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State Dept.: Hezbollah, Islamic State Maintain Presence in Latin America

June 7, 2016

State Dept.: Hezbollah, Islamic State Maintain Presence in Latin America, Breitbart, Edwin Mora, June 6, 2016

Hezbollah-Getty-640x480Getty Images

WASHINGTON, D.C. —The U.S. Department of State (DOS) has determined that Venezuela, which has refused to cooperate with the United States’ antiterrorism efforts in Latin America for nearly a decade, remains a “permissive environment” that promotes ideological and financial support for terrorist organizations, namely Iran’s Lebanese proxy Hezbollah.

Although the “primary threats” to the Western Hemisphere stem from left-wing guerrillas known as the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) and the National Liberation Army (ELN), the Islamic extremist groups Shiite Hezbollah, also spelled Hizballah, and Sunni Islamic State (ISIS/ISIL) also maintain a presence across the region, according to DOS’ Country Reports on Terrorism 2015, a congressionally mandated assessment of terrorism activities across the world authored by DOS.

The assessment declares:

South America and the Caribbean also served as areas of financial and ideological support for ISIL and other terrorist groups in the Middle East and South Asia. In addition, Hizballah continued to maintain a presence in the region, with members, facilitators, and supporters engaging in activity in support of the organization. This included efforts to build Hizballah’s infrastructure in South America and fundraising, both through licit and illicit means.

[…]

There were credible reports that Venezuela maintained a permissive environment that allowed for support of activities that benefited known terrorist groups… [including] Hizballah supporters and sympathizers.

Moreover, the DOS evaluation highlights the Tri-Border Area (TBA) between Paraguay, Brazil, and Argentina, in addition to Peru, as regions where Hezbollah was operating last year.

“Illicit activities within the TBA remained potential funding sources for terrorist organizations, most notably Hizballah,” it says, adding, “The Tri-Border Areas of Argentina, Brazil, and Paraguay remained an important regional nexus of arms, narcotics, pirated goods, human smuggling, counterfeiting, and money laundering — all potential funding sources for terrorist organizations.”

The TBA border region has long been a hotbed for Hezbollah members.

In its terrorism reports, the DOS also points out that Peruvian authorities in 2014 arrested a Lebanese national and his wife, a U.S-Peruvian citizen, for suspected links to Hezbollah, adding that “there were residue and traces of explosives” in their apartment.

Hezbollah, along with other terrorists and criminals in Latin America, are known to use networks that support illicit activities, such as trafficking drugs, wildlife, bulk cash, weapons, humans, in addition to illegal logging and mining.

The DOS released its assessment Thursday, a day after the U.S. military declared the region’s illicit trafficking networks as one of the greatest security threats facing the United States.

Gen. John Kelly – former commander of U.S. Southern Command (SOUTHCOM), which oversees military activities in Latin America and the Caribbean – warned last year that jihadist groups like ISIS could exploit the illicit networks in the region to infiltrate the United States, adding that Hezbollah is already using known routes to traffic drugs and other contraband.

Although Hezbollah is believed to be the most prominent jihadist group in Latin America and the Caribbean due to Iran’s enduring presence in the region, Gen. Kelly warned in March 2015 that a small number of Sunni extremists are actively “radicalizing  converts and other Muslims in the region and also provide financial and logistical support to designated terrorist organizations within and outside Latin America.”

Pentagon and DOS have recently revealed that between 100 and 150 people from Latin America and the Caribbean have traveled to the Middle East to engage in jihad on behalf of ISIS, without specifying the names of any of the countries in the region.

According to the Department of State, some people from Trinidad and Tobago, as well as Argentina, are believed to have joined ISIS in the Middle East.

“More than 70 nationals of Trinidad and Tobago are believed be fighting with ISIL in Syria,” reports DOS, adding, “It is possible small numbers of Argentine citizens may have sought to travel to Syria and Iraq to join ISIL,” without providing any specific figures.

DOS also mentioned an ISIS-related arrest in Brazil involving a money laundering group accused of moving $10 million-plus and having social media ties to the jihadist group.

Iran’s growing presence in Latin America is believed to be facilitated by Venezuela.

“The International Development Bank, a subsidiary of the Development and Export Bank of Iran, continued to operate in Venezuela [in 2015] despite its designation in 2008 by the U.S. Treasury Department under E.O. [Executive Order] 13382 (‘Blocking Property of Weapons of Mass Destruction Proliferators and their Supporters’),” mentions the DOS assessment.

Justin Siberell, acting coordinator for counterterrorism at the State Department, briefed reporters Thursday about the 2015 Country Reports on Terrorism, stressing that the enduring presence in the region of leading state sponsor of terror Iran continues to trouble the United States.

“I think Iran’s presence in the Western Hemisphere and its support for groups that might be engaged in facilitation or operational planning is a continued concern,” Siberell told reporters.

Nevertheless, he added, “I don’t think we’ve seen an increase in 2015 in Iran’s activity in the Western Hemisphere, but it remains a high priority for us.”

Categories: Department of State, Hezbollah, Islamic terrorism, Latin America
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Ramadan: Month of Jihad

June 7, 2016

Ramadan: Month of Jihad, Front Page Magazine, Robert Spencer, June 7, 2016

(Please see also, Obama on Ramadan: Reject ‘Voices That Seek to Limit Our Religious Freedom’. — DM)

terrorist (1)

Another Ramadan is upon us, and no less an authority on Islam than Barack Hussein Obama has assured us that “for many, this month is an opportunity to focus on reflection and spiritual growth, forgiveness, patience and resilience, compassion for those less fortunate, and unity across communities.” Meanwhile, a Muslim whom Obama would disparage as a “violent extremist” who has hijacked the religion of peace, Islamic State spokesman Abu Mohammad al-Adnani, called on Muslims to use this Ramadan to “get prepared, be ready … to make it a month of calamity everywhere for nonbelievers…especially for the fighters and supporters of the caliphate in Europe and America.”

