London Attack Shows Challenge of Stopping Terrorism in Age of ISIS

/0 Comments/in , /by

At least four people were killed, including a police officer and the suspected assailant, and 40 others wounded in a terrorist attack Wednesday in London.

British Prime Minister Theresa May described the suspected attacker, whose name she did not release, as a British-born man “inspired by Islamist ideology” whom the country’s domestic intelligence agency had investigated for connections to extremism.

The man drove a large vehicle into pedestrians on Westminster Bridge, which leads to the United Kingdom’s Parliament, authorities said.

After the vehicle crashed, the man got out and approached Parliament, where he fatally stabbed a police officer as he tried to enter the building. Police then fatally shot the attacker, authorities said.

The Islamic State, the terrorist group also known as ISIS, on Thursday claimed responsibility for the attack.

Heritage Foundation terrorism expert Robin Simcox told The Daily Signal that “anyone who has looked at this [security] issue will tell you that even with the best intelligence, this was going to happen at some point.”

Some of those wounded or injured were teenage schoolchildren from France, The New York Times and other media reported.

Police said they were treating the attack as terrorism. Parliament chambers and offices were placed on lockdown for more than two hours. Both the House of Commons and House of Lords will sit Thursday at their normal times.

The attack, which unfolded around 2:40 p.m. local time, came on the anniversary of suicide bombings in Brussels—claimed by ISIS—that killed 32 people, along with three bombers.

“This is the day we have planned for but we hoped would never happen,” Mark Rowley, the acting deputy commissioner with London’s Metropolitan Police Service, said at a news conference. “Sadly, it’s now a reality.”

President Donald Trump spoke with May to express his condolences over the attack.

Before Wednesday, Britain had not suffered a major terrorist attack since the rise of ISIS, unlike the U.S., France, Belgium, and Germany. But the United Kingdom long has been an attractive target for terrorists.

British intelligence services, considered some of the best in the world, have foiled planned attacks before they happened.

Long before the most recent threats, Britain maintained a comprehensive, preventive approach to counterterrorism, beginning its efforts shortly after the 2005 bombings by Islamist terrorists of London’s public transport network. That attack is commonly known as 7/7 for the month and day it occurred.

“The U.K had escaped the attacks of France and Germany—not because the U.K. is not a target but because it has a world-class intelligence service and collection capacity and the agencies work very well together,” Simcox said.

“Britain has an extremely well-integrated intelligence system,” Simcox continued. “But anyone who has looked at this issue will tell you that even with the best intelligence, this was going to happen at some point. The U.K. is a very high-value target for ISIS. It has had a host of plots thwarted in recent years, and eventually one would get through.”

In 2015, authorities made 35 percent more terrorism-related arrests in the United Kingdom than in 2010. About 800 individuals from Britain have traveled to Iraq and Syria to fight in the conflicts there. Among them was Mohammed Emwazi, a British Arab known as Jihadi John who notoriously beheaded multiple Americans and Britons before he was killed in a U.S. airstrike in November 2015.

Counterterrorism experts say the mode of the Wednesday’s attack—car-ramming and stabbing—are ISIS’ staples and relatively easy to carry out and difficult to stop.

“It’s impossible to stop in a free society because these are very simple attacks,” said Rashad Ali, a U.K.-based resident senior fellow at the Institute for Strategic Dialogue, in an interview with The Daily Signal. “Anyone can drive a car into anything and anyone can find a large knife. It would be completely in line with the kind of attacks we have seen over recent years.”

Indeed, in a December 2016 terrorist attack in Berlin, Germany, an attacker—who pledged allegiance to ISIS—drove a truck into a Christmas market, killing 12 people and injuring 56 others.

In Nice, France, last July, that same tactic was used when a Tunisian resident of France drove a cargo truck into crowds celebrating Bastille Day, resulting in the deaths of 86 people and injuring 434.

ISIS claimed responsibility for that attack as well.

“We don’t know for sure if [the London attack] is ISIS,” said Daveed Gartenstein-Ross, a senior fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, in an interview with The Daily Signal. “But looking at the ISIS sphere, a lot of the reasons why this stuff works is the attacks that are a little more low grade are harder to protect against than grandiose plots that occurred in the decade following 9/11.”

Gartenstein-Ross and other experts say these types of attacks are becoming more difficult to stop because domestic extremists are able to use encrypted technology to communicate with terrorist groups overseas.

