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January 7, 2017UK: Lawyer for jihad killer says he was “confused by vehicles driving on different side of road than he was used to”
January 7, 2017(Remember the old Art Linkletter segments on Kids say the Darndest Things?
— DM)
A convicted murderer from Holland was able to walk through Britain’s porous borders without any checks and went on to attack two police officers with a claw-hammer.
Court documents in Holland said he was ‘inspired by Taliban movies in which beheadings were seen’…
Simon Blackford, defending, said there was a ‘long gap’ between the murder and the latest offences.
He said: ‘This offence was committed at a time of stress for my client. He was in a foreign country. He seems to have been vulnerable. He seems to have been hallucinating.
‘He was very confused by the vehicles driving on a different side of the road than he was used to.’
It is astonishing that Simon Blackford would offered the gelastic defense of his client when he was inspired by Taliban jihad videos and is by no means the first killer in the Netherlands or Britain to be inspired by the jihad doctrine. The likes of Jamshid Piruz have been freely moving in and out of Western countries for years. Take just one of innumerable examples: the Berlin jihadi Anis Amri, who was a known terror threat, yet authorities failed to detain or deport him before he ploughed a lorry into a Christmas market.
Also, research is showing that as many as 30,000 jihad fighters of the Islamic State could soon flood back into their “home countries,” ready to continue their jihad there.
Clearly there is a critical problem stemming from loose Western borders from a homeland security standpoint. Yet foes of border controls continue simply to charge their opponents with “racism.”
More on this story. “Why wasn’t foreign killer turned away at the UK border? Afghan who beheaded Dutch woman is allowed into Britain… where he assaulted a Gatwick staff member and two police officers with a HAMMER”, Daily Mail, by Ian Drury, January 5, 2017:
A convicted murderer from Holland was able to walk through Britain’s porous borders without any checks and went on to attack two police officers with a claw-hammer.
Afghan-born Jamshid Piruz was allowed to enter the UK unchallenged despite being sentenced to 12 years in jail for slaughtering his female tenant in cold-blood after watching a Taliban beheading video.
Fury erupted after it emerged that the jobless 34-year-old was the latest in a string of foreign criminals to commit horrific offences in Britain after exploiting EU free movement rules.
MPs condemned the shocking lack of checks on offenders from the EU which left gaping holes in UK border controls.
European countries have no obligation to alert the UK about convictions of murderers or sex offenders, meaning many are able to travel to the UK unhindered.
Outraged critics blasted the embattled Home Office for allowing the scandal, by failing to ensure the authorities were notified about EU convicts before they set foot on our shores.
Politicians have called for Home Secretary Amber Rudd to introduce a tougher US-style warning system to flag up whether any traveller has a conviction as they attempt to enter Britain.
Failure to control the country’s borders – and the number of serious criminals arriving here – was a major reason why millions of people voted for Britain to leave the Brussels bloc last June.
Piruz, who was a permanent Dutch resident, will be sentenced on Friday after pleading guilty to an appalling hammer attack on PC Jessica Chick and PC Stewart Young, of Sussex Police, on January 7 last year.
PC Young was taken to hospital with head injuries but later recovered.
The officers were later praised in Parliament by ministers for their bravery.
Piruz had been in the UK a matter of days when he launched the frenzied assault on the officers as they investigated a burglary in Crawley, West Sussex.
Days earlier he had assaulted a member of staff at Gatwick Airport – but was released onto the streets by local magistrates.
Piruz got into Britain despite being a convicted murderer in Holland. In June 2006, he murdered his Chinese female tenant by cutting off her head at a house in Almere, a city close to Amsterdam.
Court documents in Holland said he was ‘inspired by Taliban movies in which beheadings were seen’.
The files said he locked his victim in her room, snatched her mobile phone, then cut her throat.
They said he acted ‘intentionally and with premeditation’.
Rejecting his plea of insanity, Dutch judges concluded: ‘The killing of the victim was not the result of an instantaneous violent emotion, but a decision to do so.’