Ramadan 2016 began with the news that a group of Muslims in Jordan were so filled with pious fervor that they murdered five Jordanian intelligence officers in an attack on a security office. The perpetrators may have been acting upon the understanding of Ramadan that a jihad group enunciated back in 2012: “The month of Ramadan is a month of holy war and death for Allah. It is a month for fighting the enemies of Allah and God’s messenger, the Jews and their American facilitators. One of our groups aided by Allah managed to bomb a bus full of Jewish tourists, plunderers of holy lands, after careful tracking. The holy war is not confined to a particular arena and we shall fight the Jews and the Americans until they leave the land of Islam.”

So which is it? Is Ramadan a time to “an opportunity to focus on reflection and spiritual growth, forgiveness, patience and resilience, compassion for those less fortunate, and unity across communities,” or is it “a month of calamity everywhere for nonbelievers”?

In fact, it’s both. During Ramadan, Muslims are exhorted to renew and deepen their devotion to Allah. Hence it is a time when they’re supposed to grow more generous and kind toward their fellow Muslims. However, the Qur’an says: “Muhammad is the Messenger of Allah, and those who are with him are severe against disbelievers, and merciful among themselves” (48:29). If the Ramadan imperative is to become more devout, the Muslim who applies himself diligently to the Ramadan observance will simultaneously become more both merciful to his fellow Muslims and more severe against the unbelievers.

Murdering infidels thus doesn’t contradict the spirit of Ramadan; it embodies it. The Kavkaz Center, a website operated by Chechen jihadists, explained in a 2010 article that the idea of Ramadan as a time for warfare against infidels went back to Muhammad’s time: “The month of Ramadan in the life of the Prophet (pbuh) and the righteous ancestors was a month of forthcoming. The greatest battles during the lifetime of the Prophet (pbuh) occurred in this blessed month, the month of jihad, zeal and enthusiasm.”

Obama is, true to form, severely misleading the American people when he focuses exclusively upon Ramadan’s exhortation to charity (the part of the Qur’an verse about being “merciful” to one’s fellow Muslims) without mentioning its imperative to terrorize infidels (the other part, about being “severe” toward the unbelievers). But as we have seen already in Jordan, all too many Muslims around the world are fully aware of that part of the Ramadan observance, and are ready to carry it out.

It is folly to pretend that the aspect of Ramadan that makes it a more dangerous time for non-Muslims doesn’t exist: dangerous, suicidal folly. But the fact that no one in the public square even thinks to question Obama’s Ramadan congratulations, which roll around every year in the same form, shows how widespread that folly is. Obama’s Ramadan message for this year concluded: “I can think of no better way to mark my Administration’s last celebration of Ramadan as President than to honor the contributions of Muslims in America and across the world for Eid. Ramadan Kareem.”

What contributions of Muslims in America? He has alluded to them before, but once again he didn’t bother to list any, and of course no one asked. That Muslims have made great contributions to America (beyond spurring tremendous developments in airline security, that is) is simply an unquestionable dogma of our silly and stupid age; no one needs ask the President for examples, because those contributions are taken as axiomatic, with only “Islamophobes” questioning them. That there aren’t any actual such contributions is an inconvenient fact, to be sure, but one so thoroughly obscured by propaganda that everyone feels it can be safely ignored.

The cognitive dissonance here equals that about Ramadan itself. And as our Ramadan follies and willful blindness continue, more Infidels will die.

Categories: Islamic terrorism, Obama and Islam, Ramadan
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Islamic Extremism in Ireland (Part I): Brotherhood Thriving

June 6, 2016

Islamic Extremism in Ireland (Part I): Brotherhood Thriving, Clarion Project, Leslie Shaw, June 6, 2016

Ali-Selim-Ireland-HP

The Muslim population of Ireland increased 10-fold from just under 4,000 or 0.1% of the total population in 1991 to 1.1% in 2011 (just under 50,000). Dr. Ali Selim is one of its leading figures. RTE, the national television and radio station, has just turned down a request he made for the broadcasting of a daily call to prayer to mark the end of the 2016 Ramadan fasting period.

Ramadan, which runs from June 6 to July 7, requires Muslims not to eat or drink between sunrise and sunset. RTE turned down the request because TV schedules are fixed, whereas the end of Ramadan varies from day to day. Selim reacted to the decision by declaring that “in Muslim countries the commencement of the period of fasting and its end is marked with a prayer call chanted through loudspeakers placed on the top of the minarets. It is also aired through radio and TV channels.” He seems to ignore the salient fact that Ireland is not a Muslim country.

While Selim is an outspoken and uncompromising advocate for the Irish Muslim constituency, he is less eloquent when it comes to condemning Islamic terrorism. In a 2003 interview, Irish talk-show host Pat Kenny put the following question to him:

“So there is no justification for September 11th?”

Selim replied, “This is another political issue I do not want to touch.”

In response to this refusal, Kenny retorted:

“Why not? I mean if you cannot condemn September 11th, people will draw the conclusion that you are in favor of it.”

Ali Selim came to Ireland from Egypt in 1999 and studied at Trinity College Dublin, where he obtained the degrees of M.A. and Ph.D. He lectures on Islam at the Mater Dei Institute, affiliated to Dublin City University and also teaches Arabic at Trinity College. Aside from his academic posts he serves as private secretary to the Imam at the Islamic Cultural Centre of Ireland and as Secretary General of the Irish Council of Imams.

In another TV interview in 2006, Selim refused to judge Osama Bin Laden when pressed, saying he did not know him personally.

In his 2014 book Islam and Education in Ireland, he called for radical change in the Irish educational system to accommodate the Islamic beliefs of the 65,000 Muslims living in Ireland, 20,000 of whom he claimed were under 18 years of age. This would include modifications to the national curriculum relating to physical education, relationship and sexuality education, music, drama and the practice of Islamic rituals during school hours.

