Monday, October 2, 2017

Catalan Referendum: Catalonia has ‘won right to statehood’ – VIDEO

October 02 2017

    The Catalans are a Romance ethnic group formed by the people from, or with origins in, Catalonia and/or the Catalan countries, who also form a nationality in northeastern Spain.
    Catalonia’s government said 90 percent of those who voted in an unauthorized independence referendum chose to split from Spain.
    On a day marred by clashes between police and voters, 2.26 million people took part in the referendum,  regional government spokesman Jordi Turull said. That represents a turnout of  42.3 percent of Catalonia’s 5.34 million voters.
    Of those who took part,  2.02 million Catalans voted “yes” to the question: “Do you want Catalonia to become an independent state in the form of a republic?”
    The preliminary results pave the way for the region’s leader to declare independence in the coming days, despite the Spanish government ruled the referendum illegal.
    The brutal scenes of police cracking down on the referendum plunged the EU into a new crisis after hundreds of people were injured in the violent stand-offs with Spanish police.
    In violent scenes beamed around the world, officers in riot gear fired rubber bullets into crowds and beat would-be voters with batons as they queued at polling stations.
    The Catalan government claimed 844 people were injured.
    There was widespread condemnation of the Spanish government’s attempt to crack down on the vote, which Catalan authorities had called despite the courts ruling it illegal.
    However, the European Union remained conspicuously silent on the police tactics, which saw masked officers smash their way into polling stations and forcibly remove ballot boxes.
    Carles Puigdemont, the Catalan leader, said the region had “won the right to an independent state” after “millions” turned out to vote in a banned independence referendum.
    “With this day of hope and suffering, the citizens of Catalonia have won the right to an independent state in the form a republic,” he said in a televised announcement after polls had closed.
    Before the results were announced, he said he would keep his pledge to declare independence unilaterally within 48 hours of the vote if the “Yes” side won the referendum.
    “Today the Spanish state wrote another shameful page in its history with Catalonia,” he said, adding that he would appeal to the European Union to look into alleged human rights violations during Sunday’s vote.
    Violence broke out across Catalonia as armored police moved in to break up the vote.
    Video footage showed officers from Spain’s national police – 4,000 of whom had been brought in by the government to help quash the ballot – fighting with elderly voters, some of whom were left bleeding, and dragging young women away from polling stations by their hair.
    Amid tense scenes, uniformed Catalan firefighters appeared to act as human shields to protect voters from advancing lines of police.
    Responding to the unfolding crisis, Boris Johnson, the Foreign Secretary, told the Daily Telegraph last night: “Obviously we are very anxious about any violence. We hope that things will sort themselves out, though clearly you have to be sensitive to the constitutional proprieties.”
    He added: “As I understand it the referendum is not legal, so there are difficulties.”

    Nicola Sturgeon described the Foreign Office’s statement as “shamefully weak”.

