LCCC ENGLISH DAILY NEWS BULLETIN

December 11/16

Compiled & Prepared by: Elias Bejjani

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Bible Quotations For Today
The works that the Father has given me to complete, the very works that I am doing, testify on my behalf that the Father has sent me
Holy Gospel of Jesus Christ according to Saint John 05/31-36/:"‘If I testify about myself, my testimony is not true. There is another who testifies on my behalf, and I know that his testimony to me is true. You sent messengers to John, and he testified to the truth. Not that I accept such human testimony, but I say these things so that you may be saved. He was a burning and shining lamp, and you were willing to rejoice for a while in his light. But I have a testimony greater than John’s. The works that the Father has given me to complete, the very works that I am doing, testify on my behalf that the Father has sent me."

For Christ is the end of the law so that there may be righteousness for everyone who believes.
Letter to the Romans 10/01-13/:"Brothers and sisters, my heart’s desire and prayer to God for them is that they may be saved. I can testify that they have a zeal for God, but it is not enlightened. For, being ignorant of the righteousness that comes from God, and seeking to establish their own, they have not submitted to God’s righteousness. For Christ is the end of the law so that there may be righteousness for everyone who believes. Moses writes concerning the righteousness that comes from the law, that ‘the person who does these things will live by them.’ But the righteousness that comes from faith says, ‘Do not say in your heart, "Who will ascend into heaven?" ’ (that is, to bring Christ down) ‘or "Who will descend into the abyss?" ’ (that is, to bring Christ up from the dead). But what does it say? ‘The word is near you, on your lips and in your heart’ (that is, the word of faith that we proclaim); because if you confess with your lips that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved. For one believes with the heart and so is justified, and one confesses with the mouth and so is saved. The scripture says, ‘No one who believes in him will be put to shame.’ For there is no distinction between Jew and Greek; the same Lord is Lord of all and is generous to all who call on him. For, ‘Everyone who calls on the name of the Lord shall be saved.’"

Titles For Latest LCCC Bulletin analysis & editorials from miscellaneous sources published on December 10-11/16
Question: "Is it true that everything happens for a reason?"/GotQuestions.org/ December 10/2016
The Myth of Israel's Demographic Doomsday/Gregg Roman/The Hill/December 10/2016
Critics of Islam on Trial in Europe: Wilders Convicted/Giulio Meotti/Gatestone Institute/December 10/16
The Guilty Verdict Dutch Politicians Wanted So Much/Douglas Murray/Gatestone Institute/December 10/16
What if Assad wins/ Dr. Azeem Ibrahim/Al Arabiya/December 10/16
A requiem for Aleppo/Hisham Melhem/Al Arabiya/December 10/16
The Gulf and Britain/Mshari Al Thaydi/Al Arabiya/December 10/16

Titles For Latest Lebanese Related News published on December 10-11/16
Lebanese Army marks 9th assassination commemoration of Martyr Francois Hajj, under President Aoun's patronage
Hariri, Ambassador of Portugal meet over developments
Berri condemns terrorist attack on Egypt
LAF raids Syrian encampments in Qaa, detains tens of Syrians
Abou Faour: Government atmosphere more positive, recent HaririBerri meeting to give great momentum
Geagea, Richard meet over developments
Sakr presses charges against four people over ISIS affiliation
Israel Readies for 'Super-Tech' Stealth Fighters, Keeps Eye on Hizbullah
Hizbullah Insists on Cabinet of 30 Ministers
Army Raids in Masharih al-Qaa in Search of Gunmen
Illegal Immigrants Ring Facilitating Prostitution Busted in Dora
Judge Charges Four over IS Affiliation

Titles For Latest LCCC Bulletin For Miscellaneous Reports And News published on December 09-10/16
Explosions hit near Turkey’s Besiktas Stadium
Four people killed in cargo train explosion in Bulgaria
Former Iran forces leader appointed to the helm of the Basij militias
Iraq sends reinforcements to eastern Mosul after ISIS attack
UN General Assembly calls for action on Syria in Canada-led resolution
US is Sending 200 More Troops to Syria to Battle IS
US-Backed Alliance Announces 'Phase Two' of Raqa Campaign
New Raids on Rebel Aleppo ahead of Talks to Save City
Syria Talks in Paris as West Watches Aleppo Slip Away
Russia Interfered in US Election to Help Trump Win
Kuwait Names New Oil Minister as Cabinet Formed
Norway Expresses Concern over Israeli Settlement Bill
France Aims to Extend State of Emergency until July 15
The Iran Regime Panics as US Senate Passed the Sanctions Act
Bahrain's Foreign Minister: Terrorist Threat Caused by Iran Regime Must Be Countered
Iran Regime's Attorney General Acknowledges Blocking 13-14 Thousand Websites Each Week
Iran: Fears of Deep Divide Among Regime's Factions
Iran: Deterioration of Political Prisoner's Health on the 45th Day of Hunger Strike
Iran: Thousands of People Protest the Environmental Catastrophe

Links From Jihad Watch Site for on December 10-11/16
UK: Muslim singer’s family gets death threats from Muslims for photo of their Christmas tree.
Houston: Muslim pleads guilty to mosque arson that Hamas-linked CAIR called “hate incident”.
Australia: Sunni Muslims get 20 years for jihad plot to bomb Shia prayer hall.
Germany: “Almost three quarters of all Algerian immigrants have popped up as suspects” in sex assault cases.
Austria: Sexual assaults by Muslim migrants rose by 133% in 2016.
South Australia state government blocks bill to prevent forced child marriages.
Spain: Muslim migrants break through border fence, over 80 still at large.
Sweden: Muslim migrants defecate, masturbate, scream Islamic chants in church pews.
Islamic State praises Ohio State jihadi, encourages more knife attacks.
Quebec: Muslims who joined jihad in Syria “left, I think, with good intentions, to do their duty as Muslims”.
Anni Cyrus’ Unknown: Warranted Fear: Donald Trump or Keith Ellison?.

Links From Christian Today Site for on December 10-11/16
CIA Says Russia Intervened To Help Trump Win White House
Dylann Roof Trial: 'I Did It,' Church Gunman Says
What Is The Future Of The Religious Right Under A Trump Presidency?
Why It's OK If People Don't Respond To Your Evangelism
Pastor Bill Johnson Condemns Homosexual Practice As 'Violation' Of God's Design
Christian Couple Rewarded for Their Faith as Their Conjoined Twins Survive Risky Separation Surgeries

Latest Lebanese Related News published on December 10-11/16
Lebanese Army marks 9th assassination commemoration of Martyr Francois Hajj, under President Aoun's patronage
Sat 10 Dec 2016/NNA - Under the patronage of President Michel Aoun represented by Higher Education Minister Elias Bou Saab, the Lebanese Army marked, on Saturday, the ninth assassination commemoration of Army Major General Francois al-Hajj, in a Mass service held at Saint Maroun's Church in Gemayze in presence of senior political officials and prominent figures. Presiding over the Mass, Parish Priest Monsignor Antoine Assaf recalled the many attributes of the late Martyr al-Hajj and his sacrifices for the sake of his nation. "The great thing about humanity is the love man gives in his life, as long as the human is in the image of God," said Assaf, adding that "the essence of Christmas which we are now living is love.""The wound of Maj. Gen. Francois al-Hajj's martyrdom will never heal, but the joy of Christmas amidst his martyrdom will still grow, despite the sadness," Assaf went on. "The late Martyr carried his cause to his home, a cause which was also shared by the Army institution and for which he paid his life," he added. The Monsignor considered that "the basic human battle nowadays is that of thought," noting that "extremism is an evil spirit, transmitted to people through ideas, whereby we are all concerned with confronting evil. "He emphasized that "the Army institution did not ever fall into the trap of extremism," adding that "extremism should never be faced with extremism."

Hariri, Ambassador of Portugal meet over developments
Sat 10 Dec 2016/NNA - Prime Minister-designate Saad Hariri met on Saturday at the Central House with Ambassador of Portugal, Joao Perestrello, with talks featuring high on recent developments.

Berri condemns terrorist attack on Egypt
Sat 10 Dec 2016/NNA - Head of the Arab Parliamentary Union, Lebanese House Speaker Nabih Berri, condemned the latest terrorist attack in Egypt. A statement issued by Berri said that the Union sternly denounces this crime, which left six police officers dead in Cairo. "We are certain that Egypt's stamina to fight terrorism would not be deterred," the statement read.

LAF raids Syrian encampments in Qaa, detains tens of Syrians
Sat 10 Dec 2016/NNA - The Lebanese Armed Forces carried out at dawn on Saturday extensive raids of Syrian encampments in Qaa in search of wanted persons and illegal arms.
Tens of Syrians were apprehend and numerous weapons were confiscated along with illegal motorcycles.

Abou Faour: Government atmosphere more positive, recent HaririBerri meeting to give great momentum
Sat 10 Dec 2016/NNA - Caretaker Public Health Minister, Wael Abou Faour, deemed on Saturday that "the recent meeting between House Speaker, Nabih Berri, and Caretaker Prime Minister, Saad Hariri, shall give huge impetus to pushing things forward with regards to the new government formation.""More positivity is witnessed at the government level," he added, speaking during the inauguration of new departments at Kherbet Kanafar Public Hospital. "Our concern is that this new presidential mandate would start with a new page in regards to relations between the Lebanese altogether," Abou Faour underscored.

Geagea, Richard meet over developments
Sat 10 Dec 2016/NNA - Lebanese Forces chief, Samir Geagea, met on Saturday at his residence in Me'rab with US Ambassador to Lebanon, Elizabeth Richard, with talks touching on the most recent political developments on the local and domestic scenes.

Sakr presses charges against four people over ISIS affiliation
Sat 10 Dec 2016/NNA - The Government's Commissioner at the Military Court, Judge Sakr Sakr, on Saturday pressed charges against four individuals, two Lebanese and two Syrians, over affiliation to ISIS terrorist group, National News Agency Correspondent said on Saturday. Individuals were accused of carrying out terrorist acts, preparing for suicide attacks, bombing security forces' centers and checkpoints in close proximity to official headquarters, the same reporter concluded.

