Girl Power Confronts Islamists

Having just been named the recipient of something called the International Four Freedoms medal German Chancellor Angela Merkel has found a new way to suppress freedom of expression in favor of Islamist sensitivities. And has found a way to kowtow to the president of Turkey, thus  making Islam look strong and manly and making Western Europe look weak and feminine.

At least, she is getting rewards from liberal foundations. The International Four Freedoms Foundation lauded her for this:

She shows great moral leadership as Chancellor of all Germans regardless of faith and ethnicity in the face of the start of the anti-Islam movement Pegida (Patriotic Europeans Against Islamisation of the West) in 2014. In the current migrant and refugee crisis Merkel is committed to Europe’s humanitarian duty to protect those fl eeing war and confl ict in the Middle East, Africa and Asia and to tackle the causes of the crisis by working for peace in Syria and the region.

Nothing quite like having strong, powerful women in charge.

The current ruckus was set off by a German stand-up comedian named Jan Boehmermann. Said comedian made a mockery of notably thin-skinned Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdogan. As one knows, Erdogan’s Turkey has been a sworn enemy of free expression and freedom of the press.

Apparently, Erdogan was so offended by the jokes that were made at his expense, that he asked Germany to invoke an old law that prohibits anyone from mocking a foreign leader. In previous decades it was used to favor the sensitivities of the Shah of Iran and Chile’s Augusto Pinochet.

The law, however, can only be applied when the German Chancellor expressly allows it. Thus, Merkel could have shut down the investigation on her own initiative. She did not. She allowed it to proceed and to move toward prosecution.  

Everyone understood that she had yet again bent over for Islam. The comedian, for his part, will be facing three years in prison. To be fair, Merkel, upon allowing the prosecution said that she did not much like the law and would call for its repeal in 2018. No defender of liberty was appeased.

This episode again showed a Western leader submitting to Islam by showing a willingness to sacrifice basic freedoms to Islamist sensitivities. In this way Merkel has encouraged the young jihadis who believe that the West is weak and decadent. Watching the spectacle they conclude that the feminized and feminist West is failing and that manly Muslims will take over. Keep in mind that in Merkel’s Germany, when Muslim men assaulted and molested German women in public in Cologne on New Years’ Eve, the police were instructed to play it all down and not to call it sexual assault.

This is called human sacrifice: sacrificing your daughters to depraved refugees on the altar of multiculturalism. As you know, Sweden is leading the world in this pagan ritual.

German newspaper editor Anna Sauerbrey offered the best report on what happened. Writing in the The New York Times, she said:

A few weeks ago, the German TV program “extra3” satirized Turkey’s president, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, in song, which prompted the Turkish government to call in the German ambassador to Ankara for a lecture, presumably, on its views regarding the limits of free speech.

Not long after, the comedian Jan Böhmermann, satirizing the ensuing debate over what is allowed in political humor, read a poem on his own show, “Neo Magazin Royale.” The poem, which he read in front of a Turkish flag, was about Mr. Erdogan and, among other things, what he might do with goats. It was a blunt provocation with an intelligent twist.

Well, at least he did not produce a YouTube video… because then the ever-fearless Obama administration, with Hillary Clinton in charge would have immediately thrown him in jail.

Why did Merkel cave in to Erdogan? Well, you see, she has a problem. Having opened Germany to over a million refugees--who are producing their own special kind of anarchy-- Merkel refused to walk back her policy. In order to shut down some of the criticism she tried to negotiate a deal—great dealmaker she—whereby Turkey would take some of them back, in exchange for financial compensation.

Sauerbrey reports:

Why would Ms. Merkel choose Mr. Erdogan over her own citizens’ free speech? One reason: the recent agreement between the European Union and Turkey to stanch the flow of refugees entering the Continent. Under the accord, those caught crossing the sea between Turkey and the Greek islands are now sent back in exchange for a payment of three billion euros and Europe’s commitment to take in up to 72,000 additional Syrian refugees.