He complained that Muslim girls were being “obliged to take off their headscarves for physical education classes” and demanded that schools “employ a female PE teacher and provide students with a sports hall not accessible to men during times when girls are at play. They should also not be visible to men while at play.”

After the Charlie Hebdo attack in January 2015, Selim threatened to sue any Irish media outlet that reproduced the offending cartoon of Mohammed.

Selim appears to be the Irish propagandist for the Muslim Brotherhood‘s Salafist interpretation of Islam and has entrenched himself in the Muslim community, assuming a leadership role and acting as a self-proclaimed spokesman. Mosques, social and educational initiatives are the instruments of this strategy and are financed by the Al Maktoum foundation in Dubai as well as Saudi Arabia and Qatar.

The Islamic Cultural Centre of Ireland is located in the same complex as the Clonskeagh mosque in south Dublin. Built and funded by Al Maktoum foundation, analysts claim it is a front for the Muslim Brotherhood. In 2007 the mosque hosted two extremist speakers. One was Saudi cleric Salman Al Awda, one of the 26 Saudi scholars who issued the 2004 fatwa calling for jihad against the Americans in Iraq. The second was Egyptian cleric Wagdy Ghoneim, who supports suicide bombing against Jews. He is banned from the UK and Canada, where he is said to be a member of Hamas and the Muslim Brotherhood. This did not pose a problem for his visits to Ireland in 2006 and 2007.

While it already boasted one of Europe’s major mosques in Clonskeagh, in 2013, Dublin City Council granted a building permit to the Dublin Welfare Society and Muslim Centre of Ireland for an even bigger development in Clongriffin, north Dublin that was to be the largest in Europe.

The six-acre project in north Dublin included a three-storey, domed mosque with two minarets as well as apartments, shops, a kindergarten, elementary school, high school, cultural center, prayer hall, meeting rooms, creche and a 60,000 sq. ft. library with the estimated $45 million investment funded by Qatar. Two years after the permit was granted the developer, Gannon Homes, announced that the project would not be going ahead due to a lack of funding by the proposers.

Back in 2006, US Ambassador to Ireland James C. Kenny reported in a cable to the State Department that the ICCI had close links to Islamic extremists and hired as a religious teacher Abderrahmane Katrani, an Afghanistan veteran and Moroccan national wanted by Moroccan authorities for the 2003 Casablanca bombings. The head of ICCI’s European Council for Fatwa and Research Sheikh Yusuf al-Qaradawi was banned from entry to the US in 1999. According to Kenny’s cable the Muslim Brotherhood is stronger in Ireland than anywhere in the world outside Qatar.

A fact that gives a whole new meaning to the term Emerald Isle.

Categories: Ireland, Islam and human rights, Islamic invasion, Islamic radicalization, Islamic terrorism, Islamisation, Islamism, Muslim Brotherhood
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No Refuge for the Victims of Jihadist Genocide

June 3, 2016

No Refuge for the Victims of Jihadist Genocide, Front Page Magazine, Joseph Klein, June 3, 2016

christian-syrian-refugee-900

President Obama sharply criticized the suggestion that persecuted Christians be given preference for admission as refugees.   He said that “when I hear political leaders suggesting that there would be a religious test for which person who’s fleeing from a war-torn country is admitted… that’s shameful.”  Obama added: “That’s not American, it’s not who we are.” 

The Obama-Trudeau policy of opening doors widely to Muslim refugees, while allowing hardly a crack to open for the Christian and Yazidi victims of jihadi-inspired genocide, is risky, to be sure. It is also immoral.

*********************

The Obama administration is rapidly accelerating its admission and resettlement of Syrian refugees.  The administration is well on its way to meeting its target of taking 10,000 Syrians into the country by the end of the current fiscal year on September 30th.  In the first five months of 2016, 2,099 Syrian refugees have been admitted, compared with 2,192 for the whole of 2015, according to a report by CNS News. However, only a very tiny percentage are Christians, a beleaguered minority who are facing genocide in their home country. The Obama administration is immorally discriminating against Christian Syrian refugees.

“Out of the 2,099 Syrian refugees admitted so far this year, six (0.28 percent) are Christians,” CNS reported.  Ten (0.3 percent) are Yazidis. Over 99 percent are Muslims. And the trend line is worsening as the year progresses.  Last month, only two Christians (0.19 percent) were admitted compared to 1,035 Muslims.

Christians are estimated to have made up approximately ten percent of the total Syrian population at the outset of the conflict in Syria, according to the CIA Factbook. As Christians have come under attack by both the regime and jihadist groups, including ISIS, the Christian population in Syria has declined.

Patrick Sookhdeo, the founder and international director of the charity group the Barnabas Fund, which has worked to rescue Syrian Christians, said: “In Aleppo, to give you one illustration, there used to be 400,000 Christians four years ago. Today there may be between 45,000 and 65,000.”

Yet, according to data compiled by the U.S. State Department Refugee Processing Center, only 47 Syrian Christians have been admitted to the United States in all that time – slightly over 1 percent of the total number of Syrian refugees admitted. The current rate of Christian admissions is running far below even that miniscule level.

The UN Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide defines the crime of genocide as “acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnic, racial or religious group.”

After receiving significant pressure, the Obama administration finally yielded to the obvious. Secretary of State John Kerry declared last March that the Islamic State has been committing genocide against Christians, Yazidis and other minorities in the Middle East.

Note that while Kerry included Shiite Muslims on his list of ISIS’s genocide victims, Sunni Muslims were not included. Nor should they be, considering the fact that ISIS jihadists are themselves Sunni Muslims. Al Qaeda jihadists are Sunni Muslims. The ideology of Wahhabism fueling the jihadists’ reign of terror, exported by Saudi Arabia, is of Sunni Muslim origin.

