Displaying posts published in

April 2017

Norway: Threat of Jihad by Judith Bergman

Norway seems to be making the same poorly thought-out choices as Britain.

It has apparently not occurred to these authorities that encouraging Muslims in prison to study the Quran and hadiths, with their exhortations to jihad against the “infidels”, may in itself serve to radicalize the inmates.

The Norwegian Police Security Service (PST) just published in February its yearly threat assessment. It concluded — as did its threat assessment for 2016 — that Norway might experience an Islamic terrorist attack from Islamic State (ISIS) sympathizers acting upon ISIS’s call to carry out independent attacks. The PST explains:

“These calls to action are one reason why we have seen an increase over the last few years in the number of lone terrorist attacks in the West. The likeliest scenario for a terrorist attack in a Western country is an ISIL-/AQ-inspired attack carried out with a simple weapon against a target with little or no protection”.

“Lone wolf” attacks are rightly described as an actual terrorist strategy, rather than what the media likes to describe as random “mental illness”. In addition, this threat assessment now fits all of Europe.

The PST goes on to warn:

“Immigration to Europe will influence the terrorist threat in various ways in the coming year. One of the problems we expect to face is the radicalization of asylum-seekers, migrants and illegal immigrants in Norway. Attempts may be made to radicalize members of these groups by other migrants at reception centers or by visitors. As in previous years, individuals who support and sympathize with extreme Islamist organizations will arrive in Norway in 2017”.

The security risks inherent in unvetted migration are clearly spelled out by the PST. Migration to Norway in 2016 was at a record low of 3,460 asylum seekers — the lowest since 1997. The reason, according to Norway’s Directorate of Immigration, is that “… border and ID checks in Europe have had a decisive effect on numbers of arrivals in Norway”. Even so, the Directorate of Immigration estimates that double that number, or around 7,000 asylum seekers, will arrive in Norway in both 2017 and 2018.

The PST mentions another source of future jihadist attacks:

“Radicalization in prisons is a phenomenon that will become more common in Norway in 2017. There are a number of individuals currently in prison as a result of national investigations of travelers to Syria, and in 2017 more of them will be prosecuted for violation of the terror provisions in Norwegian law. This means that there will be an increasing number of prisoners in Norway who have played a role in extreme Islamist groups here and who also have operational experience gained abroad. It is likely that extreme Islamists will retain their convictions in prison and attempt to radicalize others. Attempts have already been made to radicalize other prisoners, including individuals sentenced for gross violence”.

Radicalization happens on a large scale in prisons, amply illustrated by experience in British prisons. The most recent example was Khalid Masood, who targeted the Houses of Parliament and Westminster Bridge, murdering four people and injuring at least 50 others in a stabbing- and car-ramming attack. Masood is thought to have been radicalized while serving time in prison. This trend is likely in Norwegian prisons as well.

The Deconstruction of the West by Andrew A. Michta

The greatest threat to the liberal international order comes not from Russia, China, or jihadist terror but from the self-induced deconstruction of Western culture.

To say that the world has been getting progressively less stable and more dangerous is to state the obvious. But amidst the volumes written on the causes of this ongoing systemic change, one key driver barely gets mentioned: the fracturing of the collective West. And yet the unraveling of the idea of the West has degraded our ability to respond with a clear strategy to protect our regional and global interests. It has weakened the NATO alliance and changed not just the global security calculus but now also the power equilibrium in Europe. If anyone doubts the scope and severity of the problem, he or she should ask why it has been so difficult of late to develop a consensus between the United States and Europe on such key issues as defense, trade, migration, and how to deal with Russia, China, and Islamic jihadists.