Piruz was convicted of murder in August 2007 and sentenced to 12 years’ behind bars.
He was released in 2014, after serving seven years. As a permanent Dutch resident, the killer was allowed to travel freely across the EU.
Last night WED Tory MP Henry Smith, who represents Crawley, said: ‘The country has got to have tougher border controls. Clearly, being a member of the EU did not protect us on this occasion.
‘A very dangerous individual was allowed to travel here without us having prior knowledge that he’d committed murder in the Netherlands.
‘It is staggering that someone could assault staff at Gatwick and then a couple of days later attack two police officers.
‘Why was the information that he was a violent offender not available to us from our EU partners?
‘This is an appalling example of the kind of people who are getting into the country undetected.’
Piruz pleaded guilty at Hove to two counts of attempting to cause grievous bodily harm with intent, burglary and affray.
Two counts of attempted burglary and one of threatening with an offensive weapon will lie on file.
Simon Blackford, defending, said there was a ‘long gap’ between the murder and the latest offences.
He said: ‘This offence was committed at a time of stress for my client. He was in a foreign country. He seems to have been vulnerable. He seems to have been hallucinating.
‘He was very confused by the vehicles driving on a different side of the road than he was used to.’
When EU nationals arrive at the border, their passport details are checked against a ‘watchlist’ of suspected terrorists and foreign criminals compiled by the border agency.
But unless an offender is high profile, is known to have committed crimes in several countries, or is on the Interpol wanted list, the system is unlikely to be aware of their previous convictions – leaving a gaping hole in our border controls.
Except in the most extreme circumstances, Brussels does not force member states to share information on known criminals who might be planning to travel.
France, Germany, Italy, Spain and Poland flag up potential dangermen to the UK so they can be put on a watchlist and turned away at the port or airport.
But if countries do not warn the UK that a dangerous offender is on the way – and some do not even keep information of convictions for their own internal use – there is little we can do to stop them slipping through the net…..
Wealthy Obama Bundlers’ Lives ‘Upended’ by Trump Move
January 7, 2017Wealthy Obama Bundlers’ Lives ‘Upended’ by Trump Move, Washington Free Beacon, Elizabeth Harrington, January 7, 2017
President-elect Donald Trump smiles during a rally at the Wisconsin State Fair Exposition Center, Tuesday, Dec. 13, 2016, in West Allis, Wis. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci)
A group of wealthy elites who bundled millions for Barack Obama’s presidential campaigns are having their lives “upended” because their ambassadorships at plum posts will end when Obama leaves office.
The New York Times reported that President-elect Donald Trump’s transition staff has informed the State Department that politically appointed ambassadors must leave by Inauguration Day.
The Times called it a “break with precedent” to remove political ambassadors, many of whom received their posts by fundraising for Barack Obama, on schedule by Jan. 20.
The new administration is “declining to provide even the briefest of grace periods,” the Times wrote, referencing several political appointees who now must move from their mansion residences into apartments in Prague and Costa Rica.
“The directive has nonetheless upended the personal lives of many ambassadors, who are scrambling to secure living arrangements and acquire visas allowing them to remain in their countries so their children can remain in school,” diplomats told the Times.
Ambassador Stafford Fitzgerald Haney, who bundled nearly $200,000 for Obama and personally donated over $130,000 to Democrats, is now house hunting in Costa Rica as he “struggles to figure out how to avoid a move back to the United States with five months left in the school year.”
Before taking his ambassador post, Haney was the principal and director of Business Development and Client Service at Pzena Investment Management, a global investment firm that specializes in serving “high net worth individuals.”
Haney was one of the many bundlers nominated by Obama in 2014 for ambassadorships. His new job was located in “beautiful Costa Rica, land of wonderful beaches, volcanoes, tropical forests, zip-lining, exotic fauna and flora, lovely people, and no army,” the Washington Post observed at the time.
The Post called Haney a “mini-bundler” compared to Obama’s other appointments, as he only raised $35,800 during the 2012 campaign, and “just under a piddling $200,000 since 2007.”
