Muslim Refugee Tells Court Raping Little Boys ‘Culturally Appropriate’ in His Homeland

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A Muslim refugee on trial in Australia for raping a 10-year-old boy told the judge he did not know it was a wrongful act, as doing such is “culturally appropriate” in his homeland of Myanmar.

The Daily Telegraph reports, via the Daily Mail, that 20-year-old Mufiz Rahaman told Sydney’s Downing Centre Court that sexually assaulting children was not viewed as morally wrong in his country of origin, as he pleaded guilty to aggravated sexual assault.

Rahaman and the boy, also a refugee, are stateless Rohingya Muslims, a religious minority of “people considered illegal immigrants from Bangladesh by the Buddhist-majority in Myanmar—who came to Australia to flee religious persecution,” according to the Daily Mail.

Rahaman attacked the 10-year-old boy while they were living among a community of refugees, including the boy’s father, in the southwest Sydney suburb of Lakemba.

The rapist argued he was completely unaware of his wrongdoings throughout the trial:

Rahaman told the court he had been a victim of sexual abuse as a child before he moved to Australia.

Judge Andrew Scotting said Rahaman failed to understand his actions would ‘physically’ and ‘psychologically damage’ his young victim.

He also said Rahaman, who insisted he thought sexual assault was not seen as morally wrong in his homeland, had not accepted responsibility for his actions and demonstrated a ‘lack of morality’, according to the Daily Telegraph.

‘There is a need for specific deterrence … The offence appears to have been (viewed) as being culturally acceptable conduct in the offender’s childhood,’ Judge Scotting said.

The 20-year-old rapist was sentenced to five years in prison. (For more from the author of “Muslim Refugee Tells Court Raping Little Boys ‘Culturally Appropriate’ in His Homeland” please click HERE)

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A 12-Step Plan for Global Economic Freedom

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In the decades since The Heritage Foundation began publishing its annual Index of Economic Freedom in 1995, the world has witnessed profound advances in economic freedom.

Open economies have led the world in a startling burst of innovation and economic growth, and political authorities have found themselves increasingly held accountable by those they govern.

Unfortunately, the United States has drifted downward in the index rankings—propelled by reckless government spending that has spiraled out of control and led to unprecedented budget deficits. The long U.S. slide has been marked by stagnant economic expansion and extremely sluggish employment growth.

So, in this important election year, The Heritage Foundation has dedicated its annual “Global Agenda for Economic Freedom” to a detailed examination of ways to improve Americans’ economic freedom and America’s positive impact on the global economy.

Here are 12 steps the next U.S. president can take in 2017 for more economic freedom in America and the rest of the world:

1. American workers and consumers have benefitted from international trade, but global barriers to the free flow of goods and services and investment (e.g. nontariff barriers and nontransparent investment regimes) grew under President Barack Obama. The next administration must promote economic freedom by reducing them and opening new markets.

2. China faces huge economic challenges that, if unaddressed, will drag down the global economy. As a start, the next U.S. president should push China’s leadership to sign a bilateral investment agreement to make doing business there easier.

3. The price and availability of one of the most important production inputs—energy—will benefit from further liberalization of American and global energy markets.

4. Export financing subsidies from the U.S. Export-Import Bank and elsewhere are unnecessary and distort the U.S. and global economies. The Export-Import Bank should be shut down.

5. American economic growth will be enhanced by better, U.S.-led international policy coordination. The next president should downgrade the ineffective G-20 process and create a new, informal G-9 group of the world’s top nine economies.

6. The International Monetary Fund was created to bring stability to the international financial system. The IMF must return to basics by promoting rules-based monetary policies instead of bailing out countries that fail to follow those rules.

7. Many countries’ economic freedom scores would be substantially higher if not for the prevalence of government corruption. The next administration should make the fight against corruption a key component of U.S. development assistance programs.

8. The next president should evaluate all foreign aid programs for effectiveness and insist Congress update the 1961 Foreign Assistance Act to put the United States Agency for International Development directly under State Department control.

9. Massively subsidized state-owned enterprises are a main factor restraining development. The next president should review U.S. state-owned enterprises, remove the U.S. government from activities best left to the private sector, and push other countries to do likewise.

10. The next president must confront rogue states pursuing deliberately harmful policies that threaten global security and commerce by creating a sanctions strategy that targets troublemakers and prioritizes reforms that enhance economic freedom.

11. Climate change policies are another area where government decisions have created opportunities for rent-seeking cronyism and have harmed economic growth while doing nothing that actually affects global temperatures. The next administration should take immediate action to withdraw from the redistributionist and ineffective United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change and end U.S. payments to the U.N. Green Climate Fund.

12. Government-sponsored corporate socialist cronyism, often under the guise of promoting corporate social responsibility, increased greatly under Obama. The next president must assess the risks of cronyism-related CSR rent-seeking and end federal “corporate excellence” awards, “green” tax credits, “public-private partnerships,” and all other forms of corporate welfare.

The revitalizing policies in the “2017 Global Agenda for Economic Freedom” will create good, new jobs for Americans and a freer flow of capital, goods, services, and ideas around the world. (For more from the author of “A 12-Step Plan for Global Economic Freedom” please click HERE)

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Trump Heads to Mexico, but Someone’s Lying About That Border Wall

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Mexican president Enrique Peña Nieto disputed remarks made by Republican candidate for president Donald Trump regarding the construction of a wall along the U.S-Mexico border.

