Muslim Inbreeding Has Corrupted Islam’s Psyche and the Results Are Alarming

Ride Side News had the the privilege of holding an e-mail correspondence interview with Nicolai Sennels, a Danish psychologist who has worked in his government’s in-prison psychology programs to determine why so many juveniles from the Muslim immigrant community populate the Danish penal system. In the course of his research he investigated Muslim inbreeding and its effects on “Islam’s psyche”, and he gained tremendous insight into the “mind of Islam” through thousands of face-to-face dialogues with disaffected Muslims. Here are his conclusions.

The Interview

RSN: First Nicolai, would you acquaint the readers with your background, and how you have come by expertise on the Muslim mind.

Nicolai (born 1976): I am a licensed psychologist. My first appearances in the Danish media concerned my somewhat unorthodox therapy methods that I developed as the only psychologist at Sønderbro, a Copenhagen youth prison (see here and here). I taught the young prisoners about mindfulness meditation and developed a special program on anger management. I also developed a psychotherapeutic method that focused on teaching criminals with a low understanding of emotions and empathy how to take responsibility for their own behavior. In 2008, the prisoners of Sønderbro voted the facility as the best prison in Denmark. The leader of Social Services in the Copenhagen municipality concluded that this was due to my work.

At a conference on immigrant crime in 2008, arranged by the Copenhagen municipality, I said that one should not use the term “criminal immigrants,” but “criminal Muslims,” since the majority of criminal immigrants have Muslim background. Seven out of ten inmates in the Danish youth prisons have immigrant backgrounds, and almost all of them are Muslims. I was threatened that if I were to discuss my experiences again, I would get fired my job. This story developed into a national debate on the freedom of speech and became a widely discussed topic in the Danish media, and the even Minister of Integration joined the discussion.

I decided to publish a book on my experiences, “Among Criminal Muslims. A Psychologist’s Experiences from the Copenhagen Municipality”, which was well received in both the official Psychologists Union’s magazine and the newspapers. I found myself a new job at the Danish Ministry of Defense, and now once again I now work as a psychologist with children and teenagers.

I consulted on the case against Omar Khadr, a convicted terrorist serving in Guantanamo. I also contributed a chapter to the Dutch book Islam: Critical Essays on a Political Religion, along with Raymond Ibrahim, Hans Jansen, Michael Mannheimer, Ibn Warraq, Bat Ye’or and other renowned critics of Islam and Muslim immigration. Besides this I wrote a long list of articles on the psychology of Islam, Islam’s view on women, on Muslim culture and the wide spread inbreeding in Muslim society.

RSN: You have written extensively about inbreeding among Muslims, would you please explain how Islamic culture figures into their criminality.

Nicolai: Inbreeding among Muslims are extremely widespread. Around 70 percent of Pakistanis, 45 percent of Arabs and 25-30 percent of Turks are children of blood-related parents, usually first-cousin marriages. These are staggering numbers and the impacts on intelligence, sanity, health and society among Muslims are enormous. Genetics is of course a very touchy subject, especially after Hitler, but this should not deter us from pointing out a very serious problem that harms millions of children and causes massive problems for the families, who often live in places with no public resources for handicapped people. Taking up the problem of inbreeding in Muslim culture is done out of compassion for the children and the families.

Out of a professional interest as a psychologist I have studied Islam and Muslim culture for more than a decade, and I have counselled hundreds of Muslims. And I would say there are several, religious reasons for this very unhealthy practice. One reason is that Muhammad simply allows it. This is done in the Quran’s sura 4 – which by the way also legalizes sex slaves. Another reason is that consanguinous marriages, as it is called, allows the families to keep their daughters close, and thus be in a better position to observe whether they follow Islamic law, the Sharia. One third reason is that Muhammad himself married one of his cousins, and emulation of Muhammad is a central part of Islamic practice.

RSN: In your opinion, what role do Muslim genetics play in the Muslim’s ability to function in the modern world.

Nicolai: Inbreeding among cousins are connected with long list of risks. Among them are still births, infant death, low intelligence, physical diseases and handicaps and psychiatric problems. There also seem to be a clear connection between the negative effects of inbreeding and terrorism. In some cases, people with low intelligence or other mental handicaps have been easy to lure into becoming suicide bombers. In other cases, martyring oneself consciously can be an honorable way to end a life of pain or low social status due to handicaps, genetic syndromes or psychiatric problems. It is also important to know, that low intelligence and certain psychiatric disorders – which can be the result of inbreeding – is known to increase risk of delinquent behavior.

