An Internet Clean Of Jihadi Incitement – Not Mission Impossible.

An Internet Clean Of Jihadi Incitement – Not Mission Impossible. (Memri).

Social media companies are beginning to lose advertising revenue due to the hateful content that appears on their sites. According to reports, major advertisers (Johnson & Johnson, Toyota, General Motors, Walmart, AT&T, HSBC, and others) are pulling ads from social media platforms because they have found their ads placed alongside terrorist videos. YouTube alone may find itself losing $750,000,000 in ad revenue.[1] It therefore seems as if financial considerations rather than moral responsibility are prompting Internet companies to take more vigorous measures to purge their platforms of hate speech and incitement to murder.

Government pressure on the companies is mounting as well. In Germany, Justice Minister Heiko Maas (SPD) is introducing new legislation imposing huge fines of up to 50 million Euros on companies that fail to remove hate speech from their sites. In Britain after the recent Westminster terrorist attack, Home Secretary Amber Rudd summoned executives from Google, Twitter, Facebook and Microsoft to a summit at the Home Office, at which they agreed to "create new technical tools to identify and remove terrorist propaganda" from their platforms, among other measures.[2]

In addition, the families of terror victims are beginning to sue Internet companies for carrying the incitement that radicalized the terrorists and thus led to the killing or injury of their loved ones. One successful lawsuit of this sort will trigger a torrent of further lawsuits, entailing huge losses for the companies.

But will any of this guarantee an Internet free of hate speech and jihadi incitement? No. Not until both the governments and the Internet companies understand that the use of the Internet by jihadi movements poses a real threat to global security, which amounts to an emergency situation requiring them to act accordingly – namely, to make vast financial investments, to develop new technologies, and, most importantly, to fundamentally change their approach and the criteria they employ in removing content from the net.

The goals of this article are: 

• first, to present the scope of the problem; 
• second, to demonstrate the inadequacy of the measures taken to date to deal with it; 
• third, to explain the need for a revolutionary approach; 
• and fourth, to present in detail the components of a new, effective strategy to be implemented.

How Did It All Begin?

To understand the magnitude of the threat and the measures required to address it, one must go back to the beginnings of the Internet and of social media.

The Internet, just like nuclear energy and other developments in modern technology, is both a blessing and a source of danger. In most other fields, scientific and technological developments were followed by regulatory legislation to head off potential danger to society and to human life. Land, maritime, and aerial transportation, the pharmaceutical industry, the food industry, and an endless list of other industries and professions were all subject to regulation.

The Internet companies, on the other hand, enjoyed a climate of infinite license.  Since they are based in the U.S., with its almost unlimited free speech, the companies were subjected to few restrictions, and, when challenged, have argued that any further regulation of the information they carried would be an unthinkable violation of the First Amendment.

Europe knew better. As a continent that had been plunged into war due to the uninhibited rise of extremist movements, it understood that not only extremist deeds but also extremist speech and ideologies such as Nazism must be legally banned. Following WWII, Europe legislated against racism, xenophobia, anti-Semitism and Holocaust denial, leading to the conviction and penalizing of offenders. This helped keep the extremist blight and its mass influence in check.

The Current Global Jihadi Movement Is Unimaginable Without The Internet.

But even in Europe, all this changed with the rise of the Internet. Internet companies worldwide exploited the legislative vacuum in which the Internet existed to create a supranational system that is above the law. A court could penalize the likes of British Holocaust denier David Irving and French comedian and political activist Dieudonné for anti-Semitic speech, but the material that established their criminal culpability remained freely available on the web to influence others. Extremist groups of all persuasions took advantage of this situation, and online hate speech inciting jihad, racism, xenophobia, and genocidal murder spread like a plague.

Online platforms filled with horrific pictures of beheadings, crucifixions, amputations, burnings, drownings, stonings,  and other forms of execution.[3] Jihadi organizations used the web to recruit supporters and fighters,[4] provide practical instruction and manuals for terror operations including car bomb and ramming attacks,[5] make arch-terrorists into heroic models for emulation,[6] and raise funds for their activity.[7] The Internet provided them with an ideal vehicle for spreading their ideas, even to young children. 

