RUTHFULLY YOURS

There has been considerable interest in the direction of Secretary of State Rex Tillerson’s ongoing “reimagining” of the State Department, but for all the conversations about the future of American diplomacy, what has been underaddressed is how our oldest Cabinet agency is preparing to deal with the new, but foreseeable, diplomatic challenges presented by emerging technology.

While at the Department, I joined the effort to establish a Coordinator for Cyber Issues reporting directly to the Secretary, because no single bureau was able to represent all of the interests that the U.S. has in the cyber domain, including economic, military, intelligence, and freedom of expression-related issues. In 2011, the United States became the first country to assign a senior diplomat the task of focusing on cyber issues; allies and competitors alike have since set up similar positions, thus moving the international community forward – albeit in fits and starts – in developing norms and standards. Creating an office to focus on international cyber policy was a clear example of senior State Department officials anticipating where our interconnected world was headed and allocating resources to meet the challenge in a truly strategic, long-term manner.

Secretary Tillerson eliminated the Coordinator for Cyber Issues position earlier this year, but Reps. Ed Royce, R-Calif., and Eliot Engel, D-N.Y., the chairman and ranking member of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, along with 15 other representatives, have co-sponsored the Cyber Diplomacy Act of 2017 to re-establish it and require the Secretary of State to develop an international strategy for cyberspace. While it is encouraging to see a coordinated push by Congress to ensure the U.S. can fully pursue its national interests in the cyber domain, this move would merely allow us to get back to the former status quo.

Meanwhile, technological innovation in other realms continues at a furious pace. China is spending billions of dollars to surpass the United States as the world leader in artificial intelligence by 2030, with an eye towards improving its economy and matching our military prowess. Russian President Vladimir Putin believes the country with the best AI “will become the ruler of the world,” and Moscow recently made clear that it opposes international efforts to ban lethal autonomous weapons.

The Russian government will build an “independent internet” for use by itself, Brazil, India, China, and South Africa — the so-called BRICS nations — “in the event of global internet malfunctions,” the Russian news site RT reported on Tuesday. More precisely, Moscow intends to create an alternative to the global Domain Name System, or DNS, the directory that helps the browser on your computer or smartphone connect to the website server or other computer that you’re trying to reach. The Russians cited national security concerns, but the real reason may have more to do with Moscow’s own plans for offensive cyber operations.

According to RT, the Russian Security Council discussed the idea during its October meeting, saying that “the increased capabilities of western nations to conduct offensive operations in the informational space as well as the increased readiness to exercise these capabilities pose a serious threat to Russia’s security.” Russian President Vladimir Putin has set a date of August 1, 2018, to complete the alternative DNS.

Why are they doing it? Russia, along with China, has long pushed for national governments to assert more control over the DNS and net governance in general, via the UN International Telecommunication Union, or ITU. Then, as now, the Russian and Chinese arguments were rooted in national security. But were DNS to be turned over to the ITU, dictatorships would be able to much better monitor dissidents, stifle dissent, and control the information environment in their countries. For example, Western tech companies could be forced to keep data and servers physically within those countries, and thus become entangled in vast citizen-monitoring programs.

In 2014, the U.S. cleverly announced it would give control of the DNS database to a non-governmental international body of stakeholders, a process to be run by the California-based Internet Corporation of Assigned Names and Numbers, or ICANN.

“Now, when China stands up and says, ‘We want a seat at the table of internet governance,’ the U.S. can say, ‘No. The internet should be stateless.’ They’re in a much stronger position to make that argument today than they were before,” Matthew Prince, co-founder of the company Cloudflare, told Defense One at the time.

Syria could, of course, also acquire nuclear weapons from North Korea. Syria already possesses ballistic missiles; the chemical weapons are already there.

In the past, North Korea has shipped ballistic missiles to Hezbollah and Hamas via Syria; they will probably continue to do so, and to terrorist organizations as well.