The problem confronting the West today stems not from a shortage of power, but rather from the inability to build consensus on the shared goals and interests in whose name that power ought to be applied. The growing instability in the international system is not, as some argue, due to the rise of China as an aspiring global power, the resurgence of Russia as a systemic spoiler, the aspirations of Iran for regional hegemony, or the rogue despotism of a nuclear-armed North Korea; the rise and relative decline of states is nothing new, and it doesn’t necessarily entail instability. The West’s problem today is also not mainly the result of the economic decline of the United States or the European Union, for while both have had to deal with serious economic issues since the 2008 meltdown, they remain the two largest economies in the world, whose combined wealth and technological prowess are unmatched. Nor is the increasing global instability due to a surge in Islamic jihadism across the globe, for despite the horrors the jihadists have wrought upon the peoples of the Middle East and North Africa, and the attendant anxiety now pervading Europe and America, they have nowhere near the capabilities needed to confront great powers.

The problem, rather, is the West’s growing inability to agree on how it should be defined as a civilization. At the core of the deepening dysfunction in the West is the self-induced deconstruction of Western culture and, with it, the glue that for two centuries kept Europe and the United States at the center of the international system. The nation-state has been arguably the most enduring and successful idea that Western culture has produced. It offers a recipe to achieve security, economic growth, and individual freedom at levels unmatched in human history. This concept of a historically anchored and territorially defined national homeland, having absorbed the principles of liberal democracy, the right to private property and liberty bound by the rule of law, has been the core building block of the West’s global success and of whatever “order” has ever existed in the so-called international order. Since 1945 it has been the most successful Western “export” across the globe, with the surge of decolonization driven by the quintessentially American precept of the right to self-determination of peoples, a testimony to its enduring appeal. Though challenged by fascism, Nazism, and communism, the West emerged victorious, for when confronted with existential danger, it defaulted to shared, deeply held values and the fervent belief that what its culture and heritage represented were worth fighting, and if necessary even dying, to preserve. The West prevailed then because it was confident that on balance it offered the best set of ideas, values, and principles for others to emulate.

Today, in the wake of decades of group identity politics and the attendant deconstruction of our heritage through academia, the media, and popular culture, this conviction in the uniqueness of the West is only a pale shadow of what it was a mere half century ago. It has been replaced by elite narratives substituting shame for pride and indifference to one’s own heritage for patriotism. After decades of Gramsci’s proverbial “long march” through the educational and cultural institutions, Western societies have been changed in ways that make social mobilization around the shared idea of a nation increasingly problematic. This ideological hollowing out of the West has been accompanied by a surge in confident and revanchist nationalisms in other parts of the world, as well as religiously inspired totalitarianism.

Republican Congress AWOL on Syria By Andrew C. McCarthy

Where is the Republican-controlled Congress on Syria? By all accounts, it is busy cheerleading the president’s firing of 59 Tomahawk missiles at a foreign sovereign — an offensive attack that was unprovoked and unauthorized by Congress, rendering it unconstitutional. With a Republican in the White House, though, Republicans on Capitol Hill are all for executive overreach, despite having spent the last eight years chiding a Democratic president’s excesses and Middle Eastern misadventures.

Of course, the bottom line is the same: Congress does nothing. But at least during the Obama years, legislative spinelessness was swaddled in righteous constitutional rhetoric. Now, lawmakers outright encourage presidential imperiousness and their own consequent irrelevance.

The Constitution vests in Congress the power to declare war — meaning the power to authorize military operations. The president may order the use of force unilaterally only when the United States is under attack, or at least the threat of attack. There was no such threat from the Syrian regime.

That makes Trump’s aggression unprovoked. Yet, Trump apologists claim that the use of chemical weapons by the despicable Assad — perhaps in collusion with his despicable Russian and Iranian enablers — is provocation enough. It is not. To be a provocation warranting unauthorized forcible retaliation, an attack must target the United States. Or, as someone once said: America First!

The Syrian atrocity — or should we say, the latest Syrian atrocity — had nothing to do with America. It was more internecine Islamic savagery. It was a case of a ruthless dictator in a barbaric civil war conducting yet another attack on his opposition, including the non-combatant civilians among whom that opposition hides. And as the Long War Journal’s Thomas Joscelyn reminds us in an essential report published by the Weekly Standard, Assad’s opposition includes al-Qaeda cells, Islamic State elements, and assorted Islamist militants. These factions are notorious for their own atrocities and desire to cleanse Syria of its Christian and other non-Islamic populations.

