RUTHFULLY YOURS

A U.K. court on Friday convicted the first British woman of joining Islamic State, 26-year-old Tareena Shakil, who traveled to Syria with her infant son and spent three months living with the militant group.

A jury, who heard that Ms. Shakil had once declared her wish “to be a martyr,” found her guilty of belonging to a terrorist organization and encouraging support for a proscribed group.

Ms. Shakil will be sentenced on Monday.

The case provides a rare account of how a Western woman came to be involved in Islamic State amid what authorities have said is a concerning surge in the number of females traveling from Europe to Syria and Iraq. It also sheds a light on the dilemma for authorities on how to treat such women when they return home: as victim or terrorist.

Ms. Shakil, of Burton-upon-Trent, a town in the English Midlands, was arrested by counterterrorist police shortly after her plane touched down at Heathrow airport last February. She told officers

But investigators weren’t convinced. Prosecutors told the court how a raft of evidence showed Ms. Shakil had self-radicalized even before leaving the country, and that her trip to Syria was the final stage in her plan to become a jihadist bride. In the weeks leading up to her departure, Ms. Shakil had become an ever more vocal online supporter of Islamic State online, said prosecutors. Farewell notes left for her family showed she had no intention of returning home, prosecutors said.

“We are importing Islamic extremism, Arab anti-Semitism, national and ethnic conflicts of other peoples, as well as a different understanding of society and law.” — From a leaked German intelligence document.

The mayor of Molenbeek, Belgium ignored a list she received, one month prior to the Paris attacks, “with the names and addresses of more than 80 people suspected as Islamic militants living in her area,” according to the New York Times. “What was I supposed to do about them? It is not my job to track possible terrorists,” Mayor Schepmans said.

In October 2015, Andrew Parker, director general of Britain’s Security Service, said that the “scale and tempo” of the danger to the UK is now at a level he has not seen in his 32-year career. British police are monitoring over 3,000 homegrown Islamist extremists willing to carry out attacks on the UK.

The head of the Norwegian Police Security Service (PST), Benedicte Bjørnland, was recently a participating guest at a security conference in Sweden, where she warned against further Muslim immigration.

One cannot,” she said, “assume that new arrivals will automatically adapt to the norms and rules of Norwegian society. Furthermore, new arrivals are not homogenous and can bring ethnic and religious strife with them… If parallel societies, radicalization and extremist environments emerge in the long run,” she added, “We will have challenges as a security service.”

A new Al-Shabaab video features ISIS-style threats to strike at the West and uses George W. Bush quotes to try to lure western Muslims to jihad.

The video, an installment of a series called “Mujahideen Moments,” begins with Al-Shabaab members fishing in a river. It then cuts to a group of camouflage-clad jihadis with their faces obscured.

“Firstly I would like to send my greetings to all the Muslims around the world in general and to the Muslims who speak Swahili in specific,” says a light-skinned jihadist in the center, his face blurred. “The time has come for Muslims to wake up and fight the kuffar [disbelievers]. By Allah, we cannot return our long lost glory until we take up weapons and arm ourselves.”

“I swear by Allah, my dear brothers, the feelings of honor and dignity that we the mujahideen feel are indescribable. Even if I wanted to explain it to you I would not be able to do so,” he continues, chiding would-be recruits to “not be content with living a life of oppression under the rule of the kuffar.”

“Make hijrah [pilgrimage] and come to the lands of Islam so that you can defend this religion. We, your brothers here, are proud that we came to one of the lands of jihad, the land of Somalia, where we met with our brothers who trained us how to fight and taught us the art of war.”

Then the message takes another turn reminiscent of ISIS’ video released last weekend of the Paris attackers threatening the West.

Canadians have long thought of themselves as morally superior to the supposedly vulgar and abrasive Americans. According to the self-justifying Canadian mythos, we embody a more enlightened and humane outlook on the world. In addition to oil, maple syrup, and lumber, our most valuable export — our gift, we imagine, to our southern neighbors — is our vision of a sustainable and irenic future. Let us examine the most current incarnation of that vision.

Canada is essentially a socialist country, closer to the increasingly decrepit European welfare and statist paradigm than to the (now faltering) classic American model of individual self-reliance. Canada instituted social programs like state-funded medicine relying on major tax hikes long before it became an issue in the U.S., and gambled on multiculturalism as a viable national project, in effect, as a kind of political eschatology. There is no question that the Canadian temper has always been more politically Arcadian than the American.

The current refugee question in particular has become a pivotal and collective expression of this temper, with citizens opening their wallets, hearts, and homes to a migratory influx from the Islamic world. Our self-congratulatory generosity is amply demonstrated in the writings of celebrated Constitutional lawyer Julius Grey. Pontificating in the Montreal Gazette, Grey urges the welcoming of thousands of Syrian migrants as we proceed “to create a society which has, on the one hand, citizens of myriad origins and, on the other, no barriers between them.”

