Thursday, January 29, 2015

Canada' s Project Levitation: 'They' really ARE watching you...and you...and you

Canada's majority government is under attack for the data mining activities being secretly foisted on all of us.  From the CBC:

Project Levitation and your privacy: Politicians call for cybersurveillance oversight


Surveillance meant to protect homeland security may not protect Canadians' privacy rights


January 28, 2015




Canadian politicians called for heftier intelligence oversight Wednesday after a CBC News special investigation in collaboration with the U.S.-based publication The Intercept revealed Canada's cybersleuthing capabilities include a mass surveillance project dubbed "Levitation."

In the project, the Communications Security Establishment (CSE), Canada's electronic spy agency, sifts through millions of videos and documents downloaded online every day by people around the world.


Politicians reacted with arguments on varying degrees of oversight needed for projects like Levitation, to make sure Canadians' privacy is protected while also making sure Canada's homeland security is protected.


The CSE and Associate Minister of National Defence Julian Fantino argue these surveillance practices are in accordance with the law and sufficient oversight already exists.


Those defending CSE's intelligence practices say sufficient oversight is provided by Jean-Pierre Plouffe, who has been the Canadian government’s independent spy watchdog since 2013....


Much more here.


[Related: CSE's Levitation project: Expert says spy agencies 'drowning in data' and unable to follow leads  ]


THIS springs to mind:

Russia tests the skies over Britain - again

Remember Alec's column last week on the 'down-sizing' of the British Military?  Refresh your memory:I hate to say I told you so but... I bloody told you so!


Now comes news that the Russians are again (still?) exploring British vulnerabilities in the skies.  From Daily Mail:

Russian bombers in the skies over Bournemouth: RAF jets scramble to intercept intruders 


  • Typhoon jets flew alongside the long-range bombers over the Channel
  • Experts say Russians may have been probing weaknesses in UK defence
  • Bombers were in international airspace, but deviated from a standard route



LARISA BROWN, DEFENCE REPORTER FOR THE DAILY MAIL28 January 2015



British war planes were yesterday scrambled to intercept two Russian bombers capable of carrying nuclear missiles as they flew south of Bournemouth.



Typhoon jets on high alert were dispatched from two RAF bases and flew alongside the long-range Russian Bear aircraft until they were out of the region.



Last night experts said Vladimir Putin’s move to send planes capable of carrying cruise missiles so close to British shores could be seen as an act of aggression.




Off you go: A Russian Bear is escorted by an RAF jet during an alert in September. (File picture)


They said the manoeuvre in the English Channel could have been designed to ‘probe the RAF speed of reaction’ – raising fears that the Russians were looking for weaknesses in the British fighter force.



Within seconds of the bombers deviating from their usual flight path, the British quick reaction alert (QRA) jets were scrambled.



A defence source said the RAF always ‘maintains the highest level of readiness’, just as in the days of Battle of Britain.



The Typhoons were dispatched from RAF Lossiemouth in Scotland and RAF Coningsby in Lincolnshire. They were so close to the Russian planes – roughly 1,000ft away – that they could signal to the pilots....


There is more here.


Pay attention.  There WILL be more of these sorties - guaranteed.

Wednesday, January 28, 2015

Hey Al Jazeera (and now, BBC) : How about "Islamist Terrorist Murderous Thugs"????

It seems Al Jazeera is instructing its reporters to not use the words Islamist Terrorists to describe the errrrrrr ....Islamist Terrorists wreaking murder and mayhem around the globe.

Take a look:

Al Jazeera adopts the White House stylebook
Jan. 28, 2015 - 4:18 -

Leaked e-mails show broadcaster banning use of  'terrorist'

Unless we ALL call these terrorists what they ARE, we will never defeat those sworn to destroy us.    Here we follow the Bratville Style Guide:  If it looks like a Terrorist, walks like a Terrorist, beheads like a Terrorist, it IS a Terrorist!  PERIOD.


GO watch :  Greg Gutfeld commentary   "Would this suggest a bit of bias on their part?"


BBC updated their 'Editorial Guidelines' from their Official Style Guide.

Surprise! US border control bill vote delayed

As usual, politics continues to be the driving factor behind securing the US borders.

