RUTHFULLY YOURS

A total of 8,985 mosques were built between 2005 and 2015 by the Turkish government over the last decade in Turkey, according to statistics released by Turkey’s Religious Affairs Directorate (Diyanet).

The Central Anatolian province of Konya contained the highest number of mosques, Dogan News Agency reported on Sept. 16. Ankara, the southern province of Antalya, the Black Sea provinces of Ordu and Trabzon, and the southeastern province of Diyarbakır were among the other provinces with over 2,000 mosques.

While the Turkish government has built so many mosques across the country with state funds, it has banned Orthodox Christian liturgy in the Sumela Monastery, a historic site in Trabzon.

Sumela Monastery, located in the district of Macka — or Matsuka in Greek — in Trabzon province is one of the oldest monasteries in the Christian world. According to records, it was built by two Athenian monks, St. Barnabas and his nephew St. Sophronios, and was inaugurated by the bishop of Trabzon in 386 A.D.

The province of Trabzon, located in the ancient region of Pontos, the northeast portion of Anatolia adjacent to the Black Sea, also has a long Greek and Christian history. The word “Pontos” means “sea” in Greek.

“Trabzon was settled by Greeks probably by the 7th century BC,” writes researcher Sam Topalidis for the website Pontos World. “Trabzon was the ancient capital of the Greek speaking Komnenos Byzantine Kingdom (1204–1461). It survived until 1461, eight years after the fall of Byzantine Constantinople when both localities fell to the Ottoman Turks.”

After the city’s invasion by the Ottoman Turks, the local demographic began to change; but for centuries, Christians were the majority in the city.

According to Topalidis, Trabzon’s Muslim population increased dramatically under the Ottoman rule due to:

Muslims moving into the city (Most of the Trabzon’s Muslims were involuntary immigrants)
Deportations of Christians out of the city, probably to Istanbul
Christians converting to Islam, probably for fear of deportation

“However, the most important reason for the conversions was probably due to the higher taxes paid by Christians (compared to Muslims), a strong economic incentive for the poorest Christians,” writes Topalidis.

New satellite photos show activity at all three of the tunnel complexes at North Korea’s nuclear test site amid speculation that Pyongyang will stage another nuclear test around major national anniversaries in the coming days.

The photos, taken on Oct. 1, show vehicles and people around the tunnel entrances. While activity occasionally takes place at individual portals it is unusual to have activity at all three at once, experts say.

The activity could be for several reasons, including the collection of data from North Korea’s Sept. 9 nuclear test at the site, or preparation for a new test, said Jack Liu, an analyst for the North Korea-focused website 38 North, which first published the photos.

South Korea’s government says North Korea appears ready for another nuclear test whenever the order is given from its leader, Kim Jong Un. Speculation among analysts has centered on two days: the 10th anniversary of North Korea’s first nuclear test on Sunday and the 71st anniversary of the founding of its ruling Workers’ Party on Monday.
The West Portal at the nuclear test site shows mining carts nearby and a pile of spoil likely from excavation work. Mr. Liu said the pile doesn’t appear to have grown over the last two months, based on previous satellite images. ENLARGE
The West Portal at the nuclear test site shows mining carts nearby and a pile of spoil likely from excavation work. Mr. Liu said the pile doesn’t appear to have grown over the last two months, based on previous satellite images. Photo: U.S.-Korea Institute at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies/Airbus

North Korea has a pattern of staging major events on key anniversaries. The September test was held on the 68th anniversary of North Korea’s founding as a state.

A new nuclear test would likely intensify discussions at the United Nations Security Council on a response to North Korea’s provocations, which also include a long-range rocket launch in February. North Korea is banned from testing nuclear bombs and ballistic missile technology by several U.N. resolutions.

Despite international condemnation, Mr. Kim has pledged to press ahead in developing an advanced nuclear program, which he says is needed to deter an invasion by the U.S. and South Korea. Many analysts say Mr. Kim uses the nuclear buildup to bolster his own standing with North Korea’s military. CONTINUE AT SITE

MOSCOW—Russian officials intensified their rhetoric over the Syria crisis Thursday, saying Moscow was stepping up cooperation with Iran and boosting its military presence in the eastern Mediterranean.

The Russian military said Thursday that a new small warship armed with cruise missiles will join Russian’s naval grouping off the coast of Syria in the coming days, adding to Moscow’s naval presence in the region. Russia’s sole aircraft carrier is also expected to join the grouping before the end of the year.