Therefore, one would think that Christians and other targeted minorities would receive preference for refugee status in the United States, not Sunni Muslims. Think again. Since the beginning of the Syrian conflict, approximately 96% of the Syrian refugees admitted to the United States by the Obama administration have been Sunni Muslims.

President Obama sharply criticized the suggestion that persecuted Christians be given preference for admission as refugees.   He said that “when I hear political leaders suggesting that there would be a religious test for which person who’s fleeing from a war-torn country is admitted… that’s shameful.”  Obama added: “That’s not American, it’s not who we are.”

It is President Obama’s Syrian refugee policy that is both “shameful” and “not American.” It has amounted to what is in effect a “religious test,” vastly favoring the one group of migrants from Syria who needs refugee protection the least– Sunni Muslims. Moreover, some of these Sunni Muslims are bringing their Wahhabi jihadist ideology with them.

Whatever self-righteous statements Obama, Pope Francis and United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-moon make regarding the moral responsibility of Western nations to admit many more refugees, there is no moral imperative to commit cultural suicide. That is perhaps why the Dali Lama warned a German newspaper this week that “too many” refugees from the Middle East and North Africa are heading into Europe. He knows of the problems Buddhists have been having with their own Muslim populations. He is also aware of the history of many Buddhist countries that were converted to Islam, including Afghanistan where invading Muslims overran the native Buddhist and Hindu populations.

We don’t even have to look as far as Europe to see what can happen to a culture under the increasing influence of Islamization. For example, the Muslim population in Canada is growing faster than that of any other religion. A majority of Muslims already living in Canada have favored being able to live under some form of sharia law, and a number of local governments have made accommodations in that direction.

Now enters the Barack Obama of Canada, Justin Trudeau, as Canada’s new prime minister. His Liberal government is hoping to admit 50,000 Syrian refugees by the end of 2016. 25,000 Syrian refugees have been admitted in just four months.  Trudeau also appointed Member of Parliament and senior adviser Omar Alghabra, a sharia law supporter who has denied that Hamas is a terrorist group, as Parliamentary Secretary for Foreign Affairs. Alghabra was born in Saudi Arabia, but emigrated to Canada from Syria several decades ago.

While Trudeau’s predecessor Stephen Harper had prioritized the admission of persecuted Christians, Yazidis and Kurds, Trudeau said that he will “absolutely not” continue that practice. He and Obama are in sync that saving persecuted Christians from an ongoing genocide is less important than reaching out to Muslim refugees as proof of the country’s diversity and inclusiveness. When the two leaders met at the White House last March, they were effusive in mutual admiration for each other’s compassion towards the refugees. However, they are oblivious to the enhanced security risk to both countries they have created.

For example, some of the recently arrived refugees in Canada were welcomed last February with a call for jihad by the Imam of a Muslim congregation in Edmonton, Alberta, who was previously a “scholar” at al-Azhar theological school in Egypt:

“O Allah! Strengthen the mujahideen [jihad fighters in the path of Allah] everywhere, make their hearts firm and strong, let them hit their targets, give them victory over their enemies.

“O Allah! Destroy the oppressors.

“O Allah! Destroy your enemies, the enemies of religion (Islam).”

The Obama-Trudeau policy of opening doors widely to Muslim refugees, while allowing hardly a crack to open for the Christian and Yazidi victims of jihadi-inspired genocide, is risky, to be sure. It is also immoral.

Categories: Islam and Christianity, Islamic immigration, Islamic integration, Islamic supremacy, Islamic terrorism, Islamists in America, Islamists in Canada, Kurds, Obama and Christians, Obama and Islam, Obama and Islamic terrorism, Obama's America, Yazidis
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Across the Border

June 3, 2016

Across the Border, Power Line, Scott Johnson, June 3, 2016

(Somehow, Mr. Johnson seems to have missed this information from the Washington Times:

The group of six men nabbed inside the U.S. — the Afghan and five men identified as Pakistanis — all made asylum claims when they were eventually caught by the Border Patrol. Mr. Hunter said his understanding is that the five men from Pakistan were released based on those claims and have disappeared.

— DM)

At the Washington Times Stephen Dinan has a timely scoop that highlights the national security implications of our porous border with Mexico. Dinan reports:

A smuggling network has managed to sneak illegal immigrants from Middle Eastern terrorism hotbeds straight to the doorstep of the U.S., including helping one Afghan who authorities say was part of an attack plot in North America.

Immigration officials have identified at least a dozen Middle Eastern men smuggled into the Western Hemisphere by a Brazilian-based network that connected them with Mexicans who guided them to the U.S. border, according to internal government documents reviewed by The Washington Times.

Those smuggled included Palestinians, Pakistanis and the Afghan man who Homeland Security officials said had family ties to the Taliban and was “involved in a plot to conduct an attack in the U.S. and/or Canada.” He is in custody, but The Times is withholding his name at the request of law enforcement to protect investigations.

Some of the men handled by the smuggling network were nabbed before they reached the U.S., but others made it into the country. The Afghan man was part of a group of six from “special-interest countries.”

Rep. Duncan Hunter appears to have given Dinan a hand with his story:

The group, guided by two Mexicans employed by the smuggling network, crawled under the border fence in Arizona late last year and made it about 15 miles north before being detected by border surveillance, according to the documents, which were obtained by Rep. Duncan Hunter, California Republican.

As the Obama administration imports a wave of immigrants from Syria and forces them down our throats at locations unknown around the country, Dinan also adds this timely note:

[T]he documents obtained by Mr. Hunter confirm fears of a pipeline that can get would-be illegal immigrants from terrorist hotbeds to the threshold of the U.S.

Just as troubling, the Border Patrol didn’t immediately spot the Afghan man’s terrorist ties because the database that agents first checked didn’t list him. It wasn’t until agents checked an FBI database that they learned the Afghan may be a danger, the documents say.