    “A true friend of Spain would tell them today’s actions wrong and damaging,” Scotland’s First Minister said.
    Andrew Rosindell, a Tory MP who sits on the Foreign Affairs Select Committee, said he believed the European Union’s response would have been much stronger if such scenes were playing out in other EU countries.
    He told the Daily Telegraph the European Union was “showing itself again to be completely hypocritical”.
    Mr. Rosindell accused the Spanish government of trying to “bully the people” and that the violence “shows both Spain and the EU in a very bad light”.
    He said: “For years the Spanish have used the Guardia Civil to make life as difficult as possible for Gibraltar and they are using the same police force again to attack the people of Catalonia.
    “In other circumstances, there is no doubt the EU would be coming down like a tonne of bricks. They are demonstrating double standards: If this was happening in Hungary or another country there would certainly be a different reaction.”
    While some MEPs including Guy Verhofstadt – the parliament’s Brexit negotiator – condemned the police violence as ‘disproportionate’, the European Commission said it would not respond to the crisis until Monday.
    European leaders were also noticeably silent. The only voice emerging from Brussels was that of the Belgium prime minister, Charles Michel.
    On Twitter, he called for political dialogue to resolve the crisis, insisting: “Violence can never be the answer!”
    Spain, meanwhile, did not waver in its assertion that the referendum – which was ordered suspended by the Spanish constitutional court – is illegal, and that its hand has been forced by a Catalan government it claims is engaged in a coup.
    Spain’s foreign minister Alfonso Dastis said the violence was “unfortunate” and “unpleasant” but “proportionate”, blaming the violence exclusively on Mr. Puigdemont and his regional government.
    Spanish Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy last night said: “We did what we had to do”, describing the ballot as a “premeditated attack on the legality of the Spanish state faced down with serenity by the forces of order”.
    Making no mention of the large number of people injured in police charges outside polling stations, Mr. Rajoy said: “Democracy won today because the Constitution was upheld”.
    He said the police ‘performed their duty’ in Catalonia.
    The Spanish deputy prime minister, Soraya Sáenz de Santamaría, blasted the Catalan government’s “irresponsibility” in insisting on holding an “illegal referendum with no democratic guarantees”, demanding that they end what she described as a “farce”.
    The Catalan government contends it has been forced to go ahead with the unilateral poll, saying it has been left no other option after the central government consistently refused substantive negotiations over the region’s status.
    In the event of a “Yes” vote, Mr. Puigdemont plans to make a unilateral declaration of independence 48 hours after the results, which are expected to be announced Monday.
    He told The Telegraph last week that he would then be seeking dialogue with Spain and the European Union, insisting that Europe could no longer “keep looking the other way”.
    Mr. Puigdemont insisted Sunday that the poll had been carried out successfully despite the police crackdown, with voting taking place in 95 percent of polling stations.
    “Batons against ballot boxes, violence against public spirit,” he said, claiming “the shame will stay with (Spain) forever”. Security concerns even had an impact on Sunday’s football.
    FC Barcelona initially suspended its home match against Las Palmas as a precaution, but ended up playing behind closed doors after Spain’s RFEF federation rejected the postponement.
    The European Commission, the EU’s civil service, has repeatedly backed the Spanish government and constitutional court’s stance that the vote is illegal.
    Yesterday the EC told The Telegraph it had nothing to add a statement made by Jean-Claude Juncker on Friday, when he backed “the rule of law” in Spain.
    But human rights groups and politicians from around the world contended that regardless of the legality of the poll, the heavy-handed response went beyond what was unacceptable in a 21st-century democracy.
    Andrew Stroehlein, of Human Rights Watch, said that despite the court suspension, the government had a duty to protect the rights to peaceful assembly and freedom of expression.
    The EU would “have to say something more soon,” he suggested. Catalans have expressed particular concern about the use of rubber bullets, which the Catalan police force are banned from using, and which left one person needing eye surgery yesterday.
    There were suggestions from several quarters that the Commission was taking a much laxer stance on Spain, a valued member of the EU core with an important stake in Brexit negotiations, then it would against other member states.
    “The fundamental rights of EU citizens are being damaged by this disproportionate use of violence against peaceful citizens,” Amadeu Altafaj, the permanent representative of the Catalan government to the EU in Brussels told the Telegraph.
    “For some countries like Poland there are strict standards but when it comes to Spain, there seems to be a lot of complacency.”
    Reported by: The Telegraph

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    New World Order: Muslims to be majority in Europe within two generations