Recently, ISIS schoolbooks, including versions in English, written and used by the organization in its Syrian stronghold of Al-Raqqa, were circulated online via the instant messaging service Telegram – thus making globally available this crucial tool for indoctrinating the younger generation.[8] Terrorist groups' magazines and mouthpieces are also circulated online. Furthermore, some social media provide encrypted platforms, which enable the jihadis to share information safely. 

Extremists on the right have entered the fray as well, filling the Internet with their own hatred for minorities, some even urging to follow the example of "Adolfetto" Hitler and exterminate minority groups.[9]

However, most Internet companies have not seemed to care much about this problem. Hundreds of companies all over the U.S. have hosted terrorist organizations without knowing or caring who their customers were. As for social networks, most of their founders were young people largely devoid of historical consciousness. 

Focusing on their grand vision of a global online community, they were oblivious to the fact that they were also creating communities of terror and transforming scattered terrorist groups into a global jihadi movement. In the name of empowering people everywhere and giving a voice to each and every individual, they also empowered the most vicious elements in the global community – such as a jihadi who appeared on social media holding up a severed head, calling out "Allah Akbar" and preaching jihad and murder. Social media entrepreneurs continued developing this medium without considering the dangers and the need to take measures against them.

The Invalid Excuses Of The Internet And Social Media Companies.

It is important to review the excuses and ploys used by Internet companies to justify their irresponsible conduct. The first corporate ploy was to simply deny responsibility. "True," they said, "we supply the vehicle (and of course reap the revenues), but somebody else provides the content, so direct your accusations at them." While the terrorists should indeed be the prime target, the companies act as their willing accomplices by making their platform available for criminal use.

It should be mentioned that there is a clear precedent for holding carriers of incitement responsible for the results of that incitement. In the mid-1990s, the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda sentenced Ferdinand Nahimana, cofounder of the Rwandan radio station Radio Télévision Libre des Mille Collines, to 30 years in prison for spreading incitement that contributed to the Rwanda genocide. Obviously, I do not mean to compare Nahimana, who identified with and sought to promote the genocidal messages on his radio, to the magnates of social media, who are just demonstrating reckless indifference, but only to stress the principle that carriers of incitement can be held accountable for the consequences of that incitement. This principle was in fact established after WWII, in the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide adopted by the United Nations General Assembly on December 9, 1948, which criminalizes not just the act of genocide but also "direct and public incitement to commit genocide."[16]

In the U.S., too, a district court ruled in 2006 that the First Amendment does not protect the right to disseminate information meant to result in violence. This ruling came in the case of radical animal rights and environmental activist Rodney Adam Coronado, who taught others how to build bombs. "The First Amendment does not provide a defense to a criminal charge simply because the actor uses words [rather than actions] to carry out his illegal purpose," the court stated.[17]

In fact, companies are well aware of their responsibility to limit the use of their platforms, as evidenced by their introduction of "community guidelines" and "terms of use" – which they later used as their second tactical corporate excuse. "We are doing what is necessary by establishing guidelines and community standards," they said.

This is the biggest deception of all. First, the companies are clearly failing to enforce their own guidelines, for had they enforced them, the Internet and social media would not be so full of hate speech and incitement to murder. Moreover, unlike companies that produce yogurt, cars, planes, or pharmaceuticals, and that allow government regulators and even end users access to information about their quality control departments and the experts and technologies they use to safeguard the consumer, Internet companies keep us completely in the dark. This information – access to which is an essential right of consumers and government – is their closely guarded secret. 

We have no idea how many experts they employ to remove hateful content, how proficient they are in Arabic and other relevant languages, what technological processes they use, or, most importantly, what specific criteria they apply. In fact, Twitter noted recently that it was identifying jihadi content using "internal, proprietary spam-fighting tools"[18] – a description that is a bad joke at the expense of innocent victims.

