FOREIGN POLICY, WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

The Iran Deal’s Backers Are Getting Desperate Don’t be fooled by their misleading arguments for remaining a party to this terrible agreement. By Fred Fleitz

Posted By on September 14th, 2017

Supporters of the 2015 nuclear deal with Iran, otherwise known as the JCPOA, are worried. They know President Trump is on the brink of refusing to certify the agreement to Congress next month and withdrawing from it. To stop this from happening, they have come up with a series of desperate and deceptive arguments to convince the president to stick with the deal, despite its deep flaws.

Fortunately, there is a far better and more responsible alternative: a compelling strategy drafted by Ambassador John Bolton to withdraw the United States from the JCPOA and implement a more coherent Iran policy.

Mr. Trump was right when he said during the presidential campaign that the JCPOA is the worst international agreement ever negotiated, since it allows Iran to continue its nuclear-weapons program by permitting it to enrich uranium, operate and develop advanced uranium centrifuges, and run a heavy-water reactor. The limited restrictions that the deal imposes on Iran’s enrichment program will expire in eight years. And in the meantime, its inspection provisions will remain wholly inadequate.

Although the JCPOA did not require Iran to halt its belligerent and destabilizing behavior, President Obama and Secretary of State John Kerry repeatedly claimed it would lead to an improvement in that behavior. This has not happened. Instead, Iran has become an even more belligerent and destabilizing force since the deal was announced in 2015. It stepped up its ballistic-missile program. It upped its support of terrorism and sent troops into Syria. And it increased its aggression in the Persian Gulf and the Red Sea, as the Houthi rebels — its proxy in Yemen — continued to fire missiles at U.S. and gulf-state ships.

As Trump considers withdrawing from the JCPOA, its backers are promoting several dubious arguments in an effort to keep it in place. These include:

1. Argument: The IAEA says Iran is in compliance with the JCPOA. Although it is true that a September 1, 2017, IAEA report did not cite any Iranian violations of the deal, and IAEA director general Yukiya Amano has said Iran is meeting its JCPOA commitments, according to an analysis by the Institute for Science and International Security, “the [IAEA] report is so sparse in details that one cannot conclude that Iran is fully complying with the JCPOA.” The Institute also notes that, “nowhere in the report does the IAEA state that Iran is fully compliant.”

In addition, Iran refuses to allow IAEA inspectors access to what it deems to be military sites, a major violation. After Amano suggested in a speech on Monday that the IAEA could obtain access to Iranian military sites if necessary, an Iranian official made clear that that was not the case, stating that “Mr. Amano, his agents and no other foreigners have the right to inspect our military sites, because these sites are among off-limit sites for any foreigner and those affiliated with them.”

2. Argument: Iranian violations of the JCPOA are minor and “not material.” Iran-deal backers have tried to downplay Iranian violations, including those spelled out in a July 11 letter from Senators Tom Cotton (R., Ark.), Ted Cruz (R., Texas), David Perdue (R., Ga.), and Marco Rubio (R., Fla.) to Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, as minor and “not material breaches.” The truth is that these violations are significant. The four senators also noted that German intelligence reported covert cheating by Iran in 2016 and 2017.

But even if one accepts the arguments of JCPOA supporters who dismiss Iranian violations, the compliance issue is a red herring, since Tehran can advance its nuclear-weapons program by continuing its uranium-enrichment and heavy-water-reactor operations without running afoul of the deal. Moreover, when most of the deal’s restrictions expire in eight years, Iran will be able to massively expand its nuclear program with the international community’s blessing.

3. Argument: President Trump should decertify the JCPOA to Congress but remain in the agreement so we can spend several years trying to fix it. Worried that a U.S. withdrawal from the nuclear deal will anger European leaders, some JCPOA supporters have proposed that the president state he is not certifying the agreement to Congress on the October 15 deadline, but the U.S. will remain in the deal to start negotiations to amend it. After the president’s “decertification,” JCPOA supporters contend Congress could re-impose U.S. sanctions lifted under the deal.

