What could possibly be more invasive, more offensive, than the secret indiscriminate bulk collection of data by the National Security Agency?
Quite a number of things, actually.
Let's put aside, for now, the CIA's complicity in torture, which, to my mind, is the worst scandal of the Bush years. Then, as you read about the following two stories, compare them to the NSA's surveillance, and weigh the potential and actual harm to real people that the practices exposed herein would cause.
1. The Intercept's Jeremy Scahill, relying on classified documents, has exposed for all to see the ungainly expansion of terrorist watch lists after September 11, 2001, and particularly, the intrusive, invasive, and privacy-threatening means the government knowingly uses to secretly enrich its files on what must be thousands of innocents Americans, assuming that the actual bad people among them are very few. As of August 2013, Scahill reports, there were 5,000 Americans on watch lists.
According to the documents, the government does much more than simply stop watchlisted people at airports. It also covertly collects and analyzes a wide range of personal information about those individuals — including facial images, fingerprints, and iris scans.
In the aftermath of last year's Boston Marathon bombing, the Directorate of Terrorist Identities began an aggressive program to collect biometric data and other information on all Americans on the TIDE list. "This project includes record by record research of each person in relevant Department of State and [intelligence community] databases, as well as bulk data requests for information," the documents note.
The DTI also worked on the subsequent Chicago Marathon, performing "deep dives" for biometric and other data on people in the Midwest whose names were on the TIDE list. In the process, the directorate pulled the TIDE records of every person with an Illinois, Indiana, or Wisconsin driver license.
DTI's efforts in Boston and Chicago are part of a broader push to obtain biometric information on the more than one million people targeted in its secret database. This includes hundreds of thousands of people who are not watchlisted. In 2013, the directorate's Biometric Analysis Branch (BAB) launched an initiative to obtain biometric data from driver's license records across the country. At least 15 states and the District of Columbia are working with the directorate to facilitate access to facial images from driver's licenses. In fiscal year 2013, 2,400 such images were provided for inclusion in the secret TIDE database. [The Intercept]
Watchlisting is fine; the uncertainty about the identities of terrorists implies that the list of suspected al Qaeda members will be much larger than the actual list. But providing to the National Counterterrorism Center bulk biometric data from all Americans in a certain number of states? The disproportionate targeting of Muslims in Dearborn, Michigan? The ease with which the government can open a file on
The Internal Revenue Service (IRS) has never been a beloved institution in America. Since its inception in 1913, following the passage of the 16th Amendment, the IRS has been the subject of jokes by comedians and generally viewed with a range of fear to loathing by the American people. Over the years, there have been many accounts of families and businesses being destroyed by the monolithic government institution, and April 15th has become a day of great stress to most Americans.
In the recent past, the IRS has been involved in a scandal involving its targeting of conservative political groups for heightened scrutiny. This has led to a Congressional investigation and the resignation of the head of the IRS, as well as allegations of destruction of evidence related to the scope of the Congressional probe (specifically, emails by Lois Lerner). Some of these emails have surfaced, showing a deep animus towards conservative groups, calling them "crazies" and "whackos". In fact, it has come out that she personally oversaw the audit of some of the conservative groups.
With this backdrop of clear discrimination against conservative groups, it has now come to light that the IRS reached an agreement with a rapidly anti-Christian group called the Freedom From Religion Foundation that establishes specific protocols in targeting Christian churches to heightened scrutiny related to their tax exempt status. The FFRF wants to eliminate religion from the public sector. Deeming itself the "largest freethought association in North America", the Freedom From Religion Foundation describes its goal as one that "works to education the public on matters relating to nontheism, and to promote the constitutional principle of separation between church and state". Of course, the FFRF apparently is unaware of the fact that there is nothing "constitutional" about "separation of church and state", given that the phrase is not in the Constitution.
This agreement came out of a recent lawsuit by the Freedom From Religion Foundation, Freedom From Religion Foundation v Koskinen, which alleged that the IRS was not doing enough to stop political speech by churches that the FFRF referred to as "rogue churches". The anti-Christian organization argued that the IRS wasn't doing enough to investigate these churches, and wanted a stricter policy by the IRS to target churches that were engaging in speech that could be deemed political in nature.
To settle the lawsuit, the IRS agreed to a set of protocols to use to investigate churches, to determine if they were engaging in political speech. The specifics of these protocols have not been released to the public and are the subject of a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) by the Alliance Defending Freedom. The ADF is a pro-Christian, conservative organization that describes itself as an "alliance-building legal organization that advocates for the right of people to freely live out their faith". They routinely defend against laws and regulations that limit the right of people to exercise their faith.
The IRS regulation relates to the non-profit status afforded to churches (as well as other nonprofit organizations) under 26 US § 501(c)(3), commonly called 501(c)(3). This tax provision allows for the recognition of nonprofit groups, including churches, to be free from any tax on the money they take in for their ministries, provided that they meet the necessary criteria. There is also the following prohibition in the statute that is specific to the lawsuit in question by the FFRF:
(iv) the organization does not participate in, or intervene in (including the publishing or distributing of statements), any political campaign on behalf of (or in opposition to any candidate for public office.
The FFRF argues that there are some churches who do engage in political speech, either endorsing a candidate or speaking out against a candidate. They refer to these as "rogue churches". Of course, given their liberal, anti-Christian bias, they are seeking to restrain conservative churches that are speaking out against matters that directly relate to the Gospel, such as the murder of unborn children.
While the above-quoted provision in the federal statue on nonprofits is open to interpretation, the ADF has expressed some concern on how it will be administered. Christina Holcomb, ADF's counsel involved in the FOIA request, stated that "secrecy breeds mistrust", while issuing a call for the IRS to "bring into the light of day" how it intends to investigate churches. Understandably, the ADF is concerned specifically about how the IRS determines which churches to bring under heightened scrutiny and what it will do if it finds these churches in violation of its new nebulous protocols.
The wording of the provision of non-interference with political campaigns could certainly be applied to "churches", such as Obama's former congregation in Chicago, which actively engages in inflammatory political rhetoric. There are a number of "churches" that also have invited liberal politicians, such as Al Gore and Jesse Jackson, to speak at their churches. These events have been recorded going into a very political direction.
However, given the outright hostility that the IRS has shown conservative groups in recent years, which has led to the investigation that is still underway, it is certainly reasonable for ADF and other conservative groups to suspect that it will be conservative churches who will be targeted by the IRS for heightened scrutiny. For its part, the FFRF is gnashing its teeth about the IRS' temporarily halting its investigations on nonprofit groups while the investigations in Congress are ongoing. It is unclear how long this moratorium on nonprofit organizations will last, but it is certain that it will not be permanent.
If the Freedom of Information request is honored by the IRS, at least more will be known about the protocols that the IRS plans to use to determine what churches to scrutinize, and how to punish those churches it deems in violation of its policies. However, the IRS has hardly been known to comply with the law. Emails have been deleted, IRS officials have refused to testify, and the IRS has simply chosen not to cooperate in any meaningful way with the Congressional investigations into its wrongdoing.
At present, it is uncertain what will be discovered about the protocols, but all Christians should be concerned about the IRS striking a deal with an aggressively anti-Christian organization to dictate a set of protocols that could strip away the nonprofit status of churches that preach Gospel messages that do not comport with the world view of IRS agents. Where could this ultimately lead? It is not unreasonable to suggest that, unless the IRS is reigned in by Congress, we may see a time very soon when pastors are punished—even with prison time (as they are in Europe and other places currently)-for preaching the Word of God concerning sodomy, the murder of unborn children, or any other number of interests supported by the Obama or subsequent administrations.
The cornerstone of American liberty is the freedom of speech. The founding fathers knew and understood that without the ability to speak out on important issues of the day, and the right to disagree with the government, a republic built on liberty will morph into one built on tyranny.
Russia to Ban American Food Importation
Aug 7th, 2014
Daily NewsArutz Sheva
Categories: Today's Headlines;Contemporary Issues
A senior Russian official told a local news agency that Moscow will ban the importation of all food and agricultural products arriving from the United States.
The announcement came after Moscow mentioned it would respond to recent sanctions placed on Russia the European Union and the United States by boycotting their food products.
Kerem Shalom Crossing
Flash 90
Israel has agreed to lift travel and import restrictions on Gaza, Egyptian sources told Palestinian news agency Ma'an Thursday - including the naval blockade and border crossing restrictions.
However, according to the source material - in Al Quds Al-Arabi - Israel's main condition for Hamas is the total demilitarization of Gaza - something Hamas is unlikely to accept. Moreover, among Hamas's unprecedented demands are a seaport and airport, conditions both Egypt and Israel are unlikely to accept.
The report, which should be taken with a grain of salt, says that Egypt, despite its animosity toward Hamas as an affiliate of the Muslim Brotherhood, has come down on the Palestinian side of negotiations - and is putting heavy pressure on Israel to acquiesce to Hamas's demands.
Israel has yet to formally confirm the acceptance of any of the terms of the ceasefire, including unconfirmed rumors that it has accepted its extension.
In the latest confirmed development, Foreign Minister Avigdor Liberman (Yisrael Beytenu) called the demands "blackmail," and denied reports of a rumored extension deal.
Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk said on Wednesday that he believed there was a "growing threat of direct Russian intervention" in eastern Ukraine.
Tusk said on Wednesday that his assessment was based on information received in the previous dozen hours or so, but gave no details.
"The threat of direct Russian intervention is certainly greater than it was a few days ago," he said.
