RUTHFULLY YOURS

Until a few years ago, the unique recipe for secularism adopted by the French seemed able to guarantee the assimilation of the country’s burgeoning number of Muslims, something now, by criminal and terrorist activity in the country, proven a resolute failure.

Next year’s election results might signal the beginning of the end for laïcité, the long-held French principle of strict prohibition against religious influence in the determination of state policies.

The remains of St. Denis, the patron saint of Paris, who was decapitated in the year 250 during the brutal pagan persecution of Christians, lie north of the French capital in the basilica that bears his name.

The church is historically noteworthy as the first proper work of Gothic architecture, a style influenced by the Crusades. The basilica is now a rarely visited Parisian landmark, lying as it does within the profoundly Islamized enclave of Seine-Saint-Denis.

“You Christians, you kill us,” were the words of the ISIS knifeman who slit the throat of 85-year old Father Jacques Hamel. The elderly priest officiating at the altar of the church of Saint-Étienne-du-Rouvray — a mere three kilometres from the centre of Rouen in Normandy — was slain on July 25, as the two terrorists also took nuns hostage. The terrorists were then shot by police.

On August 5, police swept down on a man shouting “Allahu Akbar” [“Allah is the Greatest”] on the Champs-Élysées, the famous central thoroughfare of the capital of France. Video of the arrest shows passers-by: veiled Muslims, tourists, and presumably indigenous French men and women.

Both of these incidents, when aligned with recent mass outrages across France, including the Bataclan Theatre slaughter on November 13, and the mass carnage caused by a jihadist plot in Nice on July 14, point to a startling reality.

Despite the rhetoric by the government of Prime Minister Manuel Valls on removing dual nationality from those guilty of terrorism offences and closing extremist mosques (20 of France’s 2,500 alleged mosques have been closed down to date), the violent consequences of jihadism are a daily reality and concern stalking the heart of most French metropolitan districts.

At 7.5% of the population, Muslims in France make up the highest concentration of Muslims of any country in Europe, according to Pew Research.

For decades, those warning of the inevitable consequences of mass Muslim immigration, during a time in history when Islamic fundamentalist doctrine was on the rise worldwide, have been maligned, prosecuted, imprisoned or assassinated.

With the security infrastructure now proving inadequate to cope with the sheer scale of enthusiasm for religious war amongst those Islamists born in France, and those able to enter the country — thanks to the open border policies of the EU — the threat continues to increase day by day.

Close to the Champs-Élysées, which runs between the Louvre museum and the Arc de Triomphe, lies the official residence of the president of France.

Presently occupied by the Socialist François Hollande, who closely courted the Muslim vote to gain power in 2012, many French people are looking towards the presidential elections scheduled for April and May 2017, to provide a new occupant of the Élysée Palace in the form of Marine Le Pen.

Patrick Dunleavy is the former Deputy Inspector General for New York State Department of Corrections. He is the author of “The Fertile Soil of Jihad: Terrorism’s Prison Connection,”which was reviewed here http://www.familysecuritymatters.org/publications/detail/interview-with-patrick-t-dunleavy

With the United Kingdom’s successful prosecution of noted radical Islamic preacher Anjem Choudary for providing material support to ISIS, British officials are now faced with the dilemma of what to with him when he is sentenced Sept. 6.

While he is sure to receive a lengthy period of incarceration, that may create even more problems for counter terrorism officials. In going to prison, he is not actually moving from the frying pan to the fire. A more appropriate analogy is akin to the fox in the hen house. Anjem Choudary has spent the better part of 20 years preaching, proselytizing, and recruiting individuals to a radical form of Islam that encourages jihad as a necessary tenet of the faith. He has done it on street corners, mosques, and in front of television cameras. And like a sly fox, he avoided prosecution in the past because no direct contact between him and a terrorist organization could be proven until now. British authorities uncovered a video of Choudary pledging allegiance to ISIS leader Abu Bakr al Baghdadi.

When he goes into prison, Choudary will have the opportunity to continue his evil work in an environment that guarantees him a captive audience of people who already have a disdain for government and a predisposition for violence. It is fertile soil.

How successful will he be? We already know of his effectiveness with ex-cons such as shoe bomber Richard Reid, who attended the Finsbury Mosque after his release from prison. Finsbury was one of the places that Choudary was allowed to preach his message of hatred and intolerance to all things non-Muslim. Many of his converts are already in prison for committing terrorist acts.

