RUTHFULLY YOURS

LONDON—The head of the U.K.’s foreign intelligence agency warned Thursday that cyberattacks and the militant group Islamic State pose grave dangers to Britain and its allies.

In rare public comments, MI6 chief Alex Younger said that to protect itself and friendly nations from these threats, the U.K. must expose the magnitude of cyberwarfare and propaganda operations that subvert democracy.

“The risks at stake are profound and represent a fundamental threat to our sovereignty. They should be a concern to all those who share democratic values,” Mr. Younger said in his first major speech since his appointment as spy chief two years ago.

Mr. Younger didn’t specifically say Moscow had been behind a recent wave of cyberattacks, but his comments come as Western governments warn of Russian meddling in U.S. and European politics.

The U.S. intelligence community has accused Moscow of interfering in the U.S. election by leaking emails hacked from the Democratic National Committee in Washington and from other organizations and government agencies.

U.S. officials say the Russian-backed hacking effort is likely to continue as Moscow tries to influence U.S. politics and key elections in Europe. The Kremlin has denied the allegations.

Russian interference could be particularly aggressive in Europe, where Moscow has forged ties with euroskeptic political parties, which could make it harder for Europe to keep up sanctions on Moscow, White House officials and other experts say.

Mr. Younger described the threat from terrorism as “unprecedented,” singling out Islamic State. He said the Sunni Muslim militant group was plotting violence against the U.K. and its allies from Syria, and that the U.K. couldn’t be safe from terror threats until the Syrian civil war was brought to an end.

Since June 2013, he said, intelligence agencies have disrupted 12 terrorist plots.

Mr. Younger specified Russia by name for casting all groups that oppose Syrian leader Bashar al-Assad’s government as “terrorists” and refusing to differentiate between rebels working with U.S.-backed allies and Islamic State fighters.

Russia began airstrikes in Syria last year at the request of the Assad government. Residents, antigovernment activists and monitoring groups have for months accused Russia of bombarding the eastern, opposition-held neighborhoods of Aleppo and worsening the humanitarian crisis there.

Rebels have suffered a series of staggering losses in the northern Syrian city, and Canada, France, Germany, Italy, the U.K. and the U.S. issued a joint statement on Wednesday condemning the violence.

“In Aleppo, Russia and the Syrian regime seek to make a desert and call it peace,” Mr. Younger said. “The human tragedy is heartbreaking.”

Mr. Younger also tried to soothe worries that Donald Trump’s election as U.S. president and the U.K.’s exit from the European Union will affect the close security ties among Britain and its allies.

“I will aim for, and expect, continuity,” he said. “These relationships are long lasting and the personal bonds between us are strong.” CONTINUE AT SITE

Reprinted from Breitbart.com.

The death of Fidel Castro has driven a stake into the heart of the Left, causing progressives worldwide to weep and moan at the loss of their secular deity. While North Korea and Raúl Castro have enforced days of mandatory mourning, leftists in the free world are beating their breasts and wailing with a voluntary and committed passion.

The examples are endless: Canada’s Prime Minister Justin Trudeau gushed about how he learned of Castro’s death with “deep sorrow” and went on to pay tribute to a “legendary revolutionary.” Rep. Barbara Lee (D-CA) praised Castro and pleaded with everyone to “stop and pause and mourn.”

Other usual suspects did not disappoint. UK’s Labor opposition leader Jeremy Corbyn, the U.S. Green Party’s presidential candidate Jill Stein, Rev. Jesse Jackson and former President Jimmy Carter all stepped forward, expressing their deep sadness, extolling Castro’s “heroism,” struggle for “social justice” and other expected feats of revolutionary valor. The list goes on and on.

What exactly is going on here?

To understand why leftists, especially of the Western variety, are weeping upon Castro’s death, it is first crucial to grasp the underlying foundation of the progressives’ belief system. The leftist is a believer in a political faith, a faith that envisions a classless utopia of perfect equality and “social justice.” This faith is interlinked with the leftist’s revulsion of his own democratic-capitalist host society, which he sees as oppressive and unjust – and which he seeks to destroy. And it is upon the ashes of this intended destruction that the leftist hopes to build, with his other self-appointed social redeemers, the secular socialist paradise.