Air strikes and artillery fire between pro-Russian separatists and Ukrainian troops in Donetsk have brought the violence closer than ever to the city centre, as Kiev's forces move in on the rebel stronghold.
As the rebels struggle to push back Kiev's forces, the wild card will be whether Russia will come to their rescue.
Russian President Vladimir Putin has faced increasing pressure from Russian nationalists urging him to send in the army to back the insurgency, and Western leaders have accused Russia of building up troops along the border with Ukraine in what some fear may preface an intervention.
The Russian Defence Ministry on Tuesday also shrugged off US warnings that an air force exercise in southern Russia this week was adding to tensions, saying that the drills were being conducted hundreds of kilometres away from the Ukrainian border.
An independent panel appointed by the Pentagon and Congress said Thursday that President Obama’s strategy for sizing the armed services is too weak for today’s global threats.
The National Defense Panel called on the president to dump a major section of his 2014 Quadrennial Defense Review (QDR) and write a broader strategy that requires the military to fight on multiple fronts at once.
It also said the shrinking U.S. armed forces, which are being downsized to fit that strategy and budget cuts, is a “serious strategic misstep on the part of the United States.” The forces’ numbers spelled out in Mr. Obama’s QDR are “inadequate given the future strategic and operational environment.”
The warning comes as Mr. Obama is under criticism from many Republicans and some Democrats for his standoff policy toward Syria and his limited response to a June offensive by an al Qaeda offshoot that has gobbled up swaths of territory in Iraq.
Congress authorized the panel of outside experts to review the QDR, a strategy for shaping the active and reserve force. Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel appointed the co-chairmen: former Defense Secretary William Perry, who served under President Bill Clinton, and retired Army Gen. John Abizaid, who ran U.S. Central Command during the U.S.-led occupation of Iraq.
“Not only have they caused significant investment shortfalls in U.S. military readiness and both present and future capabilities, they have prompted our current and potential allies and adversaries to question our commitment and resolve,” the report said. “Unless reversed, these shortfalls will lead to a high-risk force in the near future. That in turn will lead to an America that is not only less secure but also far less prosperous. In this sense, these cuts are ultimately self-defeating.”
It calls the defense cuts “dangerous” as “global threats and challenges are rising.” The experts point to China’s and Russia’s new territorial claims, nuclear proliferation by Iran and North Korea and al Qaeda’s rapid rise in Iraq.
The panel knocks Mr. Obama’s QDR for reducing the military’s global mission from being able to defeat two enemies nearly simultaneously to defeating one and denying the objectives of a second. The report calls on Mr. Obama to expand this overriding mission statement.
“The international security environment has deteriorated since then,” the report said of the QDR, which was released earlier this year. “In the current threat environment, America could plausibly be called upon to deter or fight in any number of regions in overlapping time frames.”
Rep. Howard P. “Buck” McKeon, California Republican and chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, said the independent review shows the QDR was more concerned with justifying budget cuts than meeting global security needs.
“It is the same conclusion many Americans have already reached,” Mr. McKeon said. “There is a cost when America does not lead, and there are consequences when America disengages. What the president fails to understand — which the report points out — is that a strong military underwrites all other tools our nation has for global influence.”
On the two-war requirement, the panel said: “We find the logic of the two-war construct to be as powerful as ever and note that the force sizing construct in the 2014 QDR strives to stay within the two-war tradition while using different language. But given the worsening threat environment, we believe a more expansive force sizing construct — one that is different from the two-war construct but no less strong — is appropriate.”
It proposes a new overriding strategy requirement that talks of taking on and stopping adversaries in multiple theaters of war.
The experts said both the Navy and the Air Force are too small.
“The Air Force now fields the smallest and oldest force of combat aircraft in its history yet needs a global surveillance and strike force able to rapidly deploy to theaters of operation to deter, defeat or punish multiple aggressors simultaneously,” the review group said.
Cuts in the numbers of Army soldiers “go too far,” the panel said.
The panel included national security experts who were in the Pentagon when some of the Obama administration budget decisions were being made. They include retired Marine Gen. James Cartwright, former Joint Chiefs vice chairman, and Michele Flournoy, who served as under secretary of defense for policy until 2012.
Obama: No Sympathy for Hamas
Aug 7th, 2014
Daily NewsArutz Sheva
Categories: Today's Headlines;Contemporary Issues
American President, Barack Obama, sad on Wednesday night at a press conference that he has no sympathy for Hamas, but that he has “Great sympathy for the work of the Palestinian Authority, because of their honesty and their striving for peace.”
Nevertheless, Obama admitted that Abbas was weakened by crisis in Gaza.
"I have no sympathy for Hamas,” said US President Barack Obama Thursday. “I have great sympathy for ordinary people who are struggling within Gaza. And the question then becomes, can we find a formula in which Israel has greater assurance that Gaza will not be a launching pad for further attacks, perhaps more dangerous attacks as technology develops into their country. But at the same time, ordinary Palestinians have some prospects for an opening of Gaza." The US president added that the “US goal right now is to make sure the ceasefire holds, that Gaza can beginning rebuilding and have hope, while Israel "can feel confident they are not going to have a repeat of rocket launches.”
American President, Barack Obama, spoke on Wednesday night of the current situation in Israel and said that firstly, parties involved must ensure that the ceasefire in Gaza continues.
Obama added that that being said, “In the long-term, a formula must be found which would enable the siege over Gaza to be removed, while maintaining the safety of Israel’s citizens.”
(CNSNews.com) – The president, vice president and a former State Department official with the Obama administration took advantage of the U.S.-Africa Leaders Summit this week in Washington, D.C., as an opportunity to advance the homosexual rights agenda.
“Despite the focus and emphasis on these issues, the United States has remained committed to its principles of strengthening and promoting democratic institutions, encouraging good governance and accountability and also promoting good human rights, including respect for the LBG [lesbian, bisexual, gay] communities across Africa,” Johnnie Carson, former assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs under Hillary Clinton and senior adviser at the U.S. Institute of Peace, said at a press conference on Tuesday at the summit.
Also on Tuesday, a young activist from Zimbabwe asked President Barack Obama what leaders and the private sector could do to “create this economic environment that fosters for the growth and development of Africa as a continent?”
“Some of the incredible cultures of some of our U.S. businesses that do a really good job promoting people and maintaining a meritocracy, and treating women equally, and treating people of different races and faiths and sexual orientations fairly and equally, and making sure that there are typical norms of how you deal with people in contracts and respect legal constraints -- all those things I think can then take root in a country like Zimbabwe or any other country,” Obama said as part of his response to the question.
Ahead of Obama’s remarks and the question and answer, Vice President Joe Biden referred to homosexuality in his speech.
“We also know that nothing is more consequential to Africa’s future than the steps nations take to empower your people -- to make the most of their talents,” Biden said. “Of course, to state the obvious, no two countries in Africa or anywhere else are the same.
“No two countries will do it the same way,” Biden said, “but there are certain common ingredients to success in the 21st century that have become self-evident.
“The need for economic integration; a court system that adjudicates disputes fairly,” Biden said. “A commitment to invest in all of a society’s people and respect their rights, because countries that respect citizens’ equal rights no matter what their gender or religion, no matter who they love, tend to be the … most attractive to attracting international talent and international investment,” Biden said.
According to Amnesty International, homosexuality is illegal in 38 of the 57 countries on the African continent – or almost 67 percent.
Of those 38 countries, heads of state and other dignitaries from 34 attended the summit – Algeria, Angola, Benin, Botswana, Burundi, Cameroon, Comoros, Egypt, Ethiopia, Ghana, Guinea, Kenya, Lesotho, Liberia, Libya, Malawi, Mauritania, Mauritius, Morocco, Mozambique, Namibia, Nigeria, Sao Tome and Principe, Senegal, Seychelles, Sierra Leone, Somalia, South Sudan, Swaziland, Tanzania, Togo, Tunisia, Uganda, and Zambia.
On Aug. 1, a Ugandan panel of five judges ruled that Uganda’s Anti-Homosexuality Act was not valid, because it had been passed by Parliament without a proper quorum. The ruling does not preclude the law from being reconsidered and put in place with the proper quorum requirement.
A photo of China's DF-41 ballistic missile launcher shown on a Chinese military website. (Internet photo)
After the Chinese government acknowledged the existence of the DF-41 nuclear solid-fueled road-mobile intercontinental ballistic missile, the Nanning Evening News said that more advanced missiles will be revealed in the near future.
The information regarding the DF-41 was accidentally released in a report from the official website of the Shaanxi Environmental Monitoring Center. The paper said the names of various other types of new missiles including the DF-26, the HQ-1 and the HQ-26 were also mentioned in the report. This suggests that more missile systems will soon be revealed to the public, according to the paper.
Richard Fisher, an expert in Chinese military development from the International Assessment and Strategy Center, said China has used Aug. 1, the 87th anniversary of the founding of the People's Liberation Army, as an opportunity to demonstrate its military capability to the world. By doing this, Fisher said the Chinese government will inspire in its citizenry a sense of national pride. If the report is accurate, Fisher believes that PLA is going to commission the DF-41.
The DF-41 is estimated to have an operational range of between 12,000km and 15,000km, which also makes it the missile with the longest range in the world. The top speed of a DF-41 is estimated to be Mach 25. US observers believe the weapon will be capable of carrying multiple warheads and claim it could be used to carry out a surprise attack that could knock out an enemy's arsenal and limit its counterstrike capabilities.