Thus inbreeding, especially if it happens through several generations, increases the risks of handicaps and disorders, that in one way or another can decrease one’s ability to function in a modern world.

The cognitive consequences of Muslim inbreeding thus might explain why non-Western immigrants are more than 300 percent more likely to fail the Danish army’s intelligence test than native Danes. It probably also explains – at least partly – why two thirds of all immigrant school children with Arabic backgrounds are illiterate after 10 years in the Danish school system.

The high expenses on special education for slow learners consumes one third of the budget for the Danish schools. 51 percent of the children on the three schools in Copenhagen for children with physical and mental handicaps have immigrant back ground and on one of the schools the amount is 70 percent. These amounts are significantly higher than the share of immigrant children in the municipality, which is 33 percent. According to one expert, “The many handicapped children are a clear evidence that there are many intermarried parents in the immigrant families.”

RSN: When it comes to immigrating Muslims, it is widely recognized that Muslims have difficulty integrating into Western culture, especially into Europe or “Eurabia,” to what do you attribute this difficulty?

Nicolai: Well, to integrate into a culture you have to fulfill three conditions. You have to want it, you have to be able to and you have to be allowed by your family. The more welfare, the lesser motivation for integration, since you will get food and accommodation, no matter if you learn the language, earn your own money and integrate into the community – or not. And because of low education, and possibly also negative effects of inbreeding, and the many and often insurmountable differences between Western and Muslim culture, many Muslim refugees and migrants are simply not able to. Learning the language, taking an education and functioning effectively on our high tech, knowledge based work market is too difficult for them. Thirdly, many Muslim families do not allow their children to integrate. Western culture, with our freedom of speech, democracy and equality of women is opposing Islam and Muslim culture on so many central areas, that integration would mean apostasy to many Muslims. Some young Muslim and some Muslim women regularly try, but the consequences are often so extreme, that it deters thousands others from trying to break free of the religious restrictions within Islam.

On top of these things comes the mountains of hate speech against non-Muslims and our way of life in the Quran and the hadiths, which makes it very unnatural to befriend and trust non-Muslims. A recent study among Muslims by the German state concluded that 94 percent of Muslims in Germany agreed with the statement that immigrants in Germany should keep the culture of their country of origin.

The result you see today all over the West, where Muslims tend to group in Muslim areas. Many of these areas are today de facto no-go zones. Here secular authorities are regularly threatened and even attacked, while fundamentalist imams, patrolling Muslim father groups and home made sharia courts are safe to rule.

RSN: In your experience, what role do Islamic religious authorities play in the life of Muslim immigrant community? What role does the individual’s practice of the Islamic religion play in the Muslim immigrants’ success or failure in integrating into the host culture?

Nicolai: Well, to answer you first question it is just to look at the statistics. According to the above mentioned study from Germany, 85 of Muslims in Germany declare themselves to be religious or very religious. A cross-European study showed that 75 percent of Muslims in Europe think that the Quran can not be interpreted ambiguously – that it has to be taken literal. Many other studies reach similar conclusions. Muslims are thus much more religious than most other groups, they trust the written word in their religious books more – so of course the religious authorities play an important role in Muslim immigrants’ life.

That is why it is so important to ensure, that mosques in our Western countries actively, publicly and consistently reject the many verses in the Quran and the Hadiths telling Muslims to persecute, harm or even kill non-Muslims. If we do not ensure this, mosques and religious authorities will contribute to the radicalization of Muslims. Unfortunately this has already happened, and now Europe has a deadly serious problem with homegrown jihadis. 80 percent of young Turks in Holland see “nothing wrong” in waging Jihad against non-Muslims. 27 percent of all young French and 14 percent of all young British under 25 sympathize with the genocidal terror organization Islamic State. This includes most probably the vast majority of young Muslims in these two countries. Take a look at those numbers and then try to imagine what that means to Europe’s future. Several of our countries have already deployed the military and the police is running out of resources in their desperate efforts to track and contain the threats.

