Forgive me , but do we really wanna kill this of with nukes ?
Have the guts to watch till the end, do you realize how much amazing people we already have killed because of our selfish interest , religions madness , ideological madness , drunkenness from power .
Lets try for once to step a bit higher on the ladder to real human kindness .
O what the FUCK , i do flip a light switch on a Saturday , and NOBODY tells me if i,am a god or bad Jew or even a Jew at all !
US Ambassador to Turkey John Bass delivers a statement to journalists in Ankara on April 7, 2016. / AFP / ADEM ALTAN (Photo credit should read ADEM ALTAN/AFP/Getty Images)
“If we have learned anything from last year and the violence of this year, it is that the only answer to terrorism and violence is justice and tolerance,” he said.
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U.S. Ambassador to Turkey John Bass criticized the American fight against terrorism during a July Fourth celebration hosted by the U.S. consulate in Ankara, claiming that an “overly broad” definition of terrorism has hampered U.S. efforts to combat extremists and eroded international confidence in America.
Bass, a career foreign service officer who was appointed by former President Barack Obama in 2014, urged Turkey to “avoid making the mistakes the U.S. made” in its fight against radical terrorists, telling those in attendance at an Independence Day reception “that rushing to justice or making an overly broad definition of terrorism can erode fundamental freedoms and undermine public confidence in government.”
Bass’s comments have come under scrutiny by Trump administration insiders and regional experts, who told the Washington Free Beacon that Turkey’s recent crackdown on scores of political dissidents in no way reflects America’s own battles in the region.
Insiders are viewing Bass’s criticism of U.S. policy on terrorism as a veiled rejection of President Donald Trump, who has come under fire from multiple U.S. officials who rose to prominence under Obama and are still serving in government.
For example, Dana Shell Smith, who served as the U.S. ambassador to Qatar until she resigned in June, came under scrutiny earlier this year when she signaled distain for representing the Trump administration while still serving as a U.S. official abroad.
“We support the Turkish government’s ongoing efforts to bring to justice those who were responsible for the terrible events of a year ago,” Bass said in comments recorded by the Turkish newspaper Hurriyet Daily News, referring to a recent coup attempt in Turkey that resulted in the imprisonment and detention of more than 100,000 political opponents.
“In our own experience dealing with terrorism in recent years, in the U.S., we have learned some painful lessons,” Bass said, drawing parallels between Turkey’s crackdown and U.S. efforts to fight terrorists. “Among those lessons, we have learned that rushing to justice or making an overly broad definition of terrorism can erode fundamental freedoms and undermine public confidence in government. We learned those lessons the hard way.”
“It is our hope that our friends in Turkey will avoid making some of the same mistakes that we have made,” Bass was quoted as saying.
Bass’s public criticism of the U.S. fight against terrorism has raised eyebrows among Trump administration insiders and foreign policy experts, who noted a recent trend in which senior State Department stalwarts, many of whom served under Obama, have been willing to criticize U.S. policy and the Trump administration both on record and anonymously in the press.
Michael Rubin, a former Pentagon adviser and Middle East expert, chided Bass for comparing the U.S. fight against terrorism to Turkey’s recent coup attempt, in which thousands were jailed for taking up arms against Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan.
“Let me get this straight: a democratic debate about the Patriot Act is the moral equivalent of jailing tens of thousands of people, and firing a hundred thousand more?” Rubin asked. “At the very least, the ambassador’s remarks reflect a culture problem within the State Department where criticizing U.S. policy is a virtue rather than a liability. Such moral equivalence insults all those in prison without evidence or real charges and hemorrhages both credibility and leverage.”
Bass also maintained in his remarks that the only way to combat terrorism is to promote “justice and tolerance.”
“If we have learned anything from last year and the violence of this year, it is that the only answer to terrorism and violence is justice and tolerance,” he said.
Sources close to the Trump administration’s foreign policy team told the Free Beacon that Bass’s remarks reflect an attitude of opposition to Trump among senior U.S. foreign service officers who served under Obama.