Foreign Minister Avigdor Liberman, spoke on Wednesday night with US Secretary of State, John Kerry, and thanked him for his country’s continued support of Israel during yesterday’s deliberations at the United Nations Security Council.
MK Liberman told Kerry that the Palestinian Authority’s announcement in Cairo that they are not committing to continuing the ceasefire is an act of extortion and that Israel is taking this into account and is ready for all possible outcomes.
Avigdor Liberman
Flash 90
Foreign Minister Avigdor Liberman spoke with US Secretary of State John Kerry Thursday and thanked him for the United States' unreserved support for Israel in the UN Security Council session Wednesday.
Liberman noted that the US's cooperation prevented the UNSC from adopting a binding anti-Israeli resolution.
Liberman also told Kerry that the announcement by the Palestinian negotiating team in Cairo, that it cannot commit to continuing the ceasefire, is an act of blackmail. Israel is taking this into account, he said, and is prepared for all possibilities.
Minister Liberman told Kerry that Israel is not interested in an escalation with Turkey. “Until now,” he said, “we have refrained from reacting to Prime Minister Erdogan's tirades and harsh verbal attacks against Israel, and we hope that by the time elections are held in Turkey, next Sunday, the attacks will stop, but if this does not happen – Israel will respond.”
Senior Hamas terrorist Ismail Radwan said Wednesday that no agreement has been reached regarding the extension of the 72-hour ceasefire that is to expire Friday morning.
"We will not let up, until the enemy agrees to the terms we have laid down,” he said, and threatened to renew the fire.
"Our demands have been relayed to the Egyptian side and it has relayed them to the Israeli side,” Radwan said. “Until this moment, no response has been received to these demands. The hand of the military wing and the Resistance is still on the trigger,” Radwan told an Egyptian TV station.
Observers estimated that Hamas has no intention of renewing the fire even after the truce ends, its bluster notwithstanding.
Egypt has reportedly told Hamas that demands like those for a sea port and airport are the sort of conditions placed on peace negotiations, not ceasefire negotiations.
A Palestinian source close to Hamas said that Hamas told Cairo that the Palestinian unity government will be placed in charge of the passages in and out of Gaza, as well as the sea and air ports.
Let the Headlines Speak
Aug 7th, 2014
Daily NewsFrom the internet
Categories: Today's Headlines;Contemporary Issues
CDC issues highest level alert amid Ebola outbreak
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has raised their emergency response to the Ebola outbreak to level 1. This is the highest level of emergency response at the CDC and, according to an agency spokesperson, it has been activated because of the surge of personnel being sent into the affected countries.
Dem Rep: I Voted Against Funding Israel’s Anti-Missile Program Because We Need A Cease Fire
Rep. Keith Ellison (D-Of course) appeared on Meet The Press yesterday to make it clear that he is as clueless about foreign policy and the nature of Hamas as just about every other Democrat.
'Lethargic' Obama seems to have no interest in discussing Hamas, Russia
"There's no compassion, no interest, there's nothing behind it," he said. "You have to wonder why did he hold the press conference? I'm not sure that he advanced any issue at all other than to show adversaries, bad guys in the world, you don't have to worry about this guy."
Barack Obama: Israel's most dangerous enemy
In the final analysis, he may be seizing on Israel-bashing as a way to distract from his failures and resurrect his reputation as a “good man.” No more callous behavior toward dead or dying veterans, no more endless lies about Obamacare, no more blindness as ISIS runs roughshod over Syria and Iraq, or Libya (his supposed triumph) turns into a giant Islamist nightmare, not to mention armies of illegal immigrants streaming over our borders in numbers no one could conceivably count and with missions no one could possibly guess. No, it’s all Israel’s fault. See how the Jews over-reacted, killing all those innocent Arab children.
Israel says Hamas manual explains usage of human shields
The “Urban Warfare” manual, belonging to Hamas' armed wing, the Al-Qassam Brigades, says that the group knows that the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) is trying to limit civilian casualties.
ISIS militants launch assault on Iraq's largest dam
The dam, north of Iraq's second-largest city of Mosul, lies on the Tigris River, which runs through the capital, Baghdad. It provides electricity to the 1.7 million residents of Mosul and is the fourth-largest dam in the Middle East.
HISTORIC COMET RENDEZVOUS
For the first time ever, a spacecraft from Earth is traveling alongside a comet. Yesterday, at the end of a 10 year and 6 billion km journey, the European Space Agency's Rosetta probe reached 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko.
'I have no sympathy for Hamas,' Obama says
Obama sympathizes with the people of Gaza, he told journalists in Washington after the US-Africa Leaders Summit on Wednesday, but reserves no such sympathy for its "extraordinarily irresponsible" Hamas government.
Where the Ebola outbreak is most likely to spread next
Last spring, most people would have guessed that this Ebola outbreak in West Africa would be over by the end of summer. Now, we're in the midst of the deadliest outbreak in history, which has lasted longer and spread further than anyone could have predicted. "Ebola may start to approach endemic status in some of the worst affected regions."
Magnitude 5 earthquake jolts Davao Occidental
In its earthquake bulletin, Phivolcs said that the epicenter of the magnitude 5.0 quake was spotted at 141 kilometers east southeast of Sarangani. It occurred at 1:24p.m. and had a depth of six kilometers.
Iraq Christians flee as Islamic State takes Qaraqosh
Thousands of Christians are reported to be fleeing after Islamic militants seized the minority's biggest town in Iraq. The Islamic State (IS) group captured Qaraqosh in Nineveh province overnight after the withdrawal of Kurdish forces. An international Christian organisation said at least a quarter of Iraq's Christians were leaving Qaraqosh and other surrounding towns.
Liberia declares state of emergency over Ebola virus
Liberian President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf has declared a state of emergency as the country grapples with an outbreak of the deadly Ebola virus. Speaking on national television, she said some civil liberties might have to be suspended. The Ebola outbreak has also hit Guinea, Sierra Leone and Nigeria, killing more than 930 people.
Russia imposes retaliatory sanctions on EU
Moscow is slapping a ban on EU-imported fruit and vegetables and food from the US in retaliation for western economic sanctions. A Russian decree published Wednesday (6 August) called upon government officials to put forward a list of agricultural products and raw materials to be banned for up to one year.
Hamas military wing says it's ready for next round of fighting with Israel
After a month of fighting Israel, masked members of the Hamas military wing in Gaza gave the Qatar-based satellite network Al Jazeera an exclusive look at how they are preparing for a new round of warfare. ...operatives of the Izz a-Din al-Kassam Brigades gave Al Jazeera a glimpse of the tunnels and rocket-launchers that they conceal in concrete bunkers.
Why heavy rains probably won’t do much good in drought-stricken Calif
Usually, much of California is dry except for the rainy season in the winter. And for the most part, it’s been a summer of record drought and heat. But this week, firefighters battling wildfires near Sacramento have enjoyed a few moments of respite as the rain has come down. In his 27 years of fighting fires, Mr. Bente says, he has never seen weather such as this. “I have fruit trees and in January, they were budding without any rainfall through the entire winter,” he says. Now, he adds, “we’ve got these heavy rains that we don’t ever usually get in August.”
John Bolton: ‘The World's Descending Into Chaos’ Under Obama
Former ambassador to the United Nations John Bolton declared that under the president’s ineffective leadership, “the world’s descending into chaos” and if America continues to pull back internationally, "you're going to have anarchy increasing."
Top Khmer Rouge leaders guilty of crimes against humanity
Two top Khmer Rouge leaders have been jailed for life after being convicted by Cambodia's UN-backed tribunal of crimes against humanity. Nuon Chea served as Pol Pot's deputy and Khieu Samphan was the Maoist regime's head of state.
Israel offers Gaza truce extension but Hamas has yet to agree
Israel has offered to extend a three-day ceasefire in Gaza which began on Tuesday after nearly a month of conflict, Israeli officials say. But there has no far been no agreement from the militant Hamas movement, which controls Gaza, as indirect talks continue in Cairo.
U.S. to spend up to $550 million on African rapid response forces
The United States announced on Wednesday plans to spend $110 million a year over the next three to five years to help African nations develop peacekeeping forces that can be rapidly deployed to head off militant threats and other crises
India central bank chief warns of another market crash
India's central bank governor, renowned for forecasting the 2008 financial meltdown, has warned that the world economy faces risk of another market crash as asset prices surge. Increasing global financial instability stems from investors chasing ever higher yields, Raghuram Rajan, a former International Monetary Fund (IMF) chief economist, told the Central Banking Journal.
1,000-member secretive progressive journalist group uncovered
A prominent CNN commentator, the top two political reporters for The Huffington Post, a Reuters reporter, the editor of The Nation magazine, a producer for Al Jazeera America television, a U.S. News & World Report columnist, and approximately two dozen Huffington Post contributors are among the more than 1,000 members of Gamechanger Salon.
The ceasefire between the Lebanese army and Islamist organization warriors militants near the country’s border with Syria has been extended by 24 hours, after being brokered by Lebanese Sunni religious leaders.
Representatives of the mediators announced the extension of the ceasefire at a press conference, and added that three Lebanese soldiers taken captive by the Islamist militants have been released.
A new source of information for investigative reporter Glenn Greenwald has revealed that the federal government's spy agencies are now tracking more than one million people and have partnered with state governments to scoop up driver's license pictures for their databases.
Greenwald was the recipient of much of the intelligence revealed through former NSA contractor Edward Snowden, but a current report on Greenwald's website The Intercept contains a secret document published after Snowden left the country.