    September 29 2017

      Within 40 years, given current demographic trends, the white population in France and the rest of old Europe will recede, creating a Muslim majority, a French researcher says.
      Charles Gave, an economist, fund manager and political commentator, published his conclusions this month on the web page of his think tank, Institute des Libertes. He writes of the “disappearance of the European populations” as native populations shrink and Muslims continue to exhibit a robust fertility rate.
      Mr. Gave, president of Gavekal Research, acknowledges that his decidedly unpolitically correct view may bring him scorn and possibly censorship. The political left generally protects Islam from criticism. In the U.S., President Obama consistently defended Islam and mocked Christians for their criticism.
      The paper, titled “The White Plague,” is dangerous, Mr. Gave said, “for my personal respectability and my chance to be heard in our beautiful democracy.”
      The financier draws his conclusion from demographics. He assesses France’s white, or native, birthrate at 1.4 children per woman, compared with a Muslim rate of 3.4 to 4 children. France’s population today is 67 million. Unlike the U.S., France does not conduct a census on ethnic origin, but based on outside polling, some researchers, including Mr. Gave, believe the French population is already 10 percent Muslim, with 6.7 million people.
      France’s official birthrate is 1.9 per woman, but Mr. Gave’s calculations put the native rate at 1.4. Overall, the European birthrate is a low 1.6 per woman.
      Mr. Gave extrapolates those numbers, a declining white population, and a growing Muslim population, and concludes that France will have a Muslim majority by 2057.
      “And so, within 40 years at the latest, it is almost certain that the majority of the population will be Muslim in Austria, Germany, Spain, Italy, Belgium and Holland,” he writes. “Again, these are not predictions but calculations, and I do not even call for new immigrants.”
      The pace could be accelerated given continuing Muslim migration into France and other Western European states, either through regular legal processes or through refugees escaping conflicts in the Middle East and North Africa.
      “Our summer will be really over the day when demographics will change, simply because we will have become a minority in our own countries and the majority will no longer pay attention to 68-year-old jeremiads, all of whose authors will be retired or dead,” he wrote.
      “The immense news of the next 30 or 40 years will thus be the disappearance of the European populations, whose ancestors have created the modern world. And with these populations will disappear the diverse and complementary European nations that have made an immense success of the old continent for at least five centuries.”
      Mr. Gave takes an agnostic view on what an Islamic Europe would mean for liberal democracy and free speech.
      “I do not say it will be wrong, or it will be good,” he writes. “I am simply saying that this will be very different and that this will necessarily have an influence on the political system.”
      Uncertainty
      The Gatestone Institute, a conservative foreign policy think tank, analyzed Mr. Gave’s paper and did not agree with all of it. Analyst Drieu Godefridi forecasts that the native French population will not disappear or lose its prominence in the space of four decades.
      “It will take more than 40 years for them to vanish from the surface of the earth,” Mr. Godefridi said.
      Another problem with Mr. Gave’s projections is uncertainty: What Islam in Europe will look like in 40 years is difficult to predict.
      “Only two or three generations ago, tens of millions of Europeans knelt several times a week in churches to show their adoration of Jesus Christ,” Mr. Godefridi said. “Forty years after this religious fervor, almost nothing remains. What we have instead is the well-known phenomenon of ‘dechristianization,’ which has engulfed the whole of Europe.”
      Abortions in France have surged in recent decades. Government statistics show that 204,000 abortions were performed in 2015 compared with 760,421 live births.
      “Bluntly put, Europeans are not making babies anymore,” he said. “And this has nothing whatsoever to do with Islam; this ‘malady’ is entirely self-inflicted.”
      Across Europe, there are signs of the coming Muslim majority. Muslims make up nearly 50 percent of primary school children in the Belgian port city of Antwerp. A quarter of Brussels’ 1 million population is of Muslim origin. The Daily Mail, citing the Office of National Statistics, reported that the most popular boy’s name in Britain in 2015 was Mohammed or its variant spellings.
      The Christian Broadcasting Network’s Dale Hurd in 2012 took his cameras inside Belgium’s Muslim strongholds to interview the leader of a small but growing militant group, Sharia4Belgium.
      “Democracy is the opposite of Shariah and Islam,” said Belgium-born Fouad Belkacem, referring to his hometown of Antwerp as a “dirty perverted community.”
      “Even disbelievers themselves, they say in 2030 there will be majority Muslims here. It’s just a matter of time.”
      Three years after the interview, Belkacem was convicted on charges of grooming terrorists to travel to the Islamic State in Syria. A court sentenced him to 12 years in prison.
      France is in the throes of a particularly dicey time for the government and its Muslim population. The Nov. 13, 2015, Paris attacks led to a suspension of some individual rights under a national state of emergency. Subsequently, authorities raided suspected radical Muslim enclaves to break up budding attacks.
      The emergency decree is scheduled to end in November.
      Public officials and scholars talk of “no-go zones,” especially the “banlieues,” the band of predominately Muslim neighborhoods around Paris that stand isolated from traditional French life. French officials deny there are any such zones where police do not patrol.
      Mr. Gave’s numbers also conflict with Pew Research polling in 2010. It put the Muslim birthrate at 2.8 children per woman, not 3.4 to 4 children, and did not project an increase.
      In 2010, seven years ago, Pew pegged France’s Muslim population at 7.5 percent. Researchers take that number, look at the Muslim birthrate and constant migration, and conclude that the population now must be at least 10 percent.
      Pew does not project a Muslim majority in the European Union anytime soon.
      Reported by: Israel, Islam & End Times
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      What is the “Shadow Government” and How Does Its Conduct Threaten Our Nation?