“Like many other officials who rose to prominence during the Obama administration, Ambassador Bass still hasn’t adjusted to the last election and what it means,” said one veteran Middle East analyst who works with the White House on these regional issues.
“We haven’t been too tough on terrorism,” the source said. “President Trump was elected in part because he was clear that, if anything, we’ve been way too weak. In any case July Fourth is an occasion for emphasizing America as the world’s beacon of freedom, not apologizing for real and imagined faults.”
State Department spokesmen did not respond to a Free Beacon request for comment on Bass’s remarks by press time.
The Left Won’t Let Go of the ‘Russian Collusion’ Meme, PJ Media, Michael Walsh, July 10, 2017
Natalia Veselnitskaya (Yury Martyanov /Kommersant Photo via AP)
Having established the smear of “collusion,” the Times must now link every story with the word “Russia” to it in the hopes that the rubes and suckers won’t stop believing that Trump somehow cheated his way into the White House.
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Now the top story on the Drudge Report, the top Must-Read on Lucianne.com and listed on Real Clear Politics: my latest column for the New York Post regarding the ridiculous stories in the New York Times about “Russian collusion.”
The news was delivered by the New York Times in the breathless tones that might announce a cure for cancer or the discovery of life on Mars: “President Trump’s eldest son, Donald Trump Jr., was promised damaging information about Hillary Clinton before agreeing to meet with a Kremlin-connected Russian lawyer during the 2016 campaign, according to three advisers to the White House briefed on the meeting and two others with knowledge of it.”
To which a rational response is … who wouldn’t? And also: So what? A third response is unprintable.
As I said on the Dennis Prager radio show an hour ago: think David Mamet.
Just as the “Russian collusion” fantasy — a resentful smear cooked up in the immediate aftermath of Clinton’s stunning defeat last fall — was finally fading from the fever swamps of the “resistance” and its media mouthpieces, along comes the Times with a pair of journalistic nothingburgers.
They first reported that Trump Jr., along with Paul Manafort (then the campaign manager) and Jared Kushner, the president’s son-in-law, met with Natalia Veselnitskaya, a Russian lawyer “linked to” the Kremlin, back in June, shortly after Trump had clinched the Republican nomination. The second claimed she’d promised dirt on Clinton and the Democrats in order to entice Trump Jr. and the others.
According to the younger Trump, the Clinton angle was just a ruse: “Her statements were vague, ambiguous and made no sense. No details or supporting information was provided or even offered,” he told the Times.
The real reason, it seems, was that Veselnitskaya wanted to lobby for the repeal of the Magnitsky Act, an Obama-era law that allows the US to deny visas to Russians thought guilty of human rights violations. In retaliation, the Russians promptly ended the adoption of Russian orphans by Americans.
Honestly, where does this end? Having had their two big scoops instantly blasted back into their faces, the Left has now moved on to claiming that Donald Jr. “lied” about the meeting with a Russian lawyer nobody ever heard of. This is the baleful legacy of the Mike Flynn affair, where it was not the “crime” of meeting with Russians (is that against the law?) but the “coverup” of a non-existent transgression.
But this is where we are now: once the instruments of the state roll into action, the slightest discrepancy or memory loss can now be twisted into a felony: just ask Martha Stewart or Scooter Libby.
And that’s what all the fuss is about? No campaign in its right mind would turn down an offer of information on their opponent. That is what opposition research is all about. You can bet Hillary wouldn’t have hung up on the person who claimed to have dirt on The Donald. After all, the Clinton campaign lobbied the comedian Tom Arnold two days before the election to release potentially embarrassing footage from Trump’s TV show, “The Apprentice.” Arnold declined.
But in the end, the lawyer had nothing, gave nothing, got nothing in return, in a meeting that lasted 20 minutes. This is a scandal? Having established the smear of “collusion,” the Times must now link every story with the word “Russia” to it in the hopes that the rubes and suckers won’t stop believing that Trump somehow cheated his way into the White House.
