FBI launches probe into Ashley Madison hack
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20/08/15 08:45 from Mike Nova's Shared Newslinks
mikenova shared this story from World news. Hackers post details of millions of users taken from infidelity website, including government officials and executives, offering pay day to divorce lawyers
The blast was the latest in a series of attacks that have unnerved Egyptians and underscored the challenges facing the government in its campaign against Islamist militants.
20/08/15 08:45 from Mike Nova's Shared Newslinks
mikenova shared this story from World news. Hackers post details of millions of users taken from infidelity website, including government officials and executives, offering pay day to divorce lawyers
 Christian Science Monitor |
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US Slaps Sanctions on Mexican Businesses, Individuals for Drug Activities by webdesk@voanews.com (VOA News)
The U.S. Treasury imposed sanctions on 15 Mexican businesses and six individuals Wednesday for their support of a major drug cartel. "The Los Cunis drug trafficking organization is one of the most powerful and violent drug cartels in Mexico," said John E. Smith, the acting chief of the Treasury's foreign assets control. "Today's designation marks the first step in dismantling its significant business network. These businesses and individuals will no longer be...
Hackers post details of millions of users taken from infidelity website, including government officials and executives, offering pay day to divorce lawyers
Much of the Information leaked by hackers is believed to be fake
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A deputy imam of a village in Russia's Stavropol Krai region in the North Caucasus has been slain.
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The deputy speaker of the Israeli Knesset argues that failure to reach a deal with the Palestinians may be as dangerous to the Jewish state as a nuclear Iran.
WASHINGTON (AP) -- Hillary Rodham Clinton's personal lawyer has told a Senate committee that emails and all other data stored on her computer server were erased before the device was turned over to federal authorities....
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With the Obama administration's attention focused on crises elsewhere, the 6-month-old fragile cease-fire between the Ukrainian government and pro-Russia separatists has deteriorated steadily in recent weeks, reigniting fears that Russian President Vladimir Putin is poised to greenlight a fresh offensive to seize more territory across the border.
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Hillary Clinton campaign spokesman Brian Fallon continued on Wednesday the lighthearted approach the campaign has taken to address the FBI’s investigation into Clinton’s private server at the State Department.
Appearing on CNN with Wolf Blitzer, Fallon defended his boss’ testy exchange Tuesday with Fox News reporter Ed Henry.
Fallon asserted that Republican partisans and an over-eager media exaggerated the email scandal, going as far to say nothing controversial has come of the saga.
“Of the emails that have come out, we’re now in the third round of productions, and there’s been absolutely nothing controversial about any of the underlying emails that have come out,” Fallon said.
Fallon’s statement is curiously timed, as the campaign is fighting back against reports that “Top Secret” documents were found on Clinton’s server. The spokesman did not acknowledge the Sidney Blumenthal emails that were revealed, which confirmed Clinton was receiving and forwarding memos from the longtime ally who was banned to work for Clinton by President Obama.
He also did not mention that at least 15 emails from Blumenthal were not included in the emails Clinton turned over to the State Department.
Fallon did, however, take the time to joke about Clinton’s email controversy. Similar to Clinton’s Snapchat and cloth jokes, the aide said investigators would only find mundane emails if her private correspondence were recovered.
“The (emails) that were personal in nature, if they were able to retrieve them, I think that they will just find more emails expressing her preference for iced tea and maybe her inability to operate the fax machine,” Fallon quipped with a smile.
Clinton’s lawyer David Kendall said all the data on her server was wiped clean before it was turned over to federal officials.
Hillary Clinton and two aides appear to have violated two national security laws by sending classified information on a private email server, according to a former Army counterintelligence agent and investigator for a public interest law group.
Additionally, the two Clinton aides, Huma Abedin and Cheryl Mills, disregarded a federal judge’s order this month requiring both to make sworn statements to the court that all government documents in their possession will be returned to federal officials, said Chris Farrell, director of investigations for Judicial Watch, the law group.
“What we have is a secretary of state, the only cabinet official in our history, who established her own private email server … in an effort to avoid the normal protocols for unclassified and classified communications. It’s an end run,” he said.
Farrell, in a briefing on the Clinton email affair at the Judicial Watch offices, said supporters of Clinton have sought to portray the use of the private email system to send classified information as a minor administrative matter.
“It is not,” he said. “It is a national security crime, and should be a national security crime investigation,” he said, noting that Clinton created the private email server a week before she took up her duties at Foggy Bottom, indicating that she planned to avoid using official email that must be stored under federal rules.
Two laws apply to the mishandling of classified data on unsecure networks, Farrell said.
The first is 18 USC Sec. 1924, which outlaws the unauthorized removal and storage of classified information. Penalties can include fines and imprisonment for up to one year.
