March 24th, 2016 • 2h 59m
Shownotes
Every new episode of No Agenda is accompanied by a comprehensive list of shownotes curated by Adam while preparing for the show. Clips played by the hosts during the show can also be found here.
TODAY
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Brussels
Belgium Evacuates Nuclear Power Plant As Panic Spreads After Attacks
Tue, 22 Mar 2016 14:50
Energy utility Electrabel is evacuating Belgium's two nuclear power plants in the wake of Tuesday's terrorist attacks in Brussels.
Doel, made up of four reactors, and Tihange, with three are closed and all vehicles coming and going are subject to checks. "Employees who are not needed to run the two power plants are now leaving the sites," Politico EU reports, adding that the "military arrived at the Tihange plant on Friday."
"Surveillance is stepped up with added security measures at nuclear plants," Belga says. "Vehicles are being checked with police and army on site."
As AFP reminds us, "in February, investigators probing the Paris attacks found video footage of a senior Belgian nuclear official at the property of a key suspect." That footage was discovered ''as part of seizures made following the Paris attacks'', Belgian prosecutors said last month, while declining to divulge the individual's identity ''for obvious security reasons''.
(Tihange)
The plant is around 50 miles from Brussels Airport.
As France 24 reported in January, there are significant safety concerns surrounding both Tihange and Doel: "In summer 2012, Belgian authorities found small cracks in the pressure vessel of Doel 3 during a scheduled outage and safety check, opting to keep it offline until more tests were conducted [and] in September of the same year, the same flaws were discovered in the Tihange 3 reactor."
"With regard to the reactors Doel 3 and Tihange 2, many scientists are saying that there is a risk of a nuclear accident - with all the consequences that would entail for the population - because of the cracks found in the pressure vessels. So we are asking the court to stop operations of these reactors or alternatively to appoint a panel of experts to re-examine the scientific evidence," lawyers for the NGO Nucleaire Stop Kernenergie argued previously, in a bid to shut down the reactors.
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Politie geeft standje na gewetensvraag leraar | m.metronieuws.nl
Thu, 24 Mar 2016 02:56
Ivar Mol komt uit Breda en is leraar. Hij stelde zichzelf daarom dinsdag de vraag hoe je om moet gaan met moslimkinderen die applaudisseren voor de aanslagen in Brussel. 'Hoe geef je nog les als er in de klas geapplaudisseerd wordt voor de aanslagen?'', vroeg hij zich op Twitter af.
Zijn tweet werd maar liefst elfhonderd keer geretweet en ook op Facebook werd zijn bericht honderden keren gedeeld. Groot was dan ook de verrassing toen er in de middag drie politieagenten bij Mol op de stoep stonden.
In tegenstelling tot wat velen dachten, heeft Mol zelf geen applaudisserende moslimkinderen in zijn klas gehad. Via Facebook liet hij weten dat hij zich baseerde op andere berichten op radio en internet.
Vanmorgen schreef ik op Twitter, na aanleiding van andere berichten op radio en internet:"Hoe geef je nog les als er...
Geplaatst door Ivar Mol op dinsdag 22 maart 2016Toch stonden er dinsdagmiddag drie agenten op de stoep: 'Drie agenten op de stoep nav mijn tweet vanmorgen. Of ik dat voortaan liever niet meer wil doen.'' Dat zorgde voor enorme verontwaardiging op social media.
Islamic State Bragged That Its Attacks Would Help Break Up the European Union
Thu, 24 Mar 2016 03:09
A newsletter circulated after Islamic State's November massacre in Paris sheds light on what the group believes yesterday's deadly attack in Brussels will accomplish, including weakening unity on the continent and exhausting European states economically.
An issue of the Islamic State newsletter, al-Naba, published weeks after the Paris attack, boasted in one section that ''the Paris raid has caused the creation of a state of instability in European countries which will have long-term effects,'' listed as ''the weakening of European cohesion, including demands to repeal the Schengen Agreement'...which permits free traveling in Europe without checkpoints'' and ''security measures [which] will cost them tens of millions of dollars,'' along with ''mutual accusations between France and Belgium'' over security failings.
The same newsletter section also stated that a ''general state of unease'' created by terrorism would lead to decreases in tourism and new restrictions on travel, costing already cash-strapped EU countries ''tens of billions of dollars'' in revenue.
Infographic from ISIS newsletter al Naba.
In this single list, the newsletter mingled facts from the aftermath of the Paris attacks with predictions about the future. At least some of the predictions have since held up. Earlier this year, several European nations announced major increases in their defense budgets, with analysts expecting an increase of up to 50 billion Euros in spending across the continent through 2019. Indications that European borders were closing, already available before the Paris attacks, proliferated in the months after.Islamic State's post-Paris propaganda attacks on the European Union appear particularly relevant after this week's attack in Brussels, which is the EU's capital and the site of NATO headquarters. Although local authorities have said they have yet to directly connect the two attacks, Islamic State yesterday claimed responsibility for the Brussels massacre in a statement that U.S. officials said appears to be genuine.
''Because ISIL recognizes that they can't compete militarily, they employ a strategy that seeks to bleed stronger powers economically and politically,'' says Amarnath Amarasingam, a fellow at George Washington University's Program on Extremism.
A similar strategy was famously outlined in 2004 by Al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden, who claimed that the goal of the 9/11 attacks were to draw the United States into costly wars abroad that would drain its resources and political will, while engendering backlash from Muslim communities worldwide.
''Sadly, in responses to terrorism, we often fall right into the trap set by these groups by overspending, over-policing and sacrificing our civil liberties. Its an endless cycle,'' says Amarasingam.
''The smarter strategy is to understand that if we are going to be involved in foreign countries, as is probably necessary in today's world, there is going to be some kind of backlash from a small subset of people. But if we start treating this as a civilizational war and start dismantling our own institutions, it becomes a self-defeating exercise.''
If EU countries do respond to the Brussels attacks by further restricting travel between member states, it would be a step towards dismembering the integrated political order that has preserved peace on the continent since World War II. That order was described by former West German Chancellor Konrad Adenauer as ''necessary for our security, for our freedom, for our existence as a nation and as an intellectual and creative international community.'' That ISIL believes its actions undermine European integration suggests that there is a more sophisticated plan behind their attacks than simply engendering blind terror.
Before the wave of ISIL terrorism in Europe that started last year, the EU had already been shaken by a number of political and economic crises, as well as a refugee influx from the civil war in Syria that U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry recently said poses a ''near existential threat'' to the continent's integration.
Attacks like the one in Brussels are almost certain to exacerbate these dangers to the EU. Ironically, breaking up European integration is a goal that Islamic State also shares with far-right nativist parties throughout the continent, as well as Russian President Vladimir Putin.
''The political right is ascendant all across Europe at the moment, so this is a particularly dangerous climate for this attack to occur,'' says Muddassar Ahmed, a former British government advisor and chairman of the UK-based political risk firm Unitas Risk. ''The fact that the attack occurred in Brussels is particularly notable, as the EU and NATO are two of the biggest stabilizing forces in Belgium, a country which is starkly divided upon regional lines.''
Islamic State has repeatedly made clear that the purpose of its attacks are to shock societies and thus exacerbate internal differences. In the wake of its February 2015 massacre at the offices of French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo, ISIL crowed that its attacks were ''eliminating the grayzone'' of coexistence that existed between Muslims and Westerners. The attack yesterday on Brussels, the capital of the European Union, seems calculated to exacerbate the divisions extant among European nations as well.
''This attack, along with other recent developments in the continent, are furthering the cause of Russia and local right-wing parties that want to see an end to European integration,'' Ahmed said. ''Looking at the political landscape, its clear that Europe is more divided today than it has been in any time in recent memory.''
Top photo: ''Old Frayed European Flag'' by fdecomite using CC BY 2.0.
When it comes to terror, PIERS MORGAN says we should listen to Donald Trump | Daily Mail Online
Wed, 23 Mar 2016 03:20
How many more?
That's all I could think this morning as news broke of yet another ISIS terror attack, this time in Brussels.
How many more innocent men, women and children are going to be blown to pieces by these murderous bastards?
How many more airports, train stations, sports stadiums, restaurants or concert halls will be obliterated in a hail of suicide bombs and bullets?
How many more world leaders will wring their hands on national television afterwards and spout pointless platitudes about the 'poor brave victims' and 'heroic emergency services'?
How many taunting, gleeful claims of responsibility will the despicable perpetrators of these evil crimes be able to issue?
I'm sick of this, aren't you?
Sick of feeling sick about such endless, senseless barbarism.
And the worst thing about it is that I see no end.
Aftermath: Small fires burn amid the rubble, fallen ceiling tiles and abandoned luggage minutes after two bombs were detonated in the departure area of Brussels Airport this morning
Comfort: Two airport workers embrace in the aftermath of the attacks in Brussels this morning
The inherent problem which causes it, chaotic war-torn instability in the Middle East, is getting worse, not better; just as the financial and military resource of the enemy is growing greater, not reducing.
Yet just as the world is crying out for strong decisive leadership, there is none.
America has a demob happy President Obama eeking out his last few months in office. A man whose infamous 'leading from behind' philosophy to foreign policy has been partly responsible for the war in Syria raging uncontrollably for five years '' allowing fundamentalism to ferment.
Obama has zero interest in doing anything tangible to really deal with ISIS. This is now parked in the tray marked 'next president's problem.'
Europe, meanwhile, is splintering at the seams, ravaged by an unprecedented migration crisis that nobody seems to have a clue how to handle.
German chancellor Angela Merkel's decision to let a million migrants into its country is already seen to be an utter disaster.
I interviewed Trump this morning on my UK morning TV show GMB where he gave his views on the attacks and what should be done to stop ISIS
Second attack: Just over an hour after the blasts at Brussels Airport came a bomb on the busy Maalbeek Metro tunnel close to the EU institutions - again leaving multiple casualties
Victims: Emergency services treat an unknown casualty of the metro bomb blast this morning
France, reeling from two horrendous attacks in Paris, is understandably highly fearful of yet more terror coming its way.
Belgium officials effectively conceded today that they have no real way to protect themselves against the ISIS threat. A fact surely born out by the fact that today's onslaught in Brussels happened right when the city most expected it, following the capture of Paris attacks suspect Saleh Abdeslam three days ago.
Britain, surely a target anytime soon, is on red alert but its warring politicians are too distracted by the upcoming EU referendum in June to pay anything more than lame lip service to terrorism.
So nobody seems to be doing anything concrete to stop ISIS, or even suggesting a new way to do so given the spectacular lack of success to date.
Well almost nobody.
By coincidence, I had an interview scheduled today with the world's most controversial man, Donald Trump, for my UK show, Good Morning Britain.
It was set up a couple of weeks ago, but the timing was eerily prescient.
Here is one man who definitely has a plan to deal with ISIS terrorism. Several plans in fact.
The problem is that people don't like them. Well, a lot of people don't anyway.
Trump, current front-runner for the Republican nomination, wants to hit ISIS 'so hard they never recover'.
(As he told me: 'You've got to take them out and you've got to take them out harshly and you've got to take them out fast.')
He also wants a short-term ban on Muslims entering the U.S. until, as he puts it, 'we figure out what the hell is going on?'
And he wants to torture suspects like Abdeslam with techniques like water-boarding to try and extract information about future attacks.
Oh, and he wants to build a giant wall to stop illegal immigrants pouring over the Mexican border into America.
Captured: Belgian police detain two suspected terrorists soon after the explosion at the metro
George Clooney hit out at Trump yesterday, as he endorsed Democrat candidate Hillary Clinton for the presidency, saying: 'If you listen to the loudest voices out there today, you'd think we're a country that hates Mexicans, hates Muslims, and thinks that committing war crimes is the best way to make America great again.'
I spoke to Trump for 40 minutes. He was, as you'd expect, bombastic, defiant and self-congratulatory. Why wouldn't he be? He's ripped up every political rulebook to take this presidential race by storm, a scenario that is hardly going to deflate the ego of New York's most cock-sure billionaire tycoon.
But he also spoke in more detail about his plans to combat ISIS and I found myself nodding more than I expected.
Trump told me countries must tighten their borders in light of these terror attacks, especially to anyone related to an ISIS fighter in Syria.
Is he so wrong?
He told me he wants law-abiding Muslims to root out the extremists in their midst, expressing his bafflement and anger that someone like Abdeslam was able to hide for so long in the very part of Brussels he had previously lived.
Is he so wrong?
He told me America must make it far harder for illegal immigrants to enter the U.S. and thinks European countries should follow suit.
Is he so wrong?
He told me he believes there are now areas of many major European cities which have become poisonous breeding grounds for radicalized Islamic terror.
Is he so wrong?
I didn't feel I was talking to a lunatic, as many seem to view Trump.
I saw a guy, a non-politician unfettered by PC language restraints, who is genuinely furious at the devastation which ISIS is wreaking, and seriously concerned for the security of his fellow Americans and indeed, the citizens of Europe.
Salah Abdeslam, 26, was captured in Belgium just days ago for his part in the Paris attacks
(Remember, Trump's from New York and felt the horror of 9/11 very personally and very deeply like all New Yorkers.)
His plans for tackling this extraordinarily dangerous threat to the world have been widely condemned as 'bigoted' and 'racist'.
But although I publicly criticised him for the Muslim short-term ban suggestion, I've known Trump for ten years and I don't believe he's a racist.
I think he's someone who has spent his life responding to metaphorical punches on his nose by punching even harder back.
And right now, he firmly believes that ISIS will murder countless more Americans and Europeans if somebody somewhere doesn't stand up and punch them hard in the face.
Someone prepared to stop spewing politically-correct niceties after these attacks, hoping nobody gets offended, and actually DO something.
Let's be honest with ourselves, right now ISIS is winning this war and will continuing committing utter carnage on our streets on an ever graver and more barbaric scale until they are stopped.
I don't have the answers to how to do that.
But I don't hear any good ideas coming from any world leaders at the moment either, and it's their highly paid jobs to work it out.
Instead, I see a global paralysis driven by fear, confusion and woeful lack of leadership.
And it will only get worse.
Hate Donald Trump all you like, but at least he seems to recognise the magnitude of the threat and at least he has firm proposals for how to try to defeat it.
They may not win him the Politically Correct Pontificator of the Year award. But how many more scenes like this morning's appalling images from Brussels are we going to tolerate before we try a non-PC option to beat these disgusting excuses for human beings?
At the end of our interview, I asked Donald Trump to send a message to the large majority of non-violent, decent Muslims who are as disgusted by these attacks as the rest of us.
'I have great respect for Muslims,' he said, 'I have many friends that are Muslims. I'm just saying that there is something with a radicalized portion that is very, very bad and very dangerous. I would say this, to the Muslims, when they see trouble, they have to report it, they're not reporting it, they're absolutely not reporting it and that's a big problem.'
Is he so wrong?
The Quran's deadly role in inspiring Belgian slaughter: Column
Wed, 23 Mar 2016 01:47
Nabeel Qureshi2:44 p.m. EDT March 22, 2016
An explosion tore through a Brussels metro station on Tuesday, shortly after blasts at the Brussels airport. (March 22) AP
Belgian policemen and a soldier carrying an injured person after an explosion at the Maelbeek Metro station in Brussels on March 22, 2016.(Photo: epa)
Americans awoke this morning to another terrorist attack '-- this time in the Brussels airport and subway. These attacks hit close to home. Many of us have flown through the Brussels airport, just as we have vacationed in Paris and visited San Bernardino. Once again images of the injured flood social media channels, reminding Americans of the ever-present reality that it could have been us. How is this happening? Why are people becoming radicalized, and so close to home? I am concerned how little we in the West understand why peaceful Muslims who live among us are drawn into radical Islam.
As a Muslim growing up in the United States, I was taught by my imams and the community around me that Islam is a religion of peace. My family modeled love for others and love for country, and not just by their words. My father served in the U.S. Navy throughout my childhood, starting as a seaman and retiring as a lieutenant commander. I believed wholeheartedly a slogan often repeated at my mosque after 9/11: ''The terrorists who hijacked the planes also hijacked Islam.''
Yet as I began to investigate the Quran and the traditions of Muhammad's life for myself in college, I found to my genuine surprise that the pages of Islamic history are filled with violence. How could I reconcile this with what I had always been taught about Islam?
In February 2015, the U.S. State Department Acting Spokesperson Marie Harf suggested that a ''lack of opportunity for jobs'' might be a significant factor in radicalization and terrorism. Alternatively, Suraj Lakhani, a scholar of radicalization in Wales, suggested that the process is driven by religious concerns and a drive to bolster one's personal identity. He implies that young Muslims ought not be allowed to hear ISIL messages or interact with their recruiters.
Naturally, I agree that interacting with ISIL recruiters is a bad idea, but I believe what the recruiters themselves say sheds the most insight on the radicalization process. ISIL's primary recruiting technique is not social or financial but theological. With frequent references to the highest sources of authority in Islam, the Quran and hadith (the collection of the sayings of the prophet Muhammad), ISIL enjoins upon Muslims their duty to fight against the enemies of Islam and to emigrate to the Islamic State once it has been established.
USA TODAY
Europe's terror enclaves hidden in plain sight: David Andelman
A recent two-page spread in the third issue of ISIL's propaganda magazine, Dabiq, for instance, appealed to prospective recruits to leave their homeland and emigrate to the Islamic State by quoting a hadith from the canonical collections; it urged them to realize that they are living in times that reflect those of the earliest Muslims by referring to Muhammad's life; it encouraged them to take a step of faith by quoting the Quran; and it praised them for their obedience by quoting yet another hadith. All four references to the Quran, hadith and the related Sunnah, were on the same two-page spread. Such is the frequency and intensity with which ISIL uses Islam's foundational texts to appeal to potential recruits.
As a young Muslim boy growing up in the 1980s and 1990s, it was impossible for me to look up a hadith unless I traveled to an Islamic library, something I would have never thought to do. For all intents and purposes, if I wanted to know about the traditions of Muhammad, I had to ask imams or elders in my tradition of Islam. That is no longer the case today. Just as radical Islamists may spread their message far and wide online, so, too, the Internet has made the traditions of Muhammad readily available for whoever wishes to look them up, even in English. When everyday Muslims investigate the Quran and hadith for themselves, bypassing centuries of tradition and their imams' interpretations, they are confronted with the reality of violent jihad in the very foundations of their faith.
The Quran itself reveals a trajectory of jihad reflected in the almost 23 years of Muhammad's prophetic career. As I demonstrate carefully in my book, Answering Jihad: A Better Way Forward, starting with peaceful teachings and proclamations of monotheism, Muhammad's message featured violence with increasing intensity, culminating in surah 9, chronologically the last major chapter of the Quran, and its most expansively violent teaching. Throughout history, Muslim theologians have understood and taught this progression, that the message of the Quran culminates in its ninth chapter.
USA TODAY
Europe's terror enclaves hidden in plain sight: David Andelman
POLICING THE USA: A look at race, justice, media
Surah 9 is a command to disavow all treaties with polytheists and to subjugate Jews and Christians (9.29) so that Islam may ''prevail over all religions'' (9.33). It is fair to wonder whether any non-Muslims in the world are immune from being attacked, subdued or assimilated under this command. Muslims must fight, according to this final chapter of the Quran, and if they do not, then their faith is called into question and they are counted among the hypocrites (9.44-45). If they do fight, they are promised one of two rewards, either spoils of war or heaven through martyrdom. Allah has made a bargain with the mujahid who obeys: Kill or be killed in battle, and paradise awaits (9.111).
Muslim thought leaders agree that the Quran promotes such violence. Maajid Nawaz, co-founder of the Quilliam Foundation in the United Kingdom, has said, ''We Muslims must admit there are challenging Koranic passages that require reinterpretation today. ... Only by rejecting vacuous literalism are we able to condemn, in principle, ISIS-style slavery, beheading, lashing, amputation & other medieval practices forever (all of which are in the Quran). '... Reformers either win, and get religion-neutral politics, or lose, and get ISIL-style theocracy.'' In other words, Muslims must depart from the literal reading of the Quran in order to create a jihad-free Islamic world.
This is not at all to say that most Muslims are violent. The vast majority of Muslims do not live their lives based on chapter 9 of the Quran or on the books of jihad in the hadith. My point is not to question the faith of such Muslims nor to imply that radical Muslims are the true Muslims. Rather, I simply want to make clear that while ISIL may lure youth through a variety of methods, it radicalizes them primarily by urging them to follow the literal teachings of the Quran and the hadith, interpreted consistently and in light of the violent trajectory of early Islam. As long as the Islamic world focuses on its foundational texts, we will continue to see violent jihadi movements.
In order to effectively confront radicalization, then, our tools must be similarly ideological, even theological. This is why I suggest that sharing alternative worldviews with Muslims is one of the best methods to address radicalization. Indeed, this is what happened to me. As I faced the reality of the violent traditions of Islam, I had a Christian friend who suggested that Islam did not have to be my only choice and that there were excellent reasons to accept the gospel.
As more and more Western Muslims encounter ISIL's claims and the surprising violence in their own tradition, many will be looking for ways out of the moral quandary this poses for them. We need to be equipped to provide alternatives to violent jihad, alternatives that address the root of why so many Muslims are radicalizing in the first place. Any solution, political or otherwise, that overlooks the spiritual and religious roots of jihad can have only limited effectiveness.
Dr. Nabeel Qureshi is a speaker with Ravi Zacharias International Ministries and is the author ofAnswering Jihad: A Better Way Forward. Follow him on Twitter at @NAQureshi
In addition to its own editorials, USA TODAY publishes diverse opinions from outside writers, including our Board of Contributors. To read more columns like this, go to the Opinion front page.