Having Mexico pay for the construction of a wall along the border has been a key theme of Mr. Trump’s campaign, since his announcement last year. His campaign website features a detailed plan titled “compelling Mexico to pay for the wall.”

When asked if he discussed his plans with the Mexican president in their meeting today, Mr. Trump said the topic was not broached.

“Who pays for the wall? We didn’t discuss,” Trump said when asked by a reporter during the follow-up questions to their statements. “We did discuss the wall. We didn’t discuss payment of the wall. That’ll be for a later date.”

President Peña Nieto has disputed that account of their meeting. According to Peña Nieto, he flat out told Mr. Trump Mexico will not pay for a wall at the very beginning of their meeting.

“At the beginning of meeting with Donald Trump, I made it clear Mexico will not pay for the wall.”

One of these two men seems to be lying. (For more from the author of “Trump Heads to Mexico, but Someone’s Lying About That Border Wall” please click HERE)

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AS THE TERROR THREAT RISES: Europe Changes Course

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Sixteen years ago, when Dutch commentator Paul Scheffer published his “Multicultural Drama” declaring that multiculturalism in the Netherlands had failed, the response was swift and angry. Critics across Europe called him racist, bigoted, nationalistic. Others dismissed his views as mere rants and ramblings of a Leftist in search of a cause.

Not anymore.

With over 275 people killed in 10 Islamic terrorist attacks since January 2015, Europeans harbor no more illusions about the multiculturalist vision: where immigrants from Muslim countries are concerned, that idealist vision has more than just failed. It has produced a culture of hatred, fear, and unrelenting danger. Now, with European Muslim youth radicalizing at an unprecedented rate and the threat of new terrorist attacks, Europe is reassessing its handling of Muslim communities and its counterterrorism strategies and laws.

Among the changes being considered are a reversal of laws that allow radical Muslims to receive handouts from the very governments they seek to destroy; restricting foreign funding of mosques; and stronger surveillance on private citizens.

Chief among the new counterterrorism approaches is a program to coordinate intelligence data among European Union countries – a tactic that has not been pursued with any regularity or such depth before now. But following the November attacks in Paris, the Dutch intelligence agency AIVD initiated weekly meetings among intel agencies from all EU countries, Switzerland, and Norway, with the objective of sharing information, exchanging new clues, insights, and suspect alerts, and discussing improvements to a Europe-wide system of counterterrorism and intelligence.

Through these meetings and the improved shared database, it is now possible for each country to contextualize its intelligence and understand links between individuals and various groups from one city to another – and so, between radicals and radical groups as they pass through a borderless EU.

Concurrently, EU members are now beginning to share information about web sites and even details about private citizens where needed. Most countries had been reluctant to make such exchanges, citing both privacy concerns and the need to protect their sources. Other cooperative efforts include an EU initiative begun in February 2015 to counteract Islamic extremist propaganda. The project received a major €400 million boost in June, indicating the high priority Europe now places on fighting recruitment.

Earlier this month, Europol began a new effort to screen refugees still awaiting placement in Greek asylum centers. According to a report from Europa Nu, an initiative between the European parliament and the University of Leiden, Europol agents “specifically trained to unmask and dismantle terrorists and terror networks” will be dispatched to the camps to try to prevent terrorists from infiltrating the flood of refugees to Europe.

Some EU measures, however, have been based more in politics than counterterrorism, including efforts to crack down on the ability of radical Muslims to benefit from welfare programs. British citizens, for instance, reacted with outrage when it was discovered that the family of “Jihadi John” had received over £400,000 in taxpayer support over the course of 20 years. In Belgium, Salah Abdeslam, the terrorist accused of participating in the Nov. 13 Paris attacks, pulled in nearly €19,000 in welfare benefits from January 2014 and October 2015, according to Elsevier. And Gatestone reports that more than 30 Danish jihadists received a total of €51,000 in unemployment benefits all while battling alongside the Islamic State in Syria.

Such concerns have also spread to the United States. Earlier this year, U.S. Rep. Bruce Poliquin, R-Maine, introduced the “No Welfare For Terrorists Act.”

“Terrorist victims and their families should never be forced to fund those who harmed them,” he said in a statement. “This bill guarantees this will never happen.”

But not all of Europe’s new approaches to the terror threat are being coordinated out of Brussels. Many more, in fact, are country-specific, such as England’s decision to follow an example set earlier by the Netherlands and Spain, separating jailed terrorists and terror suspects from other prisoners. The measures follow others the country adopted after the July 7, 2005 bombings of a London underground and buses, to criminalize “those who glorify terrorism, those involved in acts preparatory to terrorism, and those who advocate it without being directly involved,” the New York Times reported.

In fact, prisons worldwide, including in the U.S., have long been viewed as warm breeding grounds for radicals and potential terrorists. Ahmed Coulibaly, the gunman at the Porte de Vincennes siege in January 2015, was serving time for a bank robbery, for instance, when he met Cherif Koauachi, one of the Charlie Hebdo attackers. Both converted to Islam there. It was in that same prison that the two encountered Djamel Beghal, an al-Qaida operative who attempted to blow up the American Embassy in Paris in 2001.

