Sunday, December 3, 2017

Acid Muslim Attacks Spread in London. Jerusalem Post Verifies My Reporting. Glick Attacks Tillerson and His State Department.


Whether real or not it speaks the correct sentiments.


London was one of Europe's larger and safest cities until peace loving Muslims came.  Now Londoners have to protect themselves from Muslim acid attacks.

It should also be noted that the Mayor of London, as in many cities in England, is also Muslim.  Unless The British and French decide to take their countries back they are doomed. Churchill is turning over in  his grave along with DeGaulle. (See 1 and 1a below.)
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In today's Jerusalem Post, articles support what I have been reporting.  Israel and The Saudis are exchanging intelligence, Israel's IAF destroyed missiles in Syria and Netanyahu vows that Iran will not establish military bases within certain distances near Israel in Syria and Trump is prepared to announce Jerusalem is Israel's Capital and move our Embassy there.

And

Glick attacks Tillerson and our feckless, asleep at the switch, State Department.

You would think .with Tillerson being an oil man and with long relations with the Saudis. our State Department would be enthralled at the budding relationship between Israel and The Saudis and the fact that The Saudis are tired of being taken advantage of by the  blood sucking Palestinian leadership. (See 2 below.)
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Meanwhile, Ruth King reports we are doing nothing to protect us regarding an EMP attack.  (See 3 below.)
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Dick
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1)


Fear in London as acid attacks soar

By Rosie  Scammell

London (AFP) - Delivery rider Jabed Hussain was waiting at a traffic light one night in east London when two attackers sprayed acid in his face and stole his moped.


It was one of hundreds of attacks in the British capital every year that have prompted government intervention and left the city's police force asking the public for help to tackle the crime wave.
Hussain recalled feeling "burning on my face" during the robbery in Hackney.
"If they want to take my bike, there are a lot of weapons... why (have) they got to choose the weapon of acid?" he told AFP as he returned to the spot where the attack happened.
The number of assaults is increasing rapidly.
The British capital saw 454 acid attacks reported last year, up from 261 in 2015 and 166 the year before.
Hussain suffers from chest problems after swallowing water which he believes contained traces of the acid, although his helmet protected much of his face and he has no visible scars.
A pizza delivery driver attacked in north-east London last month was not so lucky, left in a critical condition after being sprayed with acid while his helmet visor was up.
- 'Scared' Londoners -
Jaf Shah, head of the London-based Acid Survivors Trust International, said victims were "incredibly strong, resilient and courageous individuals".
"Because when you take into account the devastation of such an attack, it requires an enormous amount of strength to go through and recover," he told AFP.
Shah blamed the increase in attacks on a lack of regulation to stop people buying acid, although he noted the recent cases have "concentrated the minds of government officials".
Home Secretary Amber Rudd announced new proposals in October to force people carrying acid to prove they have a legitimate reason, taking the same approach used to tackle knife violence where possession of the weapon alone is criminalised.
Rudd also plans to require people buying high-concentrate sulphuric acid -- such as drain cleaner -- to apply for a Home Office licence.
MP Stephen Timms called for the changes in parliament in July, after his east London constituency of East Ham suffered a spate of attacks.
His intervention followed an attack against two cousins who were sitting in their car in Beckton, leaving both with life-changing injuries.
"What we cannot do is allow a situation where people feel scared to walk around the streets," he told AFP in his local library.
"And that's the position we were getting into after that attack on the two cousins, people just thought it wasn't safe to walk up and down the road anymore."
- 'Melted their skin' -
With many offenders in their teens or early 20s, East Ham's borough of Newham in east London has preempted new legislation by asking shopkeepers to challenge young people buying acid and refuse sales if they are suspicious of customers' intentions.
"The response in Newham has been really positive... Shopkeepers are actually very happy to be involved in addressing this problem," said Timms.
While police have had some success in confiscating acid on the streets, Hackney's borough commander Simon Laurence appealed to parents, teachers and social workers to ask young people what they're carrying in plastic bottles.
"What's in it? Why are they carrying it? Because the police can't stop this alone, and we need the help of the community," he told AFP outside Mangle nightclub in east London, where 22 people were injured in April with a substance the same strength as hydrochloric acid.
"It melted their skin, and they would have been in horrendous pain. Some of those victims will have life-changing injuries that they will be reminded of every day," Laurence said, after a 25-year-old man was convicted over the attack.
London police carry acid response kits to treat victims and Laurence said the force wanted to be able to test substances on the streets.
"The bit we've got to be able to get better at is identifying what's in the bottle when someone's carrying it -- and to stop people thinking they're able to use it to cause such horrendous injuries."
Fearful of returning to work, Hussain thinks more still needs to be done to make people realise the devastating impact of such a weapon.
"Why (do) they use the acid to destroy somebody's face, and destroy somebody's life?" he asked.