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'Daders Brussel waren gezochte broers' | NOS
Thu, 24 Mar 2016 15:00
De vermoedelijke daders ANP
De namen van twee terroristen van de aanslagen in Brussel zijn bekend. De zender RTBF zegt dat het gaat om de broers El Bakraoui, die vorige week al zouden zijn gezocht bij de politie-actie in Vorst. Dat laatste werd toen overigens niet bevestigd door de Belgische justitie.
De RTBF meldt dat beide broers zich hebben opgeblazen op Zaventem. Ze staan in donkere kleding op het beeld van de bewakingscamera die gisteren werd verspreid.
Volgens de publieke omroep VRT staat maar een van de broers op de foto. De andere broer zou betrokken zijn geweest bij de aanslag in de metro bij Maalbeek. Daarvan is nog altijd niet duidelijk of het een zelfmoordaanslag was, of dat er een bom was geplaatst.
De Bakraoui-broers hebben een crimineel verleden en lijken ook in verband te staan met de aanslagen in Parijs. In januari 2010 schoot Ibrahim el Bakraoui met een kalasjnikov op een politieagent, waarvoor hij in oktober van dat jaar werd veroordeeld. De broers waren toen betrokken bij een overval op een effectenkantoor.
Ibrahim, de oudste van de twee, kreeg een celstraf van negen jaar, maar kwam vervroegd vrij. Khalid werd in 2011 veroordeeld tot een voorwaardelijke gevangenisstraf wegens een reeks gewapende overvallen op auto's. Bij zijn arrestatie werden volgens de media kalasjnikovs gevonden.
VorstDe kranten melden ook dat Khalid onder een valse naam een appartement in Vorst had gehuurd, waar vorige week een schietpartij plaatsvond. Een Algerijnse IS-aanhanger werd toen doodgeschoten. In dat appartement werden vingerafdrukken van Salah Abdeslam gevonden.
Khalid zou ook een huis in Charleroi hebben gehuurd, waar daders van de aanslagen in Parijs zich hebben schuilgehouden.
Zwarte hoedDe man met de zwarte hoed op het bewakingsbeeld zou de 24-jarige Najim Laachraoui zijn. Hij liet zijn bomgordel ongebruikt achter op Zaventem en is voortvluchtig.
Laachraoui wordt gezocht sinds de aanslagen in november in Parijs; hij zou bommen hebben gefabriceerd die toen zijn gebruikt. Hij staat bekend als explosievenexpert en is een oud-Syri-strijder.
Van Laachraoui is verder bekend dat hij een vriend is van de vrijdag opgepakte Abdeslam. De twee zouden vorige week dinsdag samen zijn ontsnapt uit de woning in Vorst toen de politie daar binnenviel.
Brussels attacks could alter Apple-FBI battle
Wed, 23 Mar 2016 01:25
Techonomy Media CEO David Kirkpatrick weighs in on Apple's battle with the FBI over privacy and encryption in the wake of the Brussels terror attacks. Bloomberg
Apple CEO Tim Cook speaks during an Apple special event at the Apple headquarters on March 21, 2016 in Cupertino, California.(Photo: Justin Sullivan, Getty Images)
SAN FRANCISCO '-- The government blinked in its fight with Apple over the San Bernardino iPhone.
But this landmark privacy battle is far from over, say legal experts, especially with public opinion likely to swing again toward national security after the latest terrorist attacks in Belgium.
"It's another turn in a long road," says associate professor Mark Grabowski, who teaches Internet law at Adelphi University in New York. "Maybe they find out how to unlock the iPhone, but there is a broader goal (accessing data) beyond this case."
The Department of Justice's request late Monday that U.S. court postpone its hearing with Apple, with the explanation it may have found an outside party to help the FBI unlock the seized iPhone of a San Bernardino shooter, blew a gaping hole in the FBI's previous argument. Law enforcement had insisted only Apple could gain access to the iPhone found with Syed Farook who, with another shooter, killed 14 and injured 22 on Dec. 2.
End of the road for the FBI?
Not necessarily. The act of terrorism in Brussels on Tuesday, which killed at least 30 people and wounded 230, could rekindle the government's resolve just as the terrorist assault in California last year prompted the FBI's clash with Apple, cyber security experts say.
USA TODAY
FBI could be using these hacks to break into killer's iPhone
The FBI "will use this terrorist attack to advance its case," says Avivah Litan, a vice president at market researcher Gartner. "The public reacts very strongly to these types of incidents, and insists the government needs to do what is necessary to get the bad guys."
It was that sentiment, Litan and others say, that emboldened the bureau to undertake its very public cause against Apple. San Bernardino, they claim, checked all the boxes in the FBI's quest to find an air-tight case to push for weakened encryption on smartphones and other digital devices.
If encrypted data are an "element" in the bombings at the Brussels airport and subway station, there is renewed support for the FBI's argument, adds Paul Rosenzweig, a law professor at George Washington University, who also advises tech start-ups.
But the events in Belgium could also buttress Apple's argument about the importance of avoiding loopholes in its encryption.
Security codes, staff changes and other critical infrastructure are stored in the computing cloud and encrypted at most major airports, says Evan Greer, campaign director of Fight for the Future, a non-profit that supports Apple.
USA TODAY
Judge grants Justice delay in Apple hearing
"If the FBI had its way weakening encryption with Apple, it makes most airports that much more vulnerable to these attacks, not less," Greer says. "The FBI's case was never about Apple or an iPhone, but setting a larger precedent. They (FBI) won't back down."
The FBI has said it's testing this new method from an undisclosed outside party, and it will update the court by April 5.
Speaking late Monday, before the attack in Europe, an Apple attorney involved in the FBI square-off acknowledged the Silicon Valley company may find itself at legal loggerheads in a few weeks as it continues to match wits with hackers in a digital arms race. The attorney asked not to be identified because of the delicate nature of the ongoing case with the FBI.
While support for Apple has grown in the past month,'-- 42%-30% favor Apple, with 28% not choosing a side, according to a poll by Vrge Analytics before Tuesday's events '-- the calculus could change after Brussels, concedes Tom Galvin, a partner at Vrge Analytics.
The standoff, highlighting a broader issue of whether a tech company should be compelled to provide technological support to extract troves of digital data it collects and stores, is a decades-old theme pitting law enforcement against technologists.
The stakes now are higher with the increased frequency of terrorist attacks and major hacking breaches, Greer and Litan say.
USA TODAY
Apple's Cook sends message at iPhone launch: 'I won't back down'
Contributing: Kevin Johnson in Washington, D.C.
Follow USA TODAY San Francisco Bureau Chief @jswartz
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No Agenda Player 810 1:33:00
Tue, 22 Mar 2016 19:11
UN International Day of Happiness
4:23Trump Protester Punched and Kicked at Rally
12:04Oprah Interviews Trump in 1988
18:35Republicans Conspiring Against Trump
24:09Trump's Advisor Interviewed by Blitzer
39:08Bill Ayers: Silencing Trump
42:35Elizabeth Warren Unwilling to Attack Clinton
1:00:50[Executive Producer Segment]
1:03:16Classifying ISIS Actions as Genocidal
1:14:48Last Paris Terror Attack Suspect Captured Alive
1:21:04Turkey and EU Reach Deal on Migration
1:32:15Pelosi Asking for Immigration Reform
1:43:03Confusing Questions from Millennials
1:47:57[Donation Segment]
1:55:40John Receives the IRS Audit Scam
2:04:18[Clip of the Day]
2:05:29Armed Forces Appropriations Committee
2:19:44RT Report on German Nuclear Shutdown
2:25:48California University Stabbing Inspired by ISIS
2:29:44Hogans Win Case Against Gawker
2:31:06Swine Flu is Back
2:33:17Lead Poisoning in Flint Michigan
2:34:01
Brussels explosions: injured Mormon missionary also survived Boston attack | World news | The Guardian
Wed, 23 Mar 2016 12:27
Mormon missionaries Mason Wells, 19, and Joseph Empey, 20, of Utah. Both were injured in the explosions at Zaventem airport in Brussels. Photograph: Joseph Empey/AP
An American Mormon missionary wounded in the Brussels attacks had also been close to the scene of the Boston marathon explosion it has emerged.
Mason Wells, 19, was injured with Richard Norby, 66, and Joseph Empey, 20, fellow members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, when two bombs exploded in Zaventem airport on Tuesday morning.
Related:Brussels attacks: police raid homes in search for airport bomb suspect '' live updates
The trio had been taking a French colleague to the airport when the suicide bombing took place.
In a strange twist of fate Wells, from Utah, had a similarly close call three years ago while in Boston accompanying his mother who was running the marathon.
The event was the target of a terror attack that killed three and wounded scores more.
''He was a block away,'' Bishop Scott Bond of the Latter Day Saints Church in Sandy, Utah, told The New York Daily News.
''It's incredible he'd be so close to more than one of these,'' Bond said. ''I think any of us would be seriously shaken, but I think he's someone who could handle this better than anybody. He's the kind of young man to somehow turn this into a positive. He's a terrific young man.''
Brussels terror attacks: how events unfolded '' video explainerNBC News, quoting Wells's family, said he was also in Paris, although in a different part of the city, in November when the French capital was rocked by a series of attacks.
''This is his third terrorist attack,'' his father Chad Wells told ABC News.
''This is the third time that sadly in our society that we have a connection to a bomb blast,'' he said. ''We live in a dangerous world and not everyone is kind and loving.''
Utah's Deseret News daily quoted a friend of the Wells family as saying the teenager and Empey had both suffered burns and other injuries.
Wells ''has burns to his hands and legs and some to his face,'' Lloyd Coleman told the paper.
''Most of the damage is around his foot and ankle. A heel took the most damage, and the doctors are repairing it, but the family doesn't know how bad the injury is.''
The US Air Force said one of its service members and several of his relatives were also injured in Tuesday's terror attacks in the Belgian capital that killed at least 31 people.
''The United States Air Force can confirm that one US Air Force service member from Joint Force Command Brunssum, the Netherlands, was injured in today's horrific attack at the airport in Brussels,'' a statement said, referring to a Nato command.
''The airman's family was also present and has sustained various injuries. Due to privacy concerns, we are not releasing the status of their injuries.''
Agence France-Presse contributed to this report
Brussels attacks: Video purporting to show Zaventem Airport explosion was shot in 2011 | Europe | News | The Independent
Wed, 23 Mar 2016 12:23
CCTV purporting to show the deadly Brussels Airport explosions appears to be fake.
The footage resembles a video of the moment a bomb attack took place at Domodedovo Airport in Russia in 2011.
But the clip, which shows people walking before they duck and flee following an explosion, has been widely shared on social media since the Brussels blasts took place on Tuesday morning.
Witnesses said two explosions were heard inside the departure hall of Brussels Airport shortly after 8am.
VRT news agency apologised on Twitter for the CCTV footage being fake.
Shortly after the airport explosion in Brussels, a blast was also heard at Maalbeek Metro station.
Local media is reporting that at least 13 people have been killed and 35 have been severely injured.
All flights at the airport have been cancelled and arriving planes have been diverted.
Belgium's terror alert level has been raised to maximum.
The blasts come four days after Salah Abdeslam, one of the suspects of November Paris terror attacks, was arrested in Brussels.
In 2011, at least 35 people were killed and more than 100 were injured after a bomb attack at the Moscow airport. The suicide bomber was identified as a 20-year-old from the North Caucasus.
Pro-IS Telegram Channel Shares Guide on Creating Twitter Accounts Without Phone Number Verification
Wed, 23 Mar 2016 14:33
NOTE: The following materials are for information purposes only and may not be copied, reproduced, or transmitted without the explicit permission of SITE Intelligence Group and specific attribution to SITE Intelligence Group.
DetailsJihadist NewsCreated: 22 March 2016
A pro-Islamic State (IS) Telegram channel shared a guide for creating Twitter accounts without the need to verify with a phone number.
Register to read more ...
Pro-IS Telegram Channel Advises ''Brothers in Belgium'' on OPSEC Strategies Following Brussels Attacks
Wed, 23 Mar 2016 14:33
NOTE: The following materials are for information purposes only and may not be copied, reproduced, or transmitted without the explicit permission of SITE Intelligence Group and specific attribution to SITE Intelligence Group.
DetailsJihadist NewsCreated: 22 March 2016
A pro-Islamic State (IS) Telegram channel advised IS supporters, particularly those residing in Belgium, on Operations Security (OPSEC) and other technical strategies for avoiding apprehension by authorities following the attacks on Brussels.
Register to read more ...
IS Declares "Shaking Crusader Europe Again" in al-Naba Newspaper
Wed, 23 Mar 2016 14:33
NOTE: The following materials are for information purposes only and may not be copied, reproduced, or transmitted without the explicit permission of SITE Intelligence Group and specific attribution to SITE Intelligence Group.
DetailsJihadist NewsCreated: 22 March 2016
Regarding the attacks in the Belgian capital, Brussels, the Islamic State (IS) declared in its al-Naba weekly newspaper that it shook "Crusader Europe" again, and remarked that the operation came soon after a security crackdown by Belgian authorities.
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Brussels attack: President Erdogan says bomber was caught in Turkey last year and deported to the Netherlands | Europe | News | The Independent
Wed, 23 Mar 2016 22:28
One of the Brussels attackers was caught in Turkey in June last year and deported to the Netherlands, Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdogan has said.
President Erdogan said Turkey warned both Belgium and the Netherlands he was "a foreign fighter".
He did not name the attacker, who he said was detained at Turkey's border with Syria at Gaziantep.
President Erdogan said: "Despite our warnings that this person was a foreign terrorist fighter, Belgium could not establish any links with terrorism."
An official in the Turkish president's office later said the attacker deported from Turkey was Brahim el-Bakraoui.
Earlier reports suggested el-Bakraoui was deported to Belgium, but this was later corrected to the Netherlands.
At least 30 were killed and over 200 injured in a series of bomb attacks targeting Brussels Airport and the Molenbeek Metro station.
Shortly after 8am on Tuesday, two explosions killed at least 11 people at Brussels Airport.
Around an hour later, an explosion at the Maalbeek Metro station killed around 20.
One of the suspects captured on CCTV moments before the airport attack is still at large.
Europe Chooses Suicide - LewRockwell
Thu, 24 Mar 2016 03:24
Democracy is a tramway '' you climb on to get where you want to go, then you climb off.>> Recep Tayyip ErdoÄan (1996)
The European Council of the 17th and 18th March 2016 adopted a plan which aimed to solve the problems posed by the massive influx of migrants from Turkey [1]. 28 heads of state and government submitted to the demands of Ankara.
We have already analysed the way in which the United States wanted to use the events in the Near East in order to weaken the European Union [2]. At the beginning of the current refugee crisis>>, we were the first to observe that this event had been deliberately provoked and the insoluble problems that it was going to cause [3]. Unfortunately, all our analyses have been verified, and most of our positions have now been widely adopted by our erstwhile detractors.
Going further, we would like to study the way in which Turkey has seized control of the game, and the blindness of the European Union, which persistently remains one step behind.
Recep Tayyip ErdoÄan's game
President ErdoÄan is unlike other politicians. and it seems that the Europeans, neither the people nor their leaders, have realised this.
' First of all, he came from the Mill® G¶r¼Å, a pan-Turkish Islamic movement with connections to the Muslim Brotherhood of Egypt, and favourable to the restoration of the Caliphate [4]. According to him '' and also to his allies of the Milliyet§i Hareket Partisi (MHP) '' the Turkish people are the descendants of Attila's Huns, who were themselves the children of the Steppenwolf of Central Asia, with whom they share endurance and cold-heartedness. They form a superior race who are destined to rule the world. Their soul is Islam.
President ErdoÄan is the only head of state in the world who proclaims an ethnic supremacist ideology, perfectly comparable to Nazi Aryanism. He is also the only head of state in the world who denies the crimes of history, notably the massacres of non-Muslims by Sultan Abd¼lhamid II (the Hamidian massacres of 1894-95 '' at least 80,000 Christians murdered and 100,000 Christians incorporated by force into the harems), then by the Young Turks (the genocide of the Armenians, the Assyrians, the Chaldeans, the Syriacs, the Pontic Greeks and the Yezidis, from 1915 to 1923 '' at least 1,200,000 dead) '' a genocide which was executed with the help of Germa n officers, including Rudolf H¶, the future director of the camp at Auschwitz [5].
While celebrating the 70th anniversary of freedom from the nightmare of Nazism, President Vladimir Putin emphasised that ideas of racial supremacy and exclusivism provoked the bloodiest war in History>> [6]. Then, during a march '' and without naming Turkey '' he called on the Russian people to be ready, if necessary, to renew the sacrifice made by their grand-parents in order to save the very principle of equality between all humanity.
' Secondly, President ErdoÄan, who is supported by only one-third of the population, governs his country alone and by force. It is impossible to know precisely what the Turkish people are thinking, because the publication of any information questioning President ErdoÄan's legitimacy is now considered as an attack on state security, and leads immediately to prison. However, if we refer to the latest studies published, in October 2015, less than one-third of the electorate supports him. This is much less than the Nazis in 1933, who could count on 43% of the votes. This is why President ErdoÄan was only able to win the general elections by means of outrageous trickery. Amongst others ''
The opposition media were gagged '' the major dailies,H¼rriyet and Sabah, as well as ATV television, were attacked by thugs from the party in power, and investigations targeted journalists and Press organs accused of supporting terrorism>> or having published slanderous criticisms of President ErdoÄan. Web sites were blocked, Internet service providers cancelled the offers of opposition TV channels, and three out of five national TV channels, including the public channel, broadcast programmes which were clearly in favour of the party in power. The other national TV stations, Bug¼n TV and Kanalt¼rk, were closed by the police.
A foreign state, Saudi Arabia, poured 7 billion pounds of gifts>> into Turkey to help convince>> the electorate to support President ErdoÄan (about 2 billion Euros).
128 political headquarters of the left-wing party (HDP) were attacked by thugs from President ErdoÄan's party. Many candidates and their teams were beaten up. More than 300 Kurdish businesses were destroyed. Several dozen HDP candidates were arrested and placed in provisional detention during the campaign.
More than 2,000 opposition figures were killed during the election campaign, either by direct attacks or else by governmental repression against the PKK. Several villages in the South-East of the country were partially destroyed by army tanks.
Since ErdoÄan's election>>, an iron veil has fallen over the country. It has become impossible to find information concerning the condition of Turkey in the national Press. The main opposition daily, Zaman, has been placed under supervision and now restricts itself to the praise of the greatness of Sultan>> ErdoÄan. The civil war, which is already raging in the East of the country, is spreading, by means of terrorist attacks, to Ankara and as far as Istanbul, to the total indifference of the Europeans [7].
Mr ErdoÄan governs almost alone, accompanied by a small group which includes Prime Minister Ahmet DavutoÄlu. During the electoral campaign, he declared publicly that he was no longer applying the Constitution, and that all powers were now in his hands.
On the 14th March 2016, President ErdoÄan declared that as far as the struggle with the Kurds was concerned, '... democracy, liberty and the rule of law no longer have the slightest value>>. He announced his intention to expand the legal definition of terrorist>> to include all those who are enemies of the Turks>> '' in other words, those Turks and non-Turks who are opposed to his supremacy.
In a project costing half a billion Euros, Recep Tayyip ErdoÄan ordered the construction of the largest Presidential palace ever occupied by a head of state in world history '' the White Palace>>, in reference to the colour of his party, the Justice and Development Party, or AKP. It extends over 200,000 square metres, and houses a plethora of services, including ultra-modern secure bunkers, linked to satellites.
' Thirdly, President ErdoÄan uses powers which he has given himself '' anti-constitutionally '' to transform the Turkish state into the godfather of international jihadism. In December 2015, the Turkish police and legal system were able to establish the personal connection between Mr. ErdoÄan and his son Bilal with Yasin al-Qadi, Al-Qa¯da's global banker. He fired the policemen and the magistrates who had dared to damage the interests of Turkey>> (sic), while Yasin al-Qadi and the state sued the left-wing newspaper BirG¼n for having reproduced my editorial, Al-Qaeda, NATO's Timeless Tool>>.
Last February, the Russian Federation presented a report to the Intelligence department of the UN Security Council which attested to the support by the Turkish state for international jihadism, in violation of numerous UN Resolutions [8]. I published a precise study of these accusations which was immediately censored in Turkey [9].
The response of the European Union
The European Union had sent a delegation to supervise the general elections of November 2015. It held back the publication of its report for a long time, then decided to publish a short, diluted version.
Panicked by the reaction of their populations against the massive entry of migrants '' and, for the Germans, the abolition of a minimum wage which resulted '' the 28 heads of state and government of the Union worked out a procedure which would leave Turkey to solve their problems for them. The High Commissioner of the United Nations for Refugees, Filippo Grandi, immediately pointed out that the solution chosen was in violation of international law, but even supposing that this may improve, it is not the main problem.
The Union agreed to
pay 3 billion Euros annually to Turkey to help it deal with its obligations, but with no structure for verifying the use of this funding,
end the visa requirements for Turkish nationals who enter the Union [10] '' it is only a question of months, even weeks,
accelerate the negotiations for Turkey's adhesion to the Union '' this will take a lot longer and will be a more random process.
In other words, blinded by the recent electoral defeat of Angela Merkel [11], the European leaders have settled for applying a temporary solution to slow the flux of migrants, but without seeking to resolve the origin of the problem, and without taking into account the infiltration of jihadists among the refugees.
What have we done? (C) European Union
The Munich precedent
In the 1930's, the elites of Europe and the United States considered that the USSR, by its model, threatened their class interests. They therefore collectively supported the Nazi project for the colonisation of Western Europe and the destruction of the Slavic people. Despite repeated appeals by Moscow for the creation of a vast alliance against Nazism, European leaders accepted all the demands of Chancellor Hitler, including the annexation of the regions peopled by the Sudetes. These were the agreements of Munich (1938), which forced the USSR, in order to save its own skin, to conclude, in turn, the Germano-Soviet Pact (1939). It was only too late that certain of the leaders of Europe, then the United States, realised their error, and decided to ally with Moscow against the Nazis.