The problem that Grey refuses to confront or even identify is that immigrants and refugees from historically backward, theocratic, anti-Semitic, Sharia-dominated, and terror-sponsoring nations are precisely the ones who are creating “barriers,” such as purpose-built ghettos, no-go zones, closed neighborhoods, special privileges and spaces, an atmosphere of threat, and who have no interest in Western-style “individual autonomy and freedom” — Grey’s chosen vocabulary. Grey is the lawyer for the Muslim-friendly socialist New Democratic Party, but there is not much sunlight between the NDP and the governing Muslim-friendly Liberal Party.

Gene Poteat is a retired CIA senior scientific intelligence officer and president emeritus of the Association of Former Intelligence Officers.

Vladimir Putin killed Aleksandr Litvinenko. The November 2006 assassination was no rogue hit. Putin had the motive, means, opportunity, and power to see that this human irritant received his comeuppance. I’ve said what everyone knows but officially hesitates to declare — until now. It took gutsy British judge Robert Owen, after a long inquiry, to say publically that former KGB operative Litvinenko was killed with a dose of Polonium 210 as part of a KGB/FSB assassination. And based on the rarity of the radioactive poison used to kill him, “probably” under orders from Vladimir Putin.

Litvinenko’s assassination is only one of several. The earlier deaths included journalist/Putin-critic Anna Politkovskaya in October 2006 and opposition leader Boris Nemtsov in February 2015. Both were on the wrong side of Putin, and both suffered standard KGB eliminations – apparently “random” street shootings. This was especially easy since their deaths took place in Russia, where Putin’s cronies pulled all the investigative strings to round up the usual suspects. Which means these were in no way as thoroughly investigated as the Litvinenko case, which took place in London.

A Putinesque assassination on a grander scale was also examined recently by an exhaustive Polish Parliamentary inquiry. It examined the orchestrated 2010 plane crash in Smolensk, Russia, which [conveniently] killed Poland’s president and 96 members of the top echelon of his pro-Western government. The accident, ignored in the West as another airplane mishap, was reported later by the brave British judge as “probably” carried out under authority of Putin, yet of little significance.

If Liberals persist in endorsing the moral, cultural, and political nihilism of their current leader nothing is more certain than the emergence of an ardent movement intent on restoring the primacy of principle. Don’t believe your media courtiers, Mr Turnbull. The storm is gathering
Conservatism is in crisis. That is the conclusion drawn by leading commentators, reflecting upon the Turnbull coup in Australia, the electoral defeat of Stephen Harper in Canada, and the ongoing success of David Cameron, seen as Tory centrist. But are they right? Or are they suffering from the premature articulation of progressivist triumphalism?

According to Paul Kelly in The Australian (paywalled), writing in the afterglow of the coup, there is a powerful global trend against traditional conservative values “and Australia is a frontline test case”. Leading this alleged trend is Malcolm Turnbull, “a social progressive who champions same-sex marriage, serious action on climate change, a multicultural society, a repudiation of the monarchical trappings, and an economy, entrepreneurial and innovative, geared to aspiration.”

Kelly claims that this collection of trendy issues constitutes an alternative political platform “to that adopted by any previous Liberal Prime Minister”. It is, by his reckoning, a synthesis of “economic adaptability with social progressivity [sic], not the social conservatism of Howard and Abbott”, and Turnbull’s task, again according to Kelly, is to hold the conservative forces of the Liberal Party together while he remakes it in his own progressivist image.

While this leftward shift within the Liberal Party might lead to the disaffection of the party’s traditional conservatives at the grassroots level the line is that they have nowhere to go. Moreover, their loss will be compensated by Turnbull’s “appeal to feminists, gays, environmentalists, ethnics and youths”. Apparently these latter groups will now enthusiastically join Liberal Party branches, engage in fund-raising, and stand around on election days giving out how-to-vote cards for the newly-transformed, “progressivist” Liberal Party.

ISIS control of Libya’s Mediterranean coastline allows it not only to ship its operatives, together with Muslim refugees to Europe. ISIS expansion along the Mediterranean Seaboard of North Africa poses a growing threat to commercial shipping, cruise liners, and also oil rigging platforms offshore.

ISIS is not reported to have a navy, yet. But it does not need a large force with which to paralyze commercial shipping in the Mediterranean, or to cause tremendous ecological and environmental damage.

Vice Admiral Clive Johnstone, the UK’s highest naval officer in Nato, warned today that the ISIS jihadists are likely to use “a ‘very high-quality weapons system … quite capable Korean, Chinese and Russian hardware, to attack ships. This, he said, would have “extraordinary implications’ for the Western World.”

ISIS presence in Libya’s coastal area is not new. Nor is its growing threat to commercial navigation in the Mediterranean Seaboard of North Africa.

Last February, Seth Cropsey, a former Deputy Undersecretary of the Navy, warned in the Wall Street Journal; “ISIS’s prospects for significant naval power are remote. But small boats, fishing vessels, smugglers, and merchant craft that carry concealed weapons could hijack, sink, or rake commercial shipping, including cruise liners in the central Mediterranean.”