This is a dishonest argument for several reasons. First, it makes no sense to remain in an agreement that the president has determined is not in America’s national interests. Second, the idea that the U.S. should remain a party to the JCPOA to fix it later is actually a clever argument to keep us in the deal for good, since Iran’s ruling mullahs have made it clear they will never agree to amend it. And third, JCPOA supporters know that if President Trump decertifies the deal without withdrawing from it, Senate Democrats will use the filibuster to block the restoration of any sanctions lifted by the agreement.

WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

What If South Korea Acted Like North Korea? If it threatened to destroy its neighbor — China — the neighbor would act. By Victor Davis Hanson

Posted By on September 14th, 2017

Think of the Korean Peninsula turned upside down.

Imagine if there were a South Korean dictatorship that had been in power, as a client of the United States since 1953.

Imagine also that contemporary South Korea was not the rich, democratic home of Kia and Samsung. Instead, envision it as an unfree, pre-industrialized and impoverished failed state, much like North Korea.

Further envision that the U.S. had delivered financial aid and military assistance to this outlaw regime, which led to Seoul’s possessing several nuclear weapons and a fleet of long-range missiles.

Next, picture this rogue South Korean dictatorship serially threatening to incinerate its neighbor, North Korea — and imagine that North Korea was ruled not by the Kim dynasty but by a benign government without nuclear weapons.

Also assume that the South Korean dictatorship would periodically promise to wipe out Chinese cities such as Shanghai and Beijing. The implicit message to the Chinese would be that the impoverished South Koreans were so crazy that they didn’t care whether they, too, went up in smoke — as long a dozen of their nuclear-tipped missiles could blow up Chinese cities and paralyze the second-largest economy in the world. Assume that these South Korean threats had been going on without consequences for over a decade.

Finally, in such a fantasy scenario, what if the United States falsely claimed ignorance of much of its South Korean client’s nuclear capability and threats? America instead would plead that it regretted the growing tension and the reckless reactions of China to the nuclear threats against it. Washington would lecture China that the crisis was due in part to its support for its North Korean ally.

For effect, the United States would occasionally issue declarations of regret and concern over the situation — even as it warned China not to do anything to provoke America’s provocateur ally.

In such a fantasy, American security experts and military planners would gleefully factor a roguish nuclear South Korea into U.S. deterrent strategy. The Pentagon would privately collude with the South Korean dictatorship to keep the Chinese occupied and rattled, while the U.S. upped shipments of military weaponry to Seoul and overlooked its thermonuclear upgrades.

The American military would be delighted that China would be tied down by having an unhinged nuclear dictatorship on its borders, one that periodically threatened to kill millions of Chinese. South Korea would up the ante of its bluster by occasionally test-launching missiles in the direction of its neighbor.

Question: How long would China tolerate having weapons of mass destruction pointed at its major cities by an unbalanced tyrannical regime?

In response, would Beijing threaten a nuclear Seoul with a preemptory military strike, even though the Chinese would know that Seoul could first do a lot of nuclear damage?

Would China conclude that the United States was the real guilty party because it tacitly sanctioned South Korea’s possession of nuclear weapons?

Would China then warn the U.S. to pressure Seoul to disarm?

Would Beijing cease all trade with America?

Would China boycott, embargo or blockade South Korea?

WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

Michael Galak Inconvenient Memories

Posted By on September 14th, 2017

The sixteenth anniversary of the 9/11 attacks came and went with minimal recognition on the part of the media, a dreadful pity but not a surprise. Mark that slaughter and, well, people might be reminded of Islam’s intolerance, rather than the evil of the ‘no’ campaign on gay marriage

Americans and Israelis remember 9/11 yesterday, today and always. In Australia, by contrast, the sixteenth anniversary went by with barely a mention of the terror attack by Al-Qaida, which took 2996 lives and inflicted $10 billion in damages.