North Korea is reported to be shipping chemical weapons to Syria. The United Nations Security Council (UNSC) has stated that activity has been intercepted during the past six months and that North Korea is also shipping conventional weapons there. Furthermore, a Syrian government entity, the Scientific Studies and Research Centre, has apparently established cooperation with the Korean Mining Development Trading Corporation (KOMID), North Korea’s key arms exporter, and blacklisted by the UN Security Council

Shipping weapons and chemical weapons to Syria brings cash-strapped North Korea hard currency, Meanwhile Syria, thick in a civil war, can only acquire sophisticated weapons and weapons of mass destruction through a black market; so a sanctioned North Korea is ideal.

This news should not come as a surprise. North Korean support for Syria is nothing new. In 1995, a CIA report confirmed that Syria’s Scud B and Scud C missile systems had been acquired from North Korea. By 1997, a State Department report confirmed that North Korea was providing Syria with crucial equipment for its missile development program. Der Spiegel reported in 2015 that Syria was again trying to build nuclear bombs.

A nuclear reactor being built by North Korea in Syria was destroyed by Israel in 2007. In 2012, North Korea was sending Syria artillery components through China while using sophisticated techniques to avoid interception.

In April 2017, Kim Jong-un called a US missile strike on Syria, in response to Syrian use of chemical weapons on its own citizens, an “unforgivable act of aggression.” North Korea’s aid to Syria in developing chemical weapons, however, is also nothing new.

Lately, North Korea has again been providing Syria with chemical weapons as well as assisting its ballistic missile program.

“These epithets of ‘moderate Islam’ are very ugly, it is disrespectful and an insult to our religion. There is no moderate or immoderate Islam. Islam is Islam and that’s it.” — Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan.

In keeping with Erdoğan’s assertions, the Turkish government-funded Directorate of Religious Affairs (Diyanet) published in July a detailed 140-page report, which stated that Islam is “superior” to Judaism and Christianity, and that “interfaith dialogue is unacceptable.”

“The word kafir is the worst word in the human language. It is far worse than the n-word, because the n-word is a personal opinion, whereas, kafir is Allah’s decree.” — Dr. Bill Warner, director of the Center for the Study of Political Islam (CSPI).

At a conference on women’s entrepreneurship, held in Ankara on November 9 and hosted by the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation (OIC), Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan rejected the concept of “moderate Islam”. Referring to the vow by Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman — during the Future Investment Initiative conference in Riyadh on Oct. 25 — to turn his country into a bastion of “moderate Islam,” Erdoğan said, “Islam cannot be either ‘moderate’ or ‘not moderate.’ Islam can only be one thing.” He also claimed that the “patent of this concept originated in the West,” which “really want[s] to weaken Islam.”

Erdoğan has consistently communicated his thoughts about the term “moderate Islam” often used in the West to describe his Justice and Development Party (AKP). As early as 2007, he said: “These epithets of ‘moderate Islam’ are very ugly, it is disrespectful and an insult to our religion. There is no moderate or immoderate Islam. Islam is Islam and that’s it.”

London mayor Sadiq Khan unveiled his “London Plan” on Wednesday, and, as expected, it took a tough stance against a dangerous threat jeopardizing the health and future of the city’s children. No, it’s not a strategy to protect Londoners from potential terrorist attacks at public festivals this Christmas season. The menace is cellulite and the perp is a cheeseburger.

Khan’s plan would prevent any new fast-food restaurant from opening within 400 meters of a primary or secondary school, fulfilling a campaign pledge he made in 2013. The ban targets “takeaways” that sell food such as fish and chips, pizza, chicken, and other quick bites that are allegedly contributing to London’s childhood-obesity crisis. (Nearly 40 percent of children in London are overweight or obese by the time they finish grade school, and the number of obese eleven-year-olds in the city spiked by 22 percent in the last four years.)

According to the 458-page plan:

There is evidence that regular consumption of energy-dense food from hot food takeaways is associated with weight gain, and that takeaway food is appealing to children. A wide range of health experts recommend restricting the proliferation of hot food takeaways, particularly around schools, in order to help create a healthier food environment.

