North Korea Blames US For Internet Outage, Calls Obama a "Monkey Inhabiting a Tropical Rainforest"

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NKoreaLeaderBy FoxNews.com. North Korea blames the U.S. for the country’s internet shutdown amid allegations of the country hacking Sony Pictures as retaliation for releasing a movie featuring the assassination of the Kim Jong-un.

The country’s National Defense Commission also hurled a racial insult toward President Obama calling him a “monkey inhabiting a tropical forest.”

The regime has vehemently denied any involvement in the cyberattack on Sony, but has expressed its displeasure of the movie.

It is not the first time North Korea has hurled insults toward Washington. Earlier this year, the North called U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry a wolf with a “hideous” lantern jaw and then called South Korean President Park Guen-hye a prostitute. (Read more about how North Korea blames US HERE)
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FBI’s Claim that North Korea Hacked Sony Faces Criticism

By Judson Berger. It’s been a week since the U.S. government blamed North Korea for the cyber-attack against Sony Pictures Entertainment — and many security experts still aren’t convinced Kim Jong-un is the culprit.

The FBI’s announcement, rather than settling the debate, has only fueled widespread speculation over the source of the attack.

Skeptics claim the evidence the FBI cited is flimsy and inconclusive. They question whether Pyongyang really had the motive, or the ability, to scramble Sony’s systems.

And they’re pushing a range of alternative theories.

Could it have been a disgruntled former Sony employee? Another, more technologically savvy, foreign government? A private band of hackers? (Read more from this story HERE)
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Some Speculate that North Korean Hackers are Behind Fatal Accident at South Korean Nuclear Plant

By John Hayward. South Korea’s government-run hydroelectric and nuclear power company was threatened by an enigmatic group of hackers last week, at the same time the North Korean government was threatening to attack the United States and its allies for daring to suggest that Kim Jong Un’s regime might be behind the attack on Sony Pictures. South Korea puts up with a steady stream of mischief from hackers who profess varying degrees of separation from the North Korean government, but this latest threat was taken very seriously.

The mysterious attackers stole and published blueprints of South Korean nuclear reactors and personal data on plant employees, along with some ominous technical data related to accidental radiation exposure, and suggested something bad would happen if at least three of the country’s 23 reactors were not shut down by Christmas Day. As the UK Independent reported, anti-nuke radicals in Hawaii claimed responsibility for the data leak, but their culpability was not firmly established. Students of the First Cyber War should by now be familiar with the shadow dances of deniability and separation conducted by hostile regimes, and the converse possibility that the work of independent digital vandals could be mistakenly attributed to foreign powers with aligned interests… especially if said foreign powers make a point of applauding when something goes kablooey. Nobody’s wearing a uniform or marching under a flag in this new brand of warfare.

The South Korean government took the threat seriously enough to conduct emergency drills and step up cybersecurity efforts. Emergency teams were put on standby alert through New Year’s Day. . .

Today brings word that a fatal accident has occurred at the site of a nuclear plant under construction in the southeastern city of Ulsan. (Read more from this story HERE)
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The Anti-North Korean film The Interview hit with hundreds of thousands of pirated downloads on Christmas

By Daniel Nussbaum. The Interview is a hit with pirates. The now-infamous Sony Pictures comedy has already been illegally downloaded over 750,000 times in its first 20 hours of release, file-sharing news website TorrentFreak told Breitbart News Thursday morning.

The film began popping up on illegal downloading sites about an hour after its 1 pm Eastern release on YouTube, XBox, Google Play, and other online avenues on Christmas Day. However, only U.S. residents could watch the film through those online outlets, leaving many international users out of luck.

That’s where the pirating comes in. Many commenters on the torrent’s download page indicated that they would have paid to see the film, had they been given the opportunity.

“I want to pay to see it,” wrote one commenter. “But as I’m not in the US, I can’t pay to see it or see it from where I live. It’s not even out in the cinemas where I live and probably will not be. So torrent is the only way I can see it.”

Even the torrent site The Pirate Bay, considered the largest in the world, included a link to the film on the top left corner of its site, despite the site having been down for weeks after a raid by Swedish police crippled its servers. (Read more from this story HERE)

What is America's Survival Plan?

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nazi-islam-saluteWe’re facing the greatest national security threat we have ever known and there is no coherent plan to battle the enemy. This nation is so far behind the eight ball, the president and his minions won’t even name the enemy, no less fight it.