Israel Readies for 'Super-Tech' Stealth Fighters, Keeps Eye on Hizbullah
Agence France Presse/Naharnet/December 10/16/Israel will Monday receive its first F-35 stealth fighter jets, hailed as technological marvels whose helmets alone cost more than most people's homes but criticised for their price and initial flaws. Built by US aerospace giant Lockheed Martin, the first two planes' arrival in Israel is being welcomed as a major event for the country's military as it seeks to maintain dominance in the turbulent Middle East. US Defence Secretary Ashton Carter is to attend the arrival along with his Israeli counterpart Avigdor Lieberman at the Nevatim air base in the country's south. The delivery of the first two of 50 F-35s to be purchased by Israel comes as the years-long development of the most expensive plane in history reaches a critical stage. While a list of countries have ordered the planes, Israel, which receives more than $3 billion a year in US defence aid, will be the first with an operational F-35 squadron outside the United States. "I think we don't fully understand the big advantage of the F-35," an Israeli air force official said. "I think it's going to be learned in the next few months, maybe years. I think it's a very super-tech airplane." Israel has given it the name "Adir" -- which means "mighty" in Hebrew. Its first planes are expected to be operational within a year after delivery. It will be receiving the F-35A model for standard takeoff and landings. The B and C models are for short takeoffs and aircraft carriers. Among their main features are advanced stealth capabilities to help pilots evade sophisticated missile systems. The single-pilot jets can carry an array of weapons and travel at a supersonic speed of Mach 1.6, or around 1,200 miles per hour (around 1,900 kilometres per hour). It is unclear if Israel's planes will be able to deliver nuclear bombs. Israel is believed to be the Middle East's sole nuclear-armed power, though it has never acknowledged it.
 - High-tech helmet -The ultra-high-tech helmet, at a cost of some $400,000 each, sounds like something out of a science-fiction film. It includes its own operating system, with data that appears on the helmet visor and is also shared elsewhere. Thermal and night vision as well as 360-degree views are possible with cameras mounted on the plane. Israeli firm Elbit Systems has been involved in the helmet's production. In Israel, the planes, designed for multiple combat situations, will initially replace a group of ageing F-16s.
 They are seen as helping the country maintain its edge in the Middle East, particularly as its main enemy Iran seeks further influence in the region. "The F-35 has been designed to deal with the most advanced threat systems now being fielded in the Middle East," Lockheed Martin's Steve Over told AFP by email.
Israel is especially concerned over whether Iran will seek to develop nuclear weapons by violating the international accord it has signed with world powers aimed at preventing it. The country is also keeping an eye on Lebanon's powerful Shiite militant group Hezbollah, with which Israel fought a devastating war in 2006. Beyond that, in neighbouring Syria, Russia has deployed the sophisticated S-300 and S-400 anti-aircraft systems as it conducts an air campaign in support of President Bashar al-Assad. - 'Only game in town' -Israel is buying its first 33 jets at an average price of about $110 million (103.5 million euros) each. The government last month approved the purchase of the remaining 17. As a comparison, in 2001, Israel agreed to buy 52 additional F-16s from Lockheed Martin at a total cost of $1.3 billion. While the technology can seem dazzling, there have been questions over whether the plane will be worth the cost. A list of flaws have been uncovered, including one where pilots who weighed less than 136 pounds (62 kilos) risked being killed by its eject system. There have also been software bugs and technical glitches, though Lockheed Martin assures such issues have been overcome. Some in Israel have also said the price of the planes will limit the number that can ultimately be purchased, while losing any in combat will be particularly costly. There have also been questions over whether upgrades to the air force's existing fleet could have sufficed. But the F-35 was "the only game in town" since Israel relies so heavily on US defence aid, said Yiftah Shapir of Israel's Institute for National Security Studies. "We couldn't go and buy French or British or Russian," he said. "When you have an ally like the United States, the United States would not have allowed that." In the United States, the air force declared an initial squadron of F-35As ready for combat in August, without giving a timeline for actual combat. The US Marine Corps in 2015 announced that a first group of F-35Bs had attained initial operational capability, though these too have not yet been used in combat.

Hizbullah Insists on Cabinet of 30 Ministers
Naharnet/December 10/16/The latest meetings between some political parties delved on easing the difficulties hampering the formation of a new cabinet, have not arrived at an adequate solution for the allotment of the public works ministerial portfolio, while Hizbullah insists on the formation of a 30-minister cabinet, al-Joumhouria daily reported Saturday. Sources following up closely on the meetings between President Michel Aoun and Lebanese Forces chief Samir Geagea on one hand and between Prime Minister-designate Saad Hariri and Marada Movement chief MP Suleiman Franjieh on the other, told the daily that a final decision on the controversial public works portfolios has not be reached. Speaker Nabih Berri and the Lebanese Forces chief both insist that the ministry should be part of his share in the cabinet. Furthermore, Franjieh is adamant to be given one of three ministerial portfolios, the health, telecommunications or public works. The sources remarked that Hariri's meeting with Berri late on Friday was only to “test the waters” and weigh the possibility if the Speaker would concede the public works ministry in return for one of two, the agriculture or health ministry. In light of the prevailing atmospheres, the sources said some hurdles could be overcome if an agreement was reached to form a 30-minister cabinet which Hizbullah insists on adopting to guarantee a wide-scale participation for his allies. Aoun, however, refuses the suggestion while Speaker Nabih Berri said it could be negotiable. Media reports said that Berri and Aoun have launched efforts aimed at resolving the obstacles that are hindering the formation process. Berri and Hariri were expected to discuss the ministerial portfolio that will be offered to Marada Movement chief MP Suleiman Franjieh, “knowing that Hariri did not make any offer to the Marada chief during their meeting two days ago,” the reports said. Franjieh's demand to get a key ministerial portfolio is one of the main declared obstacles that are delaying the formation of the new cabinet. Franjieh has announced that Marada will not join the new cabinet if it does not get one of three so-called important portfolios – public works, energy or telecommunications. Berri, who is negotiating on behalf of the Hizbullah-led March 8 forces, has backed Franjieh's demand and insisted that Marada should be represented in the government with an important portfolio.

Army Raids in Masharih al-Qaa in Search of Gunmen
Naharnet/December 10/16/The Lebanese Army staged wide security raids at dawn on Saturday in the northeastern region of Masharih al-Qaa and arrested tens of suspects, the National News Agency reported Saturday. The Airborne Regiment, a Land Border Regiment unit and the Army Intelligence staged the raids in the Syrian refugee encampments in Masharih al-Qaa in search of fugitives, NNA added. Tens of suspects were arrested. The Army confiscated arms and ammunition in addition to several stolen vehicles and undocumented motorbikes. The detainees were transferred to a military position. They will be handed later to the related authorities.

Illegal Immigrants Ring Facilitating Prostitution Busted in Dora
Naharnet/December 10/16/General Security forces in Mount Lebanon busted 36 African suspects in Beirut's Dora area on charges of residing illegally in Lebanon and for facilitating prostitution, the National News Agency reported Saturday. “After thoroughly tracking members of the network, comprised of 36 individuals of different African nationalities, General Security Intelligence Units were able to bust the cell and confiscate some amounts of hashish and cocaine in their possession,” NNA said. Investigations began with the assailants who will be transferred later to the related authorities.

Judge Charges Four over IS Affiliation
Naharnet/December 10/16/State Commissioner to the Military Court Judge Saqr Saqr pressed charges against four individuals, two Lebanese and two Syrians, over affiliation to the Islamic State terrorist group, the National News Agency said on Saturday. The suspects were accused of carrying out terrorist acts, preparing for suicide attacks, bombing security forces' centers and checkpoints in close proximity to official headquarters, NNA added.

Latest LCCC Bulletin For Miscellaneous Reports And News published on December 10-11/16
Explosions hit near Turkey’s Besiktas Stadium
Al Arabiya English Saturday, 10 December 2016/Two explosions have rocked the Turkish city of Istanbul near a football stadium, killing at least 13 and wounding at least 20 people on Friday night. The two blasts hit near the Besiktas Stadium just two hours after the end of a football match. Soon after, multiple gun shots were heard coming from the same location. “Our sources tell us that the riot police van was targeted as it was exiting the Besiktas Stadium. We are seeing the entire neighborhoods surrounding the area on high alert with police and ambulance cars everywhere,” Al Arabiya’s sister news channel Al Hadath’s correspondent reported from Istanbul. Most of Turkey's state television and media outlets were observing live coverage silence of the attack on Friday night. Turkey’s radio and television board had issued a temporary coverage ban citing national security concerns. It said “to avoid broadcasts that can result in public fear, panic or chaos, or that will serve the aims of terrorist organizations
 An eyewitness said that the stadium is close to famous tourist sites Taksim Square and Istiklal Avenue that are frequented by Europeans and Arabs. “There were nearly 500 people near Taksim Square and Istiklal Avenue when the explosions detonated. A lot of the hotels near the stadium that are often frequented by Arab tourists were evacuated by security forces for fear of another attack during the night,” said Bashir Ayash, a Syrian journalist who was close to the scene of the attack. Turkey has experienced a deadly year of attacks in its two biggest cities of Ankara and Istanbul that left dozens of people dead and placed the country on high alert. “We are going to see a lot of the security apparatus in Turkey tightening and raising their alerts to the highest levels as we approach the end of the year. Turkey has seen so many deadly attacks hit its cities this year alone and tonight’s attack shows how tense the situation on the ground really is,” political analyst Islam Ozkan told Al Hadath.

Four people killed in cargo train explosion in Bulgaria
 Reuters, Sofia Saturday, 10 December 2016/Four people were killed and another 25 were injured after a cargo train derailed and exploded in the northeastern Bulgarian village of Hitrino, demolishing at least 20 buildings, police said on Saturday. Two of the train’s tanks, carrying propane-butane and propylene, derailed at the station of the village, hit electricity line and exploded in flames early on Saturday, a senior police officer said. “Two blasts have caused a serious fire and ruined at least 20 buildings. There are many people injured ... many with burns,” Interior Ministry Chief Secretary Georgi Kostov said. Some 150 firemen are trying to put out the fire and are searching for survivors in houses near the train lines. Prime Minister's appeal  Police said they are investigating the incident.Bulgarian Prime Minister Boiko Borisov is traveling to the village, some 280 km northeast of Sofia and home to around 800 people. Borisov appealed to Bulgarians in the northern city of Shumen to donate blood to the local hospital where the injured are being transported.

Former Iran forces leader appointed to the helm of the Basij militias
Saleh Hamid, AlArabiya.net Saturday, 10 December 2016/Iran has appointed Brigadier General Gholam Hossein Gheibparvar as the new commander of Iran’s Basij (mobilization) Forces after years of serving as the commanders of the country’s forces. He replaces Mohammad Reza Naqdi, who served as the Basij’s leader for nine years. Gheibparvar served as the commander of Iranian forces in Syria since October 2015. He is known as a strong critic and silencer of Iranian internal opposition members, especially the student opposition groups in universities and the popular Green Movement that that arose after the 2009 Iranian presidential election, in which protesters demanded the removal of former President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad from office.

Iraq sends reinforcements to eastern Mosul after ISIS attack
 The Associated Press, Makhmour, Iraq Saturday, 10 December 2016/An Iraqi commander says reinforcements have been sent to eastern Mosul after a major ISIS counterattack drove troops back last week, further slowing a nearly two-month-old offensive to retake the city. Major General Najim al-Jabouri said that Federal Police and Iraqi army units have moved from the southern front to the city’s east, where most of the fighting has been concentrated in recent weeks. On hold  Iraqi commanders had hoped to push up from the south to take Mosul’s international airport, but those plans appear to be on hold. Iraqi troops were driven back last week within hours of seizing the al-Salam hospital in eastern Mosul, which ISIS had been using as a base. More than 20 soldiers were killed before special forces opened a corridor for them to retreat. 