Dinan’s current scoop follows up on his December 2015 story “Agents nab Pakistanis with terrorist connections crossing U.S. border.” At Politifact (!), Joshua Gillin has a useful roundup of such stories.

Do you suppose that others fitting the profile Dinan sketches have made it across the border undetected? I do. And that porous border with Mexico — President Obama means for us to keep it that way.

Categories: Islamic State, Islamic terrorism, Obama and uncontrolled immigration, Obama's America, US Southern border
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Europe Braces for More Jihadist Attacks

June 2, 2016

Europe Braces for More Jihadist Attacks, Gatestone Institute, Soeren Kern, June 2, 2016

♦ Sports stadiums and big music events are especially vulnerable: “This is where you put a small town into a small area for a couple of hours.” — Neil Basu, deputy assistant commissioner of the Metropolitan Police, London.

♦  “We know that the Islamic State has the European Championship in its sights.” — Hans-Georg Maaßen, head of Germany’s domestic intelligence agency.

♦  According to Patrick Calvar, head of the France’s domestic intelligence agency, at least 645 French nationals or residents, including 245 women, are currently with the Islamic State in Syria and Iraq. Another 200 individuals are “in transit,” either on their way to Syria or returning to France. Around 244 jihadists have already returned to France.

♦British police chiefs are struggling to recruit enough officers who are willing to carry a firearm, because many fear they will be treated as criminal suspects if they use their weapon in the line of duty.

European security officials are bracing for potential jihadist attacks at public venues across Europe this summer.

In France, officials are preparing for possible attacks against the European Football Championships. The games, which start on June 10, comprise 51 matches involving 24 teams playing in 10 host cities across the country.

Interior Minister Bernard Cazeneuve said that more than 90,000 security personnel will be on hand to protect the 2.5 million spectators expected to attend the games, as well as the hundreds of thousands more who will watch the matches on big screens in so-called “fan zones” in major cities.

Patrick Calvar, the head of the France’s domestic intelligence agency (Direction générale de la sécurité intérieure, DGSI), warned: “We know that the Islamic State is planning new attacks in France.” He added:

“We risk being confronted with a new form of attack: a terrorist campaign characterized by placing explosive devices in places where large crowds are gathered, and repeating this type of action to create a climate of panic.”

According to Calvar, at least 645 French nationals or residents, including 245 women, are currently with the Islamic State (ISIS) in Syria and Iraq. Another 200 individuals are “in transit,” either on their way to the Middle East or returning to France. Around 244 jihadists have already returned to France, and another 818 people have “demonstrated their intention to go to Syria.”

1636The Stade de France, located in a Paris suburb, was attacked by three Islamic State suicide bombers in November 2015. The stadium will be hosting games during the UEFA Euro 2016 football championships (June 10 – July 10, 2016), and French officials are preparing for possible jihadist attacks. (Image source: Wikimedia Commons/Liondartois)

Calvar’s concerns have been echoed by Hans-Georg Maaßen, the head of Germany’s domestic intelligence agency (Bundesamt für Verfassungsschutz, BfV). In an interview with Rheinische Post, Maaßen said: “We know that the Islamic State has the European Championship in its sights.”

On May 29, British media quoted Belgian security sources as saying they had discovered an Islamic State plot to attack British football fans in the southern French city of Marseille when England plays Russia on June 11. The plans were reportedly discovered on a laptop used by Salah Abdeslam, a Belgian-born French national of Moroccan descent who is thought to be the mastermind of the November 2015 terrorist attacks on Paris which left 130 dead.

The laptop is said to have contained information about a plot to kill large numbers of British fans using assault rifles, suicide bombers and possibly even drones armed with chemical weapons. The laptop contained photos and references to Marseille’s historic Old Port, where tens of thousands of football fans are expected to gather at the many bars and restaurants in the area.

Meanwhile, French Interior Minister Bernard Cazeneuve also announced that more than 23,000 police will be deployed to protect the Tour de France, the world’s premier bicycle race, which takes place from July 2 to 24.

Teams of special operations forces (Groupe d’intervention de la Gendarmerie Nationale, GIGN) will guard riders and an estimated 12 million spectators along a route that covers 3,500 kilometers (2,180 miles). “Everyone understands that this year the Tour de France is taking place in a particular context,” Cazeneuve said. He added: “The terrorist threat remains very high.”

In Poland, officials are preparing for possible jihadist attacks against the Catholic Church’s World Youth Day, which is expected to draw 2.5 million to Krakow from July 26 to 31. Poland will impose border controls at all of its national borders from July 4 to August 2.

In Britain, music festivals, big sports venues and nightclubs have been placed on “high alert” for potential jihadist attacks, according to a senior anti-terrorism officer interviewed by the Sunday Times.

Neil Basu, the deputy assistant commissioner of the Metropolitan Police, said that crowded places — including Glastonbury, billed as the world’s largest music festival, which will draw 135,000 people to Somerset from June 22 to 26 — are a major concern for police this summer. Basu warned:

“These people are perfectly happy to target civilians with the maximum terror impact. Crowded places were always a concern for us, but now they are right at the top of the agenda.”

Basu said that sports stadiums and big music events are especially vulnerable: “This is where you put a small town into a small area for a couple of hours.”

Police in rural communities in Britain that host large summer festivals are warning that they could be “sitting ducks” in the face of a jihadist attack as they wait for armed backup to arrive from many miles away.

In an interview with the BBC, John Apter, the head of the Hampshire and Isle of Wight Police Federation, said:

“Being realistic, if a firearms unit was coming from the middle of the county you are still talking about 30 miles away — you are not talking about a few minutes. There would be an understandable delay. If a firearms unit is the other side of the county they could be 70 miles away so you are talking a significant distance. So the only officers that you have available are unarmed and vulnerable officers and they are the officers that are saying to me that in a terrorist situation they would be sitting ducks.”