American troops are on the ground in Syria, coordinating coalition attacks on the anti-Assad jihadists. Assad, Russia, and their equally loathsome Iranian/Hezbollah allies are not targeting those Americans in Syria. Why would they?

While Assad & Co. avoid confrontation with American forces, Trump’s attack on Assad buoys the jihadists. It gives them hope that if they can hang in long enough, stave off the reluctant American intervention long enough, the new administration will engineer Assad’s removal from power — an intention Trump’s State Department is now signaling. That would pave the way for the jihadists to turn most of Syria into another of the Sunni sharia-supremacist basket-cases we’ve come to know so well — like Egypt while under Muslim Brotherhood-control, Afghanistan under Taliban domination, post-Qaddafi Libya, and other failed states whose ungovernable frontiers become safe havens for anti-American terrorism.

Time for the US to stop arming its enemies By Rachel Ehrenfeld

No one expects the Trump administration to reverse the disastrous effects of the Obama supported Muslim Brotherhood’s highjacking of the “Arab-Spring” in the Middle East that increased the regional contest for supremacy in the Islamic world. The rivalry has intensified between the Sunni camp led by Saudi Arabia and the Shiite camp led by Iran – each with their pet terrorist organizations.

It’s hard to overstate how much damage was done by the Obama Administration’s misjudgment that Sunni jihadists and Shia Iran were somehow friendly to us and could be useful tools of American policy. But using jihadi groups claiming to be less violent than al-Qaida and ISIS resulted in the Benghazi massacre of four Americans including Ambassador J. Christopher Stevens, the destabilization of Egypt, Libya, Yemen and Syria, and elsewhere.

The “Stop Arming Terrorists Act” (SATA) (HR 608), which was sponsored Representative Tulsi Gabbard (D-HI) would help curtail U.S. assistance to Sunni and Shia jihadists, who would gladly use it against Americans, not not only against each other.

Rep. Gabbard points out in her introductory statement for the bill,

“Under U.S. law it is illegal for any American to provide money or assistance to al-Qaida, ISIS or other terrorist groups. If you or I gave money, weapons or support to al-Qaida or ISIS, we would be thrown in jail. Yet the U.S. government has been violating this law for years, quietly supporting allies and partners of al-Qaida, ISIL, Jabhat Fateh al Sham, and other terrorist groups with money, weapons, and intelligence support, in their fight to overthrow the Syrian government.”

Global warming: Science or dogma? By Michael Nadler

The Science & Environmental Policy Project is an outstanding resource for those unwilling to bury their heads in the sand and blindly accept the notion that human-caused catastrophic global warming is settled science and must be the highest priority in allocating the world’s limited economic resources.

Its April 1, 2017 issue of “The Week That Was” leads with the point that “government-funded Climate Studies have largely turned from empirical science to dogma — a belief system unsubstantiated by physical evidence.” Each week’s TWTW is chock full of commentary and links describing the latest science and other developments that challenge the climate change orthodoxy. This issue highlights the written testimony of John Christy, Distinguished Professor of Atmospheric Science, Alabama’s State Climatologist and Director of the Earth System Science Center at the University of Alabama in Huntsville, at the March 29th hearing titled “Climate Science: Assumptions, Policy Implications, and the Scientific Method” held by the U.S. House of Representatives Committee on Science, Space, and Technology.

Professor Christy’s summary of his written testimony, supported by evidence in the full statement, gives rise to serious questions about those who think the subject of catastrophic global warming is no longer open to further scientific inquiry and debate.

“Science” is not a set of facts but a process or method that sets out a way for us to discover information and which attempts to determine the level of confidence we might have in that information. In the method, a “claim” or “hypothesis” is stated such that rigorous tests might be employed to test the claim to determine its credibility. If the claim fails a test, the claim is rejected or modified then tested again. When the “scientific method” is applied to the output from climate models of the IPCC AR5, specifically the bulk atmospheric temperature trends since 1979 (a key variable with a strong and obvious theoretical response to increasing GHGs in this period), I demonstrate that the consensus of the models fails the test to match the real-world observations by a significant margin…

EDWARD ROTHSTEIN REVIEWS “OSLO” THE STAGE PLAY

https://www.wsj.com/articles/oslo-review-getting-them-in-the-room-1492135200

EXCERPTS ONLY

The play is generally so smartly written, the characters and their realization so vivid, and the direction of Bartlett Sher so taut that you are drawn into a three-hour drama about something intrinsically undramatic, in which nuance and minutiae are generally more crucial than action: negotiations. It also helps quite a bit if you accept the play’s premises, which I think most people will.