Now, under our very eyes, the same errors are being repeated. The European elites consider the Syrian Republic to be an adversary '' either they are defending the colonial point of view of Isral, or they hope to recolonise the Levant themselves and appropriate the gigantic and still unexploited reserves of gas. They, therefore, supported the secret operation by the United States for r(C)gime change>> and pretended to believe in the fable of the Arab Spring>>. After nearly five years of proxy war, noting that President Bachar el-Assad is still there despite the fact that his resignation has been announced a thousand times, the Europeans have decided to finance '' to the tune of 3 billion Euros per year '' Turkish support for the jihadists, allow them victory and the end of the migrations. It will not be long before they realise [12], too late, that by repealing the visa regulations for Turkish citizens, they have authorised the free circulation to Brussels from the Al-Qa¯da camps in Turkey [13].
The comparison with the end of the 1930's is all the more pertinent since, during the Munich agreements, the Nazi Reich had already annexed Austria without provoking any particular reaction from the other European states. Today, Turkey already occupies the North-East of a member state of the European Union, Cyprus, and a strip a few kilometres wide in Syria, which it administrates via a specially nominated wali (prefect). Not only does the European Union let that pass, but by its attitude, encourages Ankara to pursue its annexations with no regard for international law. The common logic of Chancellor Hitler and President ErdoÄan is based on the unification of race>> and the cleansing of the population. Hitler wanted to unite the populations of German race>> and cleanse them of foreign elements>> (the Jews and the gipsies) while ErdoÄan wants to unite the populations of Turkish race>> and cleanse them of foreign elements>> (the Kurds and the Christians).
In 1938, the European elites believed in the friendship of Chancellor Hitler, today they believe in the friendship of President ErdoÄan.
The Best of Thierry Meyssan
Elections 2016
Clinton email reveals: Google sought overthrow of Syria's Assad | Washington Examiner
Mon, 21 Mar 2016 13:29
Google in 2012 sought to help insurgents overthrow Syrian President Bashar Assad, according to State Department emails receiving fresh scrutiny this week.
Messages between former secretary of state Hillary Clinton's team and one of the company's executives detailed the plan for Google to get involved in the region.
More from the Washington Examiner
Obama predicted that political change was coming, despite efforts by the Cuban government to stop it.
'03/21/16 9:00 AM
"Please keep close hold, but my team is planning to launch a tool ... that will publicly track and map the defections in Syria and which parts of the government they are coming from," Jared Cohen, the head of what was then the company's "Google Ideas" division, wrote in a July 2012 email to several top Clinton officials.
"Our logic behind this is that while many people are tracking the atrocities, nobody is visually representing and mapping the defections, which we believe are important in encouraging more to defect and giving confidence to the opposition," Cohen said, adding that the plan was for Google to surreptitiously give the tool to Middle Eastern media.
"Given how hard it is to get information into Syria right now, we are partnering with Al-Jazeera who will take primary ownership over the tool we have built, track the data, verify it, and broadcast it back into Syria," he said.
Also from the Washington Examiner
Fifty-two percent approve of President Obama's handling of relations with Cuba.
'03/21/16 8:32 AM
"Please keep this very close hold and let me know if there is anything [else] you think we need to account for or think about before we launch. We believe this can have an important impact," Cohen concluded.
The message was addressed to deputy secretary of state Bill Burns; Alec Ross, a senior Clinton advisor; and Clinton's deputy chief of staff, Jake Sullivan. Sullivan subsequently forwarded Cohen's proposal to Clinton, describing it as "a pretty cool idea."
Cohen worked as a low-level staffer at the State Department until 2010, when he was hired to lead Google Ideas, but was tied to the use of social media to incite social uprisings even before he left the department. He once reportedly asked Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey to hold off of conducting system maintenance that officials believed could have impeded a brief 2009 uprising in Iran.
The unusual involvement by Google in foreign affairs highlights the difficulty of involvement in the internal politics of foreign states. While Cohen seemed to consider his company's effort as helpful to American interests, the effort to overthrow Assad helped spur the rise of the Islamic State, which eventually filled a vaccuum resulting from Assad's loss of control over of Syria.
Also from the Washington Examiner
The Florida senator was also $1 million in debt.
'03/20/16 8:51 PM
The exchange on Syria was highlighted by Wikileaks on Saturday. Earlier in the week, the secret-leaking website posted more than 30,000 emails that Clinton sent or received during her tenure leading the State Department.
Top Story
Critics say the president divided the country by impugning the character of his detractors.
'03/21/16 12:01 AM
Massive Voter Fraud - TONIGHT IN Utah's GOP Primary?!?!
Wed, 23 Mar 2016 12:29
Major questions are being raised about tonight's Utah Republican Presidential Primary.With 40 delegates, the state's ''winner take all'' election process makes this a critical night for Senator Ted Cruz (R-TX), if he wishes to fight conservative businessman Donald J. Trump all the way to the RNC convention in Cleveland, Ohio this summer.
But now, MAJOR questions are being raised about Utah's very unusual internet-based voting process.
A bombshell report shows that the technology to conduct web-based voting comes from Smartmatic Group, which is based in England. Currently, the chairman of Smartmatic is Lord Mark Malloch-Brown, who also is on the board of billionaire liberal Geroge Soros' Open Society Foundation and has personal ties to the billionaire.
More than a half-million dollars have been donated to Ohio Governor John Kasich's Super PAC from Soros-related hedge fund managers.
The Wall Street Journal reports this as ''one of the biggest online votes conducted so far in the U.S.'' In addition:
Utah residents will have the option of casting ballots in the Republican presidential contest using computers, tablets, and smartphones next week. '...
Online ''polls'' will be open between 7:00 a.m. and 11 p.m. on March 22. Voters will get a receipt that will verify that their vote was recorded correctly. The state party declined to release the number of online voter registrations that it has received. '...
''We expect all the jurisdictions across the U.S. to take notice and to look at this experience as something to study and, hopefully, follow,'' said Antonio Mugica, founder and chief executive of Smartmatic Group, an election-equipment vendor that is running the Utah election.
Mugica tried to address online voting concerns, noting that the company has ''security protocols'' and backups of data in case of recounts. But as internet hackers know, no web-based server is truly secure. (Just ask Hillary Clinton!)
WSJ didn't mention the company's chairman's left-wing biography, which is posted publicly on their website:
Mark Malloch-Brown is a former number two in the United Nations as well as having served in the British Cabinet and Foreign Office. He now sits in the House of Lords and is active both in business and in the non-profit world. He also remains deeply involved in international affairs.
Mark served as Deputy Secretary-General and Chief of Staff of the UN under Kofi Annan. For six years before that he was Administrator of the UNDP, leading the UN's development efforts around the world. He was later Minister of State in the Foreign Office, covering Africa and Asia, and was a member of Gordon Brown's cabinet.
Other positions have included vice-chairman of George Soros's Investment Funds, as well as his Open Society Institute, a Vice-President at the World Bank and the lead international partner at Sawyer Miller, a political consulting firm. He also has served as Vice-Chairman of the World Economic Forum. He began his career as a journalist at The Economist.
Malloch-Brown also serves on Soros' International Crisis Group board.
Obama recently said at the South by Southwest technology festival in Texas that he supports expanded online voting systems. And in 2014, he created a commission to generate a report about how best to ensure online voter integrity.
Do you think there could be funny business going on today in Utah's important GOP Primary? Please leave us a comment (below) and tell us!
SHOCKING CLAIMS: Ted Cruz Caught Cheating '-- With 5 Secret Mistresses! | National Enquirer
Thu, 24 Mar 2016 13:51
Presidential candidate Ted Cruz is trying to survive an explosive ''dirt file'' on the finger-wagging conservative senator!
And the new issue of The National ENQUIRER '-- on newsstands now '-- reveals how the reports say the staunch Republican is hiding FIVE different mistresses!
PHOTOS: Paula Jones: Hillary Clinton 'Allowed' Husband Bill To Go After Women!
''Private detectives are digging into at least five affairs Ted Cruz supposedly had,'' claimed a Washington insider.
''The leaked details are an attempt to destroy what's left of his White House campaign!''
The ENQUIRER reports that Cruz's claimed mistresses include a foxy political consultant and a high-placed D.C. attorney!
PHOTOS: Barack And Michelle Obama: Secrets And Scandals Of The White House Marriage
There are also whispers of other intimate late-night sessions Ted has had in Washington '-- and even a wild sex worker makes the cut!
Get the full list of ladies in Ted Cruz's Mistress File '-- only in the new National ENQUIRER, on newsstands now!
At Emory University, Writing 'Trump 2016' on Sidewalk Is a Racist Microaggression, Unsafe - Hit & Run : Reason.com
Wed, 23 Mar 2016 15:40
As anyone who has spent five seconds at a college can attest, sidewalks covered in chalk messages are a pretty common fixture of the campus scene. But Emory University students had their delicate worldview shaken by the sudden appearance of one specific chalk message, "Trump 2016," all over campus.
The students were so traumatized that they stormed the offices of Emory President James Wagner, demanding answers and feelings-protection. Wagner sent an email to campus in a desperate and wildly unnecessary effort to make everyone feel safe again. Here is the whole thing, with commentary:
Dear Emory Community,
Yesterday I received a visit from 40 to 50 student protesters upset by the unexpected chalkings on campus sidewalks and some buildings yesterday morning, in this case referencing Donald Trump. The students shared with me their concern that these messages were meant to intimidate rather than merely to advocate for a particular candidate, having appeared outside of the context of a Georgia election or campus campaign activity. During our conversation, they voiced their genuine concern and pain in the face of this perceived intimidation.
The election in Georgia may be over, but it is very much the case that there is still an ongoing national conversation about who the Republican Party nominee will be, and, ultimately, who will win the White House. Trump is one such contender. It's not remotely clear'--nor even plausible'--that the message "Trump 2016" was non-political in tone (and it shouldn't matter). Students who voiced "genuine concern and pain in the face of this "perceived intimidation" should have been told their perception is at odds with reality, does not supersede other people's free expression rights, and should be recalibrated if "Trump 2016" causes them actual pain. Sadly, this is not what the president told them.
After meeting with our students, I cannot dismiss their expression of feelings and concern as motivated only by political preference or over-sensitivity. Instead, the students with whom I spoke heard a message, not about political process or candidate choice, but instead about values regarding diversity and respect that clash with Emory's own.
It should be perfectly acceptable to challenge "values regarding diversity," even if these values are deeply held by both students and the institution itself.
As an academic community, we must value and encourage the expression of ideas, vigorous debate, speech, dissent, and protest. At the same time, our commitment to respect, civility, and inclusion calls us to provide a safe environment that inspires and supports courageous inquiry. It is important that we recognize, listen to, and honor the concerns of these students, as well as faculty and staff who may feel similarly.
If the institution rushes to the emotional defense of thin-skinned students, can it really be said to support "courageous inquiry"?
On the heels of work begun by students last fall and advanced last month through the Racial Justice Retreat and subsequent working groups, Emory is taking a number of significant steps:
' Immediate refinements to certain policy and procedural deficiencies (for example, our bias incident reporting and response process);
' Regular and structured opportunities for difficult dialogues (like the Transforming Community Project of several years ago);
' A formal process to institutionalize identification, review, and addressing of social justice opportunities and issues; and
' Commitment to an annual retreat to renew our efforts.
Reminding students that they can sic the campus grievance bureaucracy on people who offend them further weakens Emory's stated commitment to free speech.
To keep moving forward, we must continue to engage in rich and meaningful dialogue around critical issues facing our nation and our society. I learn from every conversation like the one that took place yesterday and know that further conversations are necessary. More than that, such discussions should lead to action that continues to foster a more just and inclusive Emory.
Sincerely, Jim Wagner
To recap: Some Emory students are so fragile, and terrified of innocuous political speech they dislike, that they immediately sought comfort from campus authority figures. These figures, of course, were more than willing to coddle them.
It's enough to make you want to grab a piece of chalk and scrawl "Trump 2016" on an Emory sidewalk, huh? No wonder so many non-liberal students are cheering for Trump'--not because they like him, but because he represents glorious resistance to the noxious political correctness and censorship that has come to define the modern college experience.
Hillary Clinton Wins Arizona, Some Bernie Sanders Supporters Weary Of Potential Voter Suppression. | Phoenix New Times
Wed, 23 Mar 2016 18:35
EXPANDA Hillary Clinton supporter cheers for her candidate as election results come in.
Miriam Wasser
Hillary Clinton won the Democratic primary in Arizona by a sizable margin tonight, bringing her that much closer to winning the party nomination.
She was declared the winner about 30 minutes after polls closed, and as of publication time, had about 60 percent of the vote.
Steve Timberman, a volunteer for the Clinton campaign, was watching election results with other Clinton supporters at a downtown Phoenix bar tonight when CNN first announced that Clinton was in the lead.
''People were cheering,'' he says, but when the station called it for her, everyone started going nuts: ''People were hugging and high-fiving. One guy got down on his knees and put his arms in the air like this,'' Timberman says, pumping his fists above his head.
''I'm ecstatic,'' he adds. ''I'm feeling really good.''
But not everyone in Phoenix shared the sentiment. A few blocks away at a different restaurant, Sanders supporters gathered to watch the results come in.
They also had the TVs tuned into to CNN, and when Arizona was called for Clinton, the crowd let out a collective ''boo.''
''I call bullshit,'' Roberta Fox, a campaign volunteer, shouted. ''There are still four-hour wait lines '... It's not over by a long shot.''
EXPANDBernie Sanders supporters watch election results at DeSoto Market in downtown Phoenix.
Miriam Wasser
As New Times wrote earlier today, many voters across Maricopa County waited hours to cast ballots because there weren't enough polling places '' to put this in perspective, in 2012, the county had 200 polling sites, while this year there were only 60.
The Maricopa County Recorder's Office says it drastically cut the number of sites for two reasons: to save money and because it expected not to need many sites since requests for early voting ballots were up substantially from years past.
But what the office apparently didn't account for was a huge surge in voter turnout '' the county is estimating that 60 percent of eligible voters cast ballots.
Voters also reported substantial issues at the polls today. At least one polling site ran out of ballots this afternoon, and many Democrats reported waiting in line for hours only to be told that they were not registered as Democrats, meaning that if they wanted to vote they could only have a provisional ballot that may or may not be counted.
Arizona Representative Martin Quezada posted this on Facebook.
Screenshot/Facebook
The day was so hectic, that as it became clear Clinton won, Sanders supporter Sheila Ryan said she just couldn't believe it: ''What about all the provisional ballots? What about all the ballots from [people still in line]? Are those getting counted?''
EXPANDA Bernie Sanders supporter gives an interview about his candidate.
Miriam Wasser
But back at the Clinton watch party, few were talking about the long lines; they were in the mood to celebrate a substantial victory '' Arizona has 75 delegates up for grabs.
''Her message of breaking down barriers really resonated here," Tim Hogan, spokesman for the Clinton campaign says. ''I saw that Sanders outspent us two to one [on TV ads], and he spent six out of the last seven days here, so we're really happy with this win.''
Hogan says he was worried about the long lines, but added that the campaign sent volunteers to polling sites to encourage people to stay in line and vote.
Meanwhile, even though the Arizona Democratic Party said it would look into the voting situation so that this doesn't happen in the future, many Sanders fans were worried about how the polling disaster today would affect their candidate's chance of winning Arizona.
''Do the math,'' says Eric Vinyl, a Sanders fan at the watch party. ''Hundreds of thousands of registered voters and only 60 polling locations?''
Something shady happened today, he believes, and he said he's not ruling out the possibility that there was ''a concerted effort, or at least a calculated indifference on the party of the county'' that caused such a disastrous election process.
Patti Serrano, another attendee of the Sanders watch party put it more bluntly: ''I think there's voter suppression going on, and it is obviously targeting particular Democrats. Many working-class people don't have the privilege to be able to stand in line for three hours.''
As the results were coming in, she was worrying about those waiting in line: ''My fear is that if people see preliminary results, they'll get discouraged and leave the line.''
EXPAND"Hillary, Hillary, Hillary," Clinton supporters chant.
Miriam Wasser
Both the Sanders and Clinton campaigns made a strong effort today to encourage voters to stay in line, and while some voters just couldn't wait hours and hours to cast a ballot, others said they refused to give up their right to vote.
When New Times stopped by a downtown Phoenix polling location at 9:20 p.m., the line to vote still was more than two blocks long. We witnessed a woman near the end of the line overhear the news that Clinton won Arizona:
''What?'' she said. ''Who declared that? We're still waiting to vote.''
ANTI-TRUMP PROTESTERS Admit Answering Craigslist Ad and Getting Paid to Protest Trump - The Gateway Pundit
Wed, 23 Mar 2016 18:33
On Saturday hundreds of far left activists held a march-rally at the Trump Tower in New York City.
The anti-Trump protesters marched to Trump Tower in New York. At least three protesters were arrested. (KTLA)
Several of the anti-Trump protesters admitted they answered an ad on Craigslist and were getting paid to protest Trump.The Daily Caller reported:
The Establishment on both the left and the right, who want to disenfranchise the millions of Republican voters who support Donald Trump, have blamed the staged riots near Trump rallies on Trump or on Bernie Sanders. That's like blaming the Russians for the Reichstag Fire. Bernie has little to do with these manufactured protests. This is a Clinton operation, a faux protest.
False flag operations have long been common in politics, but these riots are poisonous to the electorate, intentionally designed to turn violent and stifle free speech.
This free speech-busting goon squad operation is directed by supporters of Hillary Clinton. It is paid for mostly by George Soros and MoveOn.org and pushed by David Brock at Media Matters for America. It's also funded by reclusive billionaire Jonathan Lewis, who was identified by the Miami New Times as a ''mystery man.'' He inherited roughly a billion dollars from his father Peter Lewis (founder of Progressive Insurance Company).
A march and demonstration against Trump at Trump Tower essentially fizzled Saturday when only 500 ''protesters'' of the promised 5000 showed up. Infiltrating the crowd, I learned most were from MoveOn or the Occupy movement. Soap was definitely in short supply in this crowd. Several admitted answering a Craig's list ad paying $16.00 an hour for protesters.
Hillary understands that Trump would lose the votes of certain establishment Republicans if he were the nominee. On the other hand, it doesn't matter, because of his crossover outreach. In Michigan, Democrats and independents who have lost their jobs because of disastrous globalist trade deals like NAFTA are lining up to vote for Donald.
"Several [Trump protesters] admitted answering a Craig's list ad paying $16.00 an hour for protesters." https://t.co/a9vRmrUXPJ
'-- Ann Coulter (@AnnCoulter) March 23, 2016
For the record'...George Soros is pumping millions into 2016 race for Democrats.
ArchivesArchives
John Cusack and an Ex-Clinton Aide Wage a War - In the News - Truthdig
Thu, 24 Mar 2016 03:15
Actor John Cusack. (Mika Stetsovski / CC BY 2.0)
An unlikely pair exchanged harsh words on Twitter on Saturday: former Hillary Clinton staffer Alec Ross and longtime actor John Cusack. The cause of their online ''brawl''? A WikiLeaks tweet highlighting one of Clinton's emails, in which Ross'--her senior adviser for innovation when he wrote the message'--stated:
When Jared and I went to Syria, it was because we knew that Syrian society was growing increasingly young (population will double in 17 years) and digital and that this was going to create disruptions in society that we could potential[ly] harness for our purposes.
Cusack retweeted this and added: ''Well that's not very nice. ...'' Ross quickly fired back: ''What's your point?'' And then the war of words ensued, with both parties spending much of the day attacking each other via the social media platform.
Ross, now an author and ''advisor to investors, corporations and government leaders,'' worked for Clinton from 2009 to 2013 in the State Department. During his time in the Obama administration, Ross said that defending Internet freedom was a ''pillar of America's foreign policy priorities.''
This isn't his first brush with controversy on Twitter. In October, for example, he shared his support of Clinton's condemnatory opinion of Edward Snowden.
Cusack, meanwhile, has a history of being vocal about privacy rights. He's a board member of the Freedom of the Press Foundation'--as is Snowden'--and has called the Obama administration ''similar to Bush'' in regard to drones, national security and privacy rights.
Although both Ross and Cusack claim to be advocates for Internet freedom, it's clear why Cusack would take issue with Ross. Julian Assange, founder of the very WikiLeaks that published the above email, has called Ross a ''foreign-policy tech vulture'' and has said Ross gives the ''veneer of authenticity'' to the government's disingenuous stance that Internet freedom is crucial to democracy.
For all his preaching about Internet freedom, Ross has made his views on WikiLeaks clear: ''WikiLeaks set the open government backward. '... It wasn't whistle-blowing because whistle-blowing reveals acts of official government wrongdoing '.... [The] view that there should not be secret information of any sort is beyond naive.''
On Saturday, what seemed like a modest political statement on Cusack's part (he previously said he doesn't care what people think of his views) turned into all-out Twitter warfare.
There were cheap shots from both sides. But it quickly became more serious when Cusack accused Ross of being a ''pro-corporate hustler.''
Ross called the accusations ''complete crap,'' to which Cusack responded by linking to an old tweet in which Ross states that ''Snowden is no hero'' and ''[s]hould be prosecuted.'' Cusack continued to throw tweets at Ross, and eventually the WikiLeaks account jumped into the fray, accusing Ross of sexism and sharing a negative article about him. Most of Ross' tweets have since been deleted, but WikiLeaks held on to them, an ironic display of the Internet freedom being contested.
Cusack retweeted the words of his supporters and continued to criticize Ross, who seemed to ignore the swell of negativity. Although many parts of their squabble were rather immature'--Cusack telling Ross to ''take his best shot,'' for example'--their exchange highlighted serious issues that have been in the spotlight since 2011. Privacy rights and technological freedom have played a minor role thus far in the presidential campaign, but Apple's conflict with the FBI proves that these questions still need to be addressed.
