Save net neutrality

When the FCC repeal goes into effect on June 11th, “the Internet as we know it” will not suddenly die. Nothing will happen right away. Shills for big telecom companies will immediately start saying “See? The sky didn’t fall, guess we never needed net neutrality in the first place.”

The big ISPs aren’t going to immediately start blocking websites or rolling out harmful paid prioritization scams. Not while Congress and the courts are still deliberating. Not while major states like California and New York are considering legislation. Not while they know the whole Internet is poised to attack as soon as they break the rules.

Even if the ISPs get their way in the end, the Internet’s death will be slow. You probably won’t even notice it happening at first. That’s what makes it so sinister. But over time, there will be less innovative startups, less choice and diversity of opinion online, less creativity, more centralization, less awesome. We’ll also lose one of the most important tools we have for exposing corruption, challenging tyranny, and holding the powerful accountable.

But we’re not going to let that happen. We’ve turned net neutrality into a mainstream issue for the first time ever. And now we’re building a movement to make sure that we protect it for generations to come.

The fight ahead is not going to be easy, but victory is within reach.

EU blocking cities' efforts to curb Airbnb

The explosive rise of short-stay Airbnb holiday rentals may be shutting locals out of housing and changing neighbourhoods across Europe, but cities’ efforts to halt it are being stymied by EU policies to promote the “sharing economy”

Facebook's increasing PR job in Brussels

Facebook is a regular subject of controversies connected to the use of data shared by its users - in 2013, for example, after the revelations of Edward Snowden, or more recently with the Cambridge Analytica affair. As a consequence, the company has been trying its best to polish its image and reassure both the public and institutions. To this end, it has formed a network to amplify its influence in Washington as well as in Brussels.

“You picked this format for a reason,” one parliamentarian hissed at Zuckerberg as the proceedings ended.

Facebook CEO exploited ability to access data from any user’s friend network, US case claims

Don't execute Noura for self defense against the man who raped her!

At 16, Noura was forcibly married off by her father. She refused, and in protest left her family home on the outskirts of Khartoum to stay with her aunt in Sinnar, a city almost 250 kilometers away. Noura lived with her relative for three years before her father called to say that the wedding was cancelled, and that she should come home.

Upon her arrival, Noura found that she had been tricked, that the wedding to which she had never agreed was still happening, and shortly after was given away to her unchosen husband.

Slovak Police Investigate Journalists, not Murderers

Slovak police had invited investigative journalist Pavla Holcova to what she thought would be a friendly conversation to help their investigation into the murder of her friend and colleague, Jan Kuciak.

She was asked about cases that other investigative reporters were digging into, as well as Kuciak’s investigation into a man who now is a suspect in the murder - an investigation Kuciak was pursuing independently of his work with OCCRP. 

Alexandra Dovgan plays Gillock

Hillary Clinton: Need to take reports of Chinese meddling seriously

“Experts are sounding the alarm about Chinese efforts to gain political power and influence policy decisions,” she said during a speech in Auckland Monday night.

“(Academic) Anne-Marie Brady of the University of Canterbury has rightly called this a new global battle, and it’s just getting started,” added Clinton.

China vehemently denies allegations that it tries to influence the domestic politics of other countries for its own benefit.

Clinton’s comments follow a report by Brady published last month in the Journal of Democracy, accusing Beijing of carrying out a “concerted foreign-influence campaign” in New Zealand.

“The campaign aims to further the political and economic agendas of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) by co-opting local elites, securing access to strategic information and resources, and manipulating public discourse,” said the report.

Prof Anne-Marie Brady from the University of Canterbury has frequently warned of growing Chinese influence in New Zealand, a message echoed by Hillary Clinton on a recent trip to the country, saying New Zealand needed to take the threat “seriously”.

US Senate Unanimously Passes Resolution on Tibetan Reincarnation

Marking the first time ever that a national legislature has supported the Tibetan Buddhist community’s right to identify and install their religious leaders, the United States Senate unanimously passed S.Res.429, which calls any interference by the Government of the People’s Republic of China (PRC) in the religious process “invalid”. The resolution also commemorated the 59th anniversary of Tibet’s 1959 uprising as “Tibetan Rights Day”.

Three-member European Parliamentary Delegation led by MEP Thomas Mann, MEP Csaba Sogor and MEP Ramon Tremosa received a private audience with His Holiness the Dalai Lama on Wednesday morning. The delegation is on a six-day visit to Dharamshala, the seat of His Holiness the Dalai Lama and the Central Tibetan Administration.