From this ideological foundation grow many pathologies, including the obvious philosophy of the enemy of my enemy is my friend. Indeed, by logic, anyone else who wants to destroy the leftist’s host society is seen as a helpful ally – and so it becomes completely obvious why, as David Horowitz has documented, the Left formed an Unholy Alliance with communism during the Cold War and why it continues that tradition with Islamic Supremacism in our terror war today.

Dr Brendan Nelson, a former medical practitioner and former federal politician (from 2007-8 he was leader of the Liberal Party in opposition, succeeded by Malcolm Turnbull, Australia’s current prime minister) is presently director of the Australian War Memorial in Canberra.

At the opening of the War Memorial’s exhibition “The Holocaust: Witnesses and Survivors” on 29 November Dr Nelson delivered an interesting speech. Inter alia:

‘Six million people. Almost a quarter of the population of Australia, almost the entire population of Sydney. That is how many were exterminated in the worst genocide of the twentieth century. Jews, Roma, gypsies, the disabled and political prisoners. But almost all were Jews.

Jewish identity has been shaped by three things: Antisemitism, still a virulent and repugnant force in many parts of the world; The Holocaust or “Shoah”; The embattled nature of the state of Israel for whom existence is a daily struggle.

Adolf Hitler was able to undertake this mass extermination for two principal reasons. The first was that the majority were indifferent to the plight of the minority. The second was that in Germany – as in other parts of Europe, antisemitism was deeply rooted – religious, secular and racial.

One observation through my own life not having ever faced nor endured even a fraction of the adversities suffered by many of you here, is that almost all of life’s suffering and pain stems from people making themselves the centre of their own lives. So too, nations making their own narrow self-interest the centre of all else….

The Australian War Memorial is many things. But above all else is the repository of our nation’s soul. This place and the stories of two million men and women told here, reminds us that we are Australians and that there are in the end some truths by which we live. And they are worth fighting to defend – politically, diplomatically and at times, militarily.

Not everyone agrees with this exhibition. One regular visitor to the Memorial told me emphatically that she was opposed to this exhibition. “This has nothing to do with Australia and the Australian War Memorial”, she said. She told me that she would never walk through it. It has everything to do with us, for we are a part of humankind.

In a world grappling with the mass movement of people; the persecution of political, religious and ethnic minorities; euthanasia and a generational struggle against resurgent totalitarianism in the form of those who have hijacked the good name [sic] of Islam to build a violent political utopia, we must remind ourselves of that of which humankind is capable.

Our responsibility is to stimulate and challenge visitors, Australian and international, to see the world through the eyes of others….

After the Ohio State attack in which several staff and students were stabbed by a fellow student but no one suffered life-threatening wounds, the Islamic State has gone back to the drawing board in their instructions for lone jihadists on how to go on stabbing sprees — with a picture tutorial this time.

ISIS claimed the Ohio State attack through its news agency, Amaq, about a day after Abdul Razak Ali Artan rammed his car into a group of people who had left a building because of a fire alarm on Nov. 28. Eleven were wounded in the car attack or were stabbed by Artan after he got out of the car. An officer who was near the scene because of the fire alarm short Artan dead.

ISIS wrote about Artan, a Somali refugee who had graduated from a local community college and was in his first year at Ohio State, days later in their weekly newspaper, al-Naba, but notably betrayed some disappointment as within the article they emphasized Orlando shooter Omar Mateen was a good example for lone jihadists in terms of body count.

In today’s new issue of Rumiyah magazine — which was published in English in addition to Russian, German, Croatian, Pashto, Urdu and Indonesian — ISIS again refers to Artan as “our brother” and includes his attack in their roundup of global terror operations over the past month.

“The attack was carried out in response to the Islamic State’s call to target the citizens of the nations involved in the Crusader coalition,” the article states, before printing Artan’s full Facebook message.

“My brothers and sisters, I am sick and tired of seeing my fellow Muslim brothers and sisters being killed and tortured everywhere. Seeing my fellow Muslims being tortured, raped, and killed in Burma led to a boiling point. I can’t take it anymore,” the message said. “America, stop interfering with the Muslim Ummah. We are not weak. We are not weak, remember that. If you want us Muslims to stop carrying out ‘lone wolf’ attacks, then make peace with the Islamic State. Make a pact or a treaty with them where you promise to leave them alone, you and your fellow apostate allies.”

