Read it.

The professional journalists covering the trial of the “Minnesota men” before Judge Michael Davis include the Star Tribune’s Stephen Montemayor. I rely on his work, as well as that of MPR’s Mukhtar Ibrahim and Laura Yuen, even when I am sitting next to him in court. Montemayor is a good and indefatigable reporter. If you want to know what’s going on during the day at trial, follow him on Twitter. He tweets everything of interest. He misses almost nothing.

Today, however, Montemayor presents as a case study in overlooking the obvious. He is unduly concerned by the racial composition of the jury. He thinks it’s a big deal that, while the three defendants are all black, the jury is all white. He has thus produced today’s Star Tribune story on the trial with Randy Furst: “Black defendants, white jurors: Does race make a difference in the courtroom?”

Read it.

Thousands of Christians in German refugee shelters are being persecuted by Muslims, sometimes even by their security guards, according to a new report, which asserts that in most cases German authorities have done nothing to protect the victims.

The study alleges that German authorities and police have deliberately downplayed and even covered up the “taboo issue” of Muslim attacks on Christian refugees, apparently to avoid fueling anti-immigration sentiments.

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An Austrian woman attacked by four migrants from Afghanistan in a train station says when she reported the crime police officers told her she should not have been using public transportation after 8 p.m. and told her to dye her blonde hair another color.

Read it.

The latest essay by Anestos Canelides looks at the massacre and expulsion of the Greeks from Turkey as part of the larger picture of the Great Jihad.

Read it.

A former Republican member of the 9/11 commission, breaking dramatically with the commission’s leaders, said Wednesday he believes there was clear evidence that Saudi government employees were part of a support network for the 9/11 hijackers and that the Obama administration should move quickly to declassify a long-secret congressional report on Saudi ties to the 2001 terrorist attack.

The comments by John F Lehman, an investment banker in New York who was Navy secretary in the Reagan administration, signal the first serious public split among the 10 commissioners since they issued a 2004 final report that was largely read as an exoneration of Saudi Arabia, which was home to 15 of the 19 hijackers on 9/11.

My, what a surprise! Aren’t you surprised? I’m sure surprised.

Syriac Catholic Patriarch: West Is an Accomplice to Syria’s Genocide

Suspected car bombing in Istanbul injures at least eight people, reports say

Baghdad bombings: Isis kills more than 100 people in 24 hours of suicide attacks and car bombings in Iraq capital

Isis ‘sets up office to manage relations with foreign fighters’ to stop infighting and defections in Syria

Female politician disqualified from entering Iran’s parliament over photos ‘showing her not wearing headscarf’

Ohio restaurant owner says he was machete-wielding terrorist’s target

Germany doubles number of suspected Islamist militants under investigation after entering during refugee crisis

Saudi family therapist gives advice on how to ‘beat your wife’

Refugee crisis: Three-year-old child among Syrian asylum seekers ‘shot by Turkish border guards’

ISIS-claimed car bomb targets Shiite neighborhood in Baghdad, 45 dead

‘Life is horrible’: Syria’s Christians fear total genocide

Saudis take to social media with campaign supporting womens’ right to drive in the kingdom

Refugee crisis: For 350,000 Syrians, the move across the Turkish border has not brought the threat of violence to an end

Isis suspects arrested by Italian police over ‘Canary Wharf terror attack’ plot

Brothers who raped 14-year-old girl in Pakistan go free after paying 1200kg of wheat

Syrian refugee shot by border guards trying to enter Slovakia from Hungary

Iraq’s Kurds urge Jews, other religious minorities to come, practice faith

US airstrike kills ISIS ‘Emir of Anbar Province’ in Iraq

ISIS reportedly executes 7-year-old boy for cursing while playing with friends

One dead, 3 hurt after suspected Islamist stabbing spree at Germany train station

A War Like No Other: With the Peshmerga on the Front Lines Against ISIS

Poland refuses to take a single refugee because of ‘security’ fears

Isis stab man in the heart and then shoot him for being a spy. Apparently the stab was just to get his attention.

Turkey kills dozens of Isis fighters in a revenge attack

Pakistani activist murdered after praising London for electing first Muslim mayor Sadiq Khan

At least 52 killed after two buses collide with fuel tanker in Afghanistan

Gunmen kill 8 police officers in Egypt

Two Nato soldiers killed in Afghan ‘insider attack’

UN envoy says more than 50 mass graves found in parts of Iraq re-taken from ISIS

After presiding over bin Laden raid, CIA chief in Pakistan came home suspecting he was poisoned by ISI

Islamic State using homing pigeons to deliver messages to operatives outside its ‘caliphate’

Australia’s most wanted jihadist ‘killed in US air strike’ in Iraq. Happy to help.

