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G20 Leaders Scold Trump on Climate: Consider Paris Agreement ‘Irreversible’ By Tyler O’Neil

In a parting shot, German Chancellor Angela Merkel rebuked President Donald Trump for announcing his intention to withdraw from the Paris climate accord. She joined the leaders of 18 other countries to attack him as the G-20 summit concluded Saturday.

“Unfortunately — and I deplore this — the United States of America left the climate agreement, or rather announced their intention of doing this,” Merkel said as she closed the summit and presented the G20 declaration document. That document acknowledged Trump’s decision to withdraw from the agreement, but argued that withdrawal is impossible.

“We take note of the decision of the United States of America to withdraw from the Paris Agreement,” the leaders wrote. “The United States of America announced it will immediately cease the implementation of its current nationally-determined contribution and affirms its strong commitment to an approach that lowers emissions while supporting economic growth and improving energy security needs.”

Despite Trump’s decision to withdraw from the agreement, he promised to help countries in other ways. “The United States of America states it will endeavor to work closely with other countries to help them access and use fossil fuels more cleanly and efficiently and help deploy renewable and other clean energy sources,” the document noted.

While the leaders acknowledged Trump’s intent to remove America from the Paris accord, they added a passive-aggressive note: “The Leaders of the other G20 members state that the Paris Agreement is irreversible.” But as the Paris accord had no enforcement mechanism, opponents have long derided it as toothless, and this rebuke seems to confirm that there will be no real consequences for Trump’s decision.

Despite her attack on Trump’s climate position, Merkel did seem to make concessions to the American president’s trade policies. “This is all about fighting protectionism and also unfair trade practices,” she said. The declaration noted “the role of legitimate trade defense” in combatting “unfair trade practices,” echoing Trump’s criticism of international trade agreements during the 2016 campaign.

During that campaign, Trump won on an “America First” platform, vowing to pull the country out of several multilateral trade deals. Since his inauguration, he has stepped back some of the isolationist rhetoric, but he has threatened to impose new tariffs on steel imports, which prompted European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker to threaten retaliation.

Many liberals overreacted to Trump’s withdrawal from the Paris accord. Left-wing bundler Tom Steyer said doing so would be a “traitorous act of war” against the American people.

But the science is very far from “settled” on climate change. Climate models fail over and over again. Senate Democrats launched an inquisition last year aimed at silencing free inquiry and speech about this issue. Activists like Bill Nye give very unscientific answers when pressed on the issue, and a Georgia Tech climatologist resigned rather than give up her scientific integrity by toeing the party line.

Militants Behead Nine Civilians in Attack on Kenyan Village Al Qaeda-linked group al-Shabaab has vowed retribution on Kenya for sending troops to Somalia to fight it….see note please

These barbarians are called “militants” ….?????? rsk

NAIROBI, Kenya—Al-Shabaab extremists from neighboring Somalia beheaded nine civilians in an early-morning attack on a village in southeast Kenya, local officials said Saturday, as concerns grew that the group had taken up a bloody new strategy.

The attack occurred in Jima village in Lamu County, said James Ole Serian, who leads a task force of security agencies combating al-Shabaab.

Beheadings by al-Shabaab have been rare in Kenya, where the extremist group has carried out dozens of deadly attacks over the years.

The al Qaeda-linked al-Shabaab has vowed retribution on Kenya for sending troops in 2011 to Somalia to fight the group.

Saturday’s attack occurred in the Pandaguo area, where al-Shabaab fighters engaged security agencies in a day-long battle three days ago.

A police report says about 15 al-Shabaab fighters on Saturday attacked Jima village and seized men, killing them with knives.

Al-Shabaab in recent months also has increased attacks with homemade bombs, killing at least 46 in Lamu and Mandera counties.

The increase in attacks presents a huge problem for Kenya’s security agencies ahead of the Aug. 8 presidential election, said security analyst and former U.S. Marine Andrew Franklin. On election day, security agencies will be strained while attempting stop any possible violence and al-Shabaab could take advantage, he said.

Kenya is among five countries contributing troops to an African Union force that is bolstering Somalia’s fragile central government against al-Shabaab’s insurgency. Of the troop-contributing countries, Kenya has borne the brunt of retaliatory attacks from al-Shabaab.