One of them is Michael Adebolajo, convicted in the brutal murder of 25-year-old Lee Rigby, a Fusilier in the British Army as he was returning to barracks. Since his incarceration, prison officials have had to transfer Adebolajo from the general prison population in Belmarsh because of his attempts to influence and radicalize other inmates. Another Choudary protégé, Richard Dart, was sentenced to six years in prison in 2013 for his part in a plot to bomb a memorial service for British soldiers at Royal Wooten Basset. Also in prison is Junead Khan, convicted last spring for conspiring to kill U.S. servicemen stationed at the RAF Lakenheath Base.

http://www.investigativeproject.org/5595/anti-israel-double-standards-enable-assad

Syria’s civil war claimed 470,000 lives since it started in March 2011, the Syrian Centre for Policy Research announced in February. That’s an average of about 262 deaths per day and 7,860 per month. The carnage has continued unabated, so, applying the same death rate nearly 200 days after the February estimate, the death toll is over 520,000.

Such numbers are staggering, even by Middle East standards. However, the violence has become so routine that it only occasionally captures global attention, usually when a particularly poignant moment of human suffering is documented. The most recent example is Omran Daqneesh, a 5-year old Syrian boy who was filmed shell-shocked, bloody, and covered in dust after the airstrike bombing of his Aleppo apartment block.

The tragic image of Omran caused outrage around the world, as did the image of Aylan Kurdi, the drowned Syrian boy whose body washed up last September on a beach in Turkey. Yet Omran’s plight demonstrates that, nearly a year after the last child victim of Syrian horrors captured global sympathy, nothing has changed.

If anything, the violence in this multi-party proxy war seems to be getting worse. Since Aylan Kurdi’s drowning, Russia began blitz-bombing Syria in support of the Assad regime. The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR) estimates that nine months of Russian airstrikes have killed 3,089 civilians – a toll that is greater, by some estimates, than the number of civilians killed by ISIS. By contrast, Syrian civilian deaths caused by U.S. airstrikes are probably in the hundreds (over roughly twice as much time, since U.S. airstrikes began in the summer of 2015).

This post by Rowan Jacobsen was originally published on Ensia.com, a magazine that highlights international environmental solutions in action, and is republished here as part of a content-sharing agreement.

Ten miles south of Tel Aviv, I stand on a catwalk over two concrete reservoirs the size of football fields and watch water pour into them from a massive pipe emerging from the sand. The pipe is so large I could walk through it standing upright, were it not full of Mediterranean seawater pumped from an intake a mile offshore.

“Now, that’s a pump!” Edo Bar-Zeev shouts to me over the din of the motors, grinning with undisguised awe at the scene before us. The reservoirs beneath us contain several feet of sand through which the seawater filters before making its way to a vast metal hangar, where it is transformed into enough drinking water to supply 1.5 million people.

We are standing above the new Sorek desalination plant, the largest reverse-osmosis desal facility in the world, and we are staring at Israel’s salvation. Just a few years ago, in the depths of its worst drought in at least 900 years, Israel was running out of water. Now it has a surplus. That remarkable turnaround was accomplished throughnational campaigns to conserve and reuse Israel’s meager water resources, but the biggest impact came from a new wave of desalination plants.

Israel now gets 55 percent of its domestic water from desalination, and that has helped to turn one of the world’s driest countries into the unlikeliest of water giants.

Bar-Zeev, who recently joined Israel’s Zuckerberg Institute for Water Research after completing his postdoc work at Yale University, is an expert on biofouling, which has always been an Achilles’ heel of desalination and one of the reasons it has been considered a last resort. Desal works by pushing saltwater into membranes containing microscopic pores. The water gets through, while the larger salt molecules are left behind. But microorganisms in seawater quickly colonize the membranes and block the pores, and controlling them requires periodic costly and chemical-intensive cleaning. But Bar-Zeev and colleagues developed a chemical-free system using porous lava stone to capture the microorganisms before they reach the membranes. It’s just one of many breakthroughs in membrane technology that have made desalination much more efficient. Israel now gets 55 percent of its domestic water from desalination, and that has helped to turn one of the world’s driest countries into the unlikeliest of water giants.