The New York Times recently reported that as ISIS has lost territory in Iraq and Syria, its members are increasingly conceiving and guiding domestic attacks through virtual communications.

“ISIS has operatives where their role is to basically do online what physical recruiters used to do,” Gartenstein-Ross said. “They identify domestic operatives, move them forward to the point where they are ready to carry out attacks, help them prepare propaganda in advance, and even help them do technical things if necessary.”

Experts say these methods make the jobs of already overburdened law enforcement agencies that much harder.

“Law enforcement is the least of the problems,” Gartenstein-Ross said. “They are doing everything they can to stop these plots.”

Ali seconded this view.

“You can’t take away from this [London attack] that counterterrorism measures aren’t working,” Ali said. “That isn’t true. They are working because the large-scale attacks are being thwarted. Now isn’t the time for recriminations of groups and knee-jerk reactions. We need to heal before we decide how to respond to this.” (For more from the author of “London Attack Shows Challenge of Stopping Terrorism in Age of ISIS” please click HERE)

Follow Joe Miller on Twitter HERE and Facebook HERE.

Last Call: Donald Trump Plans White House Meeting With the Freedom Caucus on Healthcare Bill

/0 Comments/in , /by

President Donald Trump continues to court members the Conservative House Freedom Caucus, pushing them to support the House-led bill to replace Obamacare.

The president has scheduled a meeting with members of the caucus at the White House, just hours before the bill is scheduled for a vote. Trump wants to make a deal, appearing willing to make last minute changes to woo conservatives to support the measure.

Freedom Caucus Chairman Mark Meadows (R-N.C.) (pictured) said in an interview with Fox News host Sean Hannity that he and Trump had come to an “agreement in principle,” about the bill, but was still hammering out details.

Meadows explained to reporters on Wednesday that members of the freedom caucus want to repeal Obamacare’s “essential health benefits” and Title I insurance regulations, in order to lower premiums. (Read more from “Last Call: Donald Trump Plans White House Meeting With the Freedom Caucus on Healthcare Bill” HERE)

Follow Joe Miller on Twitter HERE and Facebook HERE.

Cuba: Christian Leader Receives 3-Year Prison Sentence for Anti-Castro Comments

/0 Comments/in , /by

Eduardo Cardet, the head of Cuba’s anti-communist Christian Liberation Movement (MCL), has been sentenced to serve three years in prison following his violent arrest in front of his two young children after the death of Fidel Castro in November.

Some witnesses say Cardet had been heard criticizing the government for forcing Cubans to sign overwrought goodbye notes in government-issued “condolence books.” The Cuban government imposed a nine-day “mourning period” following the elder Castro’s death in late November 2016, imprisoning those who dared defy it.

On Tuesday, Cuban courts convicted Cardet of assault against an officer of the state, a crime his family who witnessed his arrest, say he did not commit. “The sentence is based on manipulated data, without taking into consideration the testimony of defense witnesses,” Cardet’s wife, Yaimaris Vecino, said in a statement published by the MCL. “As we imagined, this has been another attempt to detain him as long as possible.” His family, she says, will appeal the sentence.

Vecino witnessed her husband’s arrest. Cuban police apprehended and beat him, she says, while she held her children away from the scene. Police hauled Cardet away and have since denied him bail on three occasions.

Amnesty International has declared Cardet a prisoner of conscience. “Doctor Cardet is confined to an Holguín prison just for having criticized Fidel Castro,” a statement released Wednesday by the NGO read. Cardet is a medical doctor by trade. “Dr. Cardet is a prisoner of conscience who should be freed immediately.” Amnesty declared Cardet a prisoner of conscience in February. (Read more from “Cuba: Christian Leader Receives 3-Year Prison Sentence for Anti-Castro Comments” HERE)

Follow Joe Miller on Twitter HERE and Facebook HERE.

Ann Coulter: We Have Now Hit Full-On Crazy

/0 Comments/in , /by

Liberals are ecstatic that a judge in Hawaii is writing immigration policy for the entire country, and that policy is: We have no right to tell anyone that he can’t live in America. (Unless they’re Christians — those guys we can keep out.)

As subtly alluded to in the subtitle of Adios, America: The Left’s Plan to Turn Our Country into a Third World Hellhole, the goal of liberals is for the poor of the world to have a constitutional right to come here whenever they want . . .

