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May 2017

How to Defuse the North Korean Threat China’s interests are aligned—for the moment—with those of the U.S., Japan and South Korea. By Mark Helprin

Mr. Helprin, a senior fellow of the Claremont Institute, is the author of “Winter’s Tale,” “A Soldier of the Great War” and the forthcoming novel “Paris in the Present Tense.”

North Korea has embarked at breakneck speed upon a slipshod effort to field land-, mobile-, and submarine-based ICBMs with nuclear warheads. Unlike the eight other nuclear powers, North Korea’s doctrine resides unknowingly and capriciously in the mind of one man.

All nuclear doctrines are different, but most never go beyond the conditional when treating their arsenals as instruments of deterrence. North Korea, however, issues an unrelenting stream of histrionic threats that comport with its recklessness in the shelling of South Korea and sinking of one of its warships, the kidnapping of Japanese citizens in Japan, assassinations abroad, executions and Stalinist gulags at home, criminal sources of revenue, proliferation of missilery, and, tellingly, its perpetual war footing.

The totality of its declarations, behavior, and accelerating nuclear trajectory cannot be ignored. Nuclear weapons alone radically change the calculus of any strategic problem. Given the complexity and fragile interdependence of the structures of American life, nuclear detonations in only a few of our cities constitute a true existential danger. North Korea’s successful August test of the KN-11 submarine-launched ballistic missile—along with its construction of a second ballistic-missile submarine and its development of longer-range land-based missiles—will put North America at risk.

Note that North Korea has no defensive need of nuclear weapons. Because of the vulnerability of South Korean population centers, it can exercise an almost equivalent deterrence with its conventional forces and huge stockpile of chemical weapons.

Over two decades the U.S. has run the extremes from President Clinton’s foolish or deceptive claim that his diplomacy had solved the North Korean nuclear problem, through the serial procrastinations of subsequent administrations, until the belated realization that if nothing else works the U.S. will have to attack North Korea full force. The first option has failed. The second, to which it is possible we may be compelled, is catastrophic.

The heart of South Korea’s economy and half its 50 million people are densely concentrated within range of the approximately 10,000 North Korean artillery pieces, rocket launchers, and short-range ballistic missiles capable of delivering chemical munitions, of which North Korea has an estimated 5,000 metric tons. Even conventional explosives would have a devastating effect. No matter how fast South Korean and American forces raced to suppress such fires, not to mention a nuclear attack itself, millions would probably die.

With such shock and escalation there is no guarantee that China or Russia would not come to North Korea’s aid. Russia could also take the opportunity to feast upon Eastern Europe if American power were monopolized by the battle, as it would be.

As undesirable are the two extremes of a North Korean nuclear strike or pre-emptive war in armament-saturated East Asia, America cannot accept the former. The U.S. will be forced to the latter if it fails to exploit the considerable ground that still lies between them.

The Bolton Unmasking Files Democrats give Susan Rice a pass they didn’t give to John Bolton.

Democrats and their press allies are going all in to squelch the Susan Rice “unmasking” story, insisting that the decision by Barack Obama’s national security adviser to seek the name of at least one Trump campaign official was routine and no big deal. Tell that to former Bush Administration official John Bolton, whom Democrats pilloried for doing the same with far more justification.

The U.S. routinely eavesdrops on foreign officials, and sometimes U.S. citizens are caught on tape. Intelligence agencies strip the names of those U.S. citizens for privacy. A source confirms that Ms. Rice nonetheless requested the name of a Trump transition official in at least one intelligence summary, and Ms. Rice has all but confirmed that she did.

Democrats and the media have been at pains to call this business as usual. House Intelligence Committee Democrat Adam Schiff released a tutorial on why unmasking is “lawful.” “Susan Rice Did Nothing Wrong,” said an NBC headline, quoting no one on the record.

That’s not what liberals said in 2005 as they opposed Mr. Bolton’s nominate to be U.S. ambassador to the United Nations. Then Senators Joe Biden and Chris Dodd kicked up a fuss that, as Undersecretary of State for Arms Control and International Security, Mr. Bolton had 10 times over four years asked for the names of American officials who were swept up in National Security Agency monitoring.

Mr. Bolton and the State Department were clear that he followed procedure and provided intelligence officials with sound national-security reasons for requesting the names. Interpreting intelligence was central to Mr. Bolton’s duties, so unmasking names on rare occasions wouldn’t be unusual.