From Homeland Security NewsWire: 

House delays vote on “the toughest border security bill ever”

27 January 2015

The House was supposed to vote on Wednesday on what Republicans have called “the toughest border security bill ever,” but the bill encountered harsh criticism from different sides of the GOP caucus. Some complained the measure does not address the pressing issue of immigration reform, while others complained it was the first step on slippery slope toward such reform. The border security bill, Secure Our Borders First Act (H.R. 399), sponsored by House Homeland Security Chairman Michael McCaul (R-Texas), would impose harsh penalties for federal agencies that fail to meet certain requirements. One mandate aims for DHS to achieve “operational control,” or prevent illegal entry across the southern border, within five years. If DHS fails to achieve that objective, political appointees at the agency would be prohibited from traveling in government vehicles, receive reimbursement for nonessential travel, or receive pay increases or bonuses.

Republicans who tried to reach a consensus with Democrats on immigration in the previous Congress, said McCaul’s bill could help make the task more reachable this time around.

“I actually think this makes other pieces easier to vote for, if you’re comfortable that an adequate security piece is in place,” said Representative Tom Cole (R-Oklahoma). “I don’t think doing border security and stopping would be the appropriate thing to do when we know there are other areas where we can get some things done.” Cole admits that he is uncertain of how the border security bill fits in Speaker John Boehner’s (R-Ohio) larger immigration plan, but he believes discussions on the topic are occurring. “I think the speaker is very, very determined,” Cole said....


Business as usual: all politics all the time.  Meanwhile the borders are wide open.

Video: ISIS threat to behead Obama

From JihadWatch:


“Know, oh Obama, that will reach America. Know also that we will cut off your head in the White House, and transform America into a Muslim Province.” The always hopelessly idiotic Daily Mail twice calls this “biblical,” calling it a “biblical-sounding tirade” and “biblical-sounding threats.” In reality, it is a Qur’an-sounding tirade. But characterizing it as such would be “Islamophobic.”


“ISIS issues direct threat to Obama in new beheading video after Japanese hostage says jihadis will execute him and Jordanian airman within 24 hours unless jailed female terrorist is released,” by Damien Gayle and Simon Tomlinson, MailOnline, January 27, 2015 [...]

Islamic State militants threaten to cut off Barack Obama’s head and turn the U.S. into a Muslim province in the latest gruesome video to emerge from their self-styled caliphate.
‘Know, oh Obama, that will reach America,’ proclaims a black-clad militant. ‘Know also that we will cut off your head in the White House, and transform America into a Muslim Province.’...
More here.

Tuesday, January 27, 2015

Auschwitz-Birkenau: "The world must know"

(source:  Jewish Virtual Library)


Today, from the BBC:

Auschwitz 70th anniversary: Survivors mark camp liberation

27 January 2015

About 300 Auschwitz survivors have gathered at the site of the former Nazi death camp to mark the 70th anniversary of its liberation.


The commemoration will be held at the site in southern Poland where 1.1 million people, the vast majority Jews, were killed between 1940 and 1945.


It is expected to be the last major anniversary event that survivors are able to attend in considerable numbers.


Heads of state and representatives from wartime Allies will also be present.


Events include the laying of a wreath, a church service, and the lighting of candles at a memorial in the former death camp of Birkenau, which was part of the Auschwitz complex.


Auschwitz-Birkenau was liberated by the Red Army of the Soviet Union on 27 January 1945. It opened as a museum in 1947....

The emphasis this year is on the survivors of the atrocities of the Holocaust.

One of those survivors is Angela Orosz, who was born in Auschwitiz.  From the CBC:

Angela Orosz, Auschwitz-born Montrealer, returns to Poland for liberation anniversary


One of the youngest Holocaust survivors, Orosz was an infant when Auschwitz was liberated


26 January 2015

Angela Orosz came into this world in one of the most horrific places imaginable.

As thousands of Jews around her were sent to the gas chambers, Orosz's mother hid her pregnancy for months from her Nazi captors.

On Dec. 21, 1944, Orosz was born in Auschwitz.

Within the month, Orosz and everyone else who had managed to cling to life in the desolate camp were liberated.


Seventy years later, Orosz — now a Montrealer — is returning to her birthplace to honour those who perished there, in an act of defiance against those who tried to erase her future.