      October 02 2017

        The shadow government is dangerous. All Americans, regardless of political affiliation, should unite against this growing threat to our national security and the Constitution.
        The shadow government is an ever-expanding network of individuals that are prepared to take whatever means necessary in order to advance their own ideological agenda. These individuals are not concerned with the norm of the democratic governance, but rather bond together in a common ideological worldview where personal gain is the priority.
        All Americans who are committed to the rule of law, irrespective of their own political affiliation, ought to mobilize to oppose the growth and expansion of a shadow government.
        So, what is the “shadow government” and how does its conduct threaten our nation? It is unmistakably clear that our constitutional republic faces opposition from an ever-expanding and ever-ramifying network of individuals and groups that are prepared to subvert the Constitution, the rule of law, and our national security interests in order to advance their own ideological pre-commitments. One way to think of this network is a shadow government, a metaphor that has attained a progressively larger public profile over the past several months. This network denotes individuals and groups bound together by a common ideological worldview that takes precedence over norms of democratic governance. To understand this issue more intelligibly, it is useful to define the term shadow government. Several related ideas and concepts undergird this term.
        1. The term shadow government issues forth from the notion of a shadow cabinet. The term shadow cabinet originated out of parliamentary forms of government wherein the losing party in an election campaign appoints members of its party to “shadow” officials appointed by the ruling party.
        2. Members of the shadow cabinet are selected by party leaders as “an alternative government–in–waiting” to represent the party’s own political interests, a process that is advanced by publicly critiquing the policy agenda of the party in power.
        3. In our non-parliamentary system, the idea of a shadow government, secret government, or invisible government signifies that real and actual political power resides or ought to reside, not with elected representatives, but with private individuals, government bureaucrats, judges, and elites, who exercise power and influence behind the scenes in order to bend the so-called arc of justice to favor their preferences. Power, in this view, is to be wielded by individuals who are linked by an overarching ideological agenda committed to an expansion of the administrative state.
        This viewpoint is grounded in the proclivity of progressives to delegate power to unaccountable experts outside of the scrutiny and influence of democratic institutions. That is, experts exercise power beyond the reach of the Constitution and democratically elected representatives including the President and Congress.
        Properly appreciated, shadow government proponents maintain that the official elected government is, and ought to be, subservient to its shadow, which holds or ought to hold, true Executive power. Shadow government advocates include members of the administrative bureaucracy. They believe that the government, or at least certain levers of government, ought to be secretly controlled by elites who wish to remain cagey about their desire to manipulate policy, that is, until one of their chosen representatives assumes presidential power.
        In contemporary terms, the notion of a shadow government can be linked to the concept of a shadow party, a recent development that even worries the Left. Many progressive politicos worry particularly about an organization called Organizing for America (OFA), an Obama-linked group that has led the fight against the Trump Administration. OFA represents the fact that many Obama loyalists have zero faith in state political party organizations and seek to create independent groups largely controlled by insiders who do not necessarily publicly state their positions on a raft of issues.
        In addition, informal links have surfaced between Obama loyalists, outsiders, and members of the administrative state, including members of the deep state bureaucracy located within America’s intelligence community. Consistent with this intuition, Bryan Dean Wright, a Democrat and former CIA operative, argues that some of America’s spies owe a greater allegiance to a partisan agenda than the Constitution as part of their zealous opposition to the conservative agenda.
        As a consequence, it is apparent that disloyal operatives are prepared to leak classified information in order to serve their own goals and objectives. For example, as the ACLJ has reported previously: While opponents of President Trump have become emboldened in the wake of General Flynn’s resignation as the National Security Adviser, and while the media has reveled in a frenzy of self-righteous outrage that conceals its glee, it is important to observe that his resignation was sparked by leaked information coming from unelected bureaucrats within our nation’s intelligence apparatus, seemingly provoked by their deep distaste for the new Administration. Even more ominously, some of these bureaucrats are perhaps motivated by their loyalties to the Obama Administration.
        All Americans who are committed to the rule of law, irrespective of their own political affiliation, ought to mobilize to oppose the growth and expansion of a shadow government, a move that includes the disclosure of classified information in violation of the law.
        The ACLJ has filed numerous Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests to discover why Obama officials, including former Attorney General Lynch and James Clapper, the former Director of National Intelligence, changed the rules to expand the number of individuals who could access confidential nonpublic information a mere 17 days before the end of the Obama Administration.
        This move facilitated leaks of classified information that culminated in General Flynn’s resignation. Bureaucrats, including Obama loyalists, have sworn to uphold and defend the Constitution, irrespective of their views of the Trump Administration. If they want to oppose his policies, there is no reason why they cannot resign and launch a full-scale public campaign against such policies as part of the democratic process. They should resign rather than engage in the kind of insubordination made infamous by former Acting Attorney General Sally Yates’s refusal to enforce President Trump’s lawful Executive Order.11 Allowing unelected, unaccountable bureaucrats to control policy threatens our nation. The United States was built on democratic procedure, which holds leaders accountable for their actions. In order to prevent a political leader from overstepping their authority, the Constitution created checks and balances, where “the government[’s] several constituent parts may, by their mutual relations, be the means of keeping each other in their proper places.”
        Allowing anyone, who has not been properly elected, to have power and control over the government disregards the democratic process and the Constitution because constitutional checks and balances are ineffective when operatives fail to follow proper political procedures.
        A shadow government has the potential to destroy the safeguards that were carefully implemented by the Founding Fathers. These safeguards were grounded in the fact that openness and awareness within a constitutionally prescribed political process is the best prevention against tyranny. Federal officials, from the President all the way down to the lowest-level of bureaucrats, owe their paramount duty and loyalty to the Constitution, not partisanship. The future of the republic depends on full compliance by all federal officials with their constitutional duty. The shadow government must end now.
        Reported by: ACLJ. org
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        Israel Is Going to War in Syria to Fight Iran

