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Ferhani was introduced in 2010 to Ilter Ayturk, who was an undercover cop. It was Ayturk who gave the two the idea to carry out an attack and encouraged Ferhani to make anti-Semitic remarks. He told Ferhani about Palestine and blamed Jewish people, encouraging Ferhani to do the same. |
Ferhani met another agent pretending to be a weapons dealer, giving him $100 for ammunition, a grenade, and three semi-automatic pistols. |
Ferhani was sentenced to 10 years in prison, where he attempted suicide after being abused by guards. |
The abuse was so bad that he had to have 12 staples in his head following one incident and was left in a coma after his suicide attempt, AP reports. |
Brian Church, Brent Betterly and Jared Chase were accused of domestic terrorism after allegedly planning to attack a 2012 NATO summit in Chicago. |
Chicago police raided an apartment where 11 political activists were detained. Two of those activists turned out to be undercover cops, a dark, bearded man named “Mo” and a woman named “Nadia” who claimed to be Syrian. |
Police allege they found bottles of “clear liquid” and cloths which were allegedly soaked in gas, along with a vest and gas mask. |
Three of the activists received between five and eight years for attempting to commit arson, after the defense used the undercover police’s own recordings to show that the three were all talk, no action and were goaded on by the officers. |
On one occasion, Church turned down the undercover cop’s offer to try out the Molotov cocktail they had built. |
Mayor Rahm Emanuel had used the NATO Summit to push through “draconian new powers” including surveillance cameras, strict parade restrictions, and police discretion, a permanent move slammed by the ACLU, Amnesty International, and the Occupy Movement. |
“It's almost as if Rahm Emanuel was lifting a page from Naomi Klein's Shock Doctrine – as if he was reading her account of Milton Friedman's 'Chicago Boys' as a cookbook recipe, rather than as the ominous episode that it was,” wrote Bernard Harcourt in the Guardian. |
The eldest Tsarnaev brother, Tamerlan, was being watched by the FBI two years before the Boston marathon bombing in 2013. |
After Russia’s government alerted US authorities to their concerns about Tsarnaev’s links to Chechen separatists in March 2011, the FBI ruled he was not a threat. Six months later, the Kremlin told the CIA about Tamerlan, which placed him on a watch list. |
When the alert was passed onto the FBI’s Foreign Terror Tracking Task Force, it failed to follow up based on the bureau’s previous assessment. |
The FBI wanted Tsarnaev to turn informant on the Muslim and Chechen communities in Boston, according to defense lawyers for the younger brother Dzhokhar. The FBI met with Tamerlan and his parents on more than one occasion, which the defense claimed could have “increased his paranoia and distress,” the Boston Globe repo... |
The FBI announced it had prevented another terror attack on the Capitol last year. Christopher Lee Cornell, an unemployed 20 year old who had been bullied in school, came to the FBI’s attention after he tweeted about Islamic State. |
He was then contacted by an FBI informant online “who began cooperating with the FBI in order to obtain favorable treatment with respect to his criminal exposure on an unrelated case," according to the affidavit. |
The two had been talking for months about carrying out an attack when Cornell was arrested after he purchased a firearm and converted to Islam. His legal team said he suffered from depression and schizotypal disorder. |
John T Booker caught the attention of the FBI after posting support for attacks on US soldiers online. Two informants befriended him, giving him information about bombs and helping him come up with a plan to attack a Fort Riley military base in Kansas. |
Booker checked into a mental health facility in 2014, which the FBI knew about, but they still arrested him last year and he pleaded guilty in February. The baby-faced 21 year old is awaiting sentencing and could spend 30 years in prison. |
James Medina, a Florida homeless man with mental health issues, was arrested in April 2016 for planning to commit an act of terror at a synagogue with a weapon of mass destruction. |
Medina was encouraged and directed by an FBI source to blame the attack on Islamic State (IS, formerly ISIS/ISIL) and use a bomb instead of a gun. Medina was given a fake bomb by the source and was then arrested. |
Those that are utilizing Intel's GMA950 IGP now have a chance to get a little more power out of their underpowered graphics, all without ever having to touch the hardware. |
Simply put, Intel's low voltage 945GM/GME/GMS and GSE943/940GML/GU Express chipsets are underclocked severely, running at 133/166MHz compared to the 400MHz of their regular voltage brethren. It seems that even though the IGP is running on a lower voltage, many of the chipsets are capable of running just as if they didn... |
GMABooster allows users to raise the clock sppeds on their IGP, offering up to 2.4 times the performance, all without even raising the voltage. The catch is that while you may see that kind of increase in synthetic benchmarks, typcial real world tests will show about a 25% increase in performance. |