In an exclusive interview with Tibet.net, MEP Thomas Mann said that the meeting entailed important discussion and marked a special occasion as it coincided with Europe Day.

“In whole Europe, people are celebrating the way of European Union, our values, progress and also our problems. So on this special day, we had the opportunity of meeting His Holiness. He underlined how important the European Union is. Although he knows that we have some conflicts and differences but he said, ‘the most important is what you have done in all the last years… So its most important and your fight for freedom is very important,” MEP Mann said.

미로

BlackRock steps up lobbying of the European Commission

BlackRock met EU officials to discuss financial market matters more times than any other company in the seven months to July, in a sign of the growing influence of the world’s largest asset manager. The US giant, which has $4.5tn in assets under management, had more meetings with European Commission officials ... than Goldman Sachs, HSBC and Deutsche Bank.

India: teenage girl raped and burned to death

A 16-year-old girl has been kidnapped and gang raped, then burned to death when her family tried to seek justice, in the latest case of horrific sexual violence to emerge in India.

"Instant Suspendu"

THE DAPHNE PROJECT

Six months ago, Maltese journalist Daphne Caruana Galizia was brutally killed by a car bomb just meters from her home. The investigation into her killing is ongoing, but there is little doubt that she was murdered because of her work. With a brazen, unapologetic and uncompromising style, she denounced corruption, nepotism, clientelism, and all kinds of criminal behaviors in her tiny EU member state.

A group of 45 journalists representing 18 news organizations from 15 countries picked up Daphne’s work after it was abruptly halted by her gruesome death on the doorstep of Europe. For five months they kept digging — poring over her findings, gathering documents, talking to sources — to try to get to the bottom of the many leads the formidable woman left behind.

The Daphne Project was coordinated and led by Forbidden Stories, a Paris-based organization established specifically to continue the work of killed, imprisoned, or otherwise incapacitated journalists.

Spain's terrorist "justice" and Iran's terrorist police

Among the politicians facing charges of rebellion is Jordi Sanchez, the latest candidate put forward by Catalan lawmakers to become leader of the region. Supreme court judge Pablo Llarena refused last week to release him from jail and he faces up to 25 years on charges of rebellion, marking the latest of four unsuccessful attempts to elect a new leader. If a new leader is not named before the end of May, Catalonia will be forced to call another election.

Shocking video footage of a young woman being wrestled to the floor by Iranian “morality police” because her hijab was loose has sparked outrage after it was posted online.

I hardly can believe that the war criminal Bashar al-Assad will be not arrested

Military help over the past three years from Russia and Iran, which also backs Lebanon’s Hezbollah group and Shi’ite Muslim militias in Iraq, has allowed Syrian President Bashar al-Assad to crush the rebel threat to topple him.

For the parent of a murdered Syrian child, the current western focus on the exact method of murder must feel strange. As if Assad was well within his rights to slaughter innocents using regular bombs, and his only offence was to use chlorine or sarin, inflicting a death so painful the footage is unbearable to watch. So unless there’s a plan for action once guilt is established, demanding an investigation sounds a lot like an excuse to do nothing in the hope that soon we’ll all be talking about something else.

Syria will be one of the battlefields, most likely the key battlefield, in which that confrontation plays itself out. As clashes between Israel and Iran mount, it is hard to see this White House staying out of the fight.

Tell your MEP: Stop Copyright Censorship

MEPs on the European Parliament’s Civil Liberties committee​ are about to cast crucial votes on rules attacking the very foundation of the web.

What’s a carbon tax?

A carbon tax is a fee imposed on the burning of carbon-based fuels (coal, oil, gas). More to the point: a carbon tax is the core policy for reducing and eventually eliminating the use of fossil fuels whose combustion is destabilizing and destroying our climate.

A carbon tax is a way — the only way — to make users of carbon fuels pay for the climate damage caused by releasing carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. If set high enough, it becomes a powerful monetary disincentive that motivates switches to clean energy across the economy, simply by making it more economically rewarding to move to non-carbon fuels and energy efficiency.

"Double Bind?"

How a secret Russian airlift helps Syria's Assad

Private Russian military contractors are being sent on clandestine flights to Syria, plane-tracking data shows. And a trail of documents reveals how aircraft from the West end up in the hands of those on U.S. blacklists.

