The report, considered the most important indicator of internal security in Germany, draws a bleak picture and raises questions about the government's apparent passivity in face of mounting threats.... Meanwhile, the Erdoğan-aligned Islamist movement Millî Görüş (Turkish for "National Vision"), which has around 10,000 members in Germany, is the second-largest Islamist group in the country (the Salafist movement is now the largest Islamist grouping in Germany). Millî Görüş is strongly opposed to Muslim integration into European society.

"The BfV has found that all Islamist organizations active in Germany harbor anti-Semitic ideas and disseminate them in various ways. These ideas represent a considerable challenge for peaceful and tolerant coexistence in Germany." — Annual report of the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution (Bundesamt für Verfassungsschutz, BfV), 2019

"The goal of HAMAS is the establishment of an Islamist state in the entire territory of 'Palestine' — also through armed struggle. A strategy paper written in 2017 states: 'Resistance to occupation by all means is a legitimate right guaranteed by divine laws. At the heart of it lies the armed resistance.' By 'Palestine' HAMAS means the area between the Mediterranean Sea and Jordan, which also includes the territory of the State of Israel. Western countries such as Germany are seen by HAMAS as a haven where the organization focuses on collecting donations, recruiting new supporters, and propagating its propaganda." — Annual report of the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution (Bundesamt für Verfassungsschutz, BfV), 2019

The BfV noted a "high number" of attempts by "covert Pakistani procurement structures" illegally to obtain technology for use in Pakistan's nuclear weapons program. The BfV also observed a "significant increase" in attempts by Iran to obtain technology for its missile program, which was not part of the Iran nuclear deal. The BfV reported that Syrian intermediaries were also continuing efforts to obtain products for weapons of mass destruction, including chemical weapons.

Argentine President Mauricio Macri is taking a historic step and preparing to officially designate Hezbollah as a foreign terrorist organization in Argentina, the first designation of its kind in Latin America.

Hezbollah, Lebanon's "Party of God," is first and foremost the primary terrorist proxy of the Islamic Republic of Iran. By calling and legally designating them for what they are -- a foreign terrorist group -- Argentine officials can now begin to anticipate Hezbollah's actions by communicating with more than 57 nations worldwide in the same counterterrorism language.

The purpose of anti-terrorism is to anticipate terrorist actions in order to neutralize them. It is hopeless to wait until an attack takes place and then take action. By designating Hezbollah as a foreign terrorist organization President Macri is leading Latin America in the global fight against Islamist terrorism. In doing so, he is also honoring the memory of the 85 Argentines who died in the 1994 AMIA attack and reminding us all that Iran and Hezbollah are very much a global threat.

As indicated by the US in its statement, the problem with these government-led drives for more censorship in the name of fighting "terrorist and violent extremist content online" is where one draws the line as to what constitutes "hate speech", and the extent to which such drives can manage to uphold the rights of citizens to free speech.

In Europe, hate-speech laws have increasingly been used to shut down the speech of citizens who disagree with government migration policies.

The claim of preventing the spread of terrorist content has also been used as an excuse in attempts to shut down political opponents....

At the same time, the different signatories to the Christchurch Call to Action appear to have different views on what constitutes terrorism in the first place, further complicating how one should define 'terrorist content'.

The fight for Tripoli has killed more than 750 people – not a stunning number when compared to 9/11, but not small enough to be ignored like a bomb blowing up in Paris, Istanbul or Berlin.

Earlier, during the first signs of the Arab Spring, Erdoğan took to the idea of bringing together Muslims of the Middle East and uniting them under a Turkish empire that was being reborn – with him as the new caliph.

Erdoğan was the rock star in Beirut or Cairo not because poor Arabs were desperately waiting for the return of Turks to lead them -- Turkey has serious friction with Iraq, Syria, Jordan, Lebanon, Egypt and the United Arab Emirates -- but simply because they were programmed to cozy up to any anti-Zionist man, animal or plant.

