London Terror Suspect Identified for Parliament Square Jihad, ISIS Claims Responsibility

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The Islamic State terror group has claimed responsibility for Wednesday’s terrorist attack in London, according to the jihadi outfit’s propaganda outlet, Amaq News Agency.

“The perpetrator of the attacks yesterday in front of the British Parliament in London is an Islamic State soldier and he carried out the operation in response to calls to target citizens of the coalition,” Amaq revealed.

On Wednesday, four people were killed and dozens more injured when the Islamic terrorist drove his vehicle along a pedestrian walkway over the Westminster Bridge in London. After ramming several people, the terrorist got out of his car and proceeded to go on a stabbing spree, before he was finally neutralized by police. The terrorist utilized a vehicular jihadi tactic popularized by Palestinian terrorists, a tactic which has since spread to groups like al-Qaeda and ISIS.

An American citizen, 54-year-old Kurt Cochran from Utah, was among those killed in the attack, along with a police officer and a female schoolteacher. Cochran was in London celebrating his 25th wedding anniversary with his wife Melissa, who was also injured in the melee.

British authorities have named British-born Khalid Masood as the man responsible for the attack.

“Masood was not the subject of any current investigations and there was no prior intelligence about his intent to mount a terrorist attack. However, he was known to police and has a range of previous convictions for assaults, including GBH, possession of offensive weapons and public order offences,” said a statement from London Metropolitan Police.

British Prime Minister Theresa May said that the killer had previously been investigated for ties to extremist activity.

“Our working assumption is that the attacker was inspired by Islamist ideology,” May said at the British Parliament. “We know the threat from Islamist terrorism is very real. But while the public should remain utterly vigilant, they should not and will not be cowed by this threat.”

“An act of terrorism tried to silence our democracy, but today we meet as normal … we are not afraid and our resolve will never waver in the face of terrorism,” May added. “Democracy and the values it entails will always prevail.”

Meanwhile, police have spent much of Thursday conducting raids throughout the country. They are reportedly investigating areas where Masood has previously lived. (For more from the author of “London Terror Suspect Identified for Parliament Square Jihad, ISIS Claims Responsibility” please click HERE)

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London Attack Shows Challenge of Stopping Terrorism in Age of ISIS

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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)

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

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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)

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

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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)

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The U.S. And U.K. Just Banned Something Everyone Uses on Certain Flights

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Senior administration officials confirmed Tuesday that the U.S. will be implementing carry-on restrictions banning electronic devices larger than a smartphone from flights arriving in the United States from selected airlines in the Middle East and Northern Africa. The new TSA “emergency amendment” requires passengers to put their laptops, tablets, game consoles, etc., in with their checked baggage, whether they intended to check any luggage or not.

The new procedure affects the following airports: Jordan’s Queen Alia International; Egypt’s Cairo International; Kuwait International; Qatar’s Doha International; Turkey’s Istanbul Ataturk; Saudi Arabia’s King Abdulaziz International; Saudi Arabia’s King Khalid International; Morocco’s Mohammed V Airport; Dubai International; and Abu Dabi International.

Airlines affected by the ban are as follows: Turkish Airlines; Royal Jordanian; EgyptAir; Saudia; Qatar Airways; Kuwait Airways; Royal Air Maroc; Emirates; and Ethiad Airways. The ban does not apply to airline employees or flights into any of the listed airports.

DHS officials are calling it a safety precaution, citing past attacks in Egypt, Turkey, Belgium, and Somalia — none of which involved explosives or weapons being smuggled onboard in electronic devices. They also dismissed questions regarding whether or not the sudden restrictions were in response to any credible threat, how long the “emergency amendment” will be enforced, or the difference between a device being held in the cargo hold or held in the cabin of the same plane.

Less than 24 hours later, the U.K. followed suit, announcing a carry-on electronics ban “on direct flights to the UK from Turkey, Lebanon, Jordan, Egypt, Tunisia and Saudi Arabia.” The airlines affected by the ban are British Airways; EasyJet; Jet2.com; Monarch; Thomas Cook; Thompson; Turkish Airlines; Pegasus Airways; Atlas-Global Airlines; Middle East Airlines; Egyptair; Royal Jordanian; Tunis Air; and Saudia.

The spokesman for the prime minister declined to comment on what prompted the new procedures. (For more from the author of “The U.S. And U.K. Just Banned Something Everyone Uses on Certain Flights” please click HERE)

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Where the Fight Against ISIS Stands, and How the US Can Win

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The Trump administration has invited 68 countries and international organizations to attend a summit in Washington on Wednesday to coordinate policies to defeat the Islamic State, also known as ISIS.

Secretary of State Rex Tillerson will lead the two-day gathering of foreign ministers in synchronizing coalition efforts to destroy ISIS on the battlefield, prevent it from staging a comeback, and deprive it of money, arms, and recruits.

The military campaign launched by the anti-ISIS coalition has made considerable progress in recent months. The ongoing offensives to push ISIS out of Mosul, Iraq’s second-largest city, and seize Raqqa, the de facto ISIS capital city in Syria, will be key topics at the summit.

The Iraqi army, in coordination with Iraqi Kurdish and Shiite militias, launched the offensive against Mosul in October, and has surrounded and retaken most of the city. They have been aided by a U.S.-led air campaign and supported by U.S. advisers, trainers, artillery batteries, and special operations forces.

Defeating ISIS in Syria is likely to be much more difficult than in Iraq because of the lack of reliable partners on the ground.

Syria’s brutal dictatorship has long been hostile to the United States. Backed by Russia and Iran, President Bashar al-Assad’s regime has focused its military attacks not on ISIS, but against more moderate rebel groups, including some supported by the United States.

Washington has been working with Syrian Kurdish militias, which have been effective military forces, but they are handicapped by the fact that they are feared and resented in the predominantly Arab areas that ISIS controls.

Moreover, Turkey considers them to be terrorists due to their affiliation with the Kurdistan Workers’ Party, a terrorist group that Turkey has been fighting on and off since 1984.

The Pentagon in recent weeks has deployed several hundred Army rangers and Marines to Syria to bolster Syrian rebel groups and provide artillery support to help them defeat ISIS. This is in addition to an estimated 500 American special operations personnel already in Syria.

The Trump administration’s revised plans for seizing Raqqa reportedly call for an enhanced U.S. military role, including the deployment of additional U.S. special operations forces, artillery, and attack helicopters.

More Help Needed

Washington also should press its NATO allies and Arab coalition members to provide more military forces and support for the impending offensive against Raqqa.

The anti-ISIS summit also is an opportunity to develop a supportive international framework for transforming the military defeat of ISIS into a sustainable long-term political defeat.

The summit meeting should focus on how to restore law and order and enable self-government in areas of Syria liberated from ISIS. This means recruiting as many local Sunni Arabs as possible to root out ISIS and preclude it from resurging.

Washington also should press coalition members to take more effective steps to choke off fundraising for ISIS, combat its internet recruitment efforts, and discredit its propaganda.

The summit meeting also should focus on enlisting coalition members–particularly the rich Sunni Arab oil kingdoms—to provide adequate financial support for humanitarian aid for Syria’s huge refugee population and help Syrians to eventually rebuild cities shattered by the war.

But as long as Syria’s ferocious civil war rages on, international efforts to ease the humanitarian catastrophe, stabilize the country, and permanently bury ISIS will remain precarious exercises.

Washington should lead international diplomatic efforts to pressure the Assad regime to accept a political settlement to end the conflict, including the full autonomy of regions that have expelled the regime’s repressive presence.

To nail the ISIS coffin shut, Washington must use the summit meeting to coordinate coalition efforts not only on the military front, but on the diplomatic, counterterrorism, humanitarian, and self-government fronts as well. (For more from the author of “Where the Fight Against ISIS Stands, and How the US Can Win” please click HERE)

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Report: FBI Investigation Into Trump-Russian Connects Instigated by Clinton Opposition Researcher

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The FBI investigation into potential connections between the Trump campaign and the Russian government began just weeks after a former British spy doing opposition research for Hillary Clinton supporters briefed bureau agents on evidence he had collected on such ties, Yahoo News reported Monday.

According to Chief Investigative Correspondent Michael Isikoff, Christopher Steele, a former British MI-6 intelligence officer specializing in Russian operations, had been hired as an investigator by Fusion GPS, an opposition research firm working on behalf of Clinton. On July 5, 2016, Steele went to the FBI with what he’d compiled on contact between Trump advisers and Kremlin officials.

The early contact between Steele and the bureau now appears to have set in motion a chain of events that led to Monday’s extraordinary testimony by Comey that the bureau has been actively investigating possible links between the Trump campaign and the Kremlin since “late July” — or more than three months before Election Day.

If true, this would put the match of the fuse for this Russian business in the hand of someone with a vested interest in helping Hillary Clinton take down Trump. Further, the calendar raises an intriguing possibility.

The Curious Timing of the Plane on the Tarmac

Why is the July 5th date significant? For starters, it is the day FBI Director James Comey stood in front of the nation, explained all the egregious ways Hillary Clinton had violated and flouted the law in the handling of classified information, then said he was recommending against prosecuting her.

Attorney General Loretta Lynch quickly accepted the recommendation.

Days earlier, on June 27, Lynch had secretly met on a tarmac in Phoenix with Bill Clinton. In the dust-up after the rendezvous was revealed, Lynch recused herself from the Hillary email investigation.

But perhaps all eyes were on the wrong prize. Perhaps emails had as much to do with the meeting as photos of grandchildren. Let’s add Steele into the mix.

Would Steele have taken his bag of goodies to the FBI first? No. He would go to his client, Fusion GPS. The opposition research firm then goes to their client, and soon the Clinton campaign has their hands on explosive allegations that Donald Trump is in cahoots with the Russians. What are the Clinton’s going to do with the information?

Naturally, bring the goodies to someone who can do the most damage with it. Namely, their old friend, the Attorney General of the United States.

Bill’s pitch would be pretty simple: “We have information to share about potential criminal wrongdoing and interference in the election by a foreign power, and I have to deliver it to you personally.” (This would also explain the still-simmering mystery over why Lynch would agree to meet with Clinton, knowing that, given the on-going Hillary investigation, such a meeting was a gross breach of ethics.)

If Lynch Bites

Here’s the beauty. If Lynch bites, you have Donald Trump under investigation during the final months of the campaign. You have justification to have friendly electronic ears and eyes trained on his operations, and who knows what will emerge? Even if she doesn’t bite, you and your billion dollar campaign war chest still have Steele’s information to use politically.

Or maybe Lynch just says, “Bill, don’t get me involved. If you really have something, have your guy take it to the FBI.”

Is that what happened? We do know that within days of that prearranged secret meeting, the Clinton opposition researcher was knocking on Comey’s door and an investigation into the Trump campaign’s ties to Russia was set in motion with all the snooping and surveilling that would entail. We also know the fruit of that intelligence was spread around the administration and friendly media outlets like orange slices at a youth soccer tournament.

Questions for the Attorney General-Turned #Resistance Champion

If Lynn has a few moments between her calls of support for the anti-Trump resistance, perhaps she can answer a few questions:

“When did you first hear of any Trump-Russian connections?”

“From whom?”

“What action did you take with that information?”

“When did the White House get wind of it?”

“Did you discuss in any way shape or form Donald Trump, his associates and/or the Russians during your secret meeting with Bill Clinton?”

“Would you care to say that under oath?”

“Given you met with the husband of Donald Trump’s opponent right around the time the FBI got involved in investigating Trump, did you recuse yourself from that investigation?”

“Do you consider yourself a political opponent of Donald Trump?”

And finally, “Do you agree with The Federalist‘s Mollie Hemingway that ‘we really should be having a conversation about the surveillance of a political opponent during a campaign and what that means’?”

Perhaps Lynch already did have a conversation about the surveillance of a political opponent during a campaign.

“A Big Gray Cloud”

House Intelligence Chairman Devin Nunes (R-Calif) says the FBI bombshell announcement of the on-going investigation — presented by Comey with the permission of an Obama hold-over at the Department of Justice — has left a “big gray cloud” over Trump’s White House.

So let a full investigation continue. And as more sunlight enters into the situation it’ll be curious to see who, despite the clouds, ends up burned. (For more from the author of “Report: FBI Investigation Into Trump-Russian Connects Instigated by Clinton Opposition Researcher” please click HERE)

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Trump Administration Sends Strong Signal to Russia by Indicting Hackers

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Of all the security threats facing the U.S. today, cyber threats are among the most pernicious. Thankfully, the administration is taking some concrete steps to confront them.

Last week, the Justice Department indicted four individuals on charges relating back to the 2016 hack into Yahoo’s network that compromised at least 500 million user accounts. Of those indicted, two are officers of the Russian Federal Security Service, an agency very similar in function to the United States’ FBI.

According to remarks made by acting Assistant Attorney General Mary McCord, the Russian officers “protected, directed, facilitated, and paid criminal hackers to collect information through computer intrusions in the United States.”