Name = Islam

Even worse, those in positions of power and influence misrepresent what the enemy stands for. Like a pre-recorded announcement that just won’t stop, we are endlessly subjected to the false refrain: Islam is a religion of peace. By Muslim lights, we live in the Dar al Harb, the territory of war, simply because we refuse to accept Islam. We didn’t declare war, Mohammed did.

And when it comes to the threat of Islamic supremacism, it’s not only the left that’s putting us at risk. The right is hardly better, as both parties serve up a boatload of ignorance, complicity, and cowardice on a daily basis. Our elected officials draft legislation, set foreign policy, speak at podiums, sit on panels, write press releases, pen op-eds, and yack away on talk shows about the wonders of Islam. If anyone challenges what they’re peddling, the peddlers get rather hot under the collar. As for the truth-tellers, they are mocked, marginalized, and vilified.

And what a truth it is, as we confront a totalitarian ideology bent on world domination ruled by one religion — an ideology that is infecting every aspect of our culture and which has the potential to destroy all of civilization. . .

How can that be? The most brutal and ruthless enemy is advancing toward us and has infiltrated every arm of our government, and there is hardly a word said, no less a plan offered, as to how to beat them back. Quite the opposite. We are welcoming them with open arms. Giving them the keys to the kingdom. (Read more about America’s survival plan HERE)

Russia: NATO is Our Number One Military Threat

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Photo Credit: AP

Photo Credit: AP

Russia identified NATO as the nation’s number one military threat and raised the possibility of a broader use of precision conventional weapons to deter foreign aggression under a new military doctrine signed by President Vladimir Putin on Friday.

NATO flatly denied it is a threat to Russia, and accused Moscow of undermining European security.

The new doctrine, which comes amid tensions over Ukraine, reflected the Kremlin’s readiness to take a stronger posture in response to what it sees as U.S.-led efforts to isolate and weaken Russia.

The paper maintains the provisions of the previous, 2010 edition of the military doctrine regarding the use of nuclear weapons.

It says Russia could employ nuclear weapons in retaliation for the use of nuclear or other weapons of mass destruction against the country or its allies, and also in the case of aggression involving conventional weapons that “threatens the very existence” of the Russian state. (Read more from this story HERE)

Fallout From Obama's Illegal Amnesty Continues: $50 Million Spent on New Immigration Workers

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Photo Credit: Fibonacci blue

Photo Credit: Fibonacci blue

By Brian Hughes. The Obama administration is spending nearly $50 million to hire and house 1,000 new federal workers to process immigration cases after President Obama announced that he would unilaterally protect up to 5 million illegal immigrants from deportation.

The Citizenship and Immigration Services agency will devote $40 million to annual salaries and almost $8 million a year to the lease of a new building just outside Washington, in which employees will review the claims of illegal immigrants who apply for newly protected status, according to the New York Times.

In recent weeks, critics have warned that Obama’s executive action would further increase the federal bureaucracy, leaving taxpayers on the hook for the expansion of immigration services. (Read more from this story regarding additional costs of Obama’s illegal amnesty HERE)

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More Waste: Environmental Protection Agency Overpaid $1 Million for Call Center

By Sarah Westwood. Government investigators believe Environmental Protection Agency officials may have paid a contractor nearly $1 million more than they should have for operating a telephone hotline that processed fewer calls than claimed.

The EPA inspector general said it received a hotline tip about possible contract fraud in its information office. That office handles inquiries from the general public and internal EPA customers, using a contractor to provide call center services.

At one point, the agency relied on the number of calls and emails the center was receiving to approve a jump in prices. At another, the agency cited the number of reported issues, which could have been the subject of multiple calls or emails to justify lower prices.

The inconsistent decision-making “increases the risk that the EPA may be overcharged for call center services,” the IG said.

The EPA was also spending more than it was making on the call center. Losing money prompted the agency to use the number of issues, not the volume of calls, as an excuse to lower its contract price even though the call volume had not fallen below the minimum levels needed to make such a change. (Read more from this story HERE)

ISIS Can't Govern: ISIS Controlled Syria, Iraq Falling Apart

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Photo Credit: The Independent

Photo Credit: The Independent

By Liz Sly. Isis’s vaunted exercise in state-building appears to be crumbling, as living conditions deteriorate across the territories under its control, exposing the shortcomings of a group that devotes most of its energies to fighting battles and enforcing strict rules.

Residents say services are collapsing, prices are soaring and medicines are scarce in towns and cities across the “caliphate” that Isis proclaimed in Iraq and Syria, belying the group’s boasts that it is delivering a model form of governance for Muslims.

