RUTHFULLY YOURS

The sexual abuse incidents in Europe have exposed the logical flaws in the Swedish debate about immigration and they also show how unprepared Sweden and Europe are in facing the challenges that have arisen because of the migration crisis.

After women were assaulted by “asylum seekers” in several places in Europe, it emerged that it also had happened in Sweden. However, in Sweden this had happened in August 2015 at the “We are Sthlm” festival where about 150 girls had been victims of sexual abuse by “refugee youths” from Afghanistan.

The reason that this August 2015 incident was not reported until January 2016, was because one of Sweden’s largest newspaper, Dagens Nyheter, and the Swedish police, who had access to the information, did not report these incidents to the public.

Dagens Nyheter is known as a newspaper that romanticizes immigration and multiculturalism but the actions of the police shocked many in Sweden, because the police are one of the institutions in Sweden that many Swedes have great confidence in. The explanation that the police chief Peter Ågren gave for not reporting the sexual abuses in August 2015 was:

“This is a sore point, sometimes, we do not dare to say how things really are because we believe it will play into the hands of the Sverigedemokraterna (Sweden Democrats). We have to take responsibility for this within the police.”

A Hellfire is in Cuban hands. The State Dept. explanation? Several people at several firms made the mistake of their lives … on the same package.

A U.S. Hellfire anti-tank missile — a weapon launched from Predator drones in anti-terrorism operations, among other uses — found its way into the hands of Cuba’s government in 2014.

But the route it took, twice crossing the Atlantic, was less mysterious than the U.S. government’s public response to the discovery that front-line American military equipment made it to Havana — or beyond.

The Wall Street Journal reported that a missile shipped by Lockheed Martin to Spain for a NATO exercise was supposed to be put on a flight from Madrid to Frankfurt and then back to the United States. Wrote the Journal:

[The cargo] was clearly marked as containing material subject to rigorous export controls, and that shipping information would have made clear to anyone handling it that it wasn’t regular cargo.

U.S. regulations require that such cargo be loaded by DOD personnel onto U.S. carriers. Yet there were apparently commercial shipping companies involved:

… [One] operated by Air France, which took the missile to Charles de Gaulle Airport in Paris … and headed to Havana.

Further:

At some point, officials [U.S. military personnel] loading the first flight [in Frankfurt] realized the missile it expected to be loading onto the aircraft wasn’t among the cargo, the government official said.

Working backwards, they discovered the shipment had been handled by commercial carriers and then placed on a non-U.S. plane.

ISIS badly needs Libya for its operations in North Africa: to spread its paramilitary brigades, to organize its terrorist networks and, most importantly, to prepare its political pawns, after the chaos, to take over power.

“Over the last four years, Libya has become a key node in the expansion of Islamic radicalism across North Africa… and into Europe. If events in Libya continue on their current path, they will likely haunt the United States and its Western allies for a decade or more.” — Ethan Chorin, Foreign Policy.

ISIS taking control of North Africa, the soft underbelly of Europe, would amount to it getting ready to recapture, by terror and force, al-Andalus from the Catholic Christians of Spain.

In 2011 when Libya’s former ruler, Muammar Gaddafi, was murdered by the mob of militiamen, many people believed it was the beginning of a new, free, democratic country. Libya, however, did not become free or democratic. Instead, it became fractured, violent, tribal and divided. Rather than starting a new life, Libya was sliding slowly toward some sort of hell.

Over the years, as violence became a daily casual occurrence, Libya almost became synonymous in the news with disorder, and on its way to becoming yet another failed stated, like Somalia.

In spite of that, hope emerged anew with the attempt of the United Nations to negotiate a national agreement through UNMSIL (United Nations Support Mission in Libya).

I set about gathering reports on the Islamic advance across the West with the plan to write up one week’s worth of information. However, at the mid-week point it became clear that the post would be much too long if I went the entire week. So I stopped. What you find below is a sample of overt and abject barbarism; stealth advance; and Western weakness, stupidity, and dhimmitude that unfolded in just under four days.

Australia: Police officers were threatened as Muslims followed them home, made death threats, and tracked their movement using drones (here).

Austria: A major bank offers accounts to “asylum seekers” free of charge while Austrians are charged large fees. The bank also shut down the account of an anti-immigration organization with no explanation given (here).

Canada: A Muslim man accused of sexual assault (committed in the United States) fought the court decision to strip him of his refugee status, claiming his life will be in danger if he’s deported back to Somalia. The government assured its citizens that Canadian women will not be raped by “Syrian refugees” as is happening across Europe because Canada imports a better-quality invader. A textbook teaches children that Christians are persecuting Muslims in Syria. P.M. Trudeau visited a mosque where the imam repeatedly made vile misogynist remarks. A video of the P.M. surfaced from 2013 when he spoke at a mosque (where he also joined members in prayer). The minister of foreign affairs omitted the words “Islam” and “Islamic” when talking about Islamic terrorism (here, here, here, here, here, here, and here).

Denmark: There has been a surge in reports of mass sexual assault against Danish women by Muslim men. Some nightclubs are barring “migrants” due to complaints they are harassing female patrons. Many diseases, including diphtheria, are showing up in “refugee” centers. Some towns have begun programs of volunteers patrolling their villages to monitor antisocial behavior and prevent violence. One town has made pork a mandatory food at all public institutions, including schools (here, here, here, here, here).