In Australia on the anniversary we were bombarded instead with sermons about the alleged necessity, no, the moral imperative, to vote ‘Yes’ on gay marriage. There were few mentions of the 16th anniversary of that most vile, inhuman and devastating attack by radical Islam on our way of life.

Doesn’t such a calamity deserve an honorable mention at least? Or is our collective attention so consumed by the inanity of the same-sex marriage campaign’s aggressive ‘yes’ advocates that there is simply no grey matter left to contemplate the atrocity that changed everything. Actually, make that should have changed everything.

How much effort have we put into forgetting how the Twin Towers were hit, how they burned and then tumbled, entombing those who gave offense to Islam simply by reporting for work in a high-rise office complex? Have we forgotten those heart-stopping images of human beings flinging themselves from the upper floors, choosing to die by impact rather than flames, perhaps in the hope that their bodies would be found and identified so families could bury them and find some sort of closure? Have we forgotten the bravery of ordinary Americans who found themselves on a hijacked plane and fought back? Have we forgotten the brotherhood and tenacity of the New York’s police and firefighters, ordinary men and women engulfed by calamity but rising resolutely to extend the helping hand?

Have we forgotten? Or is that we simply wish to forget?

Our mass media, I believe, ignored 9/11 attack on the the buildings that symbolised in the eyes of Islamist savages the success and confidence of the West. To be reminded that the most ardent elements of a militant creed detest us for what we are just will not do! That goes too for the hate Islamists shower on us for celebrating the equality of women and, yes, to the tolerance extended to homosexuals long before activists seized upon the same-sex marriage push as a handy tool for stroking egos and garnering look-at-me attention. The approved narrative says that we are all tiles in the gorgeous mosaic of multiculturalism, that all cultures are equal, so let’s not think about the intolerance one of those tiles represents.

That silence, it evokes the reason proponents of the SSM did everything they could to stop the national plebiscite endorsed by popular vote at the last election. Advocates were terrified that the “great unwashed” would not vote as they were told by their betters. The virtual refusal of our media to even mention the 9/11 anniversary is, I believe, a further manifestation of contempt for those whose opinion is deemed not to matter, not to the media and not to so many politicians. Remind the public of that day when almost 3000 people perished and it would prompt thoughts of Islam and how problematic it is to integrate it with Western life and norms. Any frank discussion of burqas, female genital mutilation, firebrand imams and a refusal to assimilate would be, as the media likes to put it, “Islamophobic”.

That 9/11 is remembered in Israel should come as no surprise. Israel knows the horror of Islamic terrorism on an ‘up close and personal’ basis. That is why Israelis do not delude themselves that terror attacks somewhere else are not their concern. It is. They make it so.

Some time ago, when Israelis were suffering from an incessant terror assaults, the rest of the world was indifferent to their suffering, believing it not their concern. The spread of global terrorism is a consequence of this indifference. The Jews are, indeed, the ‘canaries’ in the world’s mine – they suffered the terrorist onslaught first and learned how to fight back and survive. They have learned several lessons.

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Hillary’s Anti-Presidential Campaign Her malicious book reveals why she should never have been president. Daniel Greenfield

Posted By on September 14th, 2017

Hillary Clinton spent a third of her miserable adult life trying to get into the White House. Now the nation’s failed Harridan-in-Chief is determined to spend her remaining years blaming everyone, from Matt Lauer to the Electoral College, for having to live out the rest of her life in flat broke poverty in the eleven rooms of her Georgian Colonial mansion (and the neighboring mansion in their cul-de-sac too).

Current ‘blamees’ include the FBI, millions of white people, sexism, the Russians, Russian sexism, Bernie Sanders, Joe Biden, Matt Lauer and the Electoral College.

And probably the starting lineup of the Denver Broncos. You’ll have to buy the book for the full list.

But What Happened, Hillary’s spiteful magnum opus, does actually answer its titular question.

Hillary happened.

Hillary Clinton is a terrible person. Her politics are terrible. She’s a nasty creature whose hatred, entitlement and greed are in direct proportion to her mountainous avalanches of self-pity.

