RUTHFULLY YOURS

The UK’s “known wolf” terror problem has just gotten worse.

As I reported here at PJ Media earlier this week, the still-unnamed 18-year-old Iraqi refugee who tried to set off an IED on the London underground last Friday had been arrested two weeks before the attack at the Parsons Green station where the device went off. But today information was revealed that the bombing suspect was part of the UK’s “deradicalization” program.

The BBC reports:

The 18-year-old arrested man is thought to have lived in a foster home owned by Ronald and Penelope Jones in Sunbury-on-Thames.

He is thought to have moved to the UK from Iraq aged 15 when his parents died.

The BBC has learnt that he had been referred to an anti-extremist programme before his arrest.

It is not known who made the referral and when – or how serious the concerns were.

Sources did not name the flagship Prevent programme, but it is thought that this is the mostly likely case as the referral for help was at local authority level.

Prevent is managed and delivered locally by multi-agency teams of social workers, police officers and other specialists.

Other media are identifying the program the bombing suspect was involved with as PREVENT.

While some critics, this reporter included, have noted the ineffectiveness of the PREVENT “countering violent extremism” (CVE) program, some in the Muslim community have attacked it for “Islamophobia”:

For decades, in both America and Europe, the gay establishment – gay magazines, gay rights organizations, and self-designated gay leaders – have been dictating politics to the gay multitudes. Those politics have been consistently left-wing and Democratic. Not all gays have played follow-the-leader, but most have, so that in the 2016 U.S. presidential elections Hillary Clinton won a far larger percentage of the gay vote than Donald Trump.

Even though Hillary had opposed same-sex marriage until 2013, had taken millions of dollars from governments that execute homosexuals, and was married to the man who signed the Defense of Marriage Act, the gay mafia had managed to depict her as gay-friendly while depicting Donald Trump, a longtime gay marriage supporter, as an enemy of gay rights.

Even more perverse than the official gay take on Trump vs. Clinton is the official gay party line on Islam. To get a good picture of this party line, all you need to do is glance through the archives of The Advocate, a gay news magazine.

“Islam is not intrinsically homophobic,” wrote Trudy Ring in a 2013 Advocate report about Muslim “activists and scholars” who, she claimed, were making progress in their effort to make Islam “more welcoming to LGBT people.” In a 2014 piece, Stevie St. John promoted a Muslim lesbian’s claim that the Koran “prescribes no punishment for being gay or transgender.”

True, but wildly deceptive: in fact, the Koran contains explicit condemnations of homosexual conduct, while the punishments for such conduct are spelled out in Islamic law. Then there’s the 2017 Advocate article in which one Samra Habib happily noted that after the Orlando Pulse nightclub massacre, many news media eschewed anti-Islamic “finger-pointing” and instead “offered many queer Muslims a platform to share how they too were in mourning and how they often felt doubly ostracized” – victimized, in other words, by both “Islamophobia and homophobia.”

Any whitewash of Islam is reprehensible. But when gays whitewash Islam in a publication read by other gays, it’s downright dangerous. No ideology on Earth is more anti-gay. In ten Muslim countries, gay sex is punishable by death. To pretend that there’s any way of reconciling homosexuality and Islam, or any chance of transforming Islam into a gay-friendly faith, is to encourage a menacing fantasy.

So it’s promising to observe that as Islam plants its roots ever more deeply in the soil of Western Europe, more and more European gays are wising up, breaking ranks with the fools and liars in their midst who preach that the “gay community” and the ummah are natural allies, and casting their ballots for politicians whom they’d previously scorned. CONTINUE AT SITE

Economic boom continues with electronics industry domination and infrastructure growth through trillion-dollar Belt and Road Initiative

Not since the British garrison at Singapore surrendered to Gen. Tomoyuki Yamashita in 1942 has Western opinion of an Asian power changed so fast. When China’s 2015 stock market bubble popped, prevailing Western opinion held that China’s economic boom would flame out in a debt crisis comparable to America’s subprime disaster of 2008 or the near collapse of Europe’s southern tier in 2013.

Now that China’s tradeable stock market has risen by 43% during 2017 in US dollar terms (with the MSCI-based ETF as a benchmark), Western opinion is melting up. Bridgewater, the world’s largest hedge fund, is raising money for a China investment vehicle. Bank of Americanow predicts Asian stocks will double in the present bull run. “Hedge Funds Used to Love Shorting China. Now, Not So Much,” declared a Bloomberg headline Sept. 12.

Bottom of Form

The same applies to Western evaluation of China’s standing as a world power. Graham Allison’s The Thucydides Trap, a plea not to oppose China’s strategic challenge to the United States, now sits on the desk of every senior staffer at the National Security Council courtesy of President Trump’s national security adviser, Gen. H.R. McMasters.