The interesting thing is that Islam is the only religion in the world, where people become more violent, the more they practice and study their religion. So when it comes to Islam, more religion means more violence.

I think many Americans are not aware of what you are letting into your countries these months. After a few decades with Muslim immigration, more than half of Europeans are against Muslim immigration and the spread of Islam in our countries. I had hoped that the Americans would have learned from our bad example here where I live. But it seems that your president has decided that you should make your own experiences.

Your second question concerning Muslims’ religious practice and integration, you already have the answer if you look at Europe. Islam is opposed to Western, liberal values on so many areas, that you can not really call yourself a real Muslim if you also integrate. You might call yourself a “relaxed” Muslim or a “moderate” Muslim, but you can not both claim that you support Free Speech, democracy and the equality of women and non-Muslims, and at the same time say that you follow the Quran and the example of Muhammad.

RSN: In Western circles, Muslim treatment of women is considered oppressive, do you consider that characterization valid, and what role do women generally play in Islamic culture, recognizing that there are obviously differences from area to area?

Nicolai: Islam is obviously suppressive against women. Just read the Quran and the Hadiths. The question is of course how much Muslims follow the laws of Allah and his prophet. For sure there are variations. Just look at photos of women in Iran before and after the Islamic revolution. It is heart breaking to see how those beautiful, smiling, free women have become veiled and suppressed in today’s Iran. In some Islamic countries, though it is fewer and fewer, at least non-Muslim women can wear a bikini on the beach.

The role of women in Islamic culture is mainly to signal honor. The honor of the family depends on the women’s’ willingness to submit themselves to the suppressive Sharia.

One of the things that is interesting for me as a psychologist is that the religious suppression of Muslim women not only affects the women, but also the men. It simply changes the men’s’ sexuality, when they are taught that women are impure. Many Muslim men thus develop homosexuality or pedophilia.

Research among Pakistani truck drivers, for instance, shows that 95 percent of them “indulge in sex with ‘boy’ helpers.” Although according to most psychological schools, homosexuality is not a disturbance of the person’s natural sexual drive — unless it is caused by cultural factors — the widespread use of bacha bareesh, or “dancing boys” within the Afghan culture, perhaps the world’s most segregated and women-suppressive, is just one sign of a culture that seems to lead to such behavior. A US military report from Afghanistan concludes that “homosexual behavior is unusually common among men in the large ethnic group known as Pashtuns. … Pashtun men commonly have sex with other men, admire other men physically, have sexual relationships with boys and shun women both socially and sexually.” The report also described how male Pashtun interpreters continuously infected each other with gonorrhea. When told by the doctors to be more careful they lied about their homosexual activities and claimed that it happened by mixing different kinds of tea. One US doctor working in Afghanistan had to explain to a local man how to get his wife pregnant: “When it was explained to him what was necessary, he reacted with disgust and asked, ‘How could one feel desire to be with a woman, who God has made unclean, when one could be with a man, who is clean? Surely this must be wrong.’”

RSN: Do you, as a psychologist, consider the Muslim attitudes toward and practices of sexuality to foster healthy mental behavior? What are the effects of Muslim sexual practices in regard to their relations with members of the host society?

Nicolai: On the psychological level, one of the most serious consequences of the Islamic view on women is the extreme lack of romantic love. This is because the healing quality of romantic love can only exist if the partners are equal, where nobody is forced, and where nobody is fearing or dominating the other.

Another psychological consequence of the lack of love and the lack of freedom for the sexes to safely explore each other and be inspired by each other can lead to increased anger and aggression, among other dysfunctional social behavior. One obvious case is the infamous “underwear bomber” Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab who attempted to blow up an airplane in midair at Christmas day in 2009. Abdulmutallab struggled with sexual fantasies that according to his Islamic belief were sinful. In order to mentally combat the sexual fantasies, he tried to fantasize about jihad instead. In the end he decided to blow up the main cause of his frustrations by hiding the explosives in his underwear – his penis.

Islamization of sexuality in our Western countries is already happening. We see this already in the way that non-Muslim men are regularly excluded for public swimming halls, our secular societies are pressured to invest in separate bathing facilities in sports places, public authorities’ advises for women to not wear sexy clothes close to refugee centers etc.

I think in general that our free sexual culture and equality of women here in the West is one of the factors that contribute most the Muslims’ alienation here.