The document reveals that “On 28 June 2013, the Terrorist Identities Datamart Environment (TIDE) passed a milestone of one million persons in TIDE,” including some 730,000 “biometric files” such as fingerprints, retina scans, DNA, and the like.
The document, Directorate of Terrorist Identities, Strategic Accomplishments 2013, is clearly a 2014 publication. And at 13 pages, it's also a short list of accomplishments that does not include any attempt to claim it had prevented a terrorist incident or assisted in capturing a terrorist.
The document does report some vague fuzzies about how the Directorate of Terrorist Identities (DTI) supposedly helped with the Boston Marathon bombing investigation. “DTI Support to Boston Bombing Investigation: In the wake of the Boston Marathon bombings, NCTC/DTI was deeply involved with all facets of the response.” Of course, it had zero impact on the apprehension of bombing suspect Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, who was only captured when Watertown, Massachusetts resident Dave Henneberry went outside to look at his boat after a government curfew had ended. Interestingly, the DTI boasted that it “recognized the need to ensure that watchlisted US persons included available facial images and fingerprints.” Of course, Boston Marathon bombing mastermind Tamerlin Tsarnaev was not an American, but retained Russian citizenship.
Getting more private information on Americans as well as innocent foreigners seems to be the focus of the document's list of alleged successes. The Intercept reported August 5 that of the 680,000 people on the active watchlist (some 320,000 are deemed inactive but still in the database), “more than 40 percent are described by the government as having 'no recognized terrorist group affiliation.' That category — 280,000 people — dwarfs the number of watchlisted people suspected of ties to al Qaeda, Hamas, and Hezbollah combined.” Greenwald's reporters, Intercept authors Jeremy Scahill and Ryan Devereaux, note that the list included more than 15,000 American citizens as of August 2013.
Scahill and Devereaux added that one does not necessarily have to be on the watchlist to be a subject of warrantless federal surveillance. “The DTI also worked on the subsequent Chicago Marathon, performing 'deep dives' for biometric and other data on people in the Midwest whose names were on the TIDE list. In the process, the directorate pulled the TIDE records of every person with an Illinois, Indiana, or Wisconsin driver's license.”
And pulling driver's license pictures from state governments is a new initiative that federal spies have been accessing for permanent storage as well. According to Directorate of Terrorist Identities, Strategic Accomplishments 2013,
To fulfill the biometric enhancement mission within DTI's Identity Intelligence Group (IIG), the Biometric Analysis Branch (BAB) began an outreach/partnership effort with the larger law enforcement community to collect facial images associated with driver's license data. With support from FBI partners and NCTC's Domestic Representatives, this enhancement mission took on significant growth in FY13. BAB now coordinates directly with the following states: Arizona, Texas, New York, Maryland, Delaware, Washington DC, Florida, California, Virginia, Oregon, Massachusetts, Nevada, Georgia, Colorado, Washington and Rhode Island. This effort has resulted in 2,400 Driver's License facial images added to TIDE in FY13.
That's just the beginning. Expect the number to be in the tens of millions in a year or two unless strict legislative curbs are placed on it.
And acquiring driver's license photos is only one aspect of the insatiable appetite for private information on Americans of the Directorate of Terrorist Identities. “DTI has continued to enhance several 'non-traditional' biometric data fields in TIDE, for FY13 has shown the following growth: Handwriting (32%); Signatures (52%); Scars/marks/tattoos (70%); DNA strands (90%).”
The DTI is set for a massive infusion of new biometric information, according to the report. The “Standard Nomination Tool” for inclusion in the surveillance database has been “upgraded” so that it “allows nominating agencies to provide more data than previously disseminated.” The document boasts that it is set to “ingest large datasets for automatic exploitation and enhancement of TIDE records."
As if to spoof the villains in the Captain America movie series, The Intercept's reporting revealed that the CIA has a program known as “Hydra” which spies on the computer networks of other countries to get information for the TIDES database. The Hydra program is particularly alarming, as Americans could potentially be put on the terrorist watchlist if they encounter the disfavor of foreign governments.
Finance Minister, Yair Lapid, responded to threats made by Hamas and said, “I am saying right now – do not try us. The IDF is prepared and ready. The Air Force is prepared and ready.”
“Any fire will be answered with heavy fire,” Lapid warned.
King Abdullah of Jordan and Chairman of the Palestinian Authority, Mahmoud Abbas, spoke on the phone and discussed efforts to reach a ceasefire between Hamas and Israel.
The two agreed that a gesture should be formulated for the next step with a purpose of negotiating a permanent agreement, Kol Israel radio reports.
European Union flag flutters outside of the European Parliament in Brussels
Reuters
Israeli Foreign Minister Avigdor Liberman has called for EU "inspectors" to monitor Gaza's borders amid efforts to extend a ceasefire, in a German newspaper interview published Thursday.
"Not police or soldiers. But Germany and the EU must dispatch inspectors to Gaza to monitor the Palestinians' trade with the neighboring countries," Liberman told the mass-circulation Bild daily in comments published in German.
"The EU already did that once at a crossing in Rafah in the south of Gaza," he said.
After a month of deadly conflict, Israel and Hamas appear at odds over extending a 72-hour ceasefire in Gaza that expires at 8:00 a.m. on Friday.
The EU implemented its so-called EUBAM operation in 2005 at the Rafah crossing point between Gaza and Egypt.
In cooperation with Israeli and Palestinian officials, the mission of 70 European police officers monitored movements of people, goods and vehicles at the crossing, Gaza's only window to the outside world that bypasses Israel.
But it was suspended in June 2007 after Hamas seized power in the Gaza Strip.
France last month proposed reviving the operation and Germany has backed the call.
Liberman also told Bild that Israel did not want to again "administer" Gaza after it withdrew its troops and settlers from the coastal enclave in September 2005.
But he said a solution needed to be found for the residents of Gaza and urged Germany to take a leading role.
The Israeli delegation to the Cairo talks agreed condtionally Wednesday night to extending the three-day Gaza truce by another 72 hours, provided it is observed by Hamas.
After evacuating ground troops from the Gaza Strip over the weekend, the IDF has sent home 24,000 of the 84,000 reservists mobilized for service in the war operation.
What role does religion play in American attitudes towards Israel? An analysis by Frank Newport, the editor-in-chief of Gallup Inc., reviews 14 annual Gallup polls from 2001 to 2014 in which respondents answer the same question, "In the Middle East situation, are your sympathies more with the Israelis or more with the Palestinians?" The numbers offer insights different from what one might expect.
The study starts with two basic facts: First, looking at the whole sample of about 14,000 American adults, 59 percent answer that they have more sympathy for Israelis and 16 percent say they have more sympathy for Palestinians, a ratio of almost 4-to-1. Second, Newport finds that "Religious Americans are significantly more likely than less religious Americans to be sympathetic to the Israelis," confirming what common sense already tells us.
That said, his numbers contain several noteworthy subtleties:
•A near-linear relationship exists between church attendance and outlook: 66 percent of weekly or almost-weekly church goers favor Israel, as do 58 percent of monthly and seldom church-goers and 46 percent of never church-goers. Conversely, sympathy toward the Palestinians is also near-linear: 13 percent, 16 percent, and 23 percent, respectively.
•In both cases, any church attendance at all makes Christians more alike to each other vs. those who never attend, a difference that has somewhat widened recently.
•When one looks at religious groups, Jews, Mormons, and non-Catholic Christians are the most pro-Israel; Catholics match the national average; other religious groups and the non-religious are the least pro-Israel.
•Political views and religiosity both influence Americans' view – but as independent variables.
•Political views matter more than religiosity: "nonreligious Republicans are more likely to sympathize with Israelis than highly religious Democrats."
•Church attendance has more of an impact on Republican views than on Democratic ones.
•Israel brings together two very politically dissimilar groups, church-attending Christian Republicans and Jewish Democrats.
Some reflections on these figures:
(1) Although religiosity helps explain the difference between the United States and Europe, politics has more importance: that even irreligious Americans favor Israel 2-to-1 marks them as very different from their European counterparts.
(2) Given the prominence of Jewish anti-Zionists in the academy, the media, and in Hollywood, the 93-to-2 Jewish support for Israel comes as a surprise, suggesting that the most accomplished and articulate Jews tend to be disproportionately hostile to Israel. Perhaps this is their way of fitting into the leftist institutions where they work and hope to succeed?
(3) One wishes the "Protestant" category provided further details on the various denominations. How much do the mainline churches differ from the evangelical ones? Do the adherents of anti-Israel churches follow their leadership in this regard? Are there important changes over time? Gallup should inform us about this in the future.
(4) Muslims are lumped in with other non-Christians but have a unique profile. In Canada, whose Muslim population differs substantially from the American one, pro-Israel Muslims number about 20 percent. I estimate that pro-Israel American Muslims number half that percentage, or less. Also of note: religiosity among Muslims has the opposite influence than among Christians, making them less pro-Israel.
In conclusion, Israel benefits from the fact that Americans remain in large part a religious people. But declining religiosity bodes ill for the Jewish state.
On the second day of 72-hour ceasefire, from Wednesday at 6 p.m., the Homeland Command Wednesday lifted all restrictions imposed for the past month on all parts of the population as protection against terrorist attacks and rockets. Schools and summer camps are restored to normal activity and celebrations and functions may take place.