A portrait shows Angela Orosz as a child. Her mother was sent to a Nazi concentration camp when she was two months pregnant, but managed to hide her pregnancy. (Submitted by Angela Orosz)

"My daughter said, 'We have to go there, and we have to show it that we are alive, we have [a] big family, and we have to show Hitler didn't achieve what he wanted.'"...
Film director Stephen Spielberg is in Poland and gave a short speech:

Spielberg, the Oscar-winning director of the 1993 Holocaust film “Schindler’s List,” was introduced by an 81-year-old survivor, Paula Lebovics, who praised him as “a man who has given us a voice in history.”


In a short speech, Spielberg spoke of how his own Jewish identity evolved, first as a boy learning to read numbers from the numbers tattooed on the arms of survivors, and as an adult when he filmed “Schindler’s List” in Krakow.


But he warned of “anti-Semites, radical extremists, and religious fanatics” who are again provoking hate crimes — a warning that comes after radical Islamists massacred Jews at a kosher supermarket earlier this month in Paris...
[...]
“These people … want to all over again strip you of your past, of your story and of your identity,” he told them. He stressed the importance of countering that hatred with education and preserving Auschwitz and other historical sites...

Preserving the memory of those dark days of history is even more important today, as the world again ignores atrocities against other innocents around the world. 
One of the survivors who determined to keep the stories alive is Yehuda Bacon.



Jewish Holocaust survivor Yehuda Bacon: three months after liberation, and now

1945: 'It was a miracle to leave Auschwitz'

Czech-born Yehuda Bacon was just 14 years old when he arrived at Auschwitz-Birkenau death camp in December 1943.


Six months later his father was killed in the gas chambers. His mother and sister, Hanna, were sent to another camp in Austria where they died two weeks before the war ended.
[...]

"I remember the day I left Auschwitz very well - January 18 1945.


The Russians were coming nearer and the Germans were emptying the camp, sending those who could work to other camps.


Only a couple of thousand prisoners were left and we knew we would be sent away but we didn't know where.


I had been there a whole year so I had good connections with prisoners who had important jobs like distributing clothes. Those prisoners had been told to get clothes ready for those who were leaving.
[...]


Liberation


We were liberated on 5 May.


That morning the guards had abandoned the camp but they had poisoned the food before they left.


When we realised the guards had gone we rushed to the store room to look for food.


I tried to take a huge piece of margarine.

            [...]


It was a miracle to leave Auschwitz. But that was the beginning of the so-called death march.

[...]


Trying to tell our story

After the war, I dedicated my life to being an artist - at first to describe what I saw, in a childish way.

[...]


I think I am somehow obliged because I survived to tell the story of the people who didn't survive but what happens to the story is beyond my control. I hope that maybe someone, some time, somewhere will learn something from it...





The Telegraph shares the survival story of Zigi Shipper.  GO. Read, learn and honour.



As we remember these victims, we also honor the survivors, soldiers, reporters, and others who bore witness to Nazi crimes and reflect on the challenges we face 70 years after liberation.

“THE WORLD MUST KNOW”

In the months prior to the liberation of Auschwitz-Birkenau, an elderly French inmate urged Jewish prisoner Olga Lengyel to observe everything that transpired, telling her, “When the war is over the world must know about this. It must know the truth.” Auschwitz prisoner Seweryna Szmaglewska recalled yet another powerful impulse to speak out: the eyes of her expiring comrades, “the last testament of the dying.” Like Lengyel, she penned her memoirs in the years immediately following the war to give voice to those who could no longer speak.
General Dwight D. Eisenhower, the Supreme Commander of Allied Forces in Europe, also understood the need to witness. In a cable to General George Marshall in Washington, he wrote about his experiences at the recently liberated Nazi camp of Ohrdruf:
The things I saw beggar description. . . . The visual evidence and the verbal testimony of starvation, cruelty and bestiality were . . . overpowering. . . . I made the visit deliberately, in order to be in [a] position to give first-hand evidence of these things if ever, in the future, there develops a tendency to charge these allegations merely to “propaganda.”