“By Allah, we will not let you sleep unless you give peace to the Muslims. I am warning you, O America!” he added, encouraging fellow Muslims to ignore “celebrity scholars” and “listen instead to our hero Imam Anwar al-‘Awlaki,” the New Mexico-born al-Qaeda recruiter killed five year ago in a U.S. drone strike. “Let me ask you this question: If Muhammad, peace and blessings be upon him, and his Sahabah were here today, wouldn’t the western media call them ‘terrorists’?”

“To conclude: By Allah, I am willing to kill a billion infidels in retribution for a single Muslim or Muslimah.”

The Ohio State student waged his attack after the October issue of ISIS’ Rumiyah instructed to lone jihadists to launch random knife attacks, with a warning to pick a suitable blade for the job. The article included graphic detail, but no how-to images.

The November issue moved on to a different type of lone attack tutorial — or “just terror” attacks, as ISIS calls them — encouraging that jihadists use a heavy vehicle such as a U-Haul to plow into a crowd.

Shari’a councils should not have the right effectively to deny women rights they hold as British citizens under British law.

In the end, the biggest problem is that there is no system of external regulation for the councils. There is no legal requirement for them to keep full records of the cases they adjudicate on, no requirement to report to a civil authority with the right to prevent abuses, and not even a requirement for any council to register with a government agency.

The Muslim Brotherhood in the US itself listed the Fiqh Council of North America (FCNA) as one of several organizations who shared their goals, including the destruction of Western civilization and the conversion of the US into a Muslim nation.

The “minorities” jurisprudents generally favour a non-violent approach to the encounter of Islam and the West, while retaining a critical stance towards the latter and a conviction that Islam must, in the end, replace it. But on occasion, as in the Middle East, violence is sanctioned.

The UK has for several years faced problems with its growing number of shari’a councils (often misleadingly called courts). These councils operate outside British law, yet frequently give rulings on matters such as divorce, child custody, inheritance and more, which are based on Islamic law and in contradiction of the rights of individuals (usually women) under UK legislation. Many Muslim communities in cities such as Bradford, Birmingham, Luton, or boroughs such as Tower Hamlets in London are both sizeable and close-knit; individuals in them are made to live lives in accordance with Pakistani, Bangladeshi and Islamic traditional norms. This means that contact with British life at large is often restricted, with a lack of assimilation that traps many women and girls into lives very close to the lives of their sisters in Muslim countries.

Much of the concern about the “courts” has been expressed by Baroness Caroline Cox, whose bill to limit their impact on Muslim women has passed more than once through the House of Lords and, recently, into the House of Commons. Her personal determination and clear-sightedness have meant that the matter has remained for several years a focus for debate in politics and the media. Her arguments have received widespread support from women’s rights organizations, especially several concerned with the rights of Muslim women.

The dragon’s first major tongue-dart at the West was the death threat — a fatwa with a bounty issued in 1989 by Iran’s Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Khomeini — on Salman Rushdie, a British citizen, for his novel, The Satanic Verses.

What the dragon learned with that initial thrust! The West was so genteel. The United Nations issued condemnations on — paper! Diplomats wrote scare-letters. Politicians said harrumph.

How different if politicians and diplomats in the West had delivered the simple and forceful message back to the Ayatollah: Unless you remove this threat, we will cancel all diplomatic visas.

“The worst part of the dragon is in the tail.” You do not have to know what it means; it gives off a spooky authority. This thought was written by Guillermo Cabrera Infante, the great Cuban writer who knew something about dragons’ tails: he had confronted Fidel Castro and lived to tell about it. While on a diplomatic mission to Brussels in 1965, he denounced Castro, abandoned his post and lived out a life of exile in London until his death in 2005. He never went back.

For a minute, let us call the dragon Islamic Terror (we shall get back later to the tail). There is much about the dragon we do not know: where he lives exactly, his vulnerabilities, his comings and goings, his next attacks, his feeding schedule. We do know that he foments terror and inspires fear. From the front part of the dragon, his snout, emerges a tongue flick — tasting the air, sensing out fresh victims. His first major tongue-dart at the West was the death threat — a fatwa with a bounty issued in 1989 by Iran’s Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Khomeini — on Salman Rushdie, a citizen of Britain citizen, for his novel, The Satanic Verses.