Most police in Britain are unarmed. According to Deputy Chief Constable Simon Chesterman, the UK’s top firearms officer, British police chiefs are struggling to recruit enough officers who are willing to carry a firearm, because many fear they will be treated as criminal suspects if they use their weapon in the line of duty.

Senior British security officials estimate that the UK needs an extra 1,500 armed officers to tackle jihadist attacks such as those carried out in Paris. Because half of the recruits will not make it through the rigorous training, however, 3,000 volunteers are needed to come forward.

Che Donald of the Police Federation — which represents the 5,647 officers throughout Britain who currently carry firearms — told the Guardian that while major cities such as London are sufficiently protected, other large towns and cities are not: “Currently there are not enough firearms officers who could deal with an incident in quite a lot of areas of Britain.”

In Brussels, Manuel Navarrete Paniagua, the head of the European Counter Terrorism Centre at the European police agency Europol, warned Members of the European Parliament that terrorist cells in Europe are stockpiling weapons and explosives for future attacks:

“We have some information reported by the member states that terrorists groups are trying to establish large clandestine stockpiles of explosives in the European Union to be used eventually in large scale home attacks.”

Paniagua added that police had foiled more than 200 terrorist attacks in the EU in 2015. A total of 151 people were killed and more than 360 injured during terrorist attacks in the EU in 2015. More than 1,000 people were arrested for terrorist-related crimes.

In an interview with Time magazine, Europol director Rob Wainwright revealed that “several hundred” battle-trained European jihadists are probably plotting new attacks. He said that his agency is working on 50 ongoing terrorist investigations:

“This is the highest terrorist threat we have faced in Europe since the days of 9/11. We have 5,000 Europeans who have been radicalized by the Islamic State and have traveled to Syria and Iraq and engaged in conflict experience. We suspect that about one-third of them have come back: That is our best guess. We don’t know for sure…

“Our real concern is that there are other networks, either in Europe already, or who are being trained in Syria for further action. We know that the Islamic State last year took a strategic decision to establish an external operations command, a division to plan exactly the kind of attacks we have now seen. We think that they are still active and planning to do that. The threat is alive and current. Another attempted attack is almost certain. Whether it gets through depends of course. I am concerned about the Islamic State’s clearly expressed desire for the spectacular.”

On May 31, the U.S. State Department issued a travel alert for Europe this summer:

“We are alerting U.S. citizens to the risk of potential terrorist attacks throughout Europe, targeting major events, tourist sites, restaurants, commercial centers and transportation. The large number of tourists visiting Europe in the summer months will present greater targets for terrorists planning attacks in public locations, especially at large events.”

The travel alert urges vigilance when in public places or using mass transportation, and avoiding crowded places.

Categories: Europe, Guns, Islamic integration, Islamic invasion, Islamic State, Islamic terrorism, Islamisation
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Antwerp Terror Arrests Underscore Growing Threat to Europe and America

June 1, 2016

Antwerp Terror Arrests Underscore Growing Threat to Europe and America, Investigative Project on Terrorism, Abigail R. Esman, June 1, 2016

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Last Wednesday, just two years and a day after the deadly terrorist attack on the Jewish Museum in Brussels, and barely more than two months after the twin attacks on the Brussels airport and metro, Belgian police arrested a group of Muslim youth planning yet another attack, this time in Antwerp. Aiming “to kill as many kufar,” or non-Muslims, as possible, the group is believed to have been planning to bomb Antwerp’s Central Station. The group also is believed to have made previous plans to assassinate right-wing politician Filip Dewinter, the leader of the Vlaams Belang party. Those plans were put on hold, however, in favor of a larger-scale attack.

The suspects were members of a group of radicalized Muslim teens believed to have kept contact with Antwerp native Hicham Chaib, who is now a high-ranking leader of the Islamic State. It was Chaib who informed the public that the March 22 attacks on Belgium’s Zaventem airport and Maelbeek metro station “were just a taste of what’s to come.” And it is Chaib, the former second-in-command of Shariah4Belgium who left Antwerp for Syria in 2012, who now actively recruits other Antwerp-based youth to join ISIS or to execute terrorist attacks in their homeland.

The four arrests followed a series of raids by Antwerp police into the homes of several suspects in the Borgerhout district. Two suspects have been released, but other members of the group, some arrested previously, remain in custody. All suspects are said to be between the ages of 16 and 19, confirming earlier Dutch reports that European Muslims under the age of 20 are increasingly becoming involved in Islamic State activities and jihadist plots.

According to some accounts, the Antwerp group is comprised of nine youths, at least five of whom are minors. At least two members tried to join the Islamic State in Raqqa in March, but were stopped by officials en route and sent back to Belgium.

With security and counter-terror investigations heightened in Brussels after the March 22 attacks there, it is unsurprising that jihadists might be moving their activities and focus to nearby Antwerp. The city has a long history of Muslim unrest, with riots as early as 2002 and the founding, by Hizballah-linked Lebanese immigrant Dyab Abou Jahjah, of the Arab European League (AEL) in 2000. An organization with pan-Arab aspirations, the AEL aimed to create what Jahjah called a “sharocracy” – a kind of combination of democracy and sharia – that would eventually become European law.

More recently, Antwerp native Fouad Belkacem founded the notorious Sharia4Belgium, alleged to have organized most of the recruiting for ISIS in Belgium, with some outreach to neighboring countries such as France and The Netherlands. And, of the estimated 500 Belgian Muslims who have joined terrorist groups in Syria, more than 100 come from Antwerp.

But the indication of heightened new activity in Antwerp also suggests possible changes in strategy for Europe-based jihadists and recruiters. While French-speaking Brussels maintains close ties to France (several of the terrorists involved in the two attacks in Paris last year were based or were born in Brussels), Flemish-speaking Antwerp holds a stronger relationship to The Netherlands. Antwerp is also a mere 30 minutes from Rotterdam by high-speed train, offering easy access to Europe’s largest and busiest port. The Rotterdam Port is also the launching point for the vast majority of European exports to America, Europe’s largest external trading partner.