And What Happened sums up those qualities the way that none of her previous biographies ever did.

What Happened isn’t Hillary unfiltered. The only people privileged to witness that were the Secret Service agents she threw things at and the aides who had to frantically cater to her every whim.

But it’s close enough.

What Happened is still told in Hillary’s treacly insincere voice. But for the first time, its topic isn’t a bunch of insincere platitudes assembled by some combination of aides, staffers, ghostwriters and pollsters.

All that is over.

The carefully constructed machine built to take Hillary to the White House broke down on Wisconsin Highway 14, Florida State Road 20 and Pennsylvania Route 22. Only a skeleton staff of loyalists stayed to help Hillary turn her name recognition and remaining connections into filthy lucre and filthier spite.

That’s what What Happened is. Hillary gets to lash out at everyone and get paid for it. Not only is she upstaging Bernie’s book tour while trying to tie him to Trump, she’s taking shots at another likely Dem 2020er, Joe Biden, not to mention her own badly used DNC and everyone who didn’t vote for her.

If Hillary can’t be president, she’s going to make damn sure that none of her Dem rivals will either.

Hillary will be taking the millions that she had to spend to fight off Bernie in state after state out of his hide piece by piece. And Biden’s vacillation about the entering the race will cost him too.

How much vengeance can Hillary extract with a book? Ask Bernie.

The Bernie Sanders Guide to Political Revolution print edition will be out on September 14. Hillary’s What Happened will be out on September 12.

Two days earlier.

Hillary’s book currently tops Amazon’s bestseller list. Bernie’s is at 39.

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Trump White House Should Stop Talking about Comey Irresponsible presidential commentary complicates investigations. By Andrew C. McCarthy

Posted By on September 14th, 2017

President Trump, through his press secretary, has recommended that the Justice Department, which answers to Trump, should consider prosecuting former FBI director James Comey. The statements by Sarah Huckabee Sanders were not a model of clarity, and the way they’ve been reported may have confused matters. There is no doubt, however, that the Trump administration is politicizing law enforcement — exactly what it accuses Comey of having done.

Ms. Sanders accused Comey of leaking “privileged information” to the media and giving false testimony to Congress. The disclosure of “privileged information” is generally not a crime unless the information is classified — and Ms. Sanders did not claim that Comey divulged classified matters. The spokeswoman, moreover, failed to specify what the purportedly false testimony was, although she appeared to be referring to statements the former FBI director made to Congress regarding the Hillary Clinton emails probe — the investigation she accused Comey of politicizing.

Sanders was not clear on whether the White House believed Comey had probably committed a crime or merely strayed into a legal gray area, burbling that his “improper” actions “likely could have been illegal.” While paying lip-service to the notion that encouraging a prosecution is “not the president’s role,” Sanders nonetheless asserted, “I think if there’s ever a moment where we feel someone’s broken the law, particularly if they’re the head of the FBI, I think that’s something that certainly should be looked at.”

The press secretary’s description of the former FBI director’s actions may or may not have been accurate, depending on whether her oral remarks have been correctly punctuated in reporting by the Washington Post (whose version is substantially duplicated by The Hill). The Post relates Sanders’s statement as follows (my italics to highlight the possible confusion):

Comey, by his own self-admission, leaked privileged government information weeks before President Trump fired him. Comey testified that [if?] an FBI agent engaged in the same practice, they’d [sic] face serious repercussions. I think he set his own stage for himself on that front.

Obviously, Sanders was referring to Comey’s disclosure to the New York Times of a portion of a memo he had written about a conversation with Trump. According to Comey, during that February 14 conversation, Trump pressured him to drop the investigation of retired General Michael Flynn, the national-security adviser Trump had just fired. The problem with Sanders’s account, as quoted above, is that the leak to the Times happened days after, not “weeks before,” Comey was fired by Trump.