Hence many experts now argue in favor of isolating those held on terrorism-related charges as a way to stop them from radicalizing their fellow inmates.

Yet British officials have until now resisted creating separate wings for terror suspects, arguing that doing so gives them “credibility” and makes it harder to rehabilitate them. But a recent government report on Islamist extremism in British prisons forced a change in thinking, in part by noting that “other prisoners – both Muslim and non-Muslim – serving sentences for crimes unrelated to terrorism are nonetheless vulnerable to radicalization by Islamist Extremists [sic].”

Similarly, France, the site of the worst attacks of the past two years, also balked at first at the idea of separating terrorists from other prisoners, arguing that doing so “forms a terrorist cell within a prison.” But the Charlie Hebdo attacks of January 2015 changed all that. Now, officials are even going further, looking at other potential sources of radicalization: the mosques.

Shortly after the Bastille Day attack in Nice, Prime Minister Manuel Valls announced plans to ban foreign financing for French mosques as part of an effort to establish a “French Islam,” led by imams trained only in France. France hosts dozens of foreign-financed mosques – many sponsored by Saudi Arabia and Morocco – which preach Salafism, an extreme version of Islam practiced in the Saudi Kingdom and the root of much radical Islamist ideology. And according to a new report on counter-radicalization, about 300 imams come from outside France.

That same report also calls for “regular surveys” of France’s 4-5 million Muslims, according to France 24, in order “to acquire a better understanding of this population in a country where statistics based on religious, ethnic, or racial criteria are banned.”

Both proposed measures have been met with resistance. The “surveys,” as even the report itself notes, are a means of circumventing laws against gathering information on the basis of religious criteria – and so, go against democratic principles. And many French officials also oppose the ban on foreign funding for mosques, arguing that French government intervention in places of worship contradicts separation between church and state. Besides, they claim, radicalization doesn’t take place there anyway.

But Dutch authorities and counter-extremism experts are not so sure. The announcement earlier this month that Qatar would finance an Islamic center in Rotterdam, for instance, set off alarms even among Muslim moderates, including Rotterdam’s Moroccan-born mayor Ahmed Marcouch. There are good reasons for this. The Salafist Eid Charity, which sponsors the project, has been on Israel’s terror list since 2008, according to Dutch daily NRC Handelsblad. Moreover, in 2013 the U.S. Treasury Department accused the charity’s founder, Abd al-Rahman al-Nu’aymi, of providing funding for al-Qaida and its affiliates, and named him a “specially designated global terrorist.”

Plans for the center sound much like those of the now-abandoned plans for New York’s “Ground Zero mosque,” with sports facilities, prayer space, tutoring for students, Islamic child care, and, reports Dutch newspaper Volkskrant, imam training.

Yet the center’s prospective director, Arnoud van Doorn, a convert to Islam and former member of the far-right, anti-Islam political party PVV, insists that any fears about the project are unfounded. “Our organization has nothing to do with extremism,” he told the NRC. “We want only to provide a positive contribution to Dutch society.”

Notably, though, France’s proposal to ban foreign mosque funding and the Qatari backing of the Rotterdam center point to some of the deepest roots of Europe’s radical Islam problem, and, despite all the new initiatives now underway, the greatest challenges to ending it. When Muslim immigrants came to Europe in the 1970s, they carved prayer spaces wherever they could: the backs of community grocery stores, in restaurants and tea rooms. But these soon became too small to handle the growing Muslim population. Mosques – real mosques – would have to be built.

But by whom? The Muslim communities themselves were too poor. Western governments, wedded to the separation of church and state, could not subsidize them with taxpayer funds. And so the door was opened to foreign – mostly Saudi – investment, and the placement of Saudi-trained and Saudi-backed imams in European mosques. Europe had, in essence, rolled out the welcome mat for Salafism.

Now they want to roll it in again. But is it too late? Even as Western intelligence is now uniting to fight radical Islam, Islamic countries are pooling together in Europe to expand it. The result, as Manuel Valls told French daily Le Monde, is that, “What’s at stake is the republic. And our shield is democracy.”

Hence as the number attacks against Western targets increase, many Europeans are coming to understand that preserving the core of that democracy may mean disrupting some of the tenets on which it’s built, like certain elements of privacy, for instance, and religious principles that violate the freedom that we stand for . It is, as it were, a matter of destroying even healthy trees to save the forest. But in this tug-of-war between the Islamic world’s efforts to shape the West, and Western efforts to save itself, only our commitment to the very heart of our ideals will define who wins this fight. (For more from the author of “AS THE TERROR THREAT RISES: Europe Changes Course” please click HERE)

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America’s Top ISIS Target Reportedly Killed in Battle

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The ISIS leader topping the U.S. most wanted list is dead, according to a report from the terrorist organization.

Quoting a “military source,” Amaq News Agency said: “Sheikh Abu Muhammad al-Adnani, the spokesman of the Islamic State, was martyred while surveying operations to repel the military campaigns against Aleppo.”

The Defense Department has not confirmed the 37-year-old terrorist’s death, who is best known for calling for lone wolf terrorists to kill Westerners in Sept. 2014, NBC News reported.

