The Syrian government on Monday warned that any new attack by Washington on the war-ravaged country would provoke an even stronger reaction by Damascus and its allies.
"We would not be surprised if the United States carried out new attacks against Syria," Deputy Foreign Minister Faisal al-Moqdad told reporters in Damascus.
"But they should carefully consider the possible reactions, and should know that Syria's response, and that of its allies, will not be like the one after the first aggression."
The United States carried out its first direct military action against Syria in April, firing 59 Tomahawk cruise missiles at the Shayrat military airport.
It came in response to accusations the Syrian army used the base to unleash a chemical weapons attack on the opposition-held town of Khan Sheikhun in the country's northwest.
Last week, the White House said President Bashar al-Assad was potentially preparing a new chemical weapons attack.
Spokesman Sean Spicer warned at the time that if "Assad conducts another mass murder attack using chemical weapons, he and his military will pay a heavy price".
And Pentagon chief Jim Mattis told reporters that it appeared the Assad government "took the warning seriously".
The April strike on Shayrat was fiercely condemned by Damascus and its allies, Russia and Iran, but there was no military response.
Speaking of that attack, Moqdad cast it aside as a show of force by US President Donald Trump, who had yet to complete his first 100 days in office at the time.
"I believe that the new American administration wanted the world to know that it is strong and can strike anywhere," Moqdad said.
Moqdad also rejected last week's report by the United Nations' chemical weapons watchdog, which concluded that the banned nerve agent sarin was used in the Khan Sheikhun attack.
The Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons found that "a large number of people, some of whom died, were exposed to sarin or a sarin-like substance."
It did not accuse the Syrian government of carrying out the attack.
"We said that we will not recognise the results of this investigation and we will not deal with it, because it has no transparency, credibility, or integrity," Moqdad said.
Russia's foreign ministry also said the findings "are still based on rather questionable data".
Over the past 20 years, European cities have slowly become more ethnically diverse, as EU governments open their borders to foreign populations. And as this process has taken place, the authorities have been quick to cover up any crimes that have been committed by these populations. For instance, Swedish police are no longer allowed to describe the ethnic background of the criminals they catch, and most notably, the German government and press were desperate to cover up hundreds sexual assaults that occurred in Cologne in 2015.
However, there are certain statistics that can’t be covered up. A government can try to conceal the connection between crimes and specific ethnic groups, but they can’t cover up the overall crime statistics of an entire city. Plus, politically correct governments can’t really hide the ethnic diversity of their cities. That’s something that their progressive sensibilities command them to promote.
Fortunately, sometimes those two factors come together to give us all a good look at the relationship between immigration and crime in Europe, despite the best efforts of European governments to conceal that connection. For example, the German government recently revealed that more than half of the population of Frankfurt has a foreign background, arguably making it the most diverse major city in Germany.
For the first time, more than half of Frankfurt residents now have a migrant background, according to official data from the city’s Office of Statistics and Elections.
Presenting the figures, which show that 51.2 per cent of people living in Frankfurt have a migrant background, the city’s secretary of integration Sylvia Weber said: “We have minorities with relatively large numbers in Frankfurt but no group with a clear majority.”
Representing 13 per cent of the population, Turks are the city’s largest non-German minority, and 61 per cent of residents who were born abroad are citizens of other European Union (EU) countries.
And on top of that, the data reveals that these people aren’t thriving in Germany. 49% of people with foreign backgrounds in Frankfurt live below the poverty line, compared to 23% of native Germans, and they are significantly more likely to be unemployed. But that’s not the real kicker. Frankfurt was a diverse city long before the migrant crisis reached its peak, and even then it had a startling crime rate.
Of course if you brought this fact up to most leftists, they would call you a racist. But it has nothing to do with race. The real problem is that Germany hasn’t properly vetted their immigrants, nor have they successfully assimilated them. Germany is inviting people into their country who have no respect for German law, and they aren’t pressuring them to join German culture. And the result is rather predictable. Germany has a large foreign population that is young, jobless, alienated from mainstream culture, and more likely to commit crimes.
What we’re seeing in Frankfurt is the future of Europe, if EU nations continue to celebrate multiculturalism and leave their borders wide open. It will be a divided continent, filled with ethnic enclaves, no-go zones, civil unrest, and crime. If they don’t see the folly of multiculturalism, within a generation every city in Europe will be like Frankfurt, or perhaps even worse.
- Many so-called asylum seekers have refused to relocate to Central and Eastern Europe because the financial benefits there are not as generous as in France, Germany or Scandinavia. In addition, hundreds of migrants who have been relocated to Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania, which rank among the poorest EU countries, have since fled to Germany and other wealthier countries in the bloc.
- "It needs to be said clearly and directly: This is an attack on Europe, on our culture, on our traditions." — Poland's Prime Minister Beata Szyd?o.
- "I think we have a right to decide that we do not want a large number of Muslim people in our country. That is a historical experience for us." — Viktor Orbán, Prime Minister of Hungary, referring to Hungary's occupation by the Ottoman Empire from 1541 to 1699.