1a) Europe's Migrant Crisis: Millions Still to Come

"African exodus of biblical proportions impossible to stop"

  • More than six million migrants are waiting in countries around the Mediterranean to cross into Europe, according to a classified German government report leaked to Bild.
  • "Young people all have cellphones and they can see what's happening in other parts of the world, and that acts as a magnet." — Michael Møller, Director of the United Nations office in Geneva.
  • "The biggest migration movements are still ahead: Africa's population will double in the next decades... Nigeria [will grow] to 400 million. In our digital age with the internet and mobile phones, everyone knows about our prosperity and lifestyle.... Eight to ten million migrants are still on the way." — Gerd Müller, Germany's Development Minister.
The African Union-European Union (AU-EU) summit, held in in Abidjan, Côte d'Ivoire, on November 29-30, 2017, has ended in abject failure after the 55 African and 28 European leaders attending the event were unable to agree on even basic measures to prevent potentially tens of millions of African migrants from flooding Europe.

Despite high expectations and grand statements, the only concrete decision to come out of Abidjan was the promise to evacuate 3,800 African migrants stranded in Libya.

More than six million migrants are waiting in countries around the Mediterranean to cross into Europe, according to a classified German government report leaked to Bild. The report said that one million people are waiting in Libya; another one million are waiting in Egypt, 720,000 in Jordan, 430,000 in Algeria, 160,000 in Tunisia, and 50,000 in Morocco. More than three million others who are waiting in Turkey are currently prevented from crossing into Europe by the EU's migrant deal with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan.

The former head of the British embassy in Benghazi, Joe Walker-Cousins, warned that as many as a million migrants from countries across Africa are already on the way to Libya and Europe. The EU's efforts to train a Libyan coast guard was "too little and too late," he said. "My informants in the area tell me there are potentially one million migrants, if not more, already coming up through the pipeline from central Africa and the Horn of Africa."


The President of the European Parliament, Antonio Tajani, said that Europe is "underestimating" the scale and severity of the migration crisis and that "millions of Africans" will flood the continent in the next few years unless urgent action is taken.
In an interview with Il Messagero, Tajani said there would be an exodus "of biblical proportions that would be impossible to stop" if Europe failed to confront the problem now:
"Population growth, climate change, desertification, wars, famine in Somalia and Sudan. These are the factors that are forcing people to leave.
"When people lose hope, they risk crossing the Sahara and the Mediterranean because it is worse to stay at home, where they run enormous risks. If we don't confront this soon, we will find ourselves with millions of people on our doorstep within five years.
 "Today we are trying to solve a problem of a few thousand people, but we need to have a strategy for millions of people."


Just days before the AU-EU summit, Tajani called for a "Marshall Plan for Africa" — a €40 billion ($48 billion) long-term investment plan to boost education and job opportunities on the continent to dissuade people from leaving. He warned that spiraling population growth in Africa will be a demographic "bomb" that could push millions of Africans to Europe. "Without a strategy we will have terrorism, illegal immigration, instability," he said.

More than half of the global population growth between now and 2050 will occur in Africa, according to a new UN report, "World Population Prospects: The 2017 Revision." Africa's population is expected to jump by 1.3 billion, from 1.2 billion in 2017 to 2.5 billion in 2050. Between 2017 and 2050, the populations of 26 African countries are projected to expand to at least double their current size.

Much of Africa's population increase will occur in Nigeria, currently the world's 7th most populous country, according to the UN. By 2050, Nigeria will surpass the United States to become the world's third-largest country by population, behind India and China (the population of India is expected to surpass that of China by 2024).