The mayor is also asking restaurants to make food healthier by using fewer villainous ingredients, and grilling or baking food items instead of frying them: “The Healthier Catering Commitment is a scheme that helps food businesses in London to provide healthier food to their customers. The scheme promotes a reduction in the consumption of fat, salt and sugar, and an increase in access to fruit and vegetables.” (To his credit, Khan is reportedly trying to stop the number of pubs closing in the city each year. Two cheers for that.)

Dr. Yvonne Doyle, regional director at Public Health England, praised the move, telling the London Evening Standard that city streets “are increasingly saturated with takeaways and our school children consume too much unhealthy food and drink on the high streets near schools.”

“The police cannot win a war with the Lebanese because we outnumber them…. This applies to all of Gelsenkirchen, if we so choose.” — Lebanese clan in Gelsenkirchen, Germany.

Observers surmised that the real reason for the judge’s leniency was that he feared his family might be subjected to retribution from the clan.

Freddi Lohse, the Vice Chairman of the DPolG German Police Union in Hamburg, said that many migrant offenders view the leniency of the German justice system as a green light to continue delinquent behavior: “They are used to tougher consequences in their home countries. They have no respect for us.”

Violent attacks against German police have reached epidemic proportions, and Chancellor Angela Merkel’s open-door migration policy is to blame, official statistics show.

The Federal Criminal Police Office (Bundeskriminalamt, BKA) reported 36,755 attacks against German police in 2016 — or an average of 100 per day, a significant increase over previous years.

Violence — including verbal and physical assaults, and even murder — against police is rampant in all 16 of Germany’s federal states. According to the BKA, the epicenter of the problem in 2016 was North Rhine-Westphalia (8,929 incidents), the state with the largest migrant population, followed by: Bavaria (4,930); Baden-Württemberg (4,355); Berlin (3,154); Lower Saxony (3,030); Hesse (1,870); Saxony (1,573); Rhineland-Palatinate (1,537); Hamburg (1,339); Thüringen (1,228); Schleswig-Holstein (1,237); Brandenburg (1,009); Saxony-Anhalt (899); Mecklenburg-Vorpommern (658); Saarland (521); and Bremen (486).

Preliminary data, recently leaked to German public radio, indicate that in terms of violence against German law enforcement officers, 2017 will be a record-breaking year. In Berlin alone, attacks against police this year are up 70% in Görlitzer Park, 35% at the Warsaw Bridge and 15% at Kottbusser Tor, according to the Berliner Morgenpost.

In the report, placing the word “refugees” in quotation marks, as well as “unaccompanied children,” is supposedly an expression of “hate”. (Many, if not most, migrants classified as “unaccompanied children” have turned out to be grown men).

Government agencies are going out of their way to protect the “integrity” of possible jihadists out of concern for a “democratic society” — the society that these jihadists want to subvert and destroy — and are using their government platform to smear non-mainstream media for matters as small as the use of quotation marks. What about the “integrity” of Swedish citizens and their right to not be blown up?

Why is a municipality sponsoring an organization that supports terrorists and even awarding it prizes? It appears that glorifying terrorism is acceptable in Sweden, so long as its victims are the Israeli children. Far from countering “hate”, Sweden appears to be doing all it can to strengthen Muslim extremism.

The Swedish government is now officially questioning free speech. A government agency has declared so-called Swedish “new media” — news outlets that refuse to subscribe to the politically correct orthodoxies of the mainstream media — a possible threat to democracy. In a government report, tellingly called “The White Hatred” written by Totalförsvarets forskningsinstitut (Total Defense Research Institute), a government agency under the Swedish Ministry of Defense, Swedish new media such as Samhällsnytt (formerly known as Avpixlat), Nyheter Idag and Nya Tider are lumped together with neo-Nazi media such as Nordfront.

“Hate” is defined broadly to include violent extremism, “hateful expressions”, jokes, internet trolling and even the use of certain quotation marks. For instance, in the report, placing the word “refugees” in quotation marks, as well as “unaccompanied children,” is supposedly an expression of “hate”. (Many, if not most, migrants classified as “unaccompanied children” have turned out to be grown men).