That statute was used to prosecute retired Army General David Petraeus, a former CIA director who provided classified documents to his mistress and biographer, Paula Broadwell. Petraeus was sentenced to two years’ probation and a $40,000 fine as part of a plea deal in March.
A second federal statute that prosecutors could use to charge Clinton and her aides is 18 USC Sec. 793, a more serious felony statute Farrell described as a “hammer.”
That law covers national defense information and people who misuse it to injure the United States or benefit a foreign power.
Those convicted of violating that law face fines and up to 10 years in prison.
Farrell said he that as an Army counterintelligence officer, he has conducted investigations in the past that are similar to the Clinton email probe. He also worked at a special security officer who was in charge of SCIFs—special facilities used for handling sensitive intelligence.
“When it comes the law on these, intent doesn’t matter,” Farrell said. Mishandling top-secret information should bring down the full weight of the law on violators, he said.
The Clinton email matter is a “serious national security crime issue,” Farrell said. “It’s not two agencies fighting over classification after the fact.”
Judicial Watch currently has 18 lawsuits pending against the State Department seeking access to records under the Freedom of Information Act.
The State Department disclosed to Judicial Watch earlier this year that it had discovered an “another universe” of information sought by the group under FOIA on Clinton’s emails involving several cases that had been closed earlier. The data followed discovery of the private email server used by Clinton.
A hearing on one of the lawsuits is set for Thursday before Judge Emmet G. Sullivan of the United States District Court for the District of Columbia, who recently ordered Clinton, Abedin, and Mills to make the sworn statements regarding federal documents in their possession.
According to Farrell, only Clinton supplied the sworn statement that promised to return all government data and not destroy any records involved in the case. Abedin and Mills, however, did not and instead supplied the court with statements from their lawyers.
Thursday’s court hearing will be the latest turn in an unfolding security scandal involving the former secretary of state that has the potential to undermine her bid to win the Democratic presidential nomination.
Clinton is the leading Democratic candidate, and earlier was dogged by reports that she used the non-profit Clinton Foundation for questionable fundraising.
The email scandal burst into public view earlier this month after the inspector general for the U.S. intelligence community revealed that some of the thousands of private emails held by Clinton, secretary of state from 2009 to 2013, contained top-secret information, including data labeled “special intelligence” and “TK” for Talent Keyhole, a code word for communications or imagery intelligence derived from satellites.
The FBI has seized Clinton’s email server that once held more than 60,000 emails. Additionally, a thumb drive was from Clinton’s lawyer taken into FBI custody. The bureau is known to have strong capabilities for restoring erased electronic data from storage media.
Some 305 emails from the server were identified as containing classified information.
Clinton told reporters jokingly this week when asked whether she had wiped clean the server, “What, like with a cloth or something?”
Farrell said he has not seen evidence that anyone associated with the former secretary of state removed classified documents from secure networks and then rewrote the classified information into the private email account, or removed classification markings from secret material.
However, he said he believes that the FBI will be investigating that possibility.
“What I have seen is the excerpting and maybe verbatim copying” of classified information, he said, adding that the nature of the information describes is “clearly SCI material.”
Farrell said his investigation of the matter indicates that Clinton aides likely read classified documents and then digested and excerpted the material into the unclassified email system.
Clinton has said she never sent any classified information on the email server and did not receive any classified information that was marked as such.
“So she’s relying on the idea that somehow her deputies, Huma Abedin and Jay Sullivan, would excerpt the pertinent points out of a classified cable,” Farrell said. “They would pull those nuggets out of the classified version and restate it in an regular, unclassified conventional email on her server. And that’s what we’ve come across now.”
The Clinton campaign did not return an email seeking comment.
Said Farrell: “Here’s the bottom line: The secretary of state in an extraordinary and unprecedented move, set up a private email server to circumvent the conventional government classified and unclassified networks. Her aides and assistants excerpted code-word material from various classified message traffic and then took those excerpts and then sent them to her over an unclassified email server.”
A Romanian hacker named Gucifer hacked into the email account of Sidney Blumenthal, a Clinton associate, and was able to discern parts of conversations between Blumenthal and Clinton.
“If the Romanian hacker Gucifer got to her email via Sidney Blumenthal, which did happen, imagine what a national intelligence asset, the national intelligence services of the Russians or the Chinese could do?” Farrell asked.
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The blast was the latest in a series of attacks that have unnerved Egyptians and underscored the challenges facing the government in its campaign against Islamist militants.
General Hamid Gul, a controversial Pakistani spymaster who helped facilitate America’s covert involvement during the closing stages of the Soviet-Afghan war, has died at the age of 72.
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The United States has more than doubled the number of its military staff “providing intelligence, munitions and midair refueling” for Saudi Arabia’s airstrikes on Yemen.