'--Posted by Emma Niles
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Migrants
Germany is 'running out of PRISON cells' because of the migrant crisis gripping Europe
Wed, 23 Mar 2016 14:44
GERMANY is fast running out of prison cells due to the refugee crisis, according to the country's main prison union.
Around 30,000 migrants are being held on remand because they are deemed a flight risk and union leaders estimate that at least 2,000 of these will be handed a custodial sentence when they get to court.
Overtime costs are skyrocketing for prison officers '' 440,000 man hours logged in the state of North Rhine-Westphalia in the past six months alone.
Foreigners make up nine percent of the general population in Germany but over 30 percent of its prison population '' and a far higher proportion than that of remand prisoners.
Anton Bachl, head of the Federal Union of Prison Staff which represents 38,000 members, said: ''The wave of refugees is not without consequence for the German prisons, because more than one million refugees have come in the past year, with 30,000 criminal cases pending.''
He added: ''The pre-trial detention figures have significantly increased '' and specifically by foreigners.''
Full article:Germany is 'running out of PRISON cells' because of the migrant crisis gripping Europe (Express)
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New ISIS recruits have deep criminal roots - The Washington Post
Thu, 24 Mar 2016 13:14
One perpetrator was an automobile thief before he got religion, and served time in a Belgian prison on a carjacking charge. Another was an armed robber who once shot a police officer while fleeing from a crime scene.
Others had convictions for burglary, drug-dealing, larceny and assault. Nearly to a person, all had been violent men, long before they became foot soldiers for the hyper-violent Islamic State.
As Belgian police delve into the backgrounds of the men behind Tuesday's attacks in Brussels, they are encountering a pattern familiar to investigators in Paris and other European cities targeted by the Islamic State: The shock troops used in the terrorist group's signature attacks are largely men already well known to local law enforcement '-- not as religious radicals, but as criminals.
As it has done for years in the Middle East, the Islamic State appears to be finding a fruitful recruiting ground among Europe's street gangs and petty criminals, drawing to itself legions of troubled young men and women from predominantly poor Muslim neighborhoods, U.S. and European officials and terrorism experts say. Some recruits have scant knowledge of Islam but, attracted by the group's violent ideology, they become skilled and eager accomplices in carrying out acts of extraordinary cruelty.
[Obama rejects calls for change in strategy against the Islamic State]
The connections between the Brussels and Paris attacks''Some of these guys are just looking for an opportunity to justify their violence and criminality,'' said Ali Soufan, a former FBI counterterrorism official and a consultant to government agencies on terrorist threats. ''Now, with ISIS, it is justified '-- because they can say they're doing it for God.'' ISIS is another name for the Islamic State.
Indeed, some European officials say the perpetrators in the most recent attacks appear to be part of a new wave of recruits that are not ''radical Islamists'' but rather ''Islamized radicals'' '-- people from society's outer margins who feel at home with a terrorist organization noted for beheading hostages and executing unarmed civilians.
''Their revolt from society manifested itself through petty crime and delinquency,'' Belgian counterterrorism official Alain Grignard said in an essay published by the Combating Terrorism Center at West Point. ''Many are essentially part of street gangs. What the Islamic State brought in its wake was a new strain of Islam which legitimized their radical approach.''
The thuggish pedigree of the most recent Islamic State attackers was in evidence on Wednesday as Belgian officials revealed new details about the men who carried out the attacks on Brussels' main airport and subway line. Two of the suicide bombers, brothers Ibrahim and Khalid el-Bakraoui, had spent time in Belgian prisons for violent offenses that included armed robbery and carjacking.
[A photo of this Brussels bombing victim was on your front page. Here's her story.]
Another member of the Brussels cell, Abdelhamid Abaaoud, leader of the Nov. 13 Paris attacks, also had a lengthy criminal career that included multiple stints in jail, for crimes including burglary and assault. Salah Abdeslam, an alleged accomplice in the Paris attacks who was captured in Belgium last week, had previous convictions for drug-related offenses.
But even before the attacks in Brussels, security officials said that it had become difficult to distinguish the cells of Islamist militants in that city from its criminal networks. Operatives linked to or inspired by the Islamic State have exploited this overlap to acquire weapons in Belgium and use the nation as a transit point for plots including the attacks in Paris last fall.
Belgian security officials have described the linkages as symbiotic, saying that terror groups rely on their criminal associations to help them hide from authorities, procure explosives and other supplies, and trade information on tactics '-- even if the two sides don't share the same objectives or ideologies.
''There are so many links'' between criminals and Islamist militants, Belgian Foreign Minister Didier Reynders said at a security conference in Brussels on Sunday. ''They are using the same tools. They are using the same cars, the same apartments, the same locations.''
Over the past year, counterterrorism officials and experts in Europe have begun to document a profound shift in the typical profile of terrorist recruits, asserting that the latest arrivals are closer in key characteristics to urban street gangs than religious extremists.
''For them, joining [the Islamic State] is merely a shift to another form of deviant behavior,'' said a report released this month by Rik Coolsaet, a professor in Belgium who has studied the foreign fighter flow. Membership in the Islamic State is for many Muslim youths part of a progression that began with ''gangs, rioting, drug trafficking and juvenile delinquency,'' Coolsaet wrote. ''But it adds a thrilling, larger-than-life dimension to their way of life '-- transforming them from delinquents without a future into mujahideen with a cause.''
The expanding cohort of terror recruits from criminal backgrounds was described by Coolsaet as the ''fourth wave'' of jihadist terrorism, following cycles including those who flocked to Afghanistan in the 1980s, their elite Middle East expatriate successors who were drawn to al-Qaeda, and finally homegrown radicals who forged their bonds over the Internet.
[Brussels terrorists probably used explosive nicknamed 'the Mother of Satan]
Religion has plunged as a motivational factor among the latest generation of Islamic State recruits, according to an examination of the group's terror plots by European security authorities this year. As a result, ''it may be more accurate to speak of a 'violent extremist social trend' rather than using the term 'radicalization,'''' the report concluded.
The prominent criminal element among the networks in Belgium is in contrast to previous generations of terror cells, most notably the roster of al-Qaeda operatives who were based in Hamburg before carrying out the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.
Few of those militants had a criminal record or even any notable brushes with law enforcement '-- r(C)sum(C) flaws that al-Qaeda worried would attract scrutiny from law enforcement and risk exposing the group's elaborate, multiyear plot.
Several members of the Hamburg cell came from middle-class or affluent families. Most spent time in Germany pursuing degrees in highly technical fields such as electrical engineering and chemistry. Their principal bond was a deepening commitment to an extreme interpretation of Islam, which they cultivated during parlorlike discussions at an apartment they took to calling ''Dar el Ansar,'' or ''House of the Followers,'' according to the report by the U.S. commission that investigated the 9/11 attacks.
The archetype of this breed was Mohammed Atta, who came from a middle-class family in Egypt, had worked as an urban planner in Cairo and ''applied himself fairly seriously'' to his studies in Hamburg, according to the report. He went to the trouble of completing his advanced degree before leaving for Afghanistan, where he and others were all but handpicked by Osama bin Laden to lead the plot to hijack airliners and plow them into U.S. landmarks.
The Islamic State is clearly of a different lineage that dates to the group's earliest days, when it was called al-Qaeda in Iraq. The group's founder, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, was a tattooed Jordanian with a long history of criminal violence in his home country.
Zarqawi, a high school dropout with no formal theological training, fashioned the organization in his own image, ignoring Islamic taboos such as the use of suicide bombers when it suited his purposes. His brutality drew harsh rebukes from bin Laden and other al-Qaeda leaders of the time, recalled Nada Bakos, a former CIA officer involved in tracking Zarqawi.
''Zarqawi was never fully accepted into the al-Qaeda brand because he was a thug, and because his logistics network was involved with criminal enterprises,'' Bakos said. ''These [Islamic State] guys are the same.''
Joby Warrick joined the Post's national staff in 1996. He has covered national security, intelligence and the Middle East, and currently writes about the environment.
Greg Miller covers intelligence agencies and terrorism for The Washington Post.
Shut Up Slave!
Man behind 'mealy mouthed' Brussels tweet arrested | BreakingNews.ie
Thu, 24 Mar 2016 12:56
A man whose Twitter message about confronting a Muslim woman about the Brussels terror attacks and getting a ''mealy mouthed reply'' spawned scores of parodies online has been arrested by police.
Matthew Doyle is being questioned on suspicion of inciting racial hatred on social media.
A message posted on his Twitter profile on Wednesday morning stated: ''I confronted a Muslim woman yesterday in Croydon. I asked her to explain Brussels. She said 'Nothing to do with me'. A mealy mouthed reply.''
Doyle later deleted the tweet although it was screenshot by users. The message went viral and was widely mocked on Twitter, with many users parodying it.
A spokesman for Scotland Yard said: ''We have arrested a 46-year-old man on suspicion of inciting racial hatred on social media.
''He was arrested tonight at an address in Croydon and remains in custody at a south London police station.''
Three suicide bombers killed at least 31 people in explosions at an airport and Metro station in Brussels on Tuesday morning.
The Islamic State group, also known as Daesh, has claimed responsibility for the attacks.
definition of mealy mouthed - Google Search
Thu, 24 Mar 2016 12:56
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meal·y-mouthed
ËmÄ'lÄ'ËmouTÍHd,ËmÄ'lÄ'ËmouTHt/
adjective
adjective: mealy-mouthed; adjective: mealymouthed
afraid to speak frankly or straightforwardly.
"mealy-mouthed excuses"
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Urban Dictionary: mealy mouthwww.urbandictionary.com/define.php?...mealy+mouthTop Definition. mealy mouth. Someone who speaks indirectly and bowdlerizes. One who beats around the bush. The opposite of a "mealy mouth" is a "smash ...Mealy-mouthed - Grammaristgrammarist.com/usage/mealy-mouthed/May 15, 2013 - For a person, to be mealy-mouthed is to tend to say things in indirect, ... The word's meaning could also have to do with the softness and ...My AccountSearchMapsYouTubePlayNewsGmailDriveCalendarGoogle+TranslatePhotosMoreShoppingWalletFinanceDocsBooksBloggerContactsHangoutsEven more from Google
CBC to require online commenters to use real names - Canada - CBC News
Wed, 23 Mar 2016 15:53
CBC will ban the use of pseudonyms for readers commenting on stories on the CBC.ca website, the corporation announced Thursday.
All commenters will be required to use their real names, Emma Bedard, spokeswoman for CBC English Services, told CBC News.
The move is a "request for transparency on the part of [online] users," Bedard said.
The decision was a result of a review of CBC's commenting policy that began in January, she said, after audience members expressed concerns about the content of comments appearing online.
Thursday's announcement was spurred by a complaint from a group of prominent New Brunswick francophones over what they considered hateful attacks on the province's French-speaking community.
"CBC has heard from a number of Canadians concerned about our commenting space, the use of pseudonyms, and some audience submissions that violated our guidelines around hate speech, particularly with respect to the francophone community in New Brunswick," said Jennifer McGuire, general manager and editor in chief of CBC News, in an Editor's Blog published on the website Thursday afternoon.
Bedard said she does not know when the new policy will take effect, but that CBC will undertake a "due process" to inform users and work out the technological requirements.
"Now that we've announced this, we've committed to having this conversation in a transparent way," she said.
'A real minefield'Chris Waddell, an associate professor of journalism at Carleton University, said he has never thought anonymous online commenting was appropriate. Requiring people to identify themselves "is a good idea," he said.
But for the policy to be effective, he said, "you have to have some kind of verification process" to make sure people are really using their own names.
"That's an expensive proposition," Waddell said.
In recent years, several newspaper websites in the U.S. have adopted a "letters to the editor" model for their comments sections, he said, noting that traditional newspapers used to call people who made submissions to verify their identities.
But given the sheer number of online comments, Waddell said, "that's going to be very difficult to do."
One option, he said, would be to select some of the comments and verify them, but that would likely lead to allegations that editors are favouring certain political positions.
"This is a real minefield," Waddell said. "I really wonder if it's more trouble than it's worth."
Waddell said he thought most news audiences would rather see the amount of money required to verify the authenticity of commenters spent on "putting reporters on the ground."
The Toronto Star turned off online comments completely in December, he noted.
When the Star announced the change, it said it would instead "be promoting and showcasing the comments our readers share across social media and in their letters and emails to our editors."
'Anonymity hard to prevent entirely' When asked by CBC News if banning pseudonyms was the same as banning anonymous comments, Bedard said the goal is to "encourage our users to use their real names," but "anonymity is hard to prevent entirely."
Bedard said it is too early to say what kind of measures CBC might consider to try to ensure people are not using fake names.
She noted that banning the use of pseudonyms is "really just a first step" in fixing the issue of hateful comments online and that CBC will be looking at other measures, including the comment moderation process.
Ottomania
De overeenkomst tussen de EU en Turkije is een grap | Vrijspreker.nl
Thu, 24 Mar 2016 13:06
Van deze overeenkomst zal niets terechtkomen:
01.op grond van de onkunde/onwil van de betrokken partijen om de vereisteterugkeerlogistiek te organiseren
02.de onmogelijkheid, in Turkije de opvang te organiseren. De wachttijd voor een asielinterview in Turkije bedraagt acht jaar
03.de onwil van het asielvee om teruggedreven te worden
04.de factor van de lekke kraan of beter gezegd het dweilen met de kraan open.Wie de honderden stranden en baaien van de Turkse kust kent, zal begrijpen dat de miljoenen ontheemden en hun uitbaters zich geen halt zullen laten toeroepen en dat de markt hun vele, vele kansen zal bieden om de oversteek te maken naar Lesbos, Chios, Samos, Nisiros, Kos of Rhodos, waar zij het wel uit hun hoofd zullen laten, zich aan te melden bij een detentiecentrum
Met andere woorden: de overeenkomst is niet meer dan een public relationsgrap die bedoeld is voor de domme, domme televisiekijkende massa.
Intussen stroomt het geld naar Turkije; de Turkse overheid zal ongetwijfeld vele verklaringen afgeven, dat alles onder controle is.
Hugo van Reijen
War on Sand
BLUEPEACE blog >> SAND MINING MIGHT ERASE SOME ISLANDS FROM MAP OF MALDIVES
Wed, 23 Mar 2016 03:50
Since time immemorial artisanal coral sand extraction or mining from local beaches and lagoons, mainly for construction purposes, has been a common practice in the Maldives. However, within the last four decades the Maldives has been experiencing a massive boom in the construction of cement houses and high-rise concrete buildings. Up to late 1980s, almost all the cement houses and buildings were built with coral sand and coral aggregates from local beaches and lagoons. In the late 1980s, imports of river sand and aggregates from India started to replace coral sand and coral aggregates in the construction of high-rise buildings.
''UNEP's field mission found that artisanal extraction of coral sand from lagoons (manually using sacks was evident at nearly all the islands visited. UNEP witnessed uncontrolled coral sand exploitation, and visual evidence indicates that coral sand extraction has increased since the tsunami.'' (Maldives Post-Tsunami Environment Assessment Report)
India has over the years allowed the exports of these commodities to the Maldives under a special arrangement which has placed an exception on those commodities which are otherwise prohibited to be exported from India. Last year 300,000 MTs of river sand and 270,000 MTs of aggregates were allowed to be imported to Maldives from India. However, post tsunami reconstruction boom associated with developing more resorts have created a shortage of river sand. Thus the price of river sand rose from around RF490 (US$38) per ton to RF900 (US$70). Furthermore, the recent hike in prices of oil in the international market has increased the transportation costs of these commodities as well.
In 2008, India has increased the limit on export of construction materials '' river sand by 30 per cent and stone aggregate by 95 per cent '' to Maldives. However, the prices of river sand and aggregates have not come down.
Since most of the outer islands in the Maldives have no easy access to river sand and aggregates, the people have to get these commodities from Male' region, and it's too expensive to transport these commodities due to lack of a proper inter-island transport network. Poor islanders are left with no choice but mine coral sand from their own beaches even though it is prohibited.
In order to reduce the coral sand extraction from the local beaches and lagoons, it is imperative to make river sand and aggregates available nation-wide, of course, with subsidised prices, and also make available coral sand extracted during harbour dredging, in different sizes and qualities, that could be use for construction purposes.
What is ironic is that coral sand has been mined from some islands for the post tsunami reconstruction, further making these islands more vulnerable for erosion, sea level rise and storm surges. Even though sand extraction is prohibited from beaches of inhabited islands, it has been witnessed that the Government and internationals donors funded some projects involving extraction of coral sand.
Non-artisanal beach mining of Seenu Feydhoo's southern side beach with the help of the Government earth moving vehicle to expand Feydhoo's cemetry.Photo: www.oursda.org
According to the ''Maldives Post-Tsunami Environment Assessment Report'' published by UNEP, '' A review of sand mining regulations from other countries that are less vulnerable to sea level rise and storm surges than the Maldives, France, UK, Japan, Netherlands and USA indicates sand mining in those countries is restricted to depths greater than 10m and at minimum distance from shore of 600 metres (See, e.g., www.seafriends.org.nz/oceano/seasand.htm). It is not known if the restrictions placed on beach sand mining in the Maldives have been assessed to determined their ability to protect islands from increased vulnerability.''
If coral sand mining along with other forms of coastal modification continues at the present rates, some of islands in the Maldives would be eroded due to these unwise activities. The coastal degradation caused by such undesirable activities have to be countered through protective measures that cost millions of dollars such as concrete coastal defence structures like the one around Male'. Uncontrolled sand mining has caused severe beach erosion in islands such as Fuvahmulah, and costly remedies in the form of coastal walls are in the pipeline.
''Although official statistics shows dramatic reductions in the total volumes of sand and coral extracted this may be due to the under-reporting of a now-illegal activity rather than a substantial reduction in demand.'' (Maldives Post-Tsunami Environment Assessment Report)
It is pathetic that some of the islands might be erased from the map of Maldives because of our local actions much before forecast sea level rise due to global warming. If not for India's river sand and aggregates, some of the islands might have already vanished through unreported illegal excessive mining of coral sand from the local beaches and lagoons. With the special arrangement, India is helping to save our islands from erosion by providing a substitute to coral sand and coral aggregates. One could argue that a part of India's carbon emission could be traded off with this generous gesture to its low-lying neighbour, the Maldives.
Sand Wars (2013) - IMDb
Wed, 23 Mar 2016 03:31
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DetailsRelease Date:19 October 2013LanguageEnglish, French
Country of OriginFrance, CanadaBox OfficeBudget:'¬630,000 (estimated)
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MIC
U.S. Marines Land in Iraq to Begin Ground Operations | News | teleSUR English
Mon, 21 Mar 2016 14:35
A U.S. Marine died Saturday in rocket attacks, becoming the second combat death since the start of the latest Iraq mission.
A detachment of U.S. Marines is on the ground in Iraq to support U.S. and coalition efforts against the Islamic State group, the U.S. military said on Sunday.
A group of Marines from the 26th Marine Expeditionary Unit, or MEU, will add to the U.S. forces already in Iraq battling the extremist group, it said.
The 26th MEU is currently deployed in the U.S. 5th Fleet area of operations, which covers the Gulf, Red Sea, Arabian Sea, and parts of the Indian Ocean.
Late last month the United States also sent 200 elite forces to lead ground operations
A U.S. Marine who was part of the coalition fighting the Islamic State group was killed in a rocket attack by the militant group in northern Iraq, the Pentagon said in a statement on Saturday.
OPINION: Governments Are Killing More Civilians Than They Care toAdmit
It was the second combat death of an American service member in Iraq since the start of the campaign to fight the militant Islamic State group.
The Marine, who was providing force protection fire, died in the rocket attack at a base near Makhmur, a town between the cities of Mosul and Kirkuk, Pentagon Press Secretary Peter Cook said.
Cook did not identify the Marine who had been killed. He said several other Marines had been wounded and were being treated for injuries.
The U.S.-led air coalition has killed an estimated 1,000 civilians in Iraq and Syria since August 2015. On Saturday, suspected U.S.-led airstrikes in Mosul reportedlu killed 25 or more civilians.
The United States has only admitted to killing 21 civilians since it began airstrikes 18 months ago.
Blackwater's Founder Is Under Investigation for Money Laundering, Ties to Chinese Intel, and Brokering Mercenary Services
Thu, 24 Mar 2016 12:58
ERIK PRINCE, founder of the now-defunct mercenary firm Blackwater and current chairman of Frontier Services Group, is under investigation by the U.S. Department of Justice and other federal agencies for attempting to broker military services to foreign governments and possible money laundering, according to multiple sources with knowledge of the case.
What began as an investigation into Prince's attempts to sell defense services in Libya and other countries in Africa has widened to a probe of allegations that Prince received assistance from Chinese intelligence to set up an account for his Libya operations through the Bank of China. The Justice Department, which declined to comment for this article, is also seeking to uncover the precise nature of Prince's relationship with Chinese intelligence.
Prince, through his lawyer, Victoria Toensing, said he has not been informed of a federal investigation and had not offered any defense services in Libya. Toensing called the money-laundering allegations ''total bullshit.''
The Intercept interviewed more than a half dozen of Prince's associates, including current and former business partners; four former U.S. intelligence officers; and other sources familiar with the Justice Department investigation. All of them requested anonymity to discuss these matters because there is an ongoing investigation. The Intercept also reviewed several secret proposals drafted by Prince and his closest advisers and partners offering paramilitary services to foreign entities.
For more than a year, U.S. intelligence has been monitoring Prince's communications and movements, according to a former senior U.S. intelligence officer and a second former intelligence official briefed on the investigation. Multiple sources, including two people with business ties to Prince, told The Intercept that current government and intelligence personnel informed them of this surveillance. Those with business ties were cautioned to sever their dealings with Prince.