Driven by necessity, Israel is learning to squeeze more out of a drop of water than any country on Earth, and much of that learning is happening at the Zuckerberg Institute, where researchers have pioneered new techniques in drip irrigation, water treatment and desalination. They have developed resilient well systems for African villages and biological digesters than can halve the water usage of most homes.

The institute’s original mission was to improve life in Israel’s bone-dry Negev Desert, but the lessons look increasingly applicable to the entire Fertile Crescent. “The Middle East is drying up,” says Osnat Gillor, a professor at the Zuckerberg Institute who studies the use of recycled wastewater on crops. “The only country that isn’t suffering acute water stress is Israel.”

Those who wear compassion on their sleeves have no monopoly on concern for the poor. The only contention is about how best they can be helped. And whatever help is provided must be detached from any illusion that society can be rid of poverty.
A little enquiry shows that though a great many people are dissatisfied with the existing pattern of distribution, none of them has really any clear idea of what pattern he would regard as just. —Friedrich Hayek, “The Atavism of Social Justice”

Prosperity and poverty do not sit well together. The contrast is confronting. Take this comment for example:

Everywhere in the world there are gross inequities of income and wealth. They offend most of us. Few can fail to be moved by the contrast between the luxury enjoyed by some and the grinding poverty suffered by others.

You are probably wrong about its provenance. It is neither from a papal encyclical nor an utterance of Justin Welby, Thomas Piketty, Bernie Sanders or Jeremy Corbyn. It is from Free to Choose (1980) by Milton and Rose Friedman.

Those who wear compassion on their sleeves have no monopoly on concern for the poor. The only contention is about how best they can be helped. And whatever help is provided must be detached from any illusion of ever ridding society of poverty. It will always be around, confirmed for those biblically minded by Deuteronomy 15:11 and Matthew 26:11. Moreover, there will always be wide disparities between the rich and the poor. Anything approaching equality of income or wealth is unachievable. Even those on the fringe of the distant Left who might extol its desirability will admit of that. As explicitly does the Catholic Church: “unequal distribution [‘in physical and mental abilities, wealth, etc.’] is part of God’s plan, so that man can share his blessings with those in need” (from the “Simplified” version of the Catechism of the Catholic Church, paragraphs 1936 and 1937).

There is no question. Inequality is an inherent characteristic of all complex human societies. This means that claims of there being excessive inequality is a judgment call. It is based, presumably, on the prevailing economic system, whatever it is, being flawed or broken in one way or another. This has to be the argument.

Unsurprisingly, as the system underlying all successful economies, capitalism is in the firing line. Inequality in, say, socialist Venezuela is not a headline issue. Inequality is just one of many problems in a typical socialist society and not the major one when the lights go out. But I’m getting ahead of myself. The question I intend addressing is how the values inherent in capitalism bear on “distributive justice” compared with Christian values and, as a subsidiary reference point, with those inherent in socialism. I am squarely in the First World. At root, the Third World’s problems have nothing to do with economics. They have everything to do with dysfunctional cultures and can only be solved though political and social reform by the societies concerned.

John O’Sullivan, in The President, the Pope and the Prime Minister (2006), points out that papal encyclicals “rightly warn against greed and materialism as dangerous sins”. The latest encyclical, issued on May 24, 2015, Laudato Si’ (On Care for Our Common Home) carries on the theme. Capitalism is again the culprit, as it must be. No other system, whether it was feudal or mercantilist before the rise of capitalism at the beginning of the nineteenth century, or the experiments with socialism-cum-communism in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, has produced enough material goods to sustain widespread materialism.

Greed and materialism, to which can be added “individualism” (interpreted as meaning a lack of solidarity with others), underscore the Catholic Church’s discomfort with capitalism. Other Christian denominations undoubtedly share this discomfort. And, certainly, it is difficult to see how greed, materialism and individualism, which undoubtedly at times characterise capitalism in practice, are reconcilable with Christian values.

SEOUL—North Korea fired a submarine-launched missile that traveled much further than previous similar tests, a fresh sign of progress in Pyongyang’s program to develop nuclear-tipped missiles that are difficult to detect before launch.

The missile was launched from near the port of Sinpo on North Korea’s eastern coast at around 5:30 a.m. Seoul time on Wednesday. It traveled about 300 miles (482 kilometers), according to the U.S. military, before falling into the sea.

