RUTHFULLY YOURS

Today, institutional slavery conjures images of pre-Civil War Southern ownership of African slaves. However, slavery is an ancient practice dating from ancient Egypt, Greece, and Rome, as well as early Amer-Indian empires in Mexico and Central America. It was also well established and ideologically sanctioned in the Muslim world from the days of Mohammed.

Concurrently with African enslavement in the Americas, a flourishing slave trade existed from 1500 to 1800 of white Christian Europeans by the Muslims of North Africa’s Barbary Coast. In his book Christian Slaves, Muslim Masters, Ohio State history professor Robert Davis takes a close look at this rarely discussed aspect of modern history.

Originating from the life of the Prophet Mohammed, slavery is deeply embedded in Islamic law and tradition. Muslims are required to follow the teachings of Mohammed, who was a slave owner and trader. Further, a large part of the sharia – in the Sunna of Mohammed and the Koran – is dedicated to the practice of slavery. Muslim caliphs typically had harems of hundreds of slave girls captured from Christian, Hindu, and African lands. Slavery is still practiced today in several Muslim countries and glorified by present-day jihadist groups.

In Christian Slaves, Muslim Masters, Davis describes how, from 1500 to 1800, Muslim corsairs from the Barbary Coast systematically enslaved white Christians from Italy, France, Spain, Portugal, Holland, Iceland, Great Britain, Ireland, and Greece. The Muslims raided ships at sea and attacked coastal villages in an activity called “Christian stealing.” During that time, Davis explains, the Mediterranean had a reputation as the sea where people vanished: fisherman or sailors on board boats, shepherds tending flocks, farmers toiling near the shore, and townspeople, including women and children, living in coastal communities. Coastal dwellers and those who traveled by ship constantly risked capture, violence, and exploitation at the hands of Barbary Coast Muslims.

As part of this jihad against Christianity begun in 1500, piracy and slaving were the main instruments used to deprive infidel communities of useful, productive citizens and to acquire booty. Davis estimates that during three centuries of Muslim predation, as many as 1.25 million Europeans were permanently and stealthily removed from their families and communities.

A new guide being circulated among ISIS supporters online directs lone jihadists to construct explosives from “simple things” like rat poison and use poisonous plants to inflict casualties.

The guide says it’s from the Nashir Media Foundation, which last month circulated different terror plot suggestions including creating hazardous driving conditions. This month, after the assassination of ISIS’ No. 2 Abu Mohammad al-Adnani, the Nashir Media Foundation issued a statement to jihadists “specifically in France” to “delete anything related to the Islamic state from your devices” to avoid detection and “hurry in your operations before it becomes too late.”

The “important” new guide, as touted by one ISIS supporter who tweeted the cheat sheet, pulls together past suggestions of poison and bombmaking recipes into a comprehensive guide to “fight back” against “the infidel West.” It was distributed with an image of a howling wolf against a forest backdrop.

One bomb recipe includes, in part, sulfuric acid, rat poison and screws, with the detonator needing a small bulb bought in a “kids toy or an electrical shop,” a car battery and a length of wire. Ingredient swap suggestions include “preferably sharp” nails and bolts to inflict greater harm. Jihadists are advised to encase the device in plaster, leaving the wires feeding out, and detonate the device in a place with traffic.

Other bomb ingredients discussed include fertilizer, Vaseline, citric acid, potassium chloride and sodium bicarbonate. Even hair dye containing ammonium hydroxide is discussed as a bomb ingredient, as well as acetone in nail-polish remover, hydrogen peroxide, coal powder, phosphorus insecticides, glycerin in skin moisturizers and sulfur powder found “in stores that sell agricultural materials.”

They also suggest jihadists try the garden for effective weapons, such as the castor seeds that harbor ricin. The guide underscores that children especially have “weak resistance” to the naturally occurring poison. They discuss extraction methods once the jihadists are able to obtain seeds.

But the botanical advice doesn’t stop there — lone jihadists are advised to explore the wide range of toxic plants that are “accessible to everyone.”

That includes Atropa belladonna, also known as deadly nightshade, with a note that jihadists can commonly find it in home gardens because of its “beautiful shape.” Solanum dulcamara, or bitter nightshade, which is native to Europe and Asia and invasive in North America, is recommended for its “troublesome properties” — but the ISIS guide notes it’s “a rare reason of death.”

Jihadists are also advised to be on the watch — or sniff the wind — for Hyoscyamus niger, known as henbane or stinking nightshade. “The entire plant is extremely toxic… used sometimes in the commission of crimes,” states the guide. Laburnum anagyroides, or the golden chain tree, is another recommended botanical poison, as well as the native British Taxus baccata, or English yew.

The guide doesn’t give jihadists many suggestions on how to poison people with poisonous plants, but rounds up their list with extraction techniques for the Strychnos Nux-vomica, or strychnine tree. They warn that “even 1% of the killer in a glass of water” can be detected due to strychnine’s bitter taste, but laud it as “one of the most brutal kinds of poison.”

The guide was distributed on file-sharing sites and through social media. One ISIS member who tweeted the list Tuesday was suspended from Twitter the same day, though some others seen promoting the guide remained on the site.

Critics say that the creation of a European army, a long-held goal of European federalists, would entail an unprecedented transfer of sovereignty from European nation states to unelected bureaucrats in Brussels, the de facto capital of the EU.

Others say that efforts to move forward on European defense integration show that European leaders have learned little from Brexit, and are determined to continue their quest to build a European superstate regardless of opposition from large segments of the European public.

“Those of us who have always warned about Europe’s defense ambitions have always been told not to worry… We’re always told not to worry about the next integration and then it happens. We’ve been too often conned before and we must not be conned again.” — Liam Fox, former British defense secretary.

