RUTHFULLY YOURS

According to a 2016 investigation by Balkan journalists Marko Vesovic, Vladimir Otasevic and Hasan Haydar Diyab, the Montenegrin government is indirectly involved in the funding of Islamic terrorism.

Charges were dropped due to former PM and President Milo Đukanović’s diplomatic immunity, but not before he admitted his involvement in the criminal enterprise. In other words, while Đukanović was signing the accession protocol with NATO, boatloads of illegal cigarettes from Montenegro were apparently making their way into ISIS-controlled areas.

For all his talk of rethinking America’s foreign commitments, it appears that President Donald Trump has also made the decision to endorse Montenegro’s membership bid.

While Đukanović stepped down in October in favor of Duško Marković, a former intelligence chief and a close ally, he is widely believed to be the power behind the throne and to be planning a comeback in the 2018 presidential elections.

Between its apparent links to the funding Islamic terrorism, its flawed democracy, and its still-insufficiently developed army, Montenegro is not yet a reliable partner for the West.

Does a country involved in financing Islamic terrorism deserve to be invited to join the world’s biggest military alliance, and receive all the perks that come with it? Many may argue this is the case with the small Balkan state of Montenegro, whose NATO membership will soon be taken up for consideration by the U.S. Senate.

According to a 2016 investigation by Balkan journalists Marko Vesovic, Vladimir Otasevic and Hasan Haydar Diyab, the Montenegrin government is indirectly involved in the funding of Islamic terrorism. More precisely, between 2013 and 2015, 3.5 million kilograms of cigarettes were illegally delivered from the Montenegrin port of Bar to Libyan areas under the control of terrorists close to al-Qaeda and ISIS. And such a movement of cargo would not have been possible, they claim, without the explicit endorsement of high-ranking Montenegrin officials. According to Vesovic, in an interview with Sputnik News, the former Montenegrin prime minister and president Milo Đukanović, who kept himself in power for the past quarter of a century (until 2016), would be himself a case in point.[1]

As revealed by Italian prosecutors in 2001, it seems that Đukanović was involved in the smuggling of cigarettes around the Adriatic by Italian crime syndicates in the 1990s. Charges were dropped due to Đukanović’s diplomatic immunity, but not before he admitted his involvement in the criminal enterprise. According to Vesovic:

“The same Montenegrin elite is (now) involved in a very complex system of organized crime, based on the smuggling of cigarettes to North Africa. In the 1990s they were smuggled to Italy…. Now, as we see, they found a new market.”

In every Muslim-majority country, especially in the Middle East, the Islamic terrorist genie came out from under the ashes, built the Islamic state and threatened the West — both with terrorist operations and from inside, in a more surreptitious, seemingly peaceful manner, as the Muslim Brotherhood does.

It is important to understand that Islam is a religion that includes, in its structure, political power that governs and controls and spreads the force of arms.

US President Donald J. Trump has succeeded in naming a jihadi problem, political Islam, but it is hard to single out defective products from the factory without closing the factory — if one does not want them to appear again.

This does not mean that what Trump intends to do is not important; on the contrary, we need him after most Western politicians faced Islamic terrorism awkwardly, if they faced it at all. Sometimes they even cooperated with these terrorist organizations, invited their members to the White House; to Iftar dinners during Ramadan, and hugging what they falsely call “moderate Islam” — especially the Muslim Brotherhood, the incubator that most terrorist organizations come out of — instead of the true “moderate Muslims” who have been struggling to be heard above the crush of “influence,” infiltration and petro-dollars.

We can say that so far “Trumps’s recipe” for facing radical Islam had been tried before and failed. Dictatorships and military regimes in the Middle East, such as the presidents of Egypt Nasser, Sadat and Mubarak, and now el-Sisi, faced political and radical Islam. Russia did, and Saddam did in Iraq, Gaddafi in Libya, Bourguiba in Tunisia and others.

Perhaps the saddest failure is the Turkish model. Mustafa Kemal Atatürk built a dictatorship-state on the ruins of the Ottoman Empire. He decisively confronted all forms of political Islam, and destroyed the military wing of the army that dreamed of restoring that Empire. Atatürk founded a dictatorship guarded by the army’s broad powers, but within a constitutional and legal framework, to deter Islamists who might want to change his modernist structure. It was also meant to stop any move to Islamic rule that might want to change the relatively open and pro-Western ideas of the Kemalist Republic.

In September, I met with Ami Horowitz for an interview about Sweden and immigration, for a documentary he was making on the topic. Horowitz had heard of the work I had done on the issue, such as my reports in the Washington Examiner on the recent mass sexual attacks at music festivals in Sweden that the media and police covered up, as well as my essays on Sweden’s growing problem of jihadi tourism.