Offering up to an astonishing 2.4x of extra processing power for Your computer's integrated graphics engine, the GMABooster is a must-have tool for every user interested in advanced 3D gaming, truly flawless Windows® Vista and Mac® OS X experience, smoother operation of Google® Earth, improved video playback, and perfo... |
Former French president Nicolas Sarkozy's political ambitions have been overshadowed by investigations since he left the Elysee Palace in 2012. |
In the latest development, he is to face trial on charges of corruption and abuse of power for allegedly seeking to influence a judge who was looking into suspected illegal financing of his election campaign. |
In separate investigations he has also been accused of receiving campaign funding from the late Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi and is to face trial for allegedly overspending campaign limits in 2012. He denies any wrongdoing. |
The case for which Mr Sarkozy now faces trial centres around wiretapped phone calls in which he allegedly discussed the idea of offering a prestigious role in Monaco to a high-ranking judge in exchange for information on a financing investigation. |
Prosecutors say Mr Sarkozy's lawyer, Thierry Herzog, tried to obtain information from the judge, Gilbert Azibert, about the investigation centred on alleged illicit payments from L'Oreal heiress Liliane Bettencourt to help Mr Sarkozy win the 2007 election. Mr Sarkozy was later cleared of taking any such funds. |
The case surfaced in 2014 and Mr Sarkozy became the first former French head of state to be held in police custody before being formally placed under investigation. |
What is the Gaddafi case about? |
In March 2018, Mr Sarkozy was questioned in police custody over long-standing claims that he received illicit funding from Col Gaddafi for his 2007 election campaign. |
French-Lebanese businessman Ziad Takieddine has previously told the French news website Mediapart that in 2006-07 he handed over three suitcases stuffed with cash to Mr Sarkozy and Claude Guéant, who was his chief of staff. |
Mr Takieddine alleged that the cash came from Gaddafi and totalled €5m (£4.4m; $6.2m). |
Mr Guéant, who was managing Mr Sarkozy's presidential campaign at the time, told the franceinfo website that he had "never seen a penny of Libyan financing". |
Mr Sarkozy also denies any wrongdoing and says some former Gaddafi regime officials want revenge for his decision to send French warplanes during the 2011 Libyan uprising. |
What else is Mr Sarkozy accused of? |
The other case for which Mr Sarkozy has been told to stand trial is known as the Bygmalion affair and centres on claims that Mr Sarkozy's party, then known as the UMP, worked with a friendly PR company to hide the true cost of his 2012 presidential election campaign. |
France sets a €22.5m (£19m; $24m) limit on campaign spending, and it is alleged the firm Bygmalion provided a series of false invoices for €18m to Mr Sarkozy's party rather than the campaign. Investigators say that the false accounting enabled the party to spend well over the limit. |
Mr Sarkozy himself is accused of knowingly exceeding the spending limit by setting up campaign rallies even though he had been warned of the risk. He is appealing against the order to stand trial. |
Employees at Bygmalion have admitted knowledge of the ruse and Mr Sarkozy is among 14 people caught up in the affair to face trial. The other suspects include ex-UMP colleague Eric Cesari, campaign heads Guillaume Lambert and Jerome Lavrilleux as well as Bygmalion staff. |
As well as illegal campaign financing, the accusations involve forgery, abuse of trust, fraud, and complicity in illegal financing. |
Mr Sarkozy lost the 2012 race and failed in his bid to run again in the 2017 presidential election. |
What has Mr Sarkozy said? |
Mr Sarkozy wrote about the Bygmalion scandal in a book published in 2015. |
"It will no doubt be hard to believe, but I swear it is the strict truth: I knew nothing about this company until the scandal broke," he said. |
Regarding claims of influence peddling, he has firmly denied doing anything "contrary to the values of the republic or the rule of law". |
He has spoken of "political interference", suggesting that the judges who had ordered that he be questioned in custody had an "intention to humiliate". |
“Hate” is a word and an emotion which should be used as sparingly as possible, to be saved for only the most despicable forces, conditions, and beings. I dislike liver and onions, driving on black ice, and ear infections, but hate war, poverty, and corporations. Hatred is reserved for only those people, places, and thi... |
The hatred which I harbor for corporations harkens back to my two years as a corporate president. It was nothing like Monsanto, Boeing, or Exxon-Mobil. Not even a publicly owned company. Just a 9′ by 13′ espresso bar and grill, serving burgers, fries, and breakfast burritos. I was president/secretary/cook and my partne... |
You might be wondering why it is that I can hate corporations with the same fervor with which I hate war and poverty. The simple answer is that corporations are a major cause of war and poverty. Take a walk out into the Sonoran Desert and ask a few of the Mexicans and Central Americans who are dying of thirst under the... |
Then there’s the Citizens United Supreme Court ruling. In 2010, our fascist judges, in their infinite wisdom, saw fit to consummate the marriage between corporate and government power by giving corporations free reign to buy elections and candidates for public office. It is unfortunate that this new corporate power did... |