Allison puts America in the position of the “established power,” like Sparta on the eve of the Peloponnesian war of 431-404 B.C.E., and China in the position of the “emerging power,” like Athens, arguing that the rise of China is inevitable. Allison’s book has many flaws, as I try to show in the forthcoming issue of Claremont Review of Books, but it depicts a vibrant, technologically-driven Chinese economy.

It will shock Americans who have been told for years that China merely copies Western technology by stealing trade secrets, and for that reason alone Prof. Allison’s book fairly might be called the most influential book of the year.

Allison warns:

In the three and a half decades since Ronald Reagan became president, by the best measurement of economic performance, China has soared from 10 percent the size of the US to 60 percent in 2007, 100 percent in 2014, and 115 percent today. If the current trend continues, China’s economy will be a full 50 percent larger than that of the US by 2023. By 2040 it could be nearly three times as large. That would mean a China with triple America’s resources to use in influencing outcomes in international relations. Such gross economic, political, and military advantages would create a globe beyond anything American policymakers can now imagine.

A sense of resignation, if not outright defeatism, pervades the Trump White House where China is concerned. Washington is dependent on Beijing in the matter of North Korea’s nuclear ambitions; it has no military option as matters stand, and no appetite to undertake the formidable investments in ballistic missile defense that would be required to contain the North Korean threat.

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY: Despair and hope are the powerful forces that drive global terrorism. To better deal with this threat, the West must combine its counterterrorism efforts with harsher responses that will sow doubts in jihadists’ minds about their chosen path.https://besacenter.org/perspectives-papers/undercurrents-fueling-terrorism/

In the wake of the recent ISIS attack in Barcelona, experts on Islamic terrorism were called on, as they so often are, to explain the phenomenon. This time the experts pointed to a radical imam who had incited second-generation immigrants, organized a terrorist network, and spurred the perpetrators into action.

One major question remains unanswered: Why? Generations of academic researchers have delved and will continue to delve into this issue. In the meantime, it is worthwhile to review some of the factors necessary to deal with the phenomenon of terrorism on a practical level.

As far as the immediate operational aspects of security and thwarting terrorist attacks are concerned, the question of why has no practical significance. It is similar to saving a person suffering from a heart attack. In such an emergency, the saving of a life depends on a series of technical, efficient, and immediate actions, not on inquiries into primary causes of the disease. But once the situation has stabilized, a comprehensive examination of the precipitating circumstances is necessary. One’s way of life might need to change, and the question of “why did this happen?” becomes useful.

Dealing with the terrorist phenomenon similarly requires a two-pronged approach. The first is operational: the practical test of counterterrorism and security responses. The second is more theoretical: the examination of the full range of sociological, economic, and religious circumstances that drive this phenomenon.

Some say terrorism is fueled by the perpetrators’ sense of despair and alienation. To be sure, poverty and deprivation in many Islamic countries have prompted an emigration trend, and immigrant hubs often breed a sense of alienation. This is especially true among second-generation youths frustrated by the unbridgeable gap between their situation as immigrants and the established society around them.

But there is an additional hypothesis worth considering. Despair and alienation are not the only reasons for terrorism. Hope is also a motive.

Many times, it is precisely those who had hoped to integrate into affluent Western society who choose the path of terrorism. Some of the world’s most notorious terrorists, such as those who perpetrated the 9/11 attacks, studied at leading Western universities. At a recent international symposium I attended, I learned from a Malaysian researcher that in his country, it is mostly outstanding students with exceptional prospects who choose to join ISIS.

Projecting despair and alienation onto everything may blind one to the existence of other significant motives no less essential to understanding this phenomenon. Understanding others means understanding that they are not necessarily just like us. Besides security and prosperity, people also seek meaning. This is the crux of the humanistic debate: can one be content simply with the gospel of prosperity offered by the West?

The rational fundamentalist

This is where religious fervor, the kind the modern West does not know how to deal with, rears its head. In his book The End of Faith: Religion, Terror, and the Future of Reason, author Sam Harris discusses the challenge the Western world faces in the rise of religiously motivated terrorism. Harris argues that religion is an irrational factor – a “fountain of violence” – and believes it should be removed entirely from the political and public spheres.

Last decade, Ronald and Penelope Jones were being feted for their work as foster parents. Now their suburban Surrey home was raided in an investigation into the train bombing in London.

The Joneses had won praise for fostering hundreds of children. But their growing interest in taking in refugees from Muslim countries turned their pleasant home with its wooden fences and green backyard into a ticking time bomb.