“If you can kill a disbelieving American or European — especially the spiteful and filthy French — or an Australian, or a Canadian, or any other disbeliever from the disbelievers waging war, including the citizens of the countries that entered into a coalition against the Islamic State, then rely upon Allah, and kill him in any manner or way however it may be,” he said.

“Smash his head with a rock, or slaughter him with a knife, or run him over with your car, or throw him down from a high place, or choke him, or poison him,” al-Adnani instructed.

“There is a large amount of evidence suggesting that he was tremendously influential in terms of pushing individuals in Western countries to carry out homegrown terrorist attacks,” said Evan Kohlmann of Flashpoint, an NBC terrorism analyst.

The attacks in San Bernardino last December and Orlando in June are considered ISIS inspired.

A knife attack by a Muslim man in Roanoke, Va., earlier this month is being investigated for possible ISIS links.

Al-Adnani was reportedly taken into custody in 2005 and held in a camp run by the U.S. in Iraq, but was released in 2010.

Following his release, he became a top ISIS propagandist and by 2014 was director of external operations and the group’s man spokesman.

News of al Adnani’s death comes on the same day the Associated Press is reporting the discovery of mass graves ISIS created across Iraq and Syria.

The AP “documented and mapped 72 of the mass graves, the most comprehensive survey so far, with many more expected to be uncovered as the Islamic State group’s territory shrinks.”

Adding, “In Syria, AP has obtained locations for 17 mass graves, including one with the bodies of hundreds of members of a single tribe all but exterminated when IS extremists took over their region. For at least 16 of the Iraqi graves, most in territory too dangerous to excavate, officials do not even guess the number of dead. In others, the estimates are based on memories of traumatized survivors, Islamic State propaganda and what can be gleaned from a cursory look at the earth.”

“They don’t even try to hide their crimes,” said Sirwan Jalal, the director of Iraqi Kurdistan’s agency in charge of mass graves. “They are beheading them, shooting them, running them over in cars, all kinds of killing techniques, and they don’t even try to hide it.”

The number of victims uncovered to date is estimated to be between 5,200 and 15,000. (For more from the author of “America’s Top ISIS Target Reportedly Killed in Battle” please click HERE)

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Russia’s Military Exercises Fuel Fears of Continued Aggression

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As the late summer weather begins to cool, Russian military exercises have kept the tensions hot in Ukraine and across Eastern Europe.

Periodic flare-ups in the ongoing war in Ukraine’s embattled Donbas region this summer have renewed fears of a full-on Russian invasion and spurred an unprecedented post-Cold War redeployment of NATO military forces toward the alliance’s eastern flank to deter further Russian aggression in the region.

The latest headache for Kyiv and NATO: Russian military exercises scheduled for Eastern Europe and the Black Sea region in September in addition to Russian snap military exercises launched Aug. 25 in military districts near Ukraine and the Baltic countries.

“If there is an interest in Moscow in stability and predictability, then these exercises are not the way to go,” NATO Deputy Secretary-General Alexander Vershbow said Monday.

Russia has staged about a dozen snap military exercises in the past two years, while NATO member countries have not held any since the end of the Cold War, according to news reports.

In September, Russia has plans for a large-scale strategic military exercise called Kavkaz-2016. The exercise, which is an annual event, will include units deployed near the borders of Ukraine, Georgia, and Azerbaijan—including two Russian military districts in the Southern and Northern Caucasus, the Russian Black Sea Fleet (headquartered in occupied Crimea), and the Caspian Flotilla.

It is not immediately clear the exact size of this year’s exercise, but last year it comprised 95,000 troops, 7,000 vehicles, and 150 aircraft, according to a report by IHS Markit, a U.K.-based intelligence and analysis firm.

“It is important to assess our capabilities for protecting national interests in the southwestern strategic direction amid the uneasy international military and political situation,” Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu said in January while commenting on plans for Kavkaz-2016, according to the Russian news agency RIA Novosti.

Some military experts say the combination of snap military drills with the planned Kavkaz-2016 exercise have the hallmarks of Russian military maneuvers that served as smoke screens for the invasion of Georgia in 2008 and the hybrid warfare invasion of Ukraine’s Crimean Peninsula in 2014.

Yet, others argue Russia’s strategic military objectives have more to do with diplomatic leverage than military outcomes.

Alex Kokcharov, IHS Markit’s principal analyst for Europe and the Commonwealth of Independent States, said the Kremlin is probably maneuvering to destabilize the post-revolution government in Kyiv, and consequently gain leverage for negotiating sanctions relief at the G20 summit to be held in Hangzhou, China, from Sept. 4 to 5.

“War is a continuation of policy,” Kokcharov told The Daily Signal. “And the Kremlin’s policy is to keep Ukraine sufficiently destabilized to stall the implementation of its reform agenda and economic recovery, and thus to engineer a fall of the current pro-Western government in Kiev.”

Fighting Seasons

A combined force of pro-Russian separatists and Russian regulars has been fighting a limited war against Ukraine’s military in the southeastern Donbas region of the country since spring 2014.

One year ago, the war’s intensity dropped precipitously as both sides to the conflict renewed their commitment to the terms of the ineffectual second cease-fire, called Minsk II.

In theory, the war in Ukraine was supposed to end in September 2015. But it didn’t.