G-20 Riot Leaves Trail of Destruction as German Officials Scramble for Answers Hundreds of officers and protesters were injured in overnight violence; 265 people were detained by police By Anton Troianovski and Andrea Thomas

HAMBURG—A riot that raged for hours just a mile from the Group of 20 meeting site left German officials struggling to explain Saturday how protests that had long been predicted spiraled out of control.

Only after SWAT teams, riot police and water cannons swept block by block were authorities able to end the overnight riots in the left-leaning Schanzenviertel neighborhood, a 20-minute walk from the venue where leaders of the world’s 20 largest economies continued their two-day meeting Saturday.

Stores were looted, barricades and cars set on fire, and officers attacked with rocks, bottles and slingshots, Hamburg police said. Authorities moved to quell the riots only after they had raged for hours, according to several shopkeepers in one of the hardest-hit streets.
A police spokesman said intelligence suggesting some of the roughly 1,500 rioters were preparing to pelt authorities from buildings with cobblestones and Molotov cocktails had caused the delay. “We had prepared for the G-20 summit to be attacked, not the people of Hamburg,” Hamburg police spokesman Timo Zill told ZDF public television.

The Schanzenviertel riot appeared to be the most violent flare-up as tens of thousands of people protested across the city. By Saturday morning, 265 people had been detained and 213 officers injured, according to the police. An unspecified number of protesters were also injured.

Officials from the host government have said they needed to hold the annual summit in a metropolitan area to ensure there were enough hotel rooms, and that they wanted to show off one of Germany’s most international cities.

But critics claiming the government had miscalculated intensified their attacks Saturday. The conservative opposition leader in the Hamburg legislature, André Trepoll, slammed center-left Mayor Olaf Scholz for going easy on left-wing extremism. The Bild tabloid, Germany’s top-selling paper, said both Mr. Scholz and German Chancellor Angela Merkel —who is up for re-election in September—bore responsibility for the events.

“The feeling of general security, which the state must guarantee, has ceased to exist in Hamburg in the last 48 hours,” Julian Reichelt, a top Bild editor, wrote in Saturday’s edition. “The horrific message of Hamburg is: if the mob wants to rule, it will rule.”

After the summit ended Mr. Scholz and Ms. Merkel together met with several dozen police officers and thanked them for their work.

“Some people exercised unimaginable violence,” Mr. Scholz said. “I thank those who say that it must nevertheless be possible for such summit meetings to take place in cities such as Hamburg and in a democratic country such as Germany.” CONTINUE AT SITE

Deadly Tale: Christian Converts from Islam by Majid Rafizadeh

Most of all, the Islamist leaders fear that as a former Muslim, you have true knowledge of what Islam actually is, and you may disclose that information to others.

“Not only has [Maryam Naghash Zargaran] been detained unjustly because of her Christian faith, but the Iranian authorities have denied her urgently needed medical care.” — U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF).

“For more than four years, Maryam Naghash Zargaran has suffered in an Iranian prison, falsely charged with ‘propagating against the Islamic regime and collusion intended to harm national security.’ The Iranian government must cease its targeting of Christians and release Maryam and other religious prisoners of conscience.” — Clifford D. May, Commissioner, USCIRF.

It is currently being spouted through all forms of media — impossible to ignore — you will hear claims over and over again by many radical Imams, Muslim scholars, and preachers that Islam is a religion of inclusiveness, that anyone can become a Muslim just by muttering a few words. It seems quite simple, right?

This is not new. I grew up hearing all these claims in Iran, under Islamic laws. To uninformed ears, this can sound almost magical. What is important, however, are the many more significant requirements the imams conveniently leave out. Above all, once you become a Muslim, there is no way to turn back. Your faith is under the control of the extremist imams, sheikhs, governments, or simply the community. You cannot just decide to abandon Islam and go back to how you were living. The penalty of attempting this is death.

Additionally, those imams and sheikhs who will have you believe how easy it is to join Islam, claim that Islam accepts Christianity and Judaism (“people of the book”), and that there is absolutely no difference between the Abrahamic religions. Sounds nice to most ears. But it is absolutely false. Let us take a quick look at some people who left Islam for other “Abrahamic” religions, particularly Christianity.

