Read the whole thing.

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A Jedi’s Path to Jihad:

From introducing him to us in A New Hope (as a simple farm boy gazing into the Tatooine sunset), to his eventual transformation into the radicalized insurgent of Return of the Jedi (as one who sets his own father’s corpse on fire and celebrates the successful bombing of the Death Star), each film in the original trilogy is another step in Luke’s descent into terrorism. By carefully looking for the same signs governments and scholars use to detect radicalization, we can witness Luke’s dark journey into religious fundamentalism and extremism happen before our very eyes.

When we first meet Luke Skywalker, he’s an orphaned farm boy with barely any friends, living with his Aunt and Uncle, and wanting to join the Galactic Academy like all the other guys his age. You see, Luke didn’t become a space terrorist overnight, but he did exhibit signs that would make him a prime candidate for terrorist recruiters. The process of radicalization, as described by Anthony Stahelski in the Journal of Homeland Security, notes terrorists tend to:

Come from families where the father is absent (check)

Have difficulty forming relationships outside the home (check)

Be attracted to groups offering acceptance and comradeship (checkmate)

Luke is just the kind of isolated disaffected young man that terror recruiters seek out.

Obi Wan — a religious fanatic with a history of looking for young boys to recruit and teach an extreme interpretation of the Force — is practically salivating when he stumbles upon Luke, knowing he’s found a prime candidate for radicalization. …

Obi-Wan whisks Luke off to Mos Eisley using a Jedi mind trick to bypass security, knowing full well he likely appears on numerous terror no fly lists. After contracting a local drug smuggler for transportation, Obi-Wan and his newest Skywalker recruit are off. They are soon captured, however, and attempt an escape which culminates in a battle between Obi-Wan and Vader. During the fight, Obi-Wan notices Luke watching, and seeing an opportunity to fully inspire Luke to radicalize, says a Jedi prayer while committing suicide. Can you think of any other groups who try to inspire terrorism by yelling a prayer before a suicide attack?

Once Luke escapes and regroups with a terror sleeper cell, he joins them on an attack mission. As he nears his target, hearing Obi-Wan’s words in his mind, Luke closes his eyes, says a prayer and bombs a space station, killing everyone aboard. Young Skywalker has proven himself a quick study in the ways of armed religious extremism.

As the Empire Strikes Back begins, Obi-Wan appears to Luke as an apparition and gives him clear instructions on continuing his radicalization. Luke is ordered to travel overseas to receive training and religious instruction from Yoda, an extremist cleric who runs a Jedi madrasa on Dagobah.

Yoda accepts Luke into his religious “school,” teaching Luke Jedi fundamentalism and guerilla warfare. Like many extremist mullahs, Yoda demands total adherence to his strict interpretation of the Force and seeks to strip Luke of independent thinking. Yoda’s push to radicalize Luke, rob him of an identity, and instill obedience are apparent when at various points he instructs Luke to “Clear your mind of questions,” “Unlearn what you have learned” and, most grimly, “Do, or do not, there is no try.” The Jedi know it is imperative to force mindless devotion in warriors they recruit for their holy war. Armed with new combat training and cloaked in a hardline religious fervor, Luke leaves Dagobah, impatient to put his terror training to use.

In Return of the Jedi, we see a darker, hardened Luke, fittingly dressed in black and eager to use violence as a tool to enforce the twisted “judge, jury, executioner” value system of the Jedi. During a rescue mission, Luke exhibits their extremist binary worldview of “if you aren’t with us, you’re a viable military target” when he blows up Jabba’s barge, killing every man, woman, and child on board. Excited by so much bloodshed and mayhem, young Skywalker seeks to assassinate the Emperor and even his own father (!) if they won’t convert to Luke’s extremist interpretation of the Force. Luke enters the Death Star, hoping to gain martyrdom if he is killed. As Luke’s insurgent friends successfully bomb their target, Luke succeeds in killing the Emperor and, eventually, his own father. Luke’s path to radicalization is complete, his bloodlust sated … for now.

With Darth Vader the final casualty of Luke’s jihad, Obi-Wan and Yoda have succeeded in catching yet another young man in their web of Jedi extremism. As is now evident, Star Wars is clearly a cautionary tale of the dangers of radicalization, and how even a seemingly harmless young man who kept to himself on Tattooine can become the terrorist next door.

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