However, Haney and his wife have donated more than $250,000 to Democrats personally over the past decade.
Haney has donated $139,481 to Democrats and super PACs supporting Obama, including $30,000 to the Committee for Change, the “vehicle for ultra-rich Democratic donors” that supported Obama field operations in 2008.
His wife Andrea has personally contributed $130,252 to Democrats, the DNC, and Democratic super PACs since 2008.
Andrew H. Schapiro, a Chicago lawyer and friend of Obama since they attended Harvard together, also must leave his “lovely assignment” in the Czech Republic.
“Schapiro is seeking housing in Prague as well as lobbying his children’s Chicago-based school to break with policy and accept them back midyear,” the Times wrote.
Schapiro bundled $424,450 for Obama during the 2012 campaign, for a total of $1,260,891 since 2007. Aside from raising millions for his college friend, Schapiro has donated $148,860 personally to Democrats since 2000.
Chicago magazine called Schapiro’s appointment to the Czech Republic a “plum diplomatic post.”
“It’s a lovely assignment,” the magazine wrote. “The ambassador’s 72-room Beaux-Arts residence, built in the late 1920s by a Jewish businessman and once home to the late Shirley Temple Black, ambassador to Czechoslovakia during the 1989 Velvet Revolution, sits on six acres, and comes complete with a uniformed staff.”
Denise Bauer, who has bundled more than $4 million for Obama, also is struggling to find a way to stay in Belgium where she is ambassador so her daughter can graduate high school there, according to the Times.
Bauer, a CBS producer in Los Angeles in the 1990s, is listed as a “homemaker” in her bundling disclosures. She raised $2,360,300 for Obama’s 2012 election, and $4,367,187 overall since 2007.
Bauer has personally given Democrats $21,675 since 2007, including $9,310 to Obama’s presidential campaigns.
Aside from raising millions for Obama, Bauer served on the Democratic National Committee between 2008 and 2012 and as a finance chair and on a finance committee for Obama’s campaigns.
The final political ambassador referenced by the Times was Pamela Hamamoto, “Barry” Obama’s childhood friend from Hawaii who lives in Geneva, Switzerland as the Permanent Representative of the U.S. to the United Nations.
Hamamoto has bundled $1,885,054 for Obama since 2007. Her brother, David Hamamoto, has raised $143,200.
Hamamoto s trying to stay in Geneva for her daughter’s high school graduation, according to the Times.
Hamamoto was an investment banker for Goldman Sachs and Merrill Lynch. Her husband, Kurt Kaull, has worked at high-profile investment firms with over $1 billion in assets.
The Times article quoted Derek Shearer criticizing Trump for making Obama’s political appointees leave once Obama is no longer president.
“It feels like there’s an element just of spite and payback in it,” Shearer said. “I don’t see a higher policy motive.”
Shearer is a longtime friend of Bill and Hillary Clinton who was given the ambassadorship to Finland in exchange for a “political debt” that was “owed” in the 1990s.
Not Satire | Impeached President’s attorney claims protests against her “led by N.Korea”
January 7, 2017Impeached President’s attorney claims protests against her “led by N.Korea” NK News, JH Ahn, January 6, 2017
(Maybe Park’s claim that Kim Jong-un is responsible for her downfall will work as well as Clinton’s claim that Putin is responsible for hers. — DM)
South Korea’s ongoing Park Geun-hye scandal took another strange turn on Thursday, with a member of the impeached President’s legal representation claiming that followers of Juche ideology were behind the protests against her.
Comparing President Park to Socrates and Jesus, who were, like Park, “falsely driven by the people to execution,” the attorney said that the protests were “not the representation of the South Koreans’ popular will.”
“The candlelight vigils were organized by those who follow Kim Il Sung’s Juche ideology, and was a de facto (the North’s) declaration of war against the Republic of Korea,” Seo Seok-gu, President Park’s attorney said during impeachment hearings at the Constitutional Court.
