For Sale: Systems that Can Secretly Track Where Cellphone Users Go Around the Globe

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tracking-teez-606Makers of surveillance systems are offering governments across the world the ability to track the movements of almost anybody who carries a cellphone, whether they are blocks away or on another continent.

The technology works by exploiting an essential fact of all cellular networks: They must keep detailed, up-to-the-minute records on the locations of their customers to deliver calls and other services to them. Surveillance systems are secretly collecting these records to map people’s travels over days, weeks or longer, according to company marketing documents and experts in surveillance technology.

The world’s most powerful intelligence services, such as the National Security Agency and Britain’s GCHQ, long have used cellphone data to track targets around the globe. But experts say these new systems allow less technically advanced governments to track people in any nation — including the United States — with relative ease and precision.

Users of such technology type a phone number into a computer portal, which then collects information from the location databases maintained by cellular carriers, company documents show. In this way, the surveillance system learns which cell tower a target is currently using, revealing his or her location to within a few blocks in an urban area or a few miles in a rural one.

It is unclear which governments have acquired these tracking systems, but one industry official, speaking on the condition of anonymity to share sensitive trade information, said that dozens of countries have bought or leased such technology in recent years. This rapid spread underscores how the burgeoning, multibillion-dollar surveillance industry makes advanced spying technology available worldwide.

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ISIL, ISIS – Now QSIS? Top Sunni Cleric Says Stop Calling Terrorists ‘Islamic’

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Photo Credit: Dar al-Iftaa

Photo Credit: Dar al-Iftaa

Stand by for a new acronym for the ISIS/ISIL terrorist group causing havoc across Syria and Iraq.

One of the Arab world’s top Sunni authorities launched a campaign Sunday urging media to drop all names for the group that incorporate the word “Islamic,” in favor of “al-Qaeda separatists in Iraq and Syria” (QSIS).

Dar al-Iftaa (“the House of Fatwas”) in Cairo, headed by Egyptian grand mufti Shawki Ibrahim Allam, has launched an Internet-based campaign aimed at distancing Islam from the group known variously as Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant, Islamic State in Iraq and al-Sham, or simply Islamic State.

The campaign includes the launching of a Facebook page entitled “Call it Qa’ida Separatists not Islamic State,” and calling for people to post messages or video clips opposing ISIS terrorism.

“This page aims at clarifying the tarnished image of Islam across the globe due to the terrorist group’s horrendous act of attaching the name of Islam to their appalling acts which could not be justified under any religion or creed,” Dar al-Iftaa said.

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Stolen Consecrated Host Planned for Satanist "Black Mass" Returned to Church

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Photo Credit: TownHall

Photo Credit: TownHall

An archbishop in Oklahoma City, the site of a planned satanic “black mass” next month, has dropped his lawsuit against a satanic group after the group’s leader returned the pilfered consecrated Host he had planned to desecrate during the service.

An attorney representing the head of the satanic group presented the Host to a Catholic priest Thursday afternoon. The lawsuit sought return of the Host following multiple public statements by the head of the local satanic group that they planned to defile and desecrate the consecrated Host during a satanic ‘black mass’ scheduled next month in Oklahoma City.

With the return of the Host and an accompanying signed statement from the satanic group leader that the group no longer possesses a consecrated Host, nor will they use a consecrated Host in their rituals, the archbishop agreed to dismiss the lawsuit with prejudice.

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After Losing to Hobby Lobby, Obama Admin Pushes Crippling Fines for HHS Mandate Violators

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Photo Credit: LifeNews

Photo Credit: LifeNews

After losing to Hobby Lobby at the Supreme Court in a case about whether certain businesses who object to paying for abortion-causing drugs for their employees must follow the HHS mandate, the Obama administration has revised the HHS mandate rules.

The revisions target religious nonprofits and those pro-life companies like Hobby Lobby.

The Obama administration released a fact sheet on the newly-proposed HHS mandate rule pertaining to non-profit organizations and closely held for-profit entities, like Hobby Lobby and Conestoga Wood Specialties. The factsheet on the new rules makes it clear that the HHS mandate violates the conscience rights of non-profit organizations and family businesses across the country.

According to the factsheet, the Obama administration will publish two new regulations relating to the HHS preventive services mandate. One is an interim final rule regarding an additional mechanism for non-profits to provide notification of their objection to the mandate. The second is a proposed final rule and request for comment on applying an accommodation procedure to for-profit businesses, like family-owned companies Hobby Lobby and Conestoga Wood.

The upshot of the new rules? As Arina Grossu, Director for the Center for Human Dignity at the Family Research Council, tells LifeNews, it’s “the threat of crippling fines on non-profits who stand up for their freedom of conscience.”

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Real Islamophobes are the American Media: Jihadist Mass Murder in US Goes Unreported

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Photo Credit: AllenBWest

Photo Credit: AllenBWest

Everyone is focused on ISIS and their horrific actions abroad. But what if there were a series of jihadist murders here in the United States that went virtually unreported by the national media – impossible, right? Not so fast.

As American Uncensored News reports, “For two bloody months, an armed jihadist serial killer ran loose across the country. At least four innocent men died this spring and summer as acts of “vengeance” on behalf of aggrieved Muslims, the self-confessed murderer has now proclaimed.”