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A June 10, 2015, photo shows Ashley Madison’s website on a computer screen in Seoul, South Korea. (Lee Jin-man/AP)
Security experts are telling multiple news outlets today that the leaked names of Ashley Madison customers appear to be real. Ashley Madison markets itself with the tagline, “Life is short. Have an affair.” About one month ago it was reported that the site had been hacked and the names and credit card numbers of 37 million customers could be posted online.
The group purportedly behind the hack threatened to release the information if Ashley Madison wasn’t shut down, claiming it was engaging in fraud and deceit. In a statement, Ashley Madison’s parent company said, “This event is not an act of hacktivism, it is an act of criminality. It is an illegal action against the individual members of <a href="http://AshleyMadison.com" rel="nofollow">AshleyMadison.com</a>, as well as any freethinking people who choose to engage in fully lawful online activities.”
The site hasn’t yet verified if the leaked information is genuine. Maggie Lake of CNN discusses the story with Here & Now’s Lisa Mullins.
Guest
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Islamic Society of Boston, which was attended by the Tsarnaev brothers responsible for the Boston Marathon bombing.
Just three weeks after an ISIS-inspired attack on a Muhammad cartoonist event in Garland, Texas, the FBI began circulating an intelligence bulletin that alerts state, federal and local law enforcement about the likelihood of attacks against Muslims by “militia extremists.”
The bulletin, marked “sensitive” and not for distribution without FBI authorization, cites evidence gathered since 2013 that American militia groups are planning attacks on mosques, Islamic centers and possibly individual Muslims.
The document is dated May 28, 2015, and was leaked to Public Intelligence, an online information site committed to exposing government secrets and data. Public Intelligence posted the document on its site Aug. 18.
Named in the bulletin as news sites that provide information that supposedly fuels the militia groups were <a href="http://WND.com" rel="nofollow">WND.com</a>, Fox News, the Blaze, Western Journalism Center, Patriot Newswire and Pamela Geller’s blog, AtlasShrugs.com.
Militias fueled by ‘conspiracy theories’
These websites have reported “conspiracy theories” about Islamic terror training camps across the U.S., providing fodder for the militias that want to attack Muslims, the bulletin states. These private Islamic enclaves are operated by Jamaat al-Fuqra, which also goes by the name Muslims of America or MOA.
Interestingly, the FBI confirms in the report that nine MOA enclaves with approximately 1,500 “dedicated members” devoted to radical Pakistani cleric Sheikh Mubarik Ali Gilani do exist in the following U.S. cities: Hancock, N.Y. (headquarters); Coldwater, Michigan; Dover, Tennessee; Sweeney, Texas; Commerce and Odum, Georgia; York, South Carolina; and Red House and Meherrin, Virginia.
But the FBI states that “assertions MOA communities provide terrorist training are unfounded.”
Militias conducting surveillance?
FBI informants “with varying levels of access” report that “militia extremists” have been conducting surveillance of Islamic properties in Alaska, Arizona, Indiana, Montana, New York, North Carolina, South Carolina, Utah and Texas, the bulletin states.
The bulletin cites an unidentified source with “good access” who allegedly reported to the FBI in September 2014 that “militia extremists in Mississippi discussed kidnapping and beheading a Muslim and posting video of the attack to the Internet.” The FBI bulletin goes on to say that the Mississippi group “has since disbanded” and no longer exists.
Another FBI informant reported in early 2015 that the leader of a militia extremist group expressed “interest in training members for direct action against ISIS and associated ISIS locations,” the document states.
In the final example cited, the FBI says “militia extremists posted calls over social media to kill Muslims attending worship services and during a public event in 2013, according to a reliable source with direct access to the information.”
The FBI concludes that there are “salient perceptions within militia extremism that contribute toward an anti-Muslim bias.” The FBI says such “bias” against Islam is based on the following beliefs among the “extremists”:
- “Islam represents a foreign threat, equivalent to those which emanate from illegal immigration or international terrorism.
- “The President of the United States not only sympathizes with Islamic extremists but directs U.S. Government policy to align with their goals.”
FBI now captured by the left?
The document is significant because it demonstrates how the modern FBI has joined forces with the hard left, including groups such as the Southern Poverty Law Center and the Council on American-Islamic Relations, or CAIR, said Islam expert Robert Spencer.
Robert Spencer
“This is as ridiculous as it is disquieting,” said Spencer, author of the blog Jihad Watch for the David Horowitz Freedom Center and co-author of several books on Islam with Geller.
“Pamela Geller, Fox News, etc., do not incite or approve of or call for violence,” Spencer said. “This demonstrates that the FBI has become so thoroughly compromised that it has accepted the victimhood agenda of Islamic supremacist groups such as the Hamas-linked Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), which labor assiduously to portray those who oppose jihad terror and expose its ideological and religious roots as the ‘right-wing extremist’ equivalent of Osama bin Laden and Anwar al-Awlaki.”