Maryam Naghash Zargaran, a 38 year-old Christian convert from Islam, is currently facing serious health issues in one of the world’s most vicious jails; Evin prison in Tehran.

A former children’s music teacher, Zargaran became acquainted with teachings of Christianity at young age. Even though she grew up in a Muslim family and under Sharia, she found Christianity to be her true faith. She made a decision to convert, and dedicated her life to helping children, and ended up at an orphanage. She did her best to care for the children, and provide them with the stability and love they had been missing.

What harm was Zargaran doing to the society? She was contributing the society doing charity work and privately practicing her faith. But, if you live under Islamic laws, your faith is neither private nor personal. Your faith is directly controlled by Islamist authorities or the state.

Europe’s Mass Migration: The Leaders vs. the Public by Douglas Murray

“[T]he more generous you are, the more word gets around about this — which in turn motivates more people to leave Africa. Germany cannot possibly take in the huge number of people who are wanting to make their way to Europe.” — Bill Gates.

The annual survey of EU citizens, recently carried out by Project 28, found a unanimity on the issue of migration almost unequalled across an entire continent. The survey found that 76% of the public across the EU believe that the EU’s handling of the migration crisis of recent years has been “poor”. There is not one country in the EU in which the majority of the public differs from that consensus.

At the same time as the public has known that what the politicians are doing is unsustainable, there has been a vast effort to control what the European publics have been allowed to say. German Chancellor Angela Merkel went so far as to urge Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg to limit posts on social media that were critical of her policies.

Is Bill Gates a Nazi, racist, “Islamophobe” or fascist? As PG Wodehouse’s most famous butler would have said, “The eventuality would appear to be a remote one”. So far nobody in any position of influence has made such claims about the world’s largest philanthropist. Possibly — just possibly — something is changing in Europe.

In an interview published July 2 in the German paper Welt Am Sonntag, the co-founder of Microsoft addressed the ongoing European migration crisis. What he said was surprising:

“On the one hand you want to demonstrate generosity and take in refugees. But the more generous you are, the more word gets around about this — which in turn motivates more people to leave Africa. Germany cannot possibly take in the huge number of people who are wanting to make their way to Europe.”

These words would be uncontroversial to the average citizen of Europe. The annual survey of EU citizens recently carried out by Project 28 found a unanimity on the issue of migration almost unequalled across an entire continent. The survey found, for instance, that 76% of the public across the EU believe that the EU’s handling of the migration crisis of recent years has been “poor”. There is not one country in the EU in which the majority of the public differs from this consensus. In countries such as Italy and Greece, which have been on the frontline of the crisis of recent years, that figure rockets up. In these countries, nine out of ten citizens think that the EU has handled the migrant crisis poorly.

How could they think otherwise? The German government’s 2015 announcement that normal asylum and border procedures were no longer in operation exacerbated an already disastrous situation. The populations of Germany and Sweden increased by 2% in one year alone because of that influx of migrants. These are monumental changes to happen at such a speed to any society.

Germany: Chechen Sharia Police Terrorize Berlin by Soeren Kern

Threats of violence against “errant” women are viewed as “acts of patriotism.”

“They have come to Germany because they wanted to live in Germany, but they keep trying to turn it into Chechnya with its medieval ways.” — Social worker interviewed by Meduza.

“Everyone’s attention is fixed on the Syrians, but the Chechens are the most dangerous group. We are not paying sufficient attention to this.” — Police in Frankfurt (Oder).

A hundred Islamists are now openly enforcing Sharia law on the streets of Berlin, according to local police who are investigating a recent string of violent assaults in the German capital.

The self-appointed morality police involve Salafists from Chechnya, a predominantly Sunni Muslim region in Russia. The vigilantes are using threats of violence to discourage Chechen migrants from integrating into German society; they are also promoting the establishment of a parallel Islamic legal system in Germany. German authorities appear unable to stop them.