Erik Prince, left, chairman of Frontier Services Group, looks at a map of Africa with Deputy Chairman Johnson Ko. FSG, which is backed by Chinese capital, is based in Hong Kong.
Photo: HKEJ
Erik Prince Sought to Recreate a Blackwater-Style OperationIn 2010, amid public scandals and government investigations, Prince began to sell off his Blackwater empire. Using new vehicles, he continued to engage in controversial private security ventures, including operations in Somalia and the United Arab Emirates. Eventually, the former Navy SEAL and self-proclaimed American patriot began building close business ties with powerful individuals connected to the Chinese Communist Party. In January 2014, Prince officially went into business with the Chinese government's largest state-owned investment firm, the Citic Group, and founded Frontier Services Group, which is based in Hong Kong. Citic Group is the company's single largest investor, and two of FSG's board members are Chinese nationals.
Despite the provenance of FSG's funding and Prince's history of bad publicity, Prince was able to recruit an impressive line-up of former U.S. military and intelligence officers to run the company. Key to Prince's ability to retain such personnel, given FSG's ties to China, has been the firm's strictly circumscribed mission, which does not include military-related services. FSG is a publicly traded aviation and logistics firm specializing in shipping in Africa and elsewhere. The company also conducts high-risk evacuations from conflict zones. Prince has described his work with FSG as being ''on the side of peace and economic development'' and helping Chinese businesses to work safely in Africa.
Behind the back of corporate leadership at FSG, Prince was living a double life.
But behind the back of corporate leadership at FSG, Prince was living a double life.
Working with a small cadre of loyalists '-- including a former South African commando, a former Australian air force pilot, and a lawyer with dual citizenship in the U.S. and Israel '-- Prince sought to secretly rebuild his private CIA and special operations enterprise by setting up foreign shell companies and offering paramilitary services, according to documents reviewed by The Intercept and interviews with several people familiar with Prince's business proposals.
Several of the proposals for private security services in African nations examined by The Intercept contained metadata in the digital files showing Prince and his inner circle editing and revising various drafts.
Since 2014, Prince has traveled to at least half a dozen countries to offer various versions of a private military force, secretly meeting with a string of African officials. Among the countries where Prince pitched a plan to deploy paramilitary assets is Libya, which is currently subject to an array of U.S. and United Nations financial and defense restrictions.
Prince engaged in these activities over the objections of his own firm's corporate leadership. Several FSG colleagues accused him of using his role as chairman to offer Blackwater-like services to foreign governments that could not have been provided by the company, which lacks the capacity, expertise, or even the legal authority to do so.
FSG's CEO, Gregg Smith, a decorated former U.S. Marine who deployed twice to Beirut in the 1980s, vehemently denies the firm's complicity in any such efforts by Prince. ''FSG has no involvement whatsoever with the provision of '-- or even offering to provide '-- defense services in Libya,'' Smith told The Intercept. ''To the extent that anyone has proposed such services and purported that they were representing FSG, that activity is unauthorized and is not accepted or agreed to by the company.''
Smith said that any proposals advanced by Prince in Libya were not made on behalf of FSG, explaining that the company ''has strict protocols in place and has a board-level committee to review any high-risk project, which would certainly include any proposal'' involving Libya.
''He's a rogue chairman,'' said Prince's close associate. ''Erik wants to be a real, no-shit mercenary.''
''He's a rogue chairman,'' said one of Prince's close associates, who has monitored his attempts to sell mercenary forces in Africa.
That source, who has extensive knowledge of Prince's activities and travel schedule, said that Prince was operating a ''secret skunkworks program'' while parading around war and crisis zones as FSG's founder and chairman. ''Erik wants to be a real, no-shit mercenary,'' said the source. ''He's off the rails exposing many U.S. citizens to criminal liabilities. Erik hides in the shadows '... and uses [FSG] for legitimacy.''
Last October, FSG's corporate leadership grew so concerned about Prince's efforts to sell paramilitary programs and services that the board passed a series of resolutions stripping Prince of most of his responsibilities as chairman.
FSG also terminated the contracts of two of Prince's closest associates within the company after management became suspicious that they were assisting Prince in his unapproved dealings, according to two people with knowledge of FSG's inner workings. Smith declined to comment on internal FSG personnel matters.
In recent months, FSG employees became alarmed when they began to hear reports from sources within the U.S. government that their chairman's communications and foreign travel were being monitored by U.S. intelligence. According to three people who have worked with Prince, his colleagues were warned not to get involved with his business deals or discuss sensitive issues with him. ''I would assume that just about every intelligence agency in the world has him lit up on their screen,'' said one of the people advised to avoid Prince.
A slide from a 2015 proposal for a private military force to help ''support Libyan sovereign control.'' Prince's lawyer denies he has ever engaged in ''anything regarding defense'' in Libya.
Operation Lima: Prince Exploited Refugee Crisis to Peddle Paramilitary Services in LibyaPrince developed the paramilitary services proposal for Libyan officials in 2013, before FSG was created, according to documents and two people familiar with the pitch. He made several trips to Libya to meet with government officials there.
The Libyan proposal, reviewed by The Intercept, was code-named Operation Lima. It offered the Libyans an array of military equipment and services '-- including weaponized vehicles, helicopters, boats, and surveillance airplanes '-- to help stabilize eastern Libya. The ground force, according to a person involved with the plan, would consist of a troop of former Australian special operations commandos. Given the instability of the government and Prince's inability to navigate complex Libyan factions to vet potential partners, he had trouble finding the right power brokers to help sell the proposal.
By May 2015, Prince had rebranded himself and claimed a legitimate public reputation as FSG's chairman. Without the approval of FSG's management, he returned to Libya offering a freshly repackaged proposal, according to a person involved with the plan. Rather than a counterinsurgency force, Prince proposed a similar set of equipment and services, but with a new justification: The mercenaries would be there to engage in border security.
Prince's Libya proposal called for supplying ''armed'' vehicles, helicopters, boats, and surveillance planes to help stem the tide of migrants trying to reach Europe.
According to an internal slide presentation, Prince's private force would operate in Libya for the stated purpose of stopping the flow of refugees to Europe. Libya is one of the main routes for migrants trying to enter Europe from eastern Africa and parts of the central Sahel region.Prince told colleagues that he received preliminary approval for the border force from a senior Libyan official, but would need to secure European support to loosen up restrictions on Libyan money and weapons, which would otherwise impede the plan, according to a person who discussed the proposal with Prince.
By exploiting European fears of a mass exodus from the Middle East and North Africa, Prince believed he could obtain political buy-in from Europe to bring a foreign force into Libya.
Prince arranged a meeting in Germany to pitch the plan and also shared the proposal with the Italian government, according to two people familiar with his drive to drum up support for Operation Lima. In Italy, Prince found only lukewarm interest, according to a person with knowledge of the effort. The Intercept was unable to confirm the German response.
One slide from Prince's Libya proposal stated that military trainers and surveillance planes would be provided by Frontier Services Group. Prince is FSG's chairman, but the company's CEO denies the company approved '-- or was even aware '-- of this proposal.
Prince's May 2015 proposal for the Libya operations suggested, ''Funding can be jointly shared by the EU and Libyan government from Libyan Investment Authority money frozen in European Banks.''However, according to two people involved in the proposal, Prince grew frustrated with the failure to get European help in releasing the frozen Libyan funds, and began looking for other ways to get his border force funded.
By then, the U.S. government was already investigating Prince for possible weapons deals in Africa, according to the former senior U.S. intelligence official and the former intelligence official briefed on the matter. In the course of the surveillance operation for that investigation, U.S. intercepts revealed Prince appearing to discuss efforts to open bank accounts in China to help his Libyan associates.
''Money laundering for Libyan officials using a Chinese bank '-- that is the issue that pushed it over the edge'' for the Justice Department, said the second former intelligence official.
The U.S. spies monitoring Prince soon discovered that he had traveled to the Chinese-controlled peninsula of Macau in an effort to open a bank account, according to two people familiar with the investigation. A well-connected source within the Macau banking community told The Intercept that Prince first attempted to open an account at the Macau branch of a European-connected bank, but was denied after a review by the bank's European headquarters.
Later, Prince traveled to Beijing, where he met with Chinese agents from the Ministry of State Security, according to the second former intelligence official and a source familiar with the meeting.
In January, Prince returned to Macau and opened an account at the Bank of China, according to several sources, including the second former intelligence official and the source with close connections to Macau's banking community.
''It was not a personal account,'' said the former U.S. intelligence official briefed on the investigation. ''He was doing it for the purpose of what is considered now '-- in the investigation '-- money laundering on behalf of the Libyans.''
''When he has legitimate business, he does legitimate business,'' said Prince's lawyer.
The CEO of FSG China is a former Chinese security official who was once described by a defense trade publication as ''Prince's right-hand man in China, oiling the wheels of his relationship with the government.''
''If Erik is fucking around with the Chinese, I don't even want to imagine what the U.S. government is thinking about,'' said Prince's close associate with in-depth knowledge of his activities.
Toensing, Prince's lawyer, confirmed that Prince successfully opened an account with the Bank of China. ''He opened an account on behalf of a business,'' she said. Toensing declined to say for which business he opened the account, but said that it complied with U.S. banking regulations. ''This is not an FSG bank account,'' a spokesperson for FSG told The Intercept.
As for Prince's alleged meetings with Chinese intelligence, Toensing confirmed that Prince had met with internal security officials in Beijing, but claimed it was in connection to medical evacuation operations. Toensing was unable to answer allegations that Chinese intelligence assisted Prince in setting up a bank account in Macau because she could not reach Prince, whom she said was not in the United States. ''What he told me about visiting China was that he was there selling his book and he's given various speeches there,'' she said.
While Prince's re-invented Libya ''border security'' proposal was framed as a means of stopping migration, sources with knowledge of Prince's business strategy allege that he had greater ambitions in that country. One person involved in Prince's plan said the anti-migration force was seen as a vehicle for Prince to build a ''backdoor'' for so-called kinetic, or lethal, operations in Libya '-- a form of mercenary mission-creep. ''During the day, you do interdiction of migrants '-- not kinetic,'' said the person involved in the plan. ''But those routes are used by weapons smugglers and drug traffickers at night. Insurgents too. Erik's guys can then be offered to the Libyans to help with their other problems. That's how you get kinetic.''
The plan called for a series of ''border security'' bases housing intelligence centers, helicopters, surveillance airplanes, and weaponized vehicles. Prince proposed a fully equipped, contemporary military force to be staffed in part by foreign mercenaries.
''This is Erik Prince using the refugee crisis in Europe in an effort to put mercenaries on the ground in Libya,'' said Malcolm Nance, a former U.S. Naval officer who trained special operations forces and has extensive experience in Libya since the fall of Qaddafi. ''They think they're going to solve the migration problem with technology and a bunch of Western mercenaries?'' Nance, who reviewed a copy of Prince's plan provided by The Intercept, called the proposal ''fantasy baseball.''
Government Investigation Focuses on Violations of U.S. Defense Export RegulationsAmong the concerns of government investigators is that Prince's attempts to provide defense-related services to Libya and other countries violate U.S. defense export regulations. Under federal law, U.S. citizens seeking to offer military services or technologies to Libya must have a license certifying that the services or articles are approved under the International Traffic in Arms Regulations, or ITAR. ''Many of these services and articles are designed to kill people or defend against killing people,'' said John Barker, a former deputy assistant secretary of state for export controls. ''To protect U.S. national security and foreign policy as well as that of its allies, the U.S. requires prior authorization.''
FSG officials told The Intercept that the company has no such licenses, nor has it sought them. ''Since our inception, FSG has had bright-line policies against the provision of defense services and the purchase of U.S.-origin items that might be ITAR-controlled,'' said Smith, the CEO of FSG.
The State Department's Directorate of Defense Trade Controls, which issues the licenses, told The Intercept that it would not comment on what licenses companies possess or lack, calling them ''proprietary corporate data,'' and asserted that information on the licenses is not subject to the Freedom of Information Act. The Intercept has a long-standing FOIA request with the State Department seeking information on licenses granted to Prince and his former network of companies. To date, no information has been provided.
According to documents reviewed by The Intercept, as recently as 2014, Prince was registered as a defense services broker with the State Department through a limited liability corporation in Delaware, Westcomi LLC. That registration would permit Prince to engage in brokering without further authorization for some transactions in some countries, but not in Libya. Even with a valid brokering registration, according to legal experts, Prince would still need to get State Department approval for specific deals and report them to the U.S. government. ''He could not solicit or promote the brokering of defense articles such as armored equipment delivered from abroad, or engage in or make a proposal to engage in brokering activities, absent prior U.S. government approval,'' said Barker, the former state department official.
An FSG official said the company did not know if Prince obtained a license for his activities in Libya, but noted that he did not have one in his capacity as FSG's chairman. One of Prince's Libya proposals reviewed by The Intercept lists FSG as the commercial vendor for the project.
Last October, concerned about Prince's unsanctioned international activities, FSG's board approved a resolution clarifying that the company does not ''engage in activities that require ITAR licenses.'' A State Department spokesperson declined to comment, saying, ''We are restricted under Federal Regulations from commenting on specific defense trade export licensing activities.''
Prince's lawyer, Victoria Toensing, told The Intercept: ''I'm not going to get into what licenses [Prince] has.''
''You push the buttons on the company, but the main bad guy gets away and does it again,'' said an official who tried to prosecute Prince.
Prince has run up against ITAR in the past. In 2010, Prince sold most of his equity in the companies that fell under the Blackwater umbrella. Claiming that left-wing activists, Democratic politicians, and lawsuits had destroyed his companies, he left the United States and became a resident of Abu Dhabi. The remnant of his network was renamed Academi LLC. Federal prosecutors eventually attempted to prosecute Prince's former companies, culminating in a 2012 deferred prosecution agreement to settle a lengthy list of U.S. legal and regulatory violations committed from 2005 through 2008 when Prince was in charge, including ITAR violations.
A senior official involved with the Blackwater-related litigation, who has since left the government, told The Intercept that the Obama administration's continued willingness to award contracts to former Blackwater entities while the case was active was a fatal impediment to a successful prosecution. The official, comparing the former Blackwater empire to a drug syndicate, added that prosecutors could not get anyone under Prince to testify against him personally. ''This is very much the concern,'' the former official told The Intercept. ''You push the buttons on the company, but the main bad guy gets away and does it again.''
No criminal charges were filed against Prince.
In federal court filings, Prince's former companies admitted to providing '-- on numerous occasions during Prince's tenure '-- defense goods and services to foreign governments without the required State Department licensing. In some cases, they admitted to providing services even after failing to obtain a license from the State Department.
As part of their settlement with the government, Prince's companies ultimately agreed to pay nearly $50 million in fines and other penalties and to implement compliance procedures to ensure such illegal activities did not continue. In September 2015, the deferred charges were dismissed after the U.S. government certified that the companies had ''fully complied'' with all of its conditions.
At that point, Prince was already deep into creating new companies registered outside of the United States and appeared poised to return to the conduct that had marked his time at the helm of Blackwater.
An internal document from Prince's inner circle, reviewed by The Intercept, shows his team openly discussing the need to avoid U.S. and international defense export regulations and to mask the involvement of Prince and his cohort in efforts to provide mercenary services and military equipment to foreign governments. ''Erik is always pressing the limits as to what is possible,'' said the close associate of Prince's.
Slides from a 2014 proposal for a private force in Nigeria called for airstrikes, raids, ambushes, and ''black'' operations. Prince's lawyer claims he only offered to ''fix roads.''
Project November: Prince Offered Services to Nigeria to Fight Boko HaramSeveral of the proposals for paramilitary services Prince has shopped around the world called for the use of a foreign force to conduct operations, according to the proposals and a person familiar with Prince's plans. These documents, including one for Nigeria, were not authorized or approved by FSG and do not exist on any of its internal computer systems, according to company officials.
Prince has long been interested in raising a private military force to battle Islamic militant groups in a variety of countries. In 2014, he traveled to Nigeria and met personally with then-President Goodluck Jonathan to offer a $1.5 billion proposal to wipe out the radical Islamic group Boko Haram, according to a person familiar with Prince's meeting. ''It was a proposal to fix roads,'' Toensing, Prince's lawyer, said in a phone interview. ''It was for fixing roads and not military related.''
Part of Project November '-- Prince's proposal for Nigeria '-- envisioned air attacks in northeast Nigeria against the Islamic militant group Boko Haram.
But the internal proposals Prince and his team drafted, reviewed by The Intercept, offered a markedly different set of services than street repairs. They explicitly promised to confront the sabotage and theft of Nigerian oil, provide VIP protection for Nigerian officials, and engage in counterinsurgency activities. Code-named Project November, the Nigeria plans were originally created with the FSG logo, though the company's emblem was omitted from the plan presented to the Nigerians.Nigeria later hired Eeben Barlow, the legendary South African special forces mercenary '-- and Prince's longtime business rival '-- to conduct a three-month operation inside the country to fight Boko Haram. Two sources close to Prince said that, as Prince saw it, Barlow had taken his plan and effectively stole the contract. ''Erik was smokin' hot'' over that, said one of the sources.
In recent months, Gregg Smith and some members of FSG's board, which includes retired Adm. William Fallon, the former commander of U.S. Central Command, began examining the possibility that Prince's unauthorized activities could lead to a criminal indictment or other sanctions against the FSG chairman by the U.S. government. Toensing dismissed the notion Prince had broken any laws. ''When he has legitimate business, he does legitimate business,'' she said.
According to multiple sources familiar with Prince's activities, as well as documents reviewed by The Intercept, Prince is considering an invitation to speak at a conference later this month in China sponsored by the country's main domestic security organization, the Ministry of Public Security.
Internally, FSG executives determined that any presentations by the company's U.S. citizen personnel at the conference could potentially violate U.S. laws against providing defense advice to China. Smith issued a directive that no U.S. personnel from FSG were authorized to attend. Erik Prince, Smith told his staff, would need to make his own decision.
Research: Sheelagh McNeill, John Thomason, Margot Williams, Josh Begley
Agenda 2030
Swedish town Ostersund cancels Earth Hour festival over fears of migrant sex attacks | World | News | Daily Express
Sun, 20 Mar 2016 20:03
GETTY
Women in Ostersund have been told not to go out alone at nightGirls as young as 10 have been victims of the attackers, who are still on the loose, and police are warning females not to go outside alone at night.
The 14 separate incidents have all been reported in the town of Ostersund, which has a population of 44,300.
While police have refused to release descriptions of the attackers, victims have described the men as of foreign origin.
The council, following discussions with police, have now said Earth Hour, a worldwide environmental event involving lights being turned off for 60 minutes, will be cancelled.
Social Democrat spokesman for the council, Ann-Sofie Andersson, said: ''Earth Hour is a good and important event, but this year we chose to have the street lights on in view of what has happened. We want everyone to feel safe.''
Chief Constable Stephen Jerand added: ''The police think it's a very wise move and that the municipality made a good decision.
''Keeping the lights on creates security and is in line with our common efforts to increase security under current conditions.''
GETTY
Ostersund has a population of just 44,300Related articlesIG
Attacks also took place in a Stockholm music festival last yaerKeeping the lights on creates security and is in line with our common efforts to increase security under current conditions
Chief Constable Stephen Jerand
Vigilante groups have formed in Ostersund with some even joining police in nightly patrols.
Attacks have included the shocking attempted rape of two 10-year-old girls at a bus stop.
Another assault saw three young men wrestle a woman to the ground before trying to rip her clothes off.
However, the victim managed to fight back and escape.
In a separate attack a man in his 20s punched a woman in the face before running off.
Suspicion has been cast on a large migrant camp on the edge of town.
However, so far police have been unable to find the perpetrators.
In a recent press conference police chief Jerald said the attacks were unusual because none of the culprits appeared to be drunk.
GETTY
A rally back in 2013 held in Malmo calling for refugees to be allowed into SwedenRelated videosHe said: ''The cases of the sexual harassment and attempted rapes have involved groups of up to three people. What stands out is also that none of these perpetrators have been under the influence.
"Now the police are going out and warning women against travelling alone in the city. We have seen a worrying trend.
"This is serious, we care about the protection of women and that is why we are going out and talking about this."
Other shocking incidents involving migrant attacks have rocked Sweden.
They include a number of women being sexually assaulted at a Stockholm music festival.
The police response to that drew huge criticism afterwards with police taking five months to reveal the attacks, which took against girls as young as 11.
Around 50 men, predominantly from Afghanistan, were identified as response for the sexual assaults.
Sweden took in 163,000 migrants in 2015, a far higher proportion than any other Europan nation.
The country has a population of just 9.5 million.
Earth Hour is due to take place in Sweden from 8.30pm to 9.30pm tomorrow.
Related articles
Brazil
Carving up the Americas
Thu, 24 Mar 2016 13:12
As another Lame Cherry exclusive in matter anti matter.I desire to share with you something of what I have stated is about to take place in the American oil industry in it being taken over by Muslim OPEC.
Brazil is currently in the same situation and here is the reality of how their oil is being divided up for the world by the cartel.
Nevertheless, Brazilian news services reported that Petrobras could take in $5 to $6 billion by selling off its natural gas pipeline unit in Brazil's southeast. Canadian, French, and Chinese companies are submitting bids ahead of a deadline next Tuesday.
So the British via Canada, and the Europeans via France, and China, have just been allowed to carve up all of Brazil's oil like some English sugarcane plantation, complete with the Nigger workers to exploit.
This is coming to America, very soon. You Americans are not going to own jack or shit, if you do not put Donald Trump into the Oval Office.
agtG
Cuba
Google set to expand Wifi, broadband access in Cuba, Obama tells ABC
Tue, 22 Mar 2016 14:56
Thomson Reuters is the world's largest international multimedia news agency, providing investing news, world news, business news, technology news, headline news, small business news, news alerts, personal finance, stock market, and mutual funds information available on Reuters.com, video, mobile, and interactive television platforms. Thomson Reuters journalists are subject to an Editorial Handbook which requires fair presentation and disclosure of relevant interests.