Spencer added that the “insidious goal of this libel is to stigmatize opposition to jihad terror, so that the jihad can advance unimpeded. That the FBI would be abetting the propagation of this libel is yet another new low for the Obama-era intelligence apparatus.”
‘The priorities are upside down’
Jamie Glazov, host of the Glazov Gang online media outlet that provides information and analysis of the Islamic threat to the West, was also miffed by the FBI bulletin.
Jamie Glazov of the Glazov Gang
“The priorities are upside-down, with all the jihadist violence taking place, right-wing militias are the threat and Muslims are the victims? Give me a break,” Glazov told WND in an email. “Where exactly has anything like this happened?”
Glazov said the FBI action is a natural result of the “unholy alliance” between the far left and Islam.
The goal of this alliance is “completely disarming our society and making us unable to defend ourselves,” he said. “The truth tellers about the threat are slandered and demonized, which empowers jihad and stealth jihad. The perpetrators love to get victim status to weaken their targets. And because the left is in control of the government and cultural discourse, they are getting away with it.”
Part of a ‘sinister agenda’
Geller, who was the target of a foiled Islamic terror attack during the Muhammad cartoon contest in Garland, Texas, said the document is further proof that the FBI has seriously strayed from its role of protecting Americans from jihadists and other legitimate criminal threats.
Pam Geller
“This is an entirely trumped-up problem in service of a frankly sinister agenda,” Geller, a WND columnist and author of “Stop the Islamization of America,” told WND. “There is no significant right-wing militia threat, and neither I nor any of the others mentioned are telling anyone to commit any acts of violence.
“This is just the latest attempt to demonize and marginalize those who dare to speak the truth about jihad violence, and to further the administration’s dangerous fantasies about Islam being a ‘religion of peace’ that is lied about by hatemongers, rather than a religion of violence that is inciting violence and hatred worldwide.
“This is further proof of Obama’s perfidy and treachery. The FBI is targeting those who oppose jihad terror. America is woefully unprepared for the horror of what’s coming.”
WND contacted the FBI with several questions about the bulletin and got the following response from Joshua Campbell, supervisory special agent of the FBI office of public affairs.
“Unfortunately, we are unable to provide any information on the authenticity or contents of the referenced document. Our standard practice is to neither confirm or deny investigations or comment on bulletins provided to law enforcement partners.”
One of the questions WND asked was if he FBI had documented any actual militia attacks on Muslims over the past seven years.
David Kupelian, managing editor of WND, said the FBI’s reported concerns about the “bias” of militia groups – that they believe Islam represents a foreign threat and that President Obama not only sympathizes with Islamic extremists but directs government policy to align with their goals – are not relegated to militia groups.
Muslim attacks on Christians and Jews in Europe and on civilians in Boston and Garland and U.S. military personnel at Fort Hood and in Chattanooga are responsible for driving up these fears, he said.
These are mainstream fears “believed not only by ‘militia extremists’ but by a large percentage of Americans,” Kupelian said.
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· · · · · · · · ·
Huge amounts of personal information, including sexual fantasies and thousands of e-mail addresses, was leaked online Tuesday after the extramarital affair Web site Ashley Madison was hacked in July, according to a report first published in Wired.
While the data contains a trove of information about the site’s users, it also contains numerous military and government e-mail addresses that affair-seekers used to sign up for the service.
The e-mails included at least 250 e-mail accounts connected to numerous aircraft carriers, according to a report in the Virginian Pilot. Additionally, the Pilot notes that the data included e-mail addresses associated with every destroyer and amphibious assault ship in the U.S. Navy.
According to an analysis on the Web, the hacked e-mails include 6,788 army.mil, 1,665 navy.mil and 809 usmc.mil addresses. However, some of the addresses might be misleading because Ashley Madison does not require valid e-mail addresses to sign up and use the service.
The Pentagon couldn’t confirm which addresses were valid Tuesday, stating that confirmation would have to come from the respective services themselves, according to Military.com
The group that hacked the site — known as The Impact Team— targeted Ashley Madison because its parent company, Avid Life Media, charges the sites’ users if they want to delete their profiles from the site.
Impact Team notified the Avid Life Media in July after it successfully hacked both Ashley Madison and another site —Established Men — but only released the data Tuesday after both sites remained online despite their threats.
“This event is not an act of hacktivism, it is an act of criminality,” Avid Life Media said in a statementon its Web site Tuesday. “It is an illegal action against the individual members of <a href="http://AshleyMadison.com" rel="nofollow">AshleyMadison.com</a>, as well as any freethinking people who choose to engage in fully lawful online activities.”
Thomas Gibbons-Neff is a staff writer and a former Marine infantryman.
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A 2-year-old boy apparently shot and killed his father in what police in Alabama on Wednesday called a horrible accident.