“Meet Ali Muhammad Brown. His homicidal Islamic terror spree took him from coast to coast. The 29-year-old career thug admitted to killing Leroy Henderson in Seattle in April; Ahmed Said and Dwone Anderson-Young in Seattle on June 1; and college student Brendan Tevlin, 19, in Essex County, New Jersey, on June 25. Tevlin was gunned down in his family Jeep on his way home from a friend’s house. Ballistics and other evidence linked all the victims to Muhammad Brown. Police apprehended him in July hiding in an encampment near the Watchung Mountains of West Orange, New Jersey.”

So why are we just now learning about this? I know, I’m just a despicable Islamophobe and a fear monger attempting to scare everyone.

I realize all the cultural jihadi apologists just cannot wrap their minds around the simple fact that Islamism is a threat to western civilization and our liberty and freedoms.

Read more from this story HERE.

A Closer Look at the Botched Common Core Results

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Photo Credit: TownHall

Photo Credit: TownHall

Misleading title aside, the Buffalo News report was not good. “Students in Buffalo statewide make modest gains in math,” declared an article in the New York newspaper detailing the results from the second year of Common Core implementation. Well yes, math scores did overall improve. But, the rest of the report was not quite so rosy:

Despite another full year of preparation by schools after the rollout of state Common Core tests in 2013, there were no dramatic, across-the-board gains in English this year. Large-city districts saw slight year-to-year improvement, but wealthier suburban districts statewide actually saw overall declines on the English exam.

The detailed grade proficiency results in New York from 2012 through 2014 are downright embarrassing. Even the most successful schools weren’t spared from Common Core. Take Ledgeview Elementary School, for example. This school boasted a 91.2 percent proficiency in 2012 for third grade math. The next year, those scores slid down to 76.3 percent. It ticked back up slightly in 2014 to 82 percent, but that was small consolation.

City Honors School, a top rated school in the state, had an impressive 90.2 percent proficiency in eighth grade ELA in 2012. That shot down to 80.4 percent in 2013.

Orchard Park Middle School experienced a swift decline as well. Eighth grade ELA in 2012: 77 percent proficiency, 2013: 58.1 percent, 2014: 52 percent.

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Obama’s Libyan Strategy Creates Another Civil War

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Photo Credit: REUTERS / Hani Amara

Photo Credit: REUTERS / Hani Amara

President Barack Obama’s Libyan strategy is imploding, just in time for the second anniversary of the Sept. 2012 Benghazi attack that killed four Americans.

The fast-growing crisis may force Obama to align the U.S. with an emerging semi-secular, mostly-Arab coalition that includes military officers formerly loyal to the dictator he ousted in 2011.

That coalition is rallying Arab clans against an aggressive al-Qaida style jihadi army that includes many ethnic groups in Libya, including Berbers and the descendants of a Turkish occupation starting in the 1500s.

“It is creeping up on us… It is going to be like a new Afghanistan,” said Ibrahim Omar, one of the semi-secular leaders form Libya’s western region, said an Aug. 24 report by the New York Times.

“Tripoli, the capital and the main prize, has become a battleground,” said the NYT.

Read more from this story HERE.

Earthquake's Timing Left Many Fumbling in Dark

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Photo Credit: AP / Eric Risberg

Photo Credit: AP / Eric Risberg

A powerful earthquake that struck the heart of California’s wine country caught many people sound asleep, sending dressers, mirrors and pictures crashing down around them. Scores were injured as the temblor knocked out power to thousands, caused gas and water lines to rupture and sparked fires.

The magnitude 6.0-quake struck at 3:20 a.m. PDT Sunday near the city of Napa, an oasis of Victorian-era buildings nestled in the vineyard-studded hills of Northern California.

The fires also flared in a mobile home park where four homes were destroyed and two others were damaged, officials said.

By midday Sunday, the fires were out and power was starting to be restored, said Mark Ghilarducci, director of the California Governor’s Office of Emergency Services.

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WATCH: Lt. Col. Ralph Peters Goes Full-On ‘Beast Mode’ in Describing How to Deal With Radical Terrorists

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By Michael Hausam.

The way you deal with Islamic State, these bloodthirsty, blood drunken terrorists, is to kill them, keep on killing them, until you kill the last one and then you kill his pet goat.

Read more from this story HERE.

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FBI chief calls Islamic terror group ‘savages’

By AP News.

Islamic State extremists who executed journalist James Foley are “savages” who must be brought to justice, said FBI Director James Comey, whose agents are directly involved in the investigation into the killing.

Comey said his agency had been investigating Foley’s kidnapping for two years until Tuesday, when the militants released a video showing his beheading in Syria. They also threatened to kill a second hostage, Steven Sotloff, if U.S. airstrikes against the militants in Iraq continued.

“These savages have turned it into a homicide investigation,” Comey said, speaking to reporters during a visit to the FBI’s Denver field office. “I’m highly confident the U.S. government will bring justice to these people. We are very patient and dogged, and we will never forget.”

Comey wouldn’t say whether authorities have determined when the video of Foley’s killing was taken. But he said it underscores the urgent danger posed by the extremists in Syria, which he said has become a “safe haven and training ground” for terrorists from Western Europe, North America and elsewhere.

“Their going there is very worrisome. They will come out with the worst kind of relationships and the worst kind of training,” Comey said. Of the Islamic State extremists, he added, “We’re up against savages. These are people who make ordinary terrorists look civilized.”

Read more from this story HERE.

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Photo Credit: TownHall

Photo Credit: TownHall

Obama: “No God Would Stand For What [ISIL] Did Yesterday”

By Daniel Doherty.

Speaking from Martha’s Vineyard on Wednesday, President Obama delivered a somber yet moving speech eulogizing the life of the late American journalist James Wright Foley, who U.S. intelligence officials confirmed today was beheaded by ISIL.

“Jim was taken from us in an act of violence that shocks the conscience of the civilized world,” the president said before eviscerating the evil and gruesome tactics of his killers.

“Let’s be clear about ISIL,” he said. “They have rampaged across cities and villages killing innocent civilians.”

“They’ve murdered Muslims [by] the thousands,” he continued. “They target Christians and religious minorities, driving them from their homes whenever they can.”

Read more from this story HERE.

Establishment Narrative Dies In Republican Primary For Alaska US Senate Seat

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joe-miller-roe-vs-wade-is-threat-1140x641Throughout the primary, pollsters and pundits laughed off Joe Miller’s candidacy as a Quixote run. By summer 2014, the polls showed him 25 points behind his Establishment opponents. And almost all of the high profile national Tea Party and conservative groups pushing insurgent challengers around the country left him for dead, offering no help. Several of the local conservative activist groups maintained a posture of neutrality, acting as virtual subsidiaries of the Republican Party.

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There are still more than 27,000 votes to be counted in the Alaska Republican Primary for United States Senate. More than likely, the Establishment candidate, former Attorney General Dan Sullivan, will be the Republican nominee going forward.

The Establishment has claimed victory, and the media has all but declared the reform movement dead. But is that really the take-away? Let’s look at some facts.

Throughout the primary, pollsters and pundits laughed off Joe Miller’s candidacy as a Quixote run. By summer 2014, the polls showed him 25 points behind his Establishment opponents. And almost all of the high profile national Tea Party and conservative groups pushing insurgent challengers around the country left him for dead, offering no help. Several of the local conservative activist groups maintained a posture of neutrality, acting as virtual subsidiaries of the Republican Party.

The Club for Growth, usually a reliable ally of movement conservatives, linked arms with Karl Rove’s American Crossroads, the US Chamber of Commerce, Paul Singer’s Friends for an American Majority, the National Republican Senatorial Committee, and other Establishment Republicans in support of their golden boy, Dan Sullivan.

Further, other Washington conservatives like Erick Erickson at RedState.com and Phyllis Schlafly at Eagle Forum jumped on the bandwagon of the supposedly “more electable” Lt. Governor Mead Treadwell, who finished a distant third.

What makes this spectacle even more outrageous is that Mead Treadwell has never been a movement conservative, though he did adopt a platform redolent with conservative rhetoric.

Dan Sullivan spent about four million dollars during the primary, and his SuperPACs spent millions more.

Joe Miller, essentially going it alone, spent less than $400K, while Mead Treadwell’s million-dollar plus conservative act cut a significant swath out of his base. Why? Because conservatives didn’t unite behind Miller. Yet, the Alaska Republican primary was still winnable.

The entry of Sarah Palin, Mike Huckabee, and James Dobson gave Miller a significant boost. But it was just too late in the game to be decisive. Miller had run out of money and couldn’t close the gap.

The takeaway is something very different than the media and the beltway consultant class would have you believe. The truth is, 60% of Republicans weren’t swayed by the multimillion-dollar Establishment media blitz put on by Sullivan, Rove, and the US Chamber of Commerce.

Nor were they particularly enamored with Sullivan’s faux conservative schtick, a rhetorical tactic adopted by all the high-profile Establishment candidates around the country this cycle. If rhetoric counts, the Tea Party has already won.

The Alaska Republican primary was always going to come down to how the electorate was divided. If there was a clearly defined conservative up against two moderates, the conservative would win. On the other hand, if it was two conservatives dividing the base, over against one moderate, the moderate would win.

The reticence of the conservative movement to coalesce behind Miller cost us a seat to the Establishment. And given Sullivan’s rather weak position both with conservatives and libertarian independents, it could end in the re-election of Democrat Mark Begich. Surely Harry Reid and Barack Obama are applauding in the shadows.

But the demise of the reform movement is greatly exaggerated. It is time for conservatives to stop being cowed by pragmatic arguments and partisan politics. We must unite behind conservative candidates and ideas. And for the love of all that’s good, stop allowing phony polls to drive the agenda. Let’s put conservative unity above Republican unity. If we do, the future is ours.

The outcome in Alaska should lay the official establishment media narrative to rest. Conservatives didn’t lose; they surrendered.

If the right lessons are taken from this temporary setback, 2016 can be a banner year for conservatives.

Read more from Western Journalism HERE.