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I was at a dinner last week with the new British Foreign Secretary, Jeremy Hunt. Hunt was telling us of his recent meeting with Henry Kissinger. He had asked that doyen of diplomacy what separated the good foreign ministers from the ordinary. "Good foreign ministers have an understanding of strategy," the great man growled. Indeed.
The temptation foreign ministers must avoid is to lose sight of strategy as they react to day to day events, often driven by the ephemeral excitement of the media. Well, the West's media is in overdrive over the murder by the Saudis of Jamal Khashoggi at the Saudi Arabian consulate in Istanbul. There's a demand the West should turn its collective back on Saudi Arabia in response to this criminal act.
I'm not defending what the Saudis did. It was clearly unacceptable. Murder always is. But what is it about Saudi Arabia we have learned in the last month that we didn't already know? It's a tough autocracy, the home of Wahhabism, the hardline sect of Islam which harks back to the values and practices of the middle ages. Its political and economic system is run by an eye-wateringly rich royal family who spray their wealth around Mayfair and Fifth Avenue, if not entirely at home.
And Saudi Arabia is hardly a model of economic efficiency. It has the same population of Australia, produces about 12 per cent of the world's oil and has a GDP not much more than a third of Australia's.
My own experiences of Saudi Arabia have not been entirely happy. As foreign minister I expelled a senior Saudi diplomat because he had been allegedly imprisoning and raping his Filipina maid. The next time I visited Riyadh as foreign minister my reception was distinctly chilly. I sat in the hotel room for hours waiting for meetings which never happened. But I didn't ever publicise the expulsion of the Saudi diplomat because I knew two things. First, raping anyone was a serious criminal offence and since a diplomat couldn't be prosecuted I did the next best thing: expel him.
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But I also knew Saudi Arabia was strategically important. It was and still is a partner of convenience for the West. It's not about oil. The Saudis have to export oil to survive. And it's not about arms sales. It's about maintaining a power balance in the Middle East and in particular in the Persian Gulf.
There's no doubting the aggression and ambitions of the Iranian theocracy. They've been pushing their influence from Afghanistan to the Mediterranean. They fund and arm Hezbollah and Hamas, deeply divisive and confrontational organisations. They have actively supported the attempted Houthi takeover of Yemen and Iran is deeply engaged in cyberwarfare.
In this febrile environment, Saudi Arabia is the ally of the West. Abandoning the relationship with Saudi Arabia would further weaken the interests and influence of the Western powers in the Middle East. And if you think that doesn't matter you're quite wrong. The Middle East is volatile enough without adding to that volatility by creating new power vacuums.
So back to the tragic murder of Jamal Khashoggi. My intelligence sources tell me he had worked as an intelligence agent for the Saudi intelligence service, GID, for around 20 years. At one point he was sent by GID to Sudan to meet Osama bin Laden and to try to lure him away from terrorism. He failed.
Khashoggi had always been close to the Muslim Brotherhood, the people who took over Egypt under Morsi following the so-called Arab Spring. The Muslim Brotherhood is a hard-line Islamist organisation dedicated to the introduction of Sharia and the creation of an Islamic caliphate. These people are no bleeding heart liberals. Indeed, the Muslim Brotherhood has been outlawed as a terrorist organisation in a number of Middle Eastern countries and is part of the Hamas support group. They have been implacably opposed to many of the more liberal reforms of the Saudi Crown Prince, Mohammed bin Salman (MBS).
To add to the complexity of the story, the Brotherhood is supported by the Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and the Qataris. This is a source of real tension between Saudi Arabia, Egypt and their regional allies on the one side and the Turks and Qataris on the other.
So Jamal Khashoggi '' a former Saudi intelligence agent, a man who was close to the Muslim Brotherhood and a sworn opponent of MBS' reform program'' was in the process of setting up a centre to promote the ideology of the MB. He was setting it up in Turkey with Qatari money. The Saudis wanted to stop him. In September they offered him $9 million to return to Saudi Arabia and to live there unhindered. They wanted him out of play. Khashoggi refused and the rest you know. The Saudis killed him.
Let me make two points. First, there is no justification for murdering Khashoggi. Secondly, this man wasn't some Western-oriented liberal brutally murdered because of his passion for freedom. This man was a player.
So it makes you wonder why the American press is so particularly outraged by Khashoggi's murder. Well, he was a columnist for the Washington Post and it's a standard bearer of American liberalism. But it's also been a great propaganda coup against Saudi Arabia in general. Many Westerners blame the Saudis for the tragedy of Yemen. More than that. President Trump has made a great play of embracing Saudi Arabia as America's ally '' much more so than Obama who instead, against Saudi objections, did the nuclear deal with Iran. As for Erdogan, it's absolutely in his interests to milk the Khashoggi murder in Turkey for all it's worth. Erdogen wants Turkey to replace Saudi Arabia as the leader of the Islamic world.
You see my point. You can in government be swept up in the prevailing media narrative and if you design your foreign policy on that basis you will achieve nothing. The wise government is the government which has a clear strategic direction and manages ephemeral events often driven by others with ulterior motives.
Alexander Downer was foreign minister from 1996 to 2007 and is a former high commissioner to the UK.
Palestine Islamic Jihad calls US sanctions against Iran as terrorism - Home Page
Gaza (Web Desk) The Palestine Islamic Jihad movement, calling the US cruel sanctions against Iran as terrorism stressed that Washington ignores international law and deals with the world in 'bullying' behavior.
The Islamic Jihad has issued a statement announcing that the imposition of US sanctions against Palestine and other Arab-Islamic nations, is strengthening the belief of the Palestinian people that the White House will cause corruption in the world without any deterrent.
The statement added that the United States is seeking to spread tyranny to the people of the world by supporting Zionist-occupying terrorism against the Palestinian people.
The Islamic Jihad has emphasized that free people in the world should stand against American bullying policies that do not attach any importance to human values and laws.
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Israeli minister visits Oman amid warming ties with Arab governmentsJerusalem (Web Desk) An Israeli minister is visiting Oman, following a controversial trip by the '...
Another journalist in Saudi Arabia 'is killed during torture while in custody' | Daily Mail Online
Turki Bin Abdul Aziz Al-Jasser (pictured) is said to have been murdered in jail
Another dissident journalist has reportedly been tortured and killed in Saudi Arabia.
Turki Bin Abdul Aziz Al-Jasser is said to have been murdered in jail a month after Jamal Khashoggi was slaughtered in the kingdom's Istanbul consulate.
News site The New Khaleej reported Al-Jasser's death on Saturday quoting human rights sources. The report has not been confirmed.
Human rights groups say the Saudi government believed Al-Jasser secretly ran a Twitter account called Kashkool, which exposed human rights violations by officials and the royals.
Saudi spies in Twitter's regional HQ in Dubai unmasked him and he was arrested in March, according to reports.
The spy ring was said to be run by Saud al-Qahtani, Crown Prince Mohammad's 'thuggish' aide who was demoted after being blamed for the Khashoggi crisis.
If true, the revelations that Saudi Arabia is still killing journalists even after the uproar caused by the Khashoggi scandal will dismay the West.
It comes after Turkish media claimed yesterday that Saudi consulate staff tried to dismantle CCTV equipment at their Istanbul compound to help cover up Khashoggi's murder.
Human rights group Prisoners of Conscience claimed al-Jasser was behind a Twitter account critical of the royals
Khashoggi (pictured), a Washington Post columnist critical of the Saudi government, disappeared at the Saudi consulate in Istanbul on October 2
Workers attempted to tear out a security camera inside the building on October 2, the day the writer walked in and was killed, according to reports in Turkey.
Attempts were also made at tampering with a video system in the police security booth outside the complex days later, it is claimed.
According to Turkey's pro-government Sabah newspaper, a member of staff at the consulate went to access the police security post video system at 1am on October 6.
Sabah said the same individual entered a digital lock code into the system to block access to footage showing movements at the entrance - including the moment Khashoggi arrived at the consulate.
However, Al Jazeera reports that police had already deciphered codes and accessed the system before the attempted tampering allegedly took place.
Meanwhile, Turkey's foreign minister has claimed a 15-man Saudi team that flew to Turkey before the killing of Jamal Khashoggi must have been acting on orders.
Speaking to reporters in Tokyo, Mevlut Cavusoglu added that it was Saudi Arabia's responsibility to tell Turkey what happened to the Khashoggi's body, according to Anadolu news agency.
But he reiterated Ankara's stance that the directions had not come from King Salman.
Khashoggi, a Washington Post columnist critical of the Saudi government and its de facto ruler Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, disappeared at the Saudi consulate in Istanbul on October 2.
Saudi consulate staff tried to dismantle CCTV cameras in their Istanbul compound to help cover up the murder of Jamal Khashoggi, Turkish media have claimed. The tough critic of the Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman is pictured entering the Saudi consulate (pictured) in Istanbul on October 2 to collect a document for his upcoming marriage
The controversial San Francisco "homelessness tax" that divided the tech industry passed with nearly 60 percent affirmative votes, according to poll tallies Tuesday night.
Proposition C will increase gross receipts taxes for companies with more than $50 million in annual revenue by an average of 0.5 percent, generating up to $300 million a year to combat the city's homelessness crisis through initiatives like new beds in shelters and increased mental health services.
Prop C had both vocal proponents and vehement detractors in the tech industry.
Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff strongly endorsedthe measure as a moral responsibility of tech companies, many of which have received tax breaks to maintain offices downtown. Together, Benioff and Salesforce contributed more than $7 million to support the proposal, which could cost Salesforce up to $10 million in additional taxes a year.
On the other side, Twitter and Square CEO Jack Dorsey spoke out against Prop C, as did the CEO of payments company Stripe and the founder of Zynga, Mark Pincus. Lyft, venture capitalist Michael Moritz and Y Combinator's Paul Graham all donated at least $100,000 to the "No on Prop C" campaign, too.
Critics of the proposition argued that it lacked proper accountability and oversight, and would unfairly affect financial services companies like Square. Outside the tech industry, San Francisco Mayor London Breed and state Sen. Scott Wiener opposed the measure as well.
In the weeks leading up to the election, the measure became a point of tension in a city where tech-fueled wealth stands in stark contrast with the human suffering on display on its sidewalks.
Overall, more than 7,000 people experience homelessness in San Francisco. The median house price hit $1.6 million earlier this year and one-bedroom apartments rent for an average of $3,300.
Benioff was quick to sound off on the proposition's passing on Twitter:
TweetSupporters were hoping for the proposition to pass by a more than a two-thirds vote, which it ended up just shy of, to avoid any legal challenges. Benioff told The San Francisco Chronicle that he would fund a defense:
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Humboldt U Whiteness Training
---------- Forwarded message
---------
From: Julie L Tucker
Date: Tue, Nov 6, 2018 at 11:21 AM
Subject: Fwd: Two-part Whiteness and Microaggressions Training: 2-4pm Thursday,
11/15 & Friday, 11/16
To:
Cc: Julie Tucker
Dear
Colleagues,
All
faculty are encouraged to participate in the upcoming, two-part Whiteness and
Microaggressions Training on
Thursday, November 15 and Friday,
November 16 from 2:00-4:00 pm both days. The Whiteness and
Microaggressions training dates were selected with input that more faculty
would be available during these times.
This four-hour workshop (divided into two, 2-hour segments) will offer an
introduction to the concept of whiteness, the significance of whiteness in our
everyday lives, and how whiteness shapes our interactions. The training
examines how whiteness affects various systems of advantage and what that looks
like in our community. Additionally, it will explore how microaggressions
are a manifestation of whiteness. The training will address what
microaggressions are, how we can identify them, and how they impact our daily
interactions with one another. Finally, the training will examine
strategies to confront and avoid committing microaggressions.
We welcome you to participate and join the more than 300 HSU campus and
community members that have already participated in these sessions. Your
participation will broaden the circle of shared language and understandings to
facilitate change for equity in classrooms, on campus, and in the
community.
Facilitators:
· Meridith
Oram, Office of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion
· Dr.
Edelmira Reynoso, Office of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion
France's far-right Rassemblement National (RN) party jumped ahead of President Emmanuel Macron's LREM for the first time in a poll of voting intentions for May 2019 European Parliament elections.
An Ifop poll published on Sunday showed the centrist Republic on the Move (LREM) with 19 percent of voting intentions compared to 20 percent at the end of August, while far-right leader Marine Le Pen's RN -- formerly the National Front -- rose to 21 percent from 17 percent previously.
Together with the seven percent score of sovereignist Nicolas Dupont-Aignan and one percent each for "Frexit" parties led by former Le Pen associate Florian Philippot and Francois Asselineau, far-right parties won a combined 30 percent of voting intentions, up from 25 percent end August.
The poll asked nearly 1,000 French people on Oct 30-31 who they would vote for if the European Parliament elections were to be held the next Sunday.
The conservative Les Republicains party led by Laurent Wauquiez slipped two percentage points to 13 percent, while the far-left France Insoumise led by Jean-Luc Melenchon fell from 14 to 11 percent.
Charles Platiau | Reuters
Marine Le Pen, French National Front (FN) political party candidate for French 2017 presidential election, concedes defeat at the Chalet du Lac in the Bois de Vincennes in Paris after the second round of 2017 French presidential election, France, May 7, 2017.
Melenchon was widely criticized and mocked after yelling at police officers during a raid of his party offices as part of an anti-corruption inquiry.
In an Odoxa-Dentsu poll released mid-September, Macron and Le Pen's parties were neck-and-neck at around 21 percent, while the conservative Les Republicains came third with 14 percent and Melenchon's France Insoumise fourth with 12.5 percent.
In an Ifop poll in May, the LREM was seen winning 27 percent of the EU parliament vote, well ahead of the far right's 17 percent and more than Macron's 24 percent in the first round of France's April 2017 presidential elections.
The European elections are shaping up to be a major battle between centrist, pro-EU parties like Macron's LREM and far-right formations that want to stop immigration and globalization.
The European Parliament elections determine who leads the major EU institutions, including the European Commission, the bloc's civil service, and are also important as a bellwether of sentiment among the EU's 500 million people.
In a YouGov poll published last week, Macron's popularity fell to its lowest level since his 2017 election, with only 21 percent of those polled saying they were satisfied with him.
Macron's reputation has been hit by the brusque departure of two high-profile ministers and a summer scandal over his bodyguard, while stubbornly high unemployment, high taxes and rising fuel prices add to a general feeling of discontent.
Finland police raid billionaire's secret island fortress
FINNISH special forces have dramatically raided a private island owned by a billionaire believed to have been used as a hideout by spies.
News Corp Australia Network November 3, 2018 10:06am
A FORCE of 400 heavily armed tactical police have stormed 17 properties on Finland's western borders '-- many owned by mysterious Russian businessman Pavel Melnikov.
The raids, which took place in September, included an assault on the tiny island of Sakkiluoto. The island held nine piers, a helipad, a camouflage-draped swimming pool, swarms of satellite dishes '-- and barracks-like housing.
Officially, Finland's KRP federal police are investigating a Russian real estate company for money laundering.
But many in Finland don't believe these properties match their descriptions as luxury getaways or investment properties. And Finnish authorities have been unusually quiet about it all. This is seen as odd, given the crowing over similar corporate criminal cases in the past.
Local media is speculating that the Russian firm was, in fact, buying up land to establish covert outposts for Moscow's spies and special forces.
The involvement of the Finnish Defence Forces in the raids has added to this speculation. Surveillance planes and helicopters enforced a no-fly-zone over the Turku Archipelago as 100 armed agents swarmed the island in small boats. Another 300 were spread between the 16 remaining properties.
All reportedly had to contend with surveillance cameras and motion-detector alarms, despite their remote locations.
Pavel Melnikov owned the 17 raided sites mostly through his Finnish-based company Airiston Helmi. But Airiston, despite having invested millions since 2007, has never reported a profit.