The European Union has initiated legal action against the Czech Republic, Hungary and Poland for failing to comply with a controversial order to take in thousands of migrants from Africa, Asia and the Middle East.
The so-called infringement procedure, which authorizes the European Commission, the powerful executive arm of the European Union, to sue member states that are considered to be in breach of their obligations under EU law, could lead to massive financial penalties.
The dispute dates back to September 2015, when, at the height of Europe's migration crisis, EU member states narrowly voted to relocate 120,000 "refugees" from Italy and Greece to other parts of the bloc. This number was in addition to a July 2015 plan to redistribute 40,000 migrants from Italy and Greece.
Of the 160,000 migrants to be "shared," nine countries in Central and Eastern Europe were ordered to take in around 15,000 migrants. Although the Czech Republic, Hungary, Romania and Slovakia voted against the agreement, they were still required to comply.
Many so-called asylum seekers have refused to relocate to Central and Eastern Europe because the financial benefits there are not as generous as in France, Germany or Scandinavia. In addition, hundreds of migrants who have been relocated to Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania, which rank among the poorest countries in the EU, have since fled to Germany and other wealthier countries in the bloc.
Meanwhile, the enforcers of European "unity" have sought to shame the Central European holdouts into compliance by appealing to nebulous concepts such as European "values" and "solidarity." French President Emmanuel Macron, for example, recently warned:
Leaders in Central and Eastern Europe have held their ground. In Poland, Prime Minister Beata Szyd?o said her country would not be blackmailed by European Union officials. In a speech to Parliament on May 24, two days after the jihadist attack in Manchester, England, in which a Polish couple was killed, she said:
"We are not going to take part in the madness of the Brussels elite.... Rise from your knees and from your lethargy or you will be crying over your children every day.
"If you cannot see this — if you cannot see that terrorism currently has the potential to hurt every country in Europe, and you think that Poland should not defend itself — you are going hand in hand with those who point this weapon against Europe, against all of us.
"It needs to be said clearly and directly: This is an attack on Europe, on our culture, on our traditions. Do we want strong politicians who can see the danger and can fight against it efficiently?"
The Swedish security agency Sapo revealed there are 2,000 violent Islamic extremists in the country – rising ten-fold from 200 in 2010.
Just seven years ago, Sapo claimed there were 200 violent Islamic extremists. But today, they dominate the number of violent extremists with the agency noting that in total there are an estimated 3,000 violent extremists in Sweden, Göteborgs-Posten reports.
“We’re talking about 3,000 people, of which over 2,000 are violent Islamist extremists,” said Security Service Chief Anders Thornberg. He added the majority of the rest of the violent extremists, 600 to 700 people, came from either neo-Nazi or left wing extremist backgrounds.
“We have to go through these environments to know what to prioritise and what are the main threats,” he added.
The numbers are a massive increase from 2010 when Sapo said there were only 200 violent Islamists and around 100 neo-Nazis and far left extremists.
Sapo now receives around 6,000 extremism related tips every month. Five years ago, the number was 2,000. Many of the tips come from the public whilst others come from foreign intelligence agencies.
“It is important that everyone in Sweden takes responsibility to stop this development,” Thornberg said, “before we get an attack or act of violence we do not want to happen.”
The state of Illinois is in big trouble. In fact, they’re facing an economic collapse. Some pundits are calling them “The Venezuela of the United States.”
They owe $14,711,351,943.90 in overdue bills. This does not count their day-to-day operating expenses – this is money that should have already been paid out, but wasn’t. Nearly 15 BILLION DOLLARS.
Like every person who has ever spent more than they’re making with no regard for budget, things are starting to go downhill in an ever-growing avalanche of disasters.
They’re about to become the first state ever to see their credit downgraded by Standard & Poor to “junk status,” which means they are a terrible credit risk. If they’re even able to borrow money, it will be at much higher interest rates than ever before. This means that anything they spend on infrastructure (or refinancing their existing debt) will cost much more. And guess who will foot the bill for that? The taxpayers.
When no deal was struck, a federal judge in Chicago ordered the state to begin tackling the billions owed to Medicaid.
To take the situation from “horrific to catastrophic,” the state has been ordered to begin making payments of almost $600 million per month to catch up.
So instead of a budget, state Congress approved a 32% income tax increase.
You’d think that all the revenue made from the excruciating toll roads through Chicago would help with this deficit, but you’ d be wrong. The tollway is owned by the city of Chicago but has been leased for 99 years to the Skyway Concession Company, a group of investors from Spain and Australia.
That’s right. The toll money doesn’t go to “build better roads” or help with the infrastructure. It is strictly for the profit of foreign countries, who are now apparently trying to sell the agreement to someone else. (source)
So, it will fall to the taxpayers to foot the bill. No surprises there.
In fact, the Illinois House of Representatives just voted to raise taxes by an astonishing 32% in the largest tax increase in history.
The workforce of Illinois is fleeing the state as fast as they can pack.