Syrian civil war: Clashes between Assad troops and jihadist alliance near Aleppo leave 73 dead

Fundamentalist interpretations of Islam that restrict women’s rights are rising, says former leading imam

Pakistani teenage girl burned alive in ‘honour killing’ after helping friend elope

London Elects a Muslim Mayor Who Defended 9/11 Terrorists

10 die as suicide bomber targets crowd trying to help car bomb victims in Syria

Syrian prisoners take over prison, claiming President Assad is about to start torturing and executing them

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Today, the rise of Iran is less of a political topic to debate and more of a reality to recognize. Compared to its Middle Eastern neighbors, Iran has made impressive strides in space technology in the past few years, putting the first satellite into orbit in February 2009; has emerged as a cyber power on the level of China or Russia; and has achieved significant advances in military hardware production, including sophisticated unmanned aerial vehicles, main battle tanks, and medium and long-range ballistic missiles. The Iranian defense industry is making gradual inroads into global armament markets, with Iraq, Syria and Lebanon already receiving regular arms shipments to fight Islamic State and other rebel forces. The Iranian state is capable of projecting force in the Gulf and the Levant, and has often challenged the United States—successfully or not—to stay out of the Gulf region, showing a high degree of foreign-policy independence.

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The case below is reminiscent not just of the one against Susanne Winter, but also the charge on which Elisabeth Sabaditsch-Wolff was convicted. In Austria, you absolutely are not allowed to refer to Mohammed as a pedophile or a child molester. It doesn’t matter that any other man who has sex with a 9-year-old would be so designated. If you call Big Mo a pedophile, you can end up in trouble with the state.

Read it.

Sykes-Picot (official name: the Asia Minor Agreement) bears recalling because its profound two mistakes are in danger of being repeated: one concerned form and the other substance.

Negotiated in secret by three European imperial powers, it became the great symbol of European perfidy. Not surprisingly, the Allied Powers secretly carving up the central Middle East without consulting its inhabitants prompted an outraged response (George Antonius, writing in 1938: “a shocking document … the product of greed at its worst … a startling piece of double-dealing”). Sykes-Picot set the stage for the proliferation of a deeply consequential conspiracy-mentality that ever since has afflicted the region.

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Among the many minority groups to suffer heavy losses in the Syrian civil war are the Palestinians. Nearly one percent of the Syrian Palestinians have been killed so far, most of them civilians. Overall nearly two percent of all Syrians have died in the war so far. What is odd about this is that the Syrian Palestinians are not citizens of Syria but long-term refugees. Many of these Palestinian families have been in Syria since the 1950s. This is the result of an odd aspect of UN rules concerning refugees that only applies to Palestinians. This began in 1949 when Arab nations refused to accept and absorb Moslems who fled (mostly) from what is now Israel on the promise of the Arab nations would soon mobilize sufficient military strength to destroy Israel, drive the Jews out and allow the refugees to return home. That never happened and it was quickly recognized that there was a serious refugee problem. The UN established a program to take care of these refugees but in a very unusual move the 750,000 original Palestinian refugees were allowed to pass on their refugee status to their children. No other refugee group was allowed to do that by the UN. About the same number of Jews were driven out of Moslem countries after 1948 and they were all accepted and absorbed by other nations, mainly Israel and the U.S. Since 1947 the number of “Palestinian refugees” has grown to five million and Arab states continue to refuse to absorb them. A nasty side effect of this UN policy was to make Palestinian refugees unwelcome and untrusted in the countries they did settle in. Many Moslem nations have had serious problems in the past with Moslem refugees that were given sanctuary, but not citizenship.

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Back in 2009, when the Department of Defense had but one problem on its mind, the war in Iraq and Afghanistan, the Air Force had the idea of developing a light air support (LAS) aircraft for the close air support (CAS) mission for counterinsurgency operations. The focus was on a non-developmental platform, one that was cheap and easy to operate and maintain, intended primarily for foreign militaries with limited budgets, infrastructure and trained personnel. Initially, the Air Force thought it might acquire some number of this aircraft for its own use, but the decision was made to focus entirely on exporting them to allies and partners. At present a total of 15 aircraft are being provided to the Afghan National Air Force.

