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https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/15401/china-arctic-power

Unfortunately, the US is largely dependent upon China for these materials, which also lie beneath the huge ice masses of Greenland…. Beijing is proposing to build several airports, harbors, roads and railways in Greenland, which would facilitate the transport of rare earth materials — once they are excavated — to China.

China’s drive for eventual primacy in the Arctic region also extends to the Danish-owned, self-governing network of the 18 Faroe Islands, located midway between Norway and Iceland in the North Atlantic Ocean.

Although China is a latecomer to great-power competition in the Arctic, its Arctic profile could rise quickly if Moscow pools its efforts with Beijing. The Russian Air Force has long had a separate branch for polar aviation, and Russia maintains an extensive nuclear- and diesel-powered fleet of icebreakers.

Also at risk under such a scenario would be the US military facility in Thule, Greenland, which serves as an early-warning node for a nuclear attack on the North American continent.

One important element of the $738 billion National Defense Authorization Act for the Fiscal Year 2020, which US President Donald Trump signed into law in mid-December, is the directive to examine and monitor “Chinese military activities in the Arctic, as well as Chinese foreign direct investment in the Arctic.”

The administration in Washington is right to be concerned about China’s increasing interest in the northern polar region. Two years ago, Beijing published a White Paper outlining its Arctic policy, which includes creating a “Polar Silk Road.” If fully implemented, this policy will challenge the United States and Russia for primacy in the region, where beneath the glaciers lie vast quantities of coal and natural gas.

Two Chinese polar icebreaking research vessels, Xuelong and Xuelong II, are presently carrying out the regime’s 36th scientific expedition in the waters off Antarctica. The crews of these vessels will help complete China’s fifth Antarctic scientific station for the gathering of data and establishment of under-the-ice submarine deployments similar to those operated by Washington and Moscow.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/15375/hamas-support-turkey-invasion

The American pullout from the area, which borders on Turkey, was evidently perceived by Erdoğan as a green light for an invasion for which he had been waiting for nearly a decade.

Hamas, like Turkey, not only seeks Israel’s destruction, but also has close ties with the Erdoğan government.

Like its terrorist counterparts across the Middle East, many of which are funded by the Iranian regime, Hamas aims to annihilate Israel not only for being a Jewish state, but for sharing American values of freedom and democracy. In Hamas’s eyes, the Kurds are an extension of that Western alliance.

In mid-October, following US President Donald Trump’s announcement of a withdrawal of American troops from northern Syria, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s military invaded the Kurdish-held area.

Ankara views the Kurds in northern Syria as PKK-affiliated terrorists who, for wanting freedom, are regarded as a serious threat to Turkish national security. Eliminating Kurdish autonomy has been a key priority for Erdoğan since the beginning of the Syrian civil war in 2011.

The American pullout from the area, which borders on Turkey, was evidently perceived by Erdoğan as a green light for an invasion, for which he had been waiting for nearly a decade. Although there is no doubt about the devastating effect that this move is having and will continue to have on the Kurds, there is a question about whether and to what extent it will affect Israel, a neighboring country that has been a supporter of Kurdish independence and rightly fears an even greater Iranian power-grab in Syria.

Israel’s enemies, unsurprisingly, immediately championed Trump’s announced exit and praised Erdoğan’s invasion. Take Hamas, the terrorist organization that rules the Gaza Strip, for example.

https://www.city-journal.org/french-court-acquittal-of-kabili-traore

The recent decision of a French court would, if taken as precedent, in effect legalize murder—provided that the act was committed in a state of temporary madness caused by intoxication with cannabis.

In 2017, Kabili Traoré, a Muslim of Malian origin, who had no previous psychiatric history but a long criminal record, with 22 convictions—including for robbery, attempted robbery, drug-dealing, and possession of illegal arms—climbed over the balcony of the flat of Sarah Halimi, a Jewish woman age 66, tortured her, and then threw her over the balcony to her death. Traoré appeared to be in a state of religious excitation, for he was heard to shout “Allahu Akbar” and “I have killed Shaitan” (Satan). There is no doubt that he was psychotic at the time, or that his psychotic state was precipitated by his use of cannabis.

The court acquitted Traoré of any crime because he was psychotic when he committed the act, sending him instead to a psychiatric hospital for 20 years. Its decision caused widespread public alarm, repugnance, and derision. But from the strictly juridical point of view, the court might have been right. According to the French criminal code, a man is not to be held criminally responsible if his “discernment”—his judgment—is abolished by a psychiatric or neuropsychiatric state. The code does not make voluntary intoxication an exception to this rule.

Of course, what constitutes the abolition of discernment or judgment is itself a question of judgment. Traoré knew, for example, that his victim was Jewish (she was the only Jew on the block, and he knew this in advance); he also knew that he was killing her. He must have had at least intermittent awareness of his illegal act, for at one point he shouted that there had been a suicide and that the police should be called. On the other hand, it is unlikely that he would have acted as he did had he not been psychotic.