''There are no commercial grounds for acquiring the land, but the roads are strategically important and their military significance is considerable,'' member of Finland's parliament Tom Packalen wrote for the newspaper Uusi Soumi.
''If Airiston Helmi is a truly commercial company, it's run by really bad business people or it's money laundering, which led police to lead a massive operation on the site.''
Melnikov was not among just two men arrested during the raids. One is a Russian, and the other an Estonian of Russian heritage. Neither has been named.
Seven people had been held for questioning.
Melnikov himself remains out of reach. He claims Russian, Latvian and Maltese citizenship.
Finnish police say they seized $5 million in cash. Computers and flash drives containing some 100 terabytes of data was also reportedly confiscated.
It's not the first time Finnish media has raised fears of a potential Russian ''hybrid warfare'' campaign through strategic land purchases. Finland, which borders Russia to the East and Norway to the west, relies heavily on its western ports and Baltic Sea shipping lanes. There are also two major oil refineries in the area.
In 2018, Russian special forces staged an unannounced mock invasion of Gogland Island, close to the Finnish Coast.
The island is owneed by Russia and the raid involved the airborne insertion of special forces troops which ''attacked'' a simulated facility before helicoptering out.
It was widely seen as a ''signal'' to warn against Finland's improving relations with the West.
'The crash is going to be violent': Italy headed for crisis, warns banker
Mr Bini-Smaghi told Avvenire that the budget deficit for 2019 will be 3.5 per cent of GDP, far higher than the 2.4 per cent estimate that Brussels immediately rejected as too high.
"This is going to unleash mass selling by investors, and risks a snowball effect," he said.
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The Italian banks hold '¬380 billion ($611 billion) of the country's -sovereign bonds. Insurer Generali alone holds another '¬60 billion. The rising spreads will cause mark-to-market losses and erode the capital buffers of the banks, forcing them to rein in credit. "The whole banking system, whether big institutions or small, risks running out of funds for the real economy," he said.
Brussels has been treating the budget showdown as a problem for the Italians - much as it treats Brexit as a UK problem - but the dispute is inherently double-edged. Ultimately it threatens a systemic pan-EMU crisis and the survival of the euro itself.
"The clock is ticking for Europe," said Claudio Borghi, the Lega economics chief and budget chairman in the Italian parliament. "We're going into a world economic downturn and that is a disaster for the eurozone." He said a protracted crisis works to the advantage of the insurgent Lega-Five Star government.
"We already saw contagion to Spain, Portugal, and even France when the spreads got to 340 last week," he said.
Italy is on the cusp of recession. Credit: AP
"It hurts of course if stock markets are falling everywhere, but it helps us politically.
"The truth is that Europe cannot survive without the cushion of QE. The ECB is going to have to relaunch QE next year and as soon as that becomes clear, you'll see the spreads come back down to 50 overnight. These spreads have nothing to do with our mildly expansionary budget. They are a function of whether or not there is a central bank guarantee.
"Brussels would love to see our defeat. They think that we'll surrender if they cause a crisis for our banks. But we still have '¬15 billion left in the bank rescue fund from the Renzi era. It is not a great situation but we're still relatively comfortable. In the end, it will be they who have to back down. The only thing we will change in our budget letter is the font."
Mr Borghi dismissed a German plan over the weekend for the mass seizure of Italian private savings as ivory tower madness, warning that any such move would detonate a systemic banking crisis and the rapid disintegration of the euro.
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Karsten Wendorff, the Bundesbank's veteran finance chief, proposed "national solidarity bonds" to cover half of Italy's '¬2.3 trillion debt. This would be funded by a mandatory wealth tax of 20 per cent on the net private assets of the Italian people.
It would supposedly head off the need for help from the eurozone bail-out fund (ESM) or from the ECB, and therefore spare north European taxpayers any consequences from the eurozone's chronic structural crisis.
Mr Borghi said Italian private wealth is not held in liquid assets. Attempts to collect such vast sums would set off a cascading fire-sale of bonds, equities, and property, causing a rapid collapse of both the Italian and EMU financial edifice. "It would crush the banking system. This would not even work in theory."
Long before it reached that point, the Lega-Five Star government would have to take emergency measures to defend Italy through temporary control of the banks and activation of their "minibot" plan for a parallel liquidity. This would set in motion a de facto breakdown of monetary union.
Italy's woes threaten to spread throughout the EU. Credit: Bloomberg
Giovanni Tria, the finance minister, said Rome would act fast to shore up lenders if compelled by events. "The banks are still solid. For the time being there are no dangers. If there is systemic stress, clearly the state must intervene," he said,
While Mr Wendorff presented his plan in the Frankfurter Allgemeine as a private opinion, it follows a drumbeat from the Bundesbank and the German Council of Economic Experts for debt-restructuring before there can be any rescue of Italy or other eurozone states. They have brushed aside warnings from ECB's former president, Jean-Claude Trichet, that such plans would risk a "catastrophe". It would repeat the Deauville "walk on the beach" decision by the French and German leaders to haircut Greek debt against the advice of Frankfurt. It set off EMU-wide contagion.
Lorenzo Codogno, former chief economist of the Italian treasury and now at LC Macro Advisers, said the eurozone's northern bloc would demand "debt re-profiling" on Italian debt as a condition for any ESM bail-out - should the rebel government ever agree to request one, which is doubtful.
This would probably be a 20 per cent default, chiefly by stretching the maturities on the debt rather than as a haircut. It would still trigger bankruptcy insurance on Italian credit default swaps. He said international investors do not seem fully aware that this may be coming, or how risky this precedent could be for other Club Med debtors.
Mr Codogno said Italy is already in crisis and that the credit data for September and October will reveal the extent of the credit crunch. Capital flight is already in full swing.
Europe faces a quandary. Survey data shows that Italians fell out of love with the euro long ago, but fear the trauma and losses of leaving monetary union would be unbearable.
The more that the EU authorities talk of debt-restructuring or forced wealth taxes as the exorbitant price for staying in the euro, the greater the appeal of the lira for large blocks of the Italian nation.
Telegraph, London
Bundesbank official says Italy could issue "solidarity... | This is Money
Bundesbank official says Italy could issue "solidarity bonds"ByReuters
Published: 13:13 EST, 27 October 2018 | Updated: 13:13 EST, 27 October 2018
BERLIN, Oct 27 (Reuters) - A senior official at Germany's Bundesbank has suggested that Italy introduce 'national solidarity bonds' which wealthy Italians would be required to buy to dig their government out of debt.
The idea - sure to be controversial in Rome - would aim to tap Italian wealth tied up in property to relieve the government of much of the debt burden that drives up Italy's cost of borrowing and makes it vulnerable to financial markets.
The Italian government is facing a backlash from the European Commission over its plans to increase spending despite its large debt burden, in a standoff that has even stoked some fears Italy might leave the euro area.
"Italy is not a poor country. It does not have to be the plaything of financial markets," Karsten Wendorff, chief of the Bundesbank's public finances department wrote in an editorial for Saturday's edition of the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung.
Wendorff proposed setting up an Italian state fund, financed by the solidarity bonds, to buy national government bonds.
"The Italian population would be obliged to acquire the solidarity bonds depending, for example, on the net wealth of households," Wendorff wrote.
The Bundesbank is the most hawkish of the euro zone's 19 national central banks and regularly calls for a 'liability union', in which members are responsible for their own finances, and warns against turning the euro area into a fiscal union.
With a 'solidarity rate' of 20 percent - the proportion of net household assets to be invested in bonds - and a tax allowance of 50,000 euros ($57,000), almost half of Italy's government debt could be converted into solidarity bonds, Wendorff wrote.
"The banking system would be relieved of risks from the high government debt and the banking-state nexus would be significantly moderated," Wendorff added. "A national problem would be solved with national solidarity."
European Central Bank President Mario Draghi, himself an Italian, said on Thursday that a recent sell-off in Italian government bonds was set to dent the capital of Italy's banks, which own about 375 billion euros worth of that paper.
On Friday, Draghi defended his independence as members of the Italian ruling coalition attacked him over "improper" remarks about the country's political situation.
($1 = 0.8771 euros) (Writing by Paul Carrel Editing by Clelia Oziel)
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Six far-right suspects held over violence plot against Emmanuel Macron | World news | The Guardian
French president may have been target of 'violent action' plot, anti-terror police say
The French president, Emmanuel Macron.Photograph: Ludovic Marin/Pool/EPASix people linked to the far right have been detained in connection with a ''violent'' plot against the French president, Emmanuel Macron, officials said.
The six, who were not identified, were picked up by anti-terrorism units in the eastern French regions of Moselle and Is¨re and the north-west region of Ille-et-Vilaine, officials added.
A source close to the investigation said the arrests came after reports of a possible plot involving ''violent action'' aimed at the president. Prosecutors have launched an investigation into a ''criminal terrorist association'', a judicial source said.
Another official said: ''This investigation is looking into a plot, vague and ill-defined at this stage, involving violent action against the president of the republic.''
In July 2017, a 23-year-old far-right extremist was charged with plotting to assassinate Macron at France's Bastille Day military parade, which the French leader attended with the US president, Donald Trump.
The man, arrested at home, told investigators he wanted to kill Macron at the 14 July national day parade in Paris, along with ''Muslims, Jews, blacks and homosexuals''. Three kitchen knives were found in his car and analysis of his computer found that he had conducted web searches as part of his plot.
France's Macron Calls for Creating a 'European Army' - WSJ
French President Emmanuel Macron called for the creation of a ''true European army,'' issuing a sharp critique of trans-Atlantic security ties days before U.S. President Trump is due to visit France.
Europe's security ties with the U.S., which have been a bedrock of the continent's stability for decades, have come under strain as Mr. Trump has demanded more military spending from European members of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization and questioned the alliance's benefits for the U.S. Such tensions have led Mr. Macron and German Chancellor Angela Merkel to publicly question whether the continent can still rely on the U.S. to come to Europe's defense.
Mr. Macron went a step further by grouping the U.S. among foreign powers he considers a potential threat to the continent. ''We have to protect ourselves with respect to China, Russia and even the United States of America,'' Mr. Macron said on French radio.
Mr. Macron made the remarks as part of a weeklong tour of World War I battlefields ahead of the centenary of the Nov. 11 Armistice, when the French leader is due to host Mr. Trump, Vladimir Putin of Russia and many other heads of state.
Europe is the ''main victim,'' Mr. Macron said, of Mr. Trump's decision to withdraw from the landmark 1987 Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty. That accord prohibits the use of intermediate- and shorter-range rockets, as well as testing, producing or fielding new ground-based missiles.
''We will not protect the Europeans unless we decide to have a true European army,'' Mr. Macron said.
Tensions between European leaders and the U.S. have escalated at a time when the Trump administration has increased its defense spending in Europe. U.S. military funding specifically earmarked for Europe reached $4.77 billion this year, compared with $789 million the year Mr. Trump was elected. That has left Europe as reliant on the U.S. as ever, because the gap in relative military capabilities has widened since the Cold War.
Outside of NATO, European powers have long struggled to link their militaries, even on initiatives as basic as buying simple equipment.
European countries have experimented with putting brigades under each other's command. But no significant merging of forces has ever been achieved outside of specific European Union military missions, which tend to focus on training foreign armies or police.
In Brussels, the idea of an EU army has long had prominent supporters among those who believe European defense and foreign policy collaboration have fallen far behind cooperation on economic policies.
Following Russia's annexation of Crimea, European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker in March 2015 said the bloc needs its own military force to be taken seriously in international affairs. He has also proposed that foreign policy decisions should be taken on a majority vote, stripping capitals of their veto on these decisions.
Britain's planned exit from the bloc has also freed up Brussels to increase its defense ambitions. London had repeatedly blocked EU plans to bolster its military cooperation.
Over the past couple of years, the EU has launched a fund for defense research, and the bloc has ratcheted up efforts to force member states to put defense contracts out to tender across the bloc. The EU has also launched a new initiative that sets out key defense-procurement needs and encourages clusters of member states to submit joint projects to develop them.
Yet these early steps fall far short of Mr. Macron's aspirations. Indeed, Paris has been sufficiently frustrated by the pace of European defense progress that Mr. Macron has proposed a non-EU military-intervention force that would include the U.K.
''We need a Europe which defends itself better alone, without just depending on the United States, in a more sovereign manner,'' said Mr. Macron, who has generally enjoyed warm ties with Mr. Trump.
Meanwhile, a host of European countries, including Germany, are still struggling to lift their defense spending toward the NATO agreed target of 2% of GDP, although European defense spending, including non-EU countries like Turkey, has increased some $50 billion since the start of 2015, according to NATO.
Given those constraints, most European officials have been circumspect about talk of creating an EU army. Federica Mogherini, the bloc's foreign policy chief, said last year such a prospect was ''50, 60 or 100 years away.''
On Tuesday, European Commission spokesman Margaritis Schinas welcomed the French president's ambitions but also said talk of an EU army was premature. Cooperation should begin in the areas of research, procurement and funding, Mr. Schinas said, adding: ''I don't think this defense identity will start with an EU army.''
'--Daniel Michaels in Brussels contributed to this article.
Write to Stacy Meichtry at stacy.meichtry@wsj.com and Laurence Norman at laurence.norman@wsj.com
SWIFT
Will the Blockchain Replace Swift? | American Banker
I made a provocative comment, as it turned out, during my keynote at a recent conference. The comment was picked up in a press article that reported I said "the coding behind virtual currency bitcoin could also prove to be enormously transformational, potentially even replacing the Swift network for interbank payments."
This remark created a lot of debate as Swift is the backbone of the banking industry worldwide. Built in the 1970s to replace telex machines with electronic transfers, Swift is a co-operatively funded network by the global banking system to let them send funds with confidence. Its very name shows its cooperative nature: the Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication.
Swift provides a network that enables financial institutions to send and receive information about financial transactions in a secure, standardized and reliable environment. The majority of banks use the Swift network to send money. As of September 2010, more than 9,000 financial institutions in 209 countries, were sending and receiving an average of over 15 million messages per day, compared with just 2.4 million a day in 1995. Furthermore, banks trade something like $5 trillion a day in currencies alone, and most of that is handled by message exchanges to and from the Swift network.
Therefore to say that a new technology, the blockchain, could eradicate a 50-year-old, bank-owned network overnight is provocative. But then, many countering my view showed a complete lack of understanding of what the technology is. Sure, banks are waking up to bitcoin and, more important, the blockchain and its ability to transform banking. But not quickly enough.
Blockchain, a technology that has more compute power behind it on a decentralized basis than any open source project in history, could fundamentally reinvent the banking system. And yet, few bankers understand it. They made this known by expressing views that were clearly incorrect after they read my keynote comment.
First, there was the view that bitcoin is purely for payments. No. Bitcoin, the protocol, and other cryptocurrencies are for the recording of digital value exchanges that can take any form from a payment to a marriage vow.
Second, that bitcoin cannot threaten something like Swift, as Swift is more than just payments. Half of Swift's activities are in securities settlement, for example. Wrong. Bitcoin's technology can record securities settlements as easily as a marriage contract or a payment. This is evidenced by the newly launched investment markets service, Colored Coins, a company that records investment activity on the blockchain.
Third, that the upstart cryptocurrencies could not threaten Swift since Swift has the scalability, security, resilience and history that provide the trust in the network. Wrong. Bitcoin is now using more scalable and capable networking compute power than SETI, the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence, which was the world's previously largest networked system.
Fourth, that the bitcoin blockchain is of interest, but not the currency. Some people believe this is wrong, too. They state that you cannot have a blockchain in banking without a native currency'--and why would you replace bitcoin as the native currency when it's had five years and thousands of man hours of development effort invested? It's an interesting discussion, and one I disagree with personally as you can have a dollarchain or eurochain, rather than a bitcoin blockchain, but only time will tell on this one.