Hand of God Sent Missile Into Sea
Aug 7th, 2014
Daily NewsBarbWire
Categories: Today's Headlines;Contemporary Issues
WND – More claims of divine intervention are being reported in the ongoing conflict between Israel and Hamas, with an operator of Israel’s Iron Dome missile-defense system saying he personally witnessed “the hand of God” diverting an incoming rocket out of harm’s way.
Israel Today translated a report from a Hebrew-language news site, which noted the Iron Dome battery failed three times to intercept an incoming rocket headed toward Tel Aviv last week.
The commander recalled: “A missile was fired from Gaza. Iron Dome precisely calculated [its trajectory]. We know where these missiles are going to land down to a radius of 200 meters. This particular missile was going to hit either the Azrieli Towers, the Kirya (Israel’s equivalent of the Pentagon) or [a central Tel Aviv railway station]. Hundreds could have died.
“We fired the first [interceptor]. It missed. Second [interceptor]. It missed. This is very rare. I was in shock. At this point we had just four seconds until the missile lands. We had already notified emergency services to converge on the target location and had warned of a mass-casualty incident.
“Suddenly, Iron Dome (which calculates wind speeds, among other things) shows a major wind coming from the east, a strong wind that … sends the missile into the sea. We were all stunned. I stood up and shouted, ‘There is a God!’
“I witnessed this miracle with my own eyes. It was not told or reported to me. I saw the hand of God send that missile into the sea.”
Israel’s Iron Dome missile-defense system is fired to intercept enemy rockets
The commander’s account is reminiscent of a recent newspaper headline which trumpeted the possibility of supernatural protection.
“Their God changes the path of our rockets in mid-air, said a terrorist,” was the headline in the July 18 edition of the Jewish Telegraph.
It was a partial quote from Barbara Ordman, who lives in Ma’ale Adumim on the West Bank.
Her exact quotation was: “As one of the terrorists from Gaza was reported to say when asked why they couldn’t aim their rockets more effectively: “We do aim them, but their God changes their path in mid-air.”
She opened her piece by noting: “In October 1956, [Israeli Prime Minister] David Ben Gurion was interviewed by CBS. He stated: ‘In Israel, in order to be a realist, you must believe in miracles.’”
Ordman also noted religious texts, specifically the Jerusalem Talmud, teaches Israelis not to depend on miracles for survival.
“It argues that we must not desist from our obligations and must not wait for miraculous intervention from the Supernatural,” she wrote.
Meanwhile, the Times of Israel reported a senior officer in Israel’s army said divine miracles protected his soldiers during fighting in the Gaza Strip.
IDF Col. Ofer Winter
Givati Brigade commander Col. Ofer Winter told the weekly publication Mishpacha that he “witnessed a miraculous occurrence, the likes of which he had never seen before during his military career.”
Winter indicated a predawn raid intended to use darkness as cover was delayed, forcing the soldiers to move toward their objective as sunrise was approaching.
With the troops in danger of being exposed at daybreak, Winter explained how heavy fog quickly descended to shroud their movements until their mission was accomplished.
“Suddenly a cloud protected us,” he said, referring to clouds the Bible says guided the ancient Israelites as they wandered in the desert. “Clouds of glory.”
Winter said only when the soldiers were in a secure position, the fog finally lifted.
“It really was a fulfillment of the verse ‘For the Lord your God is the one who goes with you to give you victory,’” he said, quoting Deuteronomy 20:4.
The Times of Israel notes Winter made headlines over an official letter he sent to battalion and company commanders July 9, telling his subordinates that “history has chosen us to spearhead the fighting (against) the terrorist ‘Gazan’ enemy which abuses, blasphemes and curses the God of Israel’s (defense) forces.”
The dispatch came under fire from some, since it portrayed the Operation Protective Edge as a religious war against non-Jews. The Israeli government’s stated aim is to stop rocket attacks at Israel and destroy a network of tunnels dug under the border from Gaza used to launch terror attacks inside Israeli territory.
In his interview with Mishpacha, Winter defended his message, saying everyone finds God when in combat.
“Anyone who attacked me for the letter apparently has only seen weapons in pictures, was never in combat, and doesn’t know what fighting spirit is,” he said, revealing that before going into action his custom was to recite the blessing with which the ancient Israelite priests would bless the army before it went to war.
“When a person is in a life-threatening situation he connects with his deepest internal truths, and when that happens, even the biggest atheist meets God,” he said, claiming soldiers see so many miracles, “it is hard not to believe [in God].”
Gaza casualties: civilians or terrorists?
Reuters
A staggering amount of so-called "civilian casualties" in Gaza were probably Hamas and Islamic Jihad terrorists, the New York Times admits for the first time this week, challenging the routine acceptance of casualty figures provided by the Hamas-run health ministry.
The report critically examines the data from the Palestinian Health Ministry, the official data center at Shifa Hospital that releases the names and statistics for casualties in Gaza - and is run by a known Hamas terrorists, Dr. Ashraf Al-Qurda.
The PHM lists 1,865 “martyrs” from “Israeli aggression” since July 6 - two days before Operation Protective Edge officially began; of those, 429 were allegedly under age 18, 79 over 60, and 243 were women.
Notably, the PHM does not differentiate between terrorists and civilians, but several "Palestinian rights groups" - including one UN-based group - do, and have estimated the civilian casualty rate at between 72-82%.
Israel, however, counters that some 900 of those killed, or 47%, were terrorists. Such a ratio of combatant to non-combatant casualties - roughly 1:1 - would be almost unprecedented in the history of urban warfare.
'Policy of deception'
However, even the Times admits that the PR war on Israel is a matter of numbers - and that the Palestinian arithmetic does not add up.
The Times notes that Israeli organizations have a well-documented - though only partial - list of casualties that is supported by a wellspring of documentation.
According to the Meir Amit Intelligence and Terrorism Information Center, data from the first 300 casualties in Gaza indicates that some 142 Gazans listed as "civilian casualties" were terrorists - some 49% - whereas just 147 (51%) were actual civilians.
In addition, it said, 18 bodies have yet to be identified as belonging to either category - and could potentially swing the statistics either way.
Meanwhile, the Times admitted that of the PHM information, "the population most likely to be militants, men ages 20-29, is also the most overrepresented in death toll: they are 9% of Gaza's 1.7 million residents, but 34% of those killed whose ages are provided."
Hamas has a "policy of deception," according to the ITIC, noting that hundreds of terrorists have not been listed under PHM records at all. ITIC also noted the many incidents reported to be Hamas purposely skewing the numbers in live media coverage as part of the "media war" against Israel.
Proof has surfaced that Hamas has repeated names more than once in the casualty count it gives major media outlets, such as Al-Jazeera.
A report by pro-Israel blogger Israellycool suggested two weeks into the month-long offensive that Hamas was ballooning its numbers even then - and has provided a list marking where repeated names appear to have been snuck into the body count.
To top it off, the IDF's own reports on the 3,360 rockets fired on Israeli citizens have proven, over and over again, that a significant number of rockets have misfired and hit areas within Gaza itself - including the Shati refugee camp.
As of August 7, 3,360 rockets were confirmed fired on Israel in a 30-day period - and as many as 475 fell inside Gaza.
It is unknown whether Hamas has included casualties from these events - which are always blamed on Israeli airstrikes - as part of its "civilian casualties" in Gaza.
It is also unclear whether some 30 Gazans murdered by Hamas gunmen as "collaborators" during the conflict were also inserted into the list.
A glimpse into 'Gazawood'
A footnote in the ITIC report notes that the body count is even faked for the cameras; a France 24 broadcast blurred out the military paraphernalia among casualties shown on air, and that in at least one instance, a Palestinian took one rifle out of the scene, handed it to a fellow terrorist, and told him to hide it.
Hamas fighters often do not wear military fatigues in combat, so once they ditch their weapons they are indistinguishable from the civilian population
Photos have also been doctored throughout the conflict, as numerous photos circling social media have been proven - even by BBC, which itself is often accused of having an anti-Israel slant - to be recycled photos from war-torn Syria and even scenes from horror films or other staged events.
Destroyed buildings also have conspicuous and out-of-place elements among the rubble; often, photos will show entire buildings demolished and concrete beams in piles of rubble, yet a plastic doll or cheap stroller remains, somehow, mysteriously whole, intact, and prominent for the cameras.
The Hamas delegation in Cairo stated Wednesday that because its conditions for ending hostilities, mainly an immediate lifting of the Gaza blockade, were not accepted, it is free to resume attacks after the current pause expires Friday. Israeli earlier agreed to extend the 72-hour truce beyond that date, provided it was observed by Hamas.
Hamas Holds 'Victory Rally' in Gaza
Aug 7th, 2014
Daily NewsArutz Sheva
Categories: Today's Headlines;Contemporary Issues
Hamas "victory rally" in Gaza
Reuters
Hamas staged a "victory rally" on Thursday in Gaza, as the future of a three-day ceasefire remains uncertain.
Hundreds of Palestinians poured onto the streets of Gaza City, chanting support for "resistance" against Israel, an AFP reporter said.
Loudspeakers mounted by the roadside blared out Hamas victory songs as the crowd - most of them men but with some children dressed in combat fatigues and carrying toy guns - gathered in the square outside the parliament building.
A huge Palestinian flag hung behind a podium where speakers whipped up the crowd with chants of victory on the eve of the scheduled expiry of a 72-hour truce with Israel.
Most marchers carried the green flag of Hamas.
"We have won the military battle and with the permission of God we'll win the political battle," Hamas MP Mushir al-Masri told the crowd.
"Resistance, resistance, resistance!" chanted the demonstrators.