Hoover police Capt. Gregg Rector said investigators had all but ruled out suicide and other possible scenarios in the death of Divine Vaniah Chambliss, 31. The Jefferson County Medical Examiner's office has conducted an autopsy but police said the results had not been submitted as of Wednesday evening.
Chambliss was found shot once in the head in an apartment on Tuesday afternoon, and no one else was inside other than the toddler.
Investigators found no sign of an intruder or a self-inflicted wound, Rector said, and police know there was a semiautomatic pistol in the apartment, located in suburban Birmingham.
"It wouldn't be a physical obstacle for a 2½-year-old boy to pull a trigger on a semiautomatic handgun," said Rector.
The boy lived with his mother in the apartment with a sibling who was fathered by the same man, Rector said, and the man often stayed at the apartment to care for his son during the day while the woman was a work.
The woman found the man dead in the apartment when she returned home and called authorities, police said.
Rector said the man's death appeared to be a "horrible accident" resulting from a child getting hold of a handgun.
"Everyone knows it's a good idea not to have guns around kids, but we don't always practice it," he said.
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Many people trying to start a new life in Europe want to escape war or extreme poverty, but large numbers of young Algerians are willing to risk death crossing the Mediterranean because they are bored and fed up with the lack of opportunities at home.
I crawl under a wire and nearly trip on a sleeping dog. "This way, quick!" hisses Rachid. It is pitch black so I gingerly follow the greenish glow from his mobile phone up four flights of stairs in a half-built apartment block.
We're up here because Rachid prefers to speak away from the prying eyes of the police or the twitching ears of informers. The warm wind is sweeping across from the sea. We are overlooking Sidi Salem, a rundown suburb of the Algerian port of Annaba. To our left a former French colonial army barracks has been turned into shanty town.
"Even though I'm free, my life here is like a prison," Rachid says. "As soon as I get a call about a boat, I'll be off again to try to reach Sardinia."
Rachid is a harraga. The word means "path burner" in Arabic, a runaway who flees his or her country for a better life elsewhere. It also describes the practice of setting fire to identity papers to avoid being traced and repatriated.
Over the past decade, Sidi Salem has become a famous launch pad for illegal migrants. The Italian island of Sardinia can be reached in just 12 hours with the right weather conditions.
Under cover of darkness, the migrants set out across the open sea, usually 10 or 12 to a boat, with jerrycans of petrol, food, blankets, an outboard motor and a GPS tracking device.
In 2009 the Algerian government made clandestine emigration a crime, punishable by fines and two to six months in prison. Equipped with new boats and helicopters, the coastguard has also stepped up night-time patrols along the country's 1,200km shoreline.
The Algerian Ministry of Religious Affairs issued a Fatwa against those who try to cross the border illegally - 14,000 mosques were instructed to preach against leaving.
But the harragas keep trying to go.
Rachid has attempted to escape three times already. Twice he made it across the Mediterranean, to Sardinia. On one occasion he managed to stay away for eight months and got into France, where he worked in a halal butcher's shop, before being caught by French police and sent home.
The second time he was sent back from Italy after 55 days. "The carabinieri told us that our President Bouteflika had paid 4,500 euros (£3,175) for each of us to be returned and put us on a plane home," says Rachid. "I felt so depressed."
He admits his situation is far from desperate. He has a job, albeit a low paid one, as a security guard and a roof over his head. He does not fear for his life on a daily basis as many Algerians did during the brutal civil war of the 1990s, the period known as "the black decade".
Find out more
The Harragas of Algeria is broadcast on Crossing Continents on BBC Radio 4 at 11:00 on Thursday 20 August. It's also on Assignment on BBC World Service on the same day or you can catch up later online.
Since then Africa's biggest country has been largely peaceful. Thanks to vast reserves of oil and gas, there are plenty of imported goods in the shops. Healthcare and education are free for the country's 35 million citizens.
Young people make up more than two thirds of the population but the ruling elite consists mainly of men over the age of 70 - the ailing President, Abdelaziz Bouteflika, is in now his fourth term and many feel there is no prospect for change.
Rachid, aged 33, feels life is passing him by. "What kind of future can I have here in Algeria," he says bitterly. "There's nothing for me here."
On his last attempt to get to Europe he hid inside a cargo ship in the port of Annaba but was spotted and promptly arrested. He was fortunate. The prosecutor came from his neighbourhood and released him.
But in practice few would be migrants spend long behind bars, says Kourceila Zerguine, a lawyer in Annaba.
"Our prisons can't accommodate all the hundreds of harragas who are arrested each year," he says. "This law was imposed by the authorities under pressure from Europe. Algeria has become a guard dog for 'Fortress Europe'."
There are no official figures to show how many harragas try to leave - and many of them never reach the promised land.
Twenty-six-year-old Merouane Belabed disappeared one April night in 2007.