It is not even clear whether the screening mechanisms that companies have pledged to develop are aimed at removing hate speech and incitement. Google recently promised advertisers to "provide simpler, more robust ways to stop their ads from showing against controversial content,"[19] thus implying that such content would be kept away from ads, but not necessarily removed. Likewise, Facebook chairman and CEO Mark Zuckerberg implied in a recent post that his network's ultimate goal is to let users decide what content they will be spared from seeing, instead of categorically removing certain types of content. 

"The idea," he wrote, "is to give everyone in the community options for how they would like to set the content policy for themselves. Where is your line on nudity? On violence? On graphic content? On profanity? What you decide will be your personal settings."

A third corporate dodge was to shift responsibility onto users, an economic idea of absolute genius. Complaints about online content were answered with "Did you flag it?" Hundreds of millions of users were thus pressed into service as unpaid corporate employees. Beyond the chutzpah involved, this method is also ineffective, because flagging by users is only the first step of a process which continues with referral to committees to validate the flagging. These committees are part of an "internal" and "proprietary" process we know nothing about – save for the fact that the material they are supposed to remove remains online. MEMRI has repeatedly flagged accounts of social media companies and reported on the results. Some were removed; many were not.[20]

Finally, one of the companies' most intellectually dishonest arguments is that they are actually assisting law enforcement agencies. By allowing a free Internet, they say, they enable intelligence agencies to discover and track murderous conspiracies. The companies' argument was seconded by commercial companies seeking to profit from the status quo, and by unscrupulous academics.

This argument also fails because, as noted, some companies, such as Telegram, offer encrypted services which the terrorists gratefully use.[21] Additionally and most importantly, even if a few terror cells have been stopped thanks to a free Internet, the impact this has pales in comparison to the online radicalization of generations of young people. Moreover, the excuse of assisting intelligence bodies has never been endorsed by senior intelligence officials, who have always made the cost-benefit calculation that a free-to-incite Internet works to society's detriment. They have not been fobbed off by netting small fry, or even large fry, because they understood that this came at the price of wholesale indoctrination of generations.

What Is Required To Achieve The Goal Of An Internet Free Of Hate Speech and Incitement To Murder.

1. Understanding The Scope Of The Threat And The Need For A Revolutionary Approach To Counter It.

The war against terror has always been conceptualized as a battle against its violent manifestations. This focus has become even stronger since ISIS established its territorial base in Syria and Iraq. This terrorism, however, has ideological and religious roots, and these roots have grown stronger and more widespread since the Internet and social media companies have enabled them to use their resources toward their goals. 

Thus, due to the Internet, terrorism has evolved in recent years from isolated groups to a global phenomenon. The West’s misguided perception of terrorism as a military problem has led them to the belief that overcoming ISIS on the battleground of Syria and Iraq will solve the problem and curb terrorism in the West. However, the combination of the ideological and religious roots with the unlimited power of the Internet will entail that the defeat of ISIS in Syria and Iraq will lead to more –not less – terrorism in the West.

It is a little-known fact that the ideology of ISIS, in the early stages of its violent emergence, focused on enemies within the Islamic world, such as other terrorist organizations, Shi'ites, and others. ISIS represented an historic attempt to recreate a territorial base for radical Islam (the Caliphate). 

Fighting the West was not a priority. Indeed, this was the major difference between ISIS and Al-Qaeda, with the latter focusing on jihad against the West.[22] To this day, the ideology of ISIS is embodied in the call for hijra – immigration to the Caliphate – as the pinnacle of belief. Only those who cannot fulfill this call, because the gates of hijra have been closed by the West and because of the West's attacks on ISIS, are called upon to carry out operations in the West.[23] Hence, once ISIS is defeated in Syria and Iraq, and deprived of its territorial base altogether, the foreign fighters will return home and will attack the West from within, with a vengeance. In this battle, the Internet and the social media will play a major role in the recruitment of Muslim communities in the West to this battle.