Russian authorities have angrily denied that “Novichok,” a substance blamed by the British authorities for poisoning a former Russian military intelligence officer in the United Kingdom, has ever existed. But new evidence unearthed in Russia shows not only that an entire group of substances called Novichok did indeed exist, but that some was obtained by criminals after being produced in a government lab as late as 1994 — and has since killed at least two people.

The funds Hungary gets from the EU are channelled to Orban’s cronies

The funds Hungary gets from the European Union, say opposition politicians, are often channelled to Mr Orban’s cronies, including his son-in-law and the mayor of his home village, nurturing a new class of oligarchs. (They deny it.) The health-care and education systems are in decline, especially outside the capital. Hungary has the fifth-lowest life expectancy in the EU, at 76.2 years—lower than Albania’s 78.5

Czechs discover hidden film record of Stalin’s antisemitic show trial

For decades, events surrounding the revolutionary tribunal that resulted in the execution of Rudolf Slánský, general secretary of the Czechoslovak party, and 10 other defendants was shrouded in mythology – with most visual and verbal evidence apparently lost to posterity. But an event that has fascinated historians could soon be seen in graphic detail after footage and audio recording of the 1952 trial was found.

Dozens killed in suspected chemical attack on Syrian rebel enclave

Dozens of people have been killed in what local medics say was a toxic gas attack on the besieged town of Douma near Damascus. Videos and images showed bodies of dead children and other family members, some foaming at the mouth.

...

“There is no such thing as a good war and a bad war. Nothing, but nothing, can justify the use of such instruments of extermination on defenceless people and populations,” he said at the end of a Mass in St Peter’s Square.

La Mer

Spain Jails Catalan Leaders

The former chief of Catalonia's regional police and other regional security officials have been charged with sedition over their role in events leading last year to a banned independence referendum. ("sedition" is a fascist concept)

Marta Rovira, the head of the Catalan Republican Left party who was also summoned to the High Court, announced Friday she had left Spain to live in exile in Switzerland.

Oriol Junqueras, the former Catalan vice president, has been in prison since December.

A German court ruled that Catalan independence leader Puigdemont cannot be extradited to Spain on a charge of rebellion and ordered him to be released him on bail while it considers his return on a lesser charge

In a written statement, Scotland’s first minister, Nicola Sturgeon, reiterated the Scottish government’s support for the “Catalan people to determine their own future”. 

“We will submit there are no guarantees of due process in Spain, of a right to a fair trial in a country where most members of the Catalan government are already in prison or in exile. If returned we submit she will be subjected to degrading and inhumane treatment by the Spanish authorities.”

The Right Of Self-Determination Should Be Enforced As Against A Claim Of Territorial Integrity When Doing So Will Advance The Fundamental Values Of The International Community

[in 1940 Gestapo handed over the President of Catalonia, Lluís Companys, to Franco's Fascist State - who had him executed.]

Mitsuko Uchida on Debussy

Boulez on "Jeux"

The Hell with Samba Beat

execution-style murder of a Rio de Janeiro councilwoman who was an outspoken critic of police killings of poor residents.

The death of a Brazilian community leader followed concerns about contaminated water around the aluminium plant.

There were 58,383 violent deaths in Brazil that year (2015), according a report by the Brazilian Forum for Public Security,

Brazilian lawmakers closed ranks to shield President Michel Temer from standing trial on obstruction of justice and corruption charges, sparing him in the second such case in just two months.

IT WAS a moment many Brazilians thought they would never see. On April 7th, after spending three days among his supporters in the headquarters of the metalworkers’ union in São Bernardo do Campo, a suburb of São Paulo, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, Brazil’s former president, handed himself over to the federal police.

On 10 March 1959

tens of thousands of Tibetans took to the streets of Lhasa, Tibet’s capital, rising up against China’s illegal invasion and occupation of their homeland. Every year thousands of Tibetans and their supporters take to the streets across the world to mark the anniversary of Tibetan National Uprising Day.

It is a critical time in Tibet. China continues to intensify its grip on Tibet by imposing severe limitations on freedom of expression and opinion, by detaining non-violent protesters without judicial process, and by interfering with cultural expression and religious tradition to the point where Tibetans believe their very existence as a people is at risk. In the past five years the situation has caused at least 150 Tibetans across the plateau, young and old, to set fire to their own bodies in protest against China’s rule.

Imagine being snatched from the street or even your home. You are loaded into a police car and driven to an unknown location. Your friends, colleagues and family don’t know where you are. Nor do you. 