The Museum has a whole archive library of videos by survivors.  Rene Slotkin is one who talks of his liberation:

Uploaded on Jan 6, 2015René Slotkin (né Guttmann) and his twin sister Irene Hizme (née Renate Guttmann) were born in Czechoslovakia in December 1937. During the Holocaust, they were deported with their mother from Prague to Theresienstadt before being sent to Auschwitz, where as twins they were subjected to medical experiments. René was liberated from a death march that had just left Auschwitz in January 1945, a little over a month after his seventh birthday.


Watch René Slotkin and Irene Hizme's joint oral history online: http://collections.ushmm.org/search/c...




As we remember those lost and those who survived the horrors of Man's inhumanity to man,  the efforts must continue to ensure that the world never forgets.

The World MUST know.

Related:  Holocaust survivors: Europe is forgetting about the whole thing

A Special Kind of Hate

This is Gavriella

The final return to hell: 70 years after they were liberated, Auschwitz survivors make last landmark pilgrimage to death camp where more than a million were murdered




Monday, January 26, 2015

Terrorism: US claims more than 6,000 ISIS killed

From Homeland Security News Wire:


U.S. officials: 6,000 ISIS fighters and “more than half” of the group’s leadership killed


23 January 2015


The U.S.-led airstrikes campaign has “taken more than half” of the Islamic State’s (ISIS) leadership, U.S. ambassador to Iraq Stuart Jones said. Jones said the airstrikes were having a “devastating” effect on ISIS. “We estimate that the airstrikes have now killed more than 6,000 ISIS fighters in Syria and Iraq,” Jones said. He added that the airstrikes have “destroyed more than a thousand of ISIS vehicles inside Iraq.”


The ambassador noted that the numbers were “not so important in themselves,” but that “they do show the degradation of ISIS.”

“They show ISIS inability to supply forces inside Iraq,” he said.

CNN reports that the estimate used by the ambassador was calculated by U.S. Central Command, according to a U.S. military official.

As is the case with any military command, CENTCOM has been keeping a running estimate of ISIS fighters killed, but has not made this estimate public.

The U.S. intelligence community estimates that ISIS forces total between 9,000 to 18,000 fighters, but that the Islamist group can also draw on thousands of other fighters whose loyalty to the group is not as intense, bringing the force it could muster to around 31,000 fighters...

Saturday, January 24, 2015

Video: IDF Paramedics of Operation Protective Edge

Israel Defense Forces




Oct 17, 2014
The IDF’s [...] operation in the Gaza Strip, Operation Protective Edge, had a high cost of human life. Sixty-seven soldiers were killed on the ground and hundreds of others were injured during the fighting. The first soldiers to provide medical treatment to the wounded are the IDF’s paramedics, who are often female soldiers. Noam and Chen entered into Gaza with infantry troops with one mission: to treat injured soldiers and save as many lives as possible. 


Monday, January 19, 2015

I hate to say I told you so but... I bloody told you so!

By Alec


I've often thought that Governments are run by naughty kids, over here in England we've been overrun by the greedy who have forgotten they signed on to represent the people, allegedly... But that's another story.


When my younger Sister was an infant and started on the long road of defiance which she maintains to this day, I remember my Mother telling her not to touch the Iron as it was hot with the inevitable consequences, burnt fingers, tears and Mother shouting "I bloody told you so!"



This was the 70's when parents were allowed to be parents and curse a little, but this is by the by.



Back when the Royal Air Force was allowed to be the Royal Air Force and not the Royal Air Farce it's become, our aircraft inventory covered all possible scenario's to fight a cold war if it became hot.



As the cold war thawed, successive Governments seemed to forget history and undermine our armed forces by channelling the cash elsewhere on seemingly more important winged projects like duck houses...

Expenses MP auctions duck island for charity

The ornamental duck island which sank the career of a Tory MP at the height of the expenses scandal has been sold for charity.


Sir Peter Viggers, who retired after it was revealed he had claimed £1,645 for the item, has given the proceeds of an auction to Macmillan Cancer Support.


The floating Stockholm duck island - used to protect vulnerable fowl from foxes - went for £1,700....


  More on this 2010 debacle here.


Gradually the tip of the sword was being eroded, failing to invest in defence to the extent that soldiers arrived in Afghanistan and Iraq with no body armour or vehicles capable of carrying them into battle safely.


For years the U.K. Military top brass had been warning about threats and the need to stay equipped or we'd lose lives unnecessarily on the ground, the sea and the air.