This is the reason that the West must adopt a new, revolutionary approach to the role of the Internet and social media, in order to put a stop to its enabling role.[24]

2. Regulating The Internet Through Legislation Is Crucial To Protect Human Lives.  

Read the full story here.

To Defeat ISIS We Must Convince Twitter, YouTube to ‘Unfriend’ Terrorists.

To Defeat ISIS We Must Convince Twitter, YouTube to ‘Unfriend’ Terrorists. (Algemeiner).

Eventually, ISIS — the military menace — will be defanged, with or without American boots on the ground. But ISIS’ leadership has ensured that the terror group’s brutal, medieval values and violent Islamist worldview will far outlive the death of their last field commander.

That is due to the diabolical but brilliant marketing strategy that ISIS is deploying in targeting young Muslims.

Leveraging social network giants like Twitter and YouTube, the group paints a seductive picture of a heroic movement, sanctioned by Allah himself, to punish and expel the infidels.

ISIS, Al Shabab, Al Qaeda and their ilk have successfully recruited young potential fighters from across the Middle East, Europe and Asia and have used the Internet to lure teenage girls from the United Kingdom—urging them to swap their western lifestyles to join the struggle to establish a global Islamic Caliphate. They have also inspired and trained — online — lone wolf terrorists who are then convinced to murder and maim their neighbors in Western democracies.

Beyond killing or capturing their leaders, the burgeoning threats from ISIS and other terror groups will only subside if their online marketing capabilities are challenged and degraded.

At this stage the answer does not lie in more government legislation or intervention. No one wants more Big Brothers snooping in our lives.

What the world needs now are for the social networking giants like Twitter, YouTube, and Facebook to unfriend the terrorist enablers, recruiters, and teachers.

Teenagers in England shouldn’t so easily be able to communicate with a frontline ISIS fighter in Syria.

Muslim kids in France shouldn’t be circulating tweets celebrating the two Charlie Hebdo murderers as “heroes,” a mere two hours after the Islamist terrorists were gunned down by French police.

To date, Facebook has been the strongest in taking the lead against terrorists. Twitter has done the least.

How can online providers make a real difference? By doing the following:

– Publishing and adhering to transparent terms of usage.

– Permanently barring repeat offenders.

– Refusing service to groups that openly tout their affiliation with groups identified by the U.S. State Department as terrorists.

– Refusing to publish terrorist training manuals and videos online.

There are those who argue that such moves will only drive the evildoers underground. “Better to allow them to operate in the open, so that U.S. Homeland Security, MI5, German and French Intelligence can more easily track the activities”, they say.

But such policies have only enabled Islamist extremists to impact more and more young Muslims around the corner — and around the world. 

Intelligence and law enforcement awareness that potential terrorists are out there did not stop the Charlie Hebdo Islamist murderers or extremists from Phoenix bent on shooting up an anti-Islamist gathering in Texas.

In recent months, I have met with senior intelligence and government officials in France, Germany, and in Asia. They fear more lone wolf attacks; they are already being forced to track more young extremists. 

They all say that to defeat terrorists’ online campaigns short of deploying privacy-killing, draconian “Big Brother” tactics, democracies need help from the ultimate experts in predictive behavior– not the CIA—but Google, YouTube, Twitter, and Facebook.

There are life and death issues at stake.

During a recent conference in Jerusalem, I heard a remarkable speech from a courageous moderate Muslim leader. Imam Hassen Chalghoumi is the President of the Conference of Imams in France.

He is among the very few of 6,000 Imams in France who regularly denounces anti-Semitism. He chose to make his presentation excoriating Islamist extremism in Arabic — a noble, even heroic gesture. But at the end of stirring speech he suddenly switched to French and raised his fist in anger and frustration at the specter of his young constituents increasingly embracing religious extremism: “J’accuse, Twitter! J’accuse, YouTube!”

The Internet did not create hate or terrorism. But it is high time for the collective genius that has given society this powerful tool to help stop terrorists and bigots from hijacking the most powerful marketing and teaching tool the world has ever known before it’s too late. Read the full story here.


