Ninety miles from the South Eastern tip of the United States, Liberty has no stead. In order for Liberty to exist and thrive, Tyranny must be identified, recognized, confronted and extinguished.
It took nine long months, but finally Mohamed Noor has been charged in the murder of Justine Damond.
Minneapolis Somali-Muslim cop Mohamed Noor shot unarmed, pajama-clad Justine Damond to death at point blank range. On the force since 2015, he had three complaints against him. He is described by neighbors as “jumpy,” “ill-tempered,” “strict” and “disrespectful of women and blacks.” What was he still doing on the force?
In his short time with the Minneapolis Police, Mohamed Noor has had three complaints filed against him – two that are still open. The other was closed and Noor wasn’t disciplined.
Hijab-wearing Mayor Betsy Hodges instituted hiring policies in the police department to prioritize the hiring of Somali Muslims. This at a time when more than 22 young men from the community had left the state to join al-Shabab in Somalia, and roughly a dozen people have left in recent years to join the jihad in Syria, including the Islamic State group. The area in Minneapolis where Muslim killer-cop was recruited and fast-tracked for police work is a notorious hot spot for jihad recruitment.
Typical of jihad operatives, the lawyer of the Muslim police officer who shot dead Justine Damond in cold blood is smeared and defamed the victim. Exactly what they do to us for opposing jihad terror. Police officer’s Mohamed Noor lawyer caused controversy for reportedly asking for a review into Justine Damond’s autopsy report to see if she had taken sleeping pills. “It was absolutely sickening, and that’s the game these lawyers play, to try to...
D.C. lobbyist Jack Burkman, who claims Seth Rich was murdered by the DNC, has been hospitalized after being shot several times and run over by an SUV on Tuesday.
Kevin Doherty, a special agent with the Department of Energy, has been charged by police for the attempted murder of Burkman – who had been busy investigating Seth Rich case.
Doherty, 46, was charged Monday with Use of a Firearm in the Commission of a Felony and two counts of Malicious Wounding, according to the Arlington, Va, Co. police department.
Washingtonpost.com reports: “It’s a horror story,” Burkman, of Arlington, said in an interview Monday afternoon. He is still recovering after being shot several times and run over by an SUV last Tuesday.
Doherty briefly worked for Burkman’s Profiling Project, which was formed to build a psychological portrait of Rich’s likely killer. Burkman was offering a six-figure reward for information on the slaying of Rich, which police have determined was most likely a random robbery but many conservatives have claimed was part of a political conspiracy.
Burkman said Doherty presented an impressive resume — ex-Marine, ex-special agent — and did good work. But tension quickly developed. In Burkman’s view, Doherty began speaking to reporters out of turn and tried to take over the investigation. Doherty’s military background could not immediately be confirmed.
“He became somewhat angry because he thought the Profiling Project belonged to him,” Burkman said. In July, he cut Doherty loose and sent him a cease and desist letter.
“I just figured the matter was closed,” Burkman said. “But what happened is, I guess, he was simmering and simmering and simmering.”
In February, Burkman had moved on to a new investigation. He had put out a call for whistleblowers in the FBI, offering $25,000 for any information exposing wrongdoing in the presidential election.
Soon, he thought he had hit the jackpot. A man reached out, describing himself as a senior FBI official with information about then-agency deputy director Andrew McCabe, who at the time was under an internal investigation for his handling of probes into Hillary Clinton. (On Friday, McCabe was fired, after an internal investigation found he had dealt improperly with the media and then lied about it. He has denied wrongdoing.)
His source dropped off two packets of emails under a cone in a garage at the Marriott in Rosslyn, Burkman said.
“I thought I had the story of the decade,” Burkman recalled. His wife, Susan, was more skeptical. She warned him that she didn’t think he was dealing with the FBI. But, he said, the emails “looked super real,” containing details about the secretive Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court.
The last drop was supposed to be “the big one” — the full inspector general report on McCabe, which still has not been released.
Instead, when Burkman bent over to pull the papers out from under the cone, he was shot in the buttocks and thigh. As he ran out of the garage with his dachshund in his arms, he was hit by...