Beyond 2050, Africa is forecast to be the only region in the world still experiencing "substantial population growth" — the continent's share of the global population is forecast to increase from 17% in 2017 to 40% by 2100, according to the report.
Africa currently is the youngest continent in the world: 60% of Africa's population is under 25, compared to 32% in North America and 27% in Europe.

The EU's 28 states have a GDP of $18 trillion, nine times Africa's $2 trillion.
The director of the United Nations office in Geneva, Michael Møller, has warned that Europe must prepare for the arrival of millions more migrants from Africa, Asia and the Middle East. In an interview with The Times, Møller, a Dane, said:
"What we have been seeing is one of the biggest human migrations in history. And it's just going to accelerate. Young people all have cellphones and they can see what's happening in other parts of the world, and that acts as a magnet."
German Development Minister Gerd Müller has echoed that warning:
"The biggest migration movements are still ahead: Africa's population will double in the next decades. A country like Egypt will grow to 100 million people, Nigeria to 400 million. In our digital age with the internet and mobile phones, everyone knows about our prosperity and lifestyle."
Müller added that only 10% of those currently on the move have reached Europe: "Eight to ten million migrants are still on the way."

Writing for the Financial Times, Gideon Rachman explained Europe's predicament:
"One possible reaction for Europe is to accept that migration from the rest of the world is inevitable—and embrace it wholeheartedly. Europe's debt-ridden economies need an injection of youth and dynamism. Who will staff their old-age homes and building sites if not immigrants from the rest of the world?
"But even those Europeans who make the case for immigration tend to argue that, of course, newcomers to the continent must all accept 'European values.' That may be unrealistic... Many immigrants from the Middle East and Africa bring much more conservative and sexist attitudes with them. It will take more than a few civics classes to change that....
 "It may be possible for island nations surrounded by the Pacific Ocean, such as Japan or Australia, to maintain strict controls on immigration. It will be all but impossible for an EU that is part of a Eurasian landmass and is separated from Africa only by narrow stretches of the Mediterranean."
Soeren Kern is a Senior Fellow at the New York-based Gatestone Institute.


2) The State Department drops the ball
By Caroline Glick

Over the weekend, The New York Times published its latest broadside against US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson for what the newspaper referred to as his “culling” of senior State Department officials and his failure to date to either nominate or appoint senior personnel to open positions.


But if the State Department’s extraordinary about face on the PLO’s mission in Washington is an indication of what passes for US diplomacy these days, then perhaps Tillerson should just shut down operations at Foggy Bottom. The US would be better off without representation by its diplomats.

Last week, in accordance with US law, Tillerson notified the PLO’s Washington envoy Husam Zomlot that the PLO’s mission in Washington has to close within 90 days because it has breached the legal terms governing its operations.

Specifically, Tillerson explained, PLO chief and Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas breached US law when he called for the International Criminal Court to indict and prosecute Israeli nationals during his speech before the UN General Assembly in September.

Tillerson explained that under US law, the only way to keep the PLO mission in Washington open is if US President Donald Trump certifies in the next 90 days that its representatives are engaged in “direct and meaningful negotiations” with Israel.

The PLO didn’t respond to Tillerson with quiet diplomacy. It didn’t make an attempt to appease Congress or the State Department by for instance agreeing to end its campaign to get Israelis charged with war crimes at the ICC. It didn’t put an abrupt end to its financial support for terrorism and terrorists. It didn’t stop inciting Palestinians to hate Israel and seek its destruction. It didn’t disavow its efforts to form a unity government with Hamas and its terrorist regime in Gaza.

It didn’t join Saudi Arabia and Egypt in their efforts to fight Iranian power and influence in the region. It didn’t end its efforts to have Israeli companies blacklisted by the UN Human Rights Committee or scale back its leadership of the international boycott movement against Israel.

The PLO certainly didn’t begin “direct and meaningful negotiations” with Israel.

Instead of doing any of these things, in response to Tillerson’s notification, the PLO lashed out as the US. Abbas and his advisers launched an all-out assault against President Donald Trump and his team of Middle East envoys led by his son-in-law and senior adviser Jared Kushner and his senior negotiator Jason Greenblatt.

PLO-controlled media outlets published a flood of stories which trafficked in antisemitic conspiracy theories against Trump and his Jewish American advisors. The PLO media renewed its allegations that Kushner, Greenblatt and US Ambassador David Friedman are more loyal to Israel than to the US.