I do not. But before explaining why, I should note that the play received its premiere last summer in Lincoln Center’s smaller Mitzi E. Newhouse Theater and the production was slightly modified for its new “Broadway” run. The author’s research was considerable (he previously took on the Rwandan genocide in “The Overwhelming” and 1980s Afghanistan battles in “Blood and Gifts”). And the true-to-life aspect of “Oslo” is startling. Much of it takes place in a castle outside Oslo (abstractly suggested by Michael Yeargan’s spare sets) where a Norwegian sociologist, Terje Rød-Larsen —played by Jefferson Mays as a polished but obsessed ironist—is eager to apply theories of negotiation to the conflicts of the Middle East. Together with his wife, Mona Juul, an official in the Norwegian Foreign Ministry—played by Jennifer Ehle as a stern but gracious overseer who fills the audience in on details—they secretly assemble their subjects (neither side wanted to be publicly seen meeting the other) and set the wheels in motion. The surprise is that in September 1993 this resulted in the Oslo Accord, marked by a historic handshake on the White House lawn between Yitzhak Rabin, Israel’s prime minister, and Yasser Arafat, the PLO’s head, soon to lead the newly formed Palestinian Authority.

Since Mr. Rogers pulled off this success, it also seemed more plausible that the historical characters thought they could too. We are reminded of the play’s historical claims again and again, both by actors impersonating Israeli politicians ( Yossi Beilin, Shimon Peres ) and by the cast interjecting reminders of terrorist attacks and retaliations during the negotiations and, at play’s end, into the present. We are meant, ultimately, to side with Mr. Rød-Larsen, who declares that, despite it all, what was achieved should give us hope. The play is a plea for the value of negotiations.

The truth is, it depends. Most recently, negotiations removing chemical weapons from Syria proved to be a sham. The Vietnam peace talks led to a completely worthless agreement. And remember Munich?

It depends on who is negotiating and why. What we don’t learn from the play, for example, is that Israeli leaders had already had confidential meetings with a PLO-connected figure, Faisal Husseini, before the Norwegians took on this project and the talks led nowhere for multiple reasons. Oslo may have “succeeded” partly because it was so flawed: Israel had no security representative involved; the Palestinians had no legal representative. And the PLO, which had become impoverished and sidelined, was being brought back into power.

The play’s epilogue acknowledges that troubles did not end, but mentions just two terrorist attacks in the two years after the signing—both by Jews, one being the assassination of Rabin in November 1995. But that is a distortion. In May 1994, Arafat called for a “jihad” to liberate Jerusalem and referred to the agreement as part of a staged plan for dismantling Israel. And in the 21/2 years after the signing, 210 Israelis were murdered in terror attacks—three times the average toll of the previous 26 years. Before his 2001 death, Mr. Husseini boasted of the Oslo accord as a Palestinian Trojan Horse. …..

North Korea Parades New Long-Range ‘Frankenmissile’ Pyongyang displays military hardware, including apparently new intercontinental ballistic missile By Jonathan Cheng

SEOUL—North Korea showed off what appeared to be at least one new long-range missile at a military parade Saturday, as tensions simmer over the possibility of a military confrontation between the U.S. and North Korea.

The weaponry on show, which appeared to include a newly-modified intercontinental ballistic missile and two types of large launchers with never-before-seen missile canisters, is likely to trigger fresh concerns about the speed with which Pyongyang’s missile program has advanced in recent years.

A spokesman for South Korea’s Ministry of National Defense declined to comment on the possible new military hardware, saying more time was needed to analyze the missiles.

But an expert on North Korean weapons said the new hardware appeared to be far more advanced than expected.