Understand that the two Times stories arrived a) in the aftermath of Trump’s triumphant speech in Warsaw last week, a speech that drove the anti-American and anti-Western left into paroxysms of anger and b) just as the “Russians!” meme was fading. But the Times and the other Leftist house organs are by now too fully invested in the “resistance,” and must now play their hand all the way to the end.
Hasn’t the Times learned its lesson from its disastrous Feb. 14 story, also anonymously sourced, about the Trump campaign’s “repeated contacts with Russian intelligence”? In his congressional testimony last month, former FBI Director James Comey said: “In the main, it was not true.”
But then, so are the other “collusion” stories the left is trying to peddle as proof of some sinister plot to subvert democracy. And all because they refuse to accept the results of the 2016 election. As the president might say: Sad!
This won’t end well for them.
(Please see also, Commentary: India must understand borderline is bottom line from Chinese official paper Xinhua. “India should rectify its mistakes and show sincerity to avoid an even more serious situation creating more significant consequences.” — DM)
Troops from the two nuclear-armed neighbours have for weeks been engaged in a stand-off on a disputed section of land high near what is known as the trijunction, where Tibet, India and Bhutan meet.
China has alleged that the Indian troops are on its soil, but both Bhutan and India say the area in question is Bhutanese territory.
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India began holding naval exercises with the United States and Japan off its south coast on Monday, seeking to forge closer military ties to counter growing Chinese influence in the region.
India has a longstanding territorial dispute with its northern neighbour, which is also expanding its naval presence in the region.
It is the fourth consecutive year Japan’s Maritime Self-Defence Force (MSDF) has taken part in the Malabar Exercise, conducted annually by the US and India in the Bay of Bengal since 1992.
In a statement, the US said the exercises had “grown in scope and complexity over the years to address the variety of shared threats to maritime security in the Indo-Asia Pacific”.
About 20 vessels including the world’s largest aircraft carrier, USS Nimitz, are participating in drills which will last until July 17.
Helicopter carrier Izumo, the biggest Japanese warship since the second world war, and India’s aircraft carrier Vikramaditya are also participating in the exercises.
China has stepped up its activities in the Indian Ocean in recent years, building ports in Sri Lanka, Bangladesh and Pakistan.
The area also features heavily in Beijing’s new One Belt One Road initiative to revive ancient trade routes from Asia, which has caused concerns in New Delhi.
Troops from the two nuclear-armed neighbours have for weeks been engaged in a stand-off on a disputed section of land high near what is known as the trijunction, where Tibet, India and Bhutan meet.
China has alleged that the Indian troops are on its soil, but both Bhutan and India say the area in question is Bhutanese territory.
The maritime exercises come weeks after US President Donald Trump declared that ties between Washington and New Delhi had “never been stronger” as he held his first talks with India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
Beijing already claims large swathes of the resource-rich South China Sea and East China Sea, putting it in competition with Japan and other countries in the region.
France: Macron to ban internal combustion engine, Rebel Media via YouTube, July 10, 2017
According to the blurb beneath the video,
Sheila Gunn Reid of TheRebel.media reports on French President Emmanuel Macron’s decision to impose ruinous energy policies while failing to address the threat of radical Islam.
Egypt refers 292 suspects to military court for plotting Sisi assassination, Al Arabiya, July 9, 2017
A handout picture released by the Egyptian Presidency on January 25, 2017, shows Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi speaking in a televised address commemorating the revolution, in the capital Cairo.
Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi said that Egypt was “on the right track” six years after the uprising that overthrew Hosni Mubarak. AFP PHOTO / EGYPTIAN PRESIDENCY
Bayoumi admitted that his wife had offered to wear an explosive suicide belt to distract troops while the rest of the cell members focused on targeting Sisi. Investigations also revealed an attempt to target Prince Mohammed bin Nayef. A dentist, Ali Ibrahim Hassan, also admitted that Ahmed Bayoumi Tahawi and Mahmoud Jaber Mahmoud Ali were planning to target Sisi and Prince Mohammed bin Nayef, and that a woman called Dr. Mervat, Ahmed Bayoumi’s wife, was planning on blowing herself up as women are not being monitored at the time.