UN General Assembly calls for action on Syria in Canada-led resolution
UN General Assembly adopts Canada-led resolution demanding immediate end to hostilities in Syria and action now for Syrian victims
December 9, 2016 - Ottawa, Ontario - Global Affairs Canada
The Honourable Stéphane Dion, Minister of Foreign Affairs, today issued the following statement regarding Canada’s continuing efforts to mobilize the international community in response to the violent conflict that continues to unfold in Syria:
 The tragic humanitarian situation in Syria is getting worse. The victims trapped inside Syria, in Aleppo in particular, need relief now. They need access to life-saving supplies and to stop being targeted in senseless and indiscriminate attacks.
 “Canada, along with the international community, is deeply concerned with the UN Security Council’s inaction. This is why today, given the continuing deadlock in the Security Council, the United Nations General Assembly overwhelmingly adopted a Canada-led resolution. It demands an immediate end to attacks on all civilians and an immediate cessation of hostilities; calls for rapid, safe and unhindered humanitarian access and the resumption of a peace process; condemns all terrorist attacks; urges all parties to comply with international humanitarian law; and calls for accountability.
 “The resolution passed with the support of a resounding 122 countries, sending a very strong and unified message to the Security Council and the parties involved in the conflict to stop the violence now and to support an inclusive Syrian-led political process facilitated by the UN.
 “I want to thank our permanent mission to the United Nations in New York for their continued efforts throughout this crisis, and towards the adoption of this strong resolution.
 “Canada will continue to urge the international community to take action for the victims of this tragedy, to pressure all parties involved, in particular the Assad regime and Russia, to immediately stop the attacks, to stop the blocking of life-saving humanitarian aid and to fully respect international humanitarian law and human rights in Syria.”
 Quick facts
There has been no aid to eastern Aleppo in 150 days. The last remaining stockpile of food rations was completely exhausted by November 13, 2016, there are no functioning hospitals and 25,000 people have been displaced from their homes since Saturday, November 26.
 On October 20, 2016, Canada, along with 71 other UN member states, successfully called for an informal session of the UN General Assembly to discuss the situation in Syria and to pressure all parties involved to cease the strikes on the civilian population and to allow unhindered humanitarian access.
 On December 1, 2016, Canada sent a letter to the President of the UN General Assembly on behalf of 73 member states urging that today’s formal plenary meeting on the situation in Syria be held.
 Over 6 million children in Syria need humanitarian assistance. Two million of them are living in areas hard to reach by the UN, and more than 700,000 people remain in other besieged areas across the country
 On February 8, 2016, the Government of Canada announced that it will be contributing $1.6 billion over the next three years in a comprehensive and integrated regional response to the crises in Syria and Iraq, with a focus on security, stabilization, humanitarian and development assistance, and enhanced diplomatic engagement.

US is Sending 200 More Troops to Syria to Battle IS
Associated Press/Naharnet/December 10/16/U.S. Defense Secretary Ash Carter says as many as 200 more American troops are being sent to Syria to help Kurdish and Arab fighters capture the Islamic State group's key stronghold of Raqqa. Carter made the announcement Saturday at a security conference in Manama, Bahrain. The extra troops will include special operations forces and are in addition to 300 U.S. troops already authorized for the effort to recruit, organize, train and advise local Syrian forces to combat IS. Carter said the extra troops will help the local forces in their anticipated push to retake Raqqa, the de facto capital of the extremist group's self-styled caliphate, and to deny sanctuary to IS after Raqqa is captured.

US-Backed Alliance Announces 'Phase Two' of Raqa Campaign
Agence France Presse/Naharnet/December 10/16/A US-backed alliance of Arab and Kurdish fighters announced on Saturday "phase two" of its campaign for the Islamic State group's Syrian bastion of Raqa. The announcement came after US Defence Secretary Ashton Carter told a security forum in Bahrain that Washington was sending an additional 200 troops to join the 300 it has already deployed in support of the offensive. The Syrian Democratic Forces will "begin phase two of the campaign, which aims to liberate territory west of Raqa and isolate the city," spokeswoman Jihan Sheikh Ahmed told reporters. Speaking in the village of Aaliyah, north of Raqa, Ahmed said the SDF had captured 700 square kilometres (270 square miles) of territory since it began its advance on the city on November 5. The alliance had also grown in size, she said, with more than 1,500 local fighters joining forces with the SDF after being "trained and equipped by the international coalition." The SDF's coordination with the US-led coalition "will be stronger and more effective during the second phase of the campaign," Ahmed said. Backed by coalition air strikes, the SDF has been pushing south from areas near the Turkish border, seizing a string of villages and advancing to within 25 kilometres (15 miles) of the city.With a pre-war population of about 240,000, Raqa is the de facto capital of the self-styled caliphate IS declared across Iraq and Syria in 2014. The jihadist group still holds Al-Bab, to the west, and most of the city of Deir Ezzor, to the southeast.

New Raids on Rebel Aleppo ahead of Talks to Save City
Agence France Presse/Naharnet/December 10/16/Fresh air strikes pummelled the shrinking rebel enclave in Aleppo on Saturday ahead of parallel talks in France and Switzerland aimed at saving the Syrian city from "complete" destruction. Foreign ministers from the Western and Arab backers of Syria's beleaguered opposition -- including US Secretary of State John Kerry -- were to discuss Aleppo's plight in Paris. US and Russian officials meanwhile were to gather in Geneva in a bid to stop the city from "being absolutely, completely, destroyed", Kerry said. Once the beating heart of Syria's industrial and commercial industries, Aleppo has witnessed some of the most brutal violence of the country's nearly six-year-old war. The city's east -- a rebel stronghold since 2012 -- has been the target of a major assault by forces loyal to President Bashar al-Assad's Russian-backed regime. In less than a month, government troops and allied militia have overrun around 85 percent of east Aleppo, trapping rebels in just a few neighbourhoods. Air strikes and regime rocket fire battered the last remaining rebel districts early Saturday, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights. Opposition groups fired back with rockets, according to the British-based monitor, which did not have immediate details on casualties in the exchange of fire. An AFP correspondent in west Aleppo could hear the hum of airplanes circling above, coupled with bombardment and machine gunfire on the city's east.
The strikes were so intense that windows in the west rattled and plumes of smoke could be seen rising from several points across the city's skyline. - 'Bombing is unreal' -"The bombing is unreal," said Ibrahim Abu al-Leith, spokesman for the White Helmets rescue force inside Aleppo. Abu al-Leith spoke to AFP from one of the last rebel-controlled zones in Aleppo's southeast, saying he had been forced to move homes because of the intensity of the raids. "The streets are full of people under the rubble. They are dying because we can't get them out," he added. On Friday, a barrage of rebel rockets on regime-held neighbourhoods in Aleppo killed 15 civilians, including four children, according to the Observatory, which relies on a network of sources on the ground. Two shells landed in rebel-held Kalasseh, with both the Observatory and witnesses telling AFP on Friday of cases of suffocation and head pains due to fumes from the attack. The opposition has accused the regime of using chlorine gas on rebel zones, which Damascus denies. With the fighting intensifying after a brief respite, the UN General Assembly demanded an immediate ceasefire and urgent aid deliveries, in a resolution adopted by a strong majority. But both Moscow and Damascus have rejected talk of a ceasefire without a rebel withdrawal from the city -- a demand that opposition groups have refused. Repeated talks between Kerry and Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov this week have failed to halt the violence, although Lavrov said Friday he hoped a truce deal could be reached soon. Kerry was not upbeat about the chances of success ahead of the meetings in Paris and Geneva on Saturday. "I know people are tired of these meetings, I'm tired of these meetings," Kerry said.
"But what am I supposed to do? Go home and have a nice weekend... while people are dying? Sit there in Washington and do nothing?"- New US troops -At least 409 civilians including 45 children have been killed in the government's offensive on east Aleppo launched on November 15, according to the Observatory. Another 113 people, including 35 children, have been killed by rebel fire on government-controlled west Aleppo in the same period. Tens of thousands of civilians have fled east Aleppo in recent weeks, although the UN said Friday it had received reports of rebels blocking some from leaving and of reprisals against residents who asked armed groups to leave. It also expressed concern about reports that hundreds of men had gone missing after fleeing to government-held territory. The fall of east Aleppo would be the biggest blow for the rebels since Syria's conflict broke out in early 2011. It began as a widespread protest movement against Assad's regime but has since evolved into an all-out war that has seen jihadists like the Islamic State group rise to prominence. On Saturday, Washington said it would send another 200 US troops to Syria to help an alliance of Kurdish and Arab fighters seize IS's bastion of Raqa. The fresh dispatch, announced by Defence Secretary Ashton Carter in Bahrain, will complement 300 American special forces already in Syria.

Syria Talks in Paris as West Watches Aleppo Slip Away
Agence France Presse/Naharnet/December 10/16/Western and Middle Eastern backers of Syria's weakened opposition gather in Paris Saturday to discuss a ceasefire, having watched the conflict turn decisively in favour of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and Russia. Foreign ministers from Europe, US Secretary of State John Kerry and their counterparts from Qatar and Saudi Arabia are likely to renew what have been so far ineffective calls for an end to the onslaught on Aleppo. Opposition-held areas of the city, home to hundreds of thousands of civilians, have been starved in a siege and pummelled by an offensive by Syrian forces backed by Iranian militias and Russian airpower. Retreating rebels now control only a pocket of Syria's second city, whose fate is seen as pivotal to the outcome of a nearly six-year-old war that has killed more than 300,000 people. Calls from Western leaders to stop the fighting and diplomacy at the UN have so far amounted to nothing with Assad and Russian President Vladimir Putin seemingly intent on pushing their advantage. The talks on Saturday, which will also include Turkey, the United Arab Emirates and Jordan, will focus on getting the warring parties back to the negotiating table for talks in Geneva.
"My goal in all this is... to get both sides, all of the forces, to the table in Geneva. And that's what we're working on," Kerry said as he arrived on Friday night. Russian and American officials will meet again in Geneva on Saturday to discuss the fighting, but even Kerry struggled to sound optimistic about an outcome. "I know people are tired of these meetings, I'm tired of these meetings," he told reporters. "But what am I supposed to do? Go home and have a nice weekend in Massachusetts, while people are dying? Sit there in Washington and do nothing?"Analysts say the timeframe and conditions of talks will be set in Damascus and Moscow, whose armies are in the ascendency despite allegations of war crimes and mounting civilian deaths. "Aleppo is a critical turning point," Robin Wright, a researcher at the United States Institute of Peace, told US National Public Radio (NPR). "Assad looks ever stronger."She said the rebels which have been armed and financially backed by the countries gathered in Paris now have "very diminished chances of being a viable alternative" to the Syrian regime.
- Assad or extremists? -Joshua Landis, director of the Center of Middle East Studies, also called Aleppo "a major turning point" that left the West and other countries which oppose Assad with few allies. Once the city falls, the largest remaining rebel bastion will be Idlib province, controlled by a coalition dominated by extremists from a former Al-Qaeda affiliate. The Islamic State jihadist group remains in control of territory around their de facto capital in Raqa. "It makes the prophecy of Assad come true: it is either me or radical Islamists," Landis told NPR. The election of Donald Trump in the United States, who favours closer relations with Putin, was already a bad omen for the opposition just before troops launched their assault on Aleppo in mid-November. Trump is expected to be more isolationist than Barack Obama, which Moscow-based analyst Pavel Felgenhauer said would allow Russia to strengthen its position in the Middle East. "Everyone is going to be queuing up to become friends with Russia," said Felgenhauer, a defence analyst who writes for the independent newspaper Novaya Gazeta "Everyone understands that Assad could have been hanged a long time ago. But he bet on the Russians and he won," he told AFP. - Assad's future crucial -But when Aleppo does fall, the Syria conflict is far from over, with extremists from al-Nusra and IS, as well as US-backed Kurdish militias in the north, in control of large swathes of the country. The US and Russia have special forces on the ground, while Turkey has regular troops inside Syria near its border. The skies buzz with planes from Russia and a US-led coalition of Western and Arab nations. "If Assad takes over Aleppo, is the war going to end? No. Will he have solved the political challenge of bringing people together to unite the country? No," Kerry said on Tuesday. The US and Europe insist that a political settlement in which Assad agrees to step down is necessary to end the fighting and then rebuild the shattered country. Multiple rounds of talks between the regime and the opposition over the last two years came to nothing.