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It seems that the Islamic Council of Norway (IRN), like so many other Islamic organizations around the world, is running a halal-certification racket, and using Mafia-style methods to persuade businesses to participate. The IRN, in effect, makes them an offer they can’t refuse.

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Because they’re Muslims. Duh.

The Pakistani Taliban’s brutal attack at an Army Public School in 2014, which killed more than 140 children, forced the country’s powerful military into launching a massive military operation against militants based in the tribal regions along the Afghan border. While for years, the Pakistani leadership is known to have patronized and sheltered various militant groups for different security related reasons, to everyone’s surprise, this operation promised to decimate all terrorist groups:  “All foreign fighters and local terrorists will be wiped out without any exception,” including the Haqqani network, said the military.

…

However this apparent major doctrinal shift in Pakistan’s strategic security and defense policy has proved another hoax. Before the operation, Pakistan Army’s media wing in a statement said that this will be an indiscriminate operation and when the soldiers “go there, they will eliminate everyone,” and by that the spokesperson meant “any terrorist who is on the soil of Pakistan right now within the area of operation.”

The military operation named Zarb-e-Azb, as announced has targeted all foreign or local militant groups except those who had left the region before the operation. Reportedly, the Haqqani network was tipped off before the start of the operation and moved its assets across the Durand Line, border dividing Afghanistan and Pakistan.

Lying to the kaffir is not objectionable under Islam.

Read it.

In recent days, violence out of Gaza has indeed escalated significantly, and the trigger has been a succession of breakthroughs in the Israel Defense Forces’ (IDF) ability to detect cross-border assault tunnels that threaten Israel’s south.

On Thursday morning, the IDF announced that it had found a tunnel 30 meters (98 feet) underground that reached into southern Israel, not far from where the IDF used new breakthrough technology to locate another tunnel in April.

Realizing it is about to lose its most prized offensive weapon against Israel – the ability to inject murder squads in Israeli territory though tunnels – Hamas’s military wing decided to do something it has not done in almost two years. It began a succession of cross-border mortar attacks in the vicinity, with a view to disrupting the detection work, and more importantly, to signal to Israel that Hamas is willing to risk war over its tunnel program.

Read it.

The Russian intelligence services discovered a bomb-making factory when they raided a secret mosque in the city of Samara. The explosives they found in the building were so unstable that they had to be detonated on the spot, leaving the mosque a little worse for the wear and tear.

Read it.

Speaking in parliament on Monday to celebrate the fifth anniversary of Hungary’s new constitution, Viktor Orban said the document’s primary aim was to secure Hungarian language and culture.

The premier said the constitution meant the Hungarian government had to oppose any kind of mass migration that would imperil those principles.

He said: “We have the right to choose whom we wish to live together with and whom we do not wish to live together with.

“To be clear and unequivocal, I can say that Islamisation is constitutionally banned in Hungary.

The former Soviet client states of Eastern Europe, having experienced ‘progressive’ oppression first-hand, are more resistant to Political Correctness than most.

Read it.

In a scene straight out of a Hollywood film, a Taliban fighter detonated his suicide vest by mistake, killing himself and his eight colleagues without a single civilian casualty.

It is so hard to get good help these days.

Read it.

Angela Merkel says that Islam belongs to Germany, but she may have reversed the relationship involved: based on the report below, Turkey is rapidly Islamizing Germany through the funding of mosques, imams, and other employees. The process is being done quite openly — Germany is becoming a province of Greater Turkey, and no one is trying to hide the fact.

Read it.

This is absurd. Why not just kick their asses out? Or, better yet, put them on a boat and dump their asses on the Libyan shore somewhere.

Read it.

Yeah, the name ‘Ebru Umar’ sure says ‘Dutch’ to me….

A Dutch journalist has been detained for questioning in Turkey after allegedly insulting Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan.

Ebru Umar, a columnist for the Dutch Metro newspaper was arrested on Saturday soon after posting a tweet saying police were at her door at around 11pm Turkish time.

She later tweeted that she was being taken to a police station in Kusadasi.

Freedom of speech is not a Muslim value.