Fifth, that Mt. Gox's collapse has destroyed all trust in bitcoins and its ecosystem. No. Just because a flaky trading system collapsed does not remove the robustness of the bitcoin protocol. It's similar to Northern Rock collapsing. Does that mean you no longer buy Pounds Sterling?
Sixth, that it is difficult to use. Yes, but that's changing fast thanks to the bitcoin ecosystem. Companies such as Circle and Ripple are changing the game. Bitcoin is like the Internet before Tim Berners-Lee gave us the World Wide Web. But it's becoming easier and faster, so keep watching this space.
Finally, that it's not relevant because it's just a cryptocurrency. Wrong. It's a protocol, a commodity, a technology, a smart contracts system, a general ledger, a secure exchange '-- a many splendored thing.
Now, I write about bitcoin all the time. Not because I'm promoting it but because it has the potential to reinvent banking, money and regulation as we know it. Its technology '-- the blockchain '-- is the core technology of the ValueWeb. That is why leading exponent and investor in bitcoin startups, Marc Andreessen, is regularly quoted as saying this is important. In February 2012, he told TechCrunch, "Every single smart computer science person I've had look into it has reached the same conclusion '-- blockchain is a fundamental breakthrough in technology."
Andreessen told Bloomberg in October 2014: "We have a chance to rebuild the system. Financial transactions are just numbers; it's just information."
And on Twitter in February 2014, he wrote, "I am dying to fund a disruptive bank."
In other words he, and many other highly intelligent investors, are betting the farm that this technology will succeed.
A final point of clarification. What I said was, "Bitcoin even has the potential to replace Swift for financial transaction processing." I didn't say it would. The fact that Swift is highly inclusive of Ripple, Colored Coins, the bitcoin community and more in its internal and external discussions shows that Swift is just as keen as I to highlight the importance of these developments to its financial community.
Chris Skinner is an author, expert and speaker on banking, finance and fintech. He can be reached @Chris_Skinner.
Corrected March 7, 2016 at 12:55PM: This article is adapted from the forthcoming book "ValueWeb: How Fintech Firms are Using Bitcoin Blockchain and Mobile Technologies to Create the Internet of Value."
The Russian Association of Corporate Treasurers is joining the government-led Masterchain blockchain initiative, a platform developed by the central bank to facilitate communication within Russia's banking market. Russia is reportedly looking to use the platform to replace SWIFT's inter-bank communications network.
Russia's FinTech Association and 14 of the nation's largest banks collaborated on the development of Masterchain. The initiative eventually hopes to join banks and government agencies that collaborate on contract registration and regulation.
Using Masterchain will reduce operating costs by up to five times, the white paper claims, and will accelerate contract processing.
European Union sanctions against Russia sparked concerns that SWIFT may remove Russia from its system. Reports said that has forced the country to experiment with alternatives to facilitate payments and inter-bank messaging and communication.
Looking at a Future Without SWIFT: Financial Institutions and Blockchain '-- OANDA
In this second installment of our miniseries on ''Demystifying Cryptocurrencies, Blockchain-based Applications and Opportunities in the B2B Payments Space,'' the Solutions for Business team at OANDA will address how a decades old "messaging service" '-- SWIFT '-- is likely to be displaced for good by blockchain-based applications to fulfill international payments.
What is SWIFT?Founded in the 1970s, the Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication, or SWIFT, is the preeminent global provider of financial messaging services between banks. It provides its services to over 11,000 banks and financial institutions in over 200 countries and sends over 6.5 billion financial messages a year.
More Articles in this Series
For decades, SWIFT has provided the global financial system with a secure, reliable means to communicate and process cross-border payments. It has even been called upon to help enforce international sanctions on rogue states. But, while SWIFT remains dominant now, it may not be so in the future.
After all, Swift was built before the internet. In a traditional finance sector dominated by a select group of banks and institutions that, up until recently, had little to no meaningful competition, SWIFT was able to rise to the top unchallenged.
The real Game Changer in finance Much has been made of the rise of fintech'--financial technology'--in recent years, and rightly so. The pervasive changes taking place in the finance sector are attributed to fintech in large part for bringing innovative solutions and provoking a reluctant reaction from banks. But the most innovative development to date is arguably blockchain technology, which is on the brink of going fully mainstream as central banks around the world continue to research how to harness it.
SWIFT's position on blockchainIn Q4 2017, SWIFT said that it is "early days" regarding blockchain technology and that it's not prepared to adopt it now. The parallels between SWIFT and blockchain with banks and fintech cannot be underestimated.
The parallels between SWIFT and blockchain with banks and fintech cannot be underestimated.
The network went on to say that it may never adopt blockchain, but instead potentially pursue another route with different technology. It also highlighted that any solution would have to work "with legacy back-office applications,"
As Finextra points out, this is likely the main sticking point. SWIFT's network of banks is so vast that getting up to speed with blockchain across the board'--with so many legacy systems at work'--would be hard and astronomically expensive to implement.
What blockchain offers that SWIFT can'tSWIFT was created to replace the old telex transfer system, which was slow, unreliable, and vulnerable to security breaches. It addressed all problems and led to a much improved interconnected financial system'--in the 1970s. SWIFT is not a payment system, but only a messaging service.
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Our partner in this blog miniseries, Ripple, the world's only enterprise blockchain solution for global payments, describes how ''international transfers can only happen if banks in both locations have a pre-existing agreement. A good way to think about this is email before the advent of the SMTP protocol, which standardized electronic messaging. Imagine being on AOL and not being able to directly email someone using Yahoo. That's pretty much the situation with international payments. Each region has its own closed-loop system. What's lacking is a universal translator.'' (Source: Ripple blog)
In 2018, blockchain is the logical advancement. Through leveraging blockchain technology, Ripple is leading the charge in providing financial institutions with the following advantages on remittances*:
Speed: Cross-border settlements happen in seconds versus the traditional method of 3-5 days. Payment is instant and on demand. Reliability: Ripple's xCurrent product allows for bi-directional messaging which allows for transparency into fees, as well as reduces errors, repairs and reconciliations. Lower costs: Blockchain helps lower FX costs and liquidity requirements. And with instant payment settlement, funds aren't tied up in transit for days at a time. * https://ripple.com/solutions/
The future of payments A future without SWIFT looks faster, more reliable, and more cost-effective.
While fintech continues to move in on traditional banking sector territory, and banks continue to move forward with legacy systems at their core without much of true innovation, SWIFT is likewise standing by as blockchain-led alternative solution providers continue to make progress.Similarly to banks, SWIFT is relying on its current size, reach, and the dependence that the traditional and change-averse financial institutions have on it. But as banking continues to diversify away from traditional finance, so too will the global payments system. SWIFT may remain dominant for now, but longer term, it faces a much sterner task.
Since its creation in the 1970s, it hasn't really had serious competition to provide a challenge. But in blockchain it does now, and a future without SWIFT looks faster, more reliable, and more cost-effective.
"Extraordinary and unprecedented" is how SWIFT chief executive, Lzaro Campos, describes the March 17th move by Belgium-based SWIFT to discontinue service to 30 Iranian banks. The Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication, or SWIFT, is a worldwide financial messaging network to facilitate the interbank transfer of funds. Now, it has become an economic weapon as well.
SWIFT Headquarters in La Hulpe, BelgiumCampos emphasized the monetary blockade is "a direct result of international and multilateral action to intensify financial sanctions against Iran" and that SWIFT was forced by recent European Union sanctions designed to isolate Iran financially for its failure to demonstrate to Western nations that it is not developing nuclear weapons.
SWIFT has never expelled an institution in its 39-year history and in 2010 it processed 2 million messages for 19 Iranian member banks and 25 financial institutions. This is a vastly significant change in tactics and the repercussions are still unknown. Governments have long used the financial system as a method of tracking and blocking payment flow for targeted individuals and companies, but now it has been escalated to the nation-state level via the modern telecommunications network.
Mark Dubowitz is a sanctions specialist in Washington D.C. who advised U.S. lawmakers on the recent SWIFT legislation. He said the decision could limit the ability of Iran's banks "to move billions of dollars in financial transactions and put immense pressure on Iran's leaders to reconsider their policies" and that it underscores "the growing political isolation of Iran as it becomes the first country to be expelled from what is the financial equivalent of the United Nations."
Highlighting and exposing the structural importance of centralized financial institutions that sit at the very top of the payments pyramid will hasten the trend to more decentralized and regional payment structures. Moreover, a single worldwide financial structure with near-absolute authority will begin to be seen as a vulnerability to many nations because they cannot always be expected to comply with U.S. and European Union directives. Now that the precedent has been set for evicting a country's financial institutions from the prevailing global payments network, all nations will be rightly suspicious of that powerful weapon.
Trader and gold advocate Jim Sinclair explains to King World News how the U.S. government uses the international payments system as a weapon of war:
"We go to war, challenging the other side to do the same because whatever you use as a weapon, the other side is going to tend to use as a weapon. The weapon that's being used is the interbank transfer system, the way money is sent from bank to bank. We've already seen that Iran has been basically shut out of the SWIFT system and the SWIFT system is what this is all about. The SWIFT system doesn't take any money for the money that goes through it. The SWIFT system is like the old telephone company. What it does is charge for the use of its communication.
Believe me the SWIFT system works for the West. It's located in Belgium and you would think the US had no power on it. It's never discussed as being a US arm, but it is a US weapon. You've got to see now you've got this visual in front of you of a battlefield. You've got Wall Street firing by lighting off something that looks like a cruise missile, but it's got SWIFT written on the side."
India is now told to cooperate or suffer the consequences implying tacitly that payment network sanctions are a real possibility. In a March 26th, 2012 audio interview, Sinclair goes on to forecast how the BRIC economies and other emerging trade areas around the world may soon look to establish their own SWIFT-type transfer systems so as not to get locked out of the international monetary system in the future. The backlash from this action will lead to the remonetization of gold around the world as barter and currency substitutes to the U.S. dollar gain in importance.
Need to transfer money overseas? Today, it is easy to walk into a bank and transfer money anywhere around the globe. But how does this happen? Behind most international money and security transfers is the SWIFT system, a vast messaging network used by banks and other financial institutions to quickly, accurately, and securely send and receive information such as money transfer instructions. Every day, nearly 10,000 SWIFT member institutions send approximately 24 million messages on the network. In this article we will explore what SWIFT does, how it works, and how it makes money.
What is SWIFT?SWIFT stands for the Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunications. It is a messaging network that financial institutions use to securely transmit information and instructions through a standardized system of codes.
SWIFT assigns each financial organization a unique code that has either eight characters or 11 characters. The code is called interchangeably the bank identifier code (BIC), SWIFT code, SWIFT ID, or ISO 9362 code. (See related: What's the difference between an IBAN and a swift code?) To understand how the code is assigned, let's look at Italian bank UniCredit Banca, headquartered in Milan. It has the 8-character SWIFT code UNCRITMM.
First four characters: the institute code (UNCR for UniCredit Banca)Next two characters: the country code (IT for the country Italy)Next two characters: the location/city code (MM for Milan) Last three characters: optional, but organizations use it to assign codes to individual branches. (The UniCredit Banca branch in Venice may use the code UNCRITMMZZZ.)Assume a customer of a Bank of America branch in New York wants to send money to his friend who banks at the UniCredit Banca branch in Venice. The New Yorker can walk into his Bank of America branch with his friend's account number and UnicaCredit Banca's unique SWIFT code for its Venice branch. Bank of America will send a payment transfer SWIFT message to the UniCredit Banca branch over the secure SWIFT network. Once Unicredit Banca receives the SWIFT message about the incoming payment, it will clear and credit the money to the Italian friend's account.
As powerful as SWIFT is, keep in mind that it is only a messaging system '' SWIFT does not hold any funds or securities, nor does it manage client accounts.
The World Before SWIFTPrior to SWIFT, Telex was the only available means of message confirmation for international funds transfer. Telex was hampered by low speed, security concerns, and a free message format--in other words, Telex did not have a unified system of codes like SWIFT to name banks and describe transactions. Telex senders had to describe every transaction in sentences which were then interpreted and executed by the receiver. This led to many human errors.
To circumvent these problems, SWIFT system was formed in 1974. Seven major international banks formed a cooperative society to operate a global network that would transfer financial messages in a secure and timely manner.
Why is SWIFT Dominant?Within three years of introduction, SWIFT membership had increased to 230 banks across five countries. Although there are other message services like Fedwire, Ripple, and CHIPS, SWIFT continues to retain its dominant position in the market. Its success is attributed to how it continually adds new message codes to transmit different financial transactions.
While SWIFT started primarily for simple payment instructions, it now sends messages for wide variety actions including security transactions and treasury transactions. Nearly 50 percent of SWIFT traffic is still for payment-based messages, but 43 percent now concern security transactions, and the remaining traffic flows to treasury transactions.
Who Uses SWIFT?In in the beginning, SWIFT founders designed the network to facilitate communication about Treasury and correspondent transactions only. The robustness of the message format design allowed huge scalability through which SWIFT gradually expanded to provide services to the following:
' Banks
' Brokerage Institutes and Trading Houses
' Securities Dealers
' Asset Management Companies
' Clearing Houses
' Depositories
' Exchanges
' Corporate Business Houses
' Treasury Market Participants and Service Providers
' Foreign Exchange and Money Brokers
Services Offered by SWIFTApplications '' SWIFT connections enable access to a variety of applications which include real-time instruction matching for treasury and forex transactions, banking market Infrastructure for processing payment instructions between the banks, and securities market infrastructure for processing clearing and settlement instructions for payments, securities, forex, and derivatives transactions.Business Intelligence '' SWIFT has recently introduced dashboards and reporting utilities which enable the clients to get a dynamic, real-time view of monitoring the messages, activity, trade flow, and reporting. The reports enable filtering based on region, country, message types, and related parameters.Compliance Services '' Aimed at services around financial crime compliance, SWIFT offers reporting and utilities like Know Your Customer (KYC), Sanctions, and Anti-Money Laundering (AML).Messaging, Connectivity, and Software Solutions '' The core of SWIFT business resides in providing a secure, reliable, and scalable network for the smooth movement of messages. Through its various messaging hubs, software, and network connections, SWIFT offers multiple products and services which enable its end clients to send and receive transactional messages. How Does SWIFT Make Money?SWIFT is a cooperative society owned by its members. Members are categorized into classes based on share ownership. All members pay a one-time joining fee plus annual support charges which vary by member classes. SWIFT also charges users for each message based on message type and length. These charges also vary depending upon the bank's usage volume '' different charge tiers exist for banks that generate different volumes of messages.
In addition, SWIFT has launched new services. These are backed by the long history of data maintained by SWIFT. These include business intelligence, reference data, and compliance services and offer other income streams for SWIFT.
Challenges for SWIFTThe majority of SWIFT clients have huge transactional volumes for which manual entry of instructions is not practical. The need for automation for SWIFT message creation, processing, and transmission is growing. However, this comes at a cost and operational overhead. Although SWIFT has been successful in providing software for the same, that too comes at a cost. SWIFT may need to tap into these problem areas for the majority of its client base. Automated solutions within this space may bring in new stream of income for SWIFT and keep clients engaged in the long run.
The Bottom LineSWIFT has retained its dominant position in the global processing of transactional messages. It has recently forayed into newer areas offering reporting utilities and data for business intelligence, which indicates its willingness to remain innovative. In the short- to mid-term, SWIFT seems poised to continue dominating the market.
The latest technologies promise cops the ability to whip out a smartphone, take a snapshot of a passerby, and instantly learn if that person is in an immigration or gang database.
A federal broadband program, designed after 9/11 to improve first responder communication during emergencies, will enhance this sort of capability and integrate it into an internet ''super highway'' built specifically for police and public safety. The program, called FirstNet, is already expanding the surveillance options available to law enforcement agencies across the country.