Guess what? We did and all the time the Politicians were lining their pockets with the inevitable almost comic end to the farce.


The official records of the MP expense scandal documents go missing.

MPs’ expenses: official records from scandal-hit era have been destroyed
 Destruction of pre-2010 records means there is no longer any chance of investigating authorities reviving old cases


Rowena Mason, political correspondent 

 The Guardian

A House of Commons spokesman said the policy on destroying MPs’ expenses records was longstanding and to comply with data law.

All official records of MPs’ expenses from the scandal-hit era before 2010 have now been destroyed by the Commons authorities, it has emerged.

The disposal of the records was revealed in a letter to Conservative activists who made a complaint about the expenses of their local MP relating to claims between 2004 and 2010.


 According to the Telegraph, Kathryn Hudson, the standards commissioner, wrote back saying: “All records relating to expenses claims before 2010 have now been destroyed. No unredacted information is now available here nor any notes of conversations or advice given … which might establish the facts.”...


Much more here.


Where the Royal Air Force was concerned, we lost fleets of aircraft; Jaguar, Harrier and Nimrod. Not mentioning the Navy loss of their carriers and Harrier aircraft too.


Nimrod was an important aircraft in the defence of the UK, but as we weren't being threatened by Ivan, his Bears and tin fish, or rather the former Soviet Union and his long range bombers and submarines, it was okay to scrap the aircraft.


Sadly, this is what happened to the aircraft...

26 January 2011

Nimrod aircraft scrapped at Stockport BAE factory


Work on the controversial scrapping of nine multimillion-pound Nimrod aircraft is under way at a BAE Systems factory in Greater Manchester.


Diggers moved in to dismantle the empty aircraft behind large screens at BAE Woodford, Stockport, on Wednesday.


Unions have criticised the decision to break-up the planes, which is costing the Ministry of Defence (MoD) £200m.


A spokesman for the MoD said ministers had made it clear that the "difficult" decision would not be reversed....


Yes, there's more,(with video) here.


Predictably, after any service person with a brain cell had cried "You'll be sorry" cutting the U.K. defence capability to that of a Nunnery for one armed, er, Nuns, Ivan parks an instant sunshine equipped tin fish off the U.K. coast and we have to beg our U.S. cousins for help.

Again.

Britain needs U.S. help finding suspected Russian submarine spotted off the Scottish coast


Mystery foreign submarine thought to be lurking near Faslane naval base




  Nimrod spy planes had been mainstays of the RAF’s reconnaissance fleet since the late 1960s and had a central role in anti-submarine warfare, when they were scrapped with an upgrade programme running nine years late and £800 million over budget Photo: Alamy

By   The Daily Telegraph


The Ministry of Defence has again been forced to call for US military assistance to help track a suspected Russian submarine spotted off the Scottish coast.



Two US Navy aircraft were drafted in to conduct anti-submarine patrols along with a Royal Navy Frigate near the home of the UK’s Trident fleet at Faslane, Argyll.



Critics claimed the US deployment raised questions about the UK’s ability to protect its nuclear submarines following the scrapping of the RAF’s £4bn fleet of Nimrod surveillance aircraft in 2010....

GO read the rest of this here.


I hate to say I told you so but... I bloody told you so! 


 Some kids never learn.

Friday, January 16, 2015

Israel's Ambassador on Terrorism

Plain talk from Israel's Ambassador to the US on how we must attack Terrorism


Meanwhile we have Obama telling Britain's Prime Minister that we should not just use Military options when fighting violent extremism - which he still refuses to call Islamic Terrorism.

 The Israeli's have proved for years that what they do works, and it would be really smart for Obama et al to take notice of how Israel survives.

Video: Arlington National Cemetery - First Snow

Arlington National Cemetery

The first snowfall of 2015 blanked Arlington National Cemetery on 6 January 2015. The cemetery team worked to clear 19 miles of roadways and prepare grounds for funerals. ANC conducts between 27 and 30 funerals each week day regardless of the weather honoring the service and sacrifice of the men and women of our military. Arlington National Cemetery is the final resting place for more than 400,000 American heroes.

