Week in Review: Europe’s Immigration Crisis, Russians in Syria, Chemical Warfare, EPA Power Grab, and More

All you need to know about everything in the news this week
 

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Top Stories:

Europe’s intractable crisis

  • The solution to Europe’s migrant crisis is obvious: Fix Syria and North Africa. Give these poor people a reason to stay home. Make sure they have food and clean water, a safe home and stable community, a healthy economy. Give them hope, the lack of which is a huge part of why they are currently fleeing.
  • But fixing Syria in a meaningful way would likely lead to conflict with Iran and Russia, probably China too. Such conflict would engulf the Middle East. It would lead to World War iii.
  • The obvious alternative is simply accepting the migrants. But that comes at an enormous expense, and with significant social ramifications.
  • Russia fighting in Syria

  • Video footage this week showed Russian troops fighting alongside Syrian President Bashar Assad’s army.
  • An unnamed activist with the Syrian rebel group, the Free Syrian Army, told the Times: “The Russians have been there a long time.”
  • “There are more Russian officials who came to Slunfeh, [Syria], in recent weeks,” said the activist. “We don’t know how many but I can assure you there has been Russian reinforcement.”
  • Pentagon confirms Islamic State’s use of chemical weapons

  • Caroline Glick wrote: “The notion of jihad is fairly simple. It asserts that Islam is the only true religion. All other faiths are wrong and evil. It is the destiny of the one true faith to reign supreme. The duty of all Muslims is to facilitate Islam’s global rise and dominion. How this duty is borne varies. Some take up arms.”
  • In addition to conventional arms, the Islamic State has taken up chemical weapons.
  • This fact of chemical warfare in Syria “is a haunting symptom of the conditions created by the Assad regime when they flagrantly disregard international prohibitions against the use of chemicals as a weapon,” said Pentagon spokeswoman Elissa Smith. “These allegations are also a stark reminder to the international community of the threats posed by the ongoing chaos in Syria and the urgency of reaching a diplomatic solution to the conflict in Syria.”
  • The EPA’s federal power grab

  • The Environmental Protection Agency (epa) reinterpreted the Navigable Waters Act to give itself far greater jurisdiction than it previously understood it had.
  • PacificLegal.org calls it “undoubtedly the largest expansion of power ever proposed by a federal agency.”
  • The American Farm Bureau Federation says that the epa power grab puts 99 percent of Pennsylvania and Montana, and 100 percent of Virginia under the federal agency’s authority.
  • Suddenly, and without congressional input, the epa has placed the majority of the rivers and farmland in the United States under its regulatory control.
  • “Governments promise peace—but bring wars,” noted Herbert W. Armstrong. “They promise benefits for the people, and then extract from the people the cost of the benefits plus excessive costs of government. Government promises are empty. The people are the pawns who fork over the money in order to get a part of it back.”
  • Other news:

    “[Iran’s Quds Force commander] General Suleimani said that the collapse of American power in the region has happened,” Iran’s Assembly of Experts member Hojat al-Islam Seyyed Mojtaba Taheri said. “He gave the factors for this collapse, and one of the most influential reasons for it is the strong logic of the Islamic Republic of Iran in various arenas.”

    Five Chinese Navy ships are currently operating in the Bering Sea off the coast of Alaska, Pentagon officials said Wednesday, marking the first time the U.S. military has seen them in the area.

    A new poll showed for the first time that a majority of Scots would support independence if another vote was staged now.

    Rowan County, Kentucky, clerk Kim Davis was jailed for refusing to submit to court authority to issue marriage licenses to homosexuals. She chose to submit to “God’s authority” instead.

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