“We’re totally floored right now,” said Dave Schmerler, a research associate at the Middlebury Institute of International Studies in Monterey, Calif. “I was not expecting to see this many new missile designs.”

Mr. Schmerler called the new ICBM, which appeared to have elements of two other ICBMS, the KN-08 and KN-14 missiles, a “frankenmissile.”

Missile experts said the new capabilities, if confirmed, may increase Pyongyang’s options as it seeks to test-launch a ICBM able to deliver a nuclear warhead to the continental U.S., as North Korean leader Kim Jong Un indicated in a speech in January. U.S. President Donald Trump responded after that new-year speech, posting on Twitter: “It won’t happen!”

Meanwhile, recent satellite imagery suggests North Korea may be preparing a sixth nuclear test at Punggye-ri, where the recorded blasts have escalated in strength since the first one in 2006.

CONTINUE AT SITE

Why France Is Revolting Against The Ancien Regime Michel Gurfinkiel

No political observer in his right mind would have expected at the beginning of 2016 a Brexit vote in Britain in June, the resignation of David Cameron, a dogfight between the two main Brexit supporters and propagandists within the Tory party, Boris Johnson and Michael Gove, and eventually the rise of Theresa May. Nor would he have foreseen, for that matter, the election of Donald Trump in the United States on November 8.

Something similar is happening in France now — on a much larger and trickier scale. A few months ago, it was taken for granted that François Hollande’s ineffectual socialist administration would be succeeded after the 2017 election — on April 23 and May 7 — by a conservative government led either by former president Nicolas Sarkozy or former prime minister Alain Juppé: a simple matter of the swing of the pendulum, as is the rule among democracies. What the French are facing now, however, is an unprecedented upsurge of the National Front, the elimination of a generation of political leaders on almost all sides, and the collapse or near collapse of classic Left and Right parties. While many voters welcome the change, others are just in a state of shock. On March 18 — one month or so ahead of the first ballot — 34 per cent of the electorate and 43 per cent of voters under 35 had still not decided whether to vote or not.

On March 20, the five most prominent candidates debated for three and a half hours on TV. About 10 million people watched intently. It was indeed a great show — and probably a defining moment in the campaign.

All five candidates are rebels. Marine Le Pen, 48, the National Front leader, is a rebel by definition. She has managed to upgrade in many ways the party she inherited from her father, Jean-Marie Le Pen, in 2011, to purge it of many unsavoury elements, to trim its formerly racist and anti-Semitic rhetoric (including Holocaust denial) and to switch from Vichy nostalgia to a near-Gaullist statism. In fact, she has even been increasingly reluctant to use the name National Front, and has floated alternative labels, such as Rassemblement Bleu Marine (“Navy Blue Rally”, a play on words with her first name which means “Navy” in French).

For all that, she is still sticking to a binary, undemocratic and utterly revolutionary view of the world, positing a bitter fight between what she calls “the System” (the political and cultural elite, of both Right and Left, the “lobbies”, globalisation, multiculturalism, immigration, the European Union, the euro) and “the people” (the ordinary Frenchmen) whom she claims to represent exclusively. The implication is that either you side with the people and her against the System, and opt for a fully sovereign and autarkic France under her guidance, or you are, willingly or not, an enemy of the people. Interestingly enough, she used this logic against her own father, as he resisted the revamping and defascisation of the National Front, and did not flinch from expelling him from the party at the age of 86.

At the other end of the political spectrum, Jean-Luc Mélenchon, 65, a former minister of vocational education, rebelled against the Socialist party in 2008 to found the more hardline Parti de Gauche (Left Party) and then the Front de Gauche (Left Front) in association with a diminutive Communist Party. He eventually started a new movement in 2016, France Insoumise (Indomitable France).

Mélenchon can be described as the far-Left counterpart to Marine Le Pen. He shares almost entirely her binary, anti-elite, anti-globalisation, anti-lobbies, anti-European philosophy, except on the issue of immigration and multiculturalism, which he accepts as a natural and positive development. Just like her, he supports a strong, autarkic government, and sees himself as a charismatic popular leader who is not supposed, ultimately, to be answerable to any other authority.