        October 02 2017

          JERUSALEM – Israeli officials believe that Iran is winning its bid for dominance in the Middle East, and they are mobilizing to counter the regional realignment that threatens to follow. The focus of Israel’s military and a diplomatic campaign in Syria. Israeli jets have struck Hezbollah and Syrian regime facilities and convoys dozens of times during Syria’s civil war, with the goal of preventing the transfer of weapons systems from Iran to Hezbollah. In an apparent broadening of the scope of this air campaign, on Sept. 7 Israeli jets struck a Syrian weapons facility near Masyaf responsible for the production of chemical weapons and the storing of surface-to-surface missiles.
          The strike came after a round of diplomacy in which Israeli officials concluded that their concerns regarding the developing situation in Syria were not being addressed with sufficient seriousness in either the United States or Russia. A senior delegation led by Mossad chief Yossi Cohen visited Washington in late August, reportedly to express Israel’s dissatisfaction with the emerging U.S.-Russian understanding on Syria. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu visited Russian President Vladimir Putin in Sochi to raise similar concerns with Moscow.
          In both cases, the Israelis were disappointed with the response. Their overriding concern in Syria is the free reign that all the major players there seem willing to afford Iran and its various proxies in the country. And as long as nobody else addresses that concern in satisfactory, Israel is determined to continue addressing it on its own.
          Iranian forces now maintain a presence close to or adjoining the Israeli-controlled portion of the Golan Heights and the Quneitra Crossing that separates it from the Syrian-controlled portion of the territory. Israel has throughout the Syrian war noted a desire on the part of the Iranians and their Hezbollah clients to establish this area as a second line of active confrontation against the Jewish state, in addition to south Lebanon.
          “Syria,” of course, hardly exists today. The regime is in the hands of its Iranian and Russian masters, and half of the country remains outside its control. But the Iran-led bloc and its clearly stated intention to eventually destroy Israel certainly do exist, and the de facto buffer against them may be disappearing. Hezbollah Secretary-General Hassan Nasrallah recently declared “victory” in the Syrian war, adding that what remained was “scattered battles.”
          With the prospect of pro-Iranian forces reaching Bukamal on the Syrian-Iraqi border, this opens up the possibility of the much-reported Iranian “land corridor” stretching uninterrupted from Iran itself to a few kilometers from the Israeli-controlled Golan. Earlier this month, Israel shot down an Iranian drone over the Golan Heights. It was the latest evidence of Iran’s activities on the border. Syrian opposition reports have noted an Iranian presence in Tal Al-Sha’ar area, Tal Al-Ahmar, and Division 90 headquarters, all in the vicinity of the border. Pro-Iran forces, meanwhile, are open in their ambitions. Hezbollah al-Nujaba, an Iraqi Shiite force supported by Iran, has formed a “Golan Liberation” unit and declared itself “ready to take action to liberate the Golan.” Senior figures from the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps and the Basij have been photographed in areas close to the border.
          Israel has so far thwarted these ambitions in two ways. First, it has launched attacks to frustrate and interdict attempts to build a paramilitary infrastructure in the area. Most famously, the killing of Jihad Mughniyeh, son of Hezbollah military chief Imad Mughniyeh, in a targeted strike at Mazraat Amal in the Quneitra area in January 2015 was part of this effort. Five other Hezbollah members and a general of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards, Mohammad Allahdadi, were also killed in the strike.