The Islamic view on marriage, which is often not completely voluntarily, shows a wide acceptance of forced sexual intercourse, also called rape. Combined with the Islamic view on non-Muslim women – whom Muslim men are allowed to rape according to the Quran – this has led to an epidemy of rapes all over West Europe. Sweden, Holland and UK is hit hardest. Authorities in England estimates that “up to a million” children may have been victims of primarily Pakistani rape gangs. According to one report, Muslim men are 200 times more prone to rape children than non-Muslim men. Every rape is a catastrophe to not only the victim but also the victims’ family and friends. Life-long traumatization and difficulties in one’s sex-life is also often a result.

RSN: Many Western nations are experiencing a large influx of Muslim immigrants, can such a large inflow of Muslims be productively integrated into Western societies, both from the standpoints of the host society and the individual immigrant?

Nicolai: Only non-Europeans can ask such a question. Here on our continent it is clear to everybody that it is not possible and that the consequences are devastating. Not only economically, but we have to witness how ever growing areas of our beautiful, historical European towns and cities are transformed into areas, where our thousand-year-old culture is disappearing and met with hostility. These areas are often completely sealed to non-Islamic cultures and values, and is now breeding ground for jihad-sympathizers on an industrial scale.

It is becoming more and more common that people are talking about the imminent danger of civil war in our cities. Already now many of us have had to explain our children why there are armed military and police with automatic riffles on the way to kindergarten and school. The worst thing is that such conditions are normal to our kids. They do not even know what we have lost, which will make it very difficult for them to fight to get back the safety, freedoms and culture that nourishes the whole world with European, humanistic values.

RSN: What advice would you offer the Western world regarding their growing Muslim populations?

Nicolai: Well, I am a psychologist, not a politician. I mostly look at the human processes. On the other hand, I have been working with this topic for so many years. I have seen my own continent, my own country and my own neighborhood transforming into something I would consider a dystrophic sci-fi movie, had somebody pictured it for me 20 years ago.

I think we can say for sure now that integrating Muslims in Western society is not possible. Of course a few will always want it, be able to and have their family’s consent, but the vast, vast majority will not. Any society can handle having a few un-integrated individuals. There is enough money to give them money to food and clothing, enough public housing and enough police. But when there are enough of such individuals to establish a counter-culture in a larger defined area, trouble starts. That is where you can talk about a critical mass. And this just takes a few thousand. If you live far away, you may not even notice it. But if you live close by, you will discover that your house loses value, that crime rates increase, that there will be less money for welfare, and that your children feel less safe in school – etc.

I think that Americans can be somehow blind to the risks of inviting tens of thousands of Muslims to your country, because you already have problems with gangs and large ghettos. But you have to understand that Muslim ghettos are different from other ghettos. This is because, and this is what Europe learned at such great costs, that Islam is a political religion. It is not just about inner states of mind, inner beliefs, inner values. Islam is also about how society must be aligned with Islamic law, the Sharia. And more important is that Islam condones any mean in order to create these changes. These means include violent jihad and jihad through abusing the legal system. It also includes so-called taqiyya, which means lying in order to further the cause of Islam, and so called hijrah, which means migration in order to populate non-Islamic land in order to conquer it in the long run, block by block if necessary.

I want you Americans to be aware of this fundamental nature of Islam. It is not like other religions. And I hope that you will take a look at Europe and see what is happening here. Our free, safe societies where people have a basic trust and understanding of each other because we have the same basic values are being suffocated in terror threats and Islamization.

Europe have many things to offer the world. Our art, our egalitarian values, our food. But not the naïve approach to Islam and Muslim immigration, which has already cost so much on so many levels. There is a very interesting documentary called “Muslims in Europe”, which might be good to spread in USA – you can watch it here.

End of Interview

Conclusion

In addition to the excellent documentary on the degradation of Europe caused by Islam recommended immediately above, an RSN article, “Muslim Pedophiles, Feminists And Future Civil War,” provides another disturbing view of Islamic depravity occurring in another European country, Great Britain.