Iran Is a Bigger Threat Than Syria and North Korea Combined Damascus and Pyongyang violated their agreements. Tehran can comply and still threaten millions. By Michael Oren

Michael Oren is an Israeli historian, author, politician, former ambassador to the United States, and current member of the Knesset for the Kulanu party and the Deputy Minister for Diplomacy in the Prime Minister’s Office. He is author of many books, most recently ” Ally: My Journey Across the American-Israeli Divide .”

The U.S. has signed agreements with three rogue regimes strictly limiting their unconventional military capacities. Two of those regimes—Syria and North Korea—brazenly violated the agreements, provoking game-changing responses from President Trump. But the third agreement—with Iran—is so inherently flawed that Tehran doesn’t even have to break it. Honoring it will be enough to endanger millions of lives.

The framework agreements with North Korea and Syria, concluded respectively in 1994 and 2013, were similar in many ways. Both recognized that the regimes already possessed weapons of mass destruction or at least the means to produce them. Both assumed that the regimes would surrender their arsenals under an international treaty and open their facilities to inspectors. And both believed that these repressive states, if properly engaged, could be brought into the community of nations.

All those assumptions were wrong. After withdrawing from the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, Pyongyang tested five atomic weapons and developed intercontinental missiles capable of carrying them. Syrian dictator Bashar Assad, less than a year after signing the framework, reverted to gassing his own people. Bolstered by the inaction of the U.S. and backed by other powers, North Korea and Syria broke their commitments with impunity.

Or so it seemed. By ordering a Tomahawk missile attack on a Syrian air base, and a U.S. Navy strike force to patrol near North Korea’s coast, the Trump administration has upheld the frameworks and placed their violators on notice. This reassertion of power is welcomed by all of America’s allies, Israel among them. But for us, the most dangerous agreement of all is the one that may never need military enforcement. For us, the existential threat looms in a decade, when the agreement with Iran expires.

Every Public-School Student in Arizona Will Get a Chance at Choice The state expands its program offering $5,000 to $14,000 in education savings accounts. By Jonathan Butcher

It’s hard to find Aiden Yellowhair’s school on a map. He and his sister, Erin, are members of the Navajo Nation and attend the private St. Michael Indian School outside Window Rock, Ariz. The Catholic school’s website provides a helpful tip to follow Interstate 40 east from Flagstaff, but warns that “if you pass into New Mexico, you’ve gone too far.”

The remote location makes it easy to overlook St. Michael’s 400 students, but the school is an oasis on the 27,500-square-mile reservation. Only 66% of Arizona’s Native American high schoolers graduate in four years, a full 12 percentage points below the state average and nearly 20 points below the national average. At St. Michael, the principal says, 99% of students graduate and 98% of those attend college.

What allows Aiden and Erin to cover tuition at St. Michael is Arizona’s program for education savings accounts. Parents who take children out of public schools can opt in and receive, in a private account, a portion of the funds that the state would have spent on their education. Most students receive $5,000, but the deposits for children with special needs are roughly $14,000, depending on the diagnosis. That money can be used to pay for private-school tuition, tutoring, extracurricular activities, school uniforms and more.

Arizona created the program in 2011 for special-needs students, but since then lawmakers have slowly expanded eligibility—to children in military families, foster care, and failing schools, as well as those on Native American reservations. Today more than 3,300 students use the accounts, about 1% of those eligible.

Now the state has opened the gates to everyone. Last week Gov. Doug Ducey signed a bill that will give every public-school student in Arizona—1.2 million in all—an opportunity to apply to the program. New enrollment will be capped at about 5,500 students per year, up to a maximum of 30,000 in 2022. To apply, students must be currently enrolled in public school, except for incoming kindergartners. Applicants will be taken first come, first served.

Education savings accounts are a way to give parents more options. Many families would like to send their children to private schools or home-school them, but they simply cannot afford to—especially since they are taxed to pay for public schools regardless. A program like Arizona’s allows these parents to make the best choice for their families, whether that means a religious school, a secular private school or home schooling.