North Korea began testing submarine-launched missiles in late 2014 but flight distances have been limited to a few miles at most. The previous most recent missile launched from a submarine in July of this year failed in the early stage of flight, according to South Korea’s defense ministry.

The latest launch showed “progress” compared with previous tests, according to a statement from South Korea’s Joint Chiefs of Staff.

The apparent successful launch of a missile from a submarine comes after North Korea also held its first successful launch of a missile from a land-based mobile carrier in June.

Both missile types represent a new threat because they are harder to identify and destroy before launch. They also have the potential to give North Korea a “second-strike” capability to retaliate to an initial major attack on its military bases.

South Korea and the U.S. quickly condemned the latest test, one of a string of ballistic missile launches by North Korea this year in violation of a United Nations’ ban. CONTINUE AT SITE

Religious programming is popular throughout the Middle East. Television viewers call in or send questions via email or social media to ask scholars of Islamic law about all manner of things. Most questions relate to their personal lives, from the mundane—can Muslims listen to pop music?—to such issues as inheritance, alimony and contraception.

Every once in a while, however, a viewer raises an issue of political consequence. Such was the case with a 2015 episode of the Al Jazeera talk-show “Al-Sharia wa Al-Hayat” (Shariah and Life), which has recently become the subject of intense debate. The following question was asked: “Is it permissible—in the Syrian context—for an individual to blow himself up to target a group that owes allegiance to the Syrian regime, even if this causes casualties among civilians?”

This was the response:

“Generally, individuals should fight and die in combat. . . . However, if the need arises, individuals should only blow themselves up if a group (jamaa) decides that it is necessary for those individuals to blow themselves up. . . . These are matters that are not to be left to individuals. . . . Individuals should surrender themselves to the jamaa, and it is the jamaa that determines how to utilize individuals according to its needs.”

The speaker was Yusuf al-Qaradawi, the intellectual force behind the Muslim Brotherhood and other radical Islamic groups. He has written more than a hundred tomes on theological and jurisprudential issues that have attracted many adherents and numerous detractors. In addition to his scholarship, he has devoted a lifetime to religious political activism. Through his many writings, sermons, speeches and religious edicts, al-Qaradawi has become recognized as a progenitor of radicalism in the Middle East and beyond.

His answer regarding suicide bombings is typical of his extremism. By failing to reject the premise of the question, al-Qaradawi accepted suicide bombings as a legitimate weapon of warfare. This openly contradicts the prohibition in Islamic law on committing suicide.

Al-Qaradawi also fails to uphold the distinction between combatants and noncombatants, a cardinal principle of modern international humanitarian law and Islamic laws of war. The Holy Quran and various Prophetic sayings, otherwise known as the Hadith, establish an unquestionable prohibition on targeting noncombatants.

More alarmingly, al-Qaradawi entrusts the so-called jamaa—a term that can mean “the group” or “the community” and was left undefined—with the authority to order young women and men to become suicide bombers. He finds no religious compulsion or moral imperative to condemn the heinous practice of transforming human beings into indiscriminate instruments of death. He fails to denounce the evil of exploiting young women and men to advance the cause of terror. CONTINUE AT SITE

The world is spinning on its axis very quickly. Conditions that seem to define world affairs yesterday are hopelessly out of date today. There was a time only a couple of years ago when President Obama called Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdogan his closest friend on the world stage. Erdogan was perceived as a loyal member of NATO and an enemy of Russian’s imperial ambitions in the Middle East. Moreover, Erdogan was devoted to the ouster of Syrian president Bashar Assad, a stance that put him in direct opposition to the Russian strategy. In fact, tensions reached the point of actual conflict when a Russian fighter jet was shot down by Turkish forces near the Syrian border.

However, the ice cold relationship between the two states has begun to thaw after the attempted coup against Erdogan. During this recent period of “good feelings” Erdogan told Russian media outlets that Putin is the ”most significant” factor in resolving the Syria conflict, a statement that blatantly ignored the role of the United States.

Obviously the Turkish relationship to the U.S. has undergone change since the Obama administration has refused to extradite Fethullah Gulen, the Turkish preacher residing in Pennsylvania, who Erdogan believes was the moving force behind the attempted coup.