On Tuesday, the Ukrainian military announced that during the previous 24 hours combined Russian-separatist forces had attacked Ukrainian positions with more than 690 mortars and 250 artillery shells, including a Grad rocket attack near the southern port city of Mariupol.

One Ukrainian soldier was killed, Ukrainian military spokesman Col. Andriy Lysenko told reporters Tuesday in Kyiv.

Attacks on Ukrainian forces have spiked several times this summer, most notably around the time of the NATO summit in Warsaw (during which NATO members proclaimed their support for Ukraine), and after the Aug. 10 skirmish on the border of Russian-occupied Crimea and Ukraine.

The Crimean border incident was serious enough to prompt Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko to place Ukraine’s military on its “highest level of alert,” and for Western media outlets to momentarily divert their attention back to the only ongoing land war in Europe.

In an Aug. 24 interview with CNN’s Christiane Amanpour, Poroshenko compared Russia’s support for separatists in eastern Ukraine with the Russian bombing campaign on Aleppo, Syria.

Poroshenko claimed Russia’s overall objective was to “destabilize the global security situation” and for Ukraine to be “part of the Russian empire.”

Status Quo

The war’s escalations this summer have not resulted so far in any significant change in territory or military offensives. The war in Ukraine remains locked in a static artillery back-and-forth fought from within trenches and the artillery-blasted ruins of towns scattered along the front lines.

And domestic troubles inside Ukraine, such as the July 20 car bomb assassination of a journalist in downtown Kyiv, also highlight the steep road ahead for Ukraine’s ongoing transition to a democratic society free of the vestiges of communism and the follow-on decades of corrupt oligarchic thug rule.

The next potential inflection point for the Ukraine war is September’s G20 summit in China. Russian President Vladimir Putin will likely use the sidelines of the summit to discuss the Ukraine crisis with other world leaders and press for the lifting of sanctions put on Russia for its 2014 Crimean land grab.

“Russia certainly has the military capability to invade Ukraine but the benefits of grabbing new land in Ukraine would be much smaller than the costs, both direct, and indirect, such as potential new economic sanctions,” Kokcharov said.

He added:

I still continue to hold the view that Putin aims to use intimidation to raise the stakes in the diplomatic game in order to push for negotiations on Donbas settlement that excludes Ukrainian government from the negotiating table, by branding them illegitimate and terrorists.

(For more from the author of “Russia’s Military Exercises Fuel Fears of Continued Aggression” please click HERE)

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Did Obama Just Betray Syrian Christians to Please the Turks? Seems So.

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American policy in Syria has been marked by a long list of flip-flops and failures. Remember Obama’s “red line” meant to stop the Assad regime from using chemical weapons? That was quickly erased when Congress made it clear there was little public support for using U.S. forces to topple another secular dictator in favor of rebel groups whose radical Islamist views made them no less dangerous to our interests. The “moderate” rebels to whom the U.S. was airdropping weapons proved to be virtually mythical creatures, and those weapons ended up in the hands of al Qaeda’s allies. Then we learned that a rebel group the Pentagon had backed was fighting another that the CIA had armed.

Meanwhile, Vladimir Putin has executed on Russia’s behalf a clear and consistent policy, which has helped keep Assad in power — to the benefit of Russia’s Mediterranean influence, and to the benefit of the beleaguered Christian minority in Syria, who find him less of a threat than the Islamist alternatives.

There was one policy, just one, that the U.S. had engaged in which seemed to be working out well: Our government’s backing of the Syrian Democratic Forces, Kurdish-led militias that are allied with local Christians (the Syriac Military Council and the Nineveh Plain Force), that with growing success are taking territory away from ISIS. In those liberated regions, the SDF has established enclaves where Christians have religious freedom and their own armed militias, and women take part in government (unlike in most of the Middle East). As religious freedom activist Johannes de Jong reported here at The Stream:

The successes of the Syriac Military Council and the Nineveh Plain Forces changes the picture we may have of the Syriac-Assyrian Christians in Iraq and Syria. It also challenges us to rethink our strategy to support them. No more than you or I do these Christians aspire to live in refugee camps on care packages. They ask for our assistance in standing up and defending themselves in their own country, where their families have kept the Faith for almost 2,000 years.

But now the U.S. government has decided to abandon the Kurds and their Christian allies, as Michael Horowitz reported in the International Business Times:

Five days ago, US jets were scrambled to protect Kurdish forces in their self-declared Northern Syria Federation from Assad’s air force in the eastern city of Hasakah.

Today, in the aftermath of a limited Turkish intervention on Syrian soil, the US is demanding the Kurds leave the northern city of Manbij, which the Kurds fought and died to capture during the past two months – backed by US warplanes.

That these two events happened less than a week from another is astonishing, even in such an unpredictable and volatile environment as the Syrian civil war. That the US is letting down its only remaining ally in Syria, at a time when other powers, namely Russia and Iran, have acted aggressively to protect theirs, is damaging to the overall US position in the region. …

By demanding the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Force (SDF) leave Manbij, the US took the strategy it itself initiated, nurtured and supported, and dumped it into the trash.

Why?

What motivation does the Obama administration have for turning against its erstwhile allies, the best hope in a desolate region for establishing something like a free and pluralist government? According to Horowitz, we are currying favor with Turkey — the former secular democracy which is morphing before our eyes into an Islamist dictatorship, in the wake of a failed coup that has proved a pretext for a massive purge of secular-minded dissidents.