This matters. According to the National Institute of Justice, “Few would dispute that, if terrorists used a cargo container to conceal a weapon of mass destruction and detonated it on arrival at a U.S. port, the impact on global trade and the world economy could be immediate and devastating.” And the New York Times further observed, “The cargo containers arriving on ships from foreign ports offer terrorists a Trojan horse for a devastating attack on the United States. As the Harvard political scientist Graham T. Allison has put it, a nuclear attack is ‘far more likely to arrive in a cargo container than on the tip of a missile.'”

The good news, however, is that The Netherlands’ intelligence and counter-terrorism agencies are well-recognized for their research, acuity, and effectiveness. And Rotterdam takes an especially hard line on Islamic extremism: its Essalam Mosque, Holland’s largest, served as the site for anti-extremist protests. Last year, the mosque dismissed all foreign Arabs from its board of directors. And following the January 2015 attacks in Paris, Ahmed Aboutaleb, Rotterdam’s Muslim mayor, famously invited any Dutch Muslim wishing to join the jihad in Syria to make the trip and never try to return. More, his fierce response to youth who dislike Dutch values was even more direct: he told them to “f*** off.”

Perhaps, then, even as these latest arrests demonstrate just how much Europe’s radical Muslim problem threatens to become America’s radical Muslim problem, we should consider making some of Europe’s more radical solutions America’s solutions, too.

Categories: Belgium, Europe, Islamic integration, Islamic State, Islamic terrorism, Mosques
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Dishonoring Veterans, Honoring Terrorists

May 30, 2016

Dishonoring Veterans, Honoring Terrorists, Front Page Magazine, Daniel Greenfield, May 30, 2016

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The men and women who die fighting for the cause of freedom are not accorded a fraction of the tender affection from the press that it lavishes on a single imprisoned Al Qaeda terrorist. We live today in an America in which the butchers of the Jihad in Guantanamo Bay receive better medical care than veterans waiting endlessly at the VA. While Obama cut off hot meals for Marines in Afghanistan, Islamic terrorists in Guantanamo Bay were enjoying lemon baked fish, honey glazed chicken, lyonnaise rice, tandoori chicken breast, okra, hummus, dates, honey and seasoned lentils.

[O]ur enemies today are as likely to come from within as without. We are in the midst of a quiet civil war and our veterans have become its first casualties. The heroes of today’s ruling class are racist rabble-rousers who tear down the flag for which so many of our soldiers died and replace it with their own militant banners of identity politics. The privileged leftist activists who once chanted “Ho, Ho, Ho Chi Minh, the NFL is gonna win”, who even attempted to murder soldiers to aid the enemy, are in charge of the country, while Vietnam veterans sleep on the streets and groan in prisons.

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On Memorial Day, the flowers bloom. A dozen towns in a dozen states all claim that it began there when after the long weary struggle of the Civil War, the mothers and sisters of the lost and the fallen brought fresh cut flowers to bring a touch of life to the dead men entombed in the cold, gray stone.

“From the silence of sorrowful hours, The desolate mourners go, Lovingly laden with flowers, Alike for the friend and the foe,” reads the famous Francis Miles Finch poem which helped popularize the practice.

Today the wars are no longer fraternal. The First World War is the last war that had anything brotherly in it. It was a war where soldiers from both sides could observe a Christmas truce and hurl nothing deadlier than snowballs at each other. The end of that terrible war on the “eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month” became Armistice Day and then, when the “war to end all wars” did not end them, but instead gave way to wars fought against terrible evils, Nazism, Communism, Islam, it became Veteran’s Day to remember those who would go on sacrificing in this eternal struggle against evil.

But while wars are no longer fraternal, the flowers are laid now on the graves of foes, not friends.

The men and women who die fighting for the cause of freedom are not accorded a fraction of the tender affection from the press that it lavishes on a single imprisoned Al Qaeda terrorist. We live today in an America in which the butchers of the Jihad in Guantanamo Bay receive better medical care than veterans waiting endlessly at the VA. While Obama cut off hot meals for Marines in Afghanistan, Islamic terrorists in Guantanamo Bay were enjoying lemon baked fish, honey glazed chicken, lyonnaise rice, tandoori chicken breast, okra, hummus, dates, honey and seasoned lentils.

While veterans died at the VA, the men they had fought and helped capture were gifted with a $750,000 soccer field. This treatment is an obscene echo of the days of segregation when German POWs were allowed to sit inside at eateries while the African-American soldiers who guarded them had to wait outside. This segregation no longer occurs by race, but by patriotism and creed.

Obama denies that Islamic terrorism exists and suppresses any training materials about the role of Islam in Islamic terrorism while his administration warns of domestic terror threats from veterans. Muslim migrants from Syria receive lavish social benefits while health care for veterans is slashed. The Muslim migrants, many of whom support Islamic terrorists, benefit from job programs while veterans head for the unemployment line. This hatefully discriminatory attitude has become pervasive on the left.

Hollywood bends over backward to avoid accurately portraying Muslim terrorists, but depicts returning veterans as unstable killers and ticking time bombs. The media gushes over each petty Islamophobia grievance, like Tahera Ahmad, who claimed that she didn’t receive a Diet Coke can on a plane only because she was Muslim, while sweeping the sweeping the thousand veterans who died because of the VA scandal under the progressive prayer rug. A Muslim Diet Coke matters more than a thousand dead veterans.

When Secretary of Defense Ash Carter was slow to release Islamic Jihadists from Guantanamo Bay, Obama summoned him and personally chewed him out over the delays for his beloved terrorists. His predecessor, Secretary of Defense Hagel, said, “I’d get the hell beat out of me all the time on this at the White House.”