Isis documents leak reveals profile of average militant as young, well-educated but with only ‘basic’ knowledge of Islamic law

Video Captures Palestinians Hailing Jerusalem Bomber

Isis increasing co-operation with Boko Haram – the ‘world’s most horrific terrorist group’

Boko Haram ‘strapping bombs to birds’ as Isis-affiliated group continues bloody insurgency in Africa

Islamic face veil to be banned in Latvia despite being worn by just three women in entire country

Terror victims win Supreme Court judgment against Iran

Family of Benghazi victim to receive $400G after CIA expands benefit program

Syria opposition figure says Assad has ‘buried’ cease-fire

The Arab Spring reported and misreported: foreign intervention in Libya and the last days of Gaddafi

Syria conflict: 500 wounded people in need of ‘life-saving medical treatment’ evacuated from besieged towns

Report: German Refugee Program Money Given to Hizballah Operatives. My, what a surprise.

‘Up to 500 dead’ in refugee boat sinking, survivors tell UN investigators

Kabul attack: Death toll from Taliban bombing rises to 64 as terrorist group threatens more attacks on ‘invaders’

Report: Terrorists plotting summer attack on European tourist beaches

Roman arch destroyed by ISIS in Syria was recreated using 3D technology

Mass graves discovered in former Isis-controlled Iraqi city of Ramadi. My, what a surprise.

NATO believes there is ‘justified concern’ Isis will carry out nuclear attack in Europe. They would if they could.

UK prisons chief backs conservative Muslim sect who call non-Muslim women ‘repulsive’

British jets could bomb Isis fighters in Libya, UK Government says

Isis and Italy’s mafia ‘working together’ to smuggle cannabis through North Africa into Europe

Syrian girl campaigns against child marriage from her refugee camp in Jordan

Kabul bombing: At least 28 people killed and more than 300 injured in Taliban suicide attack on security agency

Muslim prison chaplains ‘encouraging murder of non-believers’. My, what a surprise.

Jerusalem bus bombing wounds more than 20; police call it terror

South Sudan attackers kill more than 140 at Ethiopia border, official says

Once seen as White House triumph, new nation of South Sudan descends into war, misery

Palestinians Praise Jerusalem Bus Bombing Targeting Israelis. Of course they do.

Underground Hamas Tunnels Continue to Threaten Israeli Civilians

Two Turkish youths detained after accosting US soldier at air base

ISIS revenue down 30 percent as its territory shrinks, report claims

In Wake Of Increasing Anti-Semitic Attacks, More Jews Flee France

Anti-Isis coalition ‘preparing to launch final assault on Raqqa stronghold’, US official says

Syria conflict: Turkish ultra-nationalist suspected of killing Russian pilot may have ties to his country’s ‘deep state’

South Sudan attackers kill more than 140 at Ethiopia border, official says

Chaos in Libya: The Rising ISIS Threat to Europe

Turkish border forces ‘fire live rounds at Syrian refugees’ fleeing Isis fighting

Peshmerga troops running on empty in fight against ISIS

At least 12 killed in joint US-Afghan raid targeting suspected Al Qaeda member

Read it.

On March 22, for example, the Nafir al Aqsa (Mobilizing for Al-Aqsa) Campaign “to equip the mujahidin of Beit al Maqdis [Jerusalem],” posted (and suspended in the past day) a solicitation for funding under the Twitter handle @Nafeer_aqsa100. It cites a hadith – a saying attributed to Islam’s prophet Muhammad – that giving money to those waging jihad is as good as doing it yourself.

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Hamed Abdel-Samad is an Egyptian-German author and an apostate from Islam who lives under a death fatwa for his criticism of his former faith. Rembrandt Clancy has translated and subtitled an interview with Mr. Abdel-Samad that aired yesterday in Germany. The translator includes an introduction, and also a transcript of the video.

Read it.

Switzerland has suspended the citizenship applications for the family of two Muslim teenagers, after they refused to shake hands with their female teachers.

Raymond Ibrahim lays out some inconvenient truth.

In the ongoing struggle between Islam and the West, one civilization has the will to triumph, but not the way; the other has the way to triumph, but not the will.

Some who dread Islam do not seem to understand this. They think that Islam is an irresistible force to be reckoned with; they see Muslim migrants as hordes of violent men invading Europe; they call on Western men to make a stand, resist the onslaught, save their women and children.

When only one side in a war is actually fighting, guess who wins?