Add to that picture a rising alliance of all those Arab states with Western states and corporate actors in exploring hydrocarbons in the Eastern Mediterranean, and it becomes hard to find anyone who wishes to play on the Turkish side.

By choosing to hold the protests under the banner of the "Three No's," the organizers of the "Great March of Return" have again proven that the weekly demonstrations are not about improving the living conditions of Palestinians or easing restrictions imposed on the Gaza Strip. Instead, the message the organizers are sending to the Palestinians and the rest of the world is: "We don't recognize Israel's right to exist and therefore we will never make negotiate or make peace with it."

Hamas's two other "No's" – no to recognizing Israel and no to making peace with Israel – do not come as a surprise. In fact, Hamas appears to be reminding Palestinians of its true objectives as outlined in its 1988 charter: "There is no solution for the Palestinian question expect through Jihad (holy war). Initiatives, proposals and international conferences are all a waste of time and vain endeavors...[Hamas] believes that the land of Palestine is an Islamic Waqf consecrated for future Muslim generations until Judgement Day. It, or any part of it, should not be squandered."

This is all that Hamas has to offer the Palestinians 12 years after its violent takeover of the Gaza Strip? Sadly, thousands of Palestinians continue to heed Hamas's call for trying to breach the border with Israel every Friday while ignoring that it is their leaders who are mainly responsible for dragging them from one disaster to another.

The root of these violations appears to be Turkey's denial of its extermination of the indigenous Christian peoples from 1913 to 1923.

"[Denial] is the final stage that lasts throughout and always follows genocide. It is among the surest indicators of further genocidal massacres." — Dr. Gregory H. Stanton; President, Genocide Watch; "The Ten Stages of Genocide", 2016

To this day, Turkey refuses to acknowledge its past and present crimes against the indigenous peoples whose rights it has vowed to protect. This is among many things that differentiates Turkey from civilized nations that have taken serious steps to improve the rights of their native peoples.

Experienced lawyers with whom I have discussed the case -- both prosecutors and defense attorneys -- worry that the thumb of media and political pressure will be placed on the scales of justice when it comes to the exercise of prosecutorial discretion and the decision to try or settle a case.

Consider the situation of a prosecutor today or tomorrow who has a weak federal case involving sexual allegations. He has two options: the first is he can try to make a deal based on the relative strength of his case and of the defense case. But if he makes that deal, he risks criticism for being too soft on sex offenders. His second option is to take the weak case to trial and risk losing. But even if he loses, the risks to him personally are less great because he can blame the loss on the judge or the jury. A deal, on the other hand, is totally attributed to the prosecutor, as evidenced by the Acosta resignation. So, a simple cost-benefit analysis will incline a prosecutor to litigate rather than settle.

In the post-Acosta world, prosecutors will bring cases to trial even if the likelihood of a conviction is questionable, as it was in the Epstein case. The result of this change will be more trials, more crowded courtroom dockets and fewer convictions. That is not good for defendants, victims or for the rule of law.

Erdogan may be intelligent enough to understand that things do not always go the way one likes. He led a remarkable economic resurgence in Turkey but is now presiding over what looks like an economic meltdown with rampant inflation, falling productivity and shrinking job opportunities. Rather than calming things down, his authoritarian moves, including the sacking of the Central Bank governor, have intensified the crisis. His trademark "no-enemies" foreign policy has been replaced by a policy that seems designed to turn everyone, including NATO allies and European Union partners, not to mention Arab states, against Turkey.

His party's claim of being "whiter than white" is hard to sustain as his entourage sinks deeper in the grey of corruption. More importantly, his success in persuading the "backward" half of Turkey that it could gain power through elections no longer enjoys the same level of support it once did even in deep Anatolia.

Good or bad, the once-successful Erdogan recipe seems not to be working anymore. The bashkhan has read his text, played his part and has nothing new to utter. The play has to go on but, for him, the finger may be pointing to exit.