Critics nonetheless assailed Mr. Bolton for behavior for which they now absolve Mrs. Rice. Mr. Dodd claimed unmasking was “rarely requested” and “infrequently” by “non-career political appointees such as Mr. Bolton.” The New York Times reported that the identifies of Americans are released “only in response to special requests, and these are not common, particularly from policy makers.”

Democrats argued (with no evidence) that Mr. Bolton’s requests were politically motivated and the Los Angeles Times questioned whether Mr. Bolton had requested the names to “intimidate intelligence analysts.” A Times editorial called on Mr. Bolton to “step aside,” noting Mr. Dodd was “rightly inquiring about Bolton’s unusual request to look at [NSA] intercepts and why he asked for the identities of analysts. Why indeed?”

House Intelligence Chairman Devin Nunes recently stepped aside from his committee’s Russia probe after complaints that he talked publicly about the unmasking. But in 2005 Democrats couldn’t stop talking to the press, mostly complaining that Bush intelligence agencies wouldn’t give Congress the names of those Mr. Bolton had unmasked. “I just think it’s important to remember here that Mr. Bolton himself was able to look at this classified information,” said then Sen. Barack Obama.

The Administration ultimately agreed to show transcripts (with the names redacted) to top members of the Senate Intelligence Committee. Democrats then drew up a list of 36 individuals whom Mr. Bolton had clashed with over the years and called on National Intelligence Director John Negroponte to rule out that these were the people Mr. Bolton had unmasked.

Senator Jay Rockefeller claimed that Mr. Bolton’s decision to share the name of one unmasked citizen with a direct subordinate (who possessed the necessary security clearances) was improper and amounted to the mishandling of classified information. Democrats dug in, and Mr. Bush was forced to name Mr. Bolton to the U.N. as a recess appointment.

Compare all this to the Rice episode. Ms. Rice had no direct intelligence duties in her NSC post, and no Democrat has provided a valid reason that Ms. Rice might have needed to unmask anyone associated with the Trump presidential campaign. Twelve years on, not one of the 10 individuals unmasked by Mr. Bolton has had his or her identity leaked. By contrast, the Washington Post reports that no fewer than nine Obama appointees or career officials leaked or confirmed the identity and conversations of unmasked former Trump adviser Michael Flynn.

If John Bolton’s unmasking was questionable, then Mrs. Rice’s was more so. The House and Senate Intelligence committees should investigate what she did and why.

See the astonishing reason actor Richard Dreyfuss left Tucker Carlson absolutely speechless

THANKS DPS

Actor Richard Dreyfuss, known for roles in “Jaws,” “The Goodbye Girl” and “Mr. Holland’s Opus,” left Fox News host Tucker Carlson utterly speechless on his show Friday night.

Dreyfuss, according to Carlson, emailed the Fox host a few days prior asking to appear on Carlson’s show to talk about a recent issue that Carlson and another guess sparred over: the federal judge’s recent ruling which said that it’s unconstitutional for President Donald Trump to unilaterally withhold federal funds from “sanctuary cities” for not complying with his demands.

Carlson’s point was there was no outcry from Democrats when former President Barack Obama threatened to withhold federal funds from North Carolina last year over the state’s controversial “transgender bathroom law.”

Dreyfuss explained to Carlson that the president and the executive branch, constitutionally speaking, don’t have the right to withhold funds from states. That job, Dreyfuss explained, belongs to Congress.

But Dreyfuss didn’t want his conversation with Carlson to end there.

“I want to mention one thing,” the actor told Carlson. “You were talking about the speakers on university campuses. And I am totally, incontrovertibly on your side about this.”

“I think any intrusion into freedom of speech is an intrusion into freedom of speech. And when one of the presidents of one of the colleges said, ‘this is a school, not a battlefield,’ I said, no, it is a battlefield of ideas and we must have dissonant, dissenting opinions on campuses and I think it’s political correctness taken to a nightmarish point of view,” Dreyfuss explained.

The star actor continued:

I have withdrawn from partisan politics. I am a constitutionalist who believes that the Constitution and the Bill of Rights must be central and the parties must be peripheral. What’s most important for me is what you just mentioned haphazardly, we are over 30. Civics has not been taught in the American public school system since 1970. And that means everyone in Congress never studied the constitution and the bill of rights as you and I might have.