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The US and Britain consistently promote a One Iraq policy. They are understandably wary that changing the status quo would weaken the fight against Daesh. But the One Iraq policy is running out of steam and credibility. Such positions are held in public while debate about their viability proceeds in private, and then an apparently sudden change is enunciated. Political scientist Arezu Yilmaz told the Kurdish Rudaw newspaper, for which I write a weekly column, about “over 100 diplomatic meetings in Erbil last year with [the] international community directly speaking to Kurdish political actors, which is unprecedented”.

Speed the day.

Raymond Ibrahim lays out some inconvenient truth.

A lie conceals the truth. And ugly but hidden truths never have a chance of being acknowledged, addressed, and ultimately ameliorated.

Because of this simple truism, one of the greatest lies of our age—that violence committed in the name of Islam has nothing to do with Islam—has made an intrinsically weak Islam the scourge of the modern world, with no signs of relief on the horizon.

Read it.

There was a time when most people believed that honor killings – if they had even heard of them – took place far away, in places like Afghanistan and Algeria and Iran.

These days, we know otherwise. They happen here in the West as well: in Texas, in Toronto, in Paris and Amsterdam.

Now Phyllis Chesler, the pre-eminent authority on the phenomenon and author of the most comprehensive study on honor killings, has found something else we didn’t know before: that many of these killings (and other honor violence) are perpetrated by women. “Women play a very active role in honor-based femicide,” she writes in her latest report, “both by spreading the gossip underlying such murders and by acting as conspirator accomplices and/or hands-on killers in the honor killing of female relatives.”

Read it.

A middle-aged book collector in Mali helped keep the fabled city’s libraries, books and manuscripts safe from occupying jihadists

Read it.

The Turkish poet Serkan Engin sends this guest-essay on the Islamic nature of the genocides of the early 20th century against Christian minorities in Turkey.

Read it.

Officials in Saudi Arabia have reportedly told the Obama administration they will sell off hundreds of billions of dollars of American assets if Congress passes a bill that would allow the Saudi government to be held responsible for any role in the September 11 attacks.

Any outcome that reduces Saudi influence in the U.S. sounds like a win-win to me. Does that include the mosques and madrassahs they support that preach Wahhabism and jihad?

Read it.

Just after the September 2001 attacks on the World Trade Center, I warned that radical Islam would horrify the West into submission. In Europe, it has taken a giant step towards success. Europe’s horror at the prospect of human suffering has made it supine. Sadly, the more the Europeans indulge in their humanitarian impulses, the more Muslims will suffer. To be kind is to be cruel.

This is similar to the trick of flooding a castle under siege with starving peasants from the countryside. Sane defending commanders didn’t do that, even when their people were visibly starving outside of the walls.

Turkey’s President and de facto dictator Recep Tayyip Erdogan last October threatened European officials with 10,000 to 15,000 drowned migrants, according to minutes leaked to a Greek news site and widely reported by European mainstream media–with no official denial. Erdogan demanded 6 billion Euros up front and 3 billion Euros a year to stop the refugee flow, telling European officials, “We can open the doors to Greece and Bulgaria anytime and we can put the refugees on buses, What will you do with the refugees if you don’t get a deal? Kill the refugees? the EU will be confronted with more than a dead boy on the shores of Turkey. There will be 10,000 or 15,000. How will you deal with that?”

The leader of a prominent Muslim country who claims to speak for the Muslim world threatened the Europeans with 10,000 or 15,000 Muslim deaths. When in world history has one side in negotiations threatened to kill its own people in order to gain leverage?

Read it.

One of the suspects from the March 22 Brussels bombings was the subject of a 2005 documentary on successful integration in Sweden.

Osama Krayem, a 23-year-old Swedish citizen, is awaiting trial in Belgium for his part in the Brussels bombings which killed 32 civilians. Krayem was supposed to be the second suicide bomber at the Maalbeek subway station, but got cold feet.

Along with his brother and father, 11-year-old Osama Krayem were featured in the documentary “Without borders – a movie about sports and integration.” The documentary focused on how Krayem and his brother found their place as immigrants in Malmö, Sweden, by playing soccer with the Swedish boys.

“There are so many positive things to highlight,” Christer Grike, the soccer club’s communication director, told local newspaper Sydsvenskan before the release in 2005. “Unfortunately, the media image is often too dark.”

Muslims are like Communists: Their true allegiance is to the Community of Believers, not the place where they just happen to be living in right now.

Scott Johnson updates us on the sordid tale of Somali immigrants to Minnesota who decided to get down with a little jihad.