The Sharia patrol came to public light in May 2017, when Chechen Salafists released a video warning other Chechens in Germany that those who fail to comply with Islamic law and adat, a traditional Chechen code of behavior, will be killed. The video’s existence was reported by Meduza, a Russian-language independent media organization based in Latvia. The video, which circulated through WhatsApp, an online messaging service, showed a hooded man aiming a pistol at the camera. Speaking in Chechen, he declared:

“Muslim brothers and sisters. Here, in Europe, certain Chechen women and men who look like women do unspeakable things. You know it; I know it; everybody knows it. This is why we hereby declare: For now, there are about 80 of us. More people are willing to join. Those who have lost their national identity, who flirt with men of other ethnic groups and marry them, Chechen women who have chosen the wrong path and those creatures who call themselves Chechen men — given half a chance, we will set all of them straight. Having sworn on the Koran, we go out onto the streets. This is our declaration of intent; do not say that you were not warned; do not say that you did not know. May Allah grant us peace and set our feet on the path towards justice.”

According to Meduza, the declaration was read by a representative of a Berlin-based gang of about one hundred members, headed by former henchmen of Dzhokhar Dudayev, the late Chechen separatist leader. All Berliners of Chechen origin who were interviewed by Meduza said they were aware of the gang’s existence.

The video surfaced after nude images of a 20-year-old Chechen woman who lives in Berlin were sent en masse from her stolen cellphone to every person on her contact list. Within an hour, the woman’s uncle demanded to speak with her parents. According to Meduza, they agreed to “resolve the issue” within the family by sending the woman back to Chechnya, where she would be killed to restore the family’s honor. German police intervened just hours before the woman was to board a plane bound for Russia.

After the woman was placed in protective police custody, her circumstance went from being a family issue to a communal one. According to Meduza, it is now the duty of any Chechen man, regardless of his ties to her or her family, to find and punish her. “It is none of their business, but it is an unwritten code of conduct,” said the woman, who has since cut her hair and now wears colored contact lenses in an effort to hide her identity. She said that she intends to change her name and undergo plastic surgery. “If you don’t change your name and your face, they will hunt you down and kill you,” she said. Although the woman graduated from a German high school, she hardly ever leaves her apartment because it is too dangerous. “I don’t want to be Chechen anymore,” she said.

According to Meduza, at least half of the population of single Chechen girls in Germany have enough compromising information on their cellphones to be considered guilty of violating adat:

“Associating with men of other nationalities, smoking, drinking alcohol, visiting hookah lounges, discotheques or even public swimming pools can cause communal wrath. A single photograph in a public WhatsApp chat can outcast an entire family and the rest of the community would be obliged to cease all communication with them. With everyone under suspicion and everyone responsible for one another, Chechen girls say they are sometimes approached by strangers in the street who chastise them for their appearance, including for wearing bright lipstick. The theft of a cellphone and the subsequent posting of compromising material is a hard blow; the dishonored person has no one to turn to and the one who posted the victim’s photos does not risk anything.”

Good News and Bad News From Poland By David P. Goldman

President Trump’s speech yesterday in Warsaw was better than inspiring. It was calculating and subtle, and sent strong messages to both our friends and adversaries. The crowd of cavilers who abhor Trump as an ignoramus should hang their heads in shame.

The president said:

We are confronted by another oppressive ideology — one that seeks to export terrorism and extremism all around the globe. America and Europe have suffered one terror attack after another. We’re going to get it to stop … While we will always welcome new citizens who share our values and love our people, our borders will always be closed to terrorism and extremism of any kind.

Today, the West is also confronted by the powers that seek to test our will, undermine our confidence, and challenge our interests. To meet new forms of aggression, including propaganda, financial crimes, and cyberwarfare, we must adapt our alliance to compete effectively in new ways and on all new battlefields.

We urge Russia to cease its destabilizing activities in Ukraine and elsewhere, and its support for hostile regimes — including Syria and Iran — and to instead join the community of responsible nations in our fight against common enemies and in defense of civilization itself.

There is a double message to Moscow here.