And that is a critical flaw because it’s why we were admired and respected for so long, it gives us our national identity, it tells the world who we are and why we are who we are, and without a frame that gives us values that stand behind the bill of rights, we’re just floating in the air and our sectors of society are not connected.

Trump and Congress Can Help Restore Campus Free Speech Withdraw the Obama Title IX ‘guidance’ and tie federal funds to respect for the First Amendment. By Harvey Silverglate

Mr. Silverglate, a co-author of “The Shadow University,” is a co-founder and board member of the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education. Samantha Harris, FIRE’s vice president for policy research, contributed to this article.

The culture of censorship within higher education is now legendary. And although the problem is of long standing, the Obama administration made it worse by giving academic bureaucrats a convenient excuse—“the feds made us do it”—for punishing speech. The Trump administration and Congress could help restore academic freedom, without which higher education cannot flourish.

Campus censorship affects faculty as well as students and guest speakers. And conservatives aren’t the only targets. At Louisiana State University, Teresa Buchanan’s tenure didn’t protect her from dismissal in 2015 for occasionally using vulgar language in her education classes. She did so, she said, to prepare future teachers for the language they would encounter from some students. Administrators ignored a unanimous faculty committee recommendation against termination and a report of the American Association of University Professors that found Ms. Buchanan’s academic freedom was violated.

In a statement to the press, LSU claimed it was following “the U.S. Department of Education’s Office of Civil Rights’ advisements.” That would be a 2013 OCR statement, in a settlement with the University of Montana, that in order to comply with federal antidiscrimination laws, universities must ban “unwelcome conduct of a sexual nature,” including “verbal” conduct—in other words, speech. LSU gave these “advisements” weight because of OCR’s power to withhold federal funding. The Obama administration’s overreach in higher education produced many stories like Ms. Buchanan’s.

The new administration has an opportunity to undo this damage. Education Secretary Betsy DeVos should instruct OCR to rescind its “guidance” undermining the right to free speech and guarantee that universities that receive federal dollars return to their role as centers of inquiry and learning, not censorship and indoctrination. Further, OCR’s practice of setting national standards through “guidance”—without seeking comment from academic institutions and the public—should end. Future regulations should be subject to open debate, as mandated by the Administrative Procedure Act. CONTINUE AT SITE

The Spreading Tentacles of Censorship By Eileen F. Toplansky

The list of those who are “disinvited” to forums where free speech should exist keeps getting longer. In some ways, it is a badge of honor to be included in that list; in other aspects, of course, it is the abject failure to respect the right to hold an opinion. Ultimately, it is “campus fascism” on the rise.

Phyllis Chesler is the latest victim after having been “disinvited by the King Fahd Center for Middle East Studies at the University of Arkansas Law School.” In her article titled “Being a Zionist is even worse than being an Islamophobe,” she describes being censored by a state university. She was part of a conference on a subject on which she is an expert, having studied the topic of honor killings for many years and she has a track record as an academic, an author, a human rights activist and women’s rights leader. But none of this mattered since, as so many are learning, “objectivity, true facts, clear reasoning, genuine intellectual diversity and the capacity for self-criticism” are now verboten — gone from centers of academic learning.

Instead they are replaced with vulgarity, incivility, obtuse thinking, censorship, and outright violence.

Bruce Bawer writes a searing appraisal of the hypocrisy of three Center faculty members — Joel Gordon, Ted Swedenburg and Mohja Kahf — who “slammed” Chesler. These three found Chesler’s alleged anti-Muslim bigotry, hate speech and lack of a diversity of views so abhorrent that she needed to be shut down. The fact that Chesler has “spent her career decrying the systematic misogyny in Islamic cultures” while highlighting the refusal of many of her former feminist allies to address this issue was just too much for these intellectual weaklings.

Thus, Phyllis Chesler joins the ranks of other worthy and courageous individuals such as Milo Yiannopoulous, Ann Coulter, Charles Murray, Heather McDonald, Ayaan Hirsi Ali, Nonie Darwish, Brigitte Gabriel, and David Horowitz, whose voices are being silenced in institutions of higher learning.

And so the symposium went on without the expertise of Dr. Chesler. In fact, “no one contacted [her]. No one sent a letter of regret or support and no one issued a statement of solidarity.” Consequently, “. . . yet another disgraceful episode in the ever-lengthening chronicle of campus compromise and cowardice on the topic of Islam” occurred.