Four weeks of fighting between Islamist terrorists and Israel killed more than 1,880 Palestinians, roughly half of whom are terrorists according to the IDF. Hamas claims the majority were civilians.
One of the few women at the rally told AFP her home had been destroyed in the Israeli bombardment.
"I have come here today to tell the whole world we are with the resistance. We have only two options: dignity or death, so we chose dignity," she said, refusing to give her name and wearing a headscarf and a long dress.
Diplomatic efforts entered a final countdown in Cairo on Thursday as Egyptian mediators rushed to broker an extension to the ceasefire which is due to expire at 0500 GMT on Friday, shuttling between Israeli and Palestinian teams.
An Israeli official has said Israel would be prepared to prolong the ceasefire "unconditionally", but Hamas has denied that any agreement to extend the calm exists.
IDF Chief of Staff Lt. Gen. Benny Gantz said Wednesday that the IDF had assured Israel of “peace from the Gaza Strip for many years to come.” He was talking to the division and brigade commanders who had fought in the month-long Operation Defensive Edge. “Hamas had been gravely impaired,” he said. “The Gaza Strip has suffered calamitous consequences. But Hamas is to blame for this tragedy waging violence out of populated areas.”
There’s still much that’s unclear about Tuesday’s revelation that a small group of hackers in Russia have amassed a database of 1.2 billion stolen user IDs and passwords. The company that disclosed the incident, Hold Security, didn’t offer any fresh information Wednesday, but here are five questions we’d like to see answered (and a bonus one that we already know the answer to).
Where did the credentials come from?
Hold Security said the hacking group started out buying stolen credentials on the black market, then used those credentials to launch other attacks. But it’s unclear how many credentials they bought and how many of the 1.2 billion they culled themselves. Without that information, it’s hard to know how fresh—and hence how valuable—the stolen data is.
What websites are they for?
If the hackers managed to recently penetrate major websites, like financial or email services, then it’s time to change your password. But if the data comes from mainly smaller sites, the value of the credentials is likely lower—unless people reused the same password they use for sensitive accounts. You do have unique passwords for important accounts, don’t you?
What are the hackers going to do with them?
The answer to this depends partly on the previous two questions. If they are fresh credentials for important services like online banking, they are ripe to be used to siphon money from online accounts. If they are older or from little-used services, they might be used to send spam by email or post it in online forums.
Were the passwords hashed, and how?
Even most small websites don’t store passwords as plain text these days, but the scrambling system used to protect passwords called “hashing” offers varying degrees of protection. An older one called “MD5” can be attacked with brute force and broken in a few minutes—faster if the password is something common like “password123”—but a more modern and secure method takes longer to break and so is more costly.
Was I affected?
This is the big question for every Internet user. Hold Security says you can sign up for a forthcoming service that will notify you if your details were included. Website operators are being offered a US$120-a-year service that will notify them if their user accounts appear in this or other hacker databases.
Passwords aren’t that secure, are they?
Nope, especially as most people implement them today. That’s why major websites including Gmail, Facebook and Twitter offer two-factor authentication that requires a password and an ever-changing code produced by a smartphone app, or offer to send a login token via SMS when users connect from a new computer. Security companies are working on new methods for authentication, but it’s an ever-continuing cat-and-mouse game with hackers.
LAGOS, Nigeria -- Nigerian authorities rushed to obtain isolation tents Wednesday in anticipation of more Ebola infections as they disclosed five more cases of the virus and a death in Africa's most populous nation, where officials were racing to keep the gruesome disease confined to a small group of patients.
The five new Nigerian cases were all in Lagos, a megacity of 21 million people in a country already beset with poor health care infrastructure and widespread corruption, and all five were reported to have had direct contact with one infected man.
Meanwhile, the World Health Organization began a meeting to decide whether the crisis, the worst recorded outbreak of its kind, amounts to an international public health emergency. At least 932 deaths in four countries have been blamed on the illness, with 1,711 reported cases.
In recent years, the WHO has declared an emergency only twice, for swine flu in 2009 and polio in May. The declaration would probably come with recommendations on travel and trade restrictions and wider Ebola screening. It also would be an acknowledgment that the situation is critical and could worsen without a fast global response.
The group did not immediately confirm the new cases reported in Nigeria. And Nigerian authorities did not release any details on the latest infections, except to say they all had come into direct contact with the sick man who arrived by plane in Lagos late last month.
With the death toll mounting in the region, Liberia's president announced a state of emergency late Wednesday and said it may result in the suspension of some citizens' rights. She lamented that fear and panic had kept many family members from sending sick relatives to isolation centres.
"Ignorance and poverty, as well as entrenched religious and cultural practices, continue to exacerbate the spread of the disease," President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf said.
And in Sierra Leone, where enforcing quarantines of sick patients also has been met with resistance, some 750 soldiers deployed to the Ebola-ravaged east as part of "Operation Octopus."
Ebola, which causes some victims to bleed from the eyes, mouth and ears, can only be transmitted through direct contact with the bodily fluids of someone who is sick -- blood, semen, saliva, urine, feces or sweat.
Millions in Lagos live in cramped conditions without access to flushable toilets. Signs posted across the city warn people not to urinate in public.
Kenneth Akihomi, a 47-year-old worker installing fiber-optic cable, said he was carefully washing his hands to avoid infection. But he said most people were relying on faith to stay healthy.
"They're not panicking. They are godly people," he said. "They believe they can pray, and maybe very soon there will be cure."
The revelation of more infections also came amid a public-sector doctors' strike in Nigeria that began in early July. So far, health workers monitoring the latest Ebola patients are still on the job.
Nigeria is the fourth West African country to be hit by the Ebola outbreak since it first emerged in March in the remote tropical forests of Guinea. The disease then spread to neighbouring Sierra Leona and Liberia before reaching Nigeria, where it surfaced shortly before the government drew criticism for its response to the abduction of more than 200 schoolgirls by Islamic militants back in April. The girls are still missing.
Nigerian authorities said Tuesday that doctors did not suspect Patrick Sawyer was suffering from Ebola when the 40-year-old Liberian-American arrived by plane late last month in Lagos, where the streets are a bewildering mix of wealth and abject poverty, awash in luxury SUVs and decrepit buses.
Sawyer, who worked for the Liberian government in Monrovia and had a wife and three young daughters in Minnesota, was on a business flight to Nigeria when he fell ill. Officials say a nurse who treated him has died and five others are sick with Ebola, including a doctor involved in his care.
West African countries pledged at a meeting in July to step up their surveillance at airports and borders following the start of the outbreak. But the early symptoms of Ebola -- fever, muscle aches and vomiting -- are similar to much more common tropical diseases such as malaria.
The spectre of the virus spreading through Nigeria is particularly alarming, said Stephen Morse, an epidemiology professor at Columbia University's Mailman School of Public Health.
"It makes you nervous when so many people are potentially at risk," he said.
Authorities in Liberia said Sawyer's sister had recently died of Ebola, though Sawyer said he had not had close contact with her while she was ill.
In announcing Sawyer's death, Health Minister Onyebuchi Chukwu maintained late last month that Nigerian officials had been vigilant in isolating him.
"It was right there (at the airport) that the problem was noticed because we have maintained our surveillance," he told reporters. "And immediately, he went into the custody of the port health services of the federal ministry of health so there was no time for him to mingle in Lagos. He has not been in touch with any other person again since we took him from the airport."
Chukwu's comments were at odds with remarks made Tuesday by the Lagos state health commissioner, who said doctors did not suspect Ebola immediately and identified Sawyer as a possible case only after he had been hospitalized for about a day.
Sawyer, who had a fever and was vomiting on the plane, was coming from the infected country of Liberia but had a layover in Togo. As a result, officials may not have initially known his original point of departure, and it was unclear whether he was travelling on a Liberian or American passport.
Experts say people infected with Ebola can spread the disease only after they show symptoms. Since the incubation period can last up to three weeks, some of the Nigerians who treated Sawyer are only now showing signs of illness.
The national health minister on Wednesday said special tents would be used to establish isolation wards in all of Nigeria's states. Authorities were setting up an emergency centre in Lagos to deal with Ebola and expected the facility to be "fully functional" by Thursday, he said.
Also Wednesday, the Spanish Defence Ministry said a medically equipped plane was ready to fly to Liberia to bring back a Spanish missionary priest who has Ebola. At the same time, Saudi officials reported a suspected Ebola death, underscoring the risk of the disease spreading by air travel even as many airlines curtail their flights to the most infected cities.
The Islamists and local Sunnis who overran the Iraqi town of Mosul are believed to have suffered up to 70 deaths from an Iraqi drone attack on a prison converted to a base and Kurdish shelling Wednesday. A Kurdish Peshmerga commander warned that 50,000 members of the Yazidi minority, who fled to the mountains when their town of Sinjar was invaded over the weekend, are in dire peril of death. They are stranded without food or water. The UN has credible reports of 40 Yazidi children dying of “violence, displacement and dehydration” since Sunday. US House Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Ed Royce has urged the administration to send drones to back the Kurdish forces to avoid “a humanitarian nightmare of unspeakable proportions.”
Digital Tattoes to Unlock Your Phone
Aug 7th, 2014
Daily NewsProphecy New Watch
Categories: Today's Headlines;Contemporary Issues
Should you so wish, you can now forget about securing your mobile phone by using a password or passcode that you need to always remember. Google and Motorola have partnered together to get you a memory free and more secure alternative: a digital tattoo (placed on the lower part of your arm, close to your wrist) that simply unlocks your phone once you place your phone on it. This feature is currently available for users of Motorola’s ‘Moto-X’ mobile phone brand.