Horowitz and I met up in a sleepy Swedish town and spoke for almost half an hour, of which four minutes ended up in the final cut of his documentary, Stockholm Syndrome. The film also includes an interview with two Swedish policemen and the director’s own running commentary. The documentary received some attention at the time it was released, but not much more than the occasional link appearing in my newsfeed. But — as we now know — that has since changed.

President Trump mentioned Sweden in a speech in Florida on February 18. I first learned about it from my father, who called me early the next morning to ask whether I was perhaps involved in an international incident. As soon as I went on Twitter and saw the outrage, I started to connect the dots. After sifting through the many angry tweets, I could conclude that not only had the international media severely misconstrued what Donald Trump had said about Sweden but also that the newly elected president had put his finger on exactly what ails Sweden as well as the entire European continent.

For the past week, I have been under tremendous pressure to rescind my statements and to swear off not only Amy Horowitz but also the entire premise that Sweden has problems relating to its immigration policies. Trump’s statement, however confusing, highlighted the most taboo topic in Swedish society and the well-oiled apparatus that does its utmost to keep it under wraps. And now that the world has its collective eye fixed on our country, the Swedish establishment is fighting hard to convey the party line.

Part of the reason for the outrage is that Sweden has a long-standing, complicated, love-hate relationship with the United States, defined by an equal mix of envy and distain — the U.S. being both that place we are better than and the country we secretly long to be. Sweden’s self-image is that of a country with solid liberal values, institutionalized equality, and social justice. Having an American president question that is a direct affront to the one thing we had going for us: our carefully cultivated sense of moral and intellectual superiority. The solution to this conundrum is to belittle and mock President Trump, making him seem ignorant and racist, poking fun at his statements through a barrage of colorful memes. But what all of these methods fail to address is the underlying issue and the truth at the heart of the president’s words.

As Swedish-Iranian economist Tino Sanandaji observed at NRO last week, we see a remarkable lack of statistics showing a correlation between immigration and crime in Sweden — not because there is no such correlation, but because there are no statistics. There are no statistics because the government has consistently chosen not to release them or bring the issue to light. This secrecy has sparked the rise of a populist right in Sweden, and it has also failed the most vulnerable — the immigrants subjected to extremism and crime in urban neighborhoods where the pundits and politicians never go — sacrificing them on the altar of political correctness.

SYDNEY—Australia has arrested a man it says offered to help Islamic State develop a long-range guided missile and a detection system for incoming bombs.

“Police will allege that the man arrested has sought to advise ISIL on how to develop high-tech weapons capability,” Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull said Tuesday. He said the man was arrested in the rural town of Young, northwest of the capital Canberra, after an 18-month investigation, and that the operation wasn’t related to any planned attack in Australia.

The man—an Australian-born citizen, according to Andrew Colvin, commissioner of the Australian Federal Police—was identified in local press reports as Haisem Zahab. He appeared in court later Tuesday where he was charged with two foreign-incursion offenses that carry a maximum penalty of life in prison.

He wasn’t available for comment and it is unclear whether he has a lawyer.

Australia has stepped up security in recent years, giving police and intelligence agencies more power against homegrown militants. It has also sent troops and warplanes to combat Islamic State as part of the U.S.-led coalition, as well as supporting the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

The country’s five-tier terrorism-threat system has been set at “probable,” the third-highest level, since September 2014. That December, a gunman, later identified as Iranian immigrant Man Haron Monisj, took hostages in a Sydney cafe and held them for 16 hours before being killed by police. The cafe’s manager and a female customer also died.

Since then there have been four attacks and 12 others have been disrupted, most recently in December—an Islamic State-inspired plot to set off bombs in central Melbourne. More than 50 people have been arrested on terrorism offenses. CONTINUE AT SITE

North Korea successfully tested a solid-fueled missile earlier this month, the latest in a series of technological leaps. Instant experts allege Pyongyang is not yet a serious nuclear threat to the U.S. Some reporters say North Korea does not have “miniaturized” nuclear warheads for missile delivery and that its weapons are primitive—even after five nuclear tests. These are dangerous delusions.

Google the history of nuclear testing and weapons development, and North Korea’s tests suddenly seem a lot more serious. This has all been done by the U.S., the Soviet Union, China, Britain, France, Israel, South Africa, India and Pakistan. History suggests North Korea already has nuclear-missile warheads and a sophisticated array of nuclear weapons.

Testing is not necessary to develop nuclear weapons. The first atomic bomb, which used enriched uranium, was never tested: Hiroshima was the test. The second one, which used plutonium, was tested once and worked perfectly at Trinity and on Nagasaki.