Slick videos depicting functioning governing offices and the distribution of aid fail to match the reality of growing deprivation and disorganised, erratic leadership, the residents say. A trumpeted Isis currency has not materialised, nor have the passports the group promised. Schools barely function, doctors are few and disease is on the rise.

In the Iraqi city of Mosul, the water has become undrinkable because supplies of chlorine have dried up, according to a journalist living there, who spoke on the condition of anonymity. Hepatitis was spreading and flour for bread was becoming increasingly scarce, he said. “Life in the city is nearly dead, and it is as though we are living in a giant prison,” he said.

In the Syrian city of Raqqa, the group’s self-styled capital, water and electricity are available for no more than three or four hours a day, rubbish piles up uncollected and the city’s poor scavenge for scraps . . . (Read more about ISIS’s failures in ISIS controlled Syria and Iraq HERE)
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Despite ISIS’s Dysfunctional Self-Governance, Some Believe We’re Grossly Underestimating ISIS

By Noah Rothman. Following the news that Islamic State fighters had successfully downed a Jordanian warplane and captured its pilot, U.S. Central Command claimed that there was no evidence that ISIS was responsible for shooting that aircraft out of the sky. In a statement, CENTCOM offered glowing praise for America’s freshly demoralized regional ally and offered no alternative theory for why that aircraft was lost. Take that as you will.

For all the talk of ISIS’s military prowess, or lack thereof as the case above may be, there has until recently been a dearth of substantive discussion about the state of affairs in the areas occupied by ISIS. The dangerous campaign being waged by coalition forces on the fringes of the so-called Islamic State has only just begun, and it is already claiming American and coalition assets and lives. Eventually, that campaign will need to press on into the state’s interior.

But “eventually” seems farther and farther off as the weeks go by. . .

This situation brought to mind recent comments from . In an interview following his return from ISIS-controlled areas, the intrepid reporter wondered if Western leaders were not seriously underestimating the danger posed by ISIS’s brutish militants.

In an interview with CNN, [Juergen Todenhoefer, a journalist who recently toured areas under Islamic State control] told familiar tales of the horrors of child soldiers, systematic beheadings, and foreign fighters with an unshakable loyalty to ISIS’s cause for whom the word “zealotry” seems an insufficient description. He also told, however, of the status of the “state” aspects of the Islamic State. Perhaps Todenhoefer’s most terrifying revelation was his claim that a sense of routine is beginning to take hold amongst the remaining residents of the cities flying an ISIS banner. (Read more from this story HERE)

Booting SGT Bergdahl Out of the Army Proving to be Difficult

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Photo Credit: Reuters

Photo Credit: Reuters

Getting Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl out of the Army is not going to be easy.

As Army leaders consider how to handle the former Taliban captive who is accused of misconduct, their options are narrowed by an obscure personnel regulation: Because the former prisoner of war’s term of enlistment expired during his five years in captivity, the Army must now grant him an honorable discharge or launch a court-martial.

“We’re in an all-or-nothing situation,” said Jeffrey Addicott, a retired Army lieutenant colonel and judge advocate who served as a legal adviser to the Army Special Forces and now teaches law at St. Mary’s University School of Law in Texas.

The Army announced Monday that the investigation of Bergdahl has been forwarded to a top general, or convening authority, to take “appropriate action.”

For now Bergdahl, 28, remains assigned to a desk job at an Army headquarters unit in San Antonio. The Army declined to release any details of the six-month investigation into the circumstances surrounding his disappearance.

Man Jailed for Videotaping Cops Wins Lawsuit

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cellphone recording copsAn Orlando man jailed for filming a police officer got more than his phone back.

Alberto Troche, who sued Orlando police for wrongfully jailing him and taking his phone, received $15,000 in a settlement, the Orlando Sentinel reported this week.

According to the lawsuit, Troche saw police arresting a man late one night in December of last year. Based on cries of pain from the man being arrested, Troche thought police were using excessive force and pulled out his phone to record. Several others did the same.

Police arrested Troche for recording the officers. Troche claimed he stood 10-15 feet away from the arrest and never interfered. He spent 15 hours in custody and didn’t get his phone back for three weeks.

In a video of the incident, police can be heard yelling at an indignant crowd. Police threaten to take their cell phones because they were recording, and then appeared to confiscate cell phones. They claimed the phones were needed for evidence. (Read more about what happened after Mr. Troche was confronted for videotaping cops HERE)

Watch man get arrested for videotaping police HERE.