It is way overdue that every one of these speakers who truly put their lives on the line to uphold the core principle of freedom of speech receives the unwavering support of all Americans.

It is way overdue that parents of students attending schools such as the University of Arkansas, University of California-Berkeley, and Claremont McKenna College to name a few, should remind administrators that such suppression of expression is a “view at odds with the foundation of this country. In fact Frederick Douglass, once said “speech suppression is the equivalent of theft.” And if a university fails to acknowledge this supremely profound idea, then it no longer deserves financial support.

It is high time that administrators publicly explain how they can justify violence on a campus that is supposed to be dedicated to the freedom of thought. Instead what we see are “administrators responding to the intellectual thuggery with sympathy and understanding.” They need to be held personally accountable for the violence and censorship.

Convergence of US-Israel national security interests Ambassador (Ret.) Yoram Ettinger

In 2017, the national security interests of the US and Israel have converged, in an unprecedented manner, in response to the anti-US Arab Tsunami; anti-US Islamic terrorism; the declining European posture of deterrence; drastic cuts in the US defense budget; an increasingly unpredictable, dangerous globe; Israel’s surge of military and commercial capabilities and US-Israel shared values.

Contrary to conventional wisdom – and traditional State Department policy – US-Israel and US-Arab relations are not a case of zero-sum-game. This is currently demonstrated by enhanced US-Israel strategic cooperation, concurrently with expanded security cooperation between Israel and Egypt, Jordan, Saudi Arabia and other pro-US Arab countries, as well as stronger cooperation between the US and those same Arab countries. Unlike the simplistic view of the Middle East, Arab policy-makers are well aware of their priorities, especially when the radical Islamic machete is at their throats. They are consumed by internal and external intra-Muslim, intra-Arab violence, which have bled and dominated the Arab agenda, prior to – and irrespective of – the Palestinian issue, which has never been a core cause of regional turbulence, a crown-jewel of Arab policy-making, nor the crux of the Arab-Israeli conflict.

Israel’s posture as a unique ally of the US – in the Middle East and beyond – has surged since the 1991 demise of the USSR, which transformed the bi-polar globe, into a multi-polar arena of conflicts, replete with highly unpredictable, less controllable and more dangerous tactical threats. Israel possesses proven tactical capabilities in face of such threats.

Thus, Israel provides tailwind to the US in the pursuit of three critical challenges, which impact the national and homeland security of the US, significantly transcending the scope of the Arab-Israeli conflict and the Palestinian issue:

1. To constrain/neutralize the Ayatollahs of Iran, who relentlessly aspire to achieve mega-capability (nuclear), in order to remove the mega-obstacle (the US) from the Persian Gulf, and achieve the mega-goal (domination of the Muslim World and subordination of the “modern day American Crusaders”).

2. To defeat global Islamic terrorism, which aims to topple all pro-US Arab regimes, expand the abode of the “believers” and crash the abode of the “infidel” in the Middle East and beyond.

3. To bolster the stability of the pro-US Arab regimes, which are lethally threatened by the Ayatollahs and other sources of Islamic terrorism.

Moreover, Israel has been the only effective regional power to check the North Korean incursion into the Middle East. For instance, on September 6, 2007, the Israeli Air Force destroyed Syria’s nuclear site, built mostly with the support of Iran and North Korea, sparing the USA and the globe the wrath of a ruthless, nuclear Assad regime.

Saudi Arabia’s ‘Lavish’ Gift to Indonesia: Radical Islam by Mohshin Habib

Prior to Saudi Arabia’s attempts to spread Salafism across the Muslim world, Indonesia did not have terrorist organizations such as Hamas Indonesia, Laskar Jihad, Hizbut Tahrir, Islamic Defenders Front and Jemmah Islamiyah, to name just a few. Today, it is rife with these groups.

A mere three weeks after the Saudi king wrapped up his trip, at least 15,000 hard-line Islamist protesters took to the streets of Jakarta after Friday prayers, calling for the imprisonment of the capital city’s Christian governor, who is on trial for “blaspheming the Quran.”

