All is not well in the West

In May 2017, the foreign minister of the United Arab Emirates delivered a stark and prescient warning to the Western world. Speaking at a global summit in Saudi Arabia, Sheikh Abdullah bin Zayed al Nahyan made a show of switching to English to issue his message, to ensure nothing was lost in translation: “There will come a day that we will see far more radical extremists and terrorists coming out of Europe,” he said, attributing this predicted outcome to “lack of decision-making, trying to be politically correct, or assuming that [Westerners] know the Middle East, and they know Islam, and they know the others far better than we do.”He concluded, pointedly, “I’m sorry, but that’s pure ignorance.” The audience burst into applause. That clip has been shared widely in recent days, juxtaposed with violent scenes of mayhem and destruction playing out across Europe, particularly in France.Billed by much of the so-called news media as “student protests” against conditions in French schools, the rioting bears little resemblance to this framing. Beautiful, historic buildings have been burned to the ground. Law enforcement officers have been assaulted with projectiles. Businesses, including luxury stores, have been looted and ransacked. These are not “protests.” Many of the participants are not “students.” And any goals these agitators may harbor have nothing to do with the education system.Elements of the organized and hardcore Left are playing a central, destabilizing role in the lawlessness. A French journalist asserted on television that some of the attacks against businesses in Marseille deliberately targeted Jewish-owned or linked businesses, while sparing Muslim ones. One viral video depicted a woman trying to fend off the mob outside of her store. A member of the pack urged fellow pillagers to spare her business, for explicitly sectarian reasons. “Don’t smash it up, she’s a sister,” he shouted, in an apparent reference to her status as a Muslim.Another victim wasn’t so lucky. A Muslim woman calling herself Fatima phoned into a French TV program and said that in trying to defend her shop, she was physically assaulted. “They had knives,” she alleged, estimating that “80% of them were people from my Muslim community. There were thousands of them.”Another clip buzzing around social media purports to show a plundered French grocery store with pork products untouched. The Palestinian flag appears to be the banner of choice for this violent, criminal movement, in which many of the marauders sport keffiyehs or balaclavas. This is the now-familiar branding of the West’s dirtbag coalition of far-left agitators and Islamists.Its conditions were forged in the inevitable collision of wildly unsustainable welfare and entitlement programs — it’s never enough, you see, even in France — and insane-to-suicidal immigration policies. All of it is a painful cause-and-effect demonstration for European citizens, who may or may not have the numbers and will to reverse course, and a chilling object lesson to American voters. The “red-green” alliance of leftists and Islamists is establishing a stronghold on that continent. They’re working toward a substantial foothold here.Another flapping red flag is emerging, yet again, in the United Kingdom. Many of our British cousins are furious over recent revelations that a confirmed Islamic State group terrorist is walking free in England, evidently on the taxpayer dole, as their system is again proving too sclerotic and politicized to purge even the most obvious internal threats.This person, captured in a photograph casually shopping for food, presumably with taxpayer money, is a former ISIS member who’d spent years in a German prison for terrorist activity. Subsequent to his release — why heinous terrorists are being released at all is a separate but related matter — European “human rights” rules prevented his deportation to Iraq, where he was deemed to be at risk of harsh treatment.A protester holds a Palestinian flag as a bus stop burns during a demonstration at Place de Republique on Saturday, Oct. 17, 2026, in Paris. (Guy Smallman/Getty Images) Mohammed Yaseen therefore illegally immigrated to Great Britain on a small boat, served a relatively short sentence after being arrested, then was released onto the streets. The ISIS group he joined was responsible for the infamous beheading of a U.K. citizen. One British commentator, Jonathan Sacerdoti, laid out the facts of this outrageous and damning episode, calling them “extraordinary.”“German prosecutors said Yaseen planted at least 13 roadside bombs in Iraq, carried a Kalashnikov and guarded ISIS stonings, beheadings and mass executions, including executions in which children were among the victims,” Sacerdoti wrote on X. “He was convicted in Germany of ISIS membership and jailed for nearly five years. After Germany tried to deport him to Iraq, a court blocked his removal because he could face mistreatment or execution there. He then travelled to Britain, reportedly telling officials he had seen on TikTok that the UK ‘accepts everyone’ and ‘respects human rights.’ He initially gave authorities a false identity and was only identified after fingerprint checks revealed who he really was. A British prosecutor later said Yaseen had a ‘deeper and lengthy involvement in terrorism and Islamic extremist ideology’ and posed ‘a danger to the whole of the UK.'”Said terrorist is now freely running errands in England, likely with taxpayers’ assistance. Now, as a point of comparison, contrast the British government’s treatment of this jihadist murderer with its shocking and systemic persecution of its own nation’s elite warriors. The Sunday Times of London has published a story detailing the persecution of U.K. special forces soldiers. According to the report, five of these top-flight soldiers were on a dangerous mission in Syria, pursuing a senior ISIS leader, when they heard gunfire. They confronted two individuals who refused to surrender. They turned out to be teenagers working for ISIS. Believing their lives were in danger, the operators shot the pair dead.This prompted a three-year nightmare of a double murder investigation, which very belatedly cleared them. In the interim, the accused were repeatedly sent back into the field on perilous missions, even with an unresolved cloud hanging over their heads, and undoubtedly worried about how their split-second choices could be further weaponized against them. Responding to the article, a former Special Air Service commander torched what he described as a politically correct witch hunt. “This is not just ‘persecution by (extremely clumsy) process’ imposed upon active-duty SAS operators fighting to detain vicious ISIS thugs in an active war zone, but also an example of performative self-immolation,” retired Lt. Col. Richard Williams wrote on X. “… If someone, anyone (quite possibly an enemy) within an active war zone says the SAS killed an unarmed man, then the so-called ‘senior leaders’ (some, as in this case, with near-zero combat experience) within the Whitehall-based ‘UK system’ desperate to demonstrate something that they call ‘transparency’ … will automatically launch an aggressive [Royal Military Police] operation to detain the SAS men involved. … Not on the basis of any hard evidence (there is no crime scene, no bodies, no bullets etc), but purely on distant, uncorroborated hearsay and remote, delayed analysis of operational reports; all supported by desk-bound, chinless leaders that seemingly care more about how they will (personally) look in [a Ministry of Defence] promotion board than trying to properly understand the circumstances faced by the SAS men and defend them accordingly. What a gift this utterly pathetic weakness, low threshold investigative process and twisted self-defeating system gives to our many enemies … and what an awful message it sends to those that still volunteer to fight.” British elites and bureaucrats enable and reward blood-soaked terrorists and enemies of the state, while putting their own apex special operators through the wringer, at great personal cost to the targets. On purpose. The signals being sent are suicidal — designed to impress a growing, hostile domestic political constituency, with the country’s power-thirsty leftist political parties aggressively vying for its support. As many Britons are learning, there is no bottom to the radicalism, pandering and bigotry.The constituency in question, incidentally, is also implacable. France unilaterally recognized a Palestinian state last year, as a sop to its imported Islamists. The French government has been duly rewarded by Palestinian leaders, unsurprisingly reneging on a flimsy pro-democracy commitment, and Palestinian flag-waving thugs smashing up and burning their cities.As this dirtbag alliance attempts to demonstrate dominance on European soil, it must be noted that its North American offshoots are also busy laying groundwork. Voters ought to take note. If the disturbing lessons on full display across the ocean don’t seem urgent enough, we’ll close with this dispatch from just north of our own border. Same “progressive” mentality, same devoted enemy, same dangerous partnership.FRANCE ROCKED BY ANTI-GOVERNMENT PROTESTS AND RIOTS: WHAT TO KNOW “The ‘mastermind and chief organizer’ of a terrorist plot to bomb three government buildings in Toronto is now roaming the streets after a parole board cited his ‘respectful, polite and quiet’ demeanor,” a Daily Mail report reads. “Zakaria Amara, now 41, pleaded guilty in 2009 in the Canadian Superior Court of Justice, three years after he planned the extremist attack. A massive police investigation thwarted the plot. Amara was sentenced to nine years in prison for organizing a training camp for terrorist recruits and to life in prison with no chance of parole for 10 years for plotting to construct a bomb. He was arrested on the day bomb-making materials were delivered to a warehouse. … The Parole Board of Canada in Ontario granted Amara full parole on Friday. The written decision, obtained by the Canadian Press, said he no longer showed ‘any signs of holding onto extremist beliefs or radical ideologies.’ … He will live in his own home, attend a mosque, see family, participate in ‘appropriate leisure activities’ and work a full-time job, the review stated.” In a sane society, organizing a mass casualty terrorist attack should be an act that forfeits one’s life, or at least one’s freedom, permanently. But this young man is back walking among his intended victims because Canada’s “justice” system enshrines insane leniency. They call it “progress” and “compassion.” Thus, the parole board was impressed that the would-be bomber has expressed remorse, while seeming polite and quiet. Such acts of national self-harm may be tragically on-brand for Canadians these days. One can only imagine what the former foreign minister of the United Arab Emirates would have to say, beyond, “I told you so.” Are Americans willing to learn any of the lessons many other Western countries have refused to heed?