Does anyone imagine that Obama summoned the VA secretary to yell at him over the treatment of veterans? Instead he initially backed former VA Secretary Shinseki. And it’s doubtful that current VA Secretary Bob McDonald will be getting personally yelled at by Obama for comparing wait lines at the VA to Disneyland.

33% of veterans who have served since September 11 suffer from a disability. Their unemployment rates are higher and both poverty rates and food stamp use continue to rise. Behind these tragic facts is the tragic truth that we have forgotten how to honor our veterans. Worse still, the country’s leaders go out of their way to actively diminish the respect due to their courage and sacrifices.

On his visit to Vietnam, Obama referenced veterans only to praise John Kerry while insisting that “the courage to make peace” is more important than the courage “to fight.” The old-fashioned kind of veteran who fought in Vietnam, who earned his Purple Heart honestly and came home wounded in body and spirit, who is not interested in pretending that the Communist death squads he fought deserve his tribute is, according to Obama, lacking in courage. True courage is appeasement while the courage that stopped Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan is truly something closer to cowardice.

In his apology speech at Hiroshima, Obama cynically equated American and Japanese soldiers, as he had both sides in Vietnam, dismissing World War II as being fought out of a “base instinct for domination or conquest.” This is how the left sees war and soldiers. There are no good wars. Therefore the only good veterans are the ones who transcend it by recognizing that they made a mistake by fighting. That war is a misunderstanding to be resolved by the truly courageous diplomacy of men like John Kerry.

Is it any wonder that an administration which views the military as an evil to be abolished, which sees the war against Imperial Japan and Nazi Germany not as proof of our moral convictions, but as an outgrowth of our ancestors “having learned to make blades from flint and spears from wood, used these tools not just for hunting, but against their own kind,” has such contempt and hostility for veterans?

And is it any wonder that this contempt trickles through the institutions of the left, from entertainment to academia, and that in the shadow of these institutions, the honor due to the men who fought for our freedom, those still living and the dead, from the birth of our nation to its present crisis, is lacking?

Is it any wonder that veterans go hungry while lavish feasts are thrown in the institutions of government? Once we remembered that our freedoms come from the willingness to fight for them. Not with campus activism or empty words, but on the battlefield against those totalitarian enemies, whether they wear the death’s head, the red star or the crescent, which come to deprive us of them.

But our enemies today are as likely to come from within as without. We are in the midst of a quiet civil war and our veterans have become its first casualties. The heroes of today’s ruling class are racist rabble-rousers who tear down the flag for which so many of our soldiers died and replace it with their own militant banners of identity politics. The privileged leftist activists who once chanted “Ho, Ho, Ho Chi Minh, the NFL is gonna win”, who even attempted to murder soldiers to aid the enemy, are in charge of the country, while Vietnam veterans sleep on the streets and groan in prisons.

Obama’s disrespect for veterans and the military is only a symptom of a deeper rot. Once again a civil war is underway between those of us who love this Union and those who seek to divide it. It is a conflict fought with words and laws, rather than bullets, but it has its casualties who are all around us. It is not only the veterans who have died at the VA who are its victims, but those who have long slept under green grass and gray stone, whose graves wait to be decorated, whose courage waits to be remembered and whose cause waits to be fought once again.

Categories: GITMO, Hiroshima visit, Hypocrisy, Islamic terrorism, Memorial Day, National honor, Obama and Jihad, Obama and morality, Obama and US military, Obama's America, Veterans
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Islamic State: “Only one way for US to gain victory and that is by taking the Quran out of the hearts of Muslims”

May 23, 2016

Islamic State: “Only one way for US to gain victory and that is by taking the Quran out of the hearts of Muslims” Jihad Watch, , May 22, 2016

If we didn’t have learned imams such as John Kerry and David Cameron and Pope Francis assuring us otherwise, we might almost get the impression that the Islamic State had something to do with Islam. It’s a good thing we have such erudite leaders who are so helpful in aiding our understanding of the enemy ideology.

Abu-Mohamed-al-Adnani

“‘There is only one way for the US to gain victory,’ ISIS spokesman warns,” Rudaw, May 21, 2016:

ERBIL, Kurdistan Region – A spokesman of the Islamic State (ISIS) said in a defiant audio message that his group would not be defeated, even if it loses its strongholds in Syria and Iraq or its leader is killed in US air strikes.

“Your threats do not frighten us and you will never win over us,” Abu Mohamed al-Adnani, the official spokesman of the terrorist group, said in an audio message posted online Saturday.

The militant, whose real name is Taha Subhi Falaha, said that even if ISIS loses its Syrian stronghold of Raqqa or Mosul in Iraq, that would not amount to defeat, nor would the death of its leader, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi.

“The loss of Raqqa, Mosul and the death of Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi would not mean that we have lost,” the spokesman said in the 30-minute recording.

He said Western reports about the group growing weaker – as US military officials have recently been saying – are untrue.

“You think defeat is the loss of a city or a land? Were we defeated when several cities of Iraq were taken away from us and we went to the desert? Will we lose if you control Mosul, Raqqa and other cities that were previously controlled by us: Definitely ‘no,’ because defeat is only the loss of the wish and will to fight.”

Naming several top ISIS leaders that have been killed in US airstrikes over the past several months, Adnani said their deaths – or the deaths of other living leaders – would not drive the group to defeat.

“There is only one way for the US to gain victory and that is by taking the Quran out of the hearts of Muslims,” Adnani claimed.

Categories: Islamic State, Islamic terrorism, Quran
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Judge Jeanine: Only One Person Can Keep Americans Safe

May 22, 2016

Judge Jeanine: Only One Person Can Keep Americans Safe, Fox News via YouTube, May 22, 2016

Categories: Donald Trump, Hillary Clinton, Islamic immigration, Islamic terrorism
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