Tibetan and European Women

Sonam Lhatso, a nun from Kardze County, Sichuan province, is serving a 10-year prison sentence after she took part in a protest against patriotic education sessions and forced denunciation of the Dalai Lama, on 14th May 2008.

She was arrested along with 50 fellow nuns from Pangri Nunnery and was subjected to beatings. According to some sources, she might be held in Mianyang Prison, Sichuan Province. The authorities have refused to confirm this, or provide any details about her wellbeing, despite appeals from her fellow nuns.

Yeshe Choedron is a retired medical doctor. She has been in prison since 2008, when she was arrested in Lhasa and later sentenced to 15 years in jail for “espionage”. Her arrest and imprisonment are believed to be linked to her participation in the 2008 protests and her human rights activism.

Yeshe Choedron is a mother and has not been able to see her children since her sentence. According to sources in Tibet, she is also in very bad health. She is believed to be in Drapchi Prison in Lhasa.

Bulgaria just refused to nationally apply the powerful European convention to fight violence against women. But that’s not all. It currently leads the EU - and the Union-wide process of ratifying the convention. Member states could vote to make Europe a safer place for all women as soon as in 2 weeks - but not if Bulgaria keeps resisting taking meaningful action - at home and at EU level. It now stands in the way of protecting 250 million women and girls: in Bulgaria, but also all across Europe.

A journalist was killed for investigating the Mafia in the EU

Kuciak had been working with the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project (OCCRP), the Czech Center for Investigative Journalism (CCIJ), and the Investigative Reporting Project Italy (IRPI) on what may have turned out to be a far more dangerous story: An investigation that delved into the infiltration into Slovakia of the ‘Ndrangheta mafia

Agricultural land in Slovakia ended up in the hands of families linked to the Italian ‘Ndrangheta – who then used it to benefit from EU farm subsidies.

Baltic countries are a major entry point into the western financial system for Russian cash. Last week the US Treasury accused Latvia’s third biggest bank of “institutionalised money laundering”. 

The time has come to ask whether membership in the European Union is still a quality assurance seal for democracy and the rule of law among member states. The bloc has clearly failed to enforce its stated values on its periphery. 

The Jokhang, also known as the Qoikang Monastery, Jokang, Jokhang Temple, Jokhang Monastery and Zuglagkang

A fire has hit the most important shrine in Tibetan Buddhism - the Jokhang Monastery

The Jokhang monastery is more than 1,000 years old and is listed as a Unesco World Heritage Site.

Reports say that Chinese authorities quickly tried to block footage and images of the fire appearing on social media.

Beijing maintains tight control of news reports from Tibet, where Buddhist sites have been a focal point for separatist unrest in the past.

Foreign journalists are not able to enter Tibet without special permission.

Tibetan Year 2145

Bon Cham Dance

The Guilty Soul of Pope Francis

Francis, tormented perhaps by his own dark and secret history, has misunderstood who are the victims and who are the perpetrators in this Chilean story. Instead of following the example of the Good Samaritan and comforting the wounded bodies and souls of those violated by sexual abuse, he has sided with the priest, Barros, and the other prelates who not only did nothing to alleviate that suffering, but were part of the gang that beat the victims and robbed them of their dignity.

Libera Me (excerpt)

China puts Tibetan language advocate Tashi Wangchuk on trial for subversion

Wangchuk complained of a “systematic slaughter of our culture”.

“In politics, it’s said that if one nation wants to eliminate another nation, first they need to eliminate their spoken and written language,” he said.

In the Times’ stories Wangchuk notably says he wants to use Chinese law to build his case, and praised President Xi Jinping.

Beijing says it “peacefully liberated” Tibet in 1951 and insists it has brought development to a previously backward region.

But many Tibetans accuse the Chinese government of exploiting the region’s natural resources and encouraging an influx of China’s majority Han ethnic group that critics say is diluting the native culture and Buddhist faith.

Quarter of land will be drier under 2°C

More than a quarter of Earth's land surface will become "significantly" drier even if humanity manages to limit global warming to two degrees Celsius, the goal espoused in the Paris Agreement, scientists said on Monday (Jan 1).

Iranians against corruption and for women rights

In some demonstrations, women cast off their hijabs, defying the country's strict Islamic dress code. The protests have provided an opening for Iranian women to push for equal rights.

Oiseaux Exotiques

The end of net neutrality may be here

The net neutrality rules, approved by the FCC in 2015, were intended to keep the internet open and fair. Internet service providers like Comcast and Verizon were explicitly prohibited from speeding up or slowing down traffic from specific websites and apps.