After nearly 1 million Rwandans were murdered by other Rwandans in 1994, our government asked itself: Why not bring more of this fascinating Rwandan culture to America? Ten thousand of them poured in. So far, nearly 400 have been convicted in the United States of lying on visa applications about their role in the genocide.

And that’s why we have to tighten our belt, America! Massive international investigations don’t come cheap.

Almost every immigration case is a con, something we find out every time there’s a San Bernardino shooting and half the familyturns out to have scammed our immigration officials. One hundred percent of the “humanitarian” cases are frauds. (Read more from “Ann Coulter: We Have Now Hit Full-On Crazy” HERE)

Follow Joe Miller on Twitter HERE and Facebook HERE.

The Ridiculous Reason the FBI Has Decided to Investigate Conservative Websites

/0 Comments/in , , /by

The FBI is investigating whether conservative news sites, including Breitbart and InfoWars, cooperated with the Russian government in an effort to influence the presidential election.

McClatchy reports the investigation is focused on the use of strategically-timed social media “bots” employed to blitz social media with pro-Donald Trump and anti-Hillary Clinton stories.

A bot is simply a program that gathers information based on defined specifications.

“The bots’ end products were largely millions of Twitter and Facebook posts carrying links to stories on conservative internet sites such as Breitbart News and InfoWars, as well as on the Kremlin-backed RT News and Sputnik News,” sources told McClatchy.

“This may be one of the most highly impactful information operations in the history of intelligence,” one former U.S. intelligence official stated on a condition of anonymity.

Federal investigators are seeking to discover if Breitbart and other sites cooperated in the efforts.

According to Alexa, Breitbart’s web traffic shot up dramatically in October, in relation to other similar websites, and has remained at a high level since. It currently is in the top 100 most viewed websites in the country, even outpacing FoxNews.com.

Breitbart reported on Nov. 19 that it experienced a record 300 million page views over the previous 31 days.

The news site did not respond for comment about the McClatchy story.

Breitbart’s former chairman, Steve Bannon, stepped down to become the CEO of the Trump campaign in August. He now serves as a top adviser on the president’s White House staff.

InfoWars’ Alex Jones responded to the story on his radio program on Monday.

“To be called a Russian asset by McClatchy and by the LA Times and by a bunch of other publications today is funny, if it wasn’t so serious,” he said.

“I don’t personally take this as a threat … I’m threatened for the country. I mean if the Russians want to secure our borders, cut our taxes, not have us go bankrupt, rebuild our military, block radical Islam — well then, hell, I’m a Russian agent! But I’m not,” Jones added, according to The Daily Caller.

As reported by Western Journalism, FBI Director James Comey confirmed on Monday in testimony before the House Intelligence Committee that his agency is investigating “alleged links” between the Russian government and the Trump campaign.

Earlier this month, former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper stated on Meet the Press there was “no evidence” of collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia.

House Intelligence Committee Chairman Devin Nunes, R-Calif., voiced the same conclusion on Fox News Sunday. (For more from the author of “The Ridiculous Reason the FBI Has Decided to Investigate Conservative Websites” please click HERE)

Follow Joe Miller on Twitter HERE and Facebook HERE.

When Asked About Latest Wiretapping Claims, Spicer Drops a Big League Bombshell

/0 Comments/in , /by

Sean Spicer revealed during Wednesday’s press briefing that they were caught off guard by Congressman Devin Nunes’ Wednesday press conference, in which he stated President Trump’s personal communications may actually have been collected by the Obama administration during the 2016 election.

Nunes, chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, told reporters that significant development in the committee’s investigation revealed “that on numerous occasions the intelligence community incidentally collected information about U.S. citizens involved in the Trump transition.”

Reporters asked Spicer if the White House was “concerned” about the optics of Nunes’ meeting with the president on the findings, a meeting which might be construed as White House interference in an ongoing investigation.

Spicer responded in the negative — clarifying that it was Nunes not President Trump who requested the meeting — before blasting a double standard in the media.

“Let me get this straight,” Spicer continued. “Number one, two weeks ago, we said this is the appropriate venue. Number two, you have asked over and over again why aren’t we meeting with certain individuals.” (Read more from “When Asked About Latest Wiretapping Claims, Spicer Drops a Big League Bombshell” HERE)

Follow Joe Miller on Twitter HERE and Facebook HERE.