Erdogan has come to the obvious conclusion that reliance on the U.S. as an ally is foolhardy. Far better to deal with the malevolent Russians than the unreliable Americans. Second, Turkey’s role in NATO is now ambiguous; State Department spokesmen have openly questioned having Erdogan as an ally in the alliance. On this matter, Erdogan appears to agree.

Not only has the European Union consistently blocked Turkey’s membership, it has also challenged Turkey over the issue of migrants. Arguably the most significant bone of contention is the drum beat of Western criticism over the state of Turkish democracy or lack thereof. Erdogan is now engaged in ideological cleansing, a function of the failed coup. He remains adamantly persuaded that criticism from the U.S. and European capitals is a form of intervention and a challenge to Turkish sovereignty.

Raising American Muslim Kids in the Age of Trump was a meditative essay penned by Wajahat Ali in the New York Times. During these years of Obama and Hillary, he has been comfortable knowing that no one would question his allegiance to Islamic law (sharia) over the American Constitution. Despite Islam’s record of subversion and violence, he and his coreligionists need not have been overly concerned if their children were caught rioting in the name of Allah, damaging or looting property, or burning tires or American and Israeli flags, For nearly eight years, this has been a Land of the Freedom to Run Amok and cause damage; to join boycotts against a country, Israel, that is falsely accused of the decadence and immorality widespread in Islamic countries; to march and rally against an emasculated police force; to brazenly masquerade an ideology of conquest as a religion of peace, and to be believed!

As Mr. Ali ruminates about his toddler son and new baby daughter, he shares his concerns if Donald J Trump were to become president, and the extreme vetting that could restrict others’ entry to America, regardless of possible aggression. He fears that his friend’s son might be deported and he muses that his daughter could be sent to a “concentration camp” by the only presidential candidate who expresses his intense loyalty to our laws! Has Ali not studied the Constitution and Bill of Rights? Has he not heard Trump iterate that he wants America restored and that his favors cannot be bought? Ali fears a president who upholds the Constitution, but would be comfortable with a Clinton-Kaine administration that will continue to promote the Muslim Brotherhood and Iran, endanger our homeland security with additional hordes of unvetted immigrants, betray Israel, and grant positions of power in exchange for payments, resulting in the stealthy imposition of sharia into government.

With pensive reminiscence, he speaks of the beauty of celebrating Eid-al Fitr, an elaborate dining festival that ends the Islamic month of Ramadan, and suggests that he could be denied his celebrations and food preparations under new leadership. This is pure fantasy and fear-mongering, as no other religious group has ever been thus denied – unless, of course, he misses the cattle preparation of his forebears, the men who walk in the streets with their cattle purchases, and intentionally stab and torture the docile animals with picks and knives until they bleed out and bleat their last breath. Does he fear being questioned about his loyalty to the Constitution? Does he fear the prospect of living in a country that does not countenance the torture and abuse found in the Koran?

With the United States in the throes of a presidential election, an August 10 terrorist plot in Strathroy, Ontario, Canada did not grab much news coverage. Even so, the incident proved enlightening on a number of fronts, including the motivation of the terrorist.

Aaron Driver, 24, was a Muslim convert and ISIS supporter who posted a video in which he said: “O Canada, you received many warnings… You were told many times what would happen.” The masked Driver also said “You saw bodies of the filthy French lying in the streets. You still have much to pay for.” The Canadian Muslim convert also said “For this we thirst for your blood,” and “You will pay for everything you brought against us.”

Driver’s video warned that he planned to detonate a bomb in an urban center. On August 10, he hired a taxi and headed to a shopping mall in London, Ontario. Acting on a tip from the American Federal Bureau of Investigation, Canadian police intercepted Driver, who detonated an explosive device before police shot him dead. His more powerful bomb never exploded, and the Muslim convert was already well known to Canadian authorities.

Known online as Harun Abdurahman, Driver made contact with jihadists in Britain and posted messages praising the October, 2014 attack on Canada’s Parliament Hill by Michael Zehaf-Bibeau, another Canadian Muslim convert. In June 2015, Canadian authorities arrested Driver but did not bring charges.

Instead, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) placed Driver under a court-ordered “peace bond,” which demands that a person “keep the peace and be of good behavior” and attaches additional restrictions. Driver’s peace bond limited his activities, forbade him from using the Internet and communicating with the Islamic State. The Muslim convert and ISIS supporter continued to plot terrorism and duly manufactured a bomb.