With regards to the Mueller ‘investigation’ of President Trump, I have been asking the title’s question (from many) for quite awhile: “How is conducting an investigation based upon fake evidence legal?” Thus far, I haven’t received even a mediocre reply or one that resembles a modicum of logic. Others merely try to change the subject. As a Special Counsel was assigned to the Trump case (although there doesn’t seem to be a factual let alone truthful case against him), in checking the requirements for the USAG assigning a Special Counsel—§ 600.1 Grounds for appointing a Special Counsel—states:
“The Attorney General, or in cases in which the Attorney General is recused, the Acting Attorney General, will appoint a Special Counsel when he or she determines that criminal investigation of a person or matter is warranted and - (a) That investigation or prosecution of that person or matter by a United States Attorney’s Office or litigating Division of the Department of Justice would present a conflict of interest for the Department or other extraordinary circumstances; and (b) That under the circumstances, it would be in the public interest to appoint an outside Special Counsel to assume responsibility for the matter.”
Criminal investigation or a counterintelligence investigation
Hmmm. Weren’t we told at the beginning of this whole process that it wasn’t a criminal investigation but, it was a counterintelligence investigation? It seemed to switch very quickly from a faux ‘counterintelligence’ mode to criminal…didn’t it? I strongly suspect—as do many other US citizens—that the original investigation was a huge ruse, as a counterintelligence investigation does not require nor even investigate a crime. It also appears to neither require nor allow the appointment of any “Special Counsel”…a counsel who is only to address criminal investigations. Furthermore—and despite this sleight of hand delivered by Deputy USAG Rosenstein to switch from counterintelligence to criminal—even if Special Counsel Mueller is now addressing a criminal investigation, under the law a crime must be identified before the investigation may proceed. To date, no original crime to begin a criminal investigation has ever been identified.
Quiz question: How many apparent illegalities can you count that have been engaged in by Deputy AG Rosenstein and Special Counsel and former FBI head Robert Mueller…thus far?
Then, on top of these “irregularities,” Mr. Mueller and his crew of (at least one of whom is as unsavory character as may exist) attorneys are now on a full-fledged leaping and diving fishing expedition in search of a crime against Trump and everyone who works for him. Of note is that on 29 April 2015, the US Supreme Court adopted proposed amendments to...
It is all part of the agenda to dismantle the constitution..
Who will be sued by the victims? The Broward County Sheriff, The FBI, The School System, but not the NRA. This illustrates the reality of who is to blame and the reckless bias of the media.
Mystery surrounds Robert Mueller and his investigation into Russia and President Trump. Some think he is the ultimate professional, others that he is a Democrat lackey, still others maintain he is working on Trump’s side.
We can see how he works if we look at how Mueller ran his second-most important investigation as FBI Director. In September of 2001, an entity began mailing anthrax through the US Postal system, hitting such prominent targets as NBC and Senator Daschle’s office. The terrorist attacks killed five and left others hospitalized. The world panicked.
Under Mueller’s management, the FBI launched an investigation lasting ten years. They now brag about spending “hundreds of thousands of investigator hours on this case.” Let’s take a closer look at Mueller’s response to understand the context of the investigation — who his people investigated, targeted, and found guilty.
The anthrax letters began just a week after the 9/11 attack. While planning the airplane hijackings, Al-Qaeda had been weaponizing anthrax, setting up a lab in Afghanistan manned by Yazid Sufaat, the same man who housed two of the 9/11 hijackers. Two hijackers later sought medical help due to conditions consistent with infection via anthrax: Al Haznawi went to the emergency room for a skin lesion which he claimed was from “bumping into a suitcase,” and ringleader Mohamed Atta needed medicine for “skin irritation.” A team of bioterrorism experts from Johns Hopkins confirmed that anthrax was the most likely cause of the lesion. Meanwhile, the 9/11 hijackers were also trying to obtain crop-dusting airplanes.
So how did Mueller’s investigative team handle the case?
Mueller issued a statement in October of 2001, while anthrax victims were still dying: the FBI had found “no direct link to organized terrorism.” The John Hopkins team of experts was mistaken, the FBI continued, Al Haznawi never had a...
Lest American’s doubt that the playing field for international trade is fair they need look no further than our allies – the ones politicians say Trump’s new tariffs shouldn’t apply to. In a moment reminiscent of when Dorothy looked behind the curtain in the Wizard of Oz and found he was a sham, the CEO of the world’s largest automobile company Volkswagen recently uncomfortably questioned the wide disparity between import duties imposed on U.S. cars (10 percent) headed to the Europe versus what the U.S. imposes on German cars (2.5 percent). And U.S. made pickup trucks and work vans face 25 percent tariffs! Even while this unexpectedly candid German executive was stating the obvious, the European Union continued rattling its saber and threatened retaliatory duties on U.S. goods to punish America for imposing “unfair” tariffs on steel and aluminum.