“One might find,” according to the report’s conclusion, “that pluralism of information sources… is a positive addition in a democratic society where freedom of speech is an important foundation”, but “the new media… stretch the limits of free speech,” which “threatens other democratic values”. The report further alleges that society risks becoming tolerant of the intolerant. That is rather rich coming from the authorities of a European country that has accepted Islamic intolerance to an astounding degree. There is even a proposal from a government minister to reintegrate returning ISIS fighters, who might still wish to destroy the tolerant society that houses them.

The report is part of a series commissioned by the Swedish government to conduct quantitative mapping and analyses of violent extremist propaganda spread in Sweden by the internet and social media. The survey is supposed to include violent extremist environments in Sweden: right-wing extremism, left-wing extremism and Islamic extremism.

A previous report, “The Digital Caliphate,” supposedly looks at Islamic extremism, but is rendered useless in a Swedish context by explicitly refusing to engage with concrete ISIS propaganda in Sweden for “ethical” reasons:

“It is not in itself illegal to sympathize with violent ideologies. Our work is not about mapping the views of private people, as that would be incompatible with an open democratic society. Our analyses have therefore been limited to protect the integrity of private persons. No data has been collected from pages protected by passwords, closed Facebook pages or other types of Facebook pages or social media where the user has sought to keep the material within a closed group. All the material comes from open sources… this means that the material analyzed is limited as a large part of ISIS propaganda happens in closed channels…”

Government agencies in charge of national security, in other words, are going out of their way to protect the “integrity” of possible jihadists out of concerns for a “democratic society” — the society that these jihadists want to subvert and destroy. Meanwhile, these agencies are using their government platform to smear non-mainstream media for matters as small as the use of quotation marks. What about the “integrity” of Swedish citizens and their right to not be blown up? Furthermore, this desire to protect the privacy of potential jihadists means that the most vital part of the work — mapping the extent of Islamist violent propaganda in Sweden — is still left undone.

Egypt could use the help of American desert-warfare Special Forces advisors, as well as actionable intelligence from trusted Bedouin desert trackers. Egypt might also improve relations with the Sinai’s principal Bedouin tribes and other locals by building, perhaps with US support, schools and health clinics.

Unless Egypt adopts a more effective military and political strategy against its jihadists, it could lose the entire Sinai, and the all-important Suez Canal, a prospect which would shake the foundations of both the regime and the region.

Egypt is no longer sovereign in the Sinai Peninsula. Islamic State terrorists, moving freely throughout the Sinai’s Northern Province, have been delivering stinging defeats on Egypt’s military and police convoys. The November 24 mass murder of Sufi Muslim worshippers by radical Sunni terrorists in the Northern Sinai Province underlines the Egyptian government’s loss of control in the area. If Cairo changes its tactics and strategy, however, the Sinai can be saved.

Initially, Islamic State terrorists in the Sinai Desert feasted on soft targets, such as Coptic Christian communities and local, lightly defended, police stations. The Egyptian military’s inability to prevent these attacks or subdue jihadist forces simply emboldened the terrorists. In mid-October, Islamic State jihadists even robbed a bank in the northern Sinai’s provincial capital, El-Arish, making off with about a million dollars to help finance their anti-government campaign. Large tracts of the northern Sinai are slipping out of Egypt’s control due to the military inefficiencies and counterproductive policies of government security forces.

These shortcomings include an unwillingness to change tactics, ineffective weapon systems for desert combat, and lack of proper logistical support. The troop convoys sent into the desert are “red meat” for the jihadists, “who mount sophisticated multi-tiered attacks and employ snipers to demoralize security forces.”

The jihadists station their lookouts atop high desert sand dunes to monitor the approach of security forces; convoys are visible from miles away. On one occasion, the terrorists were seemingly able to lure security forces into an ambush.

The advanced capability and sustainability of the Sinai jihadists is in part, a result of Hamas training and Iranian financial support. The sad fate of a police convoy upon which the jihadists inflicted heavy casualties underscores the typical military column’s overall vulnerability.