It is only now that the Obama administration has declared “Action in Libya is needed before Libya becomes a sanctuary for ISIS…[because] We don’t want a situation like in Iraq or Syria.” However, the steps offered by the administration are not encouraging.

According to the White House, “The president directed his national security team to continue efforts to strengthen governance and support ongoing counterterrorism efforts in Libya and other countries where ISIL has sought to establish a presence,”

It seems that Obama is not in a hurry to defeat ISIS, or stop its spread. Instead, he is said to be seeking, as always, “a political solution to get a military solution,” an unlikely outcome in Libya in the foreseeable future.

Today, Iran’s IRNA news agency broadcast video apparently taken from an Iranian Revolutionary Guard unmanned aircraft as it flew directly over an American aircraft carrier operating in the Persian Gulf. The US Navy has confirmed that an Iranian drone flew “directly over” the USS Harry S. Truman and near the French carrier Charles de Gaulle, which are both in the Persian Gulf launching airstrikes against Islamic State (Daesh) forces in Syria and Iraq.

RT rebroadcast of the Iranian television footage, showing the drone flyover of the USS Harry S. Truman.
Navy Commander Kevin Stephens, a spokesman for the US Navy’s 5th Fleet, said that the Navy was “not in a position to verify the authenticity of the video as there are countless examples of similar footage to be found on the Internet.” But he did confirm that an Iranian surveillance drone passed over the Truman on January 12. The drone did not pose a threat, he said. “It was, however, abnormal and unprofessional.” Stephens added that the Navy would “respond appropriately as the situation dictates” to future incidents.

Iranian Navy Commander Admiral Habibollah Sayyari told IRNA that the drone’s flight over the Truman was “a sign of bravery,” and it “allowed our men to go so close to the warship and shoot such a beautiful and accurate footage of the combat units of the foreign forces.” IRNA also reported that a small Iranian diesel submarine was involved in surveillance of the ships. The drone and submarine operations are part of an Iranian Navy exercise being mounted this week.

Italian officials declined to comment after being ridiculed this week for covering up the ancient nude statues in Rome’s Capitoline Museums, so as not to offend the sensibilities of a visiting foreign dignitary.

The delicate world leader in question was Iranian President Hassan Rouhani, who took a four-day trip to Italy and France to seal some business deals in the wake of the lifting of nuclear sanctions.

But being shielded from naked marble wasn’t the funniest, or even most pathetic, part of Rouhani’s trip to the City of Seven Hills. Far worse was his reception at the Vatican, where Pope Francis fawned all over the puppet head of the Ayatollah Ali Khamenei-led regime, directly and indirectly responsible for the slaughter of Christians across the world.

The father of the Catholic Church nevertheless greeted “His Excellency Hassan Rouhani, president of the Islamic Republic of Iran” as though he were a fellow pacifist, ready, willing and able not only to spread a global message of brotherly love, but to carry it out. According to a statement from the Vatican after the meeting, the two held “cordial discussions” in which “common spiritual values emerged.”

“When in Rome, do as the Romans do” evidently does not apply to Iranian President Hassan Rouhani. During his visit to Rome this week, Rouhani was spared an encounter with ancient nude Roman statues. Nude statues at Rome’s Capitoline Museums, including a centuries-old Venus, were covered up in deference to Rouhani’s Islamic faith, as the Iranian president proceeded to meet with Italian government officials and sign 17 agreements with Italy. This was but the latest exercise in ongoing European submission to Muslim cultural norms in the name of multiculturalism.

Responding to backlash, Italian government officials tried to cover up whom had actually decided on the statues’ covering. Italy’s culture minister even took it upon himself – belatedly – to criticize the decision as “incomprehensible.” For his part, Rouhani denied that his government had requested such statuary modesty, but he was appreciative of the gesture nevertheless. “I thank you for this,” he said when asked about the temporary accommodation.

Submission to Iran’s Islamic cultural norms not only does a disservice to Italy’s own rich history and culture. It sends the wrong signal to Iranian citizens living in Iran, who are trying to seek more individual freedoms.

An Iranian women’s group, My Stealthy Freedom, posted a scathing criticism of the statue covering in a Facebook page addressed to Italian news outlets and female politicians:

“As you know, your country has just censored some of your highly celebrated artwork in a bid to welcome the delegation from the Islamic Republic of Iran. This censorship reminds us the way that the Iranian regime has been forcing millions of women in Iran to cover up. The politicians of our country, regardless of whether a woman is Muslim or not, force women in Iran to cover up and their justification is, ‘You, as a woman, should be shrouded in front of my eyes in order not to provoke me’. This way of thinking is completely unacceptable.”

“Italy, for the sake of pleasing the Islamic Republic, has not hesitated to conceal some of the masterpieces of its own history, which gives the impression that for them respecting the requirements of the Islamic Republic and its unpopular laws take precedence over their own history and cultural heritage. One has to bear in mind that these same laws are being challenged by millions of Iranian women who have been risking all kinds of dangers in Iran to be themselves.”