Gorsuch Nearly Got Through His Hearings Unscathed — Then SCOTUS Stepped In

/0 Comments/in , , /by

Senate Democrats put Judge Neil Gorsuch on the defensive during his third appearance before the Senate Committee on the Judiciary Wednesday, grilling him over one of his holdings that was reversed by the Supreme Court and for his alleged ties to “dark money.”

The exchanges marked the first time Democratic attacks on the judge seemed to gain traction, since GOP aides rushed spin to reporters for the first time in the hearings. Despite this, there was a tangible sense inside the Capitol Hill committee room that the main work of the hearings had more or less concluded. Empty seats filled the press gallery, before a dais that was nearly vacant for most of the day.

In the early minutes of the hearing, the Supreme Court handed down a ruling which overturned one of Gorsuch’s own holdings. The case involved an autistic student seeking compensation for costs incurred pursuing private education. The student’s family argued they were owed compensation because a special education plan devised by the student’s public school was inadequate to meet his needs, forcing the family to seek a private alternative.

A lower court found in the school’s favor, and anchored much of its analysis in an opinion Gorsuch wrote in 2008 as a judge on the 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. In the ruling, Gorsuch said schools are in compliance with the Individuals with Disabilities in Education Act (IDEA) — which requires public schools to provide disabled children with a “free appropriate public education” — so long as they provide some form of educational benefit to the student. The Supreme Court unanimously overturned this holding, finding public schools had to provide a greater level of benefit than Gorsuch asserted.

Senate Democrats trumpeted the decision as further proof Gorsuch consistently aligns with the powerful, a theme on which they hit throughout the week.

(Read more from “Gorsuch Nearly Got Through His Hearings Unscathed — Then SCOTUS Stepped In” HERE)

Follow Joe Miller on Twitter HERE and Facebook HERE.

State Passes Pro-Life Bill to Protect Unborn Babies With Down Syndrome

/0 Comments/in , /by

The Oklahoma House passed a pro-life bill Tuesday that would prevent women from aborting unborn children diagnosed with Down syndrome.

Known as HB 1549 or the Prenatal Nondiscrimination Act of 2017, the bill protects unborn children with Down syndrome or another “genetic abnormality” from being aborted because of their diagnosis. Physicians who knowingly violate the act would have their licenses removed. The bill passed Tuesday, which was also World Down Syndrome Day, with a House vote of 67-16, NewsOK reported.

The bill comes at a time when many pro-choice advocates around the world are pushing acceptance of abortions based on genetic abnormalities. LifeSite News reported last week that in Iceland, 100 percent of unborn babies diagnosed with Down syndrome are aborted. Last year a French court upheld a ban on a video called Dear Future Mom celebrating the lives of children and adults with Down syndrome. The ban was upheld since the video was “likely to disturb the conscience of women” who had chosen to abort their babies because of a Down syndrome diagnosis, France’s State Council ruled.

Oklahoma’s HB 1549 will now move to the state Senate. (For more from the author of “State Passes Pro-Life Bill to Protect Unborn Babies With Down Syndrome” please click HERE)

Follow Joe Miller on Twitter HERE and Facebook HERE.

In New Zealand, “Transgender” Wins Weightlifting Contest, River Becomes Person

/0 Comments/in , /by

Is it strange that in a country where a woman pretending to be a man wins a weight-lifting contest, that the government would declare a river to be a person?

Wait. It might have been a man pretending to be a woman. You can never tell in these “transgender” stories which part of Reality has been affronted.

What we do know is that the New Zealand Herald reported that a “transgender” person named Hubbard won a weight-lifting competition. Hubbard beat the second-place finisher by hoisting about 40 additional pounds.

Maybe this was a man pretending to be a woman. In that case, then a man lifted more weight than a woman. So Dog-Bites-Man. Or it was a woman pretending to be a man. In that case it must have been a woman juiced on various drugs, like anabolic steroids and testosterone, to make her competitive with real men. And that makes it a story of performance-enhancing illegal drug use.

Both stories are depressing.

As What Gender Does the River Identify?

So is the story that New Zealand’s Parliament has recognized the Whanganui River as a legal person. Yes, the river, also called Te Awa Tupua, is to be treated the same as hot dog hawkers and college professors. According to BioEdge:

Riverine personhood is an untested concept in a Western legal system. According to the government, Te Awa Tupua will now have its own legal personality with all the corresponding rights, duties and liabilities of a legal person. Lawyers say that the river cannot vote and cannot be charged with homicide if people drown in it. But it will have to pay taxes, if liable. The gender of the river is unspecified at the moment.