And demographics aren’t exactly on the state’s side to bring in more government revenues. Temporary tax increases to help cover debt and pension payments expired at the end of 2014, and the number of workers employed throughout the state in May – contributing income taxes to the state’s coffers – was more than 125,000 smaller than it was 10 years ago.
“Illinois has shrunk three years in a row. We used to have 26 representatives in Congress. We’re predicted to have 16 in a couple of years. That’s what’s happening to the population,” says Ted Dabrowski, vice president of policy and a spokesman at the Illinois Policy Institute.
The institute found the size of the Illinois labor force has contracted by 230,000 since the Great Recession hit in 2007. And data from The Pew Charitable Trusts suggests personal income growth in Illinois has been among the worst in the nation in recent years. (source)
There’s more. A quarter of a trillion dollars in pensions will be due SOON.
You read that right. A quarter of a trillion dollars. $251 billion in pension payments.
Eileen Norcross, a senior research fellow at George Mason University’s Mercatus Center explains why this is so bad for the state (beyond the obvious.)
…the situation in Illinois is further complicated by a provision in its state constitution that essentially prevents the government from doing anything that would result in “diminished or impaired” pensions.
“That pretty much ties their hands. They can’t change benefit formulas going forward for their employees,” she says. “They’ve built a house that is so rigid on very weak foundation, so there’s no give. It’s been built by politics and fiscal institutions that are really poor.” (source)
A study by City.com reveals that the crime rate in Phoenix dropped dramatically after the city dropped its sanctuary city policies.
There are many reason why crime rates decline over a certain period of time. But the study suggests a provocative link between fewer illegal aliens roaming the streets and a falling crime rate.
"When we eliminated our sanctuary policy back in 2008, we saw crime, violent and stolen vehicles fall by 25 percent," former Phoenix police officer and Executive Director of the Arizona Police Association Levi Bolton told Fox News Channel's William La Jeunesse in an interview. "We saw a 20-year low crime rate. When we were allowed and had the discretion to contact our federal immigration partners, crime fell drastically."
Lajeunesse reported data from City-Data.com revealing that from 2008 to 2009, the murder rate in Phoenix dropped by 27 percent. Other crimes fell as well. Auto thefts fell by 36 percent, robberies 23 percent, thefts by 19 percent, burglaries by 14 percent, and assaults by 13 percent, the report states. The rates fell again in 2010, but by smaller numbers. The overall crime index fell by 20 percent the first year after the city's policy change.
As Independence Day comes around again we should spend a few moments between barbecue and fireworks to think about the meaning of independence. The colonists who rebelled against the British Crown were, among other things, unhappy about taxation. Yet, as economist Gary North points out, the total burden of British imperial taxation was about one-to-two percent of national income.
Some 241 years later, Washington claims more of our money as its own than King George could have ever imagined. What do we get in this bargain? We get a federal government larger and more oppressive than before 1776, a government that increasingly views us as the enemy.
Think about NSA surveillance. As we have learned from brave whistleblowers like William Binney and Edward Snowden, the US intelligence community is not protecting us from foreigners who seek to destroy our way of life. The US intelligence community is itself destroying our way of life. Literally every one of our electronic communications is captured and stored in vast computer networks. Perhaps they will be used against “dissidents” in the future who question government tyranny.
We have no privacy in our computers or our phones. If the government wants to see what we are doing at any time, it simply switches on our phone camera or computer camera – or our “smart” television. Yet today we continue to hear, “I’ve got nothing to hide.”
In a recent interview on our Liberty Report, Edward Snowden made the excellent point that,
“saying that you don’t care about privacy because you have nothing to hide is no different than saying you don’t care about freedom of speech because you have nothing to say.”
Think about the TSA. The freedom to travel is fundamental, and our Fourth Amendment protection against unreasonable searches and seizures is the law of the land. But if you dare to exercise that right by purchasing an air ticket, you are treated like a Guantanamo Bay detainee. Don’t dare question as the TSA agents commit acts that would be crimes were they done by anyone else. Yet so many Americans still believe this is what it takes to be “safe.”
Think about the military industrial complex. The US government spends more on its military empire than much of the rest of the world combined. Our so-called mortal enemy Russia spends ten cents to every dollar we spend on weapons of war. Yet we are told we must spend more! Imagine the amazing peaceful scientific discoveries that might be made were so many researchers and scientists not on the government payroll designing new ways to end life on earth.
Think about the Fed. Since the creation of the Federal Reserve in 1913 the US dollar has lost some 98 percent of its value. Is the destruction of our currency not a cruel form of tyranny, hitting hardest those who can least afford it?
I think it’s time for us to declare our independence from an oppressive government that seeks to control our money and our lives in ways unimaginable to those who rebelled against the British Crown in 1776. Our revolution is peaceful, and it concentrates on winning hearts and minds one at a time. But it marches on. We must reclaim the spirit of independence every day and every night and intensify the struggle against those who seek to impose tyranny upon us.
No comments:
Post a Comment