Red Shirt Friday


Thursday, January 15, 2015

Camp GITMO: The rush for the exit continues


From the US DoD:

IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Release No: NR-015-15
January 14, 2015

Detainee Transfer Announced

The Department of Defense announced today the transfer of Al Khadr Abdallah Muhammad Al Yafi, Fadel Hussein Saleh Hentif, Abd Al-Rahman Abdullah Au Shabati, and Mohammed Ahmed Salam from the detention facility at Guantanamo Bay to Oman.

As directed by the president’s Jan. 22, 2009, executive order, the interagency Guantanamo Review Task Force conducted a comprehensive review of this case. As a result of that review, which examined a number of factors, including security issues, these men were unanimously approved for transfer by the six departments and agencies comprising the task force.

In accordance with statutory requirements, the secretary of defense informed Congress of the United States’ intent to transfer these individuals and of his determination that this transfer meets the statutory standard.

The United States is grateful to the Government of Oman for its humanitarian gesture and willingness to support ongoing U.S. efforts to close the Guantanamo Bay detention facility. The United States coordinated with the Government of Oman to ensure these transfers took place consistent with appropriate security and humane treatment measures.

Today, 122 detainees remain at Guantanamo Bay.
And there's this:

IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Release No: NR-016-15
January 14, 2015

Detainee Transfer Announced


The Department of Defense announced today the transfer of Akhmed Abdul Qadir from the detention facility at Guantanamo Bay to Estonia.

As directed by the president’s Jan. 22, 2009, executive order, the interagency Guantanamo Review Task Force conducted a comprehensive review of this case. As a result of that review, which examined a number of factors, including security issues, this man was unanimously approved for transfer by the six departments and agencies comprising the task force.

In accordance with statutory requirements, the secretary of defense informed Congress of the United States’ intent to transfer this individual and of his determination that this transfer meets the statutory standard.

The United States is grateful to the Government of Estonia for its humanitarian gesture and willingness to support ongoing U.S. efforts to close the Guantanamo Bay detention facility. The United States coordinated with the Government of Estonia to ensure these transfers took place consistent with appropriate security and humane treatment measures.

Today, 122 detainees remain at Guantanamo Bay.

These days, as MIC pretty much opens the exit doors of GITMO, it is being bandied around that the recidivism rate of these detainees is 30%.  That is supposed to reassure us that none of these being set free are a threat to anybody.   I don't believe that at all, since over the last few years that number has gone as high as 60%+.



Pardon my cynicism, but what this stinks of to me, is all politics all the time, with absolutely no regard for the safety and security of the US. 


The current POTUS is infamous for his 'I have a pen and a phone' policies, as he demonstrates his determination to keep his 2007/8 election promises. 

On his second day in office, Obama signed a bill to close the gates of GITMO.  Here we are, six years later and only NOW are the politicians making noises about slowing down the release of those who were considered enemies of America.

"Facing serious opposition... some of these detainees might end up back on the battlefield"?????? You think?????


All well and good to be introducing bills now, BUT where the hell have these politicians been for the last six years?


Introduction of a bill to slow down the POTUS in his stated goals of releasing residents of GITMO, is a good thing (albeit very belated) but in fact he is just the public face of this insanity.  Yes, it is HIS ideology pushing the move, but his politically-motivated actions are aided and abetted - rubber-stamped if you will - by a number of agencies.

Check out the GITMO Review Task Force.   According to a 2010 report, the Department of Justice, Department of Defense, State Department, Department of Homeland Security, Office of the Director of National Intelligence, and Joint Chiefs of Staff all are supposedly signing off on these releases.  Go read that report.



All of this, in my opinion, is to provide cover for Obama's clearly stated goal of  "ongoing U.S. efforts to close the Guantanamo Bay detention facility."  THAT phrase is included in the above announcement, and should leave no doubt in anybody's mind as to what this ongoing exodus from GITMO is all about: America's national defense and security?  No.  Obama's political agenda to further his own ideology?  Check.

Business as usual for this White House:  All politics, all the time.

Related: Pentagon: No threat from five detainees released from Gitmo


Wednesday, January 14, 2015

Charlie Hebdo: Business as usual?