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Apple Crack
Government Showdown with Apple Delayed
Tue, 22 Mar 2016 14:32
In a stark reversal from its earlier position, the Justice Department on Monday backed down from its claim that Apple had the ''exclusive technical means'' to unlock an iPhone used by San Bernardino killer Syed Rizwan Farook, saying they may have another solution.
The two sides were scheduled to meet in court on Tuesday afternoon in Riverside, California.
Attorneys for the Department of Justice told Judge Sheri Pym'--who earlier ordered Apple to design a way to weaken the phone's security at the government's request'--that they might not need Apple's help anymore.
''An outside party demonstrated to the FBI a possible method for unlocking Farook's iPhone,'' wrote the DOJ counsels. ''Testing is required to determine whether it is a viable method that will not compromise data on Farook's iPhone.''
It's unclear who that third party is, though DOJ told reporters they don't work for the government. The DOJ asked for two weeks to test the proposed method.
The magistrate judge quickly granted the government's request, and placed an indefinite stay on the order.
Apple is cautiously optimistic. The company has no idea what solution the FBI has discovered, or if it's a solution at all, an Apple official told reporters during a press call. The FBI could be right back where it started when the deadline is up.
Whether the FBI's method works or not, Apple says it won't back down. ''We will not shrink from this responsibility,'' said Apple CEO Tim Cook at an Apple product release event Monday afternoon.
The government's sharp pivot, however, is at odds with the numerous times it argued that Apple and only Apple could help them access Farook's phone.
In legal documents, DOJ attorneys and FBI agents investigating the case repeatedly insisted that Apple was the only one who could help.
FBI Director Comey testified to the same under oath. ''We have engaged all parts of the U.S. government to see, does anybody have a way, short of asking Apple to do it, with a 5c running iOS 9'--to do this, and we do not'' have a solution, he told Rep. Darrell Issa, R-Calif., who grilled him about the case during a House Judiciary Hearing.
''Every credible expert knew there were alternative means. That went so far on so little demonstrated a disregard of facts: bad faith,'' tweeted NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden in response to the latest news.
Technologists following the case hypothesized that the very solution Issa suggested during the hearing'--involving ''mirroring the flash memory'''--might be the one the FBI arrived at. Though forensic scientist Jonathan Zdziarski says they probably couldn't come up with that kind of method in two weeks'--meaning someone got ''dumb lucky'' last night, or they've been working on it for a while, he told The Intercept.
On the one hand, Apple has a temporary reprieve. The company might not have to weaken its own product's security in order to help the FBI, creating a backdoor that could likely be used on any iPhone, if the code was stolen.
Most security researchers and privacy advocates following the case concluded, however, that the grace period might be short lived. Apple is currently facing multiple other court orders to unlock phones'--some of which are running on advanced operating systems comparable to Farook's phone. The government could easily choose one of these cases to serve as a new model.
''Whatever the outcome here, someone will eventually make a handset that neither vendor nor FBI can crack. FBI then asks congress for a law,'' wrote Matt Blaze, associate computer science professor at the University of Pennsylvania, in a tweet. ''In other words, this is not the end of Crypto War II. It's not even really started yet,'' he continued.
Senate proposal on encryption gives judges broad powers
Tue, 22 Mar 2016 14:57
A man tries to repair an iPhone in a repair store in New York, February 17, 2016.
Reuters/Eduardo Munoz
WASHINGTON A bipartisan group of U.S. senators has begun circulating long-awaited draft legislation that would give federal judges clear authority to order technology companies like Apple to help law enforcement officials access encrypted data, according to sources familiar with the discussions.
The proposal from Senators Richard Burr and Dianne Feinstein, the top Republican and Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee, does not spell out how companies must provide access or the circumstances under which they could be ordered to help.
It also does not create specific penalties for noncompliance, leaving that determination to judges, the sources said.
Previous legislative efforts have focused on requiring technology products to have a built-in "back door" for law enforcement. The latest approach would not mandate any specific technology, but rather would require companies to figure out how to access the data.
Congress has tried and failed for years to pass legislation that could prevent criminals and spies from "going dark," or hiding from law enforcement by using encrypted computer and communications services. The latest effort died when the Obama administration signaled last fall that it would not support it.
But Apple's high-profile showdown with the government over a federal magistrate judge's order that it unlock an iPhone connected to the mass shooting in San Bernardino, California, has reopened the debate. Apple and the Justice Department are set to face off in court on Tuesday.
''The going-dark issue has been gathering momentum (in Congress) like a train coming down the tracks, but it still seemed for a while like it was going to be a long time before it got to the station,'' Representative Adam Schiff, the top Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, told Reuters in an interview. ''But it arrived with a fury with this lawsuit.''
Apple and many of its allies argue that the court is over-reaching its authority in the San Bernardino case and that Congress should ultimately resolve the encryption debate.
President Obama warned a tech conference earlier this month against ''fetishizing'' phones and made it clear that he supports law enforcement efforts to gain access to encrypted information.
Administration officials have reviewed the legislation from Burr and Feinstein and offered suggested edits, the sources said, signaling that the White House may now be more open to a legislative approach.
Still, the Burr-Feinstein effort is expected to face a steep climb in a gridlocked Congress wary about tackling such a complex and controversial issue during an election year.
''We have previously been quite skeptical of legislative handling of this particular matter,'' White House press secretary Josh Earnest told reporters last month after the Apple case began. ''I don't know at this point whether or not (conversations with lawmakers) will result in a piece of legislation that we will embrace.''
NO CONSENSUS
In an attempt to break the congressional stalemate on encryption, Democratic Senator Mark Warner and Republican Representative Michael McCaul, who chairs the House Homeland Security Committee, introduced legislation earlier this month to form a national encryption commission to further study the issue.
That effort has been criticized by some privacy advocates who believe its composition would be skewed to favor law enforcement. Others have complained that it would give Congress an excuse to continue postponing action on encryption.
FBI says it might be able to break into seized iPhone, judge cancels order to aid decryption [Updated] | Ars Technica
Wed, 23 Mar 2016 05:04
View all'...UPDATE: At 5:30pm PDT, US Magistrate Sheri Pym agreed to cancel Tuesday's hearing and tentatively stayed an earlier order requiring Apple to assist the FBI in unlocking the iPhone. Apple did not object.
ORIGINAL STORY BELOW:
The Federal Bureau of Investigation said Monday that it might be able to break into the seized iPhone at the center of an encryption battle with Apple. That is why it wants a federal judge overseeing the litigation to vacate Tuesday's hearing on whether Apple should assist the authorities in bypassing the four-digit passcode on the iPhone used by San Bernardino terrorist Syed Farook, according to court documents filed Monday.
"On Sunday, March 20, 2016, an outside party demonstrated to the FBI a possible method for unlocking Farook's iPhone. Testing is required to determine whether it is a viable method that will not compromise data on Farook's iPhone," the government said.
US Magistrate Judge Sheri Pym has not yet ruled on the government's motion.
"We are waiting for the court to rule on the motion," said Thom Mrozek, a Justice Department spokesman in Los Angeles.
The government said in its filing that following the seizure of the iPhone in December, "the FBI did not cease its efforts after this litigation began" to break into the phone.
"As the FBI continued to conduct its own research, and as a result of the worldwide publicity and attention to this case, others outside the U.S. government have continued to contact the U.S. government offering avenues of possible research," the filing continued. The government did not name who provided the advice that it says might unlock the phone.
Last month, Judge Pym ordered Apple to code software to assist the authorities in breaking into the phone. Apple objected, saying it amounted to an encryption backdoor. Pym then scheduled a high-profile court hearing on the matter in Riverside County federal court. Among other things, Apple claimed that the order violated its constitutional rights of speech and due process. Pym had agreed with the government that the All Writs Act, a 1789 law, gave judges the power to issue orders, like the one in this case, despite the fact that there is no law on the books requiring such assistance.
Reuters, meanwhile, reported Tuesday that a group of US senators began circulating draft legislation that would give federal judges a clear legal basis to issue orders like the one in the Apple case.
The development came a day after it was reported that researchers discovered a flaw that could allow attackers to decrypt a small part of the iPhone operating system. This iMessage flaw, however, might be of little benefit to the FBI in pulling data from the iPhone. However, the bug underscores what security people have long known'--cryptography is excruciatingly hard to get right, and common bugs often leave an opening for law enforcement agents and criminal hackers.
Hours before the government's filing, Apple CEO Tim Cook said during a live-streamed product launch event that "We did not expect to be in this position at odds with our own government. But we believe strongly that we have a responsibility to help you protect your data and protect your privacy. We owe it to our customers and we owe it to our country. This is an issue that impacts all of us."
(Ars Senior Business Editor Cyrus Farivar contributed to this report from Riverside, Calif.)
L&L
Rob Ford, former Toronto mayor, dead at 46 - Toronto - CBC News
Tue, 22 Mar 2016 18:21
Rob Ford, the former Toronto mayor who polarized voters with his brash, uncompromising political style and became an international celebrity for his drug and alcohol use while in office, has died. He was 46.
Ford died this morning after battling cancer since 2014. His death was confirmed by his chief of staff Dan Jacobs, who issued the following statement:
"With heavy hearts and profound sadness, the Ford family announces the passing of their beloved son, brother, husband, and father, Councillor Rob Ford earlier today at the age of 46.
A dedicated man of the people, Councillor Ford spent his life serving the citizens of Toronto.
The family asks that you respect their privacy and join them in their grieving and their prayers.
The family will not be making any statements to the media or taking any questions. Information will follow at a later time regarding memorial services.
Over his decade and a half in municipal politics, Ford won a devoted following for being a straight talker who championed the average taxpayer."
He was equally defined by his apparent contradictions: a millionaire with a working-class attitude; a cost-cutting crusader who promoted subway expansion over less expensive transit solutions; and a man who while serving as mayor often seemed more interested in coaching high school football.
It was a testament to his common touch that even as Ford faced a growing number of controversies related to drug use, public drunkenness and racist and sexist comments, many voters in the so-called "Ford Nation" continued to stand by him.
He, in turn, remained committed to them. "I have made mistakes and all I can do right now is apologize for those mistakes," Ford said at a news conference in June 2014, after a two-month stint in rehab. "I love the work that I do and I'm going to keep doing it. I want to keep working for the people of this city."
From businessman to politicianFord had everyman appeal despite having less-than-humble beginnings himself. He and his brothers worked for Deco Labels & Tags, the multimillion-dollar family business founded by his father, Doug Ford, Sr. The senior Ford later served as an Ontario MPP, a posting that inspired Rob and his brother Doug's entry into municipal politics.
While opinions on Ford's legacy as mayor run the gamut, most in his home-town say he's left a mark there that won't soon be forgotten. (Chris Young/Canadian Press)
Rob Ford was elected councillor for Ward 2 Etobicoke North, a suburb in Toronto's west end, in 2000, and gained a reputation as a brash populist and cost-cutting crusader. Ford was so committed to addressing the concerns of his constituents that he made an effort to return every phone call personally, even going so far as to give out his home number. He showed his dedication to the community in other ways, too '-- for example, by hosting the annual Ford Fest summer barbecue, a free event open to the public, and by coaching a local high school football team.
While his candid talk led to clashes with some of his fellow councillors, Ford gained a following for trying to reduce bureaucratic waste and show "respect for the taxpayers." His promise to "stop the gravy train" at city hall became the central mantra of his 2010 mayoral campaign and ultimately lifted him to victory. Ford became mayor of Canada's biggest city by taking 47 per cent of the vote and outpacing his closest competitor by 10 points.
Personal distractionsDespite this electoral triumph, Ford's stint as mayor was contentious almost from the beginning, partly because of his politics and partly because of the increasing distractions of his personal life.
Ford's conservatism and criticism of "downtown elites" split council into opposing camps, which led to acrimonious debates, and often stalemates, on everything from budget cuts to union negotiations. One of Ford's biggest preoccupations was subways, which led to many council fights over transit expansion, which he insisted could not happen without more subways. City council under Ford nonetheless introduced a number of significant changes, including the repeal of the dreaded vehicle registration tax, outsourcing garbage collection in the city's west end and a deal with city workers that averted a strike.
At the same time, he was hit with a number of scandals, including a forensic audit of his campaign finances that found he had exceeded the authorized campaign spending limit by more than $40,000.
Another series of controversies involved his commitment to a high school football team in his constituency.
Toronto Mayor Rob Ford sits during council at City Hall on November 13, 2013. Ford admitted he has smoked crack cocaine, probably "in one of my drunken stupors," but insisted he's not an addict and said he would stay in office and run for re-election next year. (Mark Blinch/Reuters)
Football was a life-long passion for Ford. In addition to volunteering as coach of the Don Bosco Eagles, he established the Rob Ford Football Foundation, which provided funding and equipment to underprivileged youth. His love of the game eventually led to a number of controversies, including an incident in November 2012 in which a TTC bus was rerouted in order to pick up Don Bosco players after a game. Ford insisted he had "nothing to do" with it. That same month, a judge ordered that the mayor be removed from office after ruling that by sending letters to lobbyists requesting donations to his football foundation, Ford had violated the Municipal Elections Act. (Ford appealed and won.)
Toronto mayor Rob Ford, right, at a Conservative Party barbecue with his brother Doug Ford, hosted annual 'Ford Fest' community events. (Chris Young/Canadian Press)
While Ford managed to weather those controversies, things became more serious in May 2013, after reports emerged of a cellphone video that showed Ford smoking crack cocaine. A person claiming to have filmed the video showed it to reporters from the Toronto Star and U.S. gossip site Gawker and offered to sell it for "six figures." Ford staunchly denied that he smoked crack and questioned the existence of the footage, which prompted Gawker to begin a crowd-funding campaign to buy the video.
International celebrityThe story not only made Ford an international celebrity and the object of mockery on late-night talk shows, but it also triggered a criminal investigation, which eventually led police to acquire a copy of the video. After months of denying he was in the video, Ford confessed in November 2013 to having smoked crack, adding that it had likely occurred during one of his "drunken stupors."
Despite the acknowledgment, Ford refused to step down as mayor. Ford also called on then Toronto police chief Bill Blair to release the video so Torontonians could judge the severity of the footage for themselves.
Concerns about Ford's health and personal relationships led council to vote in favour of cutting his mayoral budget and hand many of his duties to Deputy Mayor Norm Kelly.
Rob Ford leaves the hall upon speaking to supporters after being elected as a councillor in the municipal election in Toronto on Oct. 27, 2014. (Fred Thornhill/Reuters)
In the months that followed, the controversy intensified with the release of other unflattering videos, including one in which Ford is seen shouting obscenities and using threatening language and another in which he appears inebriated and speaks in a Jamaican patois. Meanwhile, Toronto police investigated Ford's connections with Sandro Lisi, who was charged with extortion for what police say were efforts to recover a video that purportedly shows Ford smoking crack.
In February 2014, Robyn Doolittle, one of three reporters to have seen the original crack video, published Crazy Town, her book-length account of the Ford scandal.
In April, after the emergence of a second video allegedly showing Ford smoking crack, the mayor announced he was taking a two-month leave of absence to seek rehabilitation for drug and alcohol abuse.
The cancer diagnosisFord returned to work in June. Despite his admitted problems, he continued to enjoy significant support in the 2014 mayoral election campaign. But in mid-September, Ford was diagnosed with a rare but aggressive type of malignant tumour in his abdomen.
As a result, he pulled out of the running for mayor, and instead ran as a councillor in Ward 2 while his brother, Doug, the existing councillor for Ward 2, joined the mayoral race in his stead.
In the Oct. 27 municipal election, Rob Ford handily won the seat for Ward 2, while his brother lost to John Tory in the mayoral race.
In May 2015, doctors removed a tumour from Rob Ford's abdomen. According to Ford aide Dan Jacobs, doctors at the time said they saw no signs of other tumours.
Ford kept a relatively low profile until the latter stages of the 2015 federal election campaign in October, when he was seen campaigning with Conservative Leader Stephen Harper.
This coincided with the release of two new books about Ford, including one by Mark Towhey, a former chief of staff, which recalled a phone call to Towhey in which Ford talked about "putting three bullets" in his wife Renata's head.
In the fall, Doug Ford confirmed that doctors had found two new tumours on his brother's bladder.
Rob Ford is survived by his wife Renata and two preteen children, Stephanie and Doug.
Toronto mayor Rob Ford sold off the last of his "Robbie Bobbie" bobble head dolls with proceeds going to the two hospitals that had been treating his cancer. (Frank Gunn/Canadian Press)
NA-Tech News
Intel mastermind, Silicon Valley statesman Andy Grove dead at 79
Tue, 22 Mar 2016 14:57
Silicon Valley elder statesman Andy Grove.
Reuters/Courtesy Intel
SAN FRANCISCO Andy Grove, the Silicon Valley elder statesman who made Intel into the world's top chipmaker and helped usher in the personal computer age, died on Tuesday at age 79, Intel said.
The company did not describe the circumstances of his death but Grove, who endured the Nazi occupation of Hungary during World War Two, living under a fake name, and came to the United States to escape the chaos of Soviet rule, had suffered from Parkinson's.
Grove was Intel's first hire after it was founded in 1968 and became the practical-minded member of a triumvirate that eventually led ''Intel Inside'' processors to be used in more than 80 percent of the world's personal computers.
With his motto "only the paranoid survive," which became the title of his best-selling management book, Grove championed an innovative environment within Intel that became a blueprint for successful California startups.
Grove, who was named man of the year by Time magazine in 1997, encouraged disagreement and insisted employees be vigilant of disruptions in industry and technology that could be major dangers - or opportunities - for Intel. In doing so, he could be mercurial and demanding with employees who he thought were not doing enough and in 1981 required the staff to work two extra hours a day with no extra pay.
Grove's overhaul of Intel's business - switching from digital memory to processors - was an early example of his obsession with detecting major shifts in business and technology and staying flexible enough to move quickly and make the most of them.
"It's not that you shouldn't plan but you should not regard your plans to be anything more than a baseline model of what might happen,'' Grove said.
While Intel founders Robert Noyce and Gordon Moore proposed much of the chip technology that helped created the semiconductor industry, Grove was the stickler for detail who turned their ideas into actual products. He was responsible for driving growth in Intel's profits and stock price through the 1980s and 1990s.
NAZIS, COMMUNISTS
Grove, who was Jewish, was born Andras Grof in Budapest in 1936. Nazi Germany occupied Hungary in his youth, and after the Soviets followed, Grove sneaked into Austria in 1956 and then emigrated to the United States, where he learned English and earned a Ph.D. in chemical engineering from the University of California at Berkeley.
Grove went to work in 1963 at Fairchild Semiconductor, where he researched technology that would eventually be used to make microchips. At Fairchild, he also met chip visionaries Noyce and Moore, who left to found Intel in 1968. Grove quickly joined them, running research and manufacturing.
He became Intel's president in 1979, CEO in 1987 and chairman and CEO in 1997. He gave up his CEO title in 1998 and stayed on as chairman until 2004.
In its early years, Intel focused on making DRAM memory chips. When Japanese competition soared, Grove made the fateful decision to reinvent Intel as a manufacturer of microprocessors '' the brains at the center of personal computers and other electronic devices.
As the personal computer industry took off in the 1980s, Intel supplied its processors to IBM and then to Compaq and other manufacturers making "IBM clone" PCs.
Intel's chips, along with Microsoft's Windows operating system, quickly became an industry standard in the exploding PC industry, with Grove funneling profits into research and development to create faster and faster processors. Under his stewardship, the Pentium brand and ''Intel Inside'' logo became widely recognized by consumers.
Intel remains one of the world's leading semiconductor companies but the PC chipmaker is wrestling to adapt to trends toward smaller gadgets like smartphones and tablets.
Grove also was a champion of keeping manufacturing within the United States, arguing outsourcing the manufacturing of electronics products - like batteries or televisions - meant U.S. companies missed out on gaining experience necessary to make technology breakthroughs.
Intel still makes most of its chips in U.S. plants.
During his time at Intel in the 1990s Grove was treated for prostate cancer and later wrote an influential cover story in Fortune magazine, criticizing the medical establishment's treatment of the disease as inefficient compared to scientific standards applied in semiconductor research.
In later life, Grove donated tens of millions of dollars for research on Parkinson's disease, a condition he suffered from. He also regularly criticized government and medical researchers for making slow and inefficient progress beating that disease compared to accomplishments made in the chip industry.
Grove and his wife, Eva, who married a year after meeting while working at a resort in New Hampshire in 1957, had two daughters.
(Reporting By Noel Randewich; Editing by Bill Trott, Peter Henderson and Bernard Orr)
Hospital Declares 'Internal State of Emergency' After Ransomware Infection.
Thu, 24 Mar 2016 03:10
A Kentucky hospital says it is operating in an ''internal state of emergency'' after a ransomware attack rattled around inside its networks, encrypting files on computer systems and holding the data on them hostage unless and until the hospital pays up.
A streaming red banner on Methodisthospital.net warns that a computer virus infection has limited the hospital's use of electronic web-based services. Click to enlarge.
Henderson, Ky.-based Methodist Hospital placed a scrolling red alert on its homepage this week, stating that ''Methodist Hospital is currently working in an Internal State of Emergency due to a Computer Virus that has limited our use of electronic web based services. We are currently working to resolve this issue, until then we will have limited access to web based services and electronic communications.''
Jamie Reid, information systems director at the hospital, said malware involved is known as the ''Locky'' strain of ransomware, a contagion that encrypts all of the important files, documents and images on an infected host, and then deletes the originals. Victims can regain access to their files only by paying the ransom, or by restoring from a backup that is hopefully not on a network which is freely accessible to the compromised computer.