In a separate crisis, crowds were demanding that Basuki Tjahaja Purnama (known familiarly as Ashok) be jailed for telling a group of fishermen that, as they are fed lies about how the Quran forbids Muslims from being governed by a kafir (infidel), he could understand why some of them might not have voted for him. If convicted, Ashok stands to serve up to five years in prison.

Accompanied by a 1,500-strong entourage, Saudi King Salman bin Abdul Aziz arrived in Indonesia on March 1 for a nine-day gala tour. He was welcomed warmly not only as the monarch of one of the world’s richest countries, but as the custodian of Islam’s two holiest cities, Mecca and Medina.

While appearing to be taking a holiday rather than embarking on an official state visit — the 81-year-old sovereign spent six days at a resort in Bali — the king had some serious business to attend to. In what was advertised as an effort to promote “social interaction” between Saudi Arabia and Indonesia — with His Majesty announcing a billion-dollar aid package, unlimited flights between the two countries and the allotment of 50,000 extra spots per year for Indonesian pilgrims to make the hajj to Mecca and Medina – it seems as if the real purpose of the trip was to promote and enhance Salafism, an extremist Sunni strain, in the world’s largest Muslim country, frequently hailed in the West as an example of a moderate Islamic society.

Smokescreens in Islam: Confusing the Public about the Facts by Denis MacEoin

Qadri’s admirable take on terrorism conceals another large elephant in the room. Islam has for centuries used violence against non-Muslims in what is considered a legitimate manner: through jihad. It is not simply that Muslim armies have fought their enemies much as Christian armies have engaged in war. Jihad is commanded in the later verses of the Qur’an, is endorsed in the Traditions and the biography of Muhammad, and codified in the manuals of shari’a law. Qadri knows this perfectly well, and at times inadvertently reveals as much in several ways.

Qadri does not just insist that Islam is a religion of peace and security. By tucking all references to jihad in footnotes in transliterated Arabic, he never has to explain what it is about and how it relates to his rulings on what is and what is not permissible.

It is hard to be a reasonably knowledgeable Muslim and not know that calls for violence pervade the Qur’an and sacred traditions, or that Islamic armies have been fighting European Christians, Indian Hindus, and others since the 7thcentury.

Islam, after all, conquered Persia, Turkey, North Africa and the Middle East, Greece, Spain and most of Eastern Europe — until its armies were stopped at the gates of Vienna in 1683.

Following the terrorist attack outside Britain’s Houses of Parliament on March 22, 2017, it was not surprising or wrong that many Muslims denounced the attack and declared it to be un-Islamic. Two days afterwards, Dr. Mohammed Qureshi, chairman of the Board of Trustees for the Shropshire Islamic Foundation, said:

We need to be united in this situation.

We should not give any religion a bad name and these people need to be dealt with in full force and there should be zero tolerance when it comes to dealing with them.

My heart goes out to these victims. And my heart goes out to the people’s families and those who are injured. I pray they all have peace in their minds.

He added:

There is no place for these acts in the religion of Islam.

The people are being radicalised and the young and vulnerable people need to be protected.

We need to disassociate this with Islam, as Islam is a religion of peace.

This view was echoed in a press release by the Foundation, in which sympathy for the dead and their families was followed by a commitment to non-violence: “as a community, we need to come together to condemn violence and hatred and work towards cohesion and tolerance”.

More recently, a document about Islamophobia published by the Green Party of the United States affirmed the purportedly peaceful character of Islam:

The highest goal of the Islamic faith is Peace. Peace is pursued over all and for Muslims the world over, ‘holy war’ has nothing to do with the concept of jihad. The Arabic word translates as ‘struggle,’ and is used a handful of times in the Quran to speak of the struggle to stay on the righteous path, to fulfill obligations to family, community and Creator, what the Islamic scholars call a higher jihad.

These claims, however, seem innocent of the verses that say:

So when you meet those who disbelieve [in battle], strike [their] necks until, when you have inflicted slaughter upon them, then secure their bonds…. And those who are killed in the cause of Allah — never will He waste their deeds. Surah Muhammad [47:4]

The Middle East According to Madeleine Albright by Andrew Harrod see note please

Mme. Halfbright is runner up to John Kerry for the worst Sec. of State in recent history. rsk
Does the Middle East need to take responsibility for charting its own future? According to a recently released report from the Atlantic Council’s Middle East Strategy Task Force, the answer is yes. But critical analysis of that report reveals serious flaws that must be addressed.