From The Guardian:

Charlie Hebdo: first cover since terror attack depicts prophet Muhammad

French satirical magazine’s surviving columnist says cover is a call to forgive the terrorists who murdered her colleagues last week

13 January 2015


The front cover of Wednesday’s edition of the French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo, the first since last week’s attack on its Paris offices that left 12 people dead, is a cartoon of the prophet Muhammad.

The cover shows the prophet shedding a tear and holding up a sign reading “Je suis Charlie” in sympathy with the dead journalists. The headline says “All is forgiven”.

Zineb El Rhazoui, a surviving columnist at Charlie Hebdo magazine who worked on the new issue, said the cover was a call to forgive the terrorists who murdered her colleagues last week, saying she did not feel hate towards Chérif and Saïd Kouachi despite their deadly attack on the magazine, and urged Muslims to accept humour.

“We don’t feel any hate to them. We know that the struggle is not with them as people, but the struggle is with an ideology,” she told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme....

Tuesday, January 13, 2015

Nigeria: Boko Haram terror continues - world shrugs




While the world focuses on the terror attack in Paris, the daily carnage that is being carried out by Boko Haram continues unchecked.  UNICEF  "expressed outrage" at the use of 10 year old girls as suicide bombers.  All this, while the latest massacre by these terrorist cowards left so many dead that nobody seems able to count exactly how many were murdered.


From Homeland Security NewsWire:

Boko Haram's deadliest massacre yet: 2,000 dead

12 January 2015

Boko Haram, the Nigerian Islamist insurgency, has been gaining ground in the face of what Western security analysts consider an ineffective, even counterproductive, campaign by an incompetent Nigerian military weakened by corruption and lack of professionalism. The number of victims of Bomo Haram’s brutal campaign is mounting exponentially, with the latest tally reaching 2,000 dead in and around the northeastern town of Baga, on the border of the Nigerian border with Chad. Amnesty International described the attack on Baga as the “deadliest massacre” in the history of Boko Haram. The Baga campaign also saw the first use by Boko Haram of a child suicide bomber: A 10-years old girl detonated powerful explosives concealed under her veil at a crowded Monday Market in Maiduguri, the shopping hub in a city which is at the heart of the Boko Haram insurgency.




The Guardian reports that fighting in and around Baga, which began on 3 January, continued on Friday and Saturday. On 3 January, Boko Haram militants seized a key military base on the outskirts of town.


District head Baba Abba Hassan told the Guardian that most victims are children, women, and elderly people who could not run fast enough when insurgents drove into Baga, firing rocket-propelled grenades and assault rifles on town residents.


[...]



CNN reports that on Saturday two days ago, two more girls, believed to be around 15, exploded themselves in open-air markets in the area. CNN quoted security analysts saying that it is likely the three girls were unaware what the vests they were told to wear consisted of, and that the detonation was triggered by remote control. ... [emphasis mine]



As millions take to the streets of Paris to show outrage against that city's massacre by cowardly Islamist terrorists, Nigerian children wait for the world to notice - and rally against - their ongoing hell.


Read the rest of this incident here.

CIA torture and that Senate Democrats' Report: A betrayal



Remember a few weeks back when the Senate Democrats decided to release their 'report' on the CIA *torture* that supposedly took place post-9/11 in order to gain vital information?

I will have more to say on that at a later date (hint: it was, of course, motivated by all politics all the time) but amidst all the ongoing real terrorism and torture going on around the globe, comes an op/ed by the sister of the pilot of American Airlines Flight 77 that was taken into the Pentagon.

Debra Burlingame has long been one of the public faces - an important voice - of the horror that was 9/11 and she gives her insights into the political gamesmanship of this Democrats report.

From the NY Daily News:

The Senate’s betrayal
The sister of a pilot killed on Sept. 11 says Sen. Feinstein’s torture report has done the unthinkable — turned our enemies into victims
BY 

 January 4, 2015

In November of 2002, my two brothers and I traveled to FBI offices in Alexandria, Virginia and met with one of the lead federal prosecutors who was working on the criminal investigation of the 9/11 attacks. We were there to watch a video animation of American Airlines Flight 77, the plane that was hijacked by five Al Qaeda terrorists and flown into the Pentagon.



We were desperate to find out anything we could about the flight because our brother, Charles F. "Chic" Burlingame, III, was its captain, the pilot in command that fateful morning.