To recap, Comey was fired on May 9. He has recounted that his leak was a reaction to a tweet by Trump on May 12 — three days later. In that tweet, Trump said, “James Comey better hope that there are no ‘tapes’ of our conversations before he starts leaking to the press.” Comey related (in Senate Intelligence Committee testimony) that a few days after the tweet, it dawned on him that Trump’s allusion to tapes implied the existence of recordings that could corroborate Comey’s version of events. Using an intermediary, he thus leaked a portion of his memo to the Times, which published a story about it on May 16. Comey hoped the leak would “prompt the appointment of a special counsel” — who obviously would attempt to obtain any relevant recordings. Soon afterwards, Robert Mueller, was in fact appointed special counsel. President Trump has since represented that he made no recordings.

If the Post has framed Sanders’s assertions accurately, she was clearly wrong about the timing of the leak. I suspect, however, that the Post’s punctuation is wrong — which obviously can happen when oral statements are transcribed. The phrase “weeks before President Trump fired him” may not have been the end of Sanders’s first sentence (about Comey’s leak); it may have been the beginning of her next sentence (about Comey’s testimony regarding possible FBI leaking). If I am correct about this, Sanders’s statements should have been reported as follows:

Comey, by his own self-admission, leaked privileged government information. Weeks before President Trump fired him, Comey testified that [if?] an FBI agent engaged in the same practice, they’d face serious repercussions. I think he set his own stage for himself on that front.

This would be closer to accurate. Comey has admitted leaking his memo. The information in the memo — a summary of a conversation between the president and FBI director — was clearly sensitive and, even if not classified, should not have been leaked. And, in a May 3 Senate hearing, Comey had testified that there would be “severe consequences” if he found out FBI agents leaked investigative information. (We should note that this was less than a week before Trump fired him, not “weeks before,” as Sanders said.) This seems like a more plausible rendering. After all, the point Sanders was trying to make was that Comey’s leaking of investigative information was condemnable under his own prior condemnation of such leaking.

ENVIRONMENT AND JUNK SCIENCE, NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Scott Pruitt criticizes Obama as ‘environmental savior,’ moves EPA away from climate change by Josh Siegel

Posted By on September 14th, 2017

Few Trump administration agency chiefs have moved as decisively to implement an agenda as Scott Pruitt, the administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency, and he’s quite clear about what he wants to do.

He calls it a “back to the basics” agenda, removing the government from what he considers extraneous activity — namely, the climate change battle taken up by former President Barack Obama, who he questioned as an “environmental savior.”

Asked to define his early legacy, Pruitt, in a wide-ranging interview with the Washington Examiner at EPA headquarters Monday, reached for his coffee mug, leaned his small, stout frame forward in his chair, and embarked on a lengthy denunciation of the Obama administration.

“I’ve got to say this to you: what is it about the past administration?” Pruitt said. “Everyone looks at the Obama administration as being the environmental savior. Really? He was the environmental savior? He’s the gold standard, right? Well, he left us with more Superfund sites than when he came in. He had Gold King [the 2015 mine wastewater spill] and Flint, Michigan [drinking water crisis]. He tried to regulate CO2 twice and flunked twice. Struck out. So what’s so great about that record? I don’t know.”

Pruitt says he wants to emphasize the core mission of the agency charged with protecting the nation’s air, water, and public health.

He says he has demonstrated that commitment leading the EPA’s response in recent weeks to Hurricanes Harvey and Irma, in which the agency has worked to secure some of the nation’s most contaminated toxic waste sites under the agency’s Superfund program.

But Pruitt is equally sure of what his EPA isn’t, and he is focused on countering his predecessor’s pursuit of combating climate change.

Pruitt has rolled back regulations aimed at curbing carbon dioxide emissions, which many scientists blame for driving man-made climate change. He has erased climate change considerations from government processes, and he strongly urged President Trump to withdraw the U.S. from the Paris global climate change agreement, a move Trump announced June 1.

That effort has been intensely scrutinized by environmentalists and EPA institutionalists.

Criticism of Pruitt has been amplified after Hurricanes Harvey and Irma, partially because he has refused to engage in discussion about the role of climate change in strengthening extreme weather events.