The hackers that worked with the Russian officers have also been indicted on numerous charges. One hacker has been apprehended in Canada, while the other hacker and the two Russian officers are in Russia, where they are safe because the United States does not have an extradition treaty with Russia.

Though these three individuals in Russia cannot be prosecuted in the United States, the indictment charges against them are not useless. The decision by the administration to bring these charges sends a strong message to other nation-states about committing cyberattacks on private companies in the United States.

Private companies such as Yahoo already face a daunting challenge in defending themselves from cyber criminals and hacktivists. But when these cyberattacks come from nation-states, the defenses of a private company are outmatched.

The U.S. government has a responsibility to protect U.S. companies and other domestic computer networks from nation-state hackers, and it has a myriad of tools at its disposal to punish and deter such cyber aggressors.

These tools include the legal charges we saw last week, as well as charges the U.S. brought against five members of the Chinese Liberation Army in 2013 following their cyber espionage against businesses in the United States.

By using legal charges to combat cyber aggression, the United States shows that it is serious about protecting its interests and its companies, and has the evidence to prove other nations are acting maliciously.

Other options to respond to cyber aggression include leveling sanctions against offending nation-states.

A recent example of this came last fall following the hacks on the Democratic National Convention. In response to these hacks, the Obama administration enacted sanctions against five Russian intelligence agencies and three Russian companies, which froze assets and halted transactions and travel between those Russian companies and the United States.

Visa, commercial, and financial restrictions, diplomatic condemnations, actions in international organizations such as the World Trade Organization, and other strategic responses to hacking should all be on the table.

The Trump administration has set a strong precedent by indicting the two Russian Federal Security Service officers and the two hackers that worked with them. But this is just a first step.

Further steps will need to be taken to improve the U.S. deterrence posture against nations who would engage in cyber aggression against the United States. (For more from the author of “Trump Administration Sends Strong Signal to Russia by Indicting Hackers” please click HERE)

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Tillerson: No ‘Strategic Patience’ With North Korea, Maybe War

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On his way to China, Trump’s secretary of state, Rex Tillerson, stopped off in South Korea.

During a visit to the demilitarized border, Tillerson dissed the Obama administration. He said its policy of “strategic patience” has run its course and all “all of the options are on the table.”

Tillerson said “obviously if North Korea takes actions that threatens South Korean forces or our own forces, that would be met with (an) appropriate response. If they elevate the threat of their weapons program to a level that we believe requires action that option is on the table.”

Trump sent out a tweet to underscore the new policy. He went so far as to take a swipe at China, already irritated by the US position on its activity in the South China Sea.

It looks like the Trump administration is dead serious about starting a war with North Korea if it continues to build and test missiles and nukes.

Although it is probably unlikely Trump will be able to start a war with North Korea—additional draconian sanctions seem more likely—the residents of Seoul, 35 miles from the border, might want to prepare a go-bag. North Korea has tens of thousands of missiles aimed at them. (For more from the author of “Tillerson: No ‘Strategic Patience’ With North Korea, Maybe War” please click HERE)

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30 Countries Are Refusing to Take Back Illegal Aliens Convicted of Serious Crimes

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Approximately 30 countries are refusing to accept the deportations of illegal immigrants who have committed serious crimes in the U.S., according to Texas Rep. Henry Cuellar.

While these countries are refusing to accept the deportations of these criminals, the U.S. government is still issuing visas and student visas to citizens of those countries, according to the Texan congressman. There is already a law on the books which allows the U.S. to hold visas from a country that is not taking back its criminals, but according to Cuellar, the U.S. is not enforcing it.

“We’re not enforcing it, which is amazing. So now my intent is to go back to our committee on appropriations and affect their funding until they do that,” Cuellar told Sharyl Attkisson, host of Full Measure, in an interview.

Cuellar, a Democratic member of the House Committee on Appropriations, told Attkisson that the Supreme Court has ruled that illegal immigrants arrested for criminal activity can only be held for a certain period of time before they must be released.

“That means you’re releasing criminals into our streets because those countries refuse to take back those criminal aliens,” said Cuellar. “That’s wrong. And especially I think it’s even worse that this is already on the books, and we’re still issuing business tourist visas and student visas to countries that refuse to take back their criminal aliens. That’s wrong, and we’re hoping to change that.” (Read more from “30 Countries Are Refusing to Take Back Illegal Aliens Convicted of Serious Crimes” HERE)

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