Abbas’s media outlets also escalated their criticism of Saudi Arabia, Egypt and the UAE for their focus on combating Iranian aggression. These regimes are selling the Palestinians down the river, the PLO outlets have proclaimed, as Abbas’s flacks have insisted that the PLO will not accept any regional peace.
Relations between Arab states and Israel, the PLO insists, cannot be fostered so long as Israel fails to capitulate to all of the PLO’s demands.

In commentary published at the Gatestone Institute website, Palestinian commentator Bassam Tawil alleges that the Palestinian rejection of the requirements of US law and its assaults against the Trump administration and Sunni Arab states may serve as a pretext for another Palestinian terror campaign against Israel, which will be justified as a response to an American-Israeli-Saudi-Egyptian plot against the Palestinians.

Given that the US is a superpower and the largest state financier of the PA, not to mention the foundation of the PLO’s claim to legitimacy on the world stage, the US might have been expected to respond harshly to the PLO’s threats and slanders. But then, that isn’t the State Department’s way of doing things with the PLO.
Rather than shrugging their shoulders and acknowledging that Abbas and his comrades have absolutely no intention whatsoever of abiding by the terms of their mission’s operations in Washington and shutting it down, the State Department began to stutter.

Obviously we wish to continue our good relations and our position as mediator between the Israelis and the PLO.

Obviously we wouldn’t wish the PLO any harm and really, really don’t want to close down its mission in Washington.

It’s just that we have this stupid law and we have to follow it, State Department officials insisted.
And then, less than a week after Tillerson sent his letter to Zomlot, the State Department beat a hasty retreat from its earlier decision to actually abide by US law when it comes to the PLO.

Saturday, The Hill online newspaper reported that the State Department had changed its mind. It is no longer interested in following the law. Instead, it has rewritten the law. Now, it’s fine for the PLO to operate in Washington while trampling US law. It just needs to pretend it isn’t doing what it is doing.

According to the State Department spokesman who revealed State’s about face to the media, the PLO mission can continue to operate, but its operations must be “related to achieving a lasting, comprehensive peace between the Israelis and Palestinians.”

And if they aren’t, well, under this new interpretation of the law, the State Department can pretend it hasn’t noticed.

Two questions arise from the State Departments reversal. First, how does this decision advance the cause of peace between Israel and the Palestinians? And second, how does this decision impact the Trump administration’s bid to realign the balance of forces in the Middle East away from Iran and toward the US’s Arab allies, led by Saudi Arabia? The answer to the first question is straightforward. By empowering the PLO to continue to breach US law – with the full expectation of continuing to receive US assistance to the tune of more than $500 million a year – the US has made itself a laughingstock. Neither Hamas nor the PLO will take the US seriously. Any pressure the US attempts to apply toward the PLO to moderate its stand toward Israel will be ignored by Abbas and his cronies in the PLO and Hamas alike.

The Palestinians have taken the Trump administration’s measure. By beating a hasty retreat from its initial decision to stand with the law against the PLO, the State Department has told the PLO that the Trump administration is a paper tiger, at best.

They can get away with publicly trashing Trump. They can get away with antisemitic attacks against Friedman, Greenblatt and Kushner. Abbas and his deputies can get away with their war to delegitimize Israel in the West and harm its economy through their boycott campaign.

And the PLO can finance terrorism, sign a unity deal with Hamas and side with Hezbollah in Lebanon against Saudi Arabia.

The Trump administration will do nothing against them. Instead, in the face of this contemptuous slap in the face to the US, Vice President Mike Pence will travel to Ramallah next month and have his picture taken with Abbas the “moderate” leader and peace partner.

This then brings us to the second question of how surrendering to PLO threats will influence the US’s regional position. As Tawil reported, Al Quds, a Palestinian paper that reflects the views of Abbas and his associates, blasted the Arab League for focusing on Iran at its most recent foreign ministers’ meeting in Cairo.
“The meeting ignored the Palestinian cause,” the paper complained.

“We are facing new Arab alliances against Iran, all under American pressure.
This will have a negative impact on our cause,” it warned.

For more than a generation, the State Department, and through it US Middle East policy as a whole, have been captivated by the myth that nothing can happen in the Middle East without Israel first capitulating to PLO demands.