“North Korea’s Rodong Sinmun has said that South Koreans are raising their torchlight following Kim Jong Un’s order,” Seo said. It’s unclear which article he was referring to, as no such report was found in a search of KCNA Watch.
“South Korean reports (about the protests)… are being highly complimented by the North Korean media…and should not be used as evidence against Park.”
On the following day of impeachment hearings, Seo repeated the claim during an interview with a local radio channel.
“(Haven’t the protesters) marched through the center of the city, walking with the giant sculpture of Lee Seok-ki, who have said to plot the armed protests should the North declare war against us?,” Seo asked the CBS anchor.
Seo’s eccentric arguments continued: he claimed that Pentagon had used its intelligence satellites to count the number of protestors in Seoul.
“On the day of the protest, when so-called ‘one million’ gathered at Gwanghwamun Plaza, Pentagon has used its satellite to take the imagery and announced that it was 113,373,” Seo said.
No article or statement by the Pentagon has mentioned this, while a defense expert said it would be “technically impossible”.
“The U.S. satellites are known to be capable of identifying objects that are only a few centimeters wide,” Kim Min-seok, a senior researcher at the Korea Defense and Security Forum, told NK News.
“But that does not mean that the intelligence satellites can identify people, track their movements and count numbers,” Kim said.
U.S. Intelligence Report Contradicts Donna Brazile In Email Scandal
January 7, 2017U.S. Intelligence Report Contradicts Donna Brazile In Email Scandal, Jonathan Turley’s Blog, Jonathan Turley, January 7, 2017
(Those damn Ruskies — or whoever — put the truth before the American public about the “dishonest, disloyal, and often despicable” conduct of the Dems. What jerks! It’s no wonder that Obama is so angry with them. — DM)
The report states that the email material did not contain “any evident forgeries.” In other words, they were real emails not forged.
The emails showed how the Washington establishment — including the press corp — misled the public and colluded behind the scenes. It is a hard sell to tell the public that they should be disgusted by Russia showing them how their leaders are dishonest, disloyal, and often despicable in their conduct.
************************
We discussed earlier how Donna Brazile, the interim chair of the Democratic National Committee, denied the legitimacy of emails that showed her leaking a question to Hillary Clinton that would be asked verbatim at the CNN downhill event. The media has largely declined to investigate the claim, including confirming the receipt of the earlier email from the Clinton staffer. Now additional emails allegedly show Brazile secretly feeding information to the Clinton campaign. Again, there has been relatively little media attention to the story and CNN issued a remarkably weak response that it was “uncomfortable” with the new disclosures on Brazile’s actions while a CNN commentator. While CNN Worldwide President Jeff Zucker called Brazile’s actions “disgusting” and others have denounced her actions, the DNC has stuck with Brazile and, despite the ease of questioning the other recipients to confirm or disprove Brazile’s claims. Now, the declassified intelligence report appear to directly dispute what Brazile has said but it is unclear if anyone in the media is willing to pursue the story against one of the most powerful figures in Washington Democratic circles.
The report states that the email material did not contain “any evident forgeries.” In other words, they were real emails not forged. Yet, Brazile repeatedly insisted that the emails were doctored or forged. She dismissed the email and told Megyn Kelly that “I have seen so many doctored emails. I have seen things that come from me at 2 in the morning that I don’t even send. I will not sit here and be persecuted, because your information is totally false.” At the time, I noted that no one seemed even remotely interested in questioning the recipient: Clinton Campaign Adviser Jennifer Palmieri. Media could have asked to see the original emails since both Brazile and Palmieri had them. Instead, it was complete silence.
Now the question is whether the Washington media corp will confront Brazile and demand to see these emails to determine whether she knowingly lied to the public and the press.
The report also highlights the difficulty that many in Washington are facing in trying to rally the public against Russian hacking. Many citizens may not be as mortified that Russia revealed how their leaders were lying to them. The emails showed how the Washington establishment — including the press corp — misled the public and colluded behind the scenes. It is a hard sell to tell the public that they should be disgusted by Russia showing them how their leaders are dishonest, disloyal, and often despicable in their conduct.