In 2017, a Swedish police report, "Utsatta områden 2017" ("Vulnerable Areas 2017") showed that there are 61 such areas -- also known as no-go zones -- in Sweden. They encompass 200 criminal networks, consisting of an estimated 5,000 criminals. Most of the inhabitants are non-Western immigrants and their descendants.

In March, the Swedish National Forensic Centre estimated that since 2012, the number of shootings classified as murder or attempted murder had increased by almost 100 percent.

"Sweden is at war and it is the politicians who are responsible. Five nights in a row, cars have been set on fire in the university town of Lund. Such insane acts have occurred on hundreds of occasions in various places in Sweden over the past fifteen years. From 1955 to 1985, not a single car was ignited in Malmö, Gothenburg, Stockholm or Lund.... None of these criminals is starving or lacking in access to clean water. They have a roof over their heads and they have been offered free schooling.... They do not live in dilapidated houses.... It is called upbringing and this is missing for thousands of girls and boys in Swedish homes today." — Björn Ranelid, Swedish author, Expressen, July 5, 2019.

"Very few things were better in Sweden [before].... We have built a strong country, where we take care of each other. Where society takes responsibility and no man is left alone". — Swedish Prime Minister Stefan Löfven.

Sadly, many Swedes probably feel terribly left alone in a country that increasingly resembles a war zone.

Huawei is in no position to resist Beijing's demands to illicitly gather intelligence. For one thing, Beijing owns Huawei. The Shenzhen-based enterprise maintains it is "employee-owned," but that is an exaggeration. Founder Ren Zhengfei holds a 1 percent stake, and the remainder is effectively owned by the state. Moreover, in the Communist Party's top-down system, no one can resist a command from the ruling organization.

The concern is that the Chinese government and military will be able to use Huawei equipment to remotely manipulate devices networked on the Internet of Things (IoT), no matter where those devices are located. So, China may be able to drive your car into oncoming traffic, unlock your front door, or turn off or speed up your pacemaker.

On Tuesday, Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross echoed earlier administration comments when he promised his department would only issue exemptions "where there is no threat to U.S. national security." That sounds reassuring, but it is not possible to divide Huawei into threatening and non-threatening components. Huawei management can take profits from innocuous-looking parts of the business to support the obviously dangerous parts. Money is fungible, so the only safe course would be to prohibit all transactions with the company.

Beijing, buoyed by the talk of the American climb-down, is now fast selling Huawei equipment around the world, which means, in the normal course of events, the Chinese will soon control the world's 5G backbone.

Evidently, Palestinian leaders do not grasp that the Palestinian public cares a great deal more about being treated like human beings by their own leaders than about anti-Israel and anti-US rhetoric.

This incitement is Palestinian leaders' way of distracting attention from problems at home. They want their people to be busy hating someone else – in this case Israel, the US and pro-US Arab leaders. Otherwise, these people might wake up one fine morning and demand reform, transparency and democracy from their leaders in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip.

If Palestinian leaders spent a fraction of the time that they waste on condemning Israel and the US, on bringing good government to their people, the Palestinians would be in a much better situation. It seems that some senior Palestinian leaders cannot go to sleep at night without having disgorged fiery statements against Israel and the US. Needless to say, this does not make for particularly constructive governance.

When fighting an unseen peace plan becomes a greater priority than bettering the lives of your people, one can only say that, with failed leaders such as these, the time has come for the Palestinian public to raise its collective voice and demand its rights from its unelected leaders in the West Bank and Gaza Strip. Until this happens, Palestinian leaders will continue to enjoy the good life on the extremely burdened backs of its people.

In other words, forget everything about the free exchange of ideas: the UN feels that its 'values' are being threatened and those who criticize those values must therefore be shut down.

Naturally, the UN assures everyone that, "Addressing hate speech does not mean limiting or prohibiting freedom of speech. It means keeping hate speech from escalating into something more dangerous, particularly incitement to discrimination, hostility and violence, which is prohibited under international law".