Another government vulnerability is political in nature. Cairo is failing in desert warfare against the jihadists also because it lacks the support of the Sinai’s Bedouin tribes. The ease with which Islamic State contingents navigate the desert’s dunes indicates that the terrorists have intelligence and logistical support inside Bedouin villages. The Islamic State’s “Sinai Province” was able to capitalize on the Bedouins’ hostility to the central government’s harsh treatment, such as scorched-earth tactics against villages near a recent military defeat of security forces. Egyptian military leaders has often penalized villages for allegedly not providing warning of proximate jihadist attacks.[1]

In France, since 2012, more than 250 people were killed by Islamic terrorism — more than in all other European countries combined.

No other country in Europe has experienced so many attacks against Jews. France is a country where Jews are murdered because they are Jews.

“Muslim believers know very well what is happening. Only a minority is violent. But as a whole, they do not ignore that their birthrate is such that one day, everything here will be theirs”. — Luc Ravel, Archbishop of Strasbourg.

In Bagneux, France, on November 1, 2017, a plaque placed in memory of Ilan Halimi, a young Jew murdered in 2006 by a “gang of barbarians”, was destroyed and covered with graffiti. When a few days later, another plaque replaced it, the French government issued a statement that “hate will not win”.

There are many signs, however, that hate has already won and that France is sick. If these signs were already obvious a decade ago, they are even more obvious today. Voluntary blindness prevented them from being addressed.

Ilan Halimi was taken hostage in January 2006, then viciously tortured for three weeks. He was eventually abandoned, dying, on the edge of a road and died a few hours later.

Most of kidnappers, who were arrested a few days after the murder, were Muslims. They immediately confessed. They said they had chosen Halimi because he was a Jew and they thought that “all Jews have money”. Some added that Jews “deserve to suffer”.

They were tried behind closed doors. The leader, Youssouf Fofana, spat his bile against Jews and vehemently shouted the name of Allah during the whole trial, so the court could not hide that he was an Islamic anti-Semite. He was sentenced to “life” in prison — which in France means 18 to 20 years. If he had not assaulted his guards in the prison, he would already have be released. The other members of the gang, described by the prosecutor in a watered down way as “thugs looking for easy money”, were quieter and were handed down relatively light sentences. Today, almost all “the barbarians” are free.

Even books, accentuating the whitewash, describe the crime as just an ugly “sign of greed” among “poorly educated young people”.

We need more often to be reminded than informed, said Doctor Johnson, and if anyone needed to be reminded of how fragile and temporary the exercise of power is, and how changeable are courtiers and flatterers, especially of dictators, he could not do better than look at the website of the Bulawayo Chronicle, one of Zimbabwe’s newspapers of record.

On November 10, one of its main stories was the unveiling of a plaque commemorating Harare International Airport’s change of name to the Robert Gabriel Mugabe International Airport, a process presided over by His Excellency Comrade Robert Gabriel Mugabe himself, who “reiterated his gratitude on behalf of himself, his family and the entire country [for] the honour bestowed on him, saying it has brought joy to all Zimbabweans.” One is irresistibly reminded of a poem by the Nicaraguan poet and priest, Ernesto Cardenal, Somoza desveliza la estatua de Somoza en el Estadio Somoza (Somoza unveils the statue of Somoza in Somoza Stadium).

According to the newspaper report, the renaming was done “to match the stature of President Mugabe, a global icon.” The Minister of Transport told the president that the airport “is part of your legacy [and] wise leadership,” because “you have given priority to infrastructure and utility development in the country for the entirety of the people of Zimbabwe,” while another minister, Goneril-like, said that the renaming demonstrated “the pride [of] Zimbabweans in President Mugabe.”

Could these be some of the same ministers who, 11 days later, refused to attend a cabinet meeting called by Mugabe, who by then had been expelled from the ruling political party, the Zimbabwe African National Union—Patriotic Front? And could it be that the war veterans who, on November 9, wanted Mugabe’s wife to be made vice president were the same war veterans who, one week later, were calling for the president’s resignation? It could: the rats were leaving the sinking ship.

Zimbabwe’s next president will be Emmerson Mnangagwa, known as the Crocodile, the end of whose road the Chronicle was gleefully proclaiming only eight days ago, when he was expelled from the party with the unanimous agreement of ten regional committees.