Sennels’ findings and the referenced documentary and article all make it clear that Islam is culturally contaminating Europe and is incapable of peacefully coexisting along side Western civilization within the same physical domain. Muslim inbreeding has corrupted Islam’s psyche, which along with Islam’s doctrine of jihad, make Islam incompatible with civilization founded on European Enlightenment principles. (For more from the author of “Muslim Inbreeding Has Corrupted Islam’s Psyche and the Results Are Alarming” please click HERE)

Watch a recent interview with the author below:

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Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas Has a Nightmare Vision

In November 1974, the late Palestine Liberation Organization leader Yasser Arafat addressed the entire world from the rostrum of the United Nations General Assembly. Always a master of spectacle, Arafat cut an arresting figure as he strode towards the podium in a tieless black shirt and flowing cream jacket, with a perfectly-coiffed keffiyeh wrapped around his head. A holster without its gun—firearms are forbidden in the General Assembly Hall—was draped by his side pocket, completing the aesthetic effect of a Palestinian Che Guevara.

Arafat, however, wasn’t going to let U.N. protocol ruin the dramatic impact of his speech.

“Today I have come bearing an olive branch and a freedom-fighter’s gun,” he told the U.N. delegates at the end of his speech. “Do not let the olive branch fall from my hand. I repeat: do not let the olive branch fall from my hand.”

In visual terms at least, the contrast between Arafat in November 1974 and Palestinian Authority (PA) President Mahmoud Abbas on Sept. 30, 2015, couldn’t have been greater. At the General Assembly rostrum, the portly, drab Abbas delivered a speech so rhetorically labored and dull that I found myself wondering whether he’d had second thoughts about dropping the much-vaunted “bombshell” everyone had been talking about. (In the end, he delivered on that one.)

In between thanking Norway, Sweden, the Arab League, the Obama administration, and Russia—apologies if I left anyone out—there were strands of sheer nastiness running through Abbas’s speech. Referring to “Palestine” as the “land of holiness,” he spoke reverentially of Jesus and Muhammed, but deliberately omitted any mention of the deep and historic Jewish ties to the land: the Davidic and Hasmonean kingdoms that reigned there, for example, or the jewel in the crown that was the Temple in Jerusalem. (Read more from “Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas Has a Nightmare Vision” HERE)

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Judge Dismisses Saudi Arabia From 9/11 Suit

By AP. Saudi Arabia was dismissed Tuesday as a defendant in lawsuits brought by the families of victims of the Sept. 11 attacks by a judge who said lawyers had failed to show sufficient evidence linking the country to the attacks.

U.S. District Judge George Daniels said in a written ruling that lawyers for the plaintiffs had failed to show facts sufficient to overcome Saudi Arabia’s sovereign immunity. He also dismissed as a defendant the Saudi High Commission for Relief of Bosnia & Herzegovina on the grounds that the charity is an instrument of Saudi Arabia and thus covered as well by sovereign immunity. (Read more from “Judge Dismisses Saudi Arabia from 9/11 Suit” HERE)

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Hundreds of ISIS Fighters Desert Over Pay Disputes

By Mark Duell. Hundreds of jihadis are leaving Islamic State for other extremist organisations after being forced to take a pay cut of almost £200 by chiefs, it was claimed last night.

ISIS militants were allegedly being paid £260 a month until the terror group faced financial shortages which forced their salaries down to £65 – and at least 200 gunmen have since quit.

The fighters from ISIS, which until recently was said to be the world’s wealthiest jihadist group, are now retreating from northern Iraq to earn more money from other terror organisations in Syria

ISIS, led by Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, has faced problems since coalition air strikes in Iraq and Syria rendered it unable to access a multi-billion pound war chest, reported the Daily Mirror.

The group has made its money from the likes of bank robberies, stolen oil and people-smuggling, but accountants have cut down on cash convoys between war zones over drone attack fears. (Read more from this story HERE)


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After Attempt on President’s Life, Tiny Nation Seek US Help vs. Terror

By Josh Rogin. The Maldives is calling on the United States to help it respond to an attack on its president, potentially opening the newest front in the war on terror.

President Abdulla Yameen Abdul Gayoom on Sunday narrowly escaped an explosion on his boat. His wife was injured. Investigators have converged on the island nation in the Indian Ocean to determine whether the blast is related to organized terrorism. The government is already rethinking its security and defense practices; top officials say terrorist recruiting has been on the rise there.

Maldivian Foreign Secretary Ali Naseer Mohamed told me Tuesday that officials are still piecing together what happened.