Rabbi Abraham Cooper is associate Dean of the Simon Wiesenthal Center in Los Angeles.

Video - Facebook claims ‘a bug’ made it track nonusers, Anyone interested in a bridge for sale?

Facebook faces class action law suit for violating privacy by amassing users facial recognition data.

Facebook faces class action law suit for violating privacy by amassing users facial recognition data. (TW).

Facebook faces class action law suit for violating the privacy of its users by collecting their facial data and storing it.

Facebook is being accused of violating the privacy of its users by collecting their facial data, according to a class-action lawsuit filed last week. Facebook has been allegedly collecting facial recognition data from millions of FB users and creating “the largest privately held stash of biometric face-recognition data in the world,” according to Courthouse News Service.

The class action lawsuit filed by Carlo Licata and associates alleges that this facial recognition program violates the privacy of its users. The plaintiffs have cited an Illinois law called the Illinois Biometrics Information Privacy Acts, which requires companies to get written content from a user if it is collecting biometric data. Further, according to the Illinois law, such company must state the purpose and length of its data collection program.

The plaintiffs claims that Facebook’s biometric program shows “brazen disregard for its users’ privacy writes.” They have also argued that even by changing user settings, the FB users can't escape the facial recognition collection program, reports the Chicago Tribune. Hmmmm......Reason xxxx why i don't go to facebook......Read the full story here.

‘Jewish Ritual Murder’ Page Removed, Then Restored by Facebook Within 24 Hours

‘Jewish Ritual Murder’ Page Removed, Then Restored by Facebook Within 24 Hours.HT: Algemeiner.

A Facebook page entitled “Jewish Ritual Murder” was taken town and then reactivated within a 24-hour period after the social media giant reconsidered its decision that it violated their community standards, The Algemeiner has learned.

Dexter Van Zile, an analyst for media watchdog CAMERA, reported that he had been notified by Facebook that the page had been removed on Thursday, after a long campaign by Jewish activists and groups.

“Facebook Removes Antisemitic page. Life’s little victories,” Van Zile tweeted at 10:44 a.m.

But on Friday, The Algemeiner received multiple reports of Facebook users who had complained about the page, being informed that it was now back up.

“We revised our decision on your report of Jewish ritual murder,” a message sent to the users read. “Thank you for taking the time to report something that you feel may violate our Community Standards… We reviewed the Page you reported for containing hate speech or symbols and found it doesn’t violate our Community Standards.”

“The ‘Jewish Ritual Murder’ page on Facebook perpetuates age-old anti-Semitic propaganda, and it should be removed immediately. It is profoundly offensive, has no socially redeeming value, and adds nothing to any legitimate marketplace of ideas,” Abraham H. Foxman, ADL National Director, said.

“This page targets all Jews, and Facebook’s position that it technically does not violate their Community Standards because it does not target individuals is an unacceptable excuse. We do not believe that Facebook intends to send a message that they are insensitive to the enormous harm the blood libel has caused throughout Jewish history, and the easiest way for them to make that clear would be to exercise the discretion they certainly have to remove the page.”

Facebook, which was created by Jewish entrepreneur Mark Zuckerberg, has been accused in the past of allowing anti-Semitism to flourish on its pages. 

Last September, Algemeiner blogger David Fischler said he was “flabbergasted” when he reported a page that portrayed “all of the anti-Semitic greatest hits,” and was similarly told that Facebook’s community standards were not violated.Read the full story here. The Algemeiner Journal

"Femen Is Pornography" Say Facebook, closes down Femen pages.

FEMEN Topless Protesters Jump On Tunisian PM Ali Larayedh's Car In Brussels 

"Femen Is Pornography" Say Facebook, closes down Femen pages. HT: HuffingtonPost. By Inna Shevchenko. Leader of women's movement FEMEN, sextremist.

The women's movement Femen informs the public of the involuntary termination of its major accounts on Facebook.