First, the United States has drawn a red line at the Polish border, making clear that America will shed blood if need be to defend its Polish ally. Second, the line is drawn around Poland, not Ukraine. The United States is prepared to reach an agreement with Russia over Ukraine if Russia stops destabilizing Ukraine and if it leashes its Iranian dog. The United States has sent a clear message — as the president reminded his Warsaw audience — that it will not tolerate the tolerance of terror by the Saudis or other Sunni allies. We expect Russia to do the same with its Shi’ite allies.

That is tough, but realistic. Trump is willing to negotiate with the Russians, but from a position of strength, in solidarity with our allies who have suffered historically from Russian aggression, and with unambiguous lines in the sand. It was a brilliantly crafted speech, the slickest as well as the most inspiring foreign policy address of any American president since Ronald Reagan.

Trump also gave Poland and other Eastern European countries critical backing in their fight against the European Union’s attempt to force them to accept their quota of Muslim migrants.

That’s the good news.

The bad news is that Poland itself is probably past the demographic point of no return. The president intoned:

While Poland could be invaded and occupied, and its borders even erased from the map, it could never be erased from history or from your hearts. In those dark days, you have lost your land but you never lost your pride.

So it is with true admiration that I can say today, that from the farms and villages of your countryside to the cathedrals and squares of your great cities, Poland lives, Poland prospers, and Poland prevails.

Maybe not so much. With a total fertility rate of just 1.3 children per female, Poland is headed for demographic disaster. Poland today has one retiree for every four working-age citizens. By 2045 there will be one retiree for every two working-age citizens, and the burden of elderly dependence will crush the Polish economy. In a century, the Polish population will shrink to insignificance:

Only one major country has come back from the demographic brink, and that is Russia. At the collapse of Communism, Russian women were bearing just 1.1 children on average. That has since risen to almost 1.8, just below the American level. The demographers have not yet offered us an adequate explanation of this unprecedented turnaround, but I suspect that it coincides with a revival of religion in the former fortress of atheism. Some 80% of Russian women now identify as Orthodox Christian compared to 30% just after the collapse of Communism, according to the Pew Forum.

Paris police round up thousands of refugees camping in the streets By Rick Moran

The refugee crisis in France is getting worse as authorities say that up to 500 migrants arrive in Paris every week and join makeshift encampments that pose a “security and public health risk” to residents.

The camps are situated on the sidewalks near a refugee processing center. Paris police are now conducting round-ups of the migrants, moving them to temporary lodgings all over the city.

Reuters:

The migrants were being escorted onto buses to be taken to temporary lodgings such as gymnasium buildings in Paris and areas ringing the capital. Live TV footage showed what appeared to be a peaceful evacuation.

Interior Minister Gerard Collomb said earlier this week the situation was getting out of hand with more than 400 arrivals a week in the area.

“It’s always the same problem,” he said on Thursday. “First off you say ‘I’m going to open a center for 500 people’ and next thing you know you have 3,000 or 4,000 people and you’re left having to sort the problem out.”

He has been asked by President Emmanuel Macron to produce a plan to accelerate processing of asylum requests with a view to deciding within six months who will be granted refugee status and who gets sent back.

The camp in Paris has swollen despite the creation of two new centers by Paris City Hall to register and temporarily house migrants arriving in the city.

Local authorities have also reported a rise in recent weeks in the number of migrants roaming the streets of the northern port city of Calais, where a sprawling illegal camp was razed to the ground last November and its inhabitants dispatched to other parts of France.

Calais, from which migrants hope to reach Britain, has come to symbolize Europe’s difficulty in dealing with a record influx of men, women and children who have fled their native countries.

Last year, police cleared a huge refugee camp outside Calais, but it didn’t do much good. Another one has sprung up to take its place.

As for Paris, police made no mention of it, but the city has become a “no-go” zone for tourists because of the increase in crime. It doesn’t help that authorities allow the refugees to sleep and congregate on the sidewalks in the middle of the city. Spreading the problem out by moving the migrants to various places around the city is likely to increase crime in those areas, too.

France has been stricter than some European countries in granting asylum requests, but the number of refugees keeps climbing. Immigration was not the top issue in the recent presidential and parliamentary elections, but it’s still there as a problem. Eventually, it’s probable that, like almost everywhere else in Europe, there will be a voter backlash. What, then, will new president Macron do?