“The cause and effect of these storms, should that really be the priority right now?” Pruitt said to the Washington Examiner, mirroring his comments to other news outlets. “When I’ve got Superfund sites to worry about, wastewater treatment facilities and we’ve got drinking water issues and access to fuel issues and power outages. I just think it’s insensitive and it’s absolute misplaced priorities.”

Last weekend, Christine Todd Whitman, former Republican EPA administrator under President George W. Bush, bashed Pruitt in a commentary for the New York Times, blaming him for being overly political and opposing science.

Pruitt, an experienced deregulator and former Republican Oklahoma attorney who sued the EPA multiple times, notices those slights and doesn’t dispute their claims.

WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

Jihadism: The Fear That Dare Not Speak its Name by Dexter Van Zile

Posted By on September 14th, 2017

Anti-Zionism delays having to face the threats to world peace and human rights presented by Muslim supremacism.

“One girl had boiling water held over her throat: another had her tongue nailed to a table.” — Peter McGloughlin, Easy Meat: Inside Britain’s Grooming Gang Scandal.

Muslims who spoke in opposition to the grooming behavior learned that no one outside their community had their back. Clearly, some form of displacement is going on. Jews are safe to criticize; jihadists are not.

One of the most troubling aspects about “peace and justice” activism in the current era is that the very same institutions that condemn Israel so vociferously have had a difficult, if not impossible time confronting the terrible misdeeds of the Assad regime in Syria, ISIS in Iraq and Boko Haram in Nigeria with the same force with which they assail the Jewish state.

Yes, they issue condemnations, but their statements are lamentations that really do not approach in ferocity of the ugly denunciations these institutions target at Israel. In the United States, the problem is most pronounced in liberal Protestant mainline churches such as the United Church of Christ, the Presbyterian Church USA and the United Methodist Church, denominations that have to varying degrees of intensity support the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement that singles Israel out for condemnation — in a transparent effort to eradicate the country by economic means — while remaining shamefully silent about the genocide of Christians in the Middle East.

We also see a tendency in institutions such as the World Council of Churches, the National Council of Churches and to my dismay as a Catholic, the Vatican and other parts of the Roman Catholic Church, to assail Israel while remaining silent about the problem of jihad.

The Catholic Church, which has condemned anti-Semitism in a document called Nostra Aetate in 1965, also has a difficult time dealing with the problem of Muslim anti-Semitism and anti-Christian hostility in Muslim communities and the religious sources they hold dear.

One source of the problem is that it is simply a lot easier and safer to speak out about the conflict between Israel and the Palestinians than it is to confront the violence against Christians in the rest of the Middle East.

If you fly to Israel, you can participate in a protest against the IDF at the security barrier in the morning and be eating in a nice restaurant in Tel Aviv that afternoon without having to worry about getting shot. Protesting against ISIS or the misdeeds of the Iranian government, which puts Westerners in jail, is another, rather more courageous, thing altogether.

The Arab-Israeli conflict has a theme park for many peace activists: Israel. American clergy go on a tour organized by an anti-Israel group like Sabeel then go back home and give PowerPoint presentations about how they protested the security barrier.

Another factor is fear — fear of Islam. The threat of violence that comes with confronting the impact of Sharia law and jihadism on human rights and national security has been significant, but it has remained doggedly unstated in the witness of churches in the United States. Condemn Israel unfairly or engage in Jew-baiting and you get a letter from CAMERA, the ADL or the local Board of Rabbis. Offend the sensibilities of jihadists and you might get killed.

On this score, it is important to note that anti-Zionism really started to manifest itself in the Presbyterian Church USA (PCUSA) — the church where the anti-Israel divestment movement got its start in the U.S. — with the election of a former missionary by the name of Benjamin Weir as moderator of the denomination’s General Assembly in 1986.

Prior to his election as moderator, Weir, kidnapped while working as a missionary, spent a year as a hostage held in Lebanon by Hezbollah.