This is the same Turkey that has gone from provoking Russia (by shooting down a plane that was fighting ISIS) to cozying up to Putin. Turkey is also blackmailing the European Union for huge cash payments and visa-free travel throughout the continent, with the threat that if these demands are not granted, Turkey will dump hundreds of thousands more Syrian migrants across the EU border into Greece and Bulgaria.

So concerned are U.S. generals over Turkey’s untrustworthiness that they have pulled U.S. nuclear weapons out of their longtime Turkish base of Incirlik.

Turkey has for decades savagely repressed its large and growing Kurdish minority, and its autocratic president, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, would rather see ISIS prevail in Syria than the creation of a free, democratic Kurdish region that might serve as a magnet for armed Kurdish rebels in Turkey.

To patch up relations with that regime, the Obama administration has apparently decided to throw its Kurdish and Christian allies to the wolves — and embark on a campaign of flattery aimed at Erdoğan. On August 24, Vice President Joe Biden traveled to Ankara and told Erdoğan:

The attempted coup went to the heart of who your people are — principled, courageous and committed. And for a people who have struggled so long to establish a true democracy, this was, from my perspective and the president’s perspective, the ultimate affront. So my heart goes out to not just the government, but to the Turkish people.

Biden gushed that “the American people … stand in awe” of Erdoğan and his supporters for beating back the bungled coup. Biden did not mention the ugly crackdown that was taking place all around him as he spoke. As Bridget Johnson reported on PJ Media:

Erdoğan’s purge since the coup attempt has included basically any secular opponent to his Islamist government: more than 40,000 people have been rounded up, from soldiers to jurists to bankers and even teachers and a comedian. Human rights groups have charged that the rule of law has gone out the window as detainees have been kept in makeshift facilities without proper access to legal representation and suffering beatings, rapes and starvation. Erdoğan has also intensified his battle against the free press.

Meanwhile, religious freedom activists concerned for Christians in the region are profoundly worried about the implications of this U.S. flip-flop. Johannes de Jong, who works closely with Syrian Christian leaders, told The Stream:

It is clear that the Turkish push against the [Kurdish-led] SDF is very worrying for the Syriac Assyrian Christians of the area, and even more for the growing number of Kurdish Christians of Rojava. It shows how much influence Turkey can have and it’s obvious that Turkey is the oppressor of Christians and Kurds. Turkey still denies the [1915-21] genocide against Armenians and Assyrians. One major way for the U.S. to restore trust among the Christians is to properly arm the Syriac Military Council. And, obviously, the U.S. needs to make substantial steps to show that it indeed continues to support the SDF. The U.S. needs to stop the ongoing attacks on the SDF and to investigate the claim that Turkey used chemical weapons against the SDF and the civilian population the SDF protects. [emphasis added]

(For more from the author of “Did Obama Just Betray Syrian Christians to Please the Turks? Seems So.” please click HERE)

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England’s Commonsense Solution to Muslim Extremist Prisoners

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This author has argued that Europe’s Islamization — aided, abetted and enabled by the continent’s multiculturalist ideology — should serve as a warning and a lesson for America.

But when a European state does the right thing, we should take notice of that, too.

In the wake of the conviction of Britain-based Islamic supremacist preacher Anjem Choudary, an advocate for imposing Sharia law on Great Britain and supporter of global jihadism, British authorities are doing something that every Western nation ought to replicate.

Recognizing the problem of the spread of Islamic supremacism among prison populations, Secretary of State for Justice Liz Truss announced that the government would be establishing separate prison units for holding “a small number of very subversive individuals.”

Truss said prisons cannot continue to allow extremists to “peddle poisonous ideology across the mainstream prison population.” As the BBC notes, UK officials visited prisons in Netherlands for a close look at the program, as a similar “jail within a jail” program has been implemented by the Dutch.

This policy of, in effect, quarantining jihadism (which should be the aim not just in our prisons, but in every element of Western civilization), stems from a must-read review conducted by the UK’s Ministry of Justice on the threat of Islamic supremacism in prisons. The review, conducted by former prison governor Ian Acheson, finds:

A Muslim gang culture inspiring or directing violence, drug trafficking and criminality.

Extremist prisoners advocating support for ISIS, and threats against staff, inmates and prison chaplains.

“Charismatic” prisoners acting as self-styled “emirs” — a title sometimes used for Muslim leaders or military commanders — exerting a radicalizing influence

Aggressive encouragement of conversions to Islam, and attempts to engineer segregation.

Islamist radicals trying to get prison staff to leave during Friday prayers, attempts to prevent staff searches by claiming dress is religious, and an exploitation of staff concerns that they may be labelled racist.

Does anyone believe this is not happening across prisons throughout the West? Beyond separating Islamic supremacist criminals from others, two of the report’s noteworthy recommendations include stronger vetting of prison chaplains and removing “extremist literature” from prisons.

Britain is right to acknowledge the spread of Islamist ideology in its criminal justice system and undertake a plan to remove the cancer. As always, the devil will be in the details of how the plan is actually implemented and properly executed.

Regardless, America could learn something from its close ally across the pond. We, too, have a problem in our prisons.