Russia also boosted contacts with Iran over the Syria crisis. Following a meeting with his Iranian counterpart Thursday, Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Mikhail Bogdanov said he had discussed “immediate renewal of the coordinated international efforts aimed at an inclusive inter-Syrian dialogue,” the news agency Interfax reported.

Tehran and Moscow have supported Syrian President Bashar al-Assad since the start of the conflict. U.S. and Russian-led attempts to broker a truce recently collapsed, with Washington warning that Moscow’s role in a major offensive against the city of Aleppo had prompted discussions about giving more powerful weaponry to rebels fighting Mr. Assad’s government.

Russia’s military said Thursday that the U.S. should think twice about any future strikes on Syrian military positions, suggesting Russian antiair defenses could strike them.

The U.S.-led coalition erroneously bombarded a Syrian military site Sept. 17, prompting outrage in Damascus and Moscow. Russian military spokesman Maj. Gen. Igor Konashenkov said Thursday that the Syrian army had S-200 and Buk missile systems, while Russians had S-300 and the latest-generation S-400 systems on their base at Hmeimim, the news agency Interfax reported. CONTINUE AT SITE

ISIS’ Al-Hayat Media Center issued the second issue of its magazine Rumiyah, meaning Rome, in English, Turkish, German, French, Indonesian, Russian, Arabic and Uyghur. The design of the magazine is more simple than ISIS’ English-language Dabiq. It’s also much shorter: 38 pages compared to the 82 pages in the last issue of Dabiq.

In the first issue of Rumiyah, which debuted a month ago, jihadists were advised to target teens playing sports after school or even flower sellers hawking blooms on the street.

In the new PDF issue distributed widely via social media and Google Drive, an article on terror tactics assures would-be jihadists that “one need not be a military expert or a martial arts master, or even own a gun or rifle in order to carry out a massacre or to kill and injure several disbelievers and terrorize an entire nation.”

A footnote in the article states that ISIS won’t be using the term “lone wolf,” but “just terror operations” — “just” as an adjective for “justice.” Al-Qaeda calls lone operations “open-source jihad.”

Hinting that the article is one in a forthcoming series about terror tactics, ISIS focused on the benefits of knives to help potential terrorists with the “ocean of thoughts” that “might pour into one’s mind” when considering an attack.

“Many people are often squeamish of the thought of plunging a sharp object into another person’s flesh. It is a discomfort caused by the untamed, inherent dislike for pain and death, especially after ‘modernization’ distanced males from partaking in the slaughtering of livestock for food and the striking of the enemy in war,” the unbylined article states. “However, any such squirms and discomforts are never an excuse for abandoning jihad.”

ISIS suggested a “campaign of knife attacks” in which the attacker “could dispose of his weapon after each use, finding no difficulty in acquiring another one.””It is explicitly advised not to use kitchen knives, as their basic structure is not designed to handle the kind of vigorous application used for assassinations and slaughter,” the article states, further advising “to avoid troublesome knives, those that can cause harm to the user because of poor manufacturing.”

In the race for the next United Nations secretary-general, the Security Council has narrowed the field of candidates from a remaining 10 to precisely one: and the winner is, former Prime Minister of Portugal Antonio Guterres. It could have been worse — but not by much. Guterres brings to the job a record that suggests he is a perfect fit to head a UN that is prone to overreach, mismanagement, waste, fraud, abuse and government meddling in every aspect of life — provided we all want even more of the same.

That’s not what you’re reading in most press reports right now, where news of Guterres as top pick for the next UN secretary-general seems to consist largely of recycled public relations materials from the UN, related officials, and the Portuguese government. Guterres was roundly praised on Wednesday by Russia’s ambassador to the UN Vitaly Churkin (“we have a clear favorite”) and America’s Ambassador Samantha Power (who called Guterres “a candidate whose experience, vision and versatility across a range of areas proved compelling”).

So who is this man, Antonio Guterres, who so impressed the UN envoys of both Presidents Putin and Obama?

Along with a stint as prime minister of Portugal from 1995-2002, Guterres also served as president of the Socialist International, from 1999-2005, following a stint as vice-president of the organization from 1992-1999. As the Daily Caller reminds us, the Socialist International is “a global network of national socialist parties seeking to establish ‘democratic socialism’ around the world,” an endeavor that in the late 1980s included funding the communist Sandinistas in Nicaragua.