In an analysis of this recent development, Betanews.com quotes Motorola’s announcement of this new technology “brought to life for Moto X by Google’s Advanced Technology and Projects group and VivaLnk Inc.” The company further explains: "…made of super thin, flexible materials, based on VivaLnk's eSkinTM technology, each digital tattoo is designed to unlock your phone with just a touch of your Moto X to the tattoo, no passwords required. The nickel-sized tattoo is adhesive, lasts for five days, and is made to stay on through showering, swimming, and vigorous activities like jogging. And it’s beautiful -- with a shimmering, intricate design".
According to Smithsonianmag.com, the digital tattoos ($10 for a pack of 10) contain a near field communication (NFC) chip. NFC is a wireless transmission standard that allows small packets of information—an identification code, in this case—to pass between devices over short distances using very little power. Linking a digital tattoo to a phone is fairly simple. Once the Moto X’s internal NFC radio detects a new tattoo, it initiates a quick setup. Users repeat this process every time they change their tattoo.
VivaLnk spokesperson Jason Li says that the digital tattoo is safer and more reliable than biometric systems, such as Apple’s Touch ID. “The error rate is much higher compared to that of NFC. The other fundamental thing about biometric information is that if it’s stolen or hacked, you can never recover it…if you lost an NFC ID, you can simply change it to a different ID. It’s like if you lose a credit card, you can cancel it anytime.” Li also points out that there are inherent hardware costs associated with biometric systems that the digital tattoo avoids. “If you’re talking about fingerprint scanners or iris scanners, you have additional costs…Most phones today already have NFC functionality. Our system lowers the cost for the average consumer.”
Nothing really groundbreaking in terms of innovation or from a pioneering standpoint, as similar biometric systems have been in place, undergoing development for the past few decades. What is more noteworthy and of greater significance is that eventually, the tattoo’s functionality might even stretch beyond simple unlocking to include other applications, such as payment authorization. Li admits as much and is further quoted as stating that “It could be a type of double insurance…When you have a high-value payment, you might want to scan the tattoo on your arm.”
A tattoo that allows payment authorization does sound very much like a potential “mark of the beast” application. In the Bible, Revelation Chapter 13:16-17 gives a prophetic warning of a biometric financial system that will require everyone in the world to wear a permanent mark on their right hand or forehead, without which they will not be able to buy or sell. Every individual taking this mark will be doomed to hell, as it is essentially a mark of worship and allegiance to Satan and his demonic economic system of provision. This will be the greatest rip-off ever: the exchange of one’s priceless eternal soul in exchange for a few more short days of provision and convenience on this earth.
However, the Moto-X tattoo may not fit the bill just yet, as it is evidently temporary. But as Betanews.com explains, this can simply be the first step in desensitizing consumers to the concept of permanent tattoos or implantable NFC chips for phone unlocking. The Smithsonianmag.com report also says that VivaLnk spokesperson Jason Li hinted that more complicated (biometric) tracking methods might be on the horizon—though he can’t say what they are just yet. He estimates that a prototype of this next model will be ready within six months.
How long will it be before mankind is in for its nastiest and most dangerous biometric surprise yet? It is just a matter of time, and all indications are that it could happen much sooner than most may believe or expect.
Christians Ordered to Stop Praying Inside Mall
Aug 7th, 2014
Daily NewsProphecy New Watch
Categories: Contemporary Issues;Contemporary Issues
Managers of a shopping mall in Dublin, Georgia, who told a group of visitors they were not allowed to pray in the facility – not even over their lunches in the food court – are starting to backtrack after headlines exposed the policies of the facility owned by MCK Properties.
A report from WMAZ-TV in Macon, Georgia, late Tuesday said the owners no longer “have an issue” with people praying “privately and quietly.”
They say their ban is on “congregating, soliciting or disturbances.”
The Facebook page statement came after a group of mall walkers reported a different explanation.
According to a commentary from Fox News columnist Todd Starnes, whose latest book is “God Less America,” the “Dublin Girls Run” group had been using the mall for their walking.
But gathering in a circle recently to start their session with prayer, they reported to Starnes, they found a security guard barreling toward them, telling them prayer was not allowed.
Starnes’ report came through Tammy Brantley, a “wife, a mom and an avid power walker.”
“She’s also a person of deep faith in God.”
They have, the report said, “run road races dressed up like Chick-fil-A cows and superheroes.”
“And it’s not all that unusual to see the ladies accessorizing their running attire with tutus and feather boas,” the report said.
“The group was started to be healthy and to be spiritually healthy, too,” Starnes said Brantley told him. “I like to start off my runs with a prayer and end it with a prayer.”
It was just a few weeks back when they had gathered in the mall for a power walk. They formed a small circle and bowed their heads for prayer, Starnes said.
Read about the power of prayer, in “A Prayer to Our Father,” “The Prayer that Rocked the Capitol,” “Miracles in American History,” and more at the WND Superstore.
“But before one of the runners could say, ‘Lord Jesus,’ she was interrupted by a mall cop barreling down a corridor. ‘The security guard came running toward us and said, ‘You are not allowed to pray at the mall. That’s against the policy,”” Brantley told Fox News.
When the women said they had prayed before without problems, the guard said there was a problem with another group “trying to proselytize shoppers.”
Starnes said the ladies thought the security guard was simply mistaken so they asked him to call the mall manager.
“The mall manager verified that prayer is not allowed at the mall because this is private property,” she said, according to Starnes.
Brantley said she then found out the restriction was worse than she thought.
“I said, sir, are you saying that people who eat in the food court can’t bow their heads and pray?” she said. “He said, ‘No ma’am.’ That’s exactly what he said.”
News soon got out, putting pressure on the property owners.
The WMAZ report included a statement from John Engler, MCK vice president.
“The Dublin Mall over the last week has been the subject of conversation throughout the community. Through meeting with some of the various people involved, some of the stories have merit while others have gone off the deep end and due to the sensitive issue have publically hampered the Dublin Mall. The Mall first and foremost has no issues or objection whatsoever with anyone of any religion denomination privately and quietly praying over there food before they eat or showing devotion towards their religion of choice provided it does not impose itself on others or take away from the overall shopping experience.”
Brantley said her group wasn’t violating the mall conduct code, which bans “disorderly conduct, or other disturbances which disrupt or endanger any patrons.”
The mall boasts on its website it is trying to be more than a mall.
“Through careful management, judicious planning and the cooperation of local government, the Dublin Mall has become something of an ad hoc community center, a place where people gather for performances, events and other gatherings important to the town,” the managers explain.
Starnes said the women hope one day to return to the mall.
“The Good Book encourages us to run a good race – to press on toward the goal. And I have no doubt that Tammy and her cloud of witnesses will continue to run their race with endurance,” he said. “It’s a difficult task in a nation that has become increasingly hostile to people of faith.”
For supporters of the power walkers, more assurances may be needed.
The incident sparked a new Facebook page called “Pray Like Jesus,” and organizers say they got a permit from the city for a prayer rally outside the mall from 6-7 p.m. Thursday.
The US 7th Fleet flagship USS Blue Ridge arrives for a three-day friendly port call in Qingdao in east China's Shandong province. Photo: AP
Two senior Chinese and American naval officials yesterday agreed that their two forces should share training so they can improve understanding between the countries' navies.
The idea was raised when the US 7th Fleet's command ship USS Blue Ridge visited the port of Qingdao in Shandong province, according to a statement released by the US Navy.
The lieutenant commander of the PLA navy vessel Harbin, Guan Qiwu, was quoted as saying: "Do you think PLA Navy officers could visit 7th Fleet ships and receive [shared] training?"
Vice Admiral Robert Thomas said both navies could work together closely in future on operations and exercises, on exchanging information and in training.
Senior American and Chinese leaders have recently spoken of the need for closer ties between the two countries' militaries.
China's ties with its neighbours have also become increasingly strained over territorial disputes in the East and South China Seas.
US Defence Secretary Chuck Hagel said in April that there was a heightened risk of a clash between the United States and China in the region as the world's two largest militaries come into closer contact.
US Navy Secretary Ray Mabus also urged the two countries to deepen military ties last week.
Li Jie, a Beijing-based retired PLA officer, said yesterday's comments showed the two sides realised the need for closer naval contacts.
"I believe it might be the first time a PLA senior official has asked the US for shared training," he said.
US and PLA warship crews have occasionally trained together, but only on small-scale exercises. Mabus told The Wall Street Journal last week that Washington would welcome more naval exercises with the PLA and port visits by ships of the two countries' navies.
'It's like these are bulls-eyes.'—Dave Phillips, senior climatologist, Environment Canada, about intense local storms
"These [once in] 50-year floods are occurring every 10 years, because our climate has changed," he said.
Phillips added that planning for weather based on the past 100 years "masks" recent events that have dramatically changed how much rain falls. He said in the aftermath of the Toronto floods of August 2013, a look into the last 25 years of rainfall showed that there were three 100-year storms, and six 50-year storms.
CBC meteorologist Shelly James said that Monday's flash flood was an extremely isolated event, with 190 mm of rain in Burlington, but nearly no rain on either side of the city, including next to none in nearby Hamilton.
Phillips said that in the past few decades, precipitation across Canada has increased 12 per cent, and the "predictable" storms of the past, which used to sweep across southern Ontario, have transformed into "little cells that affect a neighbourhood, a small area."