Le soleil des eaux

Clotilde Rosa (11/5/1930 – 24/11/2017)

Maria Clotilde Belo de Carvalho Rosa Franco (11 May 1930 – 24 November 2017) was a Portuguese harpist, music educator and composer.

...

In 1970 Rosa co-founded the Lisbon Contemporary Music Group (GMCL) with composer Jorge Peixinho

Tom Koopman after his concert in Faro

Thug who battered ex-wife with spiked bat walks free after Portuguese judges quote the Bible

The warped judges expressed "some understanding" for the attacker who believed his former wife cheated on him.

Malta car bomb kills Panama Papers journalist

The journalist who led the Panama Papers investigation into corruption in Malta was killed on Monday in a car bomb near her home.

Daphne Caruana Galizia died on Monday afternoon when her car, a Peugeot 108, was destroyed by a powerful explosive device which blew the vehicle into several pieces and threw the debris into a nearby field.

Spanish Terrorism Against Catalonia

Spanish riot police smashed their way into a polling station in Catalonia on Sunday as they sought to shut down a banned independence referendum and there were reports of officers firing rubber bullets in the regional capital Barcelona.

Uncontacted Tribe Killed By Gold Miners

The killings allegedly took place last month along the River Jandiatuba in western Brazil, but the news only emerged after the goldminers started boasting about the killings, and showing off “trophies” in the nearest town.

[others are criminals in many ways, often in the most blatant ways. The hell in samba fashion...]

In memoriam of Catalonia's terrorist attacks victims

Palm Oil and Gold

Palm oil is extracted from the fruit of the oil palm tree, Elaeis guineensis, which thrives in humid climates. The large majority of palm oil production occurs in just two countries, Malaysia and Indonesia, where huge swaths of tropical forests and peatlands (carbon-rich swamps) are being cleared to make way for oil palm plantations, releasing carbon into the atmosphere to drive global warming while shrinking habitats for a multitude of endangered species. 

The Brazilian president Michel Temer has abolished an Amazonian reserve the size of Denmark, prompting concerns of an influx of mineral companies, road-builders and workers into the species-rich forest. The dissolution of the Renca reserve – which spans 46,000 sq km on the border of the Amapa and Para states – was described by one opposition senator Randolfe Rodrigues of the Sustainability Network party, as the “biggest attack on the Amazon of the last 50 years”.

Nobel Peace Prize winner Liu Xiaobo died

Liu Xiaobo, one of China’s most famous pro-democracy advocates and political prisoners, just died in Chinese custody at a hospital. He was 61. He is the first Nobel Peace Prize winner to die in state custody since the days of Nazi Germany. 

[Liu Xia is a poet and photographer. She married Xiaobo in 1996 when he was imprisoned in a “reeducation through labor” camp. His “crime” then was to have urged the government to find a peaceful way to unite mainland China with Taiwan, that is, to do so without the dire threats commonly issued by the People’s Republic of China. Liu Xia visited her husband in prison after he was awarded the Nobel Prize. She was then placed under house arrest and deprived of a mobile phone, Internet access, and all but a tiny number of visitors. She was allowed out briefly in 2013 to attend the trial of her brother, Liu Hui—part of what human rights lawyers say is official retaliation against the family. She called out to a crowd of well-wishers: “Tell everybody that I’m not free.”]

Zoltán Kocsis (30 May 1952 – 6 November 2016)

Xenakis - 'Metaux'

The Panama Papers

A massive leak of documents exposes the offshore holdings of 12 current and former world leaders and reveals how associates of Russian President Vladimir Putin secretly shuffled as much as $2 billion through banks and shadow companies.

The leak also provides details of the hidden financial dealings of 128 more politicians and public officials around the world. The cache of 11.5 million records shows how a global industry of law firms and big banks sells financial secrecy to politicians, fraudsters and drug traffickers as well as billionaires, celebrities and sports stars.

...

The documents make it clear that major banks are big drivers behind the creation of hard-to-trace companies in the British Virgin Islands, Panama and other offshore havens. The files list nearly 15,600 paper companies that banks set up for clients who want keep their finances under wraps, including thousands created by international giants UBS and HSBC.

Documents from the leaked Mossack Fonseca database showed the relations of three of the seven members of the Communist party’s elite ruling council, the politburo standing committee, had companies that were clients of the offshore law firm. They included relatives of Chinese president Xi Jinping. 