The United States has been losing on international trade issues to our competitors for years. To most Americans this is obvious and undoubtedly contributed to Trump’s election. In all but a handful of sectors primarily associated with either Defense or the Internet (whether it be autos, information technology, aviation, semiconductors, electronics, etc., etc., etc.) American business, specifically manufacturing, has systematically lost market share to overseas competition and American workers are worse off in relative terms. Analysts frequently point to the obvious failures of Detroit and the dramatic decline in the domestic auto industry, but are American business executives incompetent in almost every other business sector that competes on the international playing field?
Of course, tariffs and duties are only part of the problem. Non-tariff barriers such as quotas, local content requirements, labeling, inspections, regulatory issues are more difficult to detect and stop than the obvious numerical barriers imposed using taxes and duties but are nonetheless significant barriers to companies wishing to base their operations in America and sell overseas. For example, when countries impose data restrictions (most have) that require information to be stored outside the U.S. that impacts the decisions of where those multibillion dollar data centers are built. Or when companies are forced into joint ventures in order to enter a market where their technologies are transferred and then stolen as has been well documented in China. Because of their insidious nature, non-tariff barriers have become...
Since 2010, Facebook allows you to download an archive file of all your interactions with the network. It’s a 5-click easy process that your grandmother can do (more details below).
Inside the .zip, lies an ‘index.html’ page that acts as a portal to your personal data. Visually, it looks like an ad-free stripped down version of Facebook that’s actually quite relaxing.
As I’m trying to reduce my exposure to social networks, I decided to take a look at this info. By extrapolating the data of a single individual (me), I might be able to better apprehend the capabilities of the beast. In the end, it all comes down to what is tracked and what can be deduced from that. We all gave up on privacy…
… we just don’t fully realize it.
Everything you expect is there: your profile, statuses, messages, friends, pokes (Tinder’s ancestor), photos, videos, comments, events. All of it in a 500mb zip file.
There’s a lot of material and you could sift it for hours. Most of the content is unsurprising but there are a few notable facts that are worth exploring. Limitless data storage period
Quite simply, Facebook never deletes anything. Unfriended friends, past relationships, former employers, previous names, address book: you name it.
I created my account Friday, September 14, 2007, at 10:59 am and all my actions have been recorded ever since. I feel that for the first time in history, 10 years of consistent human behavior have been meticulously gathered, stored & analyzed. Exhaustive photo metadata
Whenever you post a photo to Facebook, it keeps a record of all the data that’s attached to it. That seems quite obvious but I didn’t suspect it was so detailed. Have a look: Camera Maker, Model, Orientation, Exposure, F-Stop, ISO Speed, Focal Length, Latitude, Longitude & Upload IP Address Abundant log-in & session data points
Every time you open Facebook, the time, location, IP address, browser & device have been recorded. If you’re part of the 1.4B people that use Facebook on a daily basis, they have enough data points to determine your everyday life patterns with great accuracy: home and work address, daily commute, wake up & bedtime, travel duration & destination, etc.
Apparently, Facebook has 232 examples of what I look like.
How does it know? Well, every time you tag a photo, you’re adding to an enormous, user-driven wealth of knowledge and data. Every day, billions of people are telling an algorithm what a human face looks like, from different angles, at different ages, and in different light conditions.
The result? Facebook allegedly said that its image recognition models could recognize human faces with 98% accuracy & that it could identify a person in one picture out of 800 million in less than five seconds. Detailed contact list
When you install Facebook’s app on your phone, you give it the right to see your contact list. Once that’s done, Facebook keeps ALL your contacts information forever.
There’s no sneaky move here: the opt-in process on your phone is actually pretty clear about that. But seeing the phone numbers, emails & addresses of everyone you know (or knew) listed on Facebook is a bit disturbing. Get to know your advertiser
… because he surely knows you.
Facebook main revenue source are ads served by their powerful targeting engine using custom audiences built for advertisers.