How this riverine person will pay taxes is something to be watched. Maybe in the spirit of Finders-Keepers, the river will offer up rings and other jewelry lost by actual people while swimming. But will swimming even be allowed? Unless you’re still preborn, you can’t swim in an actual person. May you swim in a riverine person?

That brings up the natural question: How will we know Mr. — or Ms.? — Whanganui’s opinion about swimming? We don’t even know his or her preferred “gender.” Obviously, like in Hubbard’s case, people are free to call themselves whatever “gender” they wish. Thinking anything else is rank bigotry. But we at least have the advantage of asking Hubbard’s opinion whether she is a he or he is a she, or whatever. We can assume that Whanganui gurgles, as all rivers do, but who speaks River? Who can tell us Whanganui’s preferred gender?

We’ll have to rely on hydromancy. That’s the “method of divination by means of water, including the color, ebb and flow, or ripples produced by pebbles dropped in a pool.” Or in this case, dropped in a river.

Hydromancy requires a hydromancer. That’s an actual human person who can interpret the wiggles and waves of (Mr. or Mrs. or Ms. or Mx.) Whanganui into human commands and desires. Since New Zealand’s Parliament says that these human-like desires exist, they’re going to have to fund the position of Official Hydromancer (which, in a way, they are).

The person-river also now has rights.

One politician said, “The river itself has the right itself not to be polluted. It has the right not to be degraded. It has the right not to be overdrawn before it can replenish itself.”

So Rivers Have Rights. Do They Have Duties?

These are fine rights, sure to swell in number as time passes, as all rights do. But it does seem unfair that the river gets only rights but has no duties. It can commit homicide but can’t be held accountable for it? Wait and see: this leniency will encourage bad behavior, like flooding. Don’t anger Whanganui!

There are, of course, deep tangled sensitive politics behind New Zealand’s move to call a river not a river but a man (or woman). Yet these motivations, weighty as they are, fail to explain the full enthusiasm of the Parliament for its ruling. For instance, the government could have ceded control of the river or applied vast quantities of money to those who hold the river sacred. Instead, they insisted that all of New Zealand call the river a person.

Or it could have agreed that those who wanted could call the river a person. Instead, it gave freedom to those who wanted to follow Reality to call the river a river.

Yet if a man can call himself a woman (or vice versa) and expect all must agree with his choice of “gender,” it follows that a river can be a man and that all must agree that a river is a man.

Or a woman. (For more from the author of “In New Zealand, “Transgender” Wins Weightlifting Contest, River Becomes Person” please click HERE)

Follow Joe Miller on Twitter HERE and Facebook HERE.

ISIS’s Killer Drones Are a Threat, but the Pentagon Is Bracing to Face More-Advanced ‘Suicide’ Aircraft

/0 Comments/in , /by

The Pentagon, concerned about the danger that small, armed drones pose to U.S. troops, is moving forward with a project that looks beyond remote-control aircraft used by the Islamic State to an even more complex problem: an aerial raid of autonomous suicide bombers.

The unmanned bombers have not yet appeared in combat, but defense officials already are researching how to stop them. Laden with explosives or other dangerous materials, they would operate by crashing into U.S. troops in a combat zone and would not be as easy to detect as existing drones used by the Islamic State, because they would not rely on radio frequencies for remote controlling. Instead, they would be programmed to carry out a specific mission, making them especially hard to see coming.

The effort to stop the aircraft is known as the Mobile Force Protection Program and is overseen by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, which examines ways that technology can help the U.S. military. DARPA anticipates awarding contracts within weeks for the first of three phases of testing and research, said J.C. Ledé, who oversees the program . . .

Early stages of the research were launched in October with a solicitation to industry, and final proposals for the first phase are due in January, according to DARPA documents. The program is focused specifically on going beyond using electronic jamming to stop unmanned planes and helicopters of to 200 pounds. Each company picked is expected to get about $3 million in the first phase, with the possibility of continuing on to two subsequent phases of work that are longer and more lucrative. (For more from the author of “ISIS’s Killer Drones Are a Threat, but the Pentagon Is Bracing to Face More-Advanced ‘Suicide’ Aircraft” please click HERE)

Follow Joe Miller on Twitter HERE and Facebook HERE.