Not to be satisfied with controlling representatives and laws at the national level, corporations have infiltrated and now own public fish in the smaller ponds of state and city government. ALEC (American Legislative Exchange Council) and ACCE (American City and County Exchange) are organizations formed with the expres... |
In all fairness, my relative who whores for the Chamber of Commerce, probably doesn’t even know that his employer is an active and giving ALEC member, which fights against all progressive legislation, wherever it raises its ugly head. He doesn’t understand that the folks who write his paycheck are the single most gener... |
The secret meeting commenced on the anniversary of the Hiroshima bombing, and adjourned on the anniversary of the nuking of Nagasaki. Those in attendance included high ranking members of the U.S. Military, so-called defense contractors, nuclear industry executives, and scientists. Professor Chossudovsky tells us that a... |
Back in 2002, when I became president of my little restaurant corporation (D.O.G. Inc.), I had no evil plan in mind. Had no intention of poisoning anyone, polluting any streams, lakes, or oceans, starving any Mexicans, or starting a nuclear war. Mine was a relatively benign corporation. But it did have one nasty facet.... |
Those who know me understand that I have little love for any organized religion, and for Catholicism in particular. Therefore, it may be surprising that I’m ending this tale with a quote from a Catholic abbot from about 800 years ago. Arnaud Amalric was laying siege to a city of 20,000 people back during the Albigensia... |
John R. Hall: Meanderer, dreamer, mountaineer, restaurateur, military draft refusing felon, wannabe revolutionary, and citizen of Earth, observes the circus of life, and writes from wherever the north winds blow him. He can most likely be found somewhere in The Hawaiian Island Chain, in Mexico's Corazon, in The Sonoran... |
This article was posted on Friday, January 22nd, 2016 at 8:37am and is filed under Corporate Globalization, Fascism, TPP, Trade. |
Apple is dominating news headlines in the tech sector, but it’s just as much a big retail story. Here are some key takeaways for retailers. |
As Apple’s results again showed, and as Victoria’s Secret recently demonstrated when it failed to win shoppers even with discounts, having the thing that consumers covet is what gets them to willingly open their wallets — even without deals. Just look at Apple’s flagship iPhone line: The average selling price jumped 19... |
Consumers worldwide bought 41.3 million iPhones last quarter, increasing the line’s sales by 20% to nearly $30 billion, nearly three-fifths of the company total. The top-of-the-line iPhone X was again the most popular model sold, Cook said. Citing IDC data, he said iPhone sales had outpaced global smartphone market gro... |
That demand contributed to the 17% jump in company-wide sales to $53.3 billion, which Cook said is the strongest in the past 11 quarters. |
The trend of consumers ditching cash and credit cards to pay with their mobile phones is on, especially via contactless tap payment services like Apple Pay. Over a billion transactions in Apple’s fiscal quarter ended June 30 were made by Apple Pay, triple the number from a year earlier, beating the number of transactio... |
Apple Pay, now in 24 markets worldwide, will add Germany later this year. In the U.S., eBay is beginning to enable its sellers to accept Apple Pay while CVS Pharmacy and 7-Eleven will accept Apple Pay nationwide this fall, Cook said. That came after a joint effort by retailers to design a rival CurrentC mobile payment ... |
Also worthy of close watch: Apple Pay Cash, the company’s peer-to-peer payment service facing off against the likes of PayPal-owned Venmo, is, according to Cook, already “serving millions of customers” in the U.S. less than eight months after its unveiling. |
A Juniper Research study released Monday forecast worldwide in-store contactless payments would exceed the $1 trillion mark for the first time this year, a year earlier than the research firm had expected, and double to $2 trillion by 2020. It expects the number of consumers using mobile wallets from their OEM (origina... |
Apple's latest store opened in Milan last week. |
Under Angela Ahrendts, Apple’s senior vice president of retail and former CEO of Burberry, Apple last year set out on its first major store redesign — with the new Milan store as an example — since Steve Jobs opened the first Apple store in 2001. There was good reason: Apple's template — sleek-looking stores with open ... |
Ahrendts has described her intent to make Apple stores “town squares” that host performances as well as “Today at Apple” sessions that would allow consumers to learn about topics from music to photography. |
Yes, ecosystem. It’s a big buzzword in the industry. Just look at what it has done for Amazon. |
EVEN as Indian and Pakistani guns continue to thunder along the Line of Control in Kashmir, there are several signals of a desire on both sides to improve relations. |
Most notably, Pakistan’s army chief has on several occasions articulated an openness to evolving a modus vivendi with India, dubbed the ‘Bajwa doctrine’. Recently, the Indian defence minister stated that such peace overtures from Pakistan will be reciprocated. |