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Sweden’s New Instability by Nima Gholam Ali Pour

Posted By on September 14th, 2017

If the United States in 2015 had received the same proportion of asylum seekers as Sweden, in relation to its population, the US would have taken in 5.2 million of them.

The survey covered the period 2011 to 2016 and concerned more than 10,000 reported crimes relating to sexual offenses.

That traditional Swedish bathhouses in Sweden today are associated with rape and sexual abuse was something unthinkable before the migration crisis in 2015. Both the Boston Globe and alternative media should please stick to statistics and facts.

Recently, The Boston Globe’s Astead W. Herndon wrote an article criticizing U.S. President Donald Trump’s ways of gathering support for his statements and proposals. While it is basically true that politicians should not only rely only on the media, Herndon’s understatement Sweden’s problems is dishonest at best.

If one mentions problems in Sweden relating to migration, it is important to describe what is really happening. Sadly, Sweden’s refugee policy has made Sweden less secure. In 2015, Sweden received 163,000 asylum seekers. The same year, the United States received about 70,000 asylum seekers. Sweden, however, has a population of ten million, while the United States has approximately 323 million. If the United States in 2015 had received the same proportion of asylum seekers as Sweden, in relation to its population, the US would have taken in 5.2 million. Would it have threatened U.S. security to host 5.2 million new asylum seekers in one year? Probably. That is what happened in Sweden.

The US already has a rigorous vetting process, but Sweden has a weak one — only slowly improving. In addition, because many “unaccompanied refugee children” lie about their age when they reach Sweden, the National Board of Forensic Medicine (“Rättsmedicinalverket”) has been instructed by the government to do medical age-assessments. These are made at the request of the Swedish Migration Agency (“Migrationsverket”), this, after the asylum seekers’ consent. The National Board of Forensic Medicine began performing these age-assessments in March; reporting on their activities on September 4, they found that in 83% of cases, the investigated person was not a minor, but 18 or older.

The problem of asylum seekers lying about their age is that these adults of unknown backgrounds have been sent to primary schools and high schools with children and placed in different homes with them. Sweden’s liberal migration policy has jeopardized the safety of Swedish children.

As a result of the migration crisis, since 2015 Sweden has been forced to introduce border controls. This activity, along with deporting illegal migrants and violent disputes in asylum accommodations, has claimed a large part of the resources of the police. In June 2016, the Swedish Civil Contingencies Agency, surveying fires at asylum accommodations, found that only 11% of the fires were started from outside the asylum home. The resource-crisis of the Swedish police has resulted in more municipalities forced to hire private security companies. In spring 2017, Radio Sweden sent a survey to Sweden’s 290 municipalities. 200 responded, and of these, 140 stated that their security costs had increased, and of these, 35 responded that their costs had increased directly because of the lack of police officers.

In 2005, Sweden enacted a new law concerning sexual offenses, that broadened, under Swedish law, what was considered rape. In 2013, this law was extended even further to include even a passive response as a rape.

While the increase in the number of reported rapes should not be interpreted as Sweden having a “rape epidemic,” in June 2017, for example, Sweden’s public broadcasting television reported that in just a little over a year, 15 unaccompanied migrant boys from Afghanistan were convicted of gang-rapes of other boys in Sweden. In a police report published in 2016, dealing with sexual assaults, the police stated that:

“In cases where the crimes were committed by perpetrators in a larger group in public places and in swimming pools, the perpetrators were mainly young people seeking, or recently receiving, asylum in Sweden”.

In the same report one can also read that:

“All investigations in Stockholm and Kalmar from 2014 and 2015 have been closed down due to difficulties with identification or lack of evidence.”

EDUCATION, WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

The University of Oslo Rewards a Promising Apologist by Bruce Bawer

Posted By on September 14th, 2017

A Master’s Degree in Whitewashing Islam

I routinely find the website Document.no to be more reliable on the facts than the state-owned TV and radio stations or any of the big private (but, in many cases, state-supported) dailies.