Today, 17 years after the PLO rejected statehood and peace at Camp David and in so doing, made clear that no Israeli capitulation short of national suicide will satisfy it, and with the Sunni Arab world now eagerly working with Israel to defeat Iran and its proxies, it is clear that it is time for the US to cut the cord on the PLO.
By reversing course on closing the PLO mission, and groveling to the threatening PLO, the State Department made a laughingstock of the US and President Trump. The decision to reverse course should itself be reversed, in accordance with US law and in the interest in restoring what it is still possible to restore of US credibility in the Middle East.
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3) US Would Be Wise To Prepare For EMP Attacks On Its Cities by Ilan Berman

Imagine that a hostile nation – say, North Korea – fires a nuclear-tipped missile at the United States. The missile detonates in the upper atmosphere above a major American city such as Los Angeles, releasing a cascade of charged electrons that damages and destroys all technology and electrical systems within line-of-sight of the explosion. Vital infrastructure on the country’s Western seaboard is incapacitated. Large swathes of California and parts of Nevada lose power. Stores, social services and emergency functions that rely on electricity begin to break down, as disorder spreads and the death toll climbs.
Such a scenario isn’t the plot of the latest Hollywood blockbuster, although it well could be. It is, rather, the projected outcome of a man-made electromagnetic pulse (EMP) event of the type that a growing number of America’s adversaries are capable of creating.
Of course, the phenomenon of EMP is not new. It was first discovered well over half-a-century ago as an unintended byproduct of U.S. nuclear testing in the 1940s. Nevertheless, over the decades, a lasting solution to this challenge has proven elusive, for at least two reasons.
The potentially catastrophic consequences of an EMP event have made the issue a difficult one to broach, as a matter of public policy. Debates over the probability of such an occurrence, meanwhile, has led more than a few observers to minimize the associated risk – and to ridiculethose who argue for preparedness.
Yet such complacency is ill-advised. The threat of electromagnetic pulse is both real and potentially devastating. More than a dozen years ago, in 2004, the congressionally-mandated Commission to Assess the Threat to the United States from Electromagnetic Pulse (EMP) Attack, colloquially known as the EMP Commission, concluded that the damage caused by an EMP to the United States “could be sufficient to be catastrophic to the nation.” Moreover, given America’s lack of protection against the phenomenon, the commission noted, “our current vulnerability invites attack.”
The costs of such an attack, should one occur, are staggering. Leading experts, including John Holdren, who served as science and technology advisor to President Obama throughout his two terms in office, have pegged the costs associated with national recovery from an EMP-type event at some $2 trillion annually for a protracted process that could last as long as a decade.
It is hardly surprising, therefore, that America’s adversaries have invested in the development of EMP weapons. Indeed, every single one of the main state-based threats currently arrayed against the United States (Russia, China, Iran and North Korea) has devoted considerable time and effort to the creation of such capabilities. The battlefield readiness of these technologies is shrouded in secrecy, but the devastating effects of an EMP event, should one occur, require that American policymakers take the possibility seriously – and, to the extent that they can, to take steps to guard against it.
In its 2004 report, the EMP Commission argued that the United States should undertake a national effort to reduce the vulnerability of interdependent infrastructure. “Most critical infrastructure system vulnerabilities can be reduced below the level that potentially invites attempts to create a national catastrophe,” it noted. “By protecting key elements in each critical infrastructure and by preparing to recover essential services, the prospects for a terrorist or rogue state being able to achieve large-scale, long-term damage can be minimized.”
And yet, today, the recommendations of the EMP Commission remain largely an unfunded mandate, a casualty of partisan politics and a lack of political consensus that have conspired to thwart the emergence of a national plan for the robust protection of critical infrastructure. While a number of Congressional initiatives have attempted to address America’s vulnerability to EMP attack (notably, the 2013 SHIELD Act and the 2014 GRID Act), U.S. infrastructure for the moment remains largely unprotected against the EMP threat.
This should be seen for what it is: a significant, and bipartisan, failure of government. As the EMP Commission noted, “A crisis such as the immediate aftermath of an EMP attack is not the time to begin planning for an effective response.”
Rather, the time to do so is now, ahead of any potential EMP event, and with the understanding that serious, sustained investments in the resiliency of our national infrastructure would diminish not only the impact of EMP weapons, but also their appeal in the calculus of America’s adversaries
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