France entered the nuclear club in 1960 with a sophisticated high-yield fission weapon that worked perfectly on its first test.

According to the Wisconsin Project and defector Mordechai Vanunu, Israel developed a sophisticated array of nuclear weapons from the 1960s to the ’80s—all without testing. Its arsenal ranges from high-yield thermonuclear missile warheads to low-yield tactical weapons, including neutron warheads.
South Africa also developed nuclear weapons and designed a missile warhead without testing. India and Pakistan designed atomic bombs, thermonuclear warheads and neutron warheads 20 years before testing.

North Korea built its first atomic weapons by 1994, more than a decade before testing. Yet the yield of North Korean nuclear tests isn’t known. Estimating yields from seismic signals is inexact. Press reporting on estimates for North Korea’s January 2016 test range from 4 to 50 kilotons. The estimated yield for North Korea’s fifth nuclear test, in September 2016, is between 20 and 30 kilotons.

Less known: North Korea could conduct decoupled tests to hide their true yield. Decoupling entails detonating a device in a cavity to dampen the signal by as much as 10-fold. A 100 kiloton test could look like 10 kilotons.

And low-yield tests may indicate more-advanced nuclear technology. High-yield testing is usually done for political reasons and to study nuclear-weapon effects. Low-yield testing is scarier because it is usually done to verify design principles for a more advanced generation of nuclear weapons.

Herbert London is President of the London Center for Policy Research http://www.londoncenter.org/

Revanchism, from the French revanche or “revenge”, is the will to reverse territorial losses following war or social movement. The dismantling of the Soviet Union, to cite one example, has led to a Putinesque policy of irredentism, the reclamation of territory once within the Soviet orbit. In a strange way revanchism has become the twenty- first century foreign policy perspective.

Palestinians believe the land captured in the 1967 war against Israel is “occupied” territory, hence territory belonging to the Palestinians. Chinese government officials agree Siberia is a province of China- a territory the Chinese once controlled. Persians believe the Tigris Euphrates valleys are within their empire, notwithstanding the states with a present claim on this territory.

Revanchism accompanies claims around the globe as steadfast statism retreats before disruptive politics. As a term, revanchism originated in the 1870’s in the aftermath of the Franco Prussian War among nationalists who wanted to avenge the French defeat and reclaim the lost territories of Alsace-Loraine. The movement draws its strength from patriotic and retributionist thought. It is inextricably linked to irredentism- the conception that a part of the cultural and ethnic nation remains unredeemed outside the borders of the nation state.

Russian strategy relies on military intimidation and non-military means such as the manipulation of perspectives. To offset those strategies the West requires a united front and the means to counter revanchist efforts through a variety of penalties.

The questions that always remain are what is fair and what is legitimate. Is it legitimate for Mexico to claim rights to the Southwestern states? Is it fair for Russia to say the sale of Alaska was inappropriate? When do the claims of revanchism end? Does history have limits or are the boundaries determined by the relative strength and power of the claimant? Recently the Hague International Court ruled the Philippine claim of the Spratly islands was legitimate. The Chinese government, however, chose to ignore the judgement.

History is replete with examples where false claims were made backed by powerful armies. Japan invaded Manchuria prior to World War II arguing it was once a Japanese province and should be united with Japan again. Absurd on its face, this claim was recognized until Japan was ultimately defeated.

China, based on its ancient history, contends that it is the Middle Kingdom and all nearby Asian states are peripheral and subject to the expanding concentric circle of Chinese influence.

Revanchism affects the law and is also hostage to extra-legal concerns. It is a plea for justice and a false justification for imperial aims. Unfortunately, global stability depends on the recommendations of competing interests. Where law is ignored, force prevails. If, for example, China decides to ignore decisions at the Hague, can one force China’s hand? Is it productive to do so over a few rocky islands in the middle of the China Sea? But if action isn’t taken, does that become a precedent in future controversies?

The governments of Europe have chosen altruism as the basis of their foreign policy vis-à-vis immigration. Angela Merkel of Germany especially has implemented the Stoic philosophy of Epictetus (c. 50 – 135 AD) and Marcus Aurelius of enduring without complaint the evils of an invasion by Third and Fourth World Islamic savages, because it is their Kantian “duty” or decreed categorical imperative for Germans to surrender their country, their lives, and happiness to the welfare and contentment of the contemptuous poor, the “oppressed” and the “needy.”

One of Epictetus’s Stoical “Golden Rules,” loosely translated, was: Be prepared to be self-sufficient unto oneself. Which is ancient but good advice, except that in Merkel’s “new” Germany, an individual should also flourish enough to support his enemies, the “refugees.” He is prohibited from deciding what is “sufficient.”