          Second, Israel has developed pragmatic working relations with the local rebel groups who at the moment still control the greater part of the border, such as the Fursan al-Joulan group. This cooperation focuses on treating wounded fighters and civilians, and providing humanitarian aid and financial assistance. There has also probably been assistance in the field of intelligence, though no evidence has yet emerged of direct provision of weapons or direct engagement of Israeli forces on the rebels’ behalf.
          On July 9, a ceasefire agreement directly brokered by the United States and Russia for southwest Syria was announced. It posits the establishment of a de-escalation zone in Syria’s southwest, in the area of the Quneitra and Daraa provinces. The details of the de-escalation zone are still being negotiated. But Israel has been deeply concerned that it could seriously complicate the de facto Israeli safeguards in place against Iranian infiltration of the border. If the fighting ends, physical resistance to encroachment will become more complicated and sponsorship of rebels potentially no longer relevant. As of now, Russian attempts to assure Israel that the terms of the ceasefire adequately address its concerns in this regard have evidently failed to persuade. The latest media reports on the negotiations for the zone suggest that the United States has reached an agreement with Moscow that pro-Iranian militias will be kept 25 miles from the border.
          But the issue goes beyond arrangements at the southwestern edge of Syria. Israel is concerned by Iran’s overarching regional ambitions. Recent comments by Nasrallah, the Hezbollah leader, that a future war with Israel might involve additional pro-Iranian militia forces to the Lebanese groups have been well noted in Jerusalem. Israeli Intelligence Minister Yisrael Katz recently told a security conference in Herzliya, as reported by Reuters, that in a future war between Israel and Hezbollah the latter may be able to make use of an Iranian naval port, bases for Iran’s air and ground forces, and “tens of thousands of Shiite militiamen being brought in from various countries.”
          A recent report in the London-based Al-Quds al-Arabi described Iranian plans to thin out the Sunni Arab population between Damascus and the border with Lebanon, expelling Sunni residents and replacing them with pro-government Shiites from elsewhere in the country or outside it. Israeli strategic culture tends to emphasize addressing immediate threats, but these potential demographic developments are also being watched closely in Jerusalem.
          This all forms a larger picture in which Israel sees a major shift underway in the regional balance of power, to the benefit of the Iran-led regional bloc. Anyone who has received briefings from senior Israeli security officials in recent years has become familiar with a conception of the region as divided into four broad blocs: Iran and its (mainly Shiite) allies; a loose group of countries opposed to Iran that includes the Arab autocracies of the Gulf (excluding Qatar), along with Egypt, Jordan, and Israel itself; an alliance of conservative Sunni Islamist forces, such as Turkey, Qatar, Hamas, the Muslim Brotherhood, and Sunni Arab rebels in Syria; and finally the regional networks of Sunni Salafi jihadism, most notably the Islamic State and al Qaeda.
          There are problems with this picture, and it contains simplifications. Most notably, the line between the conservative Sunni Islamists and the Salafis has always been blurred. There is an additional blurred line, in which authoritarian rulers such as Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi have some sympathy for Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. Nevertheless, the picture was a serviceable one, adhering to many of the clear realities of the Middle East over the last decade and a half.
          But the tectonic plates of this picture are now shifting, most notably to the clear detriment of the two camps associated with Sunni political Islam. The period of Arab unrest in 2010, during which Islamist and Salafi forces seemed briefly ascendant, is now a spent force — its beneficiaries in retreat and in some cases eclipsed by Sunni autocrats and pro-Iranian forces. Hamas is seeking to rebuild its relations with Iran. Former Egyptian President Mohamed Morsi languishes in jail. Islamists in Tunisia are a minority element in the government, and Qatar is under attack from Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates because of its stances in recent years. And the Syrian Sunni Arab rebels, once the great cause of this group, are now stranded — fighting for survival and without hope of victory against the Assad regime. The Salafis, too, are in eclipse, at least as political contenders.
          Looked at from Israel, this process is a mixed bag. Sunni Islamists are hostile to Israel, of course, and for the most part, their failure to assemble a lasting power bloc is welcomed in Jerusalem. Senior Israeli security officials describe, for example, Sisi’s 2013 coup deposing the Muslim Brotherhood as a species of “miracle.” In Syria, however, the insurgent efforts of the Sunni Islamists had at least the benefit of distracting the attention of the more formidable enemy — the Iran-led regional bloc. For five years, Israel was largely able to sit by while Sunni and Shiite political Islam was in a death’s embrace just north and east of the border. Russian and Iranian intervention, however, appears to have tipped the balance against the Sunni rebels, threatening to bring the long chapter of the active civil war in Syria to a close.
          From an Israeli point of view, we are back to the pre-2010 Middle East, when Israel and pro-western Sunni powers understood they were in a direct faceoff with the Iranians and their allies. But in 2017, there is the additional complicating factor of a direct Russian physical presence in the Levant, in alliance or at least in cooperation with Israel’s enemies.
          U.S. President Donald Trump’s administration, which remains exclusively focused on the war against the Islamic State, has done little to assuage Israeli concerns. Trump and those around him, of course, share the Israeli assessment regarding the challenge of Iranian regional ambitions. The impression, however, is that the administration may well not be sufficiently focused or concerned to actually take measures necessary to halt the Iranian advance — both military and political — in Syria, Iraq, or Lebanon.
          Where does this leave Israel?
          First, Israel’s diplomatic avenues to the international power brokers in Syria remain open. When it comes to Washington, Israel’s task is to locate or induce a more coherent American strategy to counter the advance of the Iranians in the Levant. Its goal when it comes to Moscow is to ensure sufficient leeway from Putin, who has no ideological animus against Israel and no special sympathy for Tehran, so that Israel can take the measures it deems necessary to halt or deter the Iranians and their proxies.
          Second, Israel will continue to rely on its military defenses, which remain without peer in the region. And as shown in Masyaf, they can be employed to halt and deter provocative actions by the Iran-led bloc where necessary. Nevertheless, as seen from Jerusalem, the shifting regional tectonic plates are producing a new situation in which the Iran-led alliance is once again directly facing Israel, consequently raising the possibility of direct confrontation. Masyaf was not the first shot in the fight between Israel and its proxies in the Levant — and it is unlikely to be the last.
          Reported by: Jonathan Spyer – Foreign Policy. com
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          Ukraine: Hundreds of thousands gather to thank God for freedom to preach the gospel

          October 02 2017

            Ukraine is a sovereign state in Eastern Europe, bordered by Russia to the east and northeast, Belarus to the northwest, Poland, Hungary and Slovakia to the west, Romania, and Moldova to the southwest, and the Black Sea and the Sea of Azov to the south and southeast. Ukraine is currently in territorial dispute with Russia over the Crimean Peninsula which Russia annexed in 2014, but which Ukraine and most of the international community recognize as Ukrainian. Including Crimea, Ukraine has an area of 233,062 sq miles, making it the largest country entirely within Europe and the 46th largest country in the world. Excluding Crimea, Ukraine has a population of about 42.5 million.
            A 2016 survey conducted by the Razumkov Centre found that of the Ukrainian population, 81.9% were Christians.
            In an amazing display of solidarity when hundreds of thousands of Christians in Ukraine poured out onto the streets of Kiev to sing songs and to praise Jesus as they celebrated the 500th anniversary of the Protestant Reformation.
            According to local press, many traveled from all provinces just to be a part of the celebration, to thank God for the freedom to worship, to thank God for the freedom to preach the Gospel in their country, and to celebrate His faithfulness.
            Mission Network News reported that the gathering came after Ukrainian president Petro Poroshenko signed an order recognizing the anniversary of the Reformation. “It was so exciting to see on the screen of my computer where I was watching young people with so much joy. They glorify God in the midst of their capital,” he said.
            Mr. Sergey Rakhuba, leader of Mission Eurasia, a Christian organization that promotes indigenous evangelism, church-planting, church growth and Christian leadership in Ukraine told Mission Network News that although the nation might face difficult days ahead, they are praising God for the spread of Christianity.
            “Ukraine is still in the midst of war. Eastern Ukraine and territories are still occupied by Russian or pro-Russian separatists. Crimea was annexed by Russia. So yes, Ukraine is struggling politically, economically, but Ukraine is striving today spiritually, pleading to God to bless that nation.”
            Attendees, according to CBN, enjoyed a host of family-friendly events including exhibits, play zones, and musical performances.
            The celebration was also topped off by a performance by world-known motivational speaker Nick Vujicic.
            Overall, Ukraine’s Thanksgiving day gathered from 100,000 to 150,000 people on Kyiv’s central street, according to the Institute of Religious Freedom NGO.
            Reported by: UG Christian News
            By | October 2nd, 2017|Tags: , , , , , , , , , 

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