In the case of Methodist Hospital, the ransomware tried to spread from the initial infection to the entire internal network, and succeeded in compromising several other systems, Reid said. That prompted the hospital to shut down all of the hospital's desktop computers, bringing systems back online one by one only after scanning each for signs of the infection.
''We have a pretty robust emergency response system that we developed quite a few years ago, and it struck us that as everyone's talking about the computer problem at the hospital maybe we ought to just treat this like a tornado hit, because we essentially shut our system down and reopened on a computer-by-computer basis,'' said David Park, an attorney for the Kentucky healthcare center.
The attackers are demanding a mere four bitcoins in exchange for a key to unlock the encrypted files; that's a little more than USD $1,600 at today's exchange rate.
Park said the administration hasn't ruled out paying the ransom.
''We haven't yet made decision on that, we're working through the process,'' with the FBI, he said. ''I think it's our position that we're not going to pay it unless we absolutely have to.''
The attack on Methodist comes just weeks after it was revealed that a California hospital that was similarly besieged with ransomware paid a $17,000 ransom to get its files back.
Park said the main effect of the infection has been downtime, which forced the hospital to process everything by hand on paper. He declined to say which systems were infected, but said no patient data was impacted.
''We have downtime procedures to going to paper system anyway, so we went to that paper system, he said. ''But we don't feel like it negatively impacted patient care. They didn't get any patient information ''
Ransomware infections are largely opportunistic attacks that mainly prey on people who browse the Web with outdated Web browsers and/or browser plugins like Java and Adobe Flash and Reader. Most ransomware attacks take advantage of exploit kits, malicious code that when stitched into a hacked site probe visiting browsers for the the presence of these vulnerabilities.
The attack on Methodist Hospital was another form of opportunistic attack that came in via spam email, in messages stating something about invoices and that recipients needed to open an attached (booby-trapped) file.
It's a fair bet that as ransomware attacks and attackers mature, these schemes will slowly become more targeted. I also worry that these more deliberate attackers will take a bit more time to discern how much the data they've encrypted is really worth, and precisely how much the victim might be willing to pay to get it back.
Tags: David Park, Jamie Reid, locky ransomware, Methodist Hospital
This entry was posted on Tuesday, March 22nd, 2016 at 1:52 pm and is filed under A Little Sunshine, Data Breaches. You can follow any comments to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a comment. Pinging is currently not allowed.
Nielsen to Break Out Metrics for Apple TV, Roku, Other Connected-TV Devices | Variety
Thu, 24 Mar 2016 13:44
Nielsen promises to give clients a look next month at usage metrics for connected-TV devices '-- including Roku and Apple TV set-tops '-- segmented by individual brand and device type.
All viewing of Nielsen-measured TV content on over-the-top devices is already included in the company's C3 and C7 television ratings. With the new data, TV networks will now be able to get a more detailed view into that usage on specific OTT devices.
Starting April 25, 2016, Nielsen said it will make available brand-level TV connected device data for Roku (pictured above), Apple TV, Amazon Fire TV, Google Chromecast, Microsoft Xbox, Sony PlayStation and Nintendo Wii. In addition, it will add information based on device type such as media-streaming player, game console, Internet-enabled DVD player and smart TV.
The data will let Nielsen clients track how many homes across the country own TV-connected devices, which devices they own and how much time consumers spend with them overall. For Nielsen-tracked TV content, the company said, media customers will be able to track program viewing by device.
Nielsen also is launching a new metric called Total Use of Television (TUT) that adds connected-TV device usage to traditional television usage ''for a complete view of the use of the TV set.''
''The ability to know how many consumers use which brands of TV-connected devices, for how often and for how long, is critical for clients who need to make informed content decisions and understand their total audience,'' said Sara Erichson, Nielsen exec VP of client solutions and audience insights, in a statement.
The data is derived from Nielsen's national TV panel, which comprises 40,000 households with more than 100,000 TV sets and 50,000 TV-connected devices.
CLIPS AND DOCS
VIDEO-Comedy Central Host Assembled Panel of Black Voters Supporting Trump to Ask Them 'Why?' | TheBlaze.com
Thu, 24 Mar 2016 14:40
Larry Wilmore, the host of Comedy Central's ''Nightly Show,'' does not understand the appeal of Donald Trump to black voters. So the host, himself a black man, assembled an all-black panel of Trump supporters to ask them to explain why they were voting for the billionaire Republican.
Image source: Comedy Central
The first person to respond to the question, ''Why do you support Donald Trump?,'' was Kevin, a man who admitted to being a ''registered Democrat.'' The Trump fan said he had ''lost faith and belief in the current state of our party right now with our two candidates.''
One of the female panelists said she was ''open to Donald Trump'' because he is a ''gangsta.'' She added, ''He's going out here, and he's kind of 'gangstering' the whole situation'...ya know, he's like, 'If you come up to my mic, I'm taking you out.'''
With his tongue firmly planted in his cheek, Wilmore compared Trump to a rapper, saying of the GOP front-runner, ''He is kind of like a rapper. He's into gold. He has his own vodka. He's got a private jet, and he really likes white women.''
A female panelist added, ''And he's married to a model.''
After listing the similarities between Trump and a rapper, Wilmore asked if those rapper-like qualities might be attractive to any of the panelists. One man responded, ''The way you express it, I never thought of that way, ya know, he's pretty cool.''
Watch the segment:
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VIDEO-Trump Thinks Obama Says 'ISIL' Instead of 'ISIS' Because He Wants to 'Bother People' | TheBlaze.com
Thu, 24 Mar 2016 14:31
Republican front-runner Donald Trump said Wednesday that he believes President Barack Obama uses the term ''ISIL'' instead of ''ISIS'' as a way to ''bother people.''
The remarks came after Trump was asked about the Islamic State terror group during an appearance on Bloomer Politics.
Scott Olson/Getty Images
''You talked earlier about the notion that we're losing to ISIL. That they are making us look foolish and soft,'' host John Heilemann said.
''ISIS,'' Trump interjected.
''ISIS, ISIL, it's all one thing,'' Heilemann quipped.
Trump didn't see it that way.
''You know it's one thing with the president,'' the billionaire said. ''He always says 'ISIL.' 'ISIL, ISIL, ISIL.' Everyone else says 'ISIS.' It's almost like he does it to bother people, OK?''
''I'm not doing it to bother you,'' Heilemann assured Trump.
''No, I know that,'' Trump said. ''But the president of the United States always says 'ISIL.' Everyone else says 'ISIS.' And I actually think he does it to bother people.''
The debate surrounding what to call the terror group has been fierce. The Associated Press refers to it as the Islamic State while the terror group's most common name is ISIS. U.K. Prime Minister David Cameron has called the group Dash, something thought to be considered offensive to the organization. The Obama administration has chosen to refer to the group as ISIL.
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VIDEO-Morning Joe Panel Slams Obama for Dancing in Argentina, Poor Brussels Response
VIDEO-Paris attack suspect wants to be extradited - CNN.com
Thu, 24 Mar 2016 12:46
World reacts to Brussels bombings
World reacts to Brussels bombings
Belgian national flags are projected onto the National Gallery in London's Trafalgar Square on March 23.
World reacts to Brussels bombings
A woman in Brussels pauses after people observed a minute of silence at the Place De La Bourse on March 23.
World reacts to Brussels bombings
Teresa Mancheno, a maintenance worker at Newark Liberty International Airport, attends a vigil in Newark, New Jersey, on March 23.
World reacts to Brussels bombings
European Union flags fly at half-staff outside the European Commission in Brussels on March 23.
World reacts to Brussels bombings
A young girl lights a candle at the Place de la Bourse in Brussels on Tuesday, March 22.
World reacts to Brussels bombings
An image of the Belgian flag is displayed on the Trevi Fountain in Rome on March 22.
World reacts to Brussels bombings
The Eiffel Tower is lit up with the colors of the Belgian flag on March 22.
World reacts to Brussels bombings
Servicemen with Azov, a Ukrainian volunteer battalion, hold torches during a tribute ceremony at the Belgian Embassy in Kiev, Ukraine, on March 22.
World reacts to Brussels bombings
U.S. President Barack Obama and his family observe a moment of silence as they attend a baseball game in Havana, Cuba, with Cuban President Raul Castro, right, on March 22.
World reacts to Brussels bombings
A woman reads messages written on the ground at Brussels' Place de la Bourse on March 22.
World reacts to Brussels bombings
A New York City church holds Mass for victims of the Brussels attacks on March 22.
World reacts to Brussels bombings
A man places flowers outside the Belgian Embassy in Moscow on March 22.
World reacts to Brussels bombings
A man looks at flowers and messages outside the stock exchange in Brussels on March 22.
World reacts to Brussels bombings
Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton, center, stands for a moment of silence during a roundtable with tribal leaders in Puyallup, Washington, on March 22.
World reacts to Brussels bombings
A woman leaves a bouquet of flowers at the base of the Belgium and European Union flags, which were flying at half-staff March 22 at the Belgian Embassy in Washington.
World reacts to Brussels bombings
Activists in Multan, Pakistan, condemn the Brussels attack on March 22.
World reacts to Brussels bombings
A woman lays flowers at the steps of the Belgian Embassy in Berlin on March 22.
World reacts to Brussels bombings
A boy at a makeshift migrant camp shows support for the victims near the village of Idomeni, Greece, on March 22.
World reacts to Brussels bombings
Mayors of Istanbul districts walk with consuls from various countries, including Belgium, during a protest condemning terrorism on March 22.
World reacts to Brussels bombings
People in Turin, Italy, take part in a rally to remember the victims on March 22.
World reacts to Brussels bombings
France's Parliament observes a minute of silence on March 22.
World reacts to Brussels bombings
Members of Quebec's National Assembly have a moment of silence on March 22.
VIDEO-Brussels terrorists probably used explosive nicknamed 'the Mother of Satan' - The Washington Post
Thu, 24 Mar 2016 05:56
The two nail-laced blasts that tore through the Brussels airport Tuesday morning shredded people in the departure area as the shock wave shattered windows and ripped tiles from the ceiling. A little more than an hour later, another explosion peeled open the side of a metro car in the middle of the city, killing and maiming dozens more.
Belgian investigators are starting to piece together how a cell of Islamic State operatives managed to build at least three bombs and kill at least 31 people in a city that has been on high alert since the Paris attacks last fall.
[Attacks in Brussels hit a city already on high alert]
Police have found a peroxide-based explosive known as triacetone triperoxide, or TATP, in the apartment of one of the suspected bombers, although investigators have yet to say conclusively what type of devices were used Tuesday. But if TATP was the primary ingredient in the bombs, the attack in Brussels would become the latest example of the chemical's use in terrorist strikes across Europe.
Officials in Brussels found bomb-making materials in the apartment of one of the suspected bombers, including 33 pounds of TATP explosives. (Jason Aldag,Thomas Gibbons-Neff/The Washington Post)
Highly unstable, peroxide-based explosives such as TATP '-- and its sibling hexamethylene triperoxide diamine, or HMTD '-- have been used in terrorist bombs for decades. TATP first gained notoriety after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks when Richard Reid, who became known as the shoe bomber, unsuccessfully tried to detonate a TATP-triggered explosive during a Paris to Miami flight in December 2001.
TATP was again used in the 2005 London bombings that killed 56 and was also confiscated from Najibullah Zazi in his failed plot to attack the New York City subway system in 2009. In the November 2015 attacks in Paris, TATP was used as the primary explosive in a number of bombs and suicide belts during the hours-long siege.
[U.S. troops keep finding themselves caught in the middle of violence in Europe]
The chemicals that make up TATP, such as concentrated hydrogen peroxide and acetone, are easy to procure. There were 40 gallons of acetone in the apartment of the suspected bomber. The attackers in Brussels could have purchased the ingredients without raising suspicion, especially if each member was responsible for buying just one element.
When cooked, the white powdery substance is highly volatile and potent, earning it the nickname ''The Mother of Satan.'' A few grams of TATP can easily blow off fingers, while concentrated pounds of it are devastating.
According to an Army explosive ordnance disposal technician, who requested anonymity because he is not authorized to speak to the press, TATP-based devices are rarely seen in war zones such as Iraq and Afghanistan because of how unstable the material is and because military-grade explosives are readily available. TATP, he said, has become a terrorist staple in Europe because of its easily obtained ingredients.
According to Brian Castner, a former Air Force explosive ordnance disposal technician and author of the book ''All the Ways We Kill and Die,'' the use of TATP-based explosives in both Paris and Brussels could suggest that a terrorist network in Europe has mastered the cooking and handling of TATP. ''There are actually very few bombmakers in the grand scheme of things,'' Castner said. ''Once one finds a successful way to construct these things, they [can] mass produce.''
While there are bomb-building manuals available on the Internet, Castner added that a competent terrorist cell would not rely on them; instead, recruits apprentice with master bombmakers in places such as Syria and Iraq before returning to their home countries. And in Afghanistan and Iraq, the United States has targeted bombmakers. In 2008, for instance, a drone strike in Pakistan killed Abu Khabab al-Masri, who trained a generation of al-Qaeda operatives in bombmaking. Israel has similarly targeted bombmakers in Hamas.
According to Belgian media reports, the suspected bombmaker involved in Tuesday's attacks is 24-year-old Najim Laachraoui, whose DNA was also found on some of the bombs used in the Paris attacks. He is believed to have trained in Syria. It is highly unusual for bombmakers to participate directly in operations, but The Post reported Wednesday that Laachraoui was the second suicide bomber at the airport, and he may have been willing to die because he feared the police were closing in.
Some reports indicate that the bombs at the airport were detonated within suitcases, while a suicide vest may have been used in the Metro bombing.
[NATO headquarters, just a few miles from Brussels attacks, boosts alert status]
While a seemingly small distinction, the two delivery methods involve different kinds of construction for the bombmaker. A TATP-loaded vest is harder to build and maintain, as the substance is so volatile. A suitcase loaded with TATP would be easier to transport and less likely to accidentally explode, since the charges would be more protected than if placed in a vest.
Pictures posted online of three suspects pushing carts loaded with suitcases through Brussels Airport show two of them wearing black gloves on their left hands. According to the Army technician, the gloves could have hidden triggering devices for the bombs.
This post has been updated
Read more:
Here's what we know about the attacks in Brussels
Why is Brussels under attack?
A quiet morning in Brussels ends in gruesome terrorist attacks
Thomas Gibbons-Neff is a staff writer and a former Marine infantryman.
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VIDEO-Valls, Juncker call for Europe-wide cooperation on security | euronews, world news
Thu, 24 Mar 2016 04:54
"I also reiterated the urgent need to better fight arms trafficking, the urgent need to adopt a European PNR system, to enable the tracking of terrorists' movements."
French Prime Minister Manuel Valls joined his Belgian counterpart Charles Michel and the President of the European Commission Jean-Claude Juncker as they paused to pay respects at the Maelbeek metro station in Brussels.
Shortly afterwards, both spoke up about the need to work together for the security of Europe.
Valls renewed France's calls for a Passenger Name Record system to be set up for European air travel.
What is needed, Valls said, is:''Systematic border controls in the Schengen area, deployment of European border guards; I also reiterated the urgent need to better fight arms trafficking, the urgent need to adopt a European PNR system, to enable the tracking of terrorists' movements.''
Juncker, too, called for Europe-wide cooperation.''We also think we need to work together towards unified security. The Commission has proposed all the constituent elements for such a union of security. I would ask the Council of Ministers not to yield to the mounting pressure of lobbyists and instead to keep in mind the essential '' what must be done.''
An extraordinary meeting of the European Union's interior ministers has been scheduled for Thursday, March 24, to compose the bloc's response to the Brussels attacks.
VIDEO-Belgium ups security at nuclear plants following Brussels bombings | euronews, world news
Thu, 24 Mar 2016 04:49
Security has been stepped up at nuclear plants around Belgium amid fears they could be the next target after the Brussels attacks.The alert follows the discovery of secret footage of a senior Belgian nuclear official, in the Belgian flat of one of the suspects linked to the Paris terror attacks.
It's understood to have contained dozens of hours of covert footage of an unnamed director of the Belgian nuclear research and developement programme.
Increased security measures include more surveillance and the checking of vehicles by police and the army.
Non-essential staff at the Doel and Tihange plants have been sent homealthough key staff will remain in order to ensure the plants continue to operate. This is because there are concerns that vetting procedures of staff may not be sufficiently rigorous.
It is understood that one of the accused in the Sharia4Belgium trial in Antwerp who is currently fighting in Syria had been a a technician at the Doel plant for three years.
VIDEO-Najim Laachraoui 'second Brussels airport bomber' '' AFP, citing police | euronews, world news
Thu, 24 Mar 2016 04:44
AFP news agency, citing police sources, has identified Najim Laachraoui as the second Brussels Airport suicide bomber.
The Belgian, of Moroccan origin, was reportedly identified as the man on the left of a CCTV image taken at Zaventem Airport on the morning of the blasts.
At least 31 people died and up to 270 were injured in twin attacks on the airport and metro in Brussels.
Laachraoui: 'accomplice and bomb-maker'A day before the Brussels attacks, Belgian prosecutors named Laachraoui as an accomplice to the Paris attackers who killed 130 people in a series of coordinated shootings and bombings in November, 2015.
Authorities said they'd found his DNA in a number of houses used by a suspected jihadist network. He is believed to have been a key bomb-maker. The 24-year-old had been using the alias Soufiane Kayal.
Brussels attacksBelgian authorities say Ibrahim el-Bakraoui was the first airport suicide bomber. He was seen on the same CCTV image as Laachraoui. A third man is still being sought.
Ibrahim's brother Khalid has been identified as the Maelbeek metro bomber. The ISIL militant group has claimed responsibility for the attacks.
Earlier on Wednesday (March 23), a man, said to be a suspect in the attacks, was arrested in the municipality of Anderlecht, in the Brussels Capital Region. There has been no further information on this.
El-Bakraoui deported from Turkey?The reports came around an hour after Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan announced one of the Brussels suicide bombers was deported from Turkey in July 2015.
Ibrahim el-Bakraoui was detained in June 2015, Ankara said. Upon deportation, Turkish authorities warned their Belgian counterparts that he was a militant, according to Erdogan. However, el-Bakraoui was later released by Belgium, with ''no links with terrorism found,'' the Turkish presidency reported. Erdogan says Belgium ignored Turkey's warnings.
Belgian Justice Minister, Koen Geens denied the reports.
''At that time this person wasn't known to us for terrorist acts. He was known as a criminal who was freed conditionally. When he was sent back, as the information by the Justice Department tells me, he was sent to the Netherlands, not to Belgium,'' he said on Wednesday evening.
''This is what I've come to know. It definitely wasn't an extradition. This is something else entirely. It's a case of someone being sent back from the Syrian border. Someone who wasn't known to us at the time for terrorism.''
Erdogan said el-Bakraoui was returned to the Netherlands at his request. Turkey says it was also in touch with the Dutch authorities. It is not clear when he was handed over to the Belgian authorities.
VIDEO-Morell: We have done 'very little' to degrade ISIS organization and its ability to attack the West - YouTube
VIDEO-Obama: Separation of powers 'very frustrating sometimes for the president,' like 'herding cats' - YouTube
VIDEO-Brian Williams: Eugene Robinson Is a 'Pulitzer Prize-Winning Communist' | MRCTV
Thu, 24 Mar 2016 04:24
[See NewsBusters for more.] Brian Williams's mouth is getting him in trouble again. The disgraced ex-Nightly News anchor on Monday closed out a segment on Castro by declaring liberal Washington Post writer Eugene Robinson a ''Pulitzer Prize-winning communist.'' Williams tried to dig himself out of the hole, retreating, ''Columnist. Communist. Wow! Columnist....I think I have that on the mind. You are not, in fact, a communist. You are a friend of ours and a Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist with the Washington Post.''
VIDEO-MSNBC Terror Analyst Blames Belgium Society for Bombings | MRCTV
Thu, 24 Mar 2016 04:02
Before the bodies of the victims of the ISIS terrorist attacks in Belgium were cold, an MSNBC Terror Analyst declared that Belgium society was to blame for the death and destruction. ''Why is it that Muslims and other immigrants in Belgian have such problem integrating with local society? Why is it that they do not feel like they are Belgian? Why is it that they are ghettoized into these communities?'' Bemoaned Evan Kohlmann Tuesday afternoon.
Kohlmann whined that those of us in the west needed to do a better job looking into why Muslims and other immigrant groups felt alienated. ''This is just the beginning, because we have to get to the root causes of why this happened. And those causes have not been dealt with.''
The questions raised by Kohlmann put all the blame on Belgians and seems to insinuate that they didn't roll out the welcome mat. The fact of the matter is that it is naturally hard for people from a different county to feel a part of a new place. Many of the new immigrants don't speak French, let alone Flemish. And it's hard to claim a community is being ''ghettoized'' when there are no walls being erected around a neighborhood. Although it is natural for people to stay close to and only associate with people they feel are similar too, everyone does it. It's call de facto segregation.
It might be in the liberal media's best interest to wait for the Belgian and European authorities to complete their investigation and man hunts, before laying blame for the attack on the victims. I might also pay for them to look into the objective of the organization the terrorists serve to identify the reasons for the attack.
VIDEO-Brian Williams Fires Back When State Dept. Spox Uses Belgium to Claim ISIS Is Losing | MRCTV
Thu, 24 Mar 2016 03:57
See more in the cross-post on the NewsBusters blog.
During the 5:00 p.m. Eastern hour of MSNBC's live coverage concerning the terror attacks in Belgium, breaking news anchor and former NBC Nightly News anchor Brian Williams shot back at State Department spokesman John Kirby when Kirby claimed that the attacks in Brussels illustrate why Islamic terrorist groups like ISIS are on the run.