Russia Interfered in US Election to Help Trump Win
Agence France Presse/Naharnet/December 10/16/A secret CIA assessment has found that Russia sought to tip last month's US presidential election in Donald Trump's favor, The Washington Post reported Friday, a conclusion that drew an extraordinary rebuke from the president-elect's camp. "These are the same people that said Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction," Trump's transition team said, launching a broadside against the spy agency. "The election ended a long time ago in one of the biggest Electoral College victories in history. It's now time to move on and 'Make America Great Again.'"The Washington Post report comes after President Barack Obama ordered a review of all cyberattacks that took place during the 2016 election cycle, amid growing calls from Congress for more information on the extent of Russian interference in the campaign. The newspaper cited officials briefed on the matter as saying that individuals with connections to Moscow provided anti-secrecy website WikiLeaks with emails hacked from the Democratic National Committee, Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton's campaign chief and others. Those emails were steadily leaked out via WikiLeaks in the months before the election, damaging Clinton's White House run. The Russians' aim was to help Donald Trump win and not just undermine the US electoral process, the paper reported. "It is the assessment of the intelligence community that Russia's goal here was to favor one candidate over the other, to help Trump get elected," the newspaper quoted a senior US official briefed on an intelligence presentation last week to key senators as saying. "That's the consensus view."
CIA agents told the lawmakers it was "quite clear" that electing Trump was Russia's goal, according to officials who spoke to the Post, citing growing evidence from multiple sources. Russian hackers did not limit their hits to the Democrats, according to The New York Times.“We now have high confidence that they hacked the D.N.C. and the R.N.C., and conspicuously released no documents” from the Republican organization, the Times cited one senior administration official as saying, referring to the Russians. The Times also questioned when Russia started supporting Trump. "It is ....far from clear that Russia’s original intent was to support Mr. Trump, and many intelligence officials — and former officials in Mrs. Clinton’s campaign — believe that the primary motive of the Russians was to simply disrupt the campaign and undercut confidence in the integrity of the vote," the Times report added. - Question marks -However, some questions remain unanswered and the CIA's assessment fell short of a formal US assessment produced by all 17 intelligence agencies, the newspaper said. For example, intelligence agents don't have proof that Russian officials directed the identified individuals to supply WikiLeaks with the hacked Democratic emails. WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange has denied links with Russia's government. Those individuals were "one step" removed from the Russian government, which is consistent with past practices by Moscow to use "middlemen" in sensitive intelligence operations to preserve plausible deniability, the report said. “I’ll be the first one to come out and point at Russia if there’s clear evidence, but there is no clear evidence — even now,” said California Republican congressman Devin Nunes, the chair of the House Intelligence Committee and a member of the Trump transition team. “There’s a lot of innuendo, lots of circumstantial evidence, that’s it.”At the White House, Deputy Press Secretary Eric Schultz said Obama called for the cyberattacks review earlier this week to ensure "the integrity of our elections." "This report will dig into this pattern of malicious cyberactivity timed to our elections, take stock of our defensive capabilities and capture lessons learned to make sure that we brief members of Congress and stakeholders as appropriate," Schultz said. Obama wants the report completed before his term ends on January 20. "We are going to make public as much as we can," the spokesman added. "This is a major priority for the president."The move comes after Democrats in Congress pressed the White House to reveal details, to Congress or to the public, of Russian hacking and disinformation in the election. On October 7, one month before the election, the Department of Homeland Security and the Director of National Intelligence announced that "the Russian Government directed the recent compromises of emails from US persons and institutions, including from US political organizations.""These thefts and disclosures are intended to interfere with the US election process," they said. Trump dismissed those findings in an interview published Wednesday by Time magazine for its "Person of the Year" award. Asked if the intelligence was politicized, Trump answered: "I think so." "I don't believe they interfered," he said. "It could be Russia. And it could be China. And it could be some guy in his home in New Jersey."

Kuwait Names New Oil Minister as Cabinet Formed
Agence France Presse/Naharnet/December 10/16/Kuwait's prime minister formed a cabinet Saturday that includes a new oil minister but keeps all the ruling family members, following elections in which the opposition performed well. The government has seven new faces including Essam al-Marzouk who was named minister of oil, electricity and water. Marzouk, a member of a merchant family, was a board member in national oil conglomerate Kuwait Petroleum Corp. and also the head of the Kuwait Bourse Company. Besides Prime Minister Sheikh Jaber Mubarak Al-Sabah, the cabinet includes five members of the Al-Sabah family which has ruled Kuwait for two and a half centuries, as many as in the previous cabinet. But Sheikh Mohammad Khaled Al-Sabah, the former interior minister and a senior royal, was moved to the defence post, apparently after many opposition lawmakers vowed to grill him over the revoking of citizenships of several opposition activists. The defence minister in the previous cabinet, Sheikh Khaled Jarrah Al-Sabah, who is also a member of the ruling family, was given the interior portfolio. Foreign Minister Sheikh Sabah Khaled Al-Sabah, a royal, was also retained. Anas al-Saleh remained the finance minister in the new cabinet despite strong criticism for his economic policies which included reducing subsidies and raising the price of petrol. Several MPs have vowed to question him if he was retained in the cabinet. The government of the oil-rich Gulf state resigned last month as required by the constitution following the November 26 general election in which the opposition and its allies won nearly half the seats in parliament. The 50-member legislature is scheduled to start meeting on Sunday. The Islamist-dominated opposition has vowed to oppose the government's austerity measures in the face of low oil revenues. The reappointment of Sheikh Jaber, 73, who has held the post since late 2011, came despite calls by a number of opposition MPs for a new premier to reflect the result of last month's polls. The opposition groups boycotted two general elections in 2012 and 2013 in protest at a change in the voting system brought unilaterally by the government. Under Kuwait's constitution, the emir has the sole power to appoint the premier regardless of the outcome of polls as the country does not have a full Western-style multi-party system. The new cabinet is not required to have a vote of confidence from parliament.

Norway Expresses Concern over Israeli Settlement Bill
Associated Press/Naharnet/December 10/16/Norway has expressed concern over a planned Israeli bill that would allow expanded construction in major West Bank settlements. Marit Berger Roesland of the Norwegian Foreign Ministry said in a statement Friday that the proposed law "cast doubts about Israel's declared support for the two-state solution." The contentious bill that Israel's parliament backed this week would retroactively legalize hundreds of homes in West Bank settlements that sit on private Palestinian land. Another Scandinavian country, Sweden — whose relations with Israel have been strained since it recognized Palestinian statehood in 2014 — said last month that it is "deeply concerned" about the bill. Sweden said such settlements are contrary to "Israeli and international law," and "greatly undermine" the possibility of a two-state solution.

France Aims to Extend State of Emergency until July 15
Agence France Presse/Naharnet/December 10/16/The French government announced plans Saturday to extend a national state of emergency until after elections next year, citing a heightened risk of jihadist attacks coinciding with polls. The security measures -- in force since attacks in Paris that killed 130 people in November 2015 -- will be debated in parliament Tuesday before their expected approval by the Senate on Thursday. "This electoral campaign period, which naturally includes numerous public meetings and rallies, will also unfortunately incur an increased risk of attacks," said newly-appointed French Prime Minister Bernard Cazeneuve. The state of emergency -- which gives police extended powers of search and arrest -- has already been renewed four times. France was also left in mourning in July this year after a Tunisian jihadist rammed a truck through a crowd of Bastille Day revellers in the city of Nice, killing 86 people. France will hold presidential elections in April-May 2017 and legislative polls in June. The state of emergency must "encompass all electoral operations" Cazeneuve said at a meeting of the French cabinet, warning of the danger of those "who want to strike at the heart of our democratic values and republican principles." The extension until July 15 would also allow a new president -- incumbent Francois Hollande is not seeking re-election -- to assess security and prolong the state of emergency if necessary, Cazeneuve added. Hollande's tenure has been marred by the three major Islamist-inspired terror attacks -- against Charlie Hebdo magazine in January 2015, then in Paris the following November and in Nice. Cazeneuve, the former interior minister who coordinated the introduction of the state of emergency, took over as prime minister on Tuesday after Manuel Valls stepped down to seek the Socialist nomination for the presidency.

The Iran Regime Panics as US Senate Passed the Sanctions Act
Saturday, 10 December 2016/NCRI - The Iranian regime sent a letter to the Secretary-General of the United Nation, Ban Ki-moon and stated that the recent enactment of US Senate violates the Iran nuclear deal. Meanwhile, the monitoring committee of the implementation of The Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA)chaired by President Hassan Rouhani held a meeting and announced that if the extended Act is implemented, the US has then violated the principals of JCPOA and the required measures shall be taken. It is worth noting that the committee also consist of the chairman of the parliament of Iran, Ali Larijani, and the Secretary of the Supreme National Council, Saeed Jalili and Ali Akbar Velayati. Fars news agency affiliated with Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC), in response to the meeting, entitled an article with:"dealing with the violation of JCPO Abehind closed doors!” The article reads:"a two-hour meeting will not solve the twenty-minute process of violating JCPOA and no news leaked about the decisions of the Board." Meanwhile, Rouhani is being slammed by the media and Khamenei's agents as the sanctions were extended for another 10 years. The Secretary of the Expediency Discernment Council, Mohsen Rezaee said:"JCPOA is as a snow that is melting and the government shall not let it fade or become useless."
The former head of Atomic Energy Organization of Iran, Fereydoon Abbasi also stated:"Rouhani and Zarif shall resign and this is the least they can do now. The damages inflicted by JCPOA are much greater than the collision of two trains for which the Head of Railways resigned."The former head of the Atomic Energy Organization Development Centre, Hossein Abniki also said:" Rouhani's government has destroyed the nuclear infrastructure. It was better to shut down our nuclear industry rather than what we did to it. Nothing can be reversible."Keyhan newspaper affiliated with Khamenei, in response to Rouhani's speech at Tehran University wrote:" Nothing can be done now anymore and the achievements of JCPOA have become almost nothing…instead of apologizing, they now falsely claim that all details and procedures were discussed and ordered by Khamenei."The former member of parliament of Iran, Alireza Zakani also claimed that JCPOA is the joint product of Rouhani and Larijani and these two people should be responsible. An MP affiliated with Khamenei also said: “If the Security Council plays role in this, it would be feasible that all resolutions will be carried gain despite the fact that we have taken most of the enriched uranium out of the country and instead we replaced Arak nuclear reactor core and changed Frodo Facility of Arak to a research center. We sent much of heavy water out of the country and in return we did not take back our blocked money and even 2 billion dollars of our money was blocked as well. There are much of oil revenues that have not yet been returned to us. Therefore we have also disrupted centrifugal activities, factories and the life of people."Zakani also added: “yesterday Mr. President at the University jokingly said that the revolutionary friends shall not be dismayed. Now we must say you and your colleagues should be only worried about the future presidential election which is going to be held in a few months. A large number of election pledges, including economy for hundred days and unfulfilled promises of JCPOA will definitely affect the election."
Hamid Rouhani said that the person who has crippled the economy and shut down nuclear programs may not receive much of vote from people.

Bahrain's Foreign Minister: Terrorist Threat Caused by Iran Regime Must Be Countered
Saturday, 10 December 2016/NCRI - Bahrain’s Foreign Minister says that until the terrorist threat caused by Iran Regime is not averted, the way for improving relations with Iran will not be opened. Following is part of Bahrain’s Foreign Minister’s interview with ‘Al Arabiya TV’:Al Arabiya TV: today, Bahrain is a member of the Arab Coalition and a supporter of Yemen’s legitimate government. You have always wished that a peaceful solution be found for Yemen. What is the (Persian) Gulf Cooperation Council’s strategy regarding the future of Yemen?Bahrain’s FM: the Arab Coalition’s support of Yemen’s legitimate government has been at the request of Yemen’s government presided by Abdrabbuh Masur Hadi. The support is aimed at countering the foreign intervention. And by that I mean the intervention by the Iranian regime who is providing the (Houthi) militias with weapons, expertise, propaganda and everything else. Every day the Arab Allied Forces’ patrol ships seize the boats in waters around Yemen carrying weapons and explosives to the country. We don’t want that, and we fight against that.
Al Arabiya TV: how do you describe the (Persian) Gulf States’ relationships with the Iranian regime? Bahrain’s FM: we have always hoped that the relationships between the (Persian) Gulf States and the Iranian regime be improved. But from 1979 and ever since Vilayat-e Faqih (absolute rule of clergy) and the new Iranian regime came to power, the situation has not been desirable while all these problems have been caused by the Iranian regime. Attempting to export their revolution, intervening in Arab countries, arms trafficking, and training and deploying citizens of our countries for terrorist purposes has been the Iranian regime’s policy. We can’t afford to remain hand-tied faced with this policy. Someone who calls himself Vali-e Faqih while preparing military force and militias to fight in his name, is our biggest terrorist threat. Only when the terrorist threat caused by Vilayat-e Faqih is stopped, will the way for improving relations with the Iranian regime be opened.

Iran Regime's Attorney General Acknowledges Blocking 13-14 Thousand Websites Each Week
Saturday, 10 December 2016/NCRI - Iranian regime’s Attorney General has acknowledged blocking 13-14 thousand websites each week. In an interview with regime’s TV on Wednesday December 7, Jafar Montazeri claimed that there are many (intellectual) currents intending to hit the independent cultures, especially the Islamic Republic, who are standing against the Western culture. “We are faced with two extremely dangerous issues in this regard; the first is that the enemy is taking advantage of the cyberspace for blasphemy, questioning people’s beliefs and so on. The second is interfering with issues towards which the society, especially the youth, are sensitive. Actually, they’ve waged a soft war against us and our religious values“, added Montazeri. He said that “we have no option but to block access to 13-14 thousand websites each week.”Also the head of regime’s Cyber Police ‘Hadianfar’ has said in this regard that “the Cyber Police has investigated a total of 67 thousand cases in the past eight months, which shows a 63 percent increase compared to the same period last year.”
Earlier, head of the so-called ‘Department of Enjoining Good and Forbidding Wrong’ in Tehran, had expressed regime’s fear of the spread of social networks in Iran as well as an increased tendency among the youth towards the People's Mojahedin organization of Iran (PMOI/MEK/), saying: “internet helps occurring riots and leads to increased tendency towards PMOI (MEK), cultural deviations and corrupt content.”“Regarding evil issues, the internet has a higher priority today compared to issues such as elections or hijab, and unfortunately, we are faced with a betrayal by some of our officials with regard to introducing the internet. So, we need to pay attention to this issue which has entered our homes and caught us”, he said on Monday December 5, according to state media.

Iran: Fears of Deep Divide Among Regime's Factions
Saturday, 10 December 2016/NCRI - The Iranian regime’s prosecutor general fearing deep factional divide warned about disclosure of the factional feuding particularly among the regime’s leaders and said: “We should resolve the intra-family issues within ourselves and not allow the enemy to poison (create) the atmosphere and infiltrate through a series of gaps and pores.”Jafar Montazeri who was speaking in the province of Kermanshah on Thursday December 8 added: “There are defects, problems, weaknesses and sometimes betrayal within the system, but they should never deter us away from the clear direction that we have taken.”“Disagreement among the authorities at the normal and usual level is no problem, but it is important not to let these differences turn into gaps. The enemy is trying to create a deep divide through the normal differences…,” Montazeri continued. He then defended the head of Judiciary and his bank accounts and said: “There are strange attacks against the Judiciary in the social media, websites, networks and other places and even in the House (Parliament’s) podium. Dear brother who criticizes (the Judiciary), when you see the enemy is sitting behind trenches and points his Tank tubes, missiles and weapons at the heart of Judiciary, is it logical to go along with our enemy.”The regime’s prosecutor general then attacked Mahmoud Sadeghi, a member of the regime’s parliament from Tehran who called for publishing report on bank accounts of mullah Sadegh Larijani (Head of Judiciary). Montazeri said: “Is it in favor of the system, country and revolution to take away people's trust and confidence in our Judiciary?” Mahmoud Sadeghi, member of the regime’s parliament, has announced that he has filed a complaint in the Special Clerical Court on Tuesday against the head of Judiciary, Sadegh Larijani. He once again in a speech in Shiraz put his finger on 63 bank accounts of the head of Judiciary and said: “Under the constitution, it would be illegal if you open a deposit account even if it is not personal account. The circulation (money flow) of these accounts under the constitution must be reported to the (Supreme) Audit Court and become public.”

Iran: Deterioration of Political Prisoner's Health on the 45th Day of Hunger Strike
Saturday, 10 December 2016/NCRI - On Thursday December 8, the political prisoner Arash Sadeghi in his 45th day of hunger strike was transferred to the prison infirmary due to severe breathing problems and heart palpitations to be connected to an oxygen device. Prison infirmary doctor described his condition as very worrying. He has been transferred to the prison clinic several times in the past weeks and each night requires using oxygen machine. He has lost nearly 18kg since the start of his hunger strike and his blood pressure has dropped drastically. This political prisoner has lost the power of speech and movement to some extent and in the last few days was also taken to the hospital after "bringing up blood clots", though was eventually returned to the prison without treatment. It should be pointed out that Arash Sadeghi started a hunger strike forty-five days ago to protest against the inhuman prison conditions and arrest of his wife without reason.

Iran: Thousands of People Protest the Environmental Catastrophe
Saturday, 10 December 2016/NCRI - On Thursday December 8, thousands of people staged demonstration in South Western city of Ahvaz to protest the decision by Iranian regime’s officials to transfer the Karoon River’s water to Isfahan. Protestors held placards demanding a halt to the project of Karoun’s water transfer and a solution to (addressing) the problem of dust (in the air) and other environmental problems. Some of the slogans written on the placards include: “Karoun’s death is death of Khuzestan” and “Karoun is our red line.”The protestors called on the United Nations to intervene in order to stop this environmental catastrophe and violation of human rights in Ahvaz. The repressive security forces and police fearing expansion of the people’s protests surrounded the demonstrators and monitored them closely. Reports indicate that the government of Hassan Rouhani has issued a directive to the relevant ministries to transfer water of Karoun River. According to legal organizations, the transfer would aggravate the situation and environmental problems in Khuzestan province. The project of Karoun river water transfer would force thousands of villages and residents of other areas, particularly farmers, to migrate due to drought and lack of water supply to thousands of hectares of arable lands. In addition, dust, mist and other air particles have increased respiratory diseases in the province in recent years, particularly among children and the elderly.

Latest LCCC Bulletin analysis & editorials from miscellaneous sources published on December 10-11/16
Question: "Is it true that everything happens for a reason?"
GotQuestions.org/ December 10/2016
http://eliasbejjaninews.com/2016/12/10/is-it-true-that-everything-happens-for-a-reason/
Answer: Does everything happen for a reason? The short answer is “yes”; because God is sovereign, there are no random, out-of-control happenings. God’s purposes may be hidden from us, but we can be assured that every event has a reason behind it.
There was a reason for the blindness of the man in John 9, although the disciples misidentified the reason (John 9:1–3). There was a reason for Joseph’s mistreatment, although his brothers’ purpose in what they did to him was very different from God’s purpose in allowing it (Genesis 50:20). There was a reason for Jesus’ death—the authorities in Jerusalem had their reasons, based on evil intent, and God had His, based on righteousness. God’s sovereignty extends even to the lowliest of creatures: “Not one [sparrow] falls to the ground apart from your Father’s will” (Matthew 10:29, NET).
Several factors help us know that everything happens for a reason: the law of cause and effect, the doctrine of original sin, and the providence of God. All these demonstrate that everything does happen for a reason, not just by happenstance or by random chance.
First, there is the natural law of cause and effect, also known as the law of sowing and reaping. Paul says, “Do not be deceived: God cannot be mocked. A man reaps what he sows. The one who sows to please his sinful nature, from that nature will reap destruction; the one who sows to please the Spirit, from the Spirit will reap eternal life” (Galatians 6:7–8). This means that in every action we take or word we utter, whether good or evil, there are certain inevitable results that follow (Colossians 3:23–25). Someone may ask, “Why am I in jail? Is there a reason for this?” and the answer may be, “Because you robbed your neighbor’s house and got caught.” That’s cause and effect.
All that we do is either an investment in the flesh or an investment in the Spirit. We shall reap whatever we have sown, and we shall reap in proportion to how we have sown. “Remember this: Whoever sows sparingly will also reap sparingly, and whoever sows generously will also reap generously” (2 Corinthians 9:6). The believer who walks in the Spirit and “sows” in the Spirit is going to reap a spiritual harvest. If his sowing has been generous, the harvest will be bountiful, if not in this life, certainly in the life to come. Conversely, those who “sow” to the flesh are going to reap a life without the full blessings of God, both in this life and the life to come (Jeremiah 18:10; 2 Peter 2:10–12).
The reason some things happen can often be traced back to original sin in the Garden of Eden. The Bible is clear that the world is under a curse (Genesis 3:17), which has resulted in infirmities, diseases, natural disasters, and death. All these things, although under God’s ultimate control, are sometimes used by Satan to inflict misery upon people (see Job 1–2; Luke 9:37–42; 13:16). Someone may ask, “Why did I contract this illness? Is there a reason for it?” and the answer may be one or more of the following: 1) “Because you live in a fallen world, and we are all subject to illness”; 2) “Because God is testing you and strengthening your faith”; or 3) “Because, in love, God is disciplining you according to Hebrews 12:7–13 and 1 Corinthians 11:29–30.”
Then we have what is called the providence of God. The doctrine of providence holds that God quietly and invisibly works through the natural world to manage events. God, in His providence, works out His purposes through natural processes in the physical and social universe. Every effect can be traced back to a natural cause, and there is no hint of the miraculous. The best that man can do to explain the reason why things happen in the course of natural events is to point to “coincidence.”
Believers proclaim that God arranges the coincidences. The unbeliever derides such ideas because he believes natural causes can fully explain each event without reference to God. Yet followers of Christ are wholly assured of this profound truth: “We know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose” (Romans 8:28).
The book of Esther shows divine providence at work. The banishment of Vashti, the selection of Esther, the plot of the assassins, the pride of Haman, the courage of Mordecai, the insomnia of the king, the bloodlust of Zeresh, and the reading of the scroll—everything in the book happens, like cogs in a well-oiled machine, to bring about the deliverance of God’s people., Although God is never mentioned in Esther, His providence, working through “coincidence,” is plain to see.
God is always at work in the lives of His people, and in His goodness will bring them to a good end (see Philippians 1:6). The events that define our lives are not simply products of natural causes or random chance. They are ordained by God and are intended for our good. We often fail to sense God’s hidden guidance or protection as events in our lives unfold. But, when we look back at past events, we are able to see His hand more clearly, even in times of tragedy.

The Myth of Israel's Demographic Doomsday
Gregg Roman/The Hill/December 10/2016
Originally published on November 22, 2016.
http://www.meforum.org/6421/the-myth-of-israel-demographic-doomsday?utm_source=Middle+East+Forum&utm_campaign=8e0173d7aa-ROMAN_HILL_CAMPAIGN_2016_12_10&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_086cfd423c-8e0173d7aa-33831725&goal=0_086cfd423c-8e0173d7aa-33831725
Critics of Israel love to exploit Jewish fears and anxieties. The most extreme resort to Holocaust inversion, boycotts, blacklists, and other singling-out methods reminiscent of Europe's anti-Semitic past. Secretary of State John Kerry likes to wave around the threat of Israel's demographic extinction.
Acute Israeli sensitivity on this matter came to the fore in the late 1960s, when Israeli rule over the newly won Gaza Strip and West Bank was thought by many to be untenable owing to much-higher Palestinian birth rates. If Israel chose to annex the territories, it would be obliged either to disenfranchise their Palestinian inhabitants, making Israel undemocratic, or extend the vote and watch Israel's Jewish majority turn into a minority. For Israel to remain both a democratic and a Jewish state, according to the conventional wisdom, it would have to give the territories up. "The womb of the Arab woman," the late Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat famously said, was his "best weapon."
Critics say Israel can't remain 'both Jewish and democratic' if there is no peace.
Fast-forward five decades. According to the Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics (PCBS), the number of (non-Jewish) Arabs living in the West Bank, Gaza, and East Jerusalem (4.62 million) and in Israel (1.68 million) for the first time matches the number of Jews (6.3 million). Taking into account still-higher Palestinian birthrates, as neatly graphed out in a September 2016 full-page New York Times advertisement by a pro-Palestinian group, the Jewish population in the expanse of territory "from the Mediterranean Sea to the Jordan River" is projected to decline to 44 percent in 2030.
In his drive to wrest Israeli concessions he believes will break the Israeli-Palestinian diplomatic logjam, Secretary Kerry has repeatedly warned of a demographic doomsday for Israel. "How does Israel possibly maintain its character as a Jewish and democratic state when from the river to the sea, there would not even be a Jewish majority?" he warned last December. Time is "running out" for Israel, Kerry maintains, insinuating that Arabs will be even less likely to accept a Jewish state as part of the former Palestine mandate once they become an overall majority, instead returning to their demand for a "one-state" solution. Israel then winds up "either being an apartheid state with second-class citizens — or ... a state that destroys the capacity of Israel to be a Jewish state."
The combined ratio of Jews to non-Jews in Israel, the West Bank, and Gaza doesn't matter.
But time is not running out, at least not for Israel. There are three big problems with the demographic doomsday argument.
For starters, the central underlying premise of this argument — that the combined ratio of Jews to non-Jews in Israel, the West Bank and Gaza matters — is laughably obsolete. There's no more reason to include Gaza in the equation than to include Lebanon or Jordan. The Israeli occupation there ended a decade ago, and its 1.6 million residents are pretty much free to determine their own future but for the brutal rule of their own homegrown Islamist regime. Indeed, most Palestinians in the West Bank also live in self-rule areas that Israel has effectively vacated and does not wish to govern.
The real question, then, isn't what happens if Israel were to suddenly annex all territories where Palestinians live en masse, but what happens if it holds on only to territories that most Israelis want and can be easily defended? Jews currently make up roughly 80 percent of Israeli citizens, and there's no reason to believe this figure will be appreciably affected by implementation of a final status agreement.
The PA deliberately inflates Palestinian population estimates and projections.
The second problem with Kerry's alarmism is that the oft-cited official PCBS estimates and projections of Arab population growth have been deliberately inflated to boost the PA's negotiating stance and qualify for more foreign aid. Yoram Ettinger, a former Israeli consul, found that PA numbers are inflated by, among other things, counting roughly 400,000 Palestinians who have lived abroad for a year or more — a large portion of whom won't be coming back if they can help it — including some 100,000 babies born abroad (ditto).
Third, Kerry seems blithely unaware that the birth rate of Israeli Jews, which reached a low of 2.6 in the 1990s, has been rising steadily in recent years, to 3.1 in 2015 — the same as that of Israeli Arabs — even as Palestinian birth rates have steadily declined, to 3.7. With the highest birth rate in the developed world and substantial Jewish immigration adding to their ranks every year, Israeli Jews are not at risk of becoming a minority in the foreseeable future.
Unfortunately for Secretary Kerry, most Israelis are well aware that time is not running out on Israel's future as a democratic Jewish state. A democratic Jewish state is very much in existence and running strong. For all of the loud condemnations of Israel on Western college campuses, Israel's diplomatic relations are stronger than ever before, even in the Arab world, and its international trade is massively expanding. It's kind of hard to rain on that parade. Most Israelis couldn't care less if Gazans or West Bankers choose to have slightly bigger families than the inhabitants of Tel Aviv.
When John Kerry declares again and again that Israel is "out of time," what he's really doing is communicating to Palestinians that the much dreaded Jewish state next door will cease to exist if they simply continue their refusal to compromise.
If the next secretary of state wants to bring about peace between Israelis and Palestinians, he should try appealing to their hopes, not their fears.
**Gregg Roman is director of the Middle East Forum. 

Critics of Islam on Trial in Europe: Wilders Convicted
Giulio Meotti/Gatestone Institute/December 10/16
http://eliasbejjaninews.com/2016/12/10/giulio-meottigatestone-institute-critics-of-islam-on-trial-in-europe-wilders-convicted/
https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/9531/islam-critics-trial-wilders
On December 9, for the first time in Dutch history, a court criminalized freedom of expression: The truly heroic Dutch Member of Parliament, Geert Wilders, was found guilty of the "crime" of "hate speech."
The death sentence against Salman Rushdie in 1989 by Iran's supreme leader looked unreal. The West did not take it seriously. Since then, however, this fatwa has been assimilated to such an extent that today's threats to free speech come from ourselves. It is now the West that put on trial writers and journalists.
The Red Brigades, the Communist terror group which devastated Italy in the 1970s, coined a slogan: "Strike one to educate one hundred." If you target one, you get collective intimidation. This is exactly the effect of these political trials about Islam.
"Hate speech" has become a political weapon to dispatch whoever may not agree with you. It is not the right of a democracy to quibble about the content of articles or cartoons. In the West, we paid a high price for the freedom to write them and and read them it. It is not up to those who govern to grant the right of thought and speech.
In Europe now, the same iron curtain as in the Soviet era is descending.
After the Second World War and the horrors of Nazism and Stalinism, a central tenet of Western democracies has been that you can put people on trial, but not ideas and opinions. Europe is now allowing dangerous "human rights" groups and Islamists to use tribunals to restrict the borders of our freedom of expression, exactly as in Soviet show trials. "Militant anti-racism will be for the 21st century what communism was for the 20th century," the prominent French philosopher, Alain Finkielkraut has predicted.
A year ago, Christoph Biró, a respected columnist and editor of the largest Austrian newspaper, Kronen Zeitung, wrote an article blaming "young men, testosterone-fuelled Syrians, who carry out extremely aggressive sexual attacks" (even before mass the sexual assaults of New Year's Eve in Cologne, Hamburg and other cities). The article sparked much controversy, and it received a large number of complaints and protests. Biró needed four weeks off work because of these attacks and later (under pressure) admitted that he had "lost a sense of proportion". Prosecutors in Graz recently charged Biró with "hate speech" after a complaint by a so-called human rights organization, SOS Mitmensch. The case will be decided in court.
Journalists, novelists and intellectuals throughout Europe are now told to raise their right hand before a judge and swear to tell the truth and nothing but the truth -- as if that were not what they were doing all along and for what they are now being prosecuted. It is an alarming but very common sight today, where "hate speech" has become a political weapon to dispatch whoever may not agree with you.
It is not the right of a democracy to quibble about the content of articles or cartoons. In the West, we paid a high price for the freedom to read and write them. It is not up to those who govern to grant the right of thought and speech, that belongs to the free initiative in the democracies. The right to express our own opinion was paid for dearly, but if it is not exercised, it can quickly disappear.
A grotesque new legal front was just opened in Paris. The French philosopher Pascal Bruckner began his trial, where he opened his defense with a quotation from Jean-Paul Sartre: "The guns are loaded with words". Bruckner, one of the most famous essayists of France, is on trial for having spoken out against the "collaborators of Charlie Hebdo's assassins".
"I will say the names: The organizations 'The Indivisibles' of Rokhaya Diallo and 'The Indigenous of the Republic', the rapper Nekfeu who wanted 'a bonfire for those dogs' (Charlie Hebdo), all those who have justified with ideology the death of the twelve journalists".
Countless witnesses testified in defense of Bruckner: the editor of Charlie Hebdo, "Riss"; the political scientist Laurent Bouvet; the former president of "Neither Whores nor Submissives," Sihem Habchi; and the philosopher, Luc Ferry. Bruckner used the term "collaborator" for "those newspapers which justified the liquidation of the Résistance and the Jews" during the Second World War. Sihem Habchi spoke of the danger of a "green fascism", Islamism.
Bruckner's verdict will be announced on January 17. "Bruckner brought his voice before the 17th Chamber [court], too often a grave-digger of freedom of expression," commented the important and courageous Riposte Laïque.
These political trials about Islam started in 2002, when a court in Paris considered a complaint against Michel Houellebecq, who, in the novel Platforme called Islam "the stupidest religion." The writer Fernando Arrabal, arrested for blasphemy in 1967 in Franco's Spain, was called by Houellebecq to testify in in court. "What a joy to be in a trial for crimes of opinion," Arrabal said in Paris. "Zaragoza, Valladolid, Santander," the playwright named a number of Spanish cities. "This is the list of the prisons where I have been for the same crime as Houellebecq."
The late Italian writer, Oriana Fallaci, was also put on trial for her book, La Rage et l'Orgueil ("The Rage and the Pride"). The French newspaper Libération called her "the woman who defames Islam." Later the satirical weekly, Charlie Hebdo, and its editor, Philippe Val, targeted by Islamist organizations, were also forced to appear in court.
The death sentence against Salman Rushdie in 1989 by Iran's supreme leader Ayatollah Khomeini looked unreal. The West did not take it seriously. Since then, however, this fatwa has been assimilated to such an extent that today's threats to free speech come from ourselves. It is now the West that puts on trial writers and journalists.
It has become almost impossible to list all the journalists and writers who have had to defend themselves in court because of their ideas on Islam. To quote the French-Algerian writer, Boualem Sansal, the author of the novel "2084," from an interview with Libération: "We are aware of the danger, but we do not know how to act for fear of being accused of being anti-immigrant, anti-Islam, anti-Africa... Democracy, like the mouse, will be swallowed by the serpent". And it will be turned into "a society that whispers".
Journalists are now prosecuted even if they question Islam during a radio debate. That is why today most of writers and journalists are only whispering about the consequences of mass migration in Europe, Islam's role in the terrorists' war on democracies and the sultans' offensives on freedom of expression.
The Red Brigades, the Communist terror group which devastated Italy in the 1970s, coined a slogan: "Strike one to educate one hundred." If you target one, you get collective intimidation. This is exactly the effect of these political trials about Islam. The debate is rapidly closing.
In the Netherlands yesterday, the trial for the "crime" of "hate speech" against Geert Wilders was concluded. The brave Dutch politician had asked supporters if they wanted "fewer Moroccans" in the country. Convicting Wilders yesterday, a court criminalized freedom of expression for the first time in Dutch history. (Wilders was acquitted five years ago in a similar trial).
In France Ivan Rioufol, one of the most respected columnists of the newspaper, Le Figaro, had to defend himself in court against the "Collective Against Islamophobia." The writer Renaud Camus, who has expounded on the "great replacement" theory, which holds that France is being colonized by Muslim immigrants with the help of mainstream politicians, was charged with "hate speech." Marine Le Pen also had to appear in court. In Germany, there was the case of Jan Böhmermann, a comedian who satirized Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan on television. German judges then put on trial Lutz Bachmann, the founder of "Pegida," the anti-Islamization movement. In Canada essayist and journalist Mark Steyn was charged with "flagrant Islamophobia" by a "Human Rights Tribunal" (and later cleared). Lars Hedegaard, the president of the Danish Free Press Society, was also charged with "hate speech" (and later aquitted) for comments critical of Islam.
It is fundamental that these writers and journalists are acquitted. But the goal of these trials is not to find the truth; it is to intimidate the public and to restrict freedom of expression on Islam. These are purges to "re-educate" them. Sadly, as we see from the Wilders trial, they have often been succeeding.
After the Russian invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1968, Milan Kundera's novels disappeared from bookstores and libraries. The intelligentsia lay in sterility and isolation. Cinemas and theaters offered only the Soviet performances. Radio, newspapers and televisions streamed only propaganda. The Russians rewarded the bureaucrats who pressured writers and journalists, and punished the rebels. Those who spoke out were often obliged to work as unskilled laborers. Prague, restless and fascinating, became silent and whispering.
In Europe now, the same iron curtain is descending.
**Giulio Meotti, Cultural Editor for Il Foglio, is an Italian journalist and author.
© 2016 Gatestone Institute. All rights reserved. The articles printed here do not necessarily reflect the views of the Editors or of Gatestone Institute. No part of the Gatestone website or any of its contents may be reproduced, copied or modified, without the prior written consent of Gatestone Institute.

The Guilty Verdict Dutch Politicians Wanted So Much
Left Wing Politicians Who Insulted Moroccans Worse, Not Prosecuted
Douglas Murray/Gatestone Institute/December 10/16
https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/9533/the-guilty-verdict-dutch-politicians-wanted-so
Remarks, incomparably more damning icepicks than "fewer Moroccans", [were] made by members of the Netherlands' Labour Party, who of course were never prosecuted.
Members of the Netherlands' Labour Party, who never of course were prosecuted, have wielded incomparably more damning icepicks than "fewer Moroccans".
The irony cannot have been lost on the wider world that on the same day that news of Wilders's conviction came out the other news from Holland was the arrest of a 30 year-old terror suspect in Rotterdam suspected of being about to carry out 'an act of terrorism'.
Internationally it will continuously be used against Wilders that he has been convicted of 'inciting discrimination' even though the charge is about a proto-crime – a crime that has not even occurred: like charging the makers of a car chase movie for 'inciting speeding'. As with many 'hate-crime' trials across the free world, from Denmark to Canada, the aim of the proceedings is to blacken the name of the party on trial so that they are afterwards formally tagged as a lesser, or non-person. If this sounds Stalinist it is because it is.
In the long-term, though, there is something even more insidious about this trial. For as we have noted here before, if you prosecute somebody for saying that they want fewer Moroccans in the Netherlands then the only legal views able to be expressed about the matter are that the number of Moroccans in the country must remain at precisely present numbers or that you would only like more Moroccans in the country. In a democratic society this sort of matter ought to be debatable.
 If there is one great mental note of which 2016 ought to have reminded the world, it is how deeply unwise it is to try to police opinion. For when you do so you not only make your society less free, but you disable yourself from being able to learn what your fellow citizens are actually – perhaps ever more secretly – feeling. Then one day you will hear them.
The trial of Geert Wilders has resulted in a guilty verdict. The court – which was located in a maximum security courthouse in the Netherlands near Schipol airport – found the leader of the PVV (Freedom Party) guilty of 'insulting a group' and of 'inciting discrimination'. The trial began with a number of complaints, but the proceedings gradually honed down onto one single comment made by Wilders at a party rally in March 2014. This was the occasion when Wilders asked the crowd whether they wanted 'fewer or more Moroccans in your city and in the Netherlands'. The crowd of supporters shouted 'Fewer'.
On Friday morning the court decided not to impose a jail sentence or a fine, as prosecutors had requested. The intention of the court is clearly that the 'guilty' sentence should be enough.
For Wilders himself this will have been another unpleasant ordeal. But he may have become used to them by now. Five years ago Wilders was put on trial for insulting a religion. The first trial fell apart after one of the judges was found to have attempted to influence the evidence of one of Wilders's defence witnesses. Once the trial restarted, it resulted in an acquittal. So the Dutch Justice system turn out to have been "second-time lucky" in getting the conviction they appear to have so badly wanted.
This is apparent from remarks, incomparably more damning icepicks than "fewer Moroccans", made by members of the Netherlands' Labour Party, who of course were never prosecuted:
"We also have s*** Moroccans over here." Rob Oudkerk, Dutch Labour Party (PvDA) politician.
"We must humiliate Moroccans." Hans Spekman, PvDA politician.
"Moroccans have the ethnic monopoly on trouble-making." Diederik Samsom, PvDA politician.
Wilders's legal trials are perhaps the least of it. For more than a decade Wilders has had to live under permanent security protection because of the threat to his life from Muslim extremists in the Netherlands. One might agree or disagree with a person who believes there should be fewer Moroccans in the Netherlands, but it requires an extraordinary degree of callousness to prosecute someone whose life is in danger from parts of such a community for voicing a desire not to see that community grow. The irony cannot have been lost on the wider world that on the same day that news of Wilders's conviction came out the other news from Holland was the arrest of a 30 year-old terror suspect in Rotterdam suspected of being about to carry out 'an act of terrorism'.
 There are two aspects to this verdict which matter. The first is what it will do for Wilders himself. Domestically, within the Netherlands, it is hard to say. On the one hand it is possible that his supporters and others will be galvanised by the intrusion of the judiciary into politics and by the nakedly partisan and political nature of this trial. Many observers predict a boost in the polls for Wilders, who may benefit from this further proof of what he has often said – that it is Wilders against the Dutch establishment.
 But internationally and among a good many Dutch nationals the conviction will carry a stigma. Internationally it will continuously be used against Wilders that he has been convicted of 'inciting discrimination' even though the charge is about a proto-crime – a crime that has not even occurred: like charging the makers of a car chase movie for 'inciting speeding'. As with many 'hate-crime' trials across the free world, from Denmark to Canada, the aim of the proceedings is to blacken the name of the party on trial so that they are afterwards formally tagged as a lesser, or non-person. If this sounds Stalinist it is because it is.
 In the long-term, though, there is something even more insidious about this trial. For as we have noted here before, if you prosecute somebody for saying that they want fewer Moroccans in the Netherlands then the only legal views able to be expressed about the matter are that the number of Moroccans in the country must remain at precisely present numbers or that you would only like more Moroccans in the country. In a democratic society this sort of matter ought to be debatable. But the judges in the Wilders case have tried to make it un-debatable. By prosecuting somebody for expressing one opinion they have sent out a message to all citizens. And that is where the stifling effect of the Wilders trial will be felt.
 It will be felt by all those Dutch men and women who have concerns about the direction their country is going in, including concerns that the rate of immigration has been too high in recent years. Many of these people will already have felt a certain social pressure not to air their views and now there is the additional restraining factor that their views have been made illegal. At social gatherings across the land the people who believe that there should only ever be more Moroccans in the Netherlands will have an additional card to play against anyone who believes the opposite. For their conversational partner will not merely be risking a social embarrassment but will be standing on the verge of committing a crime.
 Any half-way civilised society – as the Netherlands most certainly is – must see that trying to squash contrary views in such a manner is the behaviour of tyrants. This gang-up of the courts and the political elite in an effort to crush dissenting opinion is unbecoming for a great and distinguished nation such as The Netherlands. But they may yet have their comeuppance.
 If there is one great mental note of which 2016 ought to have reminded the world, it is how deeply unwise it is to try to police opinion. For when you do so you not only make your society less free, but you disable yourself from being able to learn what your fellow citizens are actually – perhaps ever more secretly – feeling. Then one day you will hear them. And only then – when it is too late – will you remember why you should have listened.
 *Douglas Murray, British author, commentator and public affairs analyst, is based in London, England
 © 2016 Gatestone Institute. All rights reserved. The articles printed here do not necessarily reflect the views of the Editors or of Gatestone Institute. No part of the Gatestone website or any of its contents may be reproduced, copied or modified, without the prior written consent of Gatestone Institute.