From 2005-2015, Guterres served as high commissioner of the UN agency for refugees (UNHCR), garnering experience which he and the Portuguese government advertised as one of his chief qualifications to head the UN Secretariat. In nominating Guterres for the post of UN secretary-general, Portugal’s Prime Minister Antonio Costa wrote that Guterres throughout his tenure as the UN’s high commissioner for refugees “showed exemplary understanding of and respect for the values of the United Nations,” ushering in all sorts of marvelous “reform and innovation.”

That sounds great, except the UN’s own auditors took a far less laudatory view of Guterres’s performance. This April the UN’s Office of Internal Oversight Services issued an audit report identifying a series of “critical” lapses by the UNHCR under Guterres’s management. That audit was obtained by Fox News editor-at-large George Russell, who published a story on June 7 headlined “UN refugee agency handed over hundreds of millions to partners without monitoring.”

The true number of child marriages in Germany is believed to be much higher than the official statistics suggest because many are being concealed.

In May, an appeals court in Bamberg recognized the marriage of a 15-year-old Syrian girl to her 21-year-old cousin. The ruling effectively legalized Sharia child marriages in Germany.

“Religious or cultural justifications obscure the simple fact that older, perverse men are abusing young girls.” — Rainer Wendt, head of the German police union.

“This is not a question of tolerance and openness, but a question of the protection of children and minors. We therefore need a clear rule: Assessing the marriageable age of a person … will in the future always be determined by German law.” — Bavarian Justice Minister Winfried Bausback.

German authorities are debating the contours of a new law that would crack down on child marriages after it emerged that some 1,500 underage brides are now living in the country.

The married minors are among the more than one million migrants from Africa, Asia and the Middle East who entered Germany in 2015.

The German Interior Ministry, responding to a Freedom of Information Act request, recently revealed that 1,475 married children are known to be living in Germany as of July 31, 2016 — including 361 children who are under the age of 14.

Most of the married children are from Syria (664), Afghanistan (157) and Iraq (100). Nearly 80% (1,152) are girls. The true number of child marriages in Germany is believed to be much than the official statistics suggest because many are being concealed.

“You [Iranian officials] will be in the future etched in the annals of history as criminals. The greatest crime committed under the Islamic Republic, from the beginning of the Revolution until now, which will be condemned by history, is this crime [mass executions] committed by you.” — Ayatollah Hossein Ali Montazeri, who was one of the founding fathers of the Islamic Republic of Iran.

Intriguingly, all those people whom Montazeri is addressing and warning in the audio, currently appear to enjoy high positions.

Iran’s massacre of more than 30,000 people was recently disclosed by Ayatollah Hossein Ali Montazeri’s son, Ahmad, a moderate cleric, who posted a confidential audio of his father on his website but was ordered by Iran’s intelligence service to remove it.

Born in Esfahan, Iran, Ayatollah Hossein Ali Montazeri was one of the founding fathers of the Islamic Republic of Iran. He is a human rights activist, an Islamic theologian, and was the designated successor to the Islamic revolution’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, until the very last moments of Khomeini’s life. His pictures were posted next to Khomeini’s in the streets.

In the recording, Montazeri states:

“You [Iranian officials] will be in the future etched in the annals of history as criminals. The greatest crime committed under the Islamic Republic, from the beginning of the Revolution until now, which will be condemned by history, is this crime [mass executions] committed by you.”

While some international human rights organizations, the Obama Administration and the United Nations appear to have turned a blind eye this massacre and other crimes against humanity, several officials have taken steps. A U.S. House of Representatives Resolution condemning the massacres and other executions was introduced by the House Homeland Security Chair, Mike McCaul, and cosponsored by Chairman Ed Royce, Ranking Member Eliot Engel, and Rules Committee Chair Pete Sessions. The resolution was introduced when Iranian President Hassan Rouhani, who heads a government that is ranked number one in the world for executions per capita, was addressing the 71st Session of the United Nation General Assembly. During his speech, according to the Associated Press, an unprecedented number of protesters gathered in Dag Hammerskjold Plaza outside the UN — including Senator Joe Lieberman, and Sir Geoffrey Robertson, former Head of the UN war crimes tribunal for Sierra Leone, who wrote a report on Iran’s 1988 massacre that was published on the United Nations Arts Initiative website.