"It's like these are bull's-eyes," Phillips said.
'No infrastructure around that could handle' Burlington rainfall
Dan McKinnon, the City of Hamilton's director of water and watershed operations, said his department is well aware of the change in weather, but the challenge is how to deal with it.
Some areas close to Burlington received next to no rainfall.
"So what do we design for?" asked McKinnon. He said the city is looking at porous pavements, green roofs and constructing storm water management systems to handle large storms. But there's no rate or amount of precipitation the city could "blanket" plan for and apply to building codes and future infrastructure projects across the city.
McKinnon added that various parts of the city have different pavement and green space areas that can help soak up flash floods and major rains.
Although Phillips admitted there was no amount of affordable infrastructure that could have prevented Monday's flooding in Burlington, the result of nearly two months' worth of rainfall in some 2½ hours, he said planning needs to be updated to accommodate climate change.
"The kind of storm that you saw on Monday, there's no infrastructure around that could handle that," Phillips said. "We accept the fact that we're going to be flooded out. That one was so off the scale."
"The reality is that our infrastructure is aging, it's breaking down.… We need to take into consideration the new climate," Phillips said.
"Because of climate change it could very well be that the performance of our infrastructure is not living up to what it was designed for."
Brooklyn Salutes Israel
Aug 7th, 2014
Daily NewsArutz Sheva
Categories: Today's Headlines;Contemporary Issues
A rally in support of Israel took place in Brooklyn. Among those participating were Rubin Margules, President of the Brooklyn Region of the Zionist Organization of America (ZOA), and Mort Klein, ZOA head, among others.
Economics Minister Naftali Bennett said that he was fully behind Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu when he says that Israel would respond with full force if Hamas resumed its attacks on Israel.
“I support the Prime Minister for his stance on the attempts by Hamas to blackmail us with terror threats against Israelis to achieve its goals, and for his opposition to giving in to the demands of the terrorists, which would just encourage them further.”
In a press conference with foreign journalists on Wednesday, Netanyahu said that Israel was “closely monitoring the implementation of the ceasefire on the ground, and we are holding position in the event it is violated. The army is in the field, with reinforcements, to meet any scenario."
Earlier Thursday, Hamas said that unless all its demands were met – including the opening of a seaport and airport in Gaza – the terror groups would resume firing rockets at Israel on Friday morning at 8 AM, the end of the 72 hour cease-fire period Egypt negotiated with Hamas and Israel. Egypt on Thursday called for a three-day extension of that truce.
In an interview with Arutz Sheva, Bennett said that Israel could not submit to Hamas threats. “We cannot be a hostage of Hamas,” he said. “Any concession to Hamas today is the foundation of a war tomorrow.”
In a press conference Thursday, Finance Minister Yair Lapid sounded a similar tone, warning that Hamas “should not test us.”
“The IDF is ready, the air force is ready, and any rockets will be responded to with heavy fire by us. The military and diplomatic 'wings' of Hamas are one and the same,” Lapid added. “Anyone who is at the top level of a terror group is taking his life into his hands.”
(Illustration)
Thinkstock
Five teenagers were arrested Thursday over a vicious anti-Semitic attack on a bus full of children from Jewish schools in Sydney that left them traumatized.
Police said a group of five- to 12-year-olds were travelling on a private bus to the suburb of Bondi Junction on Wednesday afternoon when eight teens jumped on.
They then proceeded to racially taunt the children and made physical threats, with parents claiming they yelled "Heil Hitler, kill the Jews" and "free Palestine".
Children also reported the attacks threatened "we will cut your throats" and "Palestine must kill you Jews".
None of the children were hurt but Jacqui Blackburn, whose three daughters were on the vehicle, told ABC radio they were traumatized and many were in tears.
"My little daughter said she's just really scared of everything now," she added, while questioning why the driver allowed the teenagers onto a school bus.
Five of the eight teens were arrested overnight before being released into the custody of their parents as investigations continue.
New South Wales Jewish Board of Deputies president Yair Miller told reporters that guardians would now travel on school buses.
"This abuse is totally unacceptable, especially against the most vulnerable in our society being primary-aged children," he said.
Members of minority Yazidi sect face slaughter if they go down and dehydration if they stay, while 130,000 fled to Kurdish north
Tens of thousands of members of one of Iraq's oldest minorities have been stranded on a mountain in the country's north-west, facing slaughter at the hands of jihadists surrounding them below if they flee, or death by dehydration if they stay.
UN groups say at least 40,000 members of the Yazidi sect, many of them women and children, have taken refuge in nine locations on Mount Sinjar, a craggy, mile-high ridge identified in local legend as the final resting place of Noah's ark.
At least 130,000 more people, many from the Yazidi stronghold of Sinjar, have fled to Dohuk, in the Kurdish north, or to Irbil, where regional authorities have been struggling since June to deal with one of the biggest and most rapid refugee movements in decades.
Sinjar itself has been all but emptied of its 300,000 residents since jihadists stormed the city late on Saturday, but an estimated 25,000 people remain. "We are being told to convert or to lose our heads," said Khuldoon Atyas, who has stayed behind to guard his family's crops. "There is no one coming to help."
Another man, who is hiding in the mountains and identified himself as Nafi'ee, said: "Food is low, ammunition is low, and so is water. We have one piece of bread to share between 10 people. We have to walk 2km to get water. There were some air strikes yesterday [against the jihadists], but they have made no difference."
At least 500 Yazidis, including 40 children, have been killed in the past week, local officials say. Many more have received direct threats, either from the advancing militants or members of nearby Sunni communities allied with them. "They were our neighbours and now they are our killers," said Atyas.
"It's not like this is a one-off incident," said the Unicef spokeswoman Juliette Touma. "We are almost back to square zero in terms of the preparedness and the supplies. Enormous numbers of people have been crossing the border since June.
"The stresses are enormous; dehydration, fatigue, people sometimes having to walk for days. The impact on kids is very physical, let alone the psychological impact."
The Kurdish minority Yazidis have long been regarded as devil worshippers by Sunni jihadists who have targeted them since the US invasion. As the extremists' latest and most potent incarnation, the Islamic State (Isis), has steadily conquered Iraq's north, the small, self-contained community has been especially vulnerable.
Isis forces advanced across north-western Iraq almost unchecked since a small band of hardliners stormed Iraq's second city, Mosul, on 10 June, sending the Iraqi army fleeing and shattering the central government's control.
Flush with weapons looted from Iraqi arsenals, Isis sacked Tikrit and advanced on Kirkuk. With new recruits lured or pressganged along the way, it has captured five oilfields and three cities, an 800-mile stretch of border with Syria. It has menaced Baghdad and is now within striking distance of Iraq's two largest dams.
An Iraqi Yazidi family that fled the violence in Sinjar take refuge in Dohuk. Photograph: Safin Hamed/AFP/Getty Images
"The situation is slowly tipping in their favour," said Dr Hisham al-Hashimi, Iraq's leading expert on Isis. "They won't take the dam near Mosul, but Haditha [at the centre of Iraq's water and energy supply grid] will be very hard to defend.
"They are very close to Baghdad airport. If they breached the perimeter, even with a symbolic attack, it would be enormous propaganda value for them."
Iraq's beleaguered military has been unable to muster a meaningful push back against the jihadists and is under intense pressure to support the Yazidis with air strikes and food drops. A series of spectacular defeats has seriously eroded its credibility. Baghdad claimed on Wednesday that its military had carried out an air strike on a Mosul prison which killed scores of jihadists and freed an unknown number of prisoners. The area was impossible to access and the numbers of fatalities could not be verified. However, witnesses reported damage to the prison and relatives rushed to the gates in the hope of rescuing detained family members.
Kurdish Peshmurga troops, long regarded as a more formidable fighting force, had been defending Sinjar, but they too were forced to withdraw as Isis advanced. Kurdish officials say their forces were seriously outgunned by the jihadists, who were using heavy weapons looted from Iraqi bases.
The same weapons are being used to consolidate Isis's hold on much of western Iraq. The group has significantly boosted its numbers by tapping into Iraq's estranged Sunni population, which has been marginalised by the Shia majority government since the US overthrow of Saddam Hussein more than 11 years ago.
"I would say there are now between 30,000 and 50,000 of them," Hashimi said. "Of those, I would say 30% are ideologues. The others have joined out of fear or coercion."
Yazidi members demonstrate outside UN offices in Erbil against the Isis violence. Photograph: Safin Hamed/AFP/Getty Images
The once dominant US military and powerful embassy now play next to no role in Iraq, with Iraqi militias reporting to Iranian generals increasingly taking the lead in the fight against the jihadists.
"Iraq is spiralling out of control," said Ali Khedery, the former longest-serving US official in Baghdad. "The centrifugal forces are spinning so quickly. They are on one timeline and Washington is on another. I am beyond concerned."
Khedery, who reported to five US ambassadors and three US central command generals and is now chairman of the Dubai-based consultancy Dragoman Partners, said: "Everybody is retreating to their corners. And there is no credible international actor that I can see that is trying to bring it together again.
"It definitely is an existential threat to the Iraqi government and I think it represents yet another manifestation of the disintegration of Iraq as we know it.
"Iranian overreach, the genocide in Syria, [Nouri] al-Maliki's consolidation of power in a very sectarian way, have all led to the disillusionment, the disenfranchisement of the Sunni Arabs, who have fatally, but perhaps understandably, chosen to consummate a deal with the devil. Now we are locked in a race to the bottom."