Finland: An investigation is underway into a taharrush-like attack of a mother and daughter, where Muslim men cornered them, licked the daughter, and then beat the mother when she tried to intervene. A member of Shiite terrorist group entered the country posing as a “refugee.” (here and here).

It has long been an open secret that Russian agents fatally poisoned Alexander Litvinenko, a former Russian spy turned Kremlin critic, at a London hotel in November 2006. On Thursday a formal British inquiry went further. “Taking full account of all the evidence and analysis available to me,” wrote retired High Court Judge Robert Owen, “I find that the FSB operation to kill Mr. Litvinenko was probably approved by [then FSB Director Nikolai] Patrushev and President Putin.”

Litvinenko, a veteran of the Russian Federal Security Service (FSB), fled Russia for Britain in 2000, after going public with evidence that Russian officials abused the state security apparatus for corrupt purposes. This infuriated Vladimir Putin, then director of the FSB and soon to be the Kremlin’s paramount leader.

In exile Litvinenko published a book accusing the Russian leader of having staged terrorist bombings in Moscow in 1999 as a pretext to reignite the war in Chechnya. (See David Satter nearby.) Litvinenko also likely cooperated with British intelligence. In July 2006 Russian legislators enacted a law authorizing the government to target state enemies abroad. An unofficial Kremlin hit list began circulating in Russian circles. Litvinenko’s name was on it.

The 2016 political season is churning with anti-immigrant vitriol and wariness of the outside world. But one group of American Christians—missionaries—continues reaching out instead of walling themselves off. They honor Christ’s message in the Gospel of Matthew, chapter 25: “Whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me.”

The selfless work of missionaries was poignantly illustrated by the terrorist murder on Jan. 15 of 45-year-old Michael Riddering, an orphanage director in West Africa.

Riddering and his wife, Amy, left Hollywood, Fla., in 2011 to minister to impoverished children and widows in the landlocked nation of Burkina Faso. Unicef estimates that in the country of 17 million people, almost one million are orphans. The Ridderings, who brought their young daughter with them to the town of Yako, adopted two Burkinabe children; the orphanage cared for about 400 more.

Riddering was visiting Ouagadougou, the capital about 70 miles from Yako, late last week. He was meeting with a Burkinabe pastor in the Cappuccino Café when al Qaeda terrorists attacked the restaurant and two nearby hotels. More than two-dozen people, including Riddering and six Canadians in the country on short-term missions, were killed.

DAVOS — Here in this luxe Swiss ski town, dozens of world leaders are taking advantage of one another’s presence at the massive, multi-day economic summit to get together and talk shop.

But the annual conference also draws some leaders who’d prefer not to. On Thursday morning, Iranian Foreign Minister Javad Zarif and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu were spotted one floor apart at the InterContinental hotel.
Mr. Zarif was eating breakfast in the hotel restaurant, just a floor above where Mr. Netanyahu and Vice President Joe Biden met. Mr. Zarif left the restaurant about 20 minutes before Messrs. Biden and Netanyahu’s meeting started. Mr. Biden’s national security adviser was also two tables away from Mr. Zarif.

Mr. Netanyahu has been a fierce and vocal opponent of the Iranian nuclear deal and U.S. engagement with Tehran. He’s warned that the accord will strengthen and embolden Iran’s leaders, who he has said will funnel money to Israel’s regional foes such as Hezbollah and Hamas as well as Syrian president Bashar Al-Assad and shiite militias.

North Korea said Friday it was holding a U.S. student for committing an unspecified “hostile act,” the latest in a series of detained American tourists and missionaries that Pyongyang has at times used to try to win diplomatic leverage with Washington.

Otto Frederick Warmbier, an undergraduate student at the University of Virginia, was accused of being manipulated by the U.S. government, according to a brief report from the Korean Central News Agency. The report provided no details of Mr. Warmbier’s actions other than to allege that he entered the country “for the purpose of bringing down the foundation of its single-minded unity.”

Mr. Warmbier was detained in Pyongyang on Jan. 2, according to Troy Collins of Young Pioneer Tours, the tour company that took him to North Korea. Mr. Collins declined to provide further details but said Mr. Warmbier’s family had been informed of his detention.

A deal that sent $1.7 billion in U.S. funds to Iran, announced alongside the freeing of five Americans from Iranian jails, has emerged as a new flashpoint amid a claim in Tehran that the transaction amounted to a ransom payment.

The U.S. Treasury Department wired the money to Iran around the same time its theocratic government allowed three American prisoners to fly out of Tehran on Sunday aboard a Dassault Falcon jet owned by the Swiss air force.

The prisoner swap also involved freedom for two other Americans held in Iran as well as for seven Iranians charged or convicted by the U.S.

The announcements coincided with the implementation of the nuclear agreement with Iran, lifting international economic sanctions in exchange for Iran curtailing its nuclear program.

The $1.7 billion financial settlement ended a 35-year legal saga that centered on a purchase of U.S. arms by Iran’s last monarch, Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, that were never delivered because of the Iranian revolution in 1979.

The White House described the settlement as a victory for taxpayers, arguing that the U.S. was likely to lose in arbitration under way in The Hague, Netherlands, and could have been held liable for billions more if the process had dragged on.