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Terror potential in Germany's immigrant population quadruples, German feds say

The number of refugees in Germany capable of committing terrorist attack in the country has quadrupled since 2011, the German Federal Criminal Police Office, BKA, told government broadcaster Deutsche Welle.


Ritzmann warned that the refugees are vulnerable to radicalization. “They have no connection to German culture, language, or food, or anything,” he said, noting that some accept jihadist bromides because they offer easy solutions to the complexity of refugee life. “They offer you answers, and all you have to do is obey their commands.”

Security concerns have heightened in Germany after close to a million refugees arrived in 2015 from Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan, and North Africa. Fears worsened when more than 1,200 women were reportedly assaulted in various German cities on New Year’s Eve in 2015.

"There was no proper vetting for the refugees who came here in 2015,” said Alexander Ritzmann, executive director of the European Foundation for Democracy, an NGO that exposes jihadist propaganda and right-wing extremism. “The government is still trying to get a hold on who is actually here.”

A translator at refugee camps in Germany has claimed Muslim migrants hate Christians and want to Islamize the country. During her time at a number of centers across the country, she said she discovered Muslim refugees preaching “pure hatred” of Christians.

She herself was told it was a sin for her to help feed and defend Christians. She told German Catholic website Kath.net: “They want Germany to be Islamized. They despise our country and our values. Some women told me, ‘We will multiply our numbers. We must have more children than the Christians because it’s the only way we can destroy them here.’”

Explosive Revelation of Obama Administration Illegal Surveillance of Americans

The unlawful surveillance appears to have been a massive abuse of the government’s foreign-intelligence-collection authority, carried out for the purpose of monitoring the communications of Americans in the United States. While aware that it was going on for an extensive period of time, the administration failed to disclose its unlawful surveillance of Americans until late October 2016, when the administration was winding down and the NSA needed to meet a court deadline in order to renew various surveillance authorities under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA).

The administration’s stonewalling about the scope of the violation induced an exasperated Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court to accuse the NSA of “an institutional lack of candor” in connection with what the court described as “a very serious Fourth Amendment issue.

The FISA-court opinion is now public, available here. The unlawful surveillance was first exposed in a report at Circa by John Solomon and Sara Carter, who have also gotten access to internal, classified reports. According to the internal reports reviewed by Solomon and Carter, the illegal surveillance may involve more than 5 percent of NSA searches of databases.

It is, of course, on foreign intelligence targets — non-U.S. persons situated outside the U.S. — that the NSA and CIA are supposed to focus. Foreign agents operating inside the U.S. are mainly the purview of the FBI, which conducts surveillance of their communications through warrants from the FISA court — individualized warrants based on probable cause that a specific person is acting as an agent of a foreign power.

But FISA surveillance is more controversial than criminal surveillance because the government does not have to show probable cause of a crime — and when the targets are foreigners outside the U.S., the government does not have to make any showing.

So, to summarize, we have the communications of Americans inside the United States being incidentally intercepted, stored, sifted through, and in some instances analyzed, even though those Americans are not targets of foreign-intelligence collection. The minimization procedures are supposed to prevent the worst potential abuses, particularly, the pretextual use of foreign-intelligence-collection authority in order to conduct domestic spying. But even when complied with, there is a colorable argument that the minimization procedures do not eliminate the Fourth Amendment problem — i.e., they permit seizure and search without adequate cause.

Now we know the minimization procedures have not been complied with. The new scandal involves their flouting. In 2011, it became clear to the FISA court that the minimization procedures were providing insufficient protection to Americans.

Other reporting indicates that there was a significant uptick in unmasking incidents in the latter years of the Obama administration. More officials were given unmasking authority. At the same time, President Obama loosened restrictions to allow wider access to raw intelligence collection and wider dissemination of intelligence reports. This geometrically increased the likelihood that classified information would be leaked. And of course, there has been a stunning amount of leaking of classified information to the media.

[We end up with the] enabling of domestic spying, contemptuous disregard of court-ordered minimization procedures (procedures the Obama administration itself proposed, then violated), and unlawful disclosure of classified intelligence to feed a media campaign against political adversaries

It looks like the GOP candidate in Montana has just screwed himself.

Bozeman, Montana (CNN) Votes are being tallied in Montana's special election for the open US House seat, capping off a whirlwind final 36 hours that saw one of the candidates accused of assaulting a reporter.

With 56% of precincts reporting, Gianforte has 110,364 votes -- or 49.4% of the vote, compared to Quist who has 100,043 votes -- 44.8% of the vote, according to Edison Research.

Leaders Appear to Snicker as Trump Calls on NATO Allies to Pay Their 'Fair Share'

“NATO members must finally contribute their fair share and meet their financial obligations,” the president said before all 27 other foreign ministers, noting that "23 of the 28 member nations" are failing to meet the two percent commitment.

While Trump delivered his remarks, the Prime Minister of Luxembourg, Xavier Bettel, appeared to snicker to French President Emmanuel Macron while covering his mouth.

Other leaders, such as German Chancellor Angela Merkel, also appeared to be containing laughter during Trump's speech.

Gianforte apologizes to Ben Jacobs by name after winning election

In his acceptance speech, Gianforte apologized by name to Ben Jacobs, the Guardian reporter who accused the Republican of "body-slamming" him and breaking his glasses.

"When you make a mistake, you have to own up to it," Gianforte told his supporters at his Election Night rally in Bozeman. "That's the Montana way."

Saying he was "not proud" of his behavior, he added, "I should not have responded the way I did, for that I'm sorry. I should not have treated that reporter that way, and for that I'm sorry, Mr. Ben Jacobs."

Members of the supportive crowd shouted, "You're forgiven"

“APOLOGIZE, v.t.: To lay the foundation for a future offense.”

President Donald Trump's son-in-law and senior adviser, Jared Kushner, is under FBI scrutiny as part of the Russia investigation, according to US media.

Reports say investigators believe he has relevant information, but he is not necessarily suspected of a crime.

The FBI is looking into potential Russian meddling in the 2016 election and links with Mr Trump's campaign. The president denies any collusion.

Mr Kushner's lawyer said his client would co-operate with any inquiry.

President Trump has described the Russia investigations as "the single greatest witch hunt of a politician in American history".

What with Finn speaking against arguments that I did not make, he most certainly did flail against straw men.

Reductio ad absurdum arguments based on straw man arguments are still straw man arguments, their soundness, or otherwise, notwithstanding.

Brandon9000 wrote:

InfraBlue wrote:

First, it's revealed that Trump directly expressed to Comey his hope that Comey would let the Flynn investigation go.

Really? What were the president's words?

According to a memo of Comey's, Trump said, “I hope you can see your way clear to letting this go, to letting Flynn go. He is a good guy. I hope you can let
this go.”

Brandon9000 wrote:

InfraBlue wrote:

Now, there's the revelation that he instructed his director of national intelligence, Daniel Coats, and his director of the National Security Agency, Adm. Michael S. Rogers, to publicly deny the existence of evidence of collusion during the 2016 election.

Really? Where does this claim come from?

According to the article that I linked, the claim comes from "two current and two former officials, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss private communications with the president."