RUTHFULLY YOURS

Two schoolgirls carried out simultaneous suicide bombings in the Nigerian town of Madagali. The attacks on a crowded market left at least 56 people killed and dozens wounded.

The attacks bore the marking of the Islamist terror organization Boko Haram, known for targeting civilians in northeast Nigeria as well as in neighboring Cameroon and Niger.

Although attacks by the group have been less frequent in recent months as the Nigerian army has been attempting a push back to its original stronghold in the enormous Sambia forest, this latest attack shows the group – which pledged its allegiance to Islamic State – is far from defeated.

Attacks by school girls are one of the group’s latest and most sinister operational surprises. The girls, many of them kidnapped by the group, will volunteer for such missions as a way to end their horrific lives under captivity, which include relentless hunger and sexual abuse.

One girl, 16, identified only as Fati, who was kidnapped from her village but managed to escape, told CNN, “They came to us to pick us. They would ask, ‘Who wants to be a suicide bomber?’ The girls would shout, ‘me, me, me.’ They were fighting to do the suicide bombings.

“It was just because they want to run away from Boko Haram. If they give them a suicide bomb, then maybe they would meet soldiers, tell them, ‘I have a bomb on me’ and they could remove the bomb. They can run away.”

ISTANBUL—Turkey declared a day of mourning after two suicide bombers killed at least 38 civilians and police officers deployed to guard a Saturday evening match by Istanbul’s Besiktas soccer team.

There was no immediate claim of responsibility for the blasts that occurred two hours after the game outside the team’s stadium on one of Istanbul’s major waterfront thoroughfares and urban parks. But Turkish Prime Minister Binali Yildirim said Sunday that evidence suggested the blasts were the work of the outlawed Kurdistan Workers’ Party, or PKK, which Turkey, the U.S. and Europe deem a terrorist group.

Turkey has been rocked by several terrorist bombings this year by attackers believed to be members of Islamic State and by splinter groups of the PKK, which has been fighting for decades against Turkish security forces for autonomy in the country’s Kurdish-majority southeastern regions.

The Interior Ministry said early Sunday that at least 13 people had been detained in relation to the weekend bombings that also wounded more than 150.

President Recep Tayyip Erdogan told the nation in a televised address that Turkey would fight “the scourge of terrorism to the end,” and promised that the attackers would pay a “heavy price.”

Most spectators had already left the sleek Vodafone Arena when the blasts occurred around 10:30 local time Saturday night. Large numbers of police routinely assigned to the normally sold-out matches remained in the area, however, as did many die-hard fans enjoying the unusually mild late autumn weather.

The force of the explosions shook buildings almost a half mile away from the stadium along the heavily traveled road that leads from Istanbul’s waterfront road to Taksim Square, and could be heard across the Bosporus, according to witnesses.

The first attacker drove a vehicle packed with explosives into a group of riot police who had assembled on the west side of the stadium to wait for transport back to their barracks.

CAIRO—A bomb exploded at Cairo’s main Coptic Christian cathedral compound on Sunday morning, killing at least 25 people and wounding another 49, in the largest attack on a Christian house of worship in Egypt since 2011.

The blast went off on the women’s side of the worshiping hall in the small church of St. Peter and St. Paul, attached to the Coptic cathedral in the capital’s Abassyia district, state media reported.

No group has claimed responsibility for the attack, which was quickly condemned by the Egyptian government and the head of Cairo’s Al-Azhar mosque, the seat of Sunni Islamic learning and one of the world’s oldest institutions of religious teaching.

Survivors described the church as being packed with worshipers during a national holiday to celebrate the anniversary of the Prophet Muhammad’s birth. The blast shattered the silence of the hall as those gathered listened to a sermon partly honoring a deceased church member.

“The turnout was bigger than normal,” said Tahani Gabriel, 65 years old, who sat in the third row of the church. Her cousin Souad Atta, the widow of the man mourned, was in the first row and was killed, Ms. Gabriel said.

The death toll is expected to increase, and most casualties were women, Deputy Health Minister Sherief Wadee told state television. Egypt’s top prosecutor ordered all nearby surveillance cameras be reviewed as part of a criminal investigation, state media said. CONTINUE AT SITE

The Journal is reporting that the Pentagon is putting together options for the Trump Administration to intensify the campaign against Islamic State, and right on time. ISIS jihadists re-entered the ancient city of Palmyra on Sunday, driving out Syrian government troops despite Russian bombing. President Obama asserted last week that the campaign against Islamic State is making steady progress, but the militants have other ideas.