He worked in his father's graphic design company. The family has a comfortable home but Merouane wanted to visit his cousins in Europe. He applied for a visa five times but was always turned down.
The night before he left he told his father, Kamel, that he was going to spend a few days in Tunisia on the beach with friends.
"He said, 'Don't worry Dad, I'm not asking for money or to borrow the car and I'll be back with 48 hours - three days at the most.' "
But the family never heard from him again. He joined a long list of Algerians missing at sea which includes doctors, engineers and even the grandson of the country's former president, Chadli Bendjedid.
The harragas have become something of a national obsession in the Algerian media, cinema and popular music.
Azzedine Nebil, better known as Azzou - one of Algeria's leading hip hop artists - has campaigned against clandestine crossings. His song Harraga tells the story of a journey to Sardinia which nearly ends in tragedy.
The lyrics describe towering waves, a boat full of water and a group of terrified young men "looking death in the face". They are rescued in the nick of time but not all harragas are so lucky.
"When I perform this song at concerts, so many people are in tears," says Azzou. "I have a friend, a boy I grew up with, who disappeared at sea, presumed drowned but they never found his body.
"What is the point of making it to Paris if you are going to live a miserable hand-to-mouth existence selling contraband cigarettes on the street? You can create your own dream here, in your own village. You just need to think differently."
But despite all the subsidies for cooking oil, sugar, petrol and text books, hope is a commodity in short supply in Algeria. An Islamist opposition leader once described Algerian youth as having a choice "between death at sea and a slow, gradual death at home" given the lack of opportunities in a stagnant economy dominated by nepotism and corruption.
President Bouteflika has blamed satellite TV for spreading propaganda about "a pseudo overseas prosperity". And the internet may also have helped to give Algerian youth a chronic, collective case of FOMO - Fear of Missing Out as the diaspora relay tales of social, religious and sexual freedoms and a lively nightlife as well as better job prospects abroad.
The government has urged young people to stay put to help build their own nation. Since the uprising in neighbouring Tunisia, which began in 2010, the Algerian authorities have extended youth employment schemes and given young people interest free loans to set up their own businesses.
Mourad Zemali who heads ANSEJ, the agency which funds entrepreneurs, says so far 340,000 projects have been financed which have created more than 800,000 jobs. At a time of plummeting oil prices, he tells me the state is well aware of the need to diversify the economy into areas such as digital technology and tourism.
Despite stunning scenery and a wealth of cultural treasures - including well preserved Roman cities - incidents such as the murder of a French tourist last year and the hostage crisis following an attack on a gas plant in 2013 have discouraged visitors.
And in a country where the state sector provides about 60% of jobs the service culture is sluggish, possibly a legacy of Soviet style centralised economy in the decades after Algerian independence.
"We are helping to provoke changes in mentality," says Mr Zemali. "As well as financial help, we are trying to give young people values, get them to take responsibility for themselves. So we're creating a new generation which takes initiative, which is dynamic."
He admits that some of the companies funded by ANSEJ have gone bust but argues that bankruptcy for some start-ups is inevitable. "The fact that they have tried to create a business employing other people in itself counts as a success," he says.
Yet some are sceptical. Yousef Othomani, who went to catering school in Switzerland, worked in London and has just opened a restaurant in Algiers, suspects the fund is yet another way to mask the lack of real change in Algeria.
He says many young people got loans to set up car rental companies but in practice they just bought fancy new cars for their personal use.
"That is very common and the government doesn't run after you to pay back the money," he adds. "I don't think it encourages entrepreneurship - they don't ask you for a proper business plan. I see it more as a way of buying the youth. If you guys vote for us and keep us in government, this is what you get."
However Kamel Daoud, one of the country's best known writers, says it's not the economy but sheer boredom that's driving many young Algerians away.
"Our harragas don't leave the country because they are poor or jobless…. even if that's what they say," he wrote in Le Quotidien d'Oran, the daily paper from Algeria's second largest city. "They leave because here, in this country, their lives are pointless, there's no room to dream, and worst of all, there's no fun, no laughter, no kissing, and no colour."
And life in Algeria's villages is one where "the boredom is unrelenting, unbelievable, unbearable and inhuman," he said.
Young people say they are sick of being treated with contempt - and too often their response is, "Al harga wala hogra" - better to burn than be humiliated.
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While most of the permanent political class is still aghast that 2016 GOP presidential frontrunner billionaire Donald Trump put together one of most specific, pro-American worker immigration plans of anyone running for public office, he’s winning widespread praise from key experts on the issue.
Center for Immigration Studies (CIS) executive director Mark Krikorian told Breitbart News that he’s pleased Trump is drawing a focus to this issue and his plan is spot on.
