[Image] Ugh Ugh, Ugh Ugh Ugh
From the American Thinker:
It looks like a Churchill moment in the world. With the Charlie Hebdo massacres in Paris the French have had enough. Finally -- finally! -- after years of terrorist murders followed by appeasement or worse, ordinary people are ready to take to the streets.  Politicians feel threatened by rising parties like UKIP in Britain, Marine le Pen’s Front Nationale in France, and PEGIDA in Germany.  As usual, Europe’s politicians try to smear their opponents as neo-Nazis, but that is a lie in most cases. No warmongers need apply in Europe today. But vigorous self-defense against Muslim aggression is now widely understood to be in the cards.  Europe’s many collaborators and appeasers are losing ground, as they did in the 1930s when the public finally saw that appeasing Hitler was doomed to fail. The big parties are trying to coopt the new protest movement, but now they’re on the spot: If they fail to stop future terror attacks their careers are dead.  That is why the French Prime Minister finally used the word “war,” and France sent its sole aircraft carrier to join the fight against ISIS. With the exception of the United States, the Anglosphere came out strongly against Islamist warmongers. Tony Blair made a very clear statement against Islamist aggression.  Only Obama was missing in action. Forty international leaders came to Paris to join the big protest march, including odd birds like Mahmoud Abbas, the Palestinian corruptocrat who has been running terror attacks on Israel. Turkey’s Islamofascist Prime Minister naturally accused Israel of aggression “just like ISIS.”  Countries like India, which has faced its own Muslim threat since 1948, sounded generally sympathetic. Obama may still think there’s a big struggle between the West and the developing world, but India, China and Africa are far beyond that stage. They want what we’ve got, and they are quickly trying to join the modern world.  A vitally important split is emerging in the Middle East, with Egypt’s Sisi calling for a “religious revolution” in Islam. Nobody knows whether he will gain political traction, and he is likely to back off if he doesn’t. But the Saudis and Egypt are in a very close alliance for survival, with Egypt being Saudi Arabia’s military defender while the Saudis support Sisi’s regime with billions of dollars. So it’s likely that the Saudis secretly supported Sisi’s message as a test balloon.  The MEMRI.org website, which translates news from the Muslim world, shows a split between the usual hatemongers and modernists. It’s impossible to tell how that split will develop, because (in Nathan Sharansky’s words), there are Free Societies and Fear Societies: In Fear Societies nobody says what they believe.  Now that Sisi has said out loud what millions of people have been thinking, Egyptians are making their bets: Quietly follow reformers like Sisi, or play it safe?  The Muslim world is balanced on a tightrope, ready to tumble either way. Saudi Arabia is in the middle of a succession struggle, a time of great instability, with 92-year-old King Abdullah said to be close to death. Yet they are now stuck between the devil and the deep blue sea, between two mortal enemies of ISIS and Iran, both laying claim to Mecca and Medina. The two holy cities give the Saudis their standing in the Muslim world.  Saudis are afraid of a future without OPEC oil power, with their oil money fleeing to safer havens, and threatened by the opposing war cults of Iran and ISIS. They have built a 600-mile military barrier to keep out ISIS infiltrators, and some have been caught. The Iranians are constantly making trouble for the Saudis as well.