Adnan Farah is one of the ten “Minnesota men” charged with supporting ISIS and related offenses last year. On Thursday he joined four of his co-conspirators pleading guilty under a deal offered by prosecutors. Under the deal, Farah pleaded guilty to providing material support and resources to ISIS and the prosecutors agreed to drop the remaining charges against him.

Farah had originally rejected the deal at the urging of then defense team member Hassan Mohamud, a legal assistant in the office of P. Chinedu Nwaneri, an attorney who was co-counsel representing Farah’s brother, Mohamed Farah. It’s hard to keep the Muhammads straight without a scorecard.

Hassan Mohamud is a man of many hats. He’s an imam and local Somali Muslim “community leader.” Having attended William Mitchell College of Law in St. Paul, he taught Islamic Law as an adjunct member of the faculty. His work as a legal assistant in Nwaneri’s office suggests that he has never passed the bar exam.

Be careful not to step in the diversity — it’s Hell getting that stuff off of your shoes.

Read it.

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s increasing Third-Worldish authoritarianism is taking new turns: it is now visible outside Turkey.

At the same time as Erdogan was heading for Washington for a nuclear security summit, the two journalists who he asserted last year “will pay a heavy price” had to stand trial at a second hearing on charges of espionage and terrorism, and with life sentences hanging over their heads. Their “espionage and terrorism” activity concerned a story they ran in May 2015 detailing how Turkish intelligence was transporting weapons to Islamist fighters in Syria.

Free speech is not a Muslim value. (Neither is democracy, really.)

Read it.

One of the casualties of the recent ISIL (Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant) attacks in France and Belgium was the reputation of Saudi Arabia as an ally in the fight against ISIL. The media were all over the state of Islam in Belgium and many little-publicized facts were made very public. Chief among them was the role of Saudi Arabia played in building (at Saudi expense) mosques and religious schools in Belgium and then staffing them. These facilities were controlled by very-conservative (and anti-Western) clerics and religious teachers who were often trained in Saudi Arabia. This should not be surprising as since the 1980s Saudi Arabia has spent over $100 billion doing this promotion of the very conservative Wahhabi form of Sunni Islam that has predominated in Saudi Arabia since the 18th century.

 

Read it.

Our Norwegian correspondent The Observer returns with an examination of “moderate” vs. “extreme” Islam, using the much-neglected tools of logic and formal analysis.

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A growing number of Islamist radicals are infiltrating Germany’s military, the Bundeswehr, with an estimated 30 former soldiers later joining international terrorist organizations, reports German press agency DPA International.

Germany’s military counterintelligence service (MAD) says 65 active soldiers are under investigation for suspected Islamist tendencies. Since 2007, 22 soldiers designated as Islamists have been discharged or left the military. Moreover, 29 former soldiers have left for Syria and Iraq to join Islamist terrorist organizations.

“We perceive a risk that the Bundeswehr may be used as a training ground for potentially violent Islamists,” says MAD leader Christof Gramm.

Judging by the performance of the Bundeswehr in recent NATO exercises, they might be in for a surprise.

Read it.

Earlier this month, Morocco’s head of counterterrorism, Abdelhak Khiame,warned that the Islamic State (ISIS) is trying to build chemical weapons to use in an attack on Europe. The announcement comes after Moroccan authorities in February discovered components for making a chemical weapon during a raid on an ISIS cell poised for an attack in Morocco.

Khiame was not exaggerating the risk to Europe, as ISIS has the desire, and is working hard to develop the capability, to pull off such an attack. The recent terror strikes in Paris and Brussels demonstrated ISIS’ ability to infiltrate trained terrorists into Europe, and revealed the extent of terror networks embedded across the continent.

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It is becoming increasingly obvious that reporting on Islamic terrorism has become politicized. In short, the data is increasingly unreliable. This is most obvious in Israel where the Palestinian leadership praises those who carried out attacks in Israel similar to the ones that recently took place in Paris and Brussels because the victims were Israelis and most Arabs are taught that Israel is evil and killing Israelis is not. Yet the Palestinian leaders condemn the Paris and Brussels attacks in large part because European nations provide much of the foreign aid that keeps Palestinian government going and many Europeans agree that Israel is evil and must be destroyed. This is only one of many similar situation around the world. What is terrorism and what is not is often a matter of political, ethnic or religious convictions (“one man’s terrorist is another man’s freedom fighters”). Thus the data on Islamic terrorist activity referred to by governments is not consistent. Even in the West, some government downplay obvious acts of Islamic terrorists and reclassify them as “workplace violence.” Even the United States has done this.