Kant’s “Golden Rule” of the categorical imperative is:Act only according to that maxim whereby you can, at the same time, will that it should become a universal law. (1785 – Grounding for the Metaphysics of Morals).Act only on that maxim whereby you can at the same time will that it should become a universal law of nature.

The etymological and ethical root of altruism is:

“unselfishness, devotion to the welfare of others, opposite of egoism,” from French altruisme, coined or popularized 1830 by French philosopher Auguste Comte (1798-1857), with -ism + autrui (Old French altrui) “of or to others,” from Latin alteri, dative of alter “other” (see alter). The -l- is perhaps an etymological reinsertion from the Latin word.

The word was coined by the French philosopher Auguste Comte in French, as altruisme, for an antonym of egoism.

So much for this brief lesson in philosophy. What have Europeans (and to a lesser extent, Americans) gained by their experiment in unlimited immigration altruism? The wages are high – in death, destruction, rape, crime, and parasitism by the invading savages as a “right” or “entitlement.” Let’s take a look of the benefits of personal and national selflessness as a virtue. Keep in mind, selflessness is also a paramount Christian virtue even among atheists and agnostics. Also, the “refugees welcome” crowd, at least in Europe, is shrinking:

Rapes in Sweden have skyrocketed by a shocking 1,472% since the mid-70’s, with 6,620 sexual assaults being reported to police in 2014 compared to just 421 in 1975. The country is now known as the rape capital of the west.

“77.6 percent of the country’s rapists are identified as “foreigners” (and that’s significant because in Sweden, “foreigner” is generally synonymous with “immigrant from Muslim country”), writes Selwyn Duke. “And even this likely understates the issue, since the Swedish government — in an effort to obscure the problem — records second-generation Muslim perpetrators simply as “Swedes.”

Rapes occurring in and around migrant camps are now so prevalent, that authorities in Germany are covering up details of incidents so as not to “legitimize” critics of mass immigration.

On the other hand, Swedes are awakening to their dilemma.

Wennerlund didn’t mind Christian immigrants, but he believes it’s not working with the Muslims, even though Sweden has had a Muslim population for decades. “Often they don’t want to come here and change,” he says. “They want to change us. And we don’t want to be changed. So that’s a conflict.”

Before Jamal Al-Harith blew himself up near Mosul, he had been a celebrity and a hero of the left. He had received a million pounds for his “suffering” at Gitmo and been impersonated on stage.

He was played by Shaun Parkes at London’s New Ambassadors Theatre and by Andrew Stewart-Jones in the New York production at the Bleecker Street Theatre. The play was Guantanamo: Honor Bound to Defend Freedom. The title was an interesting one considering that the play was defending Taliban and Al Qaeda terrorists who had been fighting for the freedom to murder non-Muslims and oppress women.

Andrew Stewart-Jones has a role on Gotham, Shaun Parkes has appeared on The Nightmare Worlds of H.G. Wells and Jamal Al-Harith headed off to join ISIS where he got to star in his own martyrdom video.

As Shakespeare’s Jacques declaims, “All the world’s a stage and all the men and women merely players.” Jamal Al-Harith was a better actor than any of the actors who played him. And he knew that the secret to great theater is to bring down the house. But he also had an audience of leftists eager to suspend disbelief when an Islamic terrorist is lying to them.

A year before the 7/7 bombings tore apart London, West End theatergoers were treated to these sad sack stories of Muslim terrorists with British citizenship being detained at Gitmo. Then it was the turn of New Yorkers at a theater barely a mile from Ground Zero under the auspices of the Culture Project and its mission of “socially conscious theater”. And what’s more socially conscious than Islamic terrorism?

The actors playing the ISIS killer, in a production Variety dubbed a “chilling expose of the U.S. government policies”, recited his lies that he only went “to find out about the religion”. In the version of the terrorist’s fairy tale distributed by the left from the Guardian to the New York Times, he was actually a victim of the Taliban, wrongly detained and tortured by the Bush administration.

Night after night, melancholy actors in orange jumpsuits wearing steel chains, declaimed Al-Harith’s lies and excuses to lefty audiences who fueled their outrage with imaginary Muslim suffering. Meanwhile Americans, Brits, Iraqis and Afghans were being massacred by the friends of their real life counterparts.

Progressive theatergoers glowed when Al-Harith compared his time in Gitmo to the suffering of concentration camp inmates. “I got put in isolation for because I refused to wear my wrist band. I said, ‘In concentration camps they were given tattoos, and now they’ve given us these, it’s just the same really.'” And who could be more similar to a Jewish concentration camp inmate than a member of an Islamic ideology that believes in exterminating all the Jews?

How many of them cheered when he declared, “You know, I’ll walk out from here when I leave free, because I haven’t done anything at all.”