Playstation seems to like me a lot.Apparently, 21 advertisers got access to my Facebook information:
The thing is, Facebook’s been purposely mysterious about what type of information they share with third parties. Despite numerous requests by users throughout the world, their response is systematical:
Advertisers do not give Facebook any users’ contact details. We only get such details in hashed form and they are, in any event, deleted within 48 hours. We are therefore not able to confirm what contact information an advertiser has for a particular user.
But looking at Facebook Business platform provides some details about what info is used in custom audiences targeting: email, phone number, first name, last name, city, state, country, date of birth, age & gender.
So Facebook has a lot of data about you & it shares it with a lot of advertisers: but why should you care? “Bring the world closer…”
… to ads.
I used to think there was no real drawback in ceding a lot of personal data to a 3rd party. After all, I get a free service that’s pleasant to use and really helpful.
Eventually, I realized that the harm potential really depends on 2 factors: the intentions and means of action of the organization that harvests your data.
That’s where Facebook gets really frightening: it’s hugely powerful & its only objective is to maximize the time spent & interactions made with its platform (just look at its financial KPI’s).
Don’t be fooled by the “bring the world closer together” motto: if Facebook’s here, it’s only to make money by selling ads. And to do that, they must target — in the most precise manner — the highest possible amount of eyeballs.
The thing is, do we really care?
How to get your data?
Starting with Facebook in 2010 and followed by Google and Twitter in 2011 and 2012, big social networks began allowing their users to download a backup file of everything they’ve ever posted.
To download your Facebook backup, just follow the 3 steps described here. Facebook will send you an email once your backup’s ready (it usually takes less than 10 minutes).
For a more holistic approach, check out PersonalData.io. It’s a web service that‘s helping individuals get a hold of their personal data. They’re doing an awesome job referencing data controllers & providing request templates filled with the correct wording & legal jargon. They then publish the requests & answers online so that everyone can appreciate corporate lawyers’ talent for complexifying exchanges & dodging questions.
Dig deeper
Most facts presented in this article are sourced from...
The new combat vehicles must be “optimized for fighting in dense urban terrain.” Fighting in narrow streets, in turn, requires smaller vehicles than the massive M1 — and one way to reduce weight is to take the humans out.
After 20 years of cancelled programs, the Army now wants prototypes of all-new robotic and “optionally manned” combat vehicles by 2019 so soldiers can begin field-testing them in 2020. Compared to current vehicles, they’ll be lighter, smaller and optimized for urban combat, said Brig. Gen. David Lesperance, head of the armor school at Fort Benning, Ga. and the hand-picked head of the service’s Cross-Functional Team on future ground vehicles.
Both established defense contractors and non-traditional companies are currently working on concepts, he told me and two other reporters this afternoon, and there’ll be intense experimentation, modeling, and simulation in the next “six to 12 months.”
Army Chief of Staff Mark Milley created the Cross Functional Teams last fall to advance his Big Six modernization priorities. What’s called Next-Generation Combat Vehicle (NGCV) is No. 2, second only to long-range artillery and missiles. Until this week, however, the CFTs have kept quiet. But Gen. Milley promised the Army would seek “radical,” ten-fold improvements in technology on a tight timeline. Lesperance’s proposal would definitely deliver on that promise — if it works.
Risk Factors
The problem is the post-Cold War Army’s track record on new armored fighting vehicles is unblemished by success. (The successful Armored Multi-Purpose Vehicleis essentially a modified Bradley, not an all new design). While continually upgrading and modernizing the 1980s-vintage M1 Abrams tank and the M2 Bradley, the Pentagon has cancelled the M8 Armored Gun System (1997), the Crusader howitzer (2002), the Future Combat Systems (2009), and the Ground Combat Vehicle (2013). FCS in particular is the dead elephant in the room, because it was the Army’s last attempt at this kind of technological great leap forward, specifically including both manned and robotic vehicles.
Milley has said specifically his Big Six modernization program won’t repeat the mistakes of FCS, and there are grounds for hope. First, technology is just better. The private sector has made dramatic advances in computing power, artificial intelligenc and ground robots since FCS was cancelled in 2009, when the iPhone was in its infancy and self-driving cars were a fantasy.
The Army, for its part, is taking care to prototype the new technology before it commits to an acquisition program, unlike FCS. It has also abandoned the cumbersome mega-program approach of FCS, which was a single contract for eight manned vehicles, multiple ground robots and drones, and a mobile network to...