Except the UN most definitely seeks to prohibit freedom of speech, especially the kind that challenges the UN's agendas. This was evident with regard to the UN Global Compact on Migration, in which it was explicitly stated that public funding to "media outlets that systematically promote intolerance, xenophobia, racism and other forms of discrimination towards migrants" should be stopped.

In contrast to the UN Global Migration compact, the UN's action plan against hate speech does contain a definition of what the UN considers to be "hate" and it happens to be the broadest and vaguest of definitions possible: "Any kind of communication in speech, writing or behaviour, that attacks or uses pejorative or discriminatory language with reference to a person or a group on the basis of who they are, in other words, based on their religion, ethnicity, nationality, race, colour, descent, gender or other identity factor". With a definition as broad as this, all speech could be labelled "hate".

The new action plan plays straight into the OIC's decades-long attempts to ban criticism of Islam as 'hate speech'. In the wake of the launch of Guterres' action plan, Pakistan has already presented a six-point plan "to address the new manifestations of racism and faith-based hatred, especially Islamophobia" at the United Nations headquarters. The presentation was organized by Pakistan along with Turkey, the Holy See and the UN.

US, British, French and other Western bases in the region are the most likely targets for future terrorist attacks, and a number of Western governments are understood to have responded by ordering their military and diplomatic missions in the region to upgrade security arrangements.

The discovery of the African network follows recent revelations of Iran's attempts to expand its terror network in Europe, as well as other parts of the globe including Latin America and the Middle East.

The Iranian cells are said to be active in a number of African countries including Sudan, Chad, Ghana, Niger, Gambia and the Central African Republic.

Last month, The Jerusalem Post, quoting from an intelligence report from the German state of Hesse, claimed that Iran was one of the main state actors involved in espionage in Germany. It said Iran was involved in the illicit procurement of technology for weapons of mass destruction.

German Defense Minister Ursula von der Leyen, nominated to be the next President of the European Commission, has called for the creation of a European superstate. "My aim is the United States of Europe..." she said in an interview with Der Spiegel. She has also called for the creation of a European Army.

Belgian Prime Minister Charles Michel, nominated to be the next President of the European Council, has said that Eastern European countries opposed to burden-sharing on migration should lose some of their EU rights. He is also a strong proponent of the Iran nuclear deal.

Spanish Foreign Minister Josep Borrell, nominated to replace Federica Mogherini as High Representative of the Union for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy, is a well-known supporter of the mullahs in Iran. Borrell has also said that he hopes Britain will leave the EU because it is an impediment to the creation of a European superstate.

International Monetary Fund Managing Director Christine Lagarde, nominated to be the next President of the European Central Bank, has supported U.S. President Donald J. Trump's trade war with China. "President Trump has a point on intellectual property. It is correct that nobody should be stealing intellectual property to move ahead.... On these points clearly the game has to change, the rules have to be respected."

"The best cure for Europhilia is always to observe the EU's big beasts at their unguarded worst... unencumbered by any attachment to democracy, accountability or even basic morality... [W]e witnessed rare footage of the secretive process that propels so many retreads and second-rate apparatchiks into positions of immense power in Brussels and Frankfurt, utterly disregarding public opinion.... Everything that is wrong with the EU was shamelessly on display." — Allister Heath, The Telegraph.

The progression of terrorist advances in Burkina Faso has reached such major proportions that in January, a state of emergency was imposed on 14 of its provinces, where the situation is so bad that it is too dangerous for children to go to school for fear of attack.

Unless international and NATO efforts are successful in transforming Burkina Faso's army into a more adequate defense force, the country is likely to succumb to ungovernable chaos.

Burkina Faso's army desperately needs to begin instituting political and social reforms. This, in tandem with complementary efforts by the U.S. State Department and European foreign ministries, is a necessary step towards retarding the onslaught of terrorist networks.

If Burkina Faso does dissolve into total chaos and loses its sovereignty to terrorists, its equally vulnerable neighbors will surely soon follow.