According to publicly available documents, as well as interviews with program participants, stakeholders, and government researchers, FirstNet will help agencies like U.S. Customs and Border Protection communicate with local police, deliver more information to officers' hands, accelerate the nascent law enforcement app industry, and provide public safety agencies with new privileges and powers over AT&T's commercial broadband network.
The program will also hasten these agencies' migration from public radio frequencies to encrypted broadband networks, potentially eliminating one resource that local newsrooms and citizens have historically relied upon to monitor police and first responders.
FirstNet is a public-private partnership that creates a dedicated lane for public safety agencies within AT&T's existing broadband network. As of January, all U.S. states had opted in to FirstNet, meaning that they agreed not to build their own competing broadband lanes for law enforcement and public safety. Then, in March, AT&T announced that FirstNet's core '-- the infrastructure that isolates police traffic from the commercial network '-- had become operational at last.
''It's like having a super highway that only public safety can use,'' the company wrote in a press release.
Why FirstNet?Part of FirstNet's mission is to create a virtual space that allows any federal, state or local law enforcement or public safety agency to communicate seamlessly with any other. Therefore, convincing as many agencies as possible to sign up for the program is key to its success.
FirstNet recently pitched U.S. Customs and Border Protection to convince the agency to subscribe to the network. In a white paper, FirstNet claims its services will provide CBP access to ''photographs, real-time audio/video feeds, and databases from other state, local, or Federal agencies '... to aid in the identification and apprehension of terrorists, undocumented aliens, and smugglers.'' These capabilities would be offered ''in times of crisis or simply day-to-day operations.''
In the pitch, FirstNet also promises to help agents ''connect to critical databases to identify whether detained persons have been previously apprehended for violating immigration law by quickly and efficiently collecting biographic (e.g., name, date of birth, place of birth) and biometric information (e.g., 10-print fingerprints, photo image), which are submitted remotely to said databases.'' The document also promotes FirstNet's support of other data-heavy technologies, such as live video streaming from drones.
AT&T and FirstNet did not respond to questions about whether CBP or any other federal agency has subscribed to the program. (A recent press release indicates that some federal agencies are currently using the system, but it does not name them.) CBP did not respond to requests for comment.
Local law enforcement officials are well-aware of the new capabilities that FirstNet is offering their departments. Domingo Herraiz, programs director at the International Association of Chiefs of Police, is excited about the heightened access to federal data FirstNet promises. Herraiz told The Intercept that FirstNet will place information from fusion centers, which enable criminal intelligence-sharing between government agencies, at the fingertips of local officers. ''You could have gang databases,'' he said. ''It's not there [on officers' phones] today, but it will be.''
A ''Private Tunnel'' for Law Enforcement and First RespondersThe concept behind FirstNet '-- a broadband network dedicated to public safety '-- was inspired by the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States (the so-called 9/11 Commission). Its 2004 report determined that streamlined communication between different agencies and jurisdictions could have saved lives in the aftermath of the attacks on the World Trade Center. The report blamed the use of separate radio frequencies by police and firefighters for the deaths of firefighters who didn't get the message to evacuate before the north tower collapsed.
Graphic: Soohee Cho/The Intercept
The government's subsequent quest for improved public safety communication has led to the expansion of Joint Terrorism Task Forces, which integrate local, state, and federal anti-terrorism operations, as well as a network of 79 fusion centers. The idea to dedicate a nationwide, high-speed broadband network to law enforcement and public safety was another
outgrowth of this effort. Congress acted on the proposal in 2012, when it created FirstNet as part of the Middle Class Tax Relief and Job Creation Act. Rather than create a network that would be totally independent from commercial broadband, the legislation reallocated some broadband spectrum for ''public safety'' use and allowed service providers to bid on the contract for it.
In March 2017, the U.S. Department of Commerce signed a contract with AT&T, creating a dedicated lane for FirstNet within AT&T's existing broadband network. In the deal, the federal government gave AT&T rights to 20 MHz of lucrative broadband spectrum, as well as $6.5 billion for FirstNet's initial rollout. In return, the government got AT&T's commitment to spending $40 billion over the next 25 years on network buildout and maintenance. Since 2013, the Department of Commerce has also awarded $116.5 million in funding to state Homeland Security agencies, offices of information technology, public safety agencies, and statewide communication boards to help implement and promote the network.
Scott Edson is the executive director of the Los Angeles Regional Interoperable Communications System, a fully independent public safety network built with some of the early funding for FirstNet. According to Edson, when local agencies subscribe to FirstNet, they will get ''a special connection that looks just like a commercial carrier but [connects to] what's called a dedicated core.'' FirstNet is ''a private tunnel within their AT&T network,'' he explained.
FirstNet provides ''priority'' and ''pre-emption'' privileges that have long been desired by public safety agencies. ''Priority'' means faster access to broadband-based services. ''You may have license plate readers that are scanning cars that are nearby and querying databases automatically,'' explained Edson, who is also former chief of special operations at the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department. ''That's all data that's going to be prioritized to help us do our job.''
But priority is not always enough to guarantee a fast connection during an emergency or a large gathering like a parade, sporting event, or protest, when networks can get jammed. That's where ''pre-emption'' comes in. Pre-emption allows public safety agencies or police to boot the general public off the network.
''At a time of crisis, yeah, you're trying to call your mom and say you're safe,'' Herraiz from IACP told The Intercept. ''But it's more important that that network shut down every citizen, so it can be used solely for public safety purposes, so lives can be saved.''
Service Providers Compete for Public Safety CustomersBefore FirstNet, the commercial broadband industry would not offer these public safety privileges on its networks. ''They told us we would never have priority and pre-emption,'' Edson told The Intercept. But if providers like Verizon, Sprint, and T-Mobile want to compete with FirstNet, they, too, will have to begin offering priority and pre-emption. (In January, Verizon announced that it would begin to phase in these features.)
Though all U.S. states have agreements with FirstNet, this doesn't commit state or local agencies to subscribing to the service. Most agencies currently subscribe to Verizon, which announced its own dedicated ''core'' for public safety users in March. (In February, the company aired a Super Bowl ad suggesting that it intends to retain its market share with first responders.)
But subscriptions for FirstNet are picking up quickly. In June, AT&T announced that more than 1,000 agencies had signed up. The company also announced that over 5,300 of its retail stores would offer personal FirstNet subscriptions to ''verified'' police and first responders whose agencies don't provide wireless plans. (Volunteer first responders are eligible for this offer as well.)
With Verizon mimicking FirstNet's priority and pre-emption offerings, FirstNet is aggressively pursuing new frontiers in public safety technology and smartphone apps, which could make its service more competitive.
Indeed, FirstNet has its own ''app store.'' In a slide presentation it prepared for the Association of Public-Safety Communications Officials conference in August 2017, FirstNet touted its intention to ''enable development of a growing portfolio of public safety apps.'' These applications will incorporate facial recognition, real-time video, and other existing technologies, according to the presentation.
Millions of dollars of government research funding are underwriting this development. For example, the Department of Commerce's National Institute of Standards and Technology is funding research into real-time video analytics (including the automated recognition of faces, objects, and text), a ''hyper-reality helmet for mapping and visualizing public safety data'' in the field, and livestreaming and analytics for body-worn cameras, among other technologies.
According to Dereck Orr, chief of the Public Safety Communications Research Division at NIST, most of the research into these technologies will eventually be made public. However, he added, ''we certainly bring [FirstNet] in to discuss creation and priorities of new processes, because we want to make sure that anything we do is going to be something that is impactful and useful to FirstNet.''
Law enforcement officials speak to the media about the mass shooting at the Inland Regional Center on Dec. 7, 2015, in San Bernardino, Calif.
Photo: Joe Raedle/Getty Images
A Loss of Public Oversight?With this frenzy of technological development, a longtime transparency tool is suddenly under threat. For decades, local newsrooms and citizen watchdogs have relied on police scanners to monitor first responders and track natural disasters, protests, and emergencies. The migration to data-based communications cuts down on what is communicated over these public frequencies. As FirstNet and its competitors transition voice communications to their encrypted broadband networks in the coming years, even more will be kept from public oversight.
That concerns Andrew Seaman, ethics committee chair for the Society of Professional Journalists. Seaman told The Intercept that he hopes measures will be taken to guarantee journalists and newsrooms access to the encrypted FirstNet network.
''There are very practical reasons why there should be a relationship between first responder emergency systems and the press,'' he said. ''If you want people to know what's going on '-- that they should avoid a certain area or if they need to get out of an area quickly '-- you're going to need to equip journalists with the ability to monitor these channels.''
FirstNet did not comment on whether it was open to offering local newsrooms some access. Edson of LA-RICS said decisions about transparency and access for newsrooms will likely have to take place at the local government level.
FirstNet is already the subject of a transparency lawsuit by two Vermont men who claim that the U.S. government is legally required to perform a Privacy Impact Assessment on the program, since the FirstNet network will presumably be used to transmit personal information about American citizens. The government has argued that this requirement does not apply since the network itself is owned by AT&T, rather than the government.
The program's status as a public-private partnership has created other transparency roadblocks as well: The federal government's contract with AT&T has not been made public.
Worth the Cost?Some have criticized FirstNet as a waste of public funds because after years of talk, it has produced few deliverables. However, its ultimate impact on U.S. broadband is likely to be extensive, if incremental. For example, FirstNet's prioritized section of the broadband spectrum is now being extended to some private entities, like electric utilities, that help first responders or provide essential services during emergencies.
FirstNet's most lasting achievement may be the infrastructure it provides for state-of-the-art surveillance technologies to be deployed by law enforcement at every level. One of FirstNet's early adopters, the Brazos County Sheriff's Office, has celebrated how FirstNet allows it to livestream surveillance footage to its central command. Only time will tell if the program can enable emerging technologies like real-time facial recognition to become part of the day-to-day operations of U.S. police.
Despite the surveillance enhancements that FirstNet offers local police departments, some are skeptical that local governments (and voters) can be convinced that subscribing to the program is a worthy investment.
''The public believes law enforcement already has all this at their fingertips,'' Herraiz told The Intercept. ''They think when you run a license tag or your driver's license, the cops know everything about you. That's not true.''
Well, not yet.
Top photo: A Chicago police officer speaks on his radio at the scene of a shooting on July 28, 2017, in the Marquette Park neighborhood of Chicago.
5G
Scientists Find 'Clear Evidence' Cellphone Radiation Can Cause Cancer in Rats - WSJ
Updated Nov. 1, 2018 10:51 a.m. ETU.S. researchers found ''clear evidence'' that cellphone radiation exposure can cause cancerous heart tumors in male rats. It is still unclear what the final conclusions of their two-decades-long study of the health impact on rodents mean for humans.
Scientists at the National Toxicology Program, which carried out the major study, this week published final reports that express more confidence in links between cellphone radiation exposure and some tumors in rats than they did in draft reports earlier this year.
...
U.S. researchers found ''clear evidence'' that cellphone radiation exposure can cause cancerous heart tumors in male rats. It is still unclear what the final conclusions of their two-decades-long study of the health impact on rodents mean for humans.
Scientists at the National Toxicology Program, which carried out the major study, this week published final reports that express more confidence in links between cellphone radiation exposure and some tumors in rats than they did in draft reports earlier this year.
Their final reports, for example, concluded that there is ''clear evidence'' that male rats exposed to high levels of cellphone radiation developed cancerous heart tumors, after initially saying there was just ''some evidence'''--a less certain classification.
They also said there was ''some evidence'' of brain and adrenal gland tumors in male rats that were exposed to cellphone radiation after characterizing that evidence as ''equivocal'' earlier this year.
The changes were made after scientists in charge of the study accepted the recommendations of a panel of experts that reviewed the findings.
In female rats and male and female mice, the link between cancers and exposure to cellphone radiation was less clear, the researchers said. One surprising finding in the study was that exposed male rats lived longer and had a significant reduction in a type of kidney disease.
John Bucher, a senior scientist at the NTP, warned on a call that the exposure used on rodents in the study was ''not directly comparable to the exposures that humans typically experience when using a cellphone.''
The study focused on radio frequency radiation akin to what's used in 2G and 3G cellphones and exposed animals to cellphone radiation at levels higher than what human cellphone users typically experience.
Mr. Bucher said he personally has ''no hesitation at all'' in picking up the phone for short calls, but for longer calls he tends to use ''earbuds or some other way of increasing the distance between the cellphone and my body.''
He said the NTP's role was to conduct the research for regulatory agencies and the public, not to issue warnings to consumers.
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration asked the NTP to carry out the study in 1999 because usage of cellphones was widespread and little was known about the impact of cellphone radiation.
Mr. Bucher said future research will focus on newer generations of wireless technology such as 4G, 5G and Wi-Fi and that researchers had learned ways to accelerate the speed of new studies.
Write to Sarah Krouse at sarah.krouse@wsj.com
Hundreds of birds dead during 5G experiment in The Hague, The Netherlands
About a week ago at The Hague, many birds died spontaneously, falling dead in a park. You likely haven't heard a lot about this because it seems keeping it quiet was the plan all along. However, when about 150 more suddenly died- bringing the death toll to 297- some started to take notice.
And if you are looking around that park you might have seen what is on the corner of the roof across the street from where they died: a new 5G mast, where they had done a test, in connection with the Dutch railway station, to see how large the range was and whether no harmful equipment would occur on and around the station.
And harm happened, indeed. Immediately afterward, birds fell dead from the trees. And the nearby ducks that were swimming seemed to react very oddly as well; they were simultaneously putting their heads underwater to escape the radiation while others flew away, landing on the street or in the canal.
Again, almost at the exact same time that those animals died, near the station, Holland Spoor was tested with a 5G transmitter mast.
''If they all got heart-failure with an healthy body, no signs of any virus, no bacterial infection, healthy blood, no poisons found etc. etc. The only reasonable explanation is, that it is from the new 5G Microwaves having an huge effect of all birds hearts! '... It heavily resonates with certain ERRATIC PULSED Microwaves (millions per second!) which can be proven to have biological effects on organs! '... Am not kidding here! '... Some people assume Microwaves at lower wattage ''can not harm'' because ''it does not cook you'' '... that very flawed ''logic'' is what they want you to repeat over and over! '... Search in ''Google Scholar Search Site'': Biological Effects of Non-ionizing Microwaves and be ready to be shocked how stupid most sheeple really are in believing blindly the so called ''experts'' & '' authorities'' of FCC, Telecom & Wireless Industry propaganda!'' -John Kuhles, founder of Fb.com/groups/Stop5G & Fb.me/Stop5G owner of Stop5G.net
This wasn't proof though. It was initially just conjecture.
All the information that follows comes from John Kuhles' public Facebook page (not being a native English speaker, I have cleaned a little of it up but mostly left it intact for you):
In the meantime (30-10-2018) received some more information. The birds that fell massively dead would be the victims of an experiment, performed on those days in The Hague, where RF radiation was tested with a peak frequency of 7.40 GHz. This information comes from one source and should still be confirmed, if possible.
It is not clear at this moment whether tests with 5G transmission masts have been carried out again, but so far everything points in the direction of 5G as the most probable cause. Earlier, crazy things happened, such as with cows in Groningen's Loppersum last year, where it was also tested with 5G. But also how in Switzerland a complete herd of cows collapsed in a ravine when there was tested with 5G. Source 1: www.msn.com/nl-nl/nieuws/opmerkelijk/meer-dan-honderd-vogels-vallen-dood-uit-bomen-in-den-haag/ar-BBOV8d7
Oct. 26, 2018
In the Huijgenspark in The Hague, more than a hundred starlings have fallen dead from the trees in recent days. It is a mystery what happened to the animals.