Krikorian said in an email:
The first notable thing about Trump’s immigration plan are the three principles it lays out. Immigration policy must be based exclusively on the interest of We the People of the United States, not wealthy donors, not corporations, not union bosses, not big-city politicians, and not foreign citizens. Why every candidate of every party hasn’t already said this is a mystery. Many of the specifics are also sound: E-Verify, visa-tracking, cutting off aid to sanctuary cities, making overstay of a visa a criminal offense, tightening up on H-1B visas, etc. His support for moderating our current very high levels of legal immigration is welcome, though I look forward to more specifics — which visa categories should be reduced or eliminated? Also, I think the antagonism toward Mexico in the first section is not helpful — Mexico is indeed obstructionist in many areas, though it is helpful in others (for instance, by interdicting many of the Central American illegals headed north). Our approach to our neighbor to the south must be firm, but not ham-handed. But overall, none of the other Republican (or Democratic) candidates (with the exception of Rick Santorum) has as sound and as well thought-through an immigration plan.
In addition, conservative columnist Ann Coulter—author of 11 New York Times bestselling books, including Adios America: The Left’s Plan To Turn Our Country Into A Third World Hellhole—Tweeted immense praise for Trump’s new document all day Sunday.
In one Tweet, Coulter called the plan “the greatest political document since the Magna Carta.” Inanother, she said Trump’s plan proves “IT’S MORNING IN AMERICA, AGAIN!”
Coulter, who supported Mitt Romney in 2012 because he was the strongest candidate on immigration that year, Tweeted that Trump’s document is the first of its kind since President Dwight Eisenhower’s “Operation Wetback” back in the 1950s.
“We haven’t seen anything like this since Dwight Eisenhower’s ‘Operation Wetback,’” she Tweeted. “Even @MittRomney wasn’t this pro-American on immigration.”
She also noted that there is no issue of political significance that matters as much as this, because if policies like Trump’s aren’t implemented, then Democrats will win national elections for decades straight and Republicans won’t be able to stop anything bad from becoming law. “Nothing else matters. Unless we stop 3rd worlders pouring in, bloc-voting 4 the Dems, conservatives lose EVERYTHING,” Coulter Tweeted.
Without Trump’s “immigration plan, it will be nothing but Obamas and Hillarys as president for the rest of our lives,” Coulter Tweeted after mocking Republicans party-wide for putting out position papers on issues of less significance than stopping the Democrats from fundamentally transforming the American electorate.
“These morons with their little position papers on how to replace Obamacare, deal with Iran and defund planned parenthood,” Coulter Tweeted, adding in a follow-up Tweet, “too stupid to grasp that they’ll never be in a position to do any of that unless we stop foreigners from voting in our elections.”
She also predicted that Republicans will attempt to “bury” Trump for “upsetting the donor class,” so it’s important “to get them on the record” now. She’s making the comparison between those attacking Trump and those who attacked Ronald Reagan in 1976 and 1980, and wants a record of who’s attacking Trump now “so 30 yrs from now, when all the little dweebs are claiming to be ‘Trump conservatives,’ we can say, no UR not.”
Coulter also Tweeted several quotes from the Trump document, including where Trump talks about turning refugee programs instead into jobs programs for American youths—and where Trump calls
billionaire Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg’s “personal senator.” Zuckerberg, of course, runs a lobbying firm called FWD.us designed to push for more cheap foreign labor, especially extra H-1B visas.
She then noted that Trump is the “only candidate who cares” about “black lives” since his immigration plan “will increase black, Hispanic, female workers” in Silicon Valley, rather than decreasing such American workers who are black, Hispanic or female, as Rubio’s push to bring in foreign workers would do.
In addition to Coulter and Krikorian, obviously,
Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-AL)
—the intellectual leader of the conservative movement and the chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee’s subcommittee on Immigration and the National Interest—backed it publicly already. Trump consulted Sessions while writing it.
ComputerWorld magazine, a top trade magazine that’s honed in heavily on the H-1B scandal issue,noted how Trump’s position puts him in line with the chairman of the full Senate Judiciary Committee, Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-IA), as well. It’s also got bipartisan support from folks like
Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT)
, a devout socialist who’s seeking the Democratic nomination for president and has been getting large crowds similar to Trump’s among GOP audiences, and Sen. Dick Durbin (D-IL), the Democratic Whip in the U.S. Senate.
“Trump, who is seeking the Republican nomination for president, may be closer to Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders in his criticisms of the H-1B visa than any of his fellow Republicans seeking the presidential nomination. Sanders, an Independent who is seeking the Democrat presidential nomination, says the H-1B program is being used to help ship jobs overseas,” Patrick Thibodeau, ComputerWorld’s senior editor, wrote on Sunday. “Trump’s H-1B proposal is clearly aligned with the ideas of U.S. Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa), the chair of the Judiciary Committee, and Grassley’s longtime ally, Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) — not to mention Sessions.”