A Communist party censorship directive instructed news organisations to purge all reports, blogs, bulletin boards and comments relating to this week’s highly sensitive revelations. 

The Portuguese Parliament 

has provoked outrage by failing to condemn the long prison sentences handed to the so-called Luanda book club, 17 dissidents convicted of political defiance against Angola’s government.

...

Dos Santos, 73, has been president since 1979 and has been accused of presiding over one of the world’s most corrupt governments, amassing a great fortune for himself, his family and friends, while two-thirds of his country lives below the poverty line.  

“If Angola was the front office of corruption, Portugal was the back office” [Well... it used to be the front office]

[On Portugal: it had more domestic violence fatalities than all Europe's terrorism victims in the last 10 years]

[Portugal's Siresp rescue network 'failed forest fire victims'] 

[Although the destruction wrought so far this year does not match the record 426,000 hectares destroyed in 2003, this year's fires have been the deadliest.]

["There are people setting fires, bad people. It is the only explanation that I can see, there is no other," said Maria Conceicao, another resident of Pucarica.] [few months later was Ophelia...]

[A falling tree has killed at least 13 people and injured 49 at a religious ceremony on the Portuguese island of Madeira.]

[While studying in Aveiro (Portugal), Ms. Antunes said, she experienced the pressure herself when she refused to join a hazing ritual that required simulating sexual intercourse, as well as licking yogurt from a boy’s lap. Her mother complained to the university, but no action was taken.]

[The Portuguese court’s decision “ignored the physical and psychological importance of sexuality for women’s self-fulfillment and other dimensions of women’s sexuality”, the European court said.]

[Defense officials in Portugal say they are compiling a list of weapons and ammunition stolen from the national armory in a brazen daytime raid.]

[The Portuguese internal affairs minister said she was concerned about the theft of 50 pistols from the national police premises,]

[Portugal's dark history, or a just a slice of it...]

In memoriam of Brussels' terrorist attacks victims

Losar

Losar is Tibetan for New Year. The Tibetan calendar is based on Tibetan astrology, a synthesis of Indian and Chinese astrology. The Tibetan calendar is lunar, which means it follows the cycles of the moon, so the New Year begins on a new moon.

Pierre Boulez (26 March 1925 – 5 January 2016)

Islamic State claims Paris attacks

Islamic State claimed responsibility on Saturday for a coordinated assault by gunmen and bombers that killed 127 people at locations across Paris that President Francois Hollande said amounted to an act of war against France.

In the worst attack, a Paris city hall official said four gunmen systematically slaughtered at least 87 young people at a rock concert at the Bataclan concert hall before anti-terrorist commandos launched an assault on the building. Dozens of survivors were rescued, and bodies were still being recovered on Saturday morning.

Some 40 more people were killed in five other attacks in the Paris region, the official said, including an apparent double suicide bombing outside the Stade de France national stadium, where Hollande and the German foreign minister were watching a friendly soccer international.

The assaults came as France, a founder member of the U.S.-led coalition waging air strikes against Islamic State in Syria and Iraq, was on high alert for terrorist attacks.

It was the worst such attack in Europe since the Madrid train bombings of 2004, in which 191 died.

The FBI has said it is now investigating the San Bernardino shooting in the US state of California as a "terrorist" attack, adding that it had uncovered new evidence.

David Bowdich, assistant director of the FBI's Los Angeles office, also said the attackers tried to destroy evidence - crushing two cell phones and throwing them in a rubbish bin.

Upon reading the original source documents of Islam—the Quran, hadith, biographies, and histories—one is struck by the casual and matter-of-fact way that Muhammad and his Muslims traffic in violence and bloodshed.

What fascinates the jihadis ... is “pure revolt”, and this includes kicking against their parents’ tightly bound geographical and linguistic communities. The European jihadis who go to Syria and Iraq speak French or English peppered with badly pronounced Qur’anic Arabic and are surprisingly indifferent to the old colonial struggles and injustices

Several suicide bombers were found with women’s underclothes in their pockets, for the virgins they would meet in paradise

THE Barcelona terror attack has increased the divisions between the Spanish and Catalonian administrations with either side blaming the other for failings in the run-up to the killings.

In a propaganda video released by the SITE Intelligence Group Wednesday, an ISIS member describes the Barcelona perpetrators as "our brothers," while another threatens "Spanish Christians" and promises to return the country to the "land of the Caliphate."