Calls for Judge to Resign After She Released Man Who Allegedly Threatened to Kill Cops

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judge-gangbangerBy Josh Saul and Jamie Schram. A Brooklyn judge cut loose a gang member who had posted online threats to gun down cops in the hours after two NYPD officers were executed in their patrol car — ignoring prosecutors’ pleas to keep him behind bars, The Post has learned.

Criminal Court Judge Laura Johnson let Devon Coley, 18, waltz free without bail despite the fact that he faces seven years behind bars on charges he made a terroristic threat — complete with an image of a killer shooting cops in their car — and is awaiting trial in two unrelated cases involving assault and gun possession.

Johnson’s stunning no-bail decision came just two days after Saturday’s broad-daylight slayings of Officers Rafael Ramos and Wenjian Liu by a gunman bent on avenging the deaths of Eric Garner and Michael Brown at the hands of police.

It also came after Mayor Bill de Blasio’s plea earlier Monday for New Yorkers to “call 911” if they suspect someone is planning to attack the NYPD.

“She should resign from the bench,” said Dennis Quirk, head of the state court officers union. “She’s not fit to be a judge.” Read more about the pressure on this judge to resign HERE.
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After NYC Deaths, a Surge of Support for Police

By David Crary. Rocker Jon Bon Jovi donned a New York Police Department T-shirt on stage. Well-wishers delivered home-baked cookies by the hundreds to police in Cincinnati. In Mooresville, North Carolina, police and sheriff’s officers were treated by residents to a chili dinner.

At a time when many in the nation’s police community feel embattled, Americans in cities and towns across the country are making an effort to express support and gratitude.

“I’m showing a little solidarity for my brothers in the NYPD and all of those who protect and serve us every day,” Bon Jovi told a cheering crowd at his concert Monday in Red Bank, New Jersey.

The surge of support is linked to two distinct but overlapping developments.

The immediate catalyst was the killings of two New York City police officers as they sat in their patrol car in Brooklyn on Saturday. For many of those making appreciative gestures, there also was a desire to counter the widespread protests steeped with criticism of police that followed grand jury decisions not to charge white officers for their roles in the deaths of black men Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri, and Eric Garner in New York. Read more from this story HERE.
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JetBlue Offering Free Flights to Cops Wishing to Attend NYPD Officers’ Funerals

By Daniel Prendergast and Natasha Velez. JetBlue airlines said Wednesday it will be offering free flights to police officers from around the country who wish to attend the funerals for the two slain NYPD cops killed over the weekend.

The airline said it will allow up to two cops from each department to fly at no charge from anywhere across its route network to New York City.

“We’re honored to do what we can to support the communities we serve, and our team has made flights available to law enforcement agencies … who wish to send representatives to New York to support their brethren,” said JetBlue spokeswoman Sharon Jones. Read more from this story HERE.

After 70% of Illegal Alien Families Fail to Show for Hearings, Feds Plan to Track Them with GPS

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Ankle BraceletThe Department of Homeland Security will reportedly track more illegal immigrants with GPS devices because a whopping 70% of illegal immigrants who traveled to America as a family unit failed to show up to their immigration hearings.

This summer, illegal immigrants from Central America flooded across the border, believing that “notices to appear” that illegal immigrants receive after being released were “permisos” to remain indefinitely in America. . .

According to an Associated Press report, as a result, “Immigration and Customs Enforcement earlier this month launched a program to give GPS devices to some parents caught crossing the Mexican border illegally with their children in Texas’ Rio Grande Valley.” The program will reportedly track 250 “heads of households” with GPS ankle bracelets.

Read more about tracking illegal alien families with GPS HERE.

Video: Tylenol Attempts to Normalize Four-Parent, Lesbian Family

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Lesbian FamilyAmong the individuals featured in the [Tylenol Pain Reliever’s] “For What Matters Most” video series is the Beser Carr Schneider Musich family, a mixed unit that is comprised of a four parents, including a lesbian couple, the ex-husband of one of those women and another individual.

The two-minute clip, which offers a modernized, re-imagination of Norman Rockwell’s famed “Freedom From Want” painting, describes how the Beser Carr Schneider Musich family formed, while also showing the four adults and their children seated together around the Thanksgiving table.

“[My husband] and I were married for 10 years. We’ve known each other since we were 12,” one of the mothers proclaims in the clip. “When we divorced we had Cole and Elias and we decided that they should never be divided between the households.”

Her partner then explains that the two women met while the husband and wife were separated and began dating with the husband’s blessing. After the divorce, the lesbian couple, the ex-husband and another adult essentially became a mixed family that tries to parent together.

Read more about the lesbian family portrayed in the Tylenol video HERE.