Aligning with Grassley—in addition to Sessions, who’s beloved in conservative and GOP circles, of course—puts Trump in a prime position in the all-important first presidential state of Iowa, where, along with everywhere else, he’s currently polling as the GOP frontrunner. Grassley is the senior U.S. Senator from Iowa, and it’s clear Trump’s position is his position, meaning that should Trump be elected president he’d be aiming to implement Grassley’s ideas in the White House.
“The intellectual roots of Trump’s H-1B views can be found in its links, which includes the testimony and work of two of leading academic critics, Ron Hira, an associate professor of public policy at Howard University, and Hal Salzman, professor of planning and public policy at Rutgers University, who studies the science and engineering workforce,” Thibodeau added in his ComputerWorld piece. “In previous presidential campaigns, the H-1B visa has been notable mainly by its absence. By making it major part of his immigration platform, Trump is clearly raising the issue’s profile and may force other candidates to engage on it. That alone could lead to a much broader debate about the H-1B visa than ever before.”
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· · · · ·
 Fox News |
AP Exclusive: UN to Let Iran Inspect Alleged Nuke Work Site
ABC News Iran will be allowed to use its own inspectors to investigate a site it has been accused of using to develop nuclear arms, operating under a secret agreement with the U.N. agency that normally carries out such work, according to a document seen by The ... Document: UN to Let Iran Inspect Alleged Nuke Work SiteVoice of America 'Dangerous farce': Lawmakers rip Iran deal over report Tehran can use own nuke ...Fox News White House 'confident' in Iran inspectionSky News Australia The Daily Star all 291 news articles » |
EDGARTOWN, Mass. (AP) -- During her failed 2008 White House campaign, Hillary Rodham Clinton derided rival Barack Obama's lofty talk of hope and change as equivalent to expecting "celestial choirs" to drop from the sky and inspire people to do the right thing....
Former world boxing champion Roy Jones Jr. asked Putin for a Russian passport to visit his fans because "I love it when people love me"
Scientists find how obesity gene works, a clue to treatmentby By MARILYNN MARCHIONE
Scientists have finally figured out how the key gene tied to obesity makes people fat, a major discovery that could open the door to an entirely new approach to the problem beyond diet and exercise....
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Reuters |
Fresh racial unrest in St. Louis after police shoot black suspect
Reuters Police shot and killed a black man in St. Louis on Wednesday in a killing that drew angry crowds 10 days after protesters marked the anniversary of the police shooting of an unarmed teen in nearby Ferguson. St. Louis Police Chief Sam Dotson said the ... St. Louis police shoot, kill suspect during home searchFox News St. Louis Police Fatally Shoot Suspect During Home SearchNewsweek St. Louis police shoot, kill suspectWPTZ The Champlain Valley STLtoday.com all 47 news articles » |
The conviction of a security officer, which was denounced by Estonia and Western nations, reflects tensions between Russia and its Baltic neighbors.
Two emails which the Intelligence Community now believes contained classified information have been public since May
As French authorities crack down in the port of Calais, thousands of more well-heeled migrants trying to reach the U.K. are turning to smuggling rings that promise a safer passage.
North Korea has developed an elaborate underground missile complex at its Sohae missile and space launch facility near the northwestern border with China, according to U.S. officials. The underground complex includes both facilities for preparing missiles for launch and storage areas that are connected by rail lines, according to officials ...
A relic of the Cold War, an old Nike missile radar and tracking site in western Miami-Dade County, Fla., has been demolished.
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WASHINGTON (AP) - Reaction to the U.N. allowing Iran to use its own inspectors to investigate a site it has been accused of using to develop nuclear arms. Iran is operating under a secret agreement with the U.N. agency that normally carries out such work, according to a document seen ...
The possessions of an American family have been stolen in British Columbia before they made it to their new home in Alaska.
Details of over a million Britons leaked online by hackers who published the entire database of the adultery website
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· ·
The White House says it has confidence in the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) after a report emerged claiming that, under an agreement with the IAEA, Iran would be allowed to use its own inspectors to investigate a suspected nuclear site.
Khaled al-Asaad, who was murdered by Islamic State jihadists, died for the rest of us, writes Dan Snow
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USA TODAY |
Stocks end lower after Fed minutes; Dow loses 160
USA TODAY The stock market closed lower Wednesday after minutes from the Federal Reserve's last policy meeting showed the central bank was "approaching" its first rate hike in nearly a decade. Stocks had trimmed the day's earlier losses after the 2 p.m. ET Fed ... Dollar dips after Fed minutes; China weighs on stocksReuters Most Fed Officials Saw Tapered End To Reinvestment Process At July FOMC MeetingWall Street Journal Fed minutes keep September interest rate hike in playLos Angeles Times Washington Post (blog) -CNBC all 833 news articles » |
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