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Egypt’s public prosecutor has referred 292 defendants to a military trial for being accused of forming terrorist cells and involved in terrorist operations, including two attempts to assassinate the Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi in Egypt and Saudi Arabia.
Fake News From the Washington Post, Power Line,
Note the slippery way in which Rucker claims that Trump calls the election interference a hoax. He takes two separate issues — collusion and interference — lumps them together, and then tries to make it seem as if what is true of Trump’s stance on one of the issues — collusion — is true of his stance on the other — interference.
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In the Washington Post’s lead story today, another screed about how Trump allegedly is selling out to the Russians, Philip Rucker writes:
After Putin denied in his meeting with Trump any such election interference, the U.S. president tried to turn the page altogether on the issue of Russian hacking. As special counsel Robert S. Mueller III investigates Russian interference and possible collusion with Trump campaign officials, Trump has repeatedly labeled the issue a hoax and has portrayed it as a dark cloud unfairly hanging over his first six months as president.
(Emphasis added)
This is low, dishonest journalism.
President Trump has labelled the issue of Russian collusion a hoax which, so far, it seems to be. However, he has not said that this issue of Russian interference is a hoax. To the contrary, he has said a number of times that the Russians probably did interfere.
The Post and many others would like him to go further and say, without qualification, that the Russians did interfere. If the evidence he’s been presented with supports such certainty, then Trump should say so.
But it’s simply not true that Trump has labelled the Russian interference issue a hoax. Indeed, Rucker grudgingly acknowledges later in his article that Trump has said Russia probably interfered, but muddies the waters by also saying that Trump has expressed doubt as to whether such interference occurred. Since reviewing the evidence presented to him on the question, Trump has consistently said that Russia probably interfered.
In any event, Rucker’s acknowledgement comes late in the article. Someone who read only the portion of the article that appears on the front page would not see it. (Nor would he see it in the headline that appears in the paper edition.)
Note the slippery way in which Rucker claims that Trump calls the election interference a hoax. He takes two separate issues — collusion and interference — lumps them together, and then tries to make it seem as if what is true of Trump’s stance on one of the issues — collusion — is true of his stance on the other — interference.
A reporter for a decent high school newspaper couldn’t get away with this sleight of hand. A lawyer who tried it in a brief would likely incur the wrath of a judge.
Why, then, does it fly at the Washington Post? I think it’s because this is the kind of journalism the Post, an organ of the Resistance, desires.
France: “Jihad by Court” Gatestone Institute, Yves Mamou, July 10, 2017
(Please see also, State of Hawaii Files Yet Another Legal Challenge to Trump Travel Ban. The anti -“Muslim ban” jihadists are using much the same tactic. Their chances of success appear to be minimal at most, but they continue to try to get a favorable leftist court to establish some precedent – any precedent — they deem favorable. — DM)
The goal of this trial is to create judicial precedent: to ensure that in the future, any criticism or insult against Islamism must be considered “racism”.
Valentina Colombo, a professor at the European University in Rome, warned early on about jihad by court. In 2009, she wrote that, “The lawsuit that was initiated by The Union of the Islamic Organizations of France and the Great Mosque of Paris against the satirical magazine ‘Charlie Hebdo’ for republishing the Danish cartoons about Muhammad is one of the most recent examples of this kind of jihad.” But nobody paid attention to the warning. And when jihadists came in 2015 to murder eight journalists and cartoonists, nobody understood that “jihad by court” is only the first step.
“Legal action has become a mainstay of radical Islamist organizations seeking to intimidate and silence their critics.” — Steven Emerson, Founder and President of The Investigative Project on Terrorism.
A silent jihad is under way in France. Spread by a constellation of Muslim organizations allied to powerful (non-Muslim) “anti-racist” associations, “jihad by court” is attacking freedom of press, and freedom of speech. Any journalist, politician, lawyer or intellectual who talks or writes either about Islam or some of its representatives in a critical way, is at risk of being taken to court for “racism” or “outraging a group of people because of their religion.”