MEST co-chairs former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright and former National Security Adviser Stephen Hadley presented the report to a standing-room-only audience in Washington, D.C. Albright acknowledged that people around the world are all affected by the “toxic brew” of challenges centered in the Middle East – such as terrorism and refugee flows. In response, Hadley pointed out the report’s theme of a “different, smarter way of engaging with the Middle East that does not require a Marshall Plan or a 2003 Iraq invasion.”

Under the report’s Compact for the Middle East, nations that adopt reforms will gain greater diplomatic, economic and technical support from outside countries like the United States, according to Albright, who referenced the report’s extoling of “green shoots of citizen-based entrepreneurial and civic activity occurring throughout the region.

She added,

Across the region, civic activists are working to make their local communities stronger and more resilient. Entrepreneurs are building small and medium-sized businesses rather than relying on the government to be the employer of first resort. And some leaders are beginning to recognize that the region’s greatest resource is not its oil, but its people.

Hadley said that he believes future foreign assistance should encourage “governments acting more effectively, inclusively and justly in empowering their citizens to realize their full potential and to win their loyalty. Fundamentally, it is a bet on the people of the region and a strategy to empower them,” he said, analyzing the report’s strategy, which included proposals for a regional development fund for reconstruction and reform. It also features a regional framework for dialogue and cooperation akin to regional organizations like the Association of Southeast Asian Nations.

Although it cites certain advances to living in the Middle East (e.g., the Arab world’s literacy rate, which surged from 58 percent to 80 percent between 1990 and 2010), the report does highlight the enormous hurdles hindering a peaceful and prosperous Middle East. “The Middle East crisis is the most difficult global challenge since the end of the Cold War,” Albright and Hadley wrote. “The world will be wrestling with this set of problems for a long time.”

The Impact of the ISIS Terror Attacks on Europe By Dr. Tsilla Hershco

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY: The appalling terrorist assaults perpetrated by ISIS in Europe have led to significant changes in the European state of mind. By exposing the vulnerability of EU state borders, they have prompted rudimentary initiatives to secure those borders and increase counter-terror cooperation among EU member states, while also boosting the popularity of far-right parties. The attacks have given rise to a discreet cooperation between EU member states and Israel in dealing with the terrorist threat, but have not prompted the EU to change its critical position regarding Israel’s defensive measures against Palestinian terror. The moral double standard of the EU on this issue might undermine its own fight against Islamist terrorism.https://besacenter.org/perspectives-papers/isis-terror-europe/

The terrorist assaults perpetrated by ISIS in France, Belgium, Germany, Great Britain, and Sweden did not surprise the EU security authorities. They have often noted the threat that at least some of the thousands of Muslim youngsters who left Europe to fight for ISIS might perform acts of terror upon their return. They are also well aware that military intervention against ISIS increases the risk of terror attacks on European soil. The torrent of uncontrolled numbers of refugees from the Middle East has sharpened the warnings issued by the security authorities as well as by the media. The terror attacks have had significant repercussions, and have had an impact on EU-Israel relations.

The wave of terror has produced changes in the state of mind of many Europeans. In the past, though there were occasional terror attacks (such as in London in July 2005), Europeans felt relatively safe – so much so that they did not introduce basic security measures, such as checking bags and suitcases at train stations. The recent wave of attacks, however, has produced feelings of insecurity. Citizens of EU member states are now less hostile to security measures that had been perceived in the past as breaching their civil liberties.

The attacks exposed the vulnerability of EU state borders resulting from the Schengen Agreement, which opened borders among member states. In Brussels and Paris, the perpetrators of the November 2015 attacks crossed borders with impunity.
The EU did, in fact, take a major decision in November 2015 to strengthen control over its external borders in order to protect them from smugglers of firearms and illegal immigrants. It increased cooperation and coordination among EU member states, taking measures such as a Passengers Name Record (PNR) – not only for air travel, but for sea and train travel as well as hotel room and car rentals.

In addition, EU member state authorities took measures like decreeing a state of emergency (in France) and increasing security forces.

Another significant step was the launch in January 2016 of a new European counter-terrorism center, the ECTC, following the November 2015 decision of the Justice and Home Affairs ministers. The ECTC was designated as an enhanced central information hub through which member states can increase information sharing, bolster operational coordination, track terror financing, and detect online radicalization.