UK: A Defeat Dressed Up as a Victory

by Douglas Murray • February 11, 2019 at 5:00 am

The mosque that agreed to hold the secret event was in Ilford; the chairman of the Muslim Community Centre at the mosque, Bashir Chaudhry, said the exhibition was an "eye-opener" and added that he would encourage other people to see it.
A story such as this should provide the strongest possible alarm bells to government and civil society. If, in 2019, any Muslim organization wants to commemorate the bravery of some Muslims in the Holocaust, this has to be staged secretly, covertly, and in fear of some violent or non-violent backlash?
In Britain, in 2019, government and non-government figures still feel they must flit around, letting no one know of their movements to commemorate an aspect of the Holocaust. They manage to have a commemoration of the Holocaust in secret. And they think this is a victory.

Bashir Chaudhry, chairman of the Muslim Community Centre in Ilford, England, recently hosted an exhibition on Muslims who helped to save Jews from the Nazis in Albania during WWII. Pictured: High Road in Ilford. (Image source: Sunil060902/Wikimedia Commons)

Remember the Holocaust exhibition in London that couldn't be staged last month -- the exhibition at Golders Green about Muslims who helped to save Jews from the Nazis in Albania during the Second World War? The small exhibition appeared clearly intended for two reasons. First to try to build trust between a new local mosque and the large Jewish community in Golders Green, and second, to remind Muslims in Britain that hostility towards Jews is an ancient and modern evil. The intentions behind the exhibition seemed good.

Continue Reading Article

Should Washington Heed Intelligence Assessments about North Korea?

by Peter Huessy • February 11, 2019 at 4:00 am

In spite of the fact that Reagan ultimately won the Cold War -- and the Soviet Union subsequently fell -- his policies and extraordinary global achievements were partially discarded by the failures and laziness of the U.S. intelligence community. Starting in 1993, the US cut back excessively its military defenses. And the US allowed China both militarily and non-militarily to run rampant.
Almost worse, the intelligence community failed to recognize the rise of Islamic terrorism in Iran and elsewhere, which would culminate in the 9/11 attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.
What is clear, is that the U.S. intelligence community often has a terrible track record where threat assessments are concerned. Alarmingly, it would not be surprising they were wrong again today.

Pictured: U.S. President Donald Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong-un shake hands at their first summit in Singapore, on June 12, 2018. (Image source: White House/Wikimedia Commons)

United States intelligence chiefs told Congress on January 29 that Pyongyang is unlikely to give up its nuclear weapons in any deal with Washington. This assessment was made a month ahead of U.S. President Donald Trump's February 27-28 second summit -- to be held in Vietnam -- with North Korean leader Kim Jong-un, the purpose of which is to make strides in achieving the very denuclearization that FBI Director Christopher Wray, CIA Director Gina Haspel and Director of National Intelligence Dan Coats consider improbable.

One would have thought that if these intelligence chiefs disagreed with Trump's efforts to reach a deal with North Korea, they would have presented an alternative. They might have explained what a deal with Pyongyang is liable to do to America's relations with Japan and South Korea. They might have provided a future scenario for the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), which North Korea signed in 1968, then violated and withdrew from in 2003.

Continue Reading Article