 What if Assad wins?
 Dr. Azeem Ibrahim/Al Arabiya/December 10/16
 Civil wars are always long fought and bitter. And they are also inevitably great humanitarian disasters because civilians are always targeted in one way or another. That is why the prospect of ending a civil war would normally be welcome, especially a civil war as brutal and ruinous as the one in Syria. But unfortunately, if Assad does win, that may not necessarily be the beginning of the end of the humanitarian disaster. There are good reasons to fear that if Assad finally wins the conflict, that may be only the end of the beginning of the human tragedy.
 If Assad does prevail, his first priority will be to ensure that such an uprising can never happen again. That means making an example of everyone who opposed him. There is every reason to expect that the retribution will be just as brutal as the conflict itself.
 What may have been forgotten among the endless reports and video footage from the ruins of Aleppo is why this conflict started six years ago. President Assad, like his father before him, presided over a Ba’athist regime that was as repressive as anything in Eastern Europe during the Cold War, or Iraq under Saddam Hussain. Whoever was thought to be an “enemy of the state” would be routinely rounded up, imprisoned and tortured. And if any of them resisted being “re-educated,” they would eventually be simply killed.
 It was against this kind of government that people rose up against in Syria during the heady days of the Arab Spring. And what was interesting in those early days is that even though the government was dominated by the Alawite Shiite sect, the uprising was not originally sectarian. The uprising was a coming together of virtually all elements of Syrian society, including many dissidents from the Syrian Army and other political insiders. It was only later that the conflict took a decidedly sectarian character when ISIS appeared on the scene and Iranian militias and Hezbollah also joined the fray.
 Both Assad and his key ally, Putin, have every interest in keeping Syria a humanitarian hell
And if that was the Assad government then, we can only imagine what it will be like after it has been hardened by six years of bitter sectarian civil war. Or perhaps not much imagination is required at all. After all, we have seen the government’s attitude towards civilians throughout this conflict, in their use of chemical weapons against their own people, cluster munitions, systematic bombing of hospitals – although it has denied the allegation - and other humanitarian relief agencies, and widespread use of starvation siege tactics.
 In other words, even as the rebels might finally surrender and peace will be declared, we have every reason to expect that Assad’s government will continue to wage war against the civilian populations who supported the rebellion to punish them. That war may not be as visible as the constant shelling of hospitals in urban centres, but it will be every bit as real as the networks of secret police prisons from before the war. What is more, we must not neglect the role of Assad’s allies in this conflict, like Iran and Russia. Russia in particular has benefited immensely from the instability caused by the refugee flow out of Syria and into Turkey and Europe. Even as Putin may want the conflict to settle down so he can wind down his military involvement to keep down costs, he has every reason to want the refugee flow into Europe to continue. So both Assad and his key ally, Putin, have every interest to keep Syria a humanitarian hell and hopefully displace as many opponents of the regime from the country, while none of their allies are adversely affected by this – with the possible exception of Lebanon which is, in any case, a client state of Syria and does not get to have much of say in the matter. And, let us not forget, they are the two players that have the greatest amount of control over the outcome of the conflict. So long as that remains the case, and both their respective interests would be best served by continuing the abuse of the Syrian people, there is no reason to believe that the humanitarian crisis is going to get any better.

A requiem for Aleppo
Hisham Melhem/Al Arabiya/December 10/16
We are witnessing the agonizing slow-motion conquest of Aleppo, Syria’s largest historic urban center and probably the oldest continuously inhabited city in the world. The eastern part of the city which first resisted the forces of the despot in Damascus is now succumbing to the hordes being unleashed by land and air from Russia and Iran. Aleppo is not being reclaimed by regime forces and certainly is not being liberated by a legitimate force, Aleppo is being conquered after being reduced to pyramids of rubble.
 After declaring those resisting them as terrorists and after pursuing a civilian-centric campaign of bombing that destroyed hospitals, schools, markets and bakeries the moment of the kill is at hand. Russia’s Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov spoke for the Assad regime, Iran and all their auxiliary marauders when he said few days ago that Russia’s strategy included “a merciless struggle against terrorists in Syria until their eradication.” To quote Tacitus, describing a plundering empire centuries ago “they ravage, (and) they slaughter. And when in their wake nothing remains but a desert, they call that peace.”
 From bad to worse
It is a cruel coincidence that the conquest of Aleppo is taking place in the twilight days of Barack Obama’s era. The American Hamlet whose endless obfuscations on Syria and other international challenges were claimed as wise deliberations did abdicate his responsibilities to deliver on his promises to help Syrian civilians and threats to punish the Assad regime, thus contributing to the demise of Aleppo. It is the misfortune of the Syrians who rose up peacefully against the Assad regime in 2011 that Donald Trump, a man known for his short attention span, willful ignorance and his deference to Russian President Vladimir Putin has been elected president of the United States of America. A consensus has developed among America’s numerous Intelligence Agencies that Russia, through a variety of means, did interfere in the presidential elections by waging a massive disinformation campaign to undermine the legitimacy of the elections, and the Central Intelligence Agency has just concluded that individuals connected with the Russian government have provided WikiLeaks with thousands of hacked emails from the Democratic National Committee and others, including the emails of John Podesta, Hillary Clinton’s campaign chairman. Intelligence sources have told the Washington Post and the New York Times that a principle goal of the massive hacking operation was to boost the chances of the Republican candidate Donald Trump of winning the presidency.
 With Obama, the abandonment of those Syrians seeking good governance, political empowerment and respect for human rights was gradual and partial. With Trump, the abandonment will be complete and blunt
 Like Putin and Assad, Trump believes that those fighting the Assad regime are extremist variations of ISIS. During the campaign, Trump said he favored military cooperation with Russia in the fight against ISIS and other extremists and questioned the value and the wisdom of American support for some opposition groups fighting the Assad regime. Trump’s election means the end of US calls for a Syria without Assad and the termination of even the political support for the non-extremist Syrians opposed to Assad. It is true that the Obama administration has abandoned efforts to remove Assad in the immediate future, even in the context of an agreed upon transitional period, but at least the declared objective of getting to a Syria without Assad was still in the background. With Obama, the abandonment of those Syrians seeking good governance, political empowerment and respect for human rights was gradual and partial. With Trump, the abandonment will be complete and blunt. Worse still, it is in the realm of the possible that Trump could for all intents and purposes sub-contract to Russia the whole war against the radicals in Syria, knowing that Russia will not make any distinction between the extremist and the non-extremist groups opposing Assad, including the groups the Obama administration supported in the past.
Endless wars?
 The fall of Aleppo would be a crippling defeat for the anti-Assad forces, particularly those groups that have received arms and training from the United States. The control of Aleppo will improve considerably the ability of the Assad regime to tighten the pressure on the rebel held Idlib region in Syria’s northwest. For the Assad regime, conquering Aleppo means that the regime will be in control of all of Syria’s major hinterland cities that have gone through hellish fighting in the last five years: Damascus, Aleppo, Homs, and Hama. Assad will finally be presiding over a desolate society, ruined cities, in a broken country that is very unlikely to be healed any time soon if ever. The battle of Aleppo in which the conqueror will be inheriting the wind and the dust rising from endless piles of rubble, highlights once again the staggering cost of Syria’s wars : half a million dead, one million wounded, five million refugees, and 11 million internally displaced.
 Ironically, the fall of Aleppo brings to the fore the inability of the Assad regime to reconquer the eastern and northern parts of the country. But these clear tactical victories do not mean the end of the war but merely the beginning of a new phase in seemingly endless wars. Many armed groups will go underground to wage a guerilla war that would not rely on physically controlling cities, but also make it difficult for the other powers to control them unencumbered. The fall of Aleppo would drive those Syrian groups disillusioned with America and its unfulfilled promises into the arms of the radical extremist groups.
Syria alone
 I have always felt that the Syrians are alone in this fight. Those outsiders who supported the regime did so because it fits with their national interests and agendas. Those in the Middle East who supported the opposition, particularly in the beginning of the uprising, did not share necessarily the goals of good governance, political empowerment, minority rights, and were driven mostly by their animus towards Assad and his regime. And when the regime and its killer militias began sectarian cleansings with the occasional small scale massacres, along with the ritualistic mass killings of ISIS and the depredations of other radicals, the world took note but refused to act.
 President Obama who early on in the Libyan crisis did invoke the principle of “Responsibility to Protect” (R2P) which allows for states to intervene across sovereign borders to prevent mass killings of civilians, totally ignored (R2P) in the Syrian context. Assad began to take the measure of the American president by diabolically and gradually escalating his savagery against his people.. President Obama and other world leaders would follow each massacre with strong statements of condemnation, but why would Assad take Obama’s words seriously, since the American president did not utter them seriously. Obama asked Assad to step down, but there was no “or else” and a year later a virtual red line was established warning Assad that the president would change his calculus if he dared to use Chemical Weapons against rebel held areas. President Obama and his Secretary Of State John Kerry would endlessly say that there is no military solution to the wars in Syria, while Assad, Putin and their Iranian allies always acted on the assumption that only military means create facts on the ground. In the summer of 2013, following a Chemical Weapons’ attack on a civilian neighborhood adjacent to the capital that killed more than 1400 civilians, including a large number of children, Obama issued military threats, and then backed down. The president of the United States seemed to have feet of clay. Never in the hundreds of hours that Kerry spent with his Russian counterpart Lavrov, and through countless days of negotiations in almost every European capital, did Kerry hint that the old superpower would use military power to buttress its diplomacy.
 In the meantime, the killings continued, along with the indifference. Syrian cities were burning under siege - Homs, Hama and some of Damascus’ suburbs. They fought back, but finally fell. But Aleppo was the jewel of Syrian cities that resisted the most and was punished the most. Aleppo’s beautiful stone structures, markets, forts, mosques, hotels, palaces, public baths were pulverized. Only if stones can speak. The slow death of great old cities is as agonizing as the death of a loved one. There are structures that cannot be rebuilt and maybe should not be rebuilt. Obama may still claim that he did the right things in Syria, but I would like to think that his legacy in that ancient land, particularly in Aleppo, will haunt him as long as he lives. Obama rarely mentioned Aleppo by name last year. Aleppo was killed by Assad and his marauders in as much as it was killed by regional and international apathy. When we weep for the passing of Aleppo, we should remember that we too took part in the ritualistic killing of the city. Aleppo died with a bang and with a whisper.
Aleppo is our collective shame.

The Gulf and Britain
Mshari Al Thaydi/Al Arabiya/December 10/16
At the recent Gulf summit that was held in Bahrain, the most prominent news to emerge, in my opinion, was the launch, or renewal, of the British partnership with the Gulf union. The new British prime minister, Theresa May, attended the meeting of Gulf leaders and gave an expressive speech tackling the past, present and future. The Conservative leader was the minister of interior for several years so she knows the nature of the security risks posed by chaos-causing groups and knows which states feed into the chaos and invest in terrorism.
 She was clear when she said that the UK knows its allies from its enemies. She took a trip down memory lane and told us about Britain’s historic relations with the Arabian Sea and the Arabian Peninsula countries. May was smart in selecting the memories as she focused on the old economic partnership through the historic East India Company. In an interview with the Al Arabiya News Channel, which was conducted by Turki Aldahkil, the British prime minister stressed that Gulf countries are allies, however, Iran is not. She added: “Preserving the security in the Gulf and working on its prosperity will ensure Britain’s security and prosperity.”It seems that the era of Iranian hindrance and Obama’s negligence did not succeed in falsifying the reality. She talked about the restoration of a British presence through the launch of a military base in Bahrain and highlighted the qualitative alliance with the Gulf countries. She stressed on the need to stand against and attack Iran’s malevolent policies. Who is the real contributor in the war on terrorism and who creates it at a time when this contributor accuses others of supporting terrorism?! Here we refer to the notorious New York Times article written by Mohammad Javad Zarif, foreign minister of Khomeini’s regime. Prime Minister May revealed in her speech that Saudi Arabia contributed to saving the lives of hundreds of British people, due to security cooperation between Saudi Arabia and Britain. It seems that the era of Iranian hindrance and Obama’s negligence did not succeed in falsifying the reality which shows clearly that the interests between Britain, the Gulf and Saudi Arabia cannot be ignored.
 The Daily Telegraph published an article stating that “Britain relies heavily on intelligence information obtained by Saudi Arabia to stay safe,” stressing that “amid these circumstances, we have to work with Saudis and not blame them.”
 Having said all that, it is important to mention that Britain cannot replace the US - this would be absurd. What the United States has been through is a political “margin” out of context, and even throughout this margin, the US maintained its “core” commitment to an alliance with the Gulf. They always say that politics mirrors interests and I add that it also mirrors history and the credibility of the permanent and sustainable track too.
 In the end, the truth will always prevail.
 *This article was first published in Asharq al-Awsat on December 9, 2016.