“[C]reation of EU defense structures, separate from NATO, will only lead to division between transatlantic partners at a time when solidarity is needed in the face of many difficult and dangerous threats to the democracies.” — Geoffrey Van Orden, UK Conservative Party defense spokesman.

European leaders are discussing “far-reaching proposals” to build a pan-European military, according to a French defense ministry document leaked to the German newspaper, the Süddeutsche Zeitung.

The efforts are part of plans to relaunch the European Union at celebrations in Rome next March marking the 60th anniversary of the Treaty of Rome, which established the European Community.

The document confirms rumors that European officials are rushing ahead with defense integration now that Britain — the leading military power in Europe — will be exiting the 28-member European Union.

British leaders have repeatedly blocked efforts to create a European army because of concerns that it would undermine the NATO alliance, the primary defense structure in Europe since 1949.

Proponents of European defense integration argue that it is needed to counter growing security threats and would save billions of euros in duplication between countries.

Critics say that the creation of a European army, a long-held goal (see Appendix below) of European federalists, would entail an unprecedented transfer of sovereignty from European nation states to unelected bureaucrats in Brussels, the de facto capital of the EU.

Others say that efforts to move forward on European defense integration show that European leaders have learned little from Brexit — the June 23 decision by British voters to leave the EU — and are determined to continue their quest to build a European superstate regardless of opposition from large segments of the European public.

The question of whether Socialism can be an effective economic system was famously raised when Margaret Thatcher said of the British Labor Party, “I think they’ve made the biggest financial mess that any government’s ever made in this country for a very long time, and Socialist governments traditionally do make a financial mess. They always run out of other people’s money. It’s quite a characteristic of them. They then start to nationalise everything.”

There are dire reports of people waiting in supermarket lines all day, only to discover that expected food deliveries never arrived and the shelves are empty.

There are horrific tales of desperate people slaughtering zoo animals to provide their only meal of the day. Even household pets are targeted as a much-needed source for food.

President Maduro is doubling down on the proven failed policies and philosophies of “Bolivarian Socialism,” while diverting attention away from the crisis — pointing fingers at so-called “enemies” of Venezuela such as the United States, Saudi Arabia and others.

A dozen eggs was last reported to cost $150, and the International Monetary Fund “predicts that inflation in Venezuela will hit 720% this year.

For many Venezuelans, by every economic, social and political measure, their nation is unravelling at breakneck speed.

Severe shortages of food, clean water, electricity, medicines and hospital supplies punctuate a dire scenario of crime-ridden streets in the impoverished neighborhoods of this nearly failed OPEC state, which at one time claimed to be the most prosperous nation in Latin America.

Mr. Kontorovich, a professor at Northwestern University’s Pritzker School of Law, heads the international law department at the Kohelet Policy Forum, a think tank where Ms. Grunseid is a researcher.

The United Nations began its annual session this week, and Israel will be prominent on the agenda. Many fear the Security Council may consider a resolution setting definite territorial parameters, and a deadline, for the creation of a Palestinian state.

President Obama has hinted that in the final months of his term, he may reverse the traditional U.S. policy of vetoing such resolutions. The General Assembly, meanwhile, is likely to act as the chorus in this drama, reciting its yearly litany of resolutions criticizing Israel.

If Mr. Obama is seeking to leave his mark on the Israeli-Arab conflict—and outside the negotiated peace process that began in Oslo—there is no worse place to do it than the U.N. New research we have conducted shows that the U.N.’s focus on Israel not only undermines the organization’s legitimacy regarding the Jewish state. It also has apparently made the U.N. blind to the world’s many situations of occupation and settlements.

Our research shows that the U.N. uses an entirely different rhetoric and set of legal concepts when dealing with Israel compared with situations of occupation or settlements world-wide. For example, Israel is referred to as the “Occupying Power” 530 times in General Assembly resolutions. Yet in seven major instances of past or present prolonged military occupation—Indonesia in East Timor, Turkey in northern Cyprus, Russia in areas of Georgia, Morocco in Western Sahara, Vietnam in Cambodia, Armenia in areas of Azerbaijan, and Russia in Ukraine’s Crimea—the number is zero. The U.N. has not called any of these countries an “Occupying Power.” Not even once.

The Obama administration plans to raise the number of refugees admitted to the U.S. to 110,000 in the 2017 fiscal year starting Oct. 1, from 85,000 this fiscal year, according to an annual refugee report to Congress obtained by The Wall Street Journal on Tuesday.

President Barack Obama was widely expected to announce an increase in the U.S. commitment ahead of a summit on refugees that he is convening next week during the United Nations General Assembly meeting.

The 110,000 target for 2017 for individuals fleeing persecution and conflict around the world represents a nearly 30% increase over this fiscal year and an almost 60% increase over the 70,000 admitted in 2015.

The last year that the U.S. committed to resettling as many refugees was in 1995, when President Bill Clinton set the ceiling at 112,000.

Each year, the president makes a determination of how many refugees will be admitted into the U.S.

Secretary of State John Kerry presented the new target, outlined in the report to Congress, in a closed session to members of the House and Senate judiciary committees on Tuesday.

As he left the meeting, Mr. Kerry refused to provide details, saying he was “going to wait until the president releases it.”

A State Department official confirmed that Mr. Kerry had held the closed briefing regarding the president’s plan to admit refugees and said the official determination would be issued in coming weeks.

Following terrorist attacks in Paris and the U.S., the resettlement of Muslim refugees, particularly from Syria, has become a contested issue at the state level and in the presidential campaign.

Last year, Republican governors in roughly two dozen states voiced opposition to receiving Syrians, and some states tried to halt resettlement with lawsuits, which they lost.