Kirby prefaced this bizarre spin from the Obama administration by ruling that the U.S. and allies should take threats from ISIS ''very seriously'' seeing as how ''they have threatened western targets now for a long, long time and it's a threat that we are all too familiar with sadly.''
VIDEO-Gayle King Scolds Ted Cruz: Your Terror Policies 'Play Into the Hands of ISIS' | MRCTV
Thu, 24 Mar 2016 03:40
[See NewsBusters for more.] The hosts of CBS This Morning on Wednesday berated Ted Cruz for his terrorism policies, suggesting he's ''playing into the hands of ISIS'' with ''anti-Muslim'' policies. Norah O'Donnell accused the candidate of making ''political points'' and demanded to know how many Muslims there are in America. Gayle King lectured, ''There are so many people that say that your comments are decidedly anti-Muslim.'' Preemptively blaming the Republican for future terror attacks, she suggested Cruz is ''playing right into the hands of ISIS, that you're giving them ammunition to come after us, to really take action against us, that you're just teeing it up for people to come after us.''
VIDEO-The View's Joy Behar Snarls at 'Dangerous,' 'Anti-Muslim' Cruz | MRCTV
Thu, 24 Mar 2016 03:32
[See NewsBusters for more.] The Ted Cruz bashing continued on ABC's The View, Wednesday, with Joy Behar excoriating the ''dangerous,'' ''anti-Muslim'' Republican candidate. The co-hosts discussed Cruz's call for preemptive monitoring and cooperation with Muslim communities to prevent terrorism. Behar snarled, ''All this business of being anti-Muslim is not helping the situation. We need to take a long view of terrorism.'' The co-host admitted that, with regard to Islamic terrorism, ''I don't even know why they want to kill us.'' She condemned, ''The main thing you have to stop doing is recruiting new people. Otherwise there is no end to this. And all of this hate speech against Muslims helps to recruit people.''
VIDEO-Obama: Separation of powers 'very frustrating sometimes for the president,' like 'herding cats'
VIDEO-Judge Napolitano: A catastrophic mistake to reveal Abdeslam's capture
VIDEO-Trump: 'I'm not a big believer in man-made climate change.'
Thu, 24 Mar 2016 03:04
Give Donald Trump credit for consistency. The Republican presidential front-runner repeatedly has said he isn't ''a believer'' that humans have played a significant role in the Earth's changing climate. He said as much in an interview with talk show host Hugh Hewitt last year. He told ''Fox & Friends'' earlier this year that climate change ''is just a very, very expensive form of tax. A lot of people are making a lot of money.''
In his own tweets, Trump has called the concept of global warming everything from a ''hoax'' to ''bulls'--'' to a scheme ''created by and for the Chinese in order to make U.S. manufacturing non-competitive.'' (He later said he was joking about the China tweet).
Trump's stance on climate change, of course, puts him at odds with the vast majority of the world's scientists, who agree that climate-warming trends over the past century are likely a result of human activity and are playing out in the form of rising seas, growing carbon dioxide emissions and melting glaciers.
In a wide-ranging meeting Monday with The Washington Post editorial board, Trump again dismissed man-made climate change. Instead, he said the type of climate change we should worry most about is nuclear weapons '-- an apparent reference to Cold War-era fears over a ''nuclear winter.'' The idea was that a nuclear war between the United States and the Soviet Union could have devastating consequences for the environment. Scientists say the potential threat still exists, particularly with more countries now possessing nuclear weapons, though it remains a less immediate threat than the constant pollution humans send into the environment.
Below is a transcript of the climate change exchange, which came toward the end of Trump's visit Monday to The Post:
FRED HIATT, EDITORIAL PAGE EDITOR: Last one: You think climate change is a real thing? Is there human-caused climate change?
DONALD TRUMP: I think there's a change in weather. I am not a great believer in man-made climate change. I'm not a great believer. There is certainly a change in weather that goes '' if you look, they had global cooling in the 1920s and now they have global warming, although now they don't know if they have global warming. They call it all sorts of different things; now they're using ''extreme weather'' I guess more than any other phrase. I am not '' I know it hurts me with this room, and I know it's probably a killer with this room '' but I am not a believer. Perhaps there's a minor effect, but I'm not a big believer in man-made climate change.
STEPHEN STROMBERG, EDITORIAL WRITER: Don't good businessmen hedge against risks, not ignore them?
TRUMP: Well, I just think we have much bigger risks. I mean I think we have militarily tremendous risks. I think we're in tremendous peril. I think our biggest form of climate change we should worry about is nuclear weapons. The biggest risk to the world, to me '' I know President Obama thought it was climate change '' to me the biggest risk is nuclear weapons. That's '' that is climate change. That is a disaster, and we don't even know where the nuclear weapons are right now. We don't know who has them. We don't know who's trying to get them. The biggest risk for this world and this country is nuclear weapons, the power of nuclear weapons.
FREDERICK RYAN JR., WASHINGTON POST PUBLISHER: Thank you for joining us.
You can listen to audio of Trump's full meeting with The Post below. The exchange about climate change begins at 1:02:15:
READ MORE:
We had all better hope these scientists are wrong about the planet's future
What we're doing to the Earth has no parallel in 66 million years, scientists say
Brady Dennis is a national reporter for The Washington Post, focusing on food and drug issues.
VIDEO-Donald Trump on Elizabeth Warren: 'Who's that, the Indian?' - CNNPolitics.com
Wed, 23 Mar 2016 18:31
After a reporter brought up the Democrat's recent criticism of him, Trump interrupted, asking sarcastically, "Who's that, the Indian? You mean the Indian?"
"The problem with the country right now is it's so divided," he said, after touting his success in the GOP primaries. "People like Elizabeth Warren really have to get their act together because it's going to stay divided."
In 2012, Warren's past claims about her Native American ancestry came under scrutiny, with her Republican campaign rival Scott Brown demanding she provide documented proof. But Warren said her heritage had been passed down in words, not on paper.
"Being Native American has been a part of my story, I guess since the day I was born," she told reporters in May of that year. "I don't know any other way to describe it."
Earlier on Monday, Warren in a storm of heated tweets had called Trump a "loser" who threatens "to tear apart an America that was built on values like decency, community, and concern for our neighbors."
"His insecurities are on parade," she wrote minutes earlier, "petty bullying, attacks on women, cheap racism, flagrant narcissism."
Last Monday, Warren on Facebook called Trump "a bigger, uglier threat every day that goes by.""It's time for decent people everywhere -- Republican, Democrat, Independent -- to say No More Donald," she continued. "There's no virtue in silence."
Trump introduced the "Indian" insult during an interview later on Friday with New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd."I think it's wonderful because the Indians can now partake in the future of the country," the Republican front-runner offered glibly when asked about Warren's comments. "She's got about as much Indian blood as I have. Her whole life was based on a fraud. She got into Harvard and all that because she said she was a minority."
VIDEO-Ivory Coast: 16 dead in Grand Bassam beach resort attack - BBC News
Wed, 23 Mar 2016 16:01
Media captionThe BBC's Maud Jullien visited the scene of the attackMilitants have killed at least 16 people in a gun attack on a beach resort in southern Ivory Coast.
The attackers fired on beach-goers in Grand Bassam, about 40km (25 miles) from the commercial capital Abidjan.
The resort is popular with both locals and foreigners. Four of the dead were Westerners, including a French and a German national, officials say.
Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM) said it launched the attack. The gunmen have been "neutralised", officials say.
Ivory Coast was once one of the most stable countries in West Africa.
However, a civil war broke out in 2002, pitting the mainly Muslim north against the largely Christian south. Since then, peace deals have alternated with renewed violence.
Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM) was quick to claim responsibility for the attack. It published its claim in four languages - a sign that the group was seeking to boost its media profile to match its recently enhanced operational capabilities.
The brief statement in Arabic, English, French and Spanish was published as an image on AQIM's Twitter account and through the messaging app Telegram.
The format resembled the style used by jihadist rivals Islamic State group (IS), indicating that AQIM wants to emulate IS's more advanced media operation.
AQIM said in the statement that three of its militants were responsible for this attack.
AQIM has been almost dormant in the past few years. But it stepped up its presence after announcing in December that it had partnered with the more active militant group al-Murabitoun which is known for high-profile hostage taking. This allowed Al-Qaeda to claim credit for al-Murabitoun' s hotel attacks in Mali in November and in Burkina Faso in January.
How a mother and her baby survived the attack
Profile: Al-Murabitoun
Africa Live: BBC news updates
A witness to Sunday's attack told AFP news agency that "heavily armed men wearing balaclavas" had opened fire near the L'Etoile du Sud hotel, which was full of expats.
One of the people on the beach, Belgian Charline Burton, told the BBC she grabbed her daughter and ran to hide in a toilet.
"We could hear them shooting so we could hear that they were going right next to where we were. It was a miracle the baby didn't cry," she said.
Fourteen of those killed were civilians and two were soldiers, officials say. Interior Minister Hamed Bakayoko said four of the civilians were Westerners, and included a French and a German national.
There is no word on the nationalities of the other victims.
Ivory Coast's National Security Council is holding an emergency meeting to discuss the attack.
President Alassane Ouattara visited the site a few hours after the attack and promised that security in the country will be strengthened.
"These cowardly attacks by terrorists will not be tolerated," he added.
French President Francois Hollande also condemned the attack.
Image copyrightReutersImage copyrightReutersImage caption The Etoile du Sud hotel was targeted BBC regional reporter Maud Jullien says Ivory Coast has been identified as one of several countries in West Africa at risk of being targeted by Islamist militants.
AQIM claimed deadly attacks on luxury hotels in Mali in November and Burkina Faso in January.
The group, which has its origin in Algeria's civil war of the 1990s, has expanded across the Sahel regions south of the Sahara in recent years.
VIDEO-Report: Israeli company helping FBI crack iPhone security - Israel News, Ynetnews
Wed, 23 Mar 2016 15:57
Information security experts say US authorities are being aided by Petah Tikva-based Cellebrite to open the phone of San Bernardino terrorist; Cellebrite hasn't commented on report.Sagi Cohen
The FBI has been reportedly using the services of the Israeli-based company Cellebrite in its effort to break the protection on a terrorist's locked iPhone, according to experts in the field familiar with the case.
The US Justice Department last month obtained a court order directing Apple to create software that would disable the password protection on the iPhone, allowing American authorities to access the phone used by Rizwan Farook, one of the two killers who perpetrated the December massacre in San Bernardino, California.
But Apple has fought back, arguing that the order is an overreach by the government and would undermine computer security for everyone.
This led to widespread discussion in the US on whether the government should receive access to the personal and private information of its citizens, and if so, what should be the extent of such access.
On Monday, US prosecutors announced that a "non-governmental third party" had presented a possible method for opening an encrypted iPhone, noting they were "cautiously optimistic" it would work.
The announcement led a federal judge in Riverside, CA to postpone a hearing originally scheduled for Tuesday so that the FBI could try the newly discovered technique. The Justice Department said it would update the court on April 5.
Cellebrite has not responded to the report. But if it is indeed the "third party" in question, and it is able to break into the terrorist's iPhone, it would bring the high-stakes legal showdown between the government and Apple to an abrupt end.
Cellebrite, considered one of the leading companies in the world in the field of digital forensics, has been working with the world's biggest intelligence, defense and law enforcement authorities for many years.
The company provides the FBI with decryption technology as part of a contract signed with the bureau in 2013.
Cellebrite's technology is able to extract valuable information from cellular devices that could be used in criminal and intelligence
investigations, even if the phone and the information it contains are locked and secure.
Meanwhile, an Apple executive told reporters on a press call that the company knew nothing about the Justice Department's possible method for getting into the phone, and that the government never gave any indication that it was continuing to search for such solutions.
On December 2, 2015, married couple Syed Rizwan Farook and Tashfeen Malik, both Muslim US citizens, opened fire with automatic weapon at a community center in San Bernardino, CA, killing 14 people and wounding 22 others.
During its investigation of the attack, the FBI found an iPhone 5C that belonged to Farook. The bureau believes the iPhone contains a lot of information that could shed light on the attack, and reveal, amongst other things, places the two visited before the attack, and who they were in contact with, in the search for possible accomplices. However, Farook's iPhone is locked with a password, without which investigators cannot access the information on the phone.
Apple claimed it cannot break its own security system.
Apple said on Monday that if the government was successful in getting into the phone, which might involve taking advantage of previously undiscovered vulnerabilities, it hoped officials would share information on how they did so. But if the government drops the legal case, it would be under no obligation to provide information to Apple.
Cellebrite, led by CEO Yossi Carmil, offers two types of services: Data backup and diagnostic services used by cellular operators worldwide; and solutions to law enforcement in the field of digital forensics.
Cellebrite's system can retrieve and back up data, as well as run diagnostics on over 15,000 models of cellphones, smartphones and tablets. It can also map the connections between the owner of the phone and the people he contacted using the information extracted.
Law enforcement, military, intelligence, security and government authorities in over 90 countries have been able to solve serious crimes using Cellebrite's technology in the past.
For example, a double murder in Connecticut was solved using incriminating text messages extracted from the killer's phone, revealing the perpetrator to be the victims' son. In another case, the Interpol used Cellebrite's technology to expose and bring down a network of online sexual extortionists.
Reuters contributed to this report.
VIDEO-A Message from BRUSSELS - Mischal Modrikamen supports TRUMP - YouTube
VIDEO-Morell: We have done 'very little' to degrade ISIS organization and its ability to attack the West
VIDEO-VIDEO-Ted Cruz fires back at Trump's tweet about his wife: Heidi is 'way out of his league'
VIDEO-Andover teens reflect on emergency landing
Wed, 23 Mar 2016 12:31
WICHITA, Kan. (KAKE) -- Christian Dell and Nicole Klusener say they're thankful to be alive as a pilot's greatest fear came to life.
The Andover teens crashed a private plane onto Tallgrass Country Club after the aircraft's engine gave out Friday afternoon.."We were just coming back from a Spring break trip in Nashville," Dell said.
Dell and Klusener were getting close to their landing point at Jabara Airport when something went horribly wrong.
"We've got an engine failure," Dell called into the Wichita tower. "We're trying to make it to final."
The rental plane's engine gave out as the couple was making their decent.
"I was just like, looking at Christian hoping that he knew what to do and I was praying to God," Klusener said.
"At that point it's all kind of flashback to training," Dell said.
Dell says he flew the four-seat plane right over the top of some houses lining the 14th hole of the golf course; then they clipped a tree before crashing into the ground.
"We're being told this is a small private aircraft the landed on the golf course, there are several occupants, looks like they were getting out of the plane, but injured," a 911 dispatcher scratched over the radio.
Dell says if it hadn't been for a sand trap they would have landed fairly smoothly, but instead they crashed hard. Both smashed their heads against the dash leaving them concussed and the rest of the story very foggy.
"He got out and was walking around, had blood coming out of his eyes," Klusener said.
Now that both are out of the hospital and have had time to reflect, the couple realizes how close they came to losing it all while Dell did everything he could to prevent the emergency landing from harming others.
"It's fortunate that no one else got hurt," he said.
"He did his job and that's how we're alive right now," Klusener said.
Dell says his two years of flying experience helped him keep calm during a frightening ordeal. They are still waiting for the results of the ongoing FAA investigation as to what went wrong with the rental plane's engine.
Stay up-to-date with KAKE News:
VIDEO-Reporter Angrily Walks Out When State Dept. Won't Answer His Question - YouTube
VIDEO-State Dept's Harf: "We Can Not Kill Our Way Out Of This War," Must Address Root Causes Like Joblessness | Video | RealClearPolitics
Wed, 23 Mar 2016 01:47
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MARIE HARF, U.S. STATE DEPARTMENT: I think there are a few stages here, right now we are trying to take their leaders and their fighters off the battlefield in Iraq & Syria, that is where they really flourish.
CHRIS MATTHEWS, MSNBC: Are we killing enough of them?
MARIE HARF: We're killing a lot of them. And we're going to keep killing more of them. So are the Egyptians and Jordanians, they're in this fight with us. We can not win this war by killing them. We can not kill our way out of this war. We need in the medium and longer term to go after the root causes that lead people to join these groups, whether it is lack of opportunity for jobs--
CHRIS MATTHEWS: But we're not going to be able to stop that in our lifetime or in fifty lifetimes. There's always going to be poor people. There's always going to be muslims, and as long as the trumpet is blowing they'll join. We can't stop that, can we?
VIDEO-Trump or Clinton: Which Candidate Makes You Feel Safer? - The View - YouTube
VIDEO-LiveLeak.com - Trump Predicts the Future, Again
Wed, 23 Mar 2016 01:22
Trump Predicts the Future, Again
You can't stump the Trump
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VIDEO-LiveLeak.com - Turkey's Erdogan on March 19, 2016: 'Bombs will go off in Brussels, in Europe.'
Tue, 22 Mar 2016 18:06
Added: 7 hours ago By:saas_feeIn:Other Middle EastTags:Brussels, Bruxelles, airport, Zaventem, Erdogan, Turkey, terror, terroris, Islamic, State, ISIS, Daesh, Europe, Merkel, EULocation:Turkey(load item map)Views: 4276 | Comments: 124 | Votes:5 | Favorites:2 | Shared: 25 | Updates: 0 | Times used in channels:1Direct link:Direct link without comments:
VIDEO-Screams and debris in Brussels airport after blast
Tue, 22 Mar 2016 14:47
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VIDEO-Wasserman Schultz: Not a 'shred of evidence' proving I've shown favoritism for Hillary Clinton
VIDEO-Rep. Welch Discusses Cuban Oppression, Then Says America Can Learn Things From Cuba
VIDEO-Harrington On Trump: Typical Democratic Playbook Won't Work On Him
VIDEO-Brian Williams Accidentally Calls MSNBC Commentator a Communist
VIDEO-Trump watches ad of him making offensive remarks against women, says it's 'show business'
VIDEO-AIPAC crowd laughs at Donald Trump when he says he's studied the Iran nuclear deal more than anyone
VIDEO-Trump: First thing I'd do if I got 2 a.m. phone call about terrorism is talk about the border
VIDEO-2nd GOP delegate says primary votes don't matter
Tue, 22 Mar 2016 14:15
As an example of what she called "manipulation," Orrock referred to the controversy at the Republican convention in 2012, in which backers of nominee Mitt Romney raised the bar for how candidates could qualify on the convention ballot, in order to avoid any symbolic floor votes for Ron Paul.
While Romney's nomination four years ago was never in doubt, this year, it could go down to the wire. A brokered convention, in which it takes more than one round of delegate voting to choose the nominee, appears likely, said Orrock. "That's just realistic."
Democrats experienced the last truly brokered convention in 1952. Republicans came close at their 1976 convention.
For Trump to lay claim to the 2016 nomination coming into the convention, he needs to win 1,237 delegates. He's more than halfway there ahead of Tuesday's winner-take-all Arizona primary. Utah also holds caucuses. But with Texas Sen. Ted Cruz and Ohio Gov. John Kasich still in the race, they might be able to win enough delegates to deny Trump the magic number.
"There's been attempts from all sides to take Donald Trump out of the mix. And it hasn't been very successful. The more they attack him the stronger he gets. And he's resonating with America and the voters," Orrock said.
VIDEO-World Trade Center Attack 9/11 Confirmation in 1996-The Long Kiss Goodnight - YouTube
VIDEO-Richard Engel: ISIS supporters are 'cheering' attacks on social media - TODAY.com
Tue, 22 Mar 2016 13:17
March 22nd, 2016
NBC chief foreign affairs correspondent Richard Engel tells TODAY that there is concern there could be follow-up attacks in the wake of Tuesday morning's fatal explosions in Brussels that have killed at least 26. He says many ISIS supporters have been "cheering the attack" on social media. He says the attacks could be a signal from ISIS that the terrorist group is still formidable despite having been weakened recently.
VIDEO-INSANITY Frm Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld Still Has No Clue About WTC7 - YouTube
VIDEO-Donald Trump mocks Elizabeth Warren's ancestry at news conference: 'Do you mean the Indian?'
Tue, 22 Mar 2016 13:09
Atheist trolls Christian conservatives for Sam Bee: 'I'll pray for you?' 'OK, I'll think for you'
Seth Meyers: GOP wrecked Kansas economy so bad they had to auction off dildos for cash
Voter ID horror story: NC poll workers forced brown-skinned couple to take a 'spelling test'
Donald Trump mocks Elizabeth Warren's ancestry at news conference: 'Do you mean the Indian?'
'People' deletes anti-vaxxer celebrity's baby formula recipe '-- which can be deadly
Baptist pastor sentenced to 50 years for hiring mistress and her husband to set his wife on fire
Amy Goodman rips CNN for airing Trump's empty stage instead of Sanders' speech
Crying 6-year-old put in handcuffs under school's stairs for taking candy off teacher's desk
Samantha Bee mocks Republicans for 'c*ckblocking' Merrick Garland nomination
Donald Trump swings in all directions as he tries to fight back against Elizabeth Warren
VIDEO-Bill Nye: Our Next President Can't Be A Climate Change Denier - YouTube
VIDEO-Donald Trump: Are we sure that Mitt Romney is a Mormon?
VIDEO-Anonymous Threatens To Expose Ted Cruz For Leading Double Life With Prostitutes (VIDEO)
Mon, 21 Mar 2016 14:14
What is the one thing that would absolutely destroy any hopes that Ted Cruz has of getting enough votes to ever be nominated as the GOP candidate for president in 2016?
Anonymous may have found it.
Ted Cruz's one great appeal to the minority of voters who are sticking with him is his extreme evangelical religious views. Cruz is ''a Christian first, an American second,'' and his voters really like that. It's kind of his ''thing.'' His wife has stated in interviews that she believes Ted can show America the ''face of God'' as president, and his father believes that Cruz is the only candidate who can protect the religious freedom to discriminate and be intolerant toward others in the upcoming election.