Yesterday, Facebook blocked Femen's main page Femen. A day earlier, they had terminated the account for our French Femen subsidiary. In total, these pages were liked by about 170,000 people. Until today, the network of Femen's pages had been one of the biggest women's communities on Facebook and was the main source of news about the activities of the movement.

The formal reason for the closure of the platforms is preposterous - they are accusing us of spreading pornography and promoting prostitution.

This fact is a logical continuation of the internet war waged against Femen from a host of different reactive groups: the Nazis from European and post-Soviet dictatorships to Islamic fundamentalists.

The Femen pages on Facebook were one of the main information platforms for the campaign for the release of political prisoners, in particular activists from Tunisian prisons.

The Femen movement has appealed the closing of the pages of Facebook and we've asked them to reverse their decision as soon as possible to return the women's revolution its main mouthpiece! Zuckerberg! Femen is not pornography!Hmmmm......'Also sprach Femen'.Read the full story here.

Major report into racism on Facebook release.

Major report into racism on Facebook release.HT: IsraelMatzav.A major report into racism on Facebook is to be released on Thursday morning in Australia. Here is the press release that's accompanying the report.

On the International Day for the Elimination of Racial Discrimination, March 21st, the Online Hate Prevention Institute (OHPI) will release a major new report into Racism on Facebook.

The report documents systemic shortcomings and significant blind spots. The new report focuses on antisemitic content and follows a major report last year into racism on Facebook and other platforms against Indigenous Australians. This report shows Facebook having difficulty identifying racism directly based on Nazi propaganda; consistently refusing to recognize as hate speech pages promoting the famous antisemitic forgery used to inspire mass killings, the Protocols of the Elders of Zion; and failing to take action on new antisemitism which uses Holocaust inversion to paint Israel and Jews as Nazis. These blind spots can be added to the known difficulty Facebook has in recognizing Holocaust denial as Hate Speech.

The report provides documentation of 47 items, most of them Facebook pages, and gives visual examples of the hate encountered. Of the 47 items, some of which date back to October, 15 of these items are still available on Facebook.

OHPI’s CEO, Dr Andre Oboler, explains: “The items that remain online are there as a result of a deliberate decision by Facebook to dismiss the concerns that have been expressed to them over these items. Having shared an early draft of our new report with Facebook at the start of February, none of the items discussed in this report should take Facebook by surprise.

The decision not to take action on certain types of content, like the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, is clearly a matter of Facebook policy, and not an isolated mistake by junior staff.”

Dr Oboler added that, “Facebook will have seen almost all the images in this report before, the major exception is a picture of Mark Zuckerberg with the comment, from another user: ‘someone should cut his head off!’ This content is still online, it is on a page OHPI previously recommended Facebook close. As I think of the Journalist Daniel Pearl, killed in exactly this way, simply for being a Jew, I must ask Mark Zuckerberg to do a little more; if not for his own sake, for that of others.”

On this International Day for the Elimination of Racial Discrimination, OHPI is please to share this important work with the public, disappointed such hate still exists, and hopeful that our recommendation can help make a difference if Facebook chooses to adopt them. The report will be released by 10am, Melbourne time, at: http://ohpi.org.au/recognizing-hate-speech-antisemitism-on-facebook/ 
 And not a mention of 'Islamophobia.' Hmmm. Read the full story here.

You might be a psychopath if you don't join Facebook? Some employers and psychologists say staying away from social media is 'suspicious'.

You might be a psychopath if you don't join Facebook? Some employers and psychologists say staying away from social media is 'suspicious'.(DM).Facebook has become such a pervasive force in modern society that increasing numbers of employers, and even some psychologists, believe people who aren’t on social networking sites are ‘suspicious.’

The German magazine Der Taggspiegel went so far as to point out that accused theater shooter James Holmes and Norwegian mass murder Anders Behring Breivik have common ground in their lack of Facebook profiles.
On a more tangible level, Forbes.com reports that human resources departments across the country are becoming more wary of young job candidates who don’t use the site.

Normal: