The Algemeiner by Sander Gerber and Yossi Kuperwasser On Monday, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas is scheduled to meet with UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres. The UN announcement of the meeting doesn’t refer to Abbas as president; rather, it uses the term “His Excellency,” which is the UN protocol title for a country’s leader. Then on Tuesday, the “State of Palestine” will assume the Chairmanship of the Group of 77 — a coalition of 134 developing nations, designed to promote its members’ collective economic interests and create an enhanced joint negotiating capacity in the United Nations.Abbas’ recognition by the UN as the legitimate ruler of the Palestinian people is nearly as bizarre as the UN’s near-acceptance of the idea that the Palestinian Authority (PA) contributes to global peace and prosperity. All this begs a question: Does the UN want to enable terror or disable terror?PA law mandates that “salaries” be paid...

Doofus Alert: Dem Wants to Replace Terrorism Subcommittee With...Town Hall by Beth Baumann The new Chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committees, Rep. Eliot Engel (D-NY), admitted he plans to get rid of the Subcommittee on Terrorism and use those resources to launch a Subcommittee on Investigating President Donald Trump.“We just thought, if we’re going to do something relevant in this era where Congress is going to reassert itself, where there are so many questionable activities of this Administration vis-à-vis foreign policy, that it made sense to have this," Engel told The New Yorker. And, naturally, the new Subcommittees first action would be investigating whether or not President Trump colluded with Russia. Read more: https://townhall.com/tipsheet/bethbaumann/2019/01/13/doofus-alert-dem-wants-to-replace-terrorism-subcommittee-with-n2538972...

San Francisco Chronicle by Kevin Fagan A federal magistrate judge has recommended that the terrorism convictions that have kept a Lodi man in federal prison since 2006 be overturned on the grounds that his lawyer didn’t adequately represent him.Hamid Hayat was 23 when — in a case that riveted the nation’s attention — a federal jury convicted him of training at a terrorist camp in his family’s homeland of Pakistan and returning to the United States to lie in wait for orders to kill Americans as a jihadi. He is now in a federal prison in Arizona and has served half of the 24-year sentence he drew.However, U.S. Magistrate Judge Deborah Barnes on Friday filed her recommendation that the convictions be thrown out based on her examinations of the case and of testimony by more than a dozen witnesses and experts. Barnes concluded that the failure of Hayat’s trial attorney,...

Jewish Policy Center President Trump’s Counter-Terrorism Strategy by Clifford D. May and David Adesnik • Winter 2019 “We remain a nation at war.” President Trump’s new National Strategy for Counterterrorism, released in early October, begins with that simple statement of fact. Despite the West’s victories in the several major wars of the 20th century, the 21st century is not an age of peace. It is yet another age of conflict.We don’t like that. It’s more comforting to believe, as President Obama asserted on numerous occasions, that “the tide of war is receding.”For the 44th president, that phrase became both a mantra and an idée fixe following the May 2, 2011 midnight raid by U.S. Navy SEALs on Osama bin Laden’s compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan.Obama initially used the phrase on June 23, 2011, in his prime-time address from the East Room of the White House, announcing the first phase of U.S....

Moment suicide bomber ignores police warning shots and blows herself up in Chechnya ...

The Epoch Times The porous southwest border—where Border Patrol says it catches just 35 to 40 percent of illegal crossers—poses a major security threat By Charlotte Cuthbertson WASHINGTON—Every day, an average of 10 known or suspected terrorists are prevented from entering the United States, according to the Department of Homeland Security (DHS). These are individuals flagged on a U.S. terror watch list; most are encountered at airports or even while still overseas as they apply for a visa.On top of that, 3,000 “special-interest” aliens were apprehended at the southwest border last year, DHS Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen said on Jan. 4.Special-interest aliens (SIAs) are labeled as such for their travel patterns and behavior. They hail from dozens of countries in the Middle East, South Asia, and North Africa, where terrorist groups operate. Read more: https://www.theepochtimes.com/thousands-of-suspected-terrorists-try-to-enter-america-each-year_2761769.html...

National Review By Deroy MurdockHere are some examples. The Trump-hating media have pounded White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders for her “unfortunate misstatement” (as presidential adviser Kellyanne Conway put it) on Fox News Sunday that some 3,700 “known or suspected terrorists” were caught at the U.S.–Mexico border. In fact, these “special-interest aliens” include terrorists, people who have lived or traveled through terrorist hotbeds, and others whose whereabouts trigger closer scrutiny when entering the U.S. This number includes people apprehended on the border, but mainly at airports and other locations. Trump’s detractors have used this dustup to imply that if there are not 3,700 ISIS killers in Tijuana pole-vaulting into San Ysidro, then terrorists must be as rare there as polar bears. This echoes the words of former U.S. representative Robert Francis O’Rourke (D., Texas). He claimed last year that “precisely zero terrorists, terrorist groups, or terror plots have ever...

  by Majid Rafizadeh  •  Gatestone Institute Many apologists say that Islam is a religion of peace. What they do not say is that, according to Islam, "peace" is to come only after all the world has converted to Islam. Until then, all the world is divided in two: dar al-Islam ("the House of Islam"), made up those who already believe, and dar al-harb ("the House of War"), made up of those who have yet to "believe". If one is to follow the conclusions of doctrines based on jihad and sharia, after all the disbelievers believe, then there will be peace. What is odd, is that even after countless attacks in Europe just since 2001, when we have all seen and felt this House of War on our flesh, no one ever mentions its existence. How come we never hear more about this House of War? What we are seeing,...

KESQ News Channel 3 Homeland Security: CA must change 'Real ID' requirements By Associated Press SACRAMENTO, Calif.- - The U.S. government says California must change how it issues identification cards that comply with stricter federal requirements.The so-called Real ID cards will be needed to board airplanes or enter federal buildings by October 2020 under security enhancements following 9/11. California already has issued 2.3 million cards. Department of Motor Vehicles spokesman Marty Greenstein said that those IDs will remain valid and changes will apply going forward. The DMV had required one document proving residency and counted on delivery by the post office as secondary proof of someone's address.Emails show the Department of Homeland Security approved that process last year. But it told the DMV in November that was no longer acceptable and two documents proving residency are required. Read more: https://www.kesq.com/news/homeland-security-ca-must-change-real-id-requirements/953665589...

The Miami Herald Broward Sheriff Scott Israel tells staff he’s being suspended over Parkland responseBy Julie K. Brown It appears that Broward County Sheriff Scott Israel is preparing to pack it in, for now.The two-term sheriff, the object of fierce criticism over BSO’s handling of the Parkland massacre, told his top commanders that he will be removed from office by Gov. Ron DeSantis, sources told the Miami Herald.DeSantis, who was sworn in Tuesday morning, had not made a formal announcement of a possible suspension. Israel’s discussions with staff about his ouster were first reported by Miami New Times.Stuart N. Kaplan, one of Israel’s lawyers, said Israel was working at his office at the public safety building in Fort Lauderdale.“The governor has not said anything to us, directly or indirectly, as to whether or not the sheriff is going to be suspended,’’ Kaplan said. “He is working and continues to serve...

Weekly Blitz Christine Douglass WilliamsFormer Obama White House homeland security and counterterrorism adviser Lisa Monaco is warning that “the terror threat getting worse.” She is referring, of course, to the jihad threat that neither she nor any other Obama official dares to name. It was the Obama Administration that tied the hands of counter-jihad analysts by scrubbing all reference to Islam from counterterror training materials, making it nearly impossible for intelligence and law enforcement agents to know and understand the people they were trying to stop. While serving as FBI director, Robert Mueller “decided to purge hundreds of counter-terrorism training materials that arguably rendered America less safe in the face of a growing domestic Islamic extremist problem.”Today the media is quick to attack Trump as racist when he speaks about the jihad threat. Had Trump said the same thing Monaco said, he would be accused of stoking irrational fears.Read more:...

Lawfare By Emma Broches, Julia Solomon-Strauss In the past few months, prosecutors have tried, juries have convicted, and judges have sentenced  defendants from the height of the Islamic State’s power in 2014–15. Meanwhile, American law enforcement continues to prosecute individuals involved in terrorist-related crimes in the United States, even as new challenges—like prosecuting foreign Islamic State fighters—arise. The material support provided to designated foreign terrorist organizations by these subjects has varied widely, from distributing propaganda to waging attacks in the United States to attempting to travel to join the Islamic State or helping others travel to providing funding. And although terrorism prosecutions involving individuals affiliated with the Islamic State have dominated the headlines, other defendants associated with al-Qaeda affiliates and other groups have recently been tried, convicted and sentenced.Islamic StateMaterial support charges for travelLaw enforcement continues to arrest individuals attempting to travel to join the Islamic State. On Oct. 25,...

By SUDARSAN RAGHAVAN | The Washington Post | Published: December 29, 2018TAIZ, Yemen — Last year, the Trump administration imposed sanctions on a powerful Yemeni Islamist warlord, accusing him of being a "prominent military instructor" and fundraiser for al-Qaida who had also at one point "served with" the Islamic State and financed its forces.But Abu al-Abbas is not on the run. He is not even in hiding.By his own admission, Abbas continues to receive millions of dollars in weapons and financial support for his fighters from one of Washington's closest Middle East allies, the United Arab Emirates, undermining U.S. counterterrorism goals in Yemen.The UAE, along with Saudi Arabia, leads a regional coalition waging war in Yemen even as a humanitarian crisis there worsens. The coalition's main goal is to defeat the northern Yemeni rebels known as Houthis and restore the country's ousted government. The United States assists it with intelligence...

Los Angeles Times By Tony Barboza, Meg James and Emily Alpert Reyes What first arose as a server outage was identified Saturday as a malware attack, which appears to have originated from outside the United States and hobbled computer systems and delayed weekend deliveries of the Los Angeles Times and other newspapers across the country.Technology teams worked feverishly to quarantine the computer virus, but it spread through Tribune Publishing’s network and reinfected systems crucial to the news production and printing process. Multiple newspapers around the country were affected because they share a production platform.The attack delayed distribution of Saturday editions of the Los Angeles Times and San Diego Union Tribune. It also stymied distribution of the West Coast editions of the Wall Street Journal and New York Times, which are printed at the Los Angeles Times’ Olympic printing plant in downtown Los Angeles. Read more: https://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-ln-times-delivery-disruption-20181229-story.html...

Fox News 2 Americans among 5 ISIS fighters captured in Syria, official says By Dom Calicchio Two Americans were among five ISIS fighters recently captured in eastern Syria, according to a spokesman for the U.S.-backed Syrian Democratic Forces.The Americans were identified as Warren Christopher Clark (aka Abu Mohammad al-Ameriki) of Houston, and Zaid Abed al-Hamid (aka Abu Zaid al-Ameriki), originally from the U.S., but no specific location was reported.Clark was identified in an NBC News report last February as an American who had sent his resume to ISIS, in hopes of joining the terror group.“We are aware of open source reports of reportedly American citizens currently in custody who were believed to be fighting for ISIS," Navy Cmdr. Sean Robertson, a Pentagon spokesman, told Fox News in a statement. "However, we are unable to confirm this information at this time. The incident is under investigation." Read more: https://www.foxnews.com/world/2-americans-among-5-isis-fighters-captured-in-syria-official-says...

Morocco World News By Safaa Kasraoui Rabat – Two  Spanish criminologists conducted a study on women involved in terror-related crimes in Spain. The study, quoted by  Ceutaldia, indicates that nearly 34.8 percent of women radicalized by terror organizations in Spain are Moroccans. The study showed that the majority of the 21 women “investigated during the last decade for radicalization” were between 19 and 25 years old. The criminologist, Ariadna Trespaderne and David Garriga, said in their study that  60.9 percent of these women are from Spain. Read more: https://www.moroccoworldnews.com/2019/01/262557/women-isis-terrorism-radicalization-spain-morocco/...

The Straits Times In our efforts to counter terrorism more effectively, it may be helpful to examine its causes, especially in relation to its present day proliferation (The global threat forecast for 2019; Jan 1).The United States-led invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq early in the 21st century have gravely destabilized the Middle East, unwittingly turning such lands into fertile grounds for the growth of extremist organizations.What is it that makes one vulnerable to radicalization? Is it inequality? Is it injustice? Is it an unaddressed festering sense of disenchantment and disgruntlement? In South-east Asia, more than 700,000 Rohingya refugees have fled violence and persecution in Myanmar. In their desperation, they could prove to be prime recruiting targets for terrorist groups.The West has birthed its own terrorist groups, from the Red Army Faction in Germany to the Irish Republican Army in Northern Ireland. Read more: https://www.straitstimes.com/forum/letters-in-print/important-to-drill-down-to-causes-of-modern-day-terrorism...

Washington Examiner by Naomi Lim A notorious al Qaeda terrorist linked to the USS Cole bombing in 2000 was killed in an airstrike last week, President Trump confirmed on Sunday."Our GREAT MILITARY has delivered justice for the heroes lost and wounded in the cowardly attack on the USS Cole. We have just killed the leader of that attack, Jamal al-Badawi. Our work against al Qaeda continues. We will never stop in our fight against Radical Islamic Terrorism!" Trump tweeted. The Pentagon said Friday that al-Badawi had been targeted in a precision strike launched this month in Yemen, but it had been unclear whether al-Badawi, one of the FBI’s most wanted terrorists, survived the offensive conducted while he was traveling alone."We are aware of reports that Jamal al-Badawi was killed in a strike in Yemen,” Capt. Bill Urban, U.S. Central Command spokesman, said in a statement last week. Read more: https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/news/trump-terrorist-connected-to-cowardly-uss-cole-attack-is-dead...

Counter Extremism Project by Felicia Woron On Monday, April 23, 2018––a day before G7 security ministers pressed tech companies to do more to combat the spread of extremism online––Facebook and YouTube both released updates on their progress in removing extremist content from their platforms. This long overdue move follows the Counter Extremism Project's (CEP) longtime calls for increased transparency and metrics reporting in tech’s counter-extremism efforts. However, while progress reports are a step in the right direction, gaps continue to remain in Facebook and YouTube’s approaches to combating extremism.Gaps in content removal: In its statement, Facebook claims to have removed 1.9 million pieces of ISIS and al-Qaeda content from its platform in the first quarter of 2018, using technology that specifically focuses on “ISIS, al-Qaeda, and their affiliates.” Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg also recently touted before the U.S. Congress that the company removes 99 percent of ISIS and al-Qaeda content...

Voice of Europe By Laura Cat Irish lecturer, John Dowling, 66, was fatally stabbed 13 times in the throat and chest by student ‘offended’ by a drawing of Mohammed during a lecture.No other students saw any such image displayed by Professor Dowling and police say there is no evidence of it, yet Ali R., the student that stabbed the lecturer claimed that was his reason for committing the murder.According to government prosecutor Catherine Denis, Ali held an ‘obsessive resentment’ against the university since he was expelled in September of 2017. Read more: https://voiceofeurope.com/2018/12/muslim-student-stabs-professor-to-death-in-paris-as-he-insulted-the-prophet/...