The so-called “jihad by court” began in an experimental way in France at the beginning of the century. In 2002, the famous French writer Michel Houellebecq was sued for “incitement to hatred” by Islamic organizations allied to the Ligue des droits de l’Homme, (“Human Rights League”), a prestigious “anti-racist” organization. Houellebecq was sued for having said in an interview with Lire magazine that, “of all existing religions, Islam is the dumbest. We read the Coran, we all collapse.” Houellebecq was acquitted.
In 2007, a similar lawsuit was initiated by the Union of the Islamic Organizations of France (UOIF) and the Great Mosque of Paris against the satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo, because it republished the Danish Muhammad cartoons. The plaintiffs accused Charlie Hebdo of “racism”. Charlie Hebdo was acquitted. In 2011, unknown arsonists burned Charlie Hebdo‘s offices. The magazine was sued again in 2012 and in 2013. Each time, the plaintiffs were different Muslim organizations claiming different instances of “racism” or “blasphemy”. January 7, 2015, two Muslim terrorists stormed into the offices of Charlie Hebdo and murdered 12 people.
Two years after that, jihad by court is everywhere.
Éric Zemmour, a writer and journalist, was sued in February 2011 for “racial incitement”. He saidon television that “most dealers are blacks and Arabs. That is a fact”. He was fined €2,000. In May 2012, Zemmour was sued for defamation by Patrick Lozes, president of Council of Black Associations (CRAN). Zemmour had written in 2008: “Patrick Lozes said ‘Obama is our president’, which proves that for him, racial solidarity is superior in his enamored eyes than national solidarity”. Zemmour was acquitted.
In 2014, Zemmour was sued again because he said, “The Normans, the Huns, Arabs, the great invasions after the fall of Rome are now replaced by gangs of Chechens, Roma, Kosovars, North Africans, Africans, who rob, abuse or strip your belongings.” He was released in September 2015. The appeals court reconfirmed his release in 2016.
In December 2015, Zemmour was again fined €3,000 because he had declared to the Italian daily Corriere della Sera that the “deportation” of five million French Muslim seems “unrealistic”, but is comparable to “the five or six million Germans who had to leave eastern Europe after World War II”. Zemmour succeeded in proving that the word “deportation” was added by Corriere della Sera, but the judge did not take that into consideration, and Zemmour’s conviction was reaffirmed after an appeal in November 2016.
In June 2017, Zemmour was fined €5,000 after saying on television in September 2016, that “jihadists were considered by all Muslims, good Muslims.” The plaintiff was a pro-Palestinian association, CAPJPO-EuroPalestine.
Pascal Bruckner, an author and essayist, was sued in December 2015, by the Islamic, “left-wing” associations, Les Indivisibles and Les Indigenes de la République. Bruckner had said on television that the plaintiffs had “ideologically justified the murder of Charlie Hebdo‘s journalists”. Bruckner was acquitted in 2016.
In January 2017, all “anti-racist” associations and the Islamist CCIF (Collective Against Islamophobia) sued Georges Bensoussan — an award-winning Jewish French historian, born and raised in Morocco — for racism. He had said on the radio that “in France, in Arab families… anti-Semitism is imbibed with one’s mother’s milk.” He was acquitted, but the prosecutor has filed an appeal.
The fachosphère (combination of “fascist” and “sphere”) is the term that the mainstream media are now calling a collection of websites — such as the Riposte Laïque, Resistance Republicaineand many others — that warn of the dangers of being overrun by radical Islam. Between 2012 and 2017, Riposte Laïque alone was sued “no fewer than 43 times” its editor-in-chief, Pierre Cassen, told Gatestone. This time, the plaintiffs were not only “anti-racist” associations (LDH, SOS-Racisme, le MRAP, la LICRA and Islamist CCIF) — but also the mayor of Paris, Anne Hidalgo; former Interior Minister Bernard Cazeneuve, and various Islamic associations such as L’Aube du Savoir (“Sunrise of Knowledge”), journalists from the mainstream media (Libération, Le Monde), the Ligue de Défense Judiciaire des Musulmans (“Muslim Judicial Defense League”). These libel and racism suits asked for fines from €5,000 to €40,000.