The Indian military attaché was invited to the Pakistan Day parade and accepted. Pakistan hosted India with other Shanghai Cooperation Organisation members to discuss regional terrorism. In September, Pakistan and India will participate in SCO joint counterterrorism exercises in Russia. Last month, Pakistan hosted a T... |
For its part, Pakistan has consistently advocated resumption of the Composite (now Comprehensive) Dialogue with India. And while it was preoccupied with fighting terrorism within its territory and from across its western border, it made strategic sense for Pakistan to seek a calm eastern frontier. |
A shift in India’s strategic posture could open the door to addressing, if not fully resolving, the major issues. |
Unfortunately, since its inception, Narendra Modi’s BJP government made normalisation conditional on Pakistan’s disavowal of support to the Kashmiri freedom struggle and acceptance of culpability for Mumbai and other terrorist incidents in India. It evolved an enveloping strategy to destabilise Pakistan domestically, t... |
Several developments may have shifted Indian calculations. |
First, a significant convergence has emerged between Pakistan and major regional powers, Russia, China and Iran, on the need for a negotiated settlement in Afghanistan with the Afghan Taliban. India and the US were seen as spoilers. |
Second, despite Donald Trump’s anti-Pakistan rhetoric and insults, a US confrontation with Pakistan and its designation as a state sponsor of terrorism, widely anticipated by India, have not happened and appear highly unlikely. On the contrary, the US continues to rely on Pakistan’s cooperation to sustain its presence ... |
Third, after the Doklam stand-off last year, China offered India several olive branches — larger trade and investment, access to CPEC and, through it, to Central Asia and beyond, an intimate Xi-Modi summit. Afghan developments, American unpredictability and Chinese flexibility, appear to have inspired a policy recalibr... |
Fourth, India failed in its quest to destabilise or isolate Pakistan. |
Pakistan’s several military operations in Fata and actions in Balochistan have succeeded in containing cross-border terrorism sponsored by India from Afghanistan. Cross-border attacks will be further restricted once Pakistan fully fences the Pak-Afghan border. Likewise, India has little hope now of isolating Pakistan g... |
Finally, India has been unable to suppress the ongoing popular revolt of the Kashmiri people for over two years. It may calculate that opening a dialogue with Pakistan could help to end the revolt. |
For Pakistan, the most critical issue in any normalisation process will be (and has always been) Kashmir. No government or leader in Pakistan will be able to normalise relations with India while it continues a campaign of brutal suppression in India-held Kashmir (IHK). |
If the past is any guide, India’s effort will be to focus any dialogue with Pakistan on terrorism and press for the elimination of pro-Kashmiri militant groups in Pakistan (Lashkar-e-Taiba, Jaish-e-Mohammad, Hizbul Mujahideen) and the incarceration of their leaders. Islamabad would find it difficult to act against thes... |
Contrary to simplistic analyses, India’s capacity to impose terrorist pressure on Pakistan is not unlimited. Pakistan can substantially neutralise India’s sponsorship of the TTP and the Balochistan Liberation Army through pressure on Kabul, negotiations with the US, fencing the border, political accommodation of Baloch... |
However, despite the false starts of the past, it is possible that in the midst of the current global strategic flux, India may have decided that its national interests would be better served by playing a positive role in the emerging Eurasian security and economic structures, epitomised by the SCO, rather than serving... |
Reciprocal assurances can be negotiated on terrorism, the non-use of force and the pacific settlement of disputes. Some issues, such as Siachen and Sir Creek, can be quickly resolved. Existing confidence-building measures could be enlarged, eg by agreeing to limits on force and weapons deployments and elimination of th... |
India’s participation in CPEC could be agreed without prejudice to Pakistan or India’s positions on the Jammu and Kashmir dispute. However, India would need to extend Pakistan reciprocal transit rights to Nepal and Bangladesh. |
Expansion of bilateral trade could be mutually beneficial so long as Pakistan is provided assurances against deindustrialisation by subsidised Indian exports. |
Water scarcity is a critical threat to both countries; they need to build on the Indus Waters Treaty to avert a water crisis that may become the spark of a future conflict. |
It remains to be seen if the initial Pakistan-India overtures will lead to dialogue and whether this can be sustained. The endeavour to normalise Pakistan-India relations is like a second marriage: a triumph of hope over experience. But no one can be resigned to accept the alternative: continued turmoil in South Asia a... |
Wishful thinking. Nothing will come out unless Pakistanis stop living in la la land. |
Things are going as usual. |
Lot of self imagination and far from ground reality. |
Colour blind analysis as usual. |
According to the author Pakistan will rule the world in next few months if not weeks. |
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