“No group has claimed responsibility,” he said. “But we believe it was an attack directed to the president. That’s the first time the president has been attacked in that way.”

Ali was in the United States this week for the UN General Assembly, and he said his government has been tracking an increased flow of its citizens traveling to Iraq and Syria to fight there, at least 40 so far. Some are coming back to the Maldives. (Read more from this story HERE)

Putin and Obama Clash Over Syria as Russia Calls for ‘Anti-Hitler’ Type Alliance Against ISIS

Vladimir Putin snubbed Barack Obama and revived Russia’s historic role in the Middle East on Monday by calling for a new “broad coalition” to fight Isil based on co-operation with the Assad regime, report Richard Spencer, Harriet Alexander in New York and Roland Oliphant in Moscow.

In his long-awaited speech at the United Nations, the Russian president fiercely attacked American policy in Syria and around the world and criticized the West for “exporting social experiments” in the form of democratic revolutions, which he blamed for the Middle East crisis.

He said he had called for a new Syrian peace conference to be attended by a “contact group” of outside powers including Russia and the United States, as well as regional powers such as Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Turkey and Iran.

Despite the fact that Russia is not among the countries led by the US currently conducting operations against Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (Isil), Mr Putin followed up reports that it was co-ordinating intelligence sharing between Iran, Iraq and Syria by putting Moscow at the center of the world’s “war on terror”.

He went so far as to compare his plans to the alliance that fought Hitler in the Second World War. “We must address the problems that we are all facing and create a broad anti-terror coalition,” he said. (Read more from “Putin and Obama Clash Over Syria as Russia Calls for ‘Anti-Hitler’ Type Alliance Against ISIS” HERE)

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Putin to Test Obama at UN

President Obama won’t be able to escape the long shadow of Vladimir Putin when he heads to the United Nations General Assembly this week.

Russia is in the middle of two of the biggest crises on the planet — in Syria and Ukraine — and those vexing challenges will be front and center when Obama meets with Putin Monday on the sidelines of the annual diplomatic gathering in New York.

“When we look at conflict, the president will certainly be focused on the situation in Syria and Iraq, and he’ll be focused on the situation in Ukraine,” White House deputy national security advisor Ben Rhodes told reporters this week.

“Our focus is going to be on the fact that there has to be a cost for a nation like Russia that is violating the sovereignty and territorial integrity of Ukraine.”

“At the same time, in Syria, even as we have an aggressive military effort underway against ISIL, the only lasting resolution to that challenge is for there to be a political settlement, as well,” he added, using an alternate acronym for the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS). (Read more from “Putin to Test Obama at UN” HERE)

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This Country Is Preparing to Launch Their First Airstrikes Against ISIS in Syria

Six French jet fighters targeted and destroyed an Islamic State training camp in eastern Syria, President Francois Hollande said Sunday, making good on a promise to go after the group that the president has said is planning attacks against several countries, including France . . .

“The camp was totally destroyed,” Hollande said Sunday after arriving at the United Nations, before the start of a major development summit and the U.N. General Assembly bringing together world leaders . . .

France has carried out 215 airstrikes against ISIS extremists in Iraq as part of the U.S.-led coalition since last year, the Defense Ministry said earlier this month. But it previously held back on engaging in Syria, citing concern over playing into Assad’s hand and the need for such action to be covered by international law. (Read more from “This Country Is Preparing to Launch Their First Airstrikes Against ISIS in Syria” HERE)

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Obama Backs Away From Sanctions on China for Cyber Attacks

The United States has backed down from plans to impose economic sanctions on China for cyber attacks after both countries agreed to curb economic spying, President Obama indicated Friday.

“I raised once again our very serious concerns about growing cyber-threats to American companies and American citizens,” Obama said. “I indicated that it has to stop.”

Obama said that he and Chinese leader Xi Jinping agreed in principle that “governments don’t engage in cyber espionage for commercial gain against companies.”

“What I’ve said to President Xi and what I say to the American people is, the question now is, are words followed by action?” Obama said. “And we will be watching carefully to make an assessment as to whether progress has been made in this area” . . .

