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Three senior leaders of one of Switzerland’s most visible Islamic organizations were indicted Thursday after a nearly two-year investigation into videos that one of the leaders made in Syria, including interviews with senior al-Qaeda leaders.

The charges were announced by the Office of the Attorney General, which will be heard by the Federal Criminal Court.

The Local reported:

Swiss federal prosecutors have brought charges against leading members of the country’s largest Islamic organization in a criminal probe into jihadist propaganda.

Swiss media reported on Thursday that the president and two members of the governing board of the Islamic Central Council of Switzerland (ICCS) had been charged with violating the ban on groups including Al-Qaeda and Islamic State (IS).

Blick named the three as Nicolas Blancho, ICCS president, Naim Cherni, and Qaasim Illi.

With respect to the charges, prosecutors believe the videos made inside Syria were more than just documentaries.

According to Swissinfo:

The specific allegation against the head of the “culture production department” at the ICCS is that between the end of September 2015 and mid-October 2015 he made films in Syria with a leading member of the banned terrorist organisation al-Qaeda in Syria, the OAG said in a statement on Thursday.

The films were subsequently used as propaganda for the al-Qaeda member concerned. Two videos were published on YouTube, both of which were endorsed by the head of the “public relations and information department” at the ICCS and actively promoted via social media and at a public event by all three accused: by the committee members mentioned and by the ICCS president.

The OAG alleges that the accused offered the leading al-Qaeda member in question “a prominent multilingual multimedia platform from which to advantageously portray and promote both himself and the ideology of al-Qaeda, the terrorist organisation he represents”.

The OAG claims to have proof that this increased the appeal of al-Qaeda to existing and potential members around the world, thus promoting the organisation’s criminal activities.

The investigation was opened by Swiss authorities in December 2015 when Naim Cherni published a lengthy interview with Jabhat al-Nusra leader Abdullah al-Muhaysini.

At the time, prosecutors alleged:

The German citizen is accused of having presented his journey to embattled regions of Syria in a video for propaganda purposes, without having explicitly distanced himself from Al-Qaïda activities in Syria. In particular, the accused party is accused of having interviewed a senior member of the jihad umbrella organisation Jaysh al-Fath (“Army of Conquest”), of which the Syrian Al-Qaïda branch Jabhat al-Nusra (“Support Front”) is also a member.

Prosecutors asked YouTube to remove the videos, though a copy of the interview with al-Muhaysini (with English closed-captions) is still available on their site:

Many migrants simply refused to leave, disappeared, or their home countries refused to receive them.

The European Commission published a “report card” on the EU member states’ “progress” in taking the allocated quotas of migrants. Even Sweden, on the brink of societal collapse from the influx of migrants, was told that it was only “close” to reaching its quota.

ISIS apparently has at its disposal some 11,000 stolen blank Syrian passports that it could put to use in order to smuggle its terrorists into Europe under fake identities; at the same time, more European ISIS fighters are expected to return to Europe. Why does the EU want to make it easy for them?

On September 13, the President of the European Commission, the executive arm of the European Union, Jean Claude Juncker gave his State of the Union Address to the European Parliament, saying:

“Last year… Europe was battered and bruised by a year that shook our very foundation. We only had two choices. Either come together around a positive European agenda or each retreat into our own corners… I argued for unity. I proposed a positive agenda to help create … a Europe that protects, empowers and defends… Over the past twelve months, the European Parliament has helped bring this agenda to life. We continue to make progress with each passing day… In the last year, we saw all 27 leaders… renew their vows… to our Union. All of this leads me to believe: the wind is back in Europe’s sails.”

Most EU citizens probably wondered what EU Juncker was talking about. The EU Juncker inhabits does not appear to be the same one most Europeans live in.

Jean Claude Juncker, President of the European Commission, gives his State of the Union Address to the European Parliament on September 13. (Image source: European Parliament)

This past year in Europe, a terrorist attack was attempted every seven days, on average. Juncker delivered his speech just two days before yet another terrorist attack, this time on the London underground, perpetrated by an 18-year old migrant. The European Commission, however, does not appear particularly concerned with such matters. Juncker mentioned terrorism only very briefly toward the very end of his long speech, almost as if it were an afterthought:

“The European Union must also be stronger in fighting terrorism. In the past three years, we have made real progress. But we still lack the means to act quickly in case of cross-border terrorist threats. This is why I call for a European intelligence unit that ensures data concerning terrorists and foreign fighters are automatically shared among intelligence services and with the police”.

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.