The Dutch Food and Consumer Product Safety Authority (NVWA) is having a number of birds examined in the laboratory of Wageningen Bioveterinary Research. Parts of the park are blocked and dogs are no longer allowed to be let out. The dead birds are always cleaned up as quickly as possible. Yet it is a lugubrious scene. Council member Robert Barker of the Party for the Animals had the feeling of being on a 'crime scene'. ''The fact that so many birds fall from the sky at this location must have a cause and must be investigated. If there is talk of poisoning, then we have to take a hard time. ''
It is also possible that the birds have a disease. ''In any case, it's going fast. The animals are not emaciated, do not seem ill. They just fall dead from the tree, ''says employee Sharon Lexmond of bird shelter De Wulp.
A possible link was established between 5G trials in Groningen and the 'crazy cows there, as they were called, see: www.stopumts.nl/doc.php/Berichten%20Nederland/10423/groningen_wat_mankeert_de_koeien_van_stitswerd
Further info from Facebook:
Trondheim (3rd city of Norway) also attacked the birds. After 6 months there was no toxicological report yet. It has also happened in Sweden, Australia, United States.
In the meantime (30-10-2018) received some more information. The birds that fell massively dead would be the victims of an experiment, performed on those days in The Hague, where RF radiation was tested with a peak frequency of 7.40 GHz, which corresponds to a wavelength of 4.05 cm. This wavelength is of the same order of magnitude as the size of the starlings. This may be important because of possible resonance effects. The mast in question is about 400 meters from where the starlings have fallen dead. This information comes from one source and should still be confirmed, if possible. Source 2: www.rtlnieuws.nl/nieuws/artikel/4464101/mysterious-bird deaths-den-hands-dead-speakers-falls-massal-from-the-air-
Mysterious bird deaths in The Hague: dead starlings fall massively from the sky
Oct. 26, 2018
For several days in a row, dead starlings fall from the sky in the Huijgenspark in The Hague. It is estimated that around 150 birds have already lost their lives. What is the cause of this is being investigated?
The Dutch Food and Consumer Product Safety Authority, the Dutch Wildlife Health Center and a Wageningen University laboratory are investigating the cause of death of the starlings. A veterinarian of bird care De Wulp performed a number of birds last week. She only found internal bleeding and no trace of poison.
Contaminated water
''Last year we had the same situation at the Haagse Hogeschool, where it was renovated at the time '', says an employee of the Animal Ambulance.'' Then dozens of dead jackdaws were found, which were probably poisoned because they had been drinking polluted water. What is going on right now is really speculating. Hopefully, we know more next week, because this is not normal. ''
No trace of poison.
Source 3: Dierenhospitaal and Dierenambulance The Hague
Again, dead starlings have been found in the Huijgenspark in The Hague. More than ninety dead birds were spread across the park in the Stationsbuurt.
We took the birds. Last time, five of the deceased starlings were examined by a local specialist. It did not show signs of poison, but only internal bleeding in two copies. The newly found starlings are examined by the specialized Wageningen Bioveterinary Research laboratory in Lelystad and the Dutch Wildlife Health Center in Utrecht.
The municipality has promulgated a ban on dogs in the area because the cause of the mortality is unclear. Poisoning is taken into account. The area has been blocked by the police.
Source 4: Birdcare the curlew Oct. 26, 2018
How is the current state of affairs with regard to the dead starlings? Last Friday, Wednesday and Thursday, a total of +/- 150 deceased starlings were found in the Huijgenspark in The Hague. OnSundayy, Thursday and Friday our veterinarian visited and carried out a total of 15 animals and collected material for further research. On Wednesday, the NVWA collected a cargo of birds that were examined in Lelystad on West Nile Virus. The negative result has now arrived.
On Thursday, the Dutch Wildlife Health Center also picked up a load of birds and we got a result today. Both veterinarians (ours and those from the DWHC) discussed their findings with each other. (Birds in good condition, some small bleeding in some animals, good for the upcoming winter, empty stomachs.) It is a very strange story!
Components of the deceased birds now go to various institutes for further research into rat poison and various viruses. On Monday the preparations are ready and the microscopic examination is started. In the meantime, the municipality has instituted an outlet ban in the park until further notice.
We will keep you informed and hope that we will get a quick answer regarding the bizarre deaths.
Source 5: New contribution from Facebook:
Nov. 2, 2018
There is, of course, no certainty about the cause. There are stronger 4G and IoT channels in the vicinity near the park. In July there was also 5G tested, but then the birds did not swarm and they did not arrive in the park. IoT has also been active since 30 October 2017, so it is only briefly active with a safe distance (for humans) of 7.4 meters and with a 2000 Watt transmitter at less than 200 meters from the park main beam direction exactly across the park. Also at the same distance LTE channels and at another location also LTE stations etc. Here again exactly about the park.
The truth about the safety of 5G is that it's not safe. And while letters have been sent and people have raised the alarm, the ''powers that be'' don't seem to care. All in the name of money and industry.
Make sure to click on the links below for even more information on 5G technology:
Veteran MD drops bombshell at Michigan's 5G Small Cell Tower legislation hearingDoctors worldwide reporting the incredible benefits of reducing EMF exposurePC Magazine deletes article about problems with 5G, and fires its author (John C. Dvorak from the No Agenda Show podcast)
Spot The Spook
CIA Analyst Joins UT-Austin to Help Bridge Gap Between Intelligence Community, Academia | Newsmax.com
The Central Intelligence Agency's first resident intelligence officer on a U.S. campus is coming to the University of Texas at Austin, the school announced Tuesday.
CIA analyst Alan Kessler, who'll work in the LBJ School of Public Affairs through the fall of 2020, will aim to bridge the gap between the nation's intelligence community and academia, the university said.
''The LBJ School is home to specialized programs, curriculum and affiliated centers with a shared mission to train the next generation of policymakers across a broad spectrum of issue areas. National security is one of those areas,'' said Angela Evans, dean of the LBJ School.
Prior to serving in the CIA, Kessler taught courses on international relations and foreign policy as a faculty member of UT Austin's Department of Government, the university said.
As an officer in the CIA's Directorate of Analysis, Kessler drafted products on strategic communications to support U.S. public diplomacy and developed new methods to assess the effectiveness of technical collection platforms for senior intelligence community and policy customers, the university stated.
(C) 2018 Newsmax. All rights reserved.
Shut Up Slave!
DARPA Seeks FAA Approval For Military Drones Over American Cities By 2030 '' At The Latest
This article was written by Nicholas West and originally published at Activist Post
Just a little over 10 years after drone surveillance inside U.S. borders was declared a conspiracy theory, it is now an indisputable fact of life. So, too, are military grade drones along the ''border,'' which in reality constitutes a 100-mile-wide swath that encircles the continental United States and 2/3 of its population.
According to a new report from Defense One, this level of access is still seen as a restriction by the DARPA-directed military apparatus. As new forms of autonomous aircraft take to the skies such as the latest Blackhawk helicopter drones that could be ready by 2019, DARPA and aircraft developers want permission to fly over large cities as needed. Utilizing a new artificial intelligence system that is literally called MATRIX, developers see an opportunity for more flexibility in potential use. Of course, surveillance isn't mentioned among those uses:
After that, similar to Predator drone maker General Atomics, they have their eyes on FAA certification to fly large, unmanned aircraft within the continental United States, to help ferry people and supplies from the mainland to offshore oil rigs, among other potential jobs. Today, large drones likes Predators are forbidden to fly over the U.S. except in a handful of largely unpopulated areas along the U.S. Mexico border.
The FAA is now figuring out how to change guidelines to allow unmanned planes and helicopters to fly over big cities. ''We are working with the FAA on that. Our stated goal is 2030. It very much depends on rule making. We are certainly hoping for sooner, for the mid-2020s, to field it,'' he said.
In that linked article sourced above, the long-range plans of converting military aircraft to drones and incorporating them anywhere and everywhere inside America is also detailed and expanded upon as a potential replacement for the already controversial use of police drones.
By 2025, enormous military-style drones '' close relatives of the sort made famous by counterterrorism strikes in Afghanistan and Iraq '' will be visible 2,000 feet above U.S. cities, streaming high-resolution video to police departments below. That is the bet that multiple defense contractors are placing, anyway, as they race to build unmanned aircraft that can pass evolving airworthiness certifications and replace police helicopters. And if that bet pays off, it will radically transform the way cities, citizens, and law enforcement interact.
We are now seeing various trends beginning to dovetail into what could become the ultimate in military presence over the United States. As I recently reported, new A.I. algorithms are being devised that look for emotional indicators in an attempt to predict crime and social unrest. The ''Eye in the Sky'' system, developed by Cambridge University, seeks to use small Parrot drones to identify ''violent poses'' in crowds. The system will be powered by biometric recognition and artificial intelligence, as seen in the video below:
Imagine a system like this being applied to the far more sophisticated military systems that already exist, then connecting all of it to the growing federal biometrics database.
I suspect that if the FAA does grant access to larger military aircraft over U.S. cities, it will be with the ''strict guidelines'' that no forms of surveillance or weaponry will be permitted onboard. Of course, once granted even the slightest access, all it will take is one catastrophic event to remove any restrictions at all.
"Unlike many new industries, which grow unfettered until emerging problems prompt regulation, unmanned flight needs relief from existing restrictions in order to blossom, Scassero said. Once that happens, the market for large unmanned planes could be enormous."
For reference, here is what I wrote in 2013 regarding the long-term plans and eventuality that was also hinted at in the mainstream media at the time in an Associated Press article entitled, ''Drones With Facial Recognition Technology Will End Anonymity, Everywhere.''
AP certainly offers a correct summary of how the databases that already exist (where we thought our personal information was protected) will be opened and utilized any time necessary.
''From seeing just the image of a face, computers will find its match in a database of millions of driver's license portraits and photos on social media sites. From there, the computer will link to the person's name and details such as their Social Security number, preferences, hobbies, family and friends.
Adding that capability to drones that can fly into spaces where planes cannot '-- machines that can track a person moving about and can stay aloft for days '-- means that people will give up privacy as well as the concept of anonymity.''
Naturally, the AP peddles this softly as it recounts these ''new'' developments in a tale of researchers with Carnegie Mellon University's CyLab Biometrics Center attempting to assist in sharpening FBI images of Boston bombing suspects, the Tsarnaev brothers. This is reminiscent of the above-mentioned Chris Dorner manhunt where we heard calls for how nice it would have been to have a drone at the ready for quicker identification and possible assassination.
''In a real-time experiment, the scientists digitally mapped the face of ''Suspect 2,'' turned it toward the camera and enhanced it so it could be matched against a database. The researchers did not know how well they had done until authorities identified the suspect as Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, the younger, surviving brother and a student at University of Massachusetts Dartmouth.
'I was like, 'Holy shish kabobs!' ' Marios Savvides, director of the CMU Cylab, told the Tribune-Review. 'It's not exactly him, but it's also not a random face. It does fit him.'''
This astonishment is somewhat absurd considering that drones have already been developed that are equipped with camera systems like DARPA's Autonomous Real-time Ground Ubiquitous Surveillance Imaging System (ARGUS). This sensor system can instantly see an area roughly the ''size of a small city'' with an ''all-seeing'' eye according to retired Lieutenant, David A. Deptula. The next generation of surveillance tech sees the landscape through a 1.8 billion pixels camera, the highest resolution yet created.
Using a touchscreen interface that can produce up to 65 windows for analysis, military observers can see down to the individual object level to track the movements of vehicles and people. Beyond the real-time surveillance, the system can store everything for future review right down to the minutes and seconds.
The only thing truly new about this Associated Press story is the announcement that what most people thought to be limited to overseas theaters of war will now definitely be used across Battlefield USA.
It would be wise to contact the FAA now with concerns about permitting military-grade aircraft flying over the United States for any reason in order to stave off the imminent arrival of ''Battlefield USA.''
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War on Cash
ING, Rabo en ABN werken samen met nieuwe gele geldautomaat | NOS
Nederland krijgt vanaf komend jaar gele geldautomaten zonder verdere banknaam. Deze 'flappentappers' gaan de geldautomaten van de drie grote banken Rabobank, ABN Amro en ING vervangen.
De banken beloven dat er mogelijk ook zogenoemde white label-geldautomaten komen in plaatsen waar nu helemaal niet meer kan worden gepind. Uiteindelijk zal het aantal geldautomaten wel verder dalen. Hoeveel er precies verdwijnen, is nog onduidelijk.
En zo ziet de nieuwe geldautomaat eruit:
Volgens de banken is een nieuwe strategie noodzakelijk. "Het gebruik van contant geld in ons land wordt steeds minder", zegt Geert Eikelboom van Geldservice Nederland. "Maar er blijft natuurlijk wel een behoefte aan cash geld, mensen moeten geld kunnen blijven pinnen. Om de beschikbaarheid te kunnen blijven garanderen in de toekomst, gaan de banken hun krachten bundelen."
Er zijn in Nederland 3000 locaties waar geldautomaten dicht bij elkaar staan, zoals in het centrum van Breukelen. In een straal van amper honderd meter staan nu negen automaten, zoals bij supermarkt Albert Heijn en bij filialen van de Rabobank, ING en ABN Amro. "Daarvan verdwijnen er vijf. Negen is echt te veel, ook als je kijkt naar het aantal transacties. We kunnen met minder automaten toe."
Geen bezuinigingIn het NOS Radio 1 Journaal spreekt Eikelboom tegen dat het om een bezuinigingsoperatie gaat. "We willen de beschikbaarheid op peil houden, maar dat moeten we wel kunnen blijven betalen. Als we nu niet ingrijpen, zouden de kosten juist enorm omhoog gaan. Dat willen we voorkomen."
Volgens Eikelboom heeft de nieuwe gele automaat alleen maar voordelen: "De apparaten werken nu allemaal verschillend. Straks niet meer." Dat is onder meer voor ouderen van belang, zegt hij. "En uit alle automaten komen straks desgewenst ook kleine coupures van 10 en 20 euro. Dat vinden winkeliers weer heel fijn."
Evenwichtige spreidingHet aantal geldautomaten neemt al jarenlang af. In 2017 waren er bijna duizend minder geldautomaten in het straatbeeld dan vijf jaar eerder.
Maar het feit dat we er minder gebruik van maken is niet de enige reden dat het aantal geldautomaten daalt. Ook plofkraken leiden ertoe dat pinautomaten op sommige plekken worden weggehaald. En dat is voor sommige mensen een vervelend probleem.
Geldautomaten verdwijnen en worden steeds minder gebruikt. (Bron: Maatschappelijk Overleg Betalingsverkeer Rapportage 2017)JaarAantalAantal keer gebruikt20128795419 miljoen20138633395 miljoen20148811379 miljoen20158319351 miljoen20168052328 miljoen20177814302 miljoen
Demonetisation drive that cost India 1.5m jobs fails to uncover 'black money' | World news | The Guardian
Costly banknote recall did not flush out untaxed wealth, as PM Narendra Modi had promised
The demonetisation drive in India caught people by surprise and wiped at least 1% off the country's GDP.Photograph: Jagadeesh Nv/EPAMore than 99% of the currency that India declared void in a surprise announcement in 2016 was returned to the country's banks in subsequent weeks, according to a Reserve Bank of India (RBI) report.
The figures suggest prime minister Narendra Modi's demonetisation policy, which likely wiped at least 1% from the country's GDP and cost at least 1.5m jobs, failed to wipe significant hordes of unaccounted wealth from the Indian economy '-- a key rationale for the move.
Modi shocked Indians in November 2016 when he announced on live television that all 500 and 1000-rupee notes, equivalent to about £6 and £12, would be banned in four hours' time.
People were given several weeks to exchange their demonetised currency for new notes at banks. But new notes could not be printed fast enough, and the policy sparked a months-long currency crunch that left tens of millions of Indians cashless or standing in line for hours each day to retrieve small sums of cash.
As India's massive informal economy reeled, Modi implored the country to give the policy time to work, arguing it would flush out untaxed wealth being hoarded by wealthy Indians, help to digitise the economy '-- one of the most cash-based in the world '-- and starve terrorists and criminal gangs of cash.