In response to the hacking of records on 22 million federal workers stolen from Office of Personnel Management networks, the president said he is ready to impose limited sanctions, and will closely monitor whether China backs off large-scale cyber attacks. (Read more from “Obama Backs Away From Sanctions on China for Cyber Attacks” HERE)

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Nearly 1,000 People Killed in Saudi Arabia Hajj Stampede

image.adapt.960.high.hajj_stampede_01aSaudi Arabian authorities said Thursday that at least 717 people were killed and hundreds of others were injured in a stampede near the Muslim holy city of Mecca, where an estimated 2 million people are undertaking the traditional hajj pilgrimage.

At least 863 pilgrims were injured in the crush, said the Saudi civil defense directorate, which provided the death toll. The tragedy struck as Muslims around the world marked the start of the Eid al-Adha holiday.

Reuters, citing Saudi state television, reported that the stampede took place in Mina, a tent city located approximately three miles east of Mecca itself. The area is on the main road from the center of Mecca to the Hill of Arafat, revered by Muslims as the place where Muhammad gave his farewell sermon to Muslims who had accompanied him to Mecca near the end of his life.

It was the second major disaster during this year’s hajj season, raising questions about the adequacy of measures put in place by Saudi authorities to ensure the safety of the roughly 2 million Muslims taking part in the pilgrimage. A crane collapse in Mecca nearly two weeks earlier left 111 people dead.

Photos released by the Saudi civil defense directorate on its official Twitter account showed rescue workers in orange and yellow vests helping the wounded onto stretchers and loading them onto ambulances near some of the white tents. (Read more from “Nearly 1,000 People Killed in Saudi Arabia Hajj Stampede” HERE)

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U.S. Says Chinese Sub That Can Hit U.S. On Patrol Soon

JL-2_startA Chinese nuclear submarine designed to carry missiles that can hit the U.S. is likely to deploy before year’s end, the Pentagon said, adding to Obama administration concerns over China’s muscle-flexing in Asia.

China’s navy is expected this year to conduct the first patrol of its Jin-class nuclear-powered submarine armed with JL-2 submarine-launched ballistic missiles, the Pentagon’s Defense Intelligence Agency said in a statement. It declined to give its level of confidence on when the new boat will be deployed, or the status of the missile.

“The capability to maintain continuous deterrent patrols is a big milestone for a nuclear power,” Larry Wortzel, a member of the congressionally created U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission, said in an e-mail. “I think the Chinese would announce this capability as a show of strength and for prestige.”

The submarines are part of an effort to modernize China’s military under President Xi Jinping, who will be in Washington Thursday and Friday for a state visit with U.S. President Barack Obama. U.S.-China defense cooperation and competition will be among the topics discussed by the two leaders. The Pentagon and DIA had previously predicted the patrols would start in 2014 . . .

“Don’t discount the likelihood of threat inflation by the Pentagon because of the shift toward the Asia-Pacific in the revised maritime strategy,” said Collin Koh Swee Lean, an associate research fellow at the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies in Singapore. (Read more from “U.S. Says Chinese Sub That Can Hit U.S. On Patrol Soon” HERE)

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German Woman, 91, Charged in 260,000 Auschwitz Deaths

RTR4XLJX-1German prosecutors have charged a 91-year-old woman with playing a role in the deaths of 260,000 Jews at the infamous Auschwitz death camp.

The unidentified woman, who authorities say served as member of the Nazi SS is accused of serving as a radio operator for the camp commandant from April to July 1944, The Times of Israel reports. During that time, huge numbers of Hungarian Jews were murdered in gas chambers.

Prosecutors argue that she can be charged as an accessory because she aided in the operation of the death camp. Heinz Doellel, a spokesman for the prosecutor, said there are no indications the woman is unfit for trial, though a court likely won’t decide on whether to proceed with the case until next year.

The case is the latest in a series of attempts by Germany to bring surviving Holocaust perpetrators to justice. Only 50 of the 6,500 former SS members who served at Auschwitz have been convicted in Germany, as the courts long claimed only senior Nazi leadership could be held responsible for Holocaust crimes, The Telegraph reports.

Earlier this year, a 94-year-old man known as the “bookkeeper of Auschwitz” was incarcerated under similar circumstances. Prosecutors argued Oskar Groenig’s presence when Jews entered the camp created a threatening impression, the BBC says. (Read more from “German Woman, 91, Charged in 260,000 Auschwitz Deaths” HERE)

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