The video we were about to see — put together from the plane's flight data recorder, or "black box," and FAA radar tracking — would show us the plane's every movement, from the time it pushed back from the gate at Dulles Airport to the moment just before it crashed into the Pentagon at 530 mph, one hour and 27 minutes later.



We sat in silence for the entire duration of the video. The animation noted when radio contact ceased and when the plane's unique radar signature, its transponder, was turned off. We watched, barely breathing, as the Boeing 757 changed course. Almost immediately after it completed its 180 degree turn, the plane began to pitch and roll violently.



We knew this was when Chic was fighting for his life. It lasted more than six agonizing minutes. And then it stopped.


[...]


This is the context for the families of the victims as we watched Sen. Dianne Feinstein declare from the well of the U.S. Senate last month that the harsh interrogation of the men who plotted and carried out our loved ones' savage murders, and who planned a second wave of terror, was "a stain on our values and our history."



These are the images we thought of as we were told that the government had committed war crimes when it sanctioned the CIA enhanced interrogation program to acquire intelligence from the people who meant to terrorize and incapacitate the nation further.


[...]


Tortured? What does that actually mean?


[...]


In 2009, I was among those 9/11 family members who opposed President Obama's plan to release the details of the Rendition, Detention and Interrogation program (RDI) the CIA created and carried out with presidential approval. The lengthy legal memos Obama published were written at the behest of John Rizzo, then acting chief counsel for the CIA.



[...]


For five years, Sen. Feinstein has led this effort to rewrite history and has produced a fraudulent document that says enhanced interrogation techniques "didn't work."



This claim is the linchpin the Committee relied on and, I believe, the chief reason the report was created without interviewing a single individual actually involved in the program, or any of the former CIA directors who oversaw its administration and know otherwise... 


There is much more of this MUST READ here.


I do not believe that the CIA was guilty of torture.  As one expert opined in the immediate aftermath of the release of the report [paraphrased]: Torture is when you don't get up and walk away afterwards.  These interrogation sessions made the terrorists 'uncomfortable.'


 That is NOT torture.


Meanwhile, Feinsten et al should be ashamed of playing politics with the security of American citizens. What she and her fellow Democrats have done IS a betrayal; not just of the 9/11 families, but of ALL Americans.  Period.


We will not forget.

Monday, January 12, 2015

Exercise Prairie Storm - Brits training in Canada



A soldier from the King's Royal Hussars Battlegroup on Exercise Prairie Storm at the British Army Training Area Suffield, in Alberta, Canada. [Picture: Corporal Mark Webster RLC, Crown copyright]


Thursday, January 8, 2015

Canada: Parliament Hero Kevin Vickers named Ambassador to Ireland

Remember Kevin Vickers?



Parliament's Sgt-at-Arms gained world wide attention when he was part of the security team that took down the Terrorist who had just killed Cpl Cirillo on October 22, 2014.

Now the CBC is reporting that Mr Vickers has a new job:

Kevin Vickers named ambassador to Ireland

Sergeant-at-arms of the House of Commons lauded for confronting shooter on Parliament Hill

CBC News Posted: Jan 08, 2015 

Kevin Vickers, the House of Commons sergeant-at-arms who became a household name in October after his confrontation with a gunman in a hallway on Parliament Hill, will be Canada's next ambassador to Ireland.

The appointment is effective Jan. 19. Vickers, 58, replaces Loyola Hearn, a former Conservative cabinet minister who held the post from 2011 until last August. ​

"I've known Kevin for a very long time," Prime Minister Stephen Harper said at an event in Delta, B.C., on Thursday, touting his vast security and management experience and "tremendous acts of heroism."

"I think they speak for themselves and speak to his character, and I know he will do a tremendous job as ambassador," Harper said. "I know he's looking forward to that assignment."

"As a Canadian with family on both sides hailing from Ireland, there could be no greater honour. I am humbled by the invitation to serve my country in this way," said Vickers in a statement, adding that he was saddened to be leaving Parliament Hill, but will cherish his time there.

"I would also like to take this opportunity to thank all Canadians for their support in the last few months. You have my word that I will do my best to represent you in Ireland with pride and dignity," he said....

I have absolutely NO doubt about that at all.....

Read the rest here.  (There's a video there, too)