The RBI's annual report on Wednesday found 99.3% of the money withdrawn from circulation had been returned to banks, indicating either there was less ''black money'' than expected, or that schemes to launder money were more successful than thought.
Palaniappan Chidambaram, a finance minister under the previous Congress-led government, said the country had paid a ''huge price''.
''Indian economy lost 1.5% of GDP in terms of growth,'' he tweeted. ''That alone was a loss of Rs 2.25 lakh crore [2.25tn] a year. Over 100 lives were lost. 15 crore [150m] daily wage earners lost their livelihood for several weeks. Thousands of SME units were shut down. Lakhs [hundreds of thousands] of jobs were destroyed.''
Digital transactions have grown, but the RBI found the value of banknotes in circulation had also increased in the past year by 37.7%. Counterfeiters had also shifted to recreating smaller notes and were now able to replicate en masse the new 500 and 2,000-rupee notes, it said.
Gurchuran Das, an economist and author, said the positive side to the exercise was that money stashed at home had been injected into the formal banking system.
''Now all that money can be tracked and it goes into the formal economy and people who have deposited it back have bank accounts and become future taxpayers,'' Das said.
''It has helped India move faster towards a digital economy. It will result in India actually skipping the branch phase of banking.
''But this was not the way to do it,'' he added. ''The cost to the people was high, and we lost about a year of economic growth by my estimates. And to solve the jobs problem of India you need to grow at about 8% for about 20 years.''
The Israel Lobby
14 mins CHIP IN-VIDEO - The Israel Lobby in the U.S. - Documentary by Al Jazeera (Part 2 of 4) - YouTube
A recent film clip showing ex-Israeli academic Ilan Papp(C) has raised eyebrows. Asked whether it was Palestinians who launched the BDS campaign in 2005 Papp(C) conceded, ''Not really, but yes. OK. For historical records, yes.'' Both Israel supporters and Israel haters have been taken aback by this forthright statement, from a leading Israel hater, that Palestinians did not create this now iconic movement.
What are the BDS movement's origins? The question is, at one level, an historical curiosity. The movement exists, it is forging ever-deeper links with the far left and the 'progressive' movement, and is a force to be reckoned with. At another level, however, the history of the BDS movement is emblematic of Palestinian political history, and the recent development global antisemitism, as a whole.
Two trends are immediately evident in the history of BDS, the role of Palestinian political factions and professional Palestinians from the diaspora, which have led Palestinians toward rejectionism.
It is easy to dismiss the movement's own origins story, the 2005 call from Palestinian 'civil society' organizations. The call for boycotting Israel was in explicit opposition to the Palestinian Authority (which, indeed, rejected it) and may well have originated with a rejectionist PLO faction. Indeed, many of the 'grassroots' organizations that signed the document cannot be traced. They were likely organs of political factions or just fabrications.
The message was simple: the ''representatives of Palestinian civil society, call upon international civil society organizations and people of conscience all over the world to impose broad boycotts and implement divestment initiatives against Israel similar to those applied to South Africa in the apartheid era. We appeal to you to pressure your respective states to impose embargoes and sanctions against Israel. We also invite conscientious Israelis to support this Call, for the sake of justice and genuine peace.''
The call also put forward three demands; ''1. Ending its occupation and colonization of all Arab lands and dismantling the Wall 2. Recognizing the fundamental rights of the Arab-Palestinian citizens of Israel to full equality; and 3. Respecting, protecting and promoting the rights of Palestinian refugees to return to their homes and properties as stipulated in UN resolution 194.'' In short, the call demanded dismantling of Israel through the 'right of return.' This has not changed: the end of Israel is the core BDS goal.
The story from this point is well-known; the civil society call burgeoned into an international movement which has had particular success in Europe and in global academia. Among the Palestinians themselves, however, groups like the ''Palestinian BDS National Committee,'' which purports to be the ''Palestinian coordinating body for the BDS campaign worldwide,'' remain mysterious. Only a few individuals can be identified, its funding sources are completely (and characteristically) obscure, but it has had some success encouraging BDS in Arab states, in part under the old Jordanian (and now ubiquitous) slogan of ''anti-normalization.''
But the 2005 'civil society' call built on the academic and cultural boycott launched in 2004, allegedly by Palestinian intellectuals. In fact, the academic boycott was largely the effort of a small group centered on Omar Barghouti (born in Qatar, raised in Egypt, educated in the US), then a graduate student at Tel Aviv University. The academic boycott's questionable success notwithstanding, the fact is that Barghouti was basically a freelancer; with no political base in Palestinian society, he and his 'movement' took a well-trodden rejectionist path. Palestinian society, always fearful of appearing to accept the existence of Israel, fell in line.
But this history of outside manipulation is much deeper still. The academic boycott as such has roots far outside of the Middle East, specifically in Britain. There, as David Hirsch has pointed out, academics Steven and Hilary Rose, and Mona Baker, began to demand Israelis be boycotted in 2002, and in 2003 began agitating for Israel boycotts in British teachers' unions.
Prior to their call, however, was the 2001 United Nations ''World Conference on Racism, Racial Discrimination, Xenophobia, and Related Intolerance in Durban.'' The 'Durban strategy' was a systematic effort by NGOs to demonize and delegitimize Israel precisely in the manner of apartheid South Africa, and it marked the effective return of the Soviet ''Zionism is racism'' trope that had been adopted by the UN in 1975.
Implicit in the association of Israel with South Africa was boycott and isolation, and the process was given incalculably important support from the heavyweights of the global 'human rights' industry, namely Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International.
But the British connection is even deeper and more sinister. Already in 2001 the Palestine Return Centre in London, a Muslim Brotherhood associated group founded in 1986, claimed to have been supporting a boycott of Israel. The Palestine Solidarity Campaign (founded in 1982 by Communist Party members including Tony Greenstein, and patronized by current Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn) is also at the forefront of Israel-hating in Britain. Its 40 branches have spread the 'Israel apartheid' message into British universities and trade unions since the 1980s, and the boycott message since 2001, if not earlier.
This 'red-green alliance' between Islamists and Communists is critical to understanding BDS past and present. From the 1950s local Communist parties spread the Soviet Union's anti-Zionist message throughout the world, and Soviet support for the PLO, in terms of training, weapons, and ideology, was critical. And from the early 1960s Saudi support for a global network of Islamist organizations like the Muslim World League, World Association of Muslim Youth, and International Islamic Federation of Student Organizations spread that message, including in the US through the Muslim Student Association (founded in 1962).
Today, Students for Justice in Palestine and its many chapters are the leading BDS forces on campuses. But at the national level this organization and its parent, American Muslims for Palestine, is controlled by many of the same individuals who were part of the Hamas-supporting Holy Land Foundation and Islamic Association for Palestine. Its personnel overlap with other US Muslim Brotherhood groups such as CAIR and the Muslim American Society, and its alliances with 'progressive' organizations, like the Center for Constitutional Rights and National Lawyers Guild, have made BDS and Palestinian rejectionism leading causes of the left.
To a large extent BDS in the US is a Muslim Brotherhood project. Add to this far left wing organizations and foundations (Code Pink, the Institute for Policy Studies, the Benjamin Fund, the WESPAC Foundation, and many others), local Arab groups like Al Awda, and putatively religious organizations (such as the American Friends Service Committee, Jewish Voice for Peace, and Presbyterian Church USA), and you have a global Palestinian 'movement' in which there are few Palestinians.
Even those BDS organizations in Israel and the West Bank like Badil and Adalah survive only through financial and other support from Western foundations and European governments, all of which, in effect, use BDS as policy tools against Israel.
For decades the Palestinian cause has been a pawn of others; the BDS movement is no exception. The Arab League boycott of Jews in 1945 (and arguably, the very formation of the League itself), and the unending manipulations by Islamists, Communists, and Arabs from outside Palestine '' including Yassir Arafat '' show the extent to which the political fate of Palestinians have been controlled by outsiders with their own agendas.
To find indigenous Palestinian-directed boycotts one has to look back a century to the 1910 boycott of Jewish labor in Palestine (on the grounds that Zionists had allegedly boycotted Palestinians), and the boycott of Jewish merchants called for by the 1922 Fifth Arab Congress in Nablus. These failed as economic and political measures, but like the BDS movement today, succeeded in sowing hatred. By the 1930s the Palestinian cause had been internationalized, Islamified, and Palestinian voices began to be lost. The BDS movement extends this into the 21st century.
Agenda 2030
Warning On Delhi Smog Crisis: Newborn Gulps Air Equal To 25 Cigarettes
Official efforts to combat Delhi's smog have been ineffectual.
New Delhi: Yogesh Kumar wheezes after life-saving surgery to remove a diseased lung, but his surgeons wonder how long he can last outside hospital breathing some of the world's dirtiest air.
Smog kills more than one million Indians every year and Delhi has the worst air of any major city on the planet, says the World Health Organization.
Every November, hospital wards start filling with gasping patients as a tell-tale greyish haze shrouds the city of 20 million.
"Delhi air is like a death sentence for him," said Srinivas K. Gopinath, a thoracic surgeon at Sir Ganga Ram hospital in the Indian capital where 29-year-old Kumar was treated.
Gopinath fears for his patient, who survived tuberculosis but is now at the mercy of another invisible killer.
As cooler air traps pollutants close to the ground, Delhi's levels of PM2.5 -- particles so tiny they can enter the lungs and bloodstream -- often soar to beyond 30 times the safe limit.
One of the worst times is around the festival of Diwali as smoke from millions of crackers set off by festive revellers mingles with car exhaust, factory emissions, construction dust and smoke from crop fires.
Pollution readings can reach so high they do not register on scientific instruments.
Mr Kumar is due to be discharged from hospital around the time of the festival on Wednesday. "Inside (the hospital) the air quality is maintained, but once he steps out the bad air will start affecting him," Mr Gopinath told AFP.
"His resistance is weak. He has only one lung which is now really precious. Imagine having to cope up with such bad air with only one lung?"
'Black Lungs'
But he is far from alone.
Children, the elderly and those with respiratory ailments like asthma suffer the most from Delhi's hazardous smog, which does not lift until around late February.
Exposure to toxic air kills hundreds of thousands of children every year, the WHO said in an October report.
Children breathe more rapidly than adults, taking twice as much polluted air into their tiny bodies.
It has devastating effects on children in Delhi, say doctors who see it first hand.
"A child who is born in Delhi is taking in gulps of bad air which is equivalent to smoking 20 to 25 cigarettes on the first day of his life," said Arvind Kumar, a prominent Delhi lung surgeon.
For years the surgeon has tirelessly campaigned to raise awareness about the dangers of air pollution, which the WHO last month likened to the tobacco epidemic.
On hospital grounds this weekend Kumar ordered the installation of giant, artificial lungs fitted with filters to demonstrate the damaging effects of smog.
Many of the patients he sees already bear physical scars from breathing a lifetime of Delhi air.
"These are non-smokers, but even they have black lungs," he told AFP.
"Even teenagers have black spots on their lungs. This is frightening."
Despite reappearing every winter, official efforts to combat Delhi's smog have been ineffectual.
Emergency measures such as banning construction, cutting down traffic and prohibiting the use of diesel generators have had little effect.
More long-term solutions remain elusive. State governments have refused to cooperate on root causes of the crisis, such as farmers using fire to clear their land on the outskirts of Delhi.
Surgeon Kumar said pollution needed to be tackled at its source. "Everything else is just eyewash," he said.
(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)
China, India will lead global nuclear power production growth: experts
Workers at the installation site of reactor pressure vessel of China National Nuclear Corporation's Fuqing nuclear power plant in southeast China's Fujian Province, Jan. 28, 2018. It is China's first demonstration nuclear power project using Hualong One technology, a domestically developed third-generation reactor design.
India and China are set to drive the world's nuclear power production growth as the two developing nations '-- among the top consumers of energy in the world '-- pursue their respective national nuclear energy programs.
According to the International Energy Agency, nuclear power production will grow by about 46 percent by 2040 '-- and more than 90 percent of the net increase will come from China and India.
Global nuclear electricity output grew 1 percent in 2017, as the world's nuclear fleet generated 2,503 terawatt-hours (TWh) of electricity, according to the World Nuclear Industry Status Report 2018.
Take China out of the picture, however, and the reality looks starkly different: Global nuclear power generation would have declined for a third consecutive year, the report showed.
Asia, for its part, saw 8 to 9 percent growth in nuclear capacity last year, Agneta Rising, the director general of the World Nuclear Association, told CNBC at the Singapore International Energy Week conference last week.
"(The) largest growth in nuclear energy is in the Asia region, especially in China and India," she said, adding that nuclear power is "absolutely compatible" and "necessary" for a low carbon future.
China dominates nuclear developmentChina added three new reactors to its fleet in 2017, bringing its total number of operating reactors to 41 '-- behind only the United States and France. The country reached its highest nuclear production that year, too: Its total output rose by a whopping 18 percent '-- or 35 TWh '-- the World Nuclear Industry Status Report showed.
China's expansion of nuclear production capabilities comes amid its push toward greater energy efficiency, a reduction of carbon intensity and a diversification away from fossil fuels, as outlined by the country's 13th Five Year Plan.
As part of that plan, Beijing is aiming to increase nuclear capacities to a total of 58 gigawatts (GW) by 2020. Its current nuclear capacity of 34.5 GW is, however, still dwarfed by renewable sources of energy such as wind and solar power '-- which are less costly, cleaner and safer to operate.
'Largest nuclear plant in the world'With 22 nuclear reactors, India has the seventh-largest nuclear production fleet in the world, according to numbers from the International Atomic Energy Agency.
India's total net electrical capacity of 6,255 MW trails behind China's 42,800 MW. But as the rules for foreign firms operating nuclear facilities in India ease, the country's largely indigenous nuclear program is starting to open up. That could change the nuclear landscape in the South Asian country.
With a shortage of fossil fuels, India is pursuing nuclear investments as an alternative to add to the country's energy mix to power the country's development.
Rapid development of nuclear capabilities comes after years of exclusion from trade in nuclear materials and technology, which was a result of the country's non-signatory status to a 1970 treaty on nuclear non-proliferation. A civil liability law '-- which allows for unlimited legal recourse to nuclear operators up to 80 years following any nuclear accident '-- has further hampered international investment and cooperation.
It was only after a 2005 agreement between the U.S. and India on nuclear energy cooperation that the U.K., France and Canada took a similar approach. Bilateral cooperation in nuclear development was one of the highlights of a meeting between French President Emmanuel Macron and Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi in March.
French electricity company Electricite de France (EDF), one of the largest nuclear operators in the world, told CNBC last week that the company was in talks with the Indian government to build six European Pressurized Reactors in India. With a total capacity of 9.6 GW, the joint French-Indian Jaitapur project will be the "the largest nuclear plant in the world," said Marianne Laigneau, group senior executive vice president at EDF.
Globally, nuclear energy capacity looks set to increase as part of countries continue to ramp up efforts to decarbonize.
"We see a large growth in nuclear energy around the world. In 2018, 2019 we will have more reactors coming online than it has been in the last 30 years," said the World Nuclear Association's Rising.
Any Collusion?
Nobody Is Above the Law'--Mueller Protection Rapid Response | MoveOn.org
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' + $.map(dates, function(events, dateIso) { var event = events[0]; var datetime = new Date(event.start_date); // full or in the past event.notAvailable = (new Date() > datetime || event.total_accepted >= event.capacity); //because Chrome/Firefox disagree on default timezone (Chrome defaults to UTC, but outputs "local") var localTimezone = String(new Date()).slice(28,33); var date = localizeDate(event.start_date); var dateString = hideEventDate ? '' : dateStringFromDate(date) + 'at'; return ('
On last night's episode of The Ezra Levant Show, I reported on Justin Trudeau and Immigration Minister Ahmed Hussen's plan to raise Canadian immigration levels to historic highs with an emphasis on Somalis.