When Donald Met Vlad We’ll learn what Putin thinks of Trump by what he tries to get away with.

By the time President Trump sat down in Hamburg, Germany with Russia’s Vladimir Putin, the media hype had built the meeting into virtually the second coming of the Reykjavik Summit. The agreement that fell out of the Hamburg bilateral was the announcement of a cease-fire in southwestern Syria.

Any cessation of hostilities in Syria is welcome, and we can hope it will become the basis for similar agreements on the country’s more complex northern war fronts. But that would require Mr. Putin to abandon his grand strategy for re-establishing Russian influence across the Middle East, in partnership with Iran and Syria. That would take a real summit and more planning than went into the Hamburg sit-down.

Messrs. Trump and Putin brought only their foreign ministers into the meeting, suggesting that the primary goal here was to take each other’s measure. Both men famously pride themselves in their ability to size up adversaries—Mr. Trump as a negotiator of real-estate deals and Mr. Putin as a former KGB recruiter of foreign agents.

The American and Russian sides also bring distinctly different intentions into meetings like this one. For the American side, prodded by an insistent media narrative, the goal is to discover areas of possible “cooperation.” In Mr. Putin’s world, such a meeting has one purpose: to discover if he will be able to press Russian interests forward without significant pushback from the U.S. President.

Mr. Putin concluded that Barack Obama would pose minimal resistance, and so he seized Crimea, invaded eastern Ukraine and adopted Syria’s Bashar Assad. He’s still in all three places.

We can’t guess what Mr. Putin made of Donald Trump. Mr. Trump for his part enjoys his reputation for unpredictability, and he confirmed this by pressing Mr. Putin on Russia’s efforts to disrupt the U.S. presidential election. Mr. Putin denied any meddling, but the Russian now has a new element in the Trump equation to think about.

Until now, Mr. Trump has let the Russian leader believe their dealings might be man-to-man. But by raising Russian interference in a U.S. election, Mr. Trump made clear to Vlad that he’ll be dealing with the President of all the American people. That sounds like a positive outcome.

Trump, Putin Spar on Hacks, Act on Syria Two leaders hold highly anticipated bilateral in Hamburg amid questions about Russian interference in U.S. elections, policies in Syria and Ukraine By Peter Nicholas

HAMBURG—Coming face-to-face in a highly anticipated meeting, the American and Russian presidents disagreed Friday over election interference and about the best approach to North Korea, but made tentative progress toward curbing the bloodshed in Syria’s long-running war.

President Donald Trump and Russia’s Vladimir Putin spoke for more than two hours Friday on the sidelines of the Group of 20 leading nations summit in Germany. The meeting went so much longer than planned that first lady Melania Trump looked in at one point to see if she could coax them to wrap up.

It didn’t work. They kept talking another hour.

“It was an extraordinarily important meeting—so much for us to talk about,” Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, who was in the room, told reporters afterward. “And it was a good start.”

Mr. Trump’s interest lay not only in speaking in detail with the Russian leader, but also in trying to shape the narrative that emerged about the meeting. Toward that end, Mr. Tillerson provided a round-by-round account of the conversation, answering questions from reporters about a spectrum of international issues.

The first issue raised by Mr. Trump was one that has vexed him most at home: whether Russia interfered with the 2016 presidential race to help him win. Before Friday, it was far from clear Mr. Trump would mention it at all. As recently as the day before, Mr. Trump cast doubt on the U.S. intelligence community’s conclusion that Russia interfered in the election and was prepared to do it again.

“No one really knows for sure,” Mr. Trump said.

In private, however, the president told Mr. Putin that Americans are upset about Russia’s actions and want them to stop, Mr. Tillerson said. The president invoked a bill passed 98-2 by the Senate last month that would slap new sanctions on Russia in reprisal. The measure is now pending in the House.

Mr. Trump’s message: Russia could pay a higher price unless it keeps out of America’s democratic elections, Mr. Tillerson said.

“The president pressed President Putin on more than one occasion regarding Russian involvement,” Mr. Tillerson recounted.

Mr. Putin denied that Russia played a role. With the two men at odds, they agreed they wouldn’t let the issue poison the overall relationship between their countries. CONTINUE AT SITE