Friday roundup

Northern and western Africa are awash in jihadist arms:

A report issued this month tracking the flow of weapons across Libya and the Sahel revealed that terror groups operating in West Africa are getting much more than just inspiration from terror hubs in Iraq and Syria.

The study by UK-based Conflict Armament Research, an independent organization that tracks the flow of conventional weapons and materiel, found that weapons stockpiles remaining from the nearly 42-year dictatorship of Moammar Gadhafi have migrated as far as Mali and Syria.

But investigators found that the unstable country awash in more than 100 militia groups with around 125,000 fighters -- some support the unity government, some don't -- is not the only source of illicit weapons in the region.

"The profile of illicit weapons in the region reflects the consequences of other state crises, particularly in Mali, and of weak control over national stockpiles in the Central African Republic and Côte d’Ivoire," states the report. "The prevalence of Ivorian-origin small arms across the region is a particularly unexpected finding of this investigation."

And even through the flow of weapons out of Libya has been decreasing, importation of arms and ammunition into Libya has been increasing -- particularly from Sudan.

The report highlighted "a new set of weapons" now in use among Islamist armed groups in the southern Sahel, noted when al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb and Al-Mourabitoun attacked hotels, restaurants and resorts this year and last, killing Americans among other foreigners and locals, in Mali, Burkina Faso, and Ivory Coast with "a common set of small arms unlike any previously documented in the sub-region."

"These include Iraqi-origin assault rifles and a batch of Chinese rifles manufactured in 2011 whose serial numbers interleave with matching rifles that Syrian Kurdish People’s Protection Units (YPG) seized from IS fighters in Syria in 2015. These findings indicate that the Islamist groups responsible for the Sahelian attacks have a common source of supply or constitute a single cell, and point tentatively to possible links or commonalities of supply sources between Islamist fighters in West Africa and those operating in Iraq and Syria."

The report says the weapons used in the high-profile attacks —AK-pattern Type 56-1 assault rifles— "are a type which are readily available from local sources in the region but which seem instead to have been sourced transnationally." The Chinese government had not yet responded to trace requests by UN and CAR investigators.

Informative Washington Post piece about an underground radio station in Mosul, Iraq the call-in shows of which give trapped residents a chance to speak out about day-to-day, moment-to-moment conditions.

Robert Tracinski at The Federalist offers five ways for #NeverTrump folks to move forward now that the deal is done: take what we can get, remember that the federal Congress and most state legislatures are in Pub hands, don't make partisan excuses for Squirrel-Hair, be the loyal opposition, and be the mustard seed. That last one has to do with preserving "the powerful mustard seed of liberty . . even when nobody else cares. Especially when nobody else cares.

Jonah Goldberg at NRO says it was the lefties that populate the MSM who "normalized" Trump:

Throughout the primaries, Trump’s conservative opponents complained bitterly that the mainstream media was normalizing Trump. No one listened, for three reasons.

Trump was good for ratings (and got billions worth of free media as a result). CBS honcho Les Moonves said that Trump’s success “may not be good for America, but it’s damn good for CBS.”

Second, the mainstream media and numerous liberal pundits loved Trump’s impact on the GOP for the same reason bored teenagers like to throw lit matches into dumpsters: Garbage fires are fun to watch.

The third reason is closely related to the second: The media thought Trump was more likely lose to Hillary Clinton. (And so did the Clinton campaign itself, as we learned from WikiLeaks.)

In February, Jonathan Chait, a writer for New York magazine and the author of a forthcoming book explaining how super-terrific Barack Obama’s presidency was, wrote a piece titled “Why liberals should support a Trump Republican nomination.” He listed three reasons: Trump would lose, Trump would wreak havoc on the GOP, and Trump would be better than the other Republican candidates.

“If he does win,” Chait wrote, “a Trump presidency would probably wind up doing less harm to the country than a Marco Rubio or a (Ted) Cruz presidency. It might even, possibly, do some good.”

The day after the election, Chait declared on Twitter “This is the worst thing that has happened in my life.”

Okay, then.

Shortly after the election, Slate’s Jamelle Bouie wrote a piece titled “There’s no such thing as a good Trump voter,” likening some 60 million Americans to a racist lynch mob. Last year, Bouie penned an article with the headline “Donald Trump is actually a moderate Republican.”

Of course, Chait and Bouie are not alone. Progressive figures such as Paul Krugman, Matt Yglesias, Robert Borosage, Amanda Marcotte, and Bill Maher all said during the primaries that Trump was less scary than, say, Rubio or Cruz. (See Warren Henry’s excellent survey in The Federalist for details.)

Isn’t it awfully late to be decrying the normalization of Trump when you were an early adopter of normalization because you thought the horrible Democratic nominee would have an easier time beating him?

The dating app Tinder now offers users 37 gender choices.

The list includes “Agender,” “Gender Fluid,” “Gender Nonconforming,” every variation of “Trans” and “Transgender,” and “Two-Spirit.”

Another option is “Pangender,” a gender that can transcend sex and time.

“Pangender (and/or Omnigender) is a non-binary gender experience which refers to a wide multiplicity of genders that can (or not) tend to the infinite (meaning that this experience can go beyond the current knowledge of genders),” according to Nonbinary.org. “This experience can be either simultaneously or over time.”

The climate-change hustlers of the current post-American regime are in Morocco, trying to make haste regarding putting concrete details on the recent Paris accord. They and the rest of the attendees are making very little progress.