On March 30, 2016, Laurence Rossignol, then Minister of Families, Children and Women’s Rights and known to be a fierce critic of the omnipresence of the Islamic veil in public places, was interviewed by the radio station RMC. She compared veiled women to “American negroes [“nègres américains”] who supported slavery”. Rossignol apologized for using “negroes”, but possibly too late. The Islamist Collectif Contre L’islamophobie en France (CCIF) and the Frantz Fanon Foundation launched a class action suit for “insult of a racial nature” and announced their intention to submit a complaint to the Cour de Justice de la République, a court empowered to adjudicate lawsuits against members of the government. The plaintiffs also threatened to sue the minister appointed to the Correctional Court and the Administrative Court of Paris.
In June 2017, Véronique Corazza, Head of Elsa-Triolet secondary school of Saint-Denis (a suburb of Paris), was sued by Majid Messaoudene, an official of the municipality of Saint Denis, because she republished on her Facebook page dozens “shameful tweets” of Messaoudène in which he supported BDS against Israel and mocked the secularist imam of Drancy, Hassen Chalghoumi.
On June 20, 2017, the jihadi terrorist Salah Abdeslam sued Member of Parliament Thierry Solère, for “breach of privacy”. Abdeslam is the only survivor of the Islamist terror cell that murdered 130 people and wounded 430 others on November 13, 2015 in Paris. Exercising his right as a member of parliament to visit prisons, Solère described to two journalists the life of the prisoner, from brushing his teeth to doing exercises in his cell.
Salah Abdeslam (left), a member of the Islamist terror cell that murdered 130 people in Paris on November 13, 2015, filed a lawsuit against Member of Parliament Thierry Solère (right), for “breach of privacy”. Solère had described to journalists the life of Abdeslam in prison. (Images source: Wikimedia Commons)
On June 22, 2017, Pierre de Bousquet de Florian, head of the new anti-ISIS task-force created by president Emmanuel Macron, was sued and fined €500 euros for “defaming” Imam Mohamed Khattabi. In 2015, Bousquet de Florian said that Khattabi was a Salafist and a hate-preacher.
On February 6, 2015, Soufiane Zitouni, a professor of philosophy, published an op-ed in the daily, Libération, questioning the Islamist style of Averroes Muslim College, which was employing him. He described the college as “Muslim territory under contract with the State” and criticized an incipient anti-Semitism in the school. He was sued for defamation by Amar Lasfar, president of Union des Organizations Islamiques de France (UOIF), an umbrella organization said to be “in conformity with” the Muslim Brotherhood. Zitouni was acquitted.
Between 2015 and 2017, Mohamed Louizi, author of Pourquoi j’ai quitté les Frères Musulmans(“Why I Quit the Muslim Brotherhood”) was sued four times. In May and July 2015, he was sued for defamation because he published six articles on his blog about Sofiane Zitouni’s case with Averroes College (see above). In these two cases, Louizi was acquitted.
Then, in 2017, Louizi again shed light on arrangements made behind closed doors between some Socialist officials heading the city of Lille and Islamists accused by Louizi to be members of the Muslim Brotherhood. He was sued twice. Judgement is pending.
On June 6, 2017, Ahmed Meguini, secularist activist and founder of LaïcArt association, said on Twitter that Marwan Muhammad was “a son of a b**ch Salafist” and a “small sh**t”. Marwan Muhammad, an Islamist and Executive Director of CCIF was not angry at all. He simply picked up his phone and called his lawyer to sue Meguini — not for having insulting him, but for “racism“. The goal of this trial, according to Causeur magazine, is to create a judicial precedent: to ensure that in the future, any criticism or insult against Islamism must be considered “racism”.