The arrangement was supposed to solve everything: a relatively humanitarian answer that would tamp down far-right sentiment in Germany and appease Turkey, at little cost to the chancellor. It was a model of political realism — with a touch of political cynicism. As Chancellor Merkel saw it, the alternative to sending back the refugees was political inertia at best, political cataclysm at worst.

But what seemed like a policy breakthrough became a political albatross. Had Ms. Merkel refused to prosecute Mr. Böhmermann, Turkey could have pulled out of the deal. She has opted for the second, bad option, sullying her own liberal virtues.

Obviously, the deal with Turkey did not solve the refugee problem. Sauerbrey writes:

Nor does it work as policy. There are still hundreds of thousands of refugees in Europe and many more on the way, and still there is no agreement on how to share the burden across the Continent. Meanwhile, human traffickers are beginning to build new routes over Libya to Italy.

But what the Böhmermann affair shows most impressively is that the deal was struck for the wrong reasons at the wrong time. It was a panic reaction. Ms. Merkel was under immense political pressure; her party, the Christian Democrats, had just suffered setbacks in three state elections. Other European leaders are facing similar problems.

Europe came to the table quarreling and desperate — not as a partner, but as a beggar. Now Mr. Erdogan continues to treat Europe as such. Political realists love to cite game theory to justify their decisions; had they cracked open their textbooks for a refresher, they could have easily predicted this outcome.

In Germany, Merkel has been roundly attacked for her weakness and cowardice. Some say that this will end her political career. Perhaps, it will. But, what will end the European habit of showing weakness and appeasement when faced with Islamist savagery?

Meantime on the girl power front, the Belgian minister of transportation, Jacqueline Galant has resigned her position. After the terrorist attack at the Brussels airport someone noticed that Galant had been warned over and over again that airport security was deficient and that it needed to be drastically improved. She ignored the warnings.

The Wall Street Journal has the story:

Belgium’s transport minister resigned on Friday amid allegations that she ignored warnings over shortcomings in security monitoring and funding at Brussels Airport, becoming the first member of the government to fall in the wake of last month’s terror attacks.

Belgian Prime Minister Charles Michel confirmed that he had accepted the resignation of Jacqueline Galant, a member of his own centrist party. “I salute the dignity she shows,” Mr. Michel said.

Pressure on Ms. Galant had grown in recent days after leaked European Commission reports showed that the European Union executive had repeatedly warned that the country’s civil aviation authority wasn’t conducting sufficient checks at Belgian airports.

Why are these women leaders—and we could have included the insouciant attitude of the feminist prime minister of Sweden about the rapes of Swedish women by Muslim men—so reluctant to protect people from predators?

As for girl power, our own former Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton was warned by Ambassador Chris Stevens that the security situation in Benghazi, Libya was deteriorating before it killed him. Of course, they could also have found this out by reading the evening news. He requested additional security. His request was turned down. Hillary’s state department chose to do nothing.

The Wall Street Journal reported the Hillary attitude:

Then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton received emails from her top aides warning about dangerous security conditions in Benghazi, Libya, in the run-up to the terrorist attack that killed a U.S. ambassador and three other Americans there in 2012, documents disclosed on Friday show.

The messages were part of a batch of about 300 emails involving Benghazi that were made public by the State Department. State officials already gave the emails in February to a special House committee that is looking into the Benghazi attacks and is expected to take testimony from Mrs. Clinton.

The emails, in addition to what they reveal about the Benghazi attack, offer glimpses into Mrs. Clinton’s thinking and executive style. In an exchange with aides about to testify on Capitol Hill, she wrote: “Well, what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger (as I have rationalized for years), so just survive and you’ll have triumphed!”

Unfortunately, glib insensitivity does not make you look tough. It makes you look weak and numb. And yet, Americans, especially those of the Democratic variety, believe that Hillary is strong and tough. Clearly, something is wrong with the American mind.

One understands why Hillary would have been so hell bent on punishing the videographer for what happened in Benghazi. By the nature of her position she was responsible for the security of the ambassador to Libya. She failed miserably. Naturally, she wanted to shift the blame.