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Austria has began construction of an anti-refugee barrier across their border with Italy.

Police say work on creating a border control across the Brenner pass is scheduled to be completed by the end of May.

They say have begun pouring concrete for foundations of a registration hall, barriers and other structures.

The barrier is being built as a response to the anticipated flow of refugees trying to enter Austria after arriving in Italy from the Mediterranean.

How quickly the much-vaunted European Union is dissolving into its components as its Ruling Class fumbles the ball.

Stop. Just stop.

Shortly after the latest ISIS suicide bombers struck in Brussels on March 22, German Green Party MP Franziska Brantner tweeted “Why do they hate us so much?” The intelligentsia’s ignorance perseveres in spite of the answer right in front of them: it’s not hatred but an ideology called Islamism that compels violence. We are now almost 15 years beyond 9/11, and it’s time to stop asking this question after every major jihadist attack.

None so blind as they who will not see.

Read it.

The fate of a $655 million judgment against the Palestinian Authority (PA) is in the hands of a federal appellate court.

Judges at New York’s 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals heard arguments Tuesday in the case of Sokolow v. PLO, et al., in which jurors found the PA and the Palestine Liberation Organization liable for a series of terrorist attacks in 2001-2004 that were part of the Palestinian intifada.

Those attacks killed or wounded members of 11 American families who filed the lawsuit under the Anti-Terrorism Act (ATA). During a six-week trial last year, jurors saw internal PLO and PA records showing payments to terror cells that were part of the Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, which was created by the PLO. Families of PA and PLO employees killed carrying out terrorist attacks, or who were imprisoned after attacks, also received monthly payments.

The PA’s defense hinges on an argument that U.S. courts do not have the jurisdiction to hear such a lawsuit. The United States does not recognize Palestine as a sovereign state, they argued, and the PA’s activities here fail to meet the standard for being “at home.”

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Boko Haram’s use of child suicide bombers in the Nigeria regional conflict has increased ten-fold in the past year, according to a new Unicef report.

Nearly one in five suicide attacks orchestrated by Boko Haram are now carried out by children, more than 75 per cent of which are performed by girls.

Unicef’s report, Beyond Chibok, released two years after Boko Haram abducted 276 schoolgirls in the area, shows that the number of children involved in suicide attacks in Nigeria, Cameroon, Chad and Niger increased from four to 44 in the space of a year.

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One of the more recent targets for the U.S. led coalition airstrikes has been the University of Mosul in northern Iraq. It was long known that ISIL (Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant) was using university facilities for training technical personnel, especially computer and communications specialists and bomb builders. Research was also being done on chemical weapons and how to build “dirty bombs” that used radioactive material.

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The public swimming pools of Germany and Austria serve as an uncovered-meat market for recently-arrived Muslim “refugees” in Germany and Austria. The following article from the Austrian daily Kurier describes the proactive measures being employed against sexual assaults at the pools by Viennese authorities. Needless to say, the program makes sure not to “discriminate” against the migrants by targeting them specifically.

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Part of the reason is that Yemen sits on Saudi Arabia’s back doorstep, and a hostile government there could put southern Saudi communities in danger. But the campaign in Yemen has actually worsened Saudi security, as Houthi militants retaliate by firing rockets at Saudi villages and staging border raids. And while Al Qaeda has menaced Saudi Arabia in the past, its presence in Yemen has never elicited a major military mobilization—that’s been left to the United States. So why intervene now?

To understand the war in Yemen, you have to assume the perspective of a Saudi elite and zoom the camera outwards. Once upon a time, the Shia-majority nations of the Middle East were ruled by monarchs and strongmen who were largely unsympathetic to the idea of Shia power—Iraq under the Sunni Saddam Hussein, Bahrain under the Saudi-backed Khalifa dynasty, and Iran under the Pahlavis. Islam was governed as it had been for centuries, with Sunnis wielding power and Shia awaiting the end times. America viewed the Middle East through the lens of regnant Sunnis, and collaborated with many of them, most notably the Saudi royal family.

Read it. And watch the video.

Romanian citizens took to the streets yesterday to protest a mega-mosque planned for Bucharest. The sentiments of the demonstrators may be summed up this way: “We fought the Ottomans for eight hundred years — we don’t want any mosques!”

Seems reasonable.

Read it.

Oh, it’s all about that cash, ’bout that cash, no Shari’ah….