And that bomb may have gone off at the Parsons Green station leaving behind flash burns and horror.

Earlier, the Joneses had admitted that, “We’ve had a real mix of children from Iraq, Eritrea, Syria, Albania and Afghanistan.” The tidal wave of refugees from these countries has swept across Europe bringing terror and death.

Ronald Jones, 88, and Penelope Jones, 71, like so many well-meaning Westerners, had no idea what they were letting themselves in for until the police were hammering at their door. Now they themselves have been turned into refugees, seeking shelters with relatives, while the police search for clues to the latest terror attack.

The couple became interested in fostering “refugees” when the media barraged helpless listeners with sob stories of Syrian suffering. But while they spoke often of children, the actual migrants are adults.

At the center of the case is Yahyah Farroukh, a Syrian, in his twenties. Farroukh was no child.

Neighbors described a constant flow of traffic to the Jones home. The visitors wore the traditional Islamic clothing often associated with the Jihadists who are the core of the European terror threat.

Prayer mats were set out in the garden. And there were constant cell phone conversations.

Farroukh allegedly invaded Europe by taking a migrant boat from Egypt to Italy.

Another of the alleged Jones “refugees” is an 18-year-old Iraqi from Baghdad who had apparently been monitored by law enforcement. And may have even been previously arrested. A refugee charity allegedly helped bring him to the UK. And arranged to have him placed with the Joneses.

The Iraqi had overloaded even the endless generosity of the Joneses who reportedly found him troublesome and dangerous. And that must have taken some doing.

It was this Iraqi whom police may suspect planted the bomb at Parsons Green station. And when the bomb went off on a crowded train on Friday, the holiest day in the Islamic religion, the manhunt began.

The Iraqi refugee was arrested trying to buy a ticket to Calais.

Calais to Dover is the route that refugees take to penetrate the UK. The Joneses had spoken of one “boy” in their care who had “managed to get in a lorry travelling through Calais.”

The Iraqi refugee suspect had originally come through Calais, but now he was headed the other way.

Have Islamic terrorism and violence – in Muslim and non-Muslim countries – been extrinsic or intrinsic elements of Islam?http://bit.ly/2wooego

Since September 11, 2001, there have been 31,722 Islamic terrorist attacks, mostly hitting Muslims. In August, 2017, there were 180 Islamic terrorist attacks in 32 countries, resulting in 1,014 murdered and 1,090 injured.

Christianity is on the verge of extinction in the Middle East. In the past century, over 50% of Middle East Christians emigrated or were killed. According to the May 13, 2015 US House Foreign Affairs Committee testimony, “Christianity could be eradicated from large swaths of the Middle East in the next five years…. In the last decade, the Christian community in Iraq has plummeted from 1.5 million to under 300,000, half of whom are displaced…. [In Muslim countries], there is also real persecution of [Muslim] Yazidis, Turkomen, Shia and Sunni….”

The New York Times reported: “Nearly every day seems to bring a new horror to the streets of Western Europe…. Death and injury have been dealt out by truck, ax, handgun, kebab knife and bomb….”

11 million Muslims have been killed since 1948, of which 35,000 (0.3%) were killed during Arab-Israeli wars. Over 90% were killed by fellow Muslims.

This background – which is consistent with inter-Muslim relations since the rise of Islam in the seventh century – begs the following questions:

1. Is it logical to assume that dramatic concessions to rogue Muslim regimes would convince them to accord “the infidel” that which they have denied their fellow-“believers” for 1,400 years: peaceful-coexistence and tolerance?

2. What are the roots of Muslim aggression against “believers” and “infidels”?

3. Is Muslim contempt toward Western culture extrinsic or intrinsic to Islam?

4. Has the absence of democracy and civil liberties, in all Arab countries, been consistent or at variance with Islam?

5. Why is Muslim violence intensifying in Europe – as Muslim immigration to Europe is expanding – despite the goodwill showered upon the Muslim world and Muslim immigrants by most European governments and societies?

6. Why has there been an expansion of no-go zones in European cities – forbidden to Christian “infidels” – simultaneously with the proliferation of Muslim organizations, in Europe, calling for Jihad (holy war against the “infidel”)?

7. Is the motto of the Muslim Brotherhood – the largest Islamic transnational terror organization – consistent or at variance with Islam: “Allah is our objective, Muhammad is our leader, the Quran is our constitution, Jihad (holy war) is our venue and Shuhada (martyrdom) on behalf of Allah is our wish”?

8. Why has the US – which has never ruled Muslim societies – been targeted by Islamic violence/terrorism, while the USSR/Russia – which has aggressively ruled over millions of Muslims – enjoyed preferential Arab/Muslim treatment?