Meanwhile, terrorists struck no fewer than four cities around the world in an especially murderous weekend. The carnage began Saturday afternoon in the Yemeni port of Aden. A suicide bomber detonated his vest near a barracks where troops had gathered to pick up their paychecks, killing 48. A pair of suicide bombers attacked Istanbul’s Vodafone Arena in Turkey the same day after a soccer match. At least 38 died, most of them police officers guarding the arena. A pair of suicide bombers, almost certainly the work of ISIS’s Boko Haram affiliate, maimed 17 in Nigeria on Sunday. And in Egypt, a nail-bomb at Cairo’s St. Mark’s Cathedral killed at least 25 Coptic Christian worshippers. Though no one had taken credit as we went to press, Egypt is besieged by more than one Islamist group. The Trump Administration is inheriting a dangerous world.

Somewhere in the Kremlin Vladimir Putin must be laughing. The Russian strongman almost certainly sought to undermine public confidence in American democracy this year, and as the Obama Administration leaves town it is playing into his hands.

That’s the real story behind the weekend reports that U.S. intelligence services have concluded that Russia intervened to assist Donald Trump’s presidential campaign. The stories are attributed to “senior administration” officials who won’t go on the record but assert murky details that are impossible to verify without seeing the evidence.

Mr. Trump is denouncing the claims with his usual subtlety, but he has a point about their timing and nature. “I don’t want anyone hacking us,” Mr. Trump said on Fox News Sunday, while blaming the leaks on Democrats. “I think it’s ridiculous” and “I don’t believe it.”

Democrats are still in shock from their defeat, and many want to add the Kremlin to FBI Director James Comey, fake news and the Electoral College as excuses that cast doubt on the legitimacy of Mr. Trump’s victory.

December 11, 1941, the United States Congress declared war upon Germany hours after Germany declared war on the United States after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. The vote was 88–0 in the Senate and 393–0 in the House.

Whereas the Government of Germany has formally declared war against the Government and the people of the United States of America: Therefore be it Resolved by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America in Congress assembled, That the state of war between the United States and the Government of Germany which has thus been thrust upon the United States is hereby formally declared; and the President is hereby authorized and directed to employ the entire naval and military forces of the United States and the resources of the Government to carry on war against the Government of Germany; and, to bring the conflict to a successful termination, all of the resources of the country are hereby pledged by the Congress of the United States.

(Signed) Sam Rayburn, Speaker of the House of Representatives
(Signed) H. A. Wallace, Vice President of the United States and President of the Senate
Approved December 11, 1941 3:05 PM E.S.T.
(Signed) Franklin D. Roosevelt

Twisting a quotation variously attributed to Talleyrand, Metternich and Churchill, Vladimir Putin opined in 2002 that Russia is “never so strong as it wants to be and never so weak as it is thought to be”. Sure enough, Russia has probably never been as strong as it wants to be. Geopolitical over-ambition may be a permanent curse on a nation which lies straddled between Europe and Asia, and does not know to which continent it belongs. But, whatever the situation in 2002, there is no truth in the claim that today’s Russia is more powerful than the standard media representation. On all the key metrics except one, Russia is far weaker than most people realise.

The size of its economy is fundamental in assessing any country’s global importance. The ability to create goods and services is correlated with the ability to export those goods and services, and hence to pay for imports. The ability to spend money on imports then matters to suppliers in every country and to all the world’s citizens. Big nations with open markets can impress and influence small nations, simply because prosperity is inter-linked and mutual. Further, a country with a large national output can readily afford the expenditures associated with both soft and hard power. It can spread a favourable image of itself and its culture, disburse aid and support international organisations, and yet at the same time build up its military strength. Ultimately, the dominance of “the West” (meaning Western Europe and North America, with some Asian adjuncts) in the last two centuries has been based on economics. The West has been home to only a fraction of the world’s population, but these have been by far the richest people. Indeed, so high has been the typical income per head that the combined output of Western nations has been well over half the global total for most of the time since 1800.

Is Russia a great power in economic terms? One method of comparing national outputs is to calculate them at current prices and exchange rates. It is certainly relevant to the ability of a nation to import, to invest in soft power and to cover military expenditures in foreign currencies. World Bank data show that in 2015 Russia’s gross domestic product on this basis was $1,326 billion, which made it the 13th largest in the world. It was therefore in the select group of 15 nations that had a GDP above $1,000 billion.

But a glance at Chart One shows that Russia is a dwarf compared with the world’s only two economic superpowers, the US and China. The US’s output is almost 13 times Russia’s while China’s is more than eight times as large. Evidently, on the most familiar and basic criterion of international significance — national output expressed in dollars — Russia is not among the top nations. It is at best a medium-weight power, jostling for position with countries such as South Korea and Mexico — hardly major players in 20th-century global diplomacy. Let it immediately be conceded that the numbers in Chart One, despite having the World Bank as their source, are not conclusive.