As Patrick T. Dunleavy, former deputy inspector general of the Criminal Intelligence Unit of New York’s correctional department, details in his 2011 book “The Fertile Soil of Jihad: Terrorism’s Prison Connection,” America’s prisons serve as a breeding ground for jihadist ideology. Dunleavy should know, as he led the investigation into Islamic supremacist recruiting activities in New York prisons and beyond, known as Operation Hades.

Dunleavy’s research documents “the deep historical roots of radical Islam in the U.S. prison environment going back almost 30 years, and how a network of radical preachers and recruiters spread through the system.”

Europe’s present reflects the American past. As a European ISIS recruit now serving time in German prison recounts in a telling New York Times expose, “a criminal past can be a valued asset…especially if they [ISIS] know you have ties to organized crime and they know you can get fake IDs, or they know you have contact men in Europe who can smuggle you into the European Union.”

A recent Buzzfeed article examining the challenges European authorities face targeting jihadist networks notes: “It’s not simply that ISIS offers redemption to a criminal looking to change his ways [in the form of jihad]; it’s that ISIS knows how to target criminals and turn them into jihadists.”

There is little indication that America’s politically correct “countering violent extremism” paradigm does anything to address the problems in Europe that surely continue to plague our own prisons.

For once, we should be stealing a page from the European playbook when it comes to defeating the global jihad by rooting Islamic supremacism out of our own prisons too. (For more from the author of “England’s Commonsense Solution to Muslim Extremist Prisoners” please click HERE)

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North Korean Sub-Launched Missiles Threaten US Allies

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North Korea conducted its most successful test launch of a submarine-launched ballistic missile on Tuesday. The missile traveled 500 kilometers (300 miles), a considerable improvement over the 30-km range of the previous launch, and landed within Japan’s air defense identification zone.

South Korean military officials report that North Korea used an unusual 500-km high trajectory so as not to penetrate the Japanese air defense zone further. If launched on a regular 150-km high trajectory, the submarine-launched missile might have traveled over 1,000 km.

After the unsuccessful missile test earlier this year, the South Korean ministry of defense assessed it would take North Korea three to four years before deploying a submarine ballistic missile force. However, after yesterday’s test, some South Korean military authorities warn deployment potentially could occur within a year.

South Korea does not currently have defenses against submarine-launched ballistic missiles. The SM-2 missile currently deployed on South Korean destroyers only provides protection against anti-ship missiles. South Korea has recently expressed interest in the U.S.-developed SM-3 or SM-6 ship-borne systems to provide anti-submarine launched missile defense.

Some experts are dismissive of a submarine-based ballistic missile threat based on the perception that North Korea’s old and noisy submarines would be easy to detect. However, in 2010, a North Korean submarine sank the South Korean naval corvette Cheonan in South Korean waters. In August 2015, 50 North Korean submarines—70 percent of the fleet—left port and disappeared despite allied monitoring efforts.

Despite post-Cheonan efforts, South Korean anti-submarine warfare capabilities remain an area of concern for allied military planners. A strong anti-submarine capability is not only critical for homeland defense but also for protecting sea lines of communication during a crisis on the Korean Peninsula. During a Korean conflict, the South Korean navy could have a critical mission to protect U.S. carrier groups deployed near the peninsula by engaging North Korean submarines.

Expanding Missile Threat

North Korean leader Kim Jong Un is pushing forward rapidly on both nuclear and missile fronts. In addition to submarine missile launches, this year he has successfully tested a nuclear weapon, an intercontinental ballistic missile, a road-mobile intermediate-range missile as well as medium- and short-range missiles, re-entry vehicle technology, a new solid-fuel rocket engine, and an improved liquid-fuel ICBM engine. During Kim’s four-year reign, Pyongyang has conducted 34 missile tests, more than twice as many as his father Kim Jong Il did in 17 years in office.

In June, North Korea successfully tested a Musudan intermediate-range missile, which led experts to conclude the regime currently has the ability to threaten U.S. bases in Guam, a critical node in allied plans for defending South Korea. Successful No Dong medium-range missile tests were conducted in July and August, accompanied by North Korean statements that they were practice drills for preemptive nuclear attacks on South Korea and U.S. forces based there.

A North Korean media-released photo showed the missile range would encompass all of South Korea, including the port of Busan where U.S. reinforcement forces would land. Adm. Bill Gortney, commander of North American Aerospace Defense Command, stated that North Korea is capable of putting a nuclear warhead on the No Dong medium-range ballistic missile that can reach all of South Korea and Japan.

In March, Kim Jong Un observed another missile launch simulating a nuclear missile attack on South Korean targets. The regime declared those launches were “a sea port of debarkation ballistic missile test [conducted] under the simulated conditions of exploding nuclear warheads from the preset altitude above targets in the ports under the enemy control where foreign aggressor forces are involved.”

In February, North Korea again used a Taepo Dong missile to put a satellite into orbit, the same technology needed to launch an ICBM nuclear warhead. Assessments indicate that the satellite was approximately 450 pounds, twice as heavy a payload as the previous successful satellite launch in Dec. 2012, and that the missile may have a range of 13,000 km, putting the entire continental United States within range.