Hussen is a Somali refugee himself, so it makes sense that he would want to bring more of his people to Canada. But is that really in our interest?
Unfortunately, Somalis don't have the best track record of assimilating. Obviously, they aren't all terrorists, but Justin Trudeau can't be trusted to properly vet migrants.
WATCH my video to see just a few acts of terror committed by Somali migrants.
BTC
The Decentralized Web powered by Ravencoin & IPFS '' Good Audience
A few months ago I heard about a project Overstock.com and Medici Ventures were involved in called Ravencoin. I just recently decided to take a look at the code and see what it is currently capable of.
I found the chain being BTC based has some powerful features like the ability create digital assets much like you would create an ERC20 on Ethereum and NFT (Non-fungible Tokens) which are unique like Crypto Kitties / ERC721 tokens.
Along with an important feature if it happens to be a security token. The ability to message token holders.
The other feature I did not initially get the full impact of was IPFS which can be attached to the metadata of a Fungible and NFT token by including the hash generated for an image or video. IPFS is a decentralized protocol for hosting files, images and video. Feature wise it is much like AWS S3 which many companies use today to host and serve files.
After creating a Garbage Pal Kid themed Crypto Kitty on the Raven Testnet (yes I grew up in the 80's) I had a thought experiment. What if you could attach an entire dApp or Site to a token?
You could have a company site linking out to dynamic content automatically linked to your token.Gaming tokens could include a dApp.You have a censorship resistant, decentralized site which can be easily shared. China may not let you enter the country with 50 King James Bibles to distribute but sending a KJV Bible token with a decentralized site attached is much harder to censor.To my surprise. It worked.
The S3Raven Token w/ IPFS React WebsiteClicking the IPFS link takes you to the demo React website:
React Demo site hosted via IPFS & Attached to S3Raven tokenThe Process
Much like launching a React Website on Amazon Web Services S3 you can create a new React app and build it. Upload the build folder to IPFS.
Install IPFS
https://docs.ipfs.io/introduction/install/
Create a React App
Bitcoin may be an unlikely winner in midterm elections - MarketWatch
Newsom began accepting bitcoin in 2014, and now he's the governor of CaliforniaAs Americans went to the polls Tuesday, cryptocurrencies and blockchain technology may not have been top of mind.
However, for the hard-core distributed ledger evangelists, governor races in Colorado and California proved to be landmark victories.
In Colorado, progressive Democratic candidate Jared Polis defeated Republican Walker Stapleton by a little more than 6 points in the governor race, replacing John Hickenlooper, who faced a term limit and couldn't seek re-election.
Colorado governor results
Polis, who also became the first openly gay elected governor, has longed touted blockchain technology as a paramount part of his states economic and voting future. In a campaign policy paper, Polis said he wanted to make Colorado the hub for all things crypto.
''My goal is to establish Colorado as a national hub for blockchain innovation in business and government. I believe strong leadership will put Colorado at the forefront of innovation in this sector'--encouraging companies to flock to the state and establishing government applications that save taxpayers money and create value for Colorado residents,'' he wrote.
Neeraj Agrawal, director of communications at Coin Center, a blockchain advisory research firm said the election of Polis is a step in the right direction for the industry.
''We are happy to see Mr. Polis' electoral success and are excited to continue our work with him and the Colorado Blockchain Council to promote sound cryptocurrency policy in the state.''
Read: What the midterm election outcome may mean for markets
Meanwhile, in California, fellow crypto enthusiast, Gavin Newsom comfortably won the gubernatorial race over Republican John Cox.
Newsom plugged into the crypto community in 2014 when he began accepting donations in bitcoin. In a May 20, 2014 tweet, the progressive candidate said ''Step right up?'' to those willing to donate via a virtual currency. At the time, a single bitcoin BTCUSD +1.32% was worth just shy of $500.
Blockchain and elections have a history'--at least a conceptual one.
The anonymous, distributed-ledger technology has often garnered the attention of lawmakers who have grappled with election-meddling scandals. In an Op-ed for the New York Times, Alex Tapscott, the co-founder of the Blockchain Institute Research, said it is time to put faith in code, which he think would eliminate human error and external influence, referring to the problems with current voting technology.
''In a blockchain-based system, public trust in the voting process is achieved not by faith in one single institution, but through cryptography, code, and collaboration among citizens, government agencies and other stakeholders,'' he wrote.
Read: Opinion: Voting by blockchain could add new risks to our elections'--including fraud
See original version of this story
The Purge
In Silicon Valley, Saudi Money Keeps Flowing to Startups Amid Backlash - WSJ
Silicon Valley startups are continuing to negotiate deals with Saudi Arabia and take its capital through its partner SoftBank Group Corp. , amid the controversy over the killing of journalist Jamal Khashoggi that has clouded the kingdom's role as a global technology investor.
Two startups'-- View Inc., which makes light-adjustable glass, and Zume Inc., which uses robots to make pizza'--disclosed investments over the past week totaling a combined $1.5 billion from SoftBank's Saudi-backed Vision Fund.
Late last month, Katerra Inc., an innovator in property construction, reached a tentative deal with the Saudi government to build up to 50,000 units of housing annually for the kingdom. That followed a $1 billion funding round led by the Vision Fund early this year that valued the Menlo Park, Calif., company at more than $3 billion.
Meanwhile, negotiations continued in recent weeks for a deal in which Tokyo-based SoftBank would invest $15 billion to $20 billion to buy a majority stake in WeWork Cos. likely with Vision Fund money, according to people familiar with the discussions. A WeWork spokeswoman declined to comment.
The deals and negotiations indicate at least some in Silicon Valley continue to do business with Saudi Arabia and the SoftBank fund that it backs in the aftermath of Mr. Khashoggi's grisly killing by Saudi agents at the kingdom's consulate in Istanbul on Oct. 2.
Turkish allegations of Saudi involvement in the killing early last month prompted a number of companies, including some in Silicon Valley backed by SoftBank, to cancel attendance at an October conference in Riyadh sponsored by the Saudi sovereign-wealth fund.
Endeavor LLC, Hollywood's biggest talent agency, has been trying to end its business with Saudi Arabia, The Wall Street Journal reported last month. Richard Branson's Virgin Group and multiple Washington lobbying firms have said they are canceling or suspending deals with the Saudi government. Republican and Democratic lawmakers also have called for curbing ties with the kingdom.
Other companies, including many in the energy industry, have stood by Saudi Arabia through the controversy.
Saudi Arabia, which initially said Mr. Khashoggi left the consulate alive, has since acknowledged he was killed inside. It says it is investigating and denies any link to its crown prince, Mohammed Bin Salman.
Masayoshi Son, SoftBank's chief executive, said at an earnings conference Monday he wasn't aware of any companies that had refused SoftBank money because of ties to Saudi Arabia. He denounced Mr. Khashoggi's killing and said ''there may be a little impact'' in SoftBank's ability to invest in companies in the future, but that the Japanese conglomerate will continue to work with the kingdom.
''We have an obligation to the people of Saudi Arabia to help them manage their financial resources to diversify their economy,'' he said.
The stakes are high in Silicon Valley. Saudi Arabia has become the largest funder of U.S. startups in recent years as it works to diversify its economy by steering a big chunk of its Public Investment Fund toward technology. The kingdom has committed more than $12 billion to U.S. startups since mid-2016, according to a Wall Street Journal analysis, largely through its $45 billion commitment to SoftBank's $92 billion Vision Fund. SoftBank has autonomy over most of the fund's investment decisions.
Within Silicon Valley'--a place where chief executives often talk openly about politics and startup founders often say they are out to make the world a better place'--the response to the Khashoggi killing and the international backlash of a huge benefactor has been relatively muted. Entrepreneurs and venture capitalists have generally declined to talk publicly about Saudi money in recent weeks.
U.S. Rep. Ro Khanna, a Democrat who represents much of Silicon Valley, says startups should reject Saudi money, particularly given Saudi involvement in the war in Yemen.
Companies financed by Saudis or Saudi-backed funds ''would be complicit in taking money from a regime that is engaged in some of the most brutal human rights violations in the world,'' he said.
View, based in Milpitas, Calif., and Zume, in nearby Mountain View, declined to discuss Saudi involvement in their funding. Both companies had been in talks with the Vision Fund before Mr. Khashoggi's death.
View, which makes windows that automatically darken and lighten, announced on Friday that it had raised $1.1 billion from the Vision Fund. Zume, which uses robots to cook pizza in delivery vans, raised $375 million from the fund, according to a person familiar with the matter. The company announced the funding but didn't reveal its source publicly.
Katerra is a three-year-old company that is trying to make construction more efficient by putting architects, engineers, contractors and builders in the same company, and use an assembly line-like manufacturing process for building parts. Its chairman, Michael Marks, signed a memorandum of understanding in Riyadh nearly two weeks ago with the Saudi government as part of a competition with other companies to build housing for a Saudi public agency.
If the Saudi deal is ultimately completed, it would be far larger than anything Katerra has signed to date, involving construction of as many as eight factories in Saudi Arabia along with the new housing.
'--Katie Roof contributed to this article.
Write to Eliot Brown at eliot.brown@wsj.com
Ministry of Truthiness
Jim Acosta violated one of the oldest rules of journalism
By producing a split decision, the election that was supposed to end all elections turned out to be fairly predictable. But it's the day after that was unlike any other.
The Republican president, the likely speaker of the Democratic-controlled House and the Senate's Republican majority leader each started Wednesday by talking about working together to get things done. They talked to each other privately and talked separately in public about what they thought they could accomplish for the country.
For most Americans, that would make for a very good day. Given the overheated environment leading up to the midterms and the fear among many that we are drifting toward an era of disunion and spreading political violence, bipartisan pledges to work together for the common good were like the sudden emergence of a bright candle flickering in the wind.
Alas, it was the last thing some members of the White House press corps wanted, so they tried to snuff it out.
The conduct of a handful of so-called reporters during President Trump's news conference was disgraceful beyond measure. This is not journalism, this is narcissism.
Naturally, the boorish Jim Acosta of CNN was the instigator. As is his habit, Acosta doesn't ask questions '-- he makes accusations and argues. Almost daily, he does it with the press secretary; Wednesday, he did it with the president.
''I want to challenge you,'' Acosta began after Trump called on him. Trump realized he'd made a mistake, murmuring, ''Here we go'' and Acosta didn't disappoint.
He insisted that despite the president's use of the word ''invasion,'' the caravan of Central America migrants ''is not an invasion.''
He adopted a lecturing, I-know-best tone to declare that ''they're hundreds and hundreds of miles away; that's not an invasion.''
Trump's response should not have been necessary: ''Honestly, I think you should let me run the country, you run CNN.''
After more back-and-forth, he called Acosta ''a rude, terrible person'' and said ''CNN should be ashamed of itself.''
That should have been enough '-- Acosta got the attention he wanted and got Trump's goat, giving his network video it could make hay out of for days. Besides, there were scores of other reporters raising their hands to be called on.
But Acosta wouldn't give up the microphone and kept talking over Trump, trying to lob another grenade.
The president, clearly angry now and stepping away from the podium as if he might bolt the room, pointed at him and said forcefully, ''That's enough, that's enough. Put down the mic.''
Finally, Acosta sat down, then stood up to argue again, interrupting another reporter. That reporter, from NBC, praised Acosta and picked up the baton by making his own accusation disguised as a question. He mentioned Trump's attacks on Democrats and ''asked'' the president: Why are ''you are pitting Americans against one another?''
Trump, to his credit, actually answered in a substantive way, but that didn't satisfy because the reporter didn't really ask a question. He, too, just wanted to make an accusation and argue. On camera.
There was a time not long ago when young journalists were taught not to become the story. Apparently, many news organizations have flipped that lesson on its head.
But we are witnessing something more insidious here than media trash talk. Plain and simple, we are watching expressions of personal hatred.
Yes, it's true that most journalists lean far left and their bias sticks out like so many sore thumbs. That's been true for a long time, but political bias is an insufficient explanation for the Jim Acostas of our time.
They hate Trump. They really, really hate him. There's nothing professional about it.
They are not alone. Take a poll of almost any major newsroom in America and the vast majority of those working there, if they are being honest, will confess they, too, can't stand the existence or the sound of Trump.
Or try to imagine Acosta and his ilk behaving in similarly hostile fashion toward Barack Obama or Hillary Clinton. Keep trying, but you can't imagine it because it never happened. Both of those pols lied to journalists repeatedly, yet you can bet 90 percent still voted straight Democratic.
Even if they didn't like Obama or Clinton, the political reporters would never dare accuse them publicly of anything, argue with them or interrupt them. Even when skeptical, they were respectful.
Recall how Obama used to spend 10, 15 and even 20 minutes answering a single question '-- without interruption.
Many in the press corps may have found him overbearingly arrogant. They may have resented the way he looked down on them and bristled at critical stories or tough questions. They knew he started more leak investigations than any other president, and might have feared him because his Justice Department wiretapped a Fox News reporter during a leak case.
But they would never interrupt him or insult him or refuse to give up the microphone.
White House press credentials are not a universal right. There are implicit expectations of proper behavior, and the White House decision to suspend Acosta's credential is warranted.
Just as Acosta can't go into a movie theater and yell ''fire'' when there is no fire, he should not have the right to hijack a presidential press conference to suit his own ego.
It is also long past time for his colleagues, including those from other outlets, to remind him that his shameful conduct is making all of them look bad. More important, scenes like Wednesday's further erode the public's already-declining mistrust of the media and fuel resistance to the First Amendment.
The anti-Trump antics are no longer a side show. America has serious problems as well as dangerous enemies, and the mere prospect of Trump, Nancy Pelosi and Mitch McConnell working together is the best news we could have hoped for Wednesday.
Instead, it was overshadowed by a few narcissists chasing their own vanity.
e-Scoorters
Ford to buy scooter company Spin to beef up mobility businesses
A person displays the SpinBike shared electric scooter application on a Apple Inc. iPhone X in San Francisco, California, on Friday, April 13, 2018.
Ford confirmed Thursday it has agreed to buy San Francisco-based scooter sharing company Spin.
News of the deal was first reported by Axios Wednesday, which quoted a source that put its value at $40 million.
Ford did not disclose the financial terms of the deal.
The move is a bid to beef up Ford's holdings in transportation and "mobility" businesses that don't involve selling cars, and tap what executives say is a rapidly growing market.
Several scooter start-ups, such as Bird and Lime, have risen to prominence recently, and some see these companies as yet another form of transportation, along with ride-sharing, that could undermine the need many households have for a garage filled with cars.
Spin rents out "dockless" scooters, meaning users do not have to park the scooters in designated areas or "docks," as is commonly seen with similar sorts of services, such as bike-share programs. It currently operates in 13 cities and college campuses, including Denver, Detroit, Long Beach, California; Coral Gables, Florida and Troy University in Alabama. It operates bike-share programs at the University of Kentucky; and the University of California, San Diego.
By the end of 2018, Spin plans to operate in Washington, D.C.; Austin, Texas; Charlotte, North Carolina; Durham, North Carolina, as well as nearby Duke University; and Towson University in Maryland.
Ford has made a number of investments in mobility companies through its Smart Mobility division. In early 2018, the automaker bought Autonomic, a company that makes software meant to connect vehicles and organize transportation networks. When Autonomic CEO Sunny Madra joined Smart Mobility he was named the head of Ford X, an incubator designed to help grow new businesses that can target customers who may be losing interest in traditional car ownership.
Micro-mobility businesses like Spin are growing in a much different way than ride-sharing did, according to Madra. Cities are requiring permits and putting caps on the number of scooters a company can put in an area and where they can be placed.
Madra told CNBC Ford chose to acquire Spin because the way the company works fit Ford's values. "They always launch in markets where they have permits, they work very closely with cities to understand what their needs are," he said.
Ford wants to grow Spin's business from 13 cities and college campuses today to about 100 in the next 18 months.