These lists are not comprehensive; the trials above are just the most visible part of the iceberg.
Valentina Colombo, a professor at the European University in Rome, warned early on about “jihad by court”. In 2009, in Gatestone, she wrote:
“The lawsuit that was initiated by The Union of the Islamic Organizations of France and the Great Mosque of Paris against the satirical magazine ‘Charlie Hebdo’ for republishing the Danish cartoons about Muhammad is one of the most recent examples of this kind of jihad.”
But nobody (in France) paid attention to the warning. And when jihadists came in 2015 to murder eight journalists and cartoonists, nobody understood that jihad by court is only the first step. When people persist in what other people regard as “Islamophobia”, murderers have shown up to make sure the message sticks.
In another article, Colombo writes: “Jihad by court is another form of ‘intermediate’ jihad and is a modern and aggressive form of jihad through legal means.”
Jihad by court is one of the favorite means of the organizations and individuals ideologically linked with the Muslim Brotherhood (MB) in the West and sometimes is connected with the accusation of Islamophobia. The strategy is clear: any journalist, writer, intellectual, academic, activist or any newspaper, organization, association criticizing or exposing a Muslim Brotherhood individual or organization is very likely to be sued for defamation. The Legal Project of the Middle East Forum, based in the U.S., has given a very useful definition of this tactic:
Such lawsuits are often predatory, filed without a serious expectation of winning, but undertaken as a means to bankrupt, distract, intimidate, and demoralize defendants. Plaintiffs seek less to prevail in the courtroom than to wear down researchers and analysts. Even when the latter win cases, they pay heavily in time, money, and spirit. As counterterrorism specialist Steven Emerson comments, “Legal action has become a mainstay of radical Islamist organizations seeking to intimidate and silence their critics.” Islamists clearly hope, Douglas Farah notes, that researchers will “get tired of the cost and the hassle [of lawsuits] and simply shut up.”
French intellectuals, journalists, officials do not yet understand that they must organize, raise funds and elaborate strategies with lawyers to counter this threat. No one can compete individually against court by jihad. If an organized counter-strategy is not elaborated, the prediction of Yusuf al-Qaradawi, the Egyptian Islamic cleric and chairman of the International Union of Muslim Scholars — “We will colonize you with your democratic laws” — will come true.
Yves Mamou, author and journalist, based in France, worked for two decades as a journalist for Le Monde.
New Syrian-Hizballah offensive defies ceasefire, DEBKAfile, July 10, 2017
The Assad regime, for its part, felt free to resume combat because the Trump-Putin ceasefire deal had not set out demarcation lines as dividers between the opposing armies, leaving that task to US and Russian officers on the ground to take up.
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Less than 24 hours after the US-Russian sponsored ceasefire went into force in southwest Syria, it broke down early Monday, July 10, when large-scale Syrian army and Hizballah forces launched a general offensive on Syrian rebel forces in the Al Suweida province. This region was listed with Quneitra and Daraa as one of three demilitarized locations to be covered by the truce.
DEBKAfile’s military sources report that the Syrian’s army’s 5th Armored Division led the offensive which the Syrian army’s general command designated “Operation Big Dawn,” to mark it as the opening of a new phase in the war in southern Syria.
Our military sources described the attack as focusing on the northern rural areas of Al Suweida province to provide the Syrians and Hizballah with a pretext for claiming they are not part of the town and therefore not part of the ceasefire agreement reached by Presidents Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin in Hamburg last Friday, July 7.
In the early hours of their drive forward, Syrian and Hizballah troops captured 11 villages and small towns, including Tal Asfar and Al-Qasr, which lie 33km from the town of Suweida, 70km from Daraa on the Jordanian border and 78km east of Quneitra and the Israeli Golan border.
They forced the rebels defending them to retreat; most belonging to the Syrian Democratic Forces, who were trained and armed by the US and Jordan.
According to our sources, Damascus decided to terminate another short-lived ceasefire in the six-year Syrian war when the Jordanian army and intelligence took advantage of the pause in fighting to transfer large quantities of weapons and military equipment to allied Syrian rebel forces defending Daraa. Under no illusions about the sustainability of the US-Russian ceasefire deal, Jordan moved fast to bolster its Syrian allies for the next round of fighting.
The Assad regime, for its part, felt free to resume combat because the Trump-Putin ceasefire deal had not set out demarcation lines as dividers between the opposing armies, leaving that task to US and Russian officers on the ground to take up.
by John R. Bolton
July 10, 2017 at 9:00 am
Source: Putin Looked Trump in the Eye and Lied to Him
Before Donald Trump’s meeting with Vladimir Putin at the G20, media speculation approached hysterical levels. Would it be like the Reagan-Gorbachev get-together at Reykjavik in 1986, or Chamberlain meeting Hitler in Munich in 1938?
Of course, it was like neither. Instead, the encounter was primarily for the leaders to take each other’s measure. This was especially important for Trump, given his opponents’ charges, with no evidence to date, that his campaign colluded with Russia to rig the 2016 election.
Rex Tillerson, the Secretary of State, reported afterwards that Trump opened the meeting by expressing “the concerns of Americans” about Russian election interference. Tillerson emphasized that the discussion was “robust and lengthy”, with Trump returning several times to Russia’s meddling.
Although we do not have Trump’s exact words, US critics immediately attacked him for not referring to his concerns about the intrusions. If Trump did speak broadly about Americans’ worries, he struck the right note. The US is essentially unanimous that no foreign intervention in our constitutional process is acceptable.
 Russian President Vladimir Putin (left) meets with U.S. President Donald Trump (right in Hamburg, Germany on July 7, 2017. (Image source: kremlin.ru) |
But there was an even more important outcome: Trump got to experience Putin looking him in the eyes and lying to him, denying Russian interference in the election. It was predictable Putin would say just that, as he has before (offering the gratuitous, nearly insulting suggestion that individual hackers might have been responsible). Commentators were quick to observe that governments almost never straightforwardly acknowledge their intelligence activities.
But attempting to undermine America’s constitution is far more than just a quotidian covert operation. It is in fact a casus belli, a true act of war, and one Washington will never tolerate. For Trump, it should be a highly salutary lesson about the character of Russia’s leadership to watch Putin lie to him. And it should be a fire-bell-in-the-night warning about the value Moscow places on honesty, whether regarding election interference, nuclear proliferation, arms control or the Middle East: negotiate with today’s Russia at your peril.
On specific issues, the meeting’s outcome was also problematic. A ceasefire agreement in southwestern Syria is a clear victory for Russia, Assad’s regime, Hizbollah terrorists and Iran’s Revolutionary Guard. Although humanitarian in intention, this deal substantially legitimizes Russia’s participation in the Syrian struggle, thereby keeping Assad’s dictatorship alive.
Any ceasefire necessarily relieves pressure on Assad on one front, which he can exploit on another. Even more troubling were Tillerson’s references to the regime’s future, implying discussions with Russia about a post-Assad Syria. If so, this would simply be a continuation of the Obama administration’s delusion that Moscow shared our interest in removing Assad. Russia would acquiesce only if another Russian stooge were to fill his shoes.
Moreover, on North Korea, Tillerson said that Washington wanted to return Pyongyang to the table to discuss rolling back its nuclear weapons program. This too is a continuation of Obama policies, which brought us to the point where the North is dangerously close to delivering nuclear weapons on targets in the US.
For both Syria and North Korea, such comments reflect the influence of America’s permanent bureaucracy, which has been implementing Obama policies for eight years, and which Trump has yet to redirect.
There was undoubtedly much more to the Trump-Putin meeting. But its major consequence – what Trump learnt from observing Putin in action, lying with the benefit of the best KGB training – will be important for years to come.
John R. Bolton, former U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations, is Chairman of Gatestone Institute, a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, and author of “Surrender Is Not an Option: Defending America at the United Nations and Abroad”.
This article first appeared in the Daily Telegraph and is reprinted here with the kind permission of the author.
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