The idea that there are Muslims who seek to turn Europe into an Islamic colony is, of course, no “conspiracy theory.” Jihad and the caliphate are core Islamic doctrines. For over a decade, however, Norwegian academics and intellectuals have accused those commentators, who face up to the reality of these doctrines, of “peddling paranoia.”

I wonder if anyone asked how a statement of opinion can violate “fundamental human rights.”

In Norway, where the mainstream media systematically bury or whitewash news stories that might reflect badly on the nation’s misguided immigration policies, its failed integration policies, or on Islam, a handful of small but heavily trafficked websites serve a vital function: getting out information that is being suppressed and providing a forum for opinions that are being silenced.

Perhaps the most prominent of those websites is Document.no, founded in 2003 by Hans Rustad, who still serves as editor and publisher. It is an intelligent, serious, and responsible site, whose contributors tend to know more about the above-mentioned subjects — and to be better writers — than the staffers at the major Oslo newspapers. I have yet to read a bigoted word by a contributor to Document.no, and I routinely find the site to be more reliable on the facts than the state-owned TV and radio stations or any of the big private (but, in many cases, state-supported) dailies.

For countless Norwegian citizens, Document.no is essential reading. For the nation’s cultural elite, however, it is anathema — a major chink in an otherwise almost solid wall of pro-Islam propaganda.

So it is no surprise to learn, via Universitetsavisa, the student newspaper at the University of Oslo, that a Religious Studies student there, Royer Solheim, has written a master’s thesis on Document.no, in which he describes it as a locus of “hate rhetoric,” “Islamophobia,” and “conspiracy theories.” Nor is it a surprise that he was graded an A.

Solheim describes the thesis itself as “a qualitative study based on a critical discourse analysis of a Norwegian Islamophobic website, document.no.” His conclusion:

“The Eurabia conspiracy theory permeates the Islamophobic discourse on the website. The Eurabia theory is based on an idea that Arabs or Muslims are increasing their influence and are in the process of turning Europe into an Islamic colony.”

ISRAEL, WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

British Cabinet Minister: UK Will Celebrate 100th Anniversary of Balfour Declaration ‘With Pride’ By Barney Breen-Portnoy

Posted By on September 13th, 2017

The United Kingdom will celebrate the 100th anniversary of the issuance of the Balfour Declaration “with pride,” a British Cabinet minister said on Monday.https://www.algemeiner.com/2017/09/12/british-cabinet-minister-uk-will-celebrate-100th-anniversary-of-balfour-declaration-with-pride/

At a meeting in the British capital with a visiting World Jewish Congress delegation, Sajid Javid — the secretary of state for communities and local government — stated, “Someone said we should apologize for the declaration, to say it was an error of judgment. Of course that’s not going to happen. To apologize for the Balfour Declaration would be to apologize for the existence of Israel and to question its right to exist.”

In the Balfour Declaration, which was published in November 1917, the British government announced its support for “the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people.”

Last year, the Palestinian Authority said it intended to sue the UK over the declaration, claiming it had led to a “catastrophe” for the Palestinian people. And last September, PA President Mahmoud Abbas — during a UN General Assembly address – called on the UK to apologize for the declaration.

In his remarks on Monday, Javid — a member of Prime Minister Theresa May’s Conservative Party — highlighted the ongoing failure of the boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) movement to harm UK-Israel ties.

“I’ll be 100 percent clear,” he said. “I do not support calls for a boycott, my party does not support calls for a boycott. For all its bluster, the BDS campaign is most notable I think, for its lack of success.”

“Trade is booming, tourism is soaring,” he continued. “The media campaign is full of sound and fury, but to the majority of Britain today it signifies nothing.”

“As long as I’m in government, as long as I’m in politics, I will do everything in my power to fight back against those who seek to undermine Israel,” Javid vowed.

Addressing the same delegation, House of Commons Speaker John Bercow cautioned that Jews across the globe still faced a “pernicious and insidious” danger.