"We are really going to give them significant resources to help them scale," Madra said, adding that the Spin will be able to leverage relationships Ford already has with different cities.
The potential market is large. Madra cited data from transportation research firm Populus, which found that half of all trips in the U.S. are three miles or less.
"Some of the leading companies in this space were getting upwards of 10 million rides in less than a year," Madra said. "And if you compare that to the most disruptive transportation company in the last 10 years, being Uber, it took them three years to get to get the same level of usage. So it became obvious there was consumer desire in this space."
Understanding how to scale a business like this will be key.
"That is an important fact because as we grow out our range of mobility offerings, we think autonomous vehicles are going to undergo the same sort of scrutiny that the scooters are in that sense," he said. "Companies will need to get permits, and there will be caps, and companies will need to operate in very distinct ways."
Your Tesla Can Go Zero to 60 in 2.5 Seconds But Can't Get AM Radio - WSJ
Cars and AM radio go back a long way, but there's a rough road ahead for the old travel buddies.
The same types of electric-powered motors that propel Teslas past 150 mph and the Chevy Bolt as far as 238 miles on a charge, are a total buzz kill for AM reception. Instead of sports, oldies or news, it's more like all-static, all-the-time radio.
As auto makers race headlong into an electrified future, AM radios are getting kicked to the curb, joining cassette decks, eight-track players and ashtrays.
Daniel Rich is a fan of both San Francisco's KNBR-AM 680 and his Chevy Bolt. That means his commute isn't as easygoing as it used to be. ''All my other cars over the years could receive that station just fine, despite the distance,'' the 58-year-old eye surgeon said. ''Not the Bolt.''
A General Motors Co. spokeswoman said GM was aware of the issue in the Bolt and has ''taken steps,'' but declined to say exactly what they are.
The problem, experts said, is that electric-vehicle motors generate electromagnetic frequencies on the same wavelength as AM radio signals. That creates the buzzing and signal fading from electromagnetic interference.
''You get two signals that literally collide into each other and cancel each other out before the antenna even receives the signal,'' said Brian McKay, head of engine innovation and technology at the North American operations of Continental AG .
As EV motors grow more powerful, so does AM static. ''The root of the problem is getting worse,'' Mr. McKay said.
Rather than field complaints about lousy reception, some auto makers, including BMW AG , have dropped AM radios from their electric vehicles. Honda Motor Co. no longer offers them on its hybrid electric Acura NSX sports car.
Tesla Inc. has phased out AM radio from all current production models, including its Model S, which used to offer it. Instead, the company offers an internet-based radio service as well as FM radio, optional HD radio and Bluetooth connectivity for streaming from smartphones.
Travis Hollman, a Dallas-area business owner, said he ordered a fully loaded Tesla when AM radios were still offered. His 2018 Model S arrived in April without one, he said: ''I was so mad I told them to take the car back.''
Mr. Hollman, 49, ended up keeping the car but misses tuning into local sports and conservative talk-radio stations. ''They don't want me listening to Rush Limbaugh, '' he joked.
Car AM radios have been as common as windshield wipers since the 1940s. On summer road trips, AM radio has been the north star for generations of drivers crossing the U.S., an idiosyncratic sampler of local Americana and a distraction from the fatigue of long hours on the open road.
Transistor radios blasted the sports, news and music of the 1960s on AM radio stations at home and on the streets, with hand-held versions nearly as ubiquitous as the smartphone is now.
Today's AM radio stations, already struggling with a decadelong loss of advertising revenue, worry about losing any more of their drive-time audience.
''It's a real challenge for the industry, and they've been trying to convince car manufacturers to include it'' in all vehicles, said Mark Fratrik, a senior vice president and chief economist at BIA Advisory Services, a market research firm focused on broadcast media.
In a sign of the times, the L.A. Kings hockey team said in September that audio for most games would switch from AM radio to internet-only radio.
The biggest AM stations hold spots on internet radio services, which give drivers a way to hear favorite stations, even far from home. Smaller AM stations might not be able to afford the equipment needed to join the digital age.
BMW said it recognized the interference problem early, in its Mini E and BMW ActiveE models. AM radio never reached the i3 model, which made its debut in 2013.
The National Association of Broadcasters criticized BMW's decision in a 2014 open letter. ''AM Radio continues to serve an important role in America's cultural landscape, and i3 drivers deserve access to this programming,'' NAB President Gordon Smith wrote the head of BMW's North American operations.
HD Radio, which uses digitally transmitted radio signals, is standard on U.S. models, a BMW spokesman said, and ''many traditional AM stations in key markets are available on secondary and tertiary HD signals.''
There isn't an easy way to eliminate the electromagnetic interference that drowns out AM signals without adding too much weight, experts said.
Toyota Motor Corp. is working on a solution, but ''it's a tough problem,'' said Rich Sullivan, an electromagnetic compatibility expert and senior engineering manager at the auto maker's U.S. research and development center.
Mr. Sullivan pointed out that the auto industry faced a similar challenge when gas-powered cars began offering AM radio and had to deal with noise from defrosters and heater fans.
Some companies that make entertainment systems for vehicles said AM radio's time may have already passed.
''Even if we do resolve it, there's a gravitation toward internet-based radio'' that is displacing traditional radio, said Balaji Iyer, vice president for connected cars at Samsung unit Harman.
One web developer offers a smartphone app that, when used with a diagnostic port adapter, can activate the dormant AM radio reception in a BMW i3 EV.
The German auto maker warns that may void the warranty, but using the app is easy, said Art Isabell, 74, a 2014 BMW i3 owner. He retired from Apple as a software support engineer and lives in Honolulu.
Even though the AM reception in his electric vehicle is sketchy, Mr. Isabell said, he wants the option: ''I rarely listen to AM radio, but I want to have it available as another potential source of information during emergency situations such as severe weather, tsunamis or North Korean missile attacks.''
Write to Chester Dawson at chester.dawson@wsj.com
Vegas Massacre
Las Vegas shooting survivors were inside Thousand Oak bar, friends say | Fox News
Some survivors of the Las Vegas mass shooting were inside the Borderline Bar in Thousand Oaks, Calif., when a gunman opened fire just before midnight on Wednesday, killing 12.
Hundreds of people were inside the venue for "college country night" when shots rang at around 11:20 p.m. The shooter was dead inside the bar, police said. It was unclear how he died.
Chandler Gunn, 23, of Newberry Park, called a friend who works at the Borderline Bar & Grill, who was also at Route 91 in Las Vegas, The Los Angeles Times reported.
"A lot of people in the Route 91 situation go here," he said, referring to the mass shooting last year in Las Vegas. "There's people that live a whole lifetime without seeing this, and then there's people that have seen it twice."
Josh Coaly, 27, had been to Borderline several times with his friends, including one who also survived the Vegas shooting, The Times reported.
Coaly told the paper that his friend said he is with his dad and is in good condition.
Carl Edgar, 24, of Tarzana, told The Times he had about 20 friends inside the bar, which he frequently attends.
''As far as I know, all of my friends are OK, safe,'' he said. ''There are a few people we can't get a hold of, but in these situations, people usually turn off their phones to be safe so I'm not gonna get too worried. A lot of my friends survived Route 91. If they survived that, they'll survive this.''
John, a father of two in Colorado, had no idea what his 15-year-old son had gotten into, until one night last year when John walked into his home office. We're not using his last name to protect his son's privacy.
John saw a large pile of papers facedown next to his printer. He turned them over and found a copy of a notorious neo-Nazi propaganda book. "It's 'the white culture's in trouble, we are under attack by Jews, blacks, every other minority.' It was scary. It was absolutely frightening to even see that in my house. I was shaking, like, 'What in the world is this and why is it in my house?' "
John confronted his son angrily.
"I was through the roof." And then, "I went back into my room. I was crying. I felt like a failure that a child that I had raised would be remotely interested in that sort of stuff."
Almost every teen plays video games '-- 97 percent of boys, according to the Pew Research Center, and 83 percent of girls.
Increasingly, these games are played online, with strangers. And experts say that while it's by no means common, online games '-- and the associated chat rooms, livestreams and other channels '-- have become one avenue for recruitment by right-wing extremist groups.
At the time, John's son liked playing first-person shooter games, like Counterstrike: Global Offensive. Games like these are multiplayer '-- you must form teams with friends or strangers. You can chat in the game, over voice or text, or in separate chat rooms. Some of these are hosted by sites like Discord that make it easy for anyone to create a private chat.
John knew his son was spending time playing video games and chatting either out loud or over text, but there were no obvious red flags.
"There wasn't anything obvious to me at first because it's common. This is the norm for kids. Instead of hanging out at the drive-in they're all online," he said.
Yet it's exactly this way, John says, that his son started hanging out with avowed white supremacists.
These people became his son's friends. They talked to him about problems he was having at school, and suggested some of his African-American classmates as scapegoats. They also keyed into his interest in history, especially military history, and in Nordic mythology. Above all, they offered him membership in a hierarchy: whites against others.
"He started to feel like he was in on something. He was now in the in crowd with these guys. It provided some structure and identity that he was searching for at the time."
John learned his son had been drawn into conversation with at least one group that the Southern Poverty Law Center calls a Nazi terrorist organization. He searched online for help and found a man named Christian Picciolini.
Picciolini runs the Free Radicals project, which he calls "a global prevention network for extremism." He's a reformed skinhead himself.
"Thirty years ago, when I was involved in the white supremacist movement, it was very much a face to face interaction," he says. "You know, you had to meet somebody to be recruited, or you had a pamphlet or a flyer put on your car."
But today, he says, it's much more common for extremists to initially reach out online. And that includes over kids' headsets during video games. Picciolini describes the process: "Well typically, they'll start out with dropping slurs about different races or religions and kind of test the waters ... Once they sense that they've got their hooks in them they ramp it up, and then they start sending propaganda, links to other sites, or they start talking about these old kind of racist anti-Semitic tropes."
That's also what Joan Donovan has seen. She is the media manipulation research lead at Data and Society, a research institute, and she has been following white supremacists online for years. She says they've been highly innovative in using new online spaces, like message boards in the '90s, for recruitment.
"I saw how these groups communicated and spread out to other spaces online with the intent of not telling people specifically that they were white supremacists, but they were really trying to figure out what young men were angry about and how they could leverage that to bring about a broad-based social movement."
And violent first-person shooter games, she says, are one place to find angry young men. She calls "gaming culture" "one of the spaces of recruitment that must be addressed."
Donovan says that recruitment, and even the planning of harassment campaigns, happens not only during in-game chat, but during livestreaming of game play on platforms like Twitch and YouTube.
For example, there's a feature on YouTube called Super Chat, where fans can offer cash tips while gamers are playing.
"People will donate 14 dollars and 88 cents, which is a reference to ... a white nationalist slogan, as well as 88, which is most commonly found in prison tattoos, for Heil Hitler," Donovan said.
Game-related Reddit threads and chat sites like Discord also host similar conversations. Last year, a nonprofit media collective called Unicorn Riot published chat logs from Discord in which known white supremacists planned aspects of the Charlottesville "Unite The Right" rally.
Video games are a hundred billion dollar industry.
What are companies' responsibilities to ensure that young people won't encounter hate groups? We reached out to several game and chat companies for comment. Riot Games noted in a statement that it relies on volunteers to moderate game-related chats. And Discord, the chatroom site, forwarded a statement from the Southern Poverty Law Center, praising it for recently banning several far-right extremist communities.
Greg Boyd, who represents video game companies for the law firm Frankfurt Kurnit, says "toxic" behavior including hate speech, to say nothing of recruitment, is a key industry concern and a frequent topic of conversation. "If they could find it all they would get rid of it ASAP."
But it's a daunting technical challenge. The three biggest video game platforms '-- Microsoft, PlayStation and Steam '-- host 48 million, 70 million and 130 million monthly active players respectively, Boyd says. "That's the populations of Spain, France and Russia. And then imagine that you're monitoring all of their text chat ... all of their voice chat, in literally every language, dialect, and subdialect spoken in the world."
In the absence of sufficient resources for moderation, most game platforms rely on players to monitor and report each other.
Picciolini compares the companies to landlords with disruptive tenants "disrupting or damaging the building or threatening the other tenants. You know, they would take action."
But, Picciolini says, ultimately unwinding the influence of these groups over young people takes love and acceptance. He counseled John to find out what his son's personal struggles were '-- he calls them "potholes." As John put it, "He's missing something, so find out what those [potholes] are and fill those with something positive and healthy, and that's the way to steer them out of all this."
It took time, but lately, John says, his son, now 16, seems to have left these ideas behind. He's playing fewer networked shooter games, and on his own, he has started attending church.
VIDEO - President Trump Calls 2018 Midterm Elections Close Complete Victory, Nov 7 2018
November 7, 2018 2018-11-07T11:57:14-05:00 https://images.c-span.org/Files/e58/20181107115826001_hd.jpg President Trump held a news conference in the White House East Room the day after the 2018 midterm elections. The president said ''the Republican Party defied history to expand our Senate majority.'' He praised House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) and vowed to work with the new Democratic House majority in a bipartisan manner. In addition, the president threatened to respond to any House Democratic efforts to investigate the White House. Throughout the press conference, the president got into several heated exchanges with reporters including CNN's Jim Acosta and PBS NewsHour's Yamiche Alcindor.President Trump held a news conference in the White House East Room the day after the 2018 midterm elections. The president said ''the Republican Party defied'... read more
President Trump held a news conference in the White House East Room the day after the 2018 midterm elections. The president said ''the Republican Party defied history to expand our Senate majority.'' He praised House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) and vowed to work with the new Democratic House majority in a bipartisan manner. In addition, the president threatened to respond to any House Democratic efforts to investigate the White House. Throughout the press conference, the president got into several heated exchanges with reporters including CNN's Jim Acosta and PBS NewsHour's Yamiche Alcindor. close
Democrat Stacey Abrams said early Wednesday morning that she's not conceding the Georgia governor's race despite Republican candidate Brian Kemp's lead.
''I'm here to tell you tonight that votes remain to be counted,'' Abrams told her supporters in Atlanta.
Kemp is leading Abrams by more than two percentage points '' 50.6 percent to 48.5 percent '' with 97 percent of precincts reporting.
GEORGIA GUBERNATORIAL RACE TOO CLOSE TO CALL TUESDAY NIGHT
The Democrat's campaign believes there are enough outstanding votes to trigger a run-off election in the state. If neither candidate earns more than 50 percent of the vote, then they will head for a Dec. 4 runoff '-- the first general election gubernatorial runoff in the state's history.
''Tonight we have closed a gap between yesterday and tomorrow, but we still have a few more miles to go,'' Abrams said. ''Across our state, folks are opening up the dreams of voters in absentee ballots, and we believe our chance for a stronger Georgia is just within reach.''
''But we cannot seize it until all voices are heard," Abrams continued. ''And I promise you tonight, we're going to make sure that every vote is counted.''
"Across our state, folks are opening up the dreams of voters in absentee ballots, and we believe our chance for a stronger Georgia is just within reach."
'-- Democrat Stacey Abrams
She also went on to accuse Kemp '' without directly naming him '' of suppressing the vote by making it harder to participate in the election. ''I'm not going to name names, but some have worked hard to take our votes away,'' she said.
In the wake of the Election Day, Kemp made a dramatic announcement of ''possible cyber crimes'' by the Georgia Democratic Party.
The state Democratic Party and Abrams denied the accusations and said the announcement was merely an attempt to ''suppress the vote.''
Abrams' bid for governor of Georgia was set to make history by becoming the state's first black governor and the first female black governor in the whole nation.
Her campaign was backed by big-name celebrities and high-profile political figures. Oprah Winfrey and former President Barack Obama campaigned for the Democrat.
Fox News' Jennifer Earl and the Associated Press contributed to this report.
VIDEO - Pelosi: Let's Hear It More for Pre-Existing Medical Conditions - YouTube