Palestinians to Trump: moving embassy to Jerusalem equals declaration of war…
January 7, 2017Palestinians to Trump: moving embassy to Jerusalem equals declaration of warA close aide to Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas calls Trump’s stated intention to move the US Embassy to the Israeli capital ‘a declaration of war on Muslims’, as another official threatens to call on Arab, Muslim countries to remove embassies from Washington.
Elior Levy|Published: 07.01.17 , 12:07
Source: Ynetnews News – Palestinians to Trump: moving embassy to Jerusalem equals declaration of war…
The Palestinian Authority has stepped up its combative rhetoric against US President-elect Donald Trump’s stated mission to transfer the US Embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, which was repeated by one of his top aides.
The sentiment was expressed by Palestinian Authority Mahmoud Abbas’s close advisor Mahmoud al-Habash, who on Friday called it “a declaration of war on Muslims.” The description was significant not only for its content, but also for the fact that it echoed a similar sentiment voiced by former Jerusalem Mufi Achrama Sabri, whose extreme views are normally not shared by the PA.
Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas
“Everything can collapse if the embassy will be moved to Jerusalem,” said al-Habash. “It can open a wide door to possibilities that no one wants.” He added that they will not be able to sit idly by if such a move occurs.
US President-elect Donald Trump
Another official in the Palestinian Fatah party stated that if the embassy will be moved to Jerusalem, the PA will demand that that Arab and Muslim countries remove their embassies from Washington. The officials stressed that is not merely a Palestinian issue, but an Arab and Muslim one as well.
Abbas himself also commented on the possible scenario of the US Embassy moving to the Israeli capital. Abbas took a less militant tone, voicing his hope that Trump will not seek to implement his past statements, as it would cause irrevocable damage to the peace process.
“We heard a lot of statements relating to moving the US embassy, which we hope are not correct and will not be implemented, but if implemented then the peace process in the Middle East, and even peace in the world, will be in a crisis we will not be able to come out from,” stated Abbas.
The Palestinian campaign against transferring the US embassy to Jerusalem comes less than two weeks before Trump’s inauguration and days before the international peace conference that is set to be held next week in Paris. The conference will focus on trying to find a solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
Elbit Flight Vision System to Comply with FAA ‘Zero Visibility Landing’ Regulations
January 7, 2017The FAA recently published a new ruling to provide dispatch and landing priority along with low visibility landing credit at ‘zero visibility’ conditions.
By: David Israel
Published: January 6th, 2017
The Falcon 8X
Photo Credit: Dassault
The Elbit Systems ClearVision Enhanced Flight Vision System (EFVS) is aligned with the most updated ruling released by the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), enabling the pilot to perform a full landing procedure with no natural vision.
The EFVS was designed with a forward thinking approach, consistent with the recently updated FAA ruling. The system offers unmatched capabilities, providing dispatch and landing approach priority as well as Low Visibility Landing regardless of the destination airport’s infrastructure.
Falcon 900 LX (Credit Dassault)
Prior to the updated ruling, EFVS was only approved for use for descent to 100 feet above the Touchdown Zone Elevation (TDZE) using straight-in landing instrument approach procedures (IAPs). The new ruling allows operators to use an EFVS, and not necessarily natural vision, to continue descending from 100 feet above the TDZE to the runway and to land on certain straight-in IAPs under instrument flight rules.
The ruling also updated the regulations to initiate and continue an approach when the destination airport’s weather is below authorized visibility minimums for the runway of intended landing. This ruling establishes pilot training and recent flight experience requirements for operators who use EFVS.
Yoram Shmuely, General Manager of Elbit Systems’ Aerospace Division commented: ”Elbit Systems is the market leader for EFVS solutions for air transport, business aviation and helicopters. We also are a pioneer in the market in offering full EFVS capabilities designed to meet the new FAA ruling requirements.”
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