Defending Allied Security

The accelerated pace of North Korean nuclear and missile tests reflect Kim’s intent to deploy a spectrum of missile systems of complementary ranges to threaten the U.S. and its allies with nuclear weapons. Kim affirmed at the National Party Congress in May—the first held in 36 years—that North Korea will never negotiate away its nuclear weapons.

The U.S. and South Korea should:

Deploy the THAAD ballistic missile defense system. The Terminal High Altitude Area Defense, or THAAD, is more capable than any system that South Korea has or would have for decades to defend against North Korean land-based missiles.

Refute fallacious Chinese arguments against THAAD. Beijing asserted that THAAD deployment would impinge on its security interests. However, a careful analysis of THAAD interceptor and radar capabilities and Chinese missile deployment sites reveal Chinese technical objections are disingenuous. Beijing’s true objective is preventing improvement in allied defensive capabilities and multilateral cooperation.

Demonstrate THAAD radar is not a health threat. South Korean critics of THAAD deployment claim fears of radiation risks from the X-band radar, saying it would kill bees and irradiate melons. Independent South Korean measurements show the levels of electromagnetic waves emanating from the radar are at an intensity far safer than required by Korean law.

Deploy sea-based ballistic missile defense against the submarine missile threat. The THAAD system is not designed to counter SLBM threats. The X-band radar can only detect missiles in an approximate 90-degree arc, which would be directed toward North Korea, not the waters surrounding the Korean Peninsula. Therefore, Washington and Seoul should discuss deployment of SM-3 or SM-6 missiles on South Korean naval ships.

Augment allied anti-submarine warfare capabilities. North Korea’s apparent ability to evade allied submarine detection systems is worrisome. Washington should facilitate South Korean collection and analysis capabilities and linkage with U.S. naval intelligence. Seoul requires wide-area ocean-surveillance capability, for both coastal defense and blue-water operations.

North Korea continues its relentless quest to augment and refine its nuclear weapons arsenal and missile delivery capabilities. The international community should maintain a comprehensive effort of augmented sanctions for North Korea’s repeated violations of U.N. resolutions and international law.

But the U.S. and its allies must implement measures to defend themselves against the spectrum of North Korea’s military threats. Ballistic missile defense is an important part of the broader strategy of strong alliances, forward-deployed U.S. military forces in the Pacific, and devoting sufficient resources to the U.S. defense budget. (For more from the author of “North Korean Sub-Launched Missiles Threaten US Allies” please click HERE)

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Surge of Killer Earthquakes Worldwide in Last Few Days; Hundreds Dead

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By Elisabetta Povoledo. A strong earthquake struck a mountainous stretch of central Italy early Wednesday, killing at least 247 people, trapping scores under debris and setting off tremors that awakened residents in Rome, nearly 100 miles to the southwest.

The earthquake, which had a preliminary magnitude of 6.2, struck at 3:36 a.m., about 6.5 miles southeast of the town of Norcia in the Umbria region, followed by about 200 aftershocks over the next several hours, including a 5.5-magnitude tremor at 4:33 a.m.

The authorities said the quake was comparable in intensity to one in 2009 in the Abruzzo region of central Italy that killed more than 300 people. (Read more from “Surge of Killer Earthquakes Worldwide in Last Few Days; Hundreds Dead” HERE)

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Powerful Earthquake Rocks Myanmar; 4 Dead, Temples Damaged

By The Associated Press. At least four people are dead after a powerful earthquake with a preliminary magnitude of 6.8 shook central Myanmar on Wednesday, knocking glasses off tables and sending people running out of buildings in the country’s largest city.

The U.S. Geological Survey said the quake was centered about 25 kilometers (15 miles) west of Chauk, an area west of the ancient capital of Bagan. It was located fairly far below the Earth’s surface at a depth of about 84 kilometers (52 miles), it said. Deep earthquakes generally cause less surface damage.

At least 185 brick pagodas in Bagan were damaged, the Ministry of Religious and Cultural Affairs said in a statement. Bagan, also known as Pagan, has more than 2,200 structures including pagodas and temples constructed from the 10th to the 14th centuries. Many are in disrepair while others have been restored in recent years, aided by the U.N. cultural agency UNESCO. (Read more from “Powerful Earthquake Rocks Myanmar; 4 Dead, Temples Damaged” HERE)

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7.3 Magnitude Quake in South Atlantic Ocean, No Tsunami Alert

By Pranshu Rathee. A major earthquake with a magnitude of 7.3 on the Richter scale was reported in the Atlantic Ocean, to the south-east of Argentina on Friday. According to an observatory in Germany, it occurred about 1,500 miles east of the southern tip of Argentina.

The German Research Centre for Geosciences said that the earthquake struck early on Friday and the epicentre was near the British administered South Georgia Island region. No tsunami alert has been issued by authorities. (Read more from “7.3 Magnitude Quake in South Atlantic Ocean, No Tsunami Alert” HERE)

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High Warning Alert for Vanuatu Volcano

By Ruby Taylor. Authorities have upgraded warnings around Ambae Volcano in northern Vanuatu, Radio New Zealand has just reported.

According to radionz, the country’s Geohazards Observatory has raised the alert to Level two on a scale of one to five which signifies the volcano is in a stage of major unrest.

“The observatory says volcanic activity could increase at any time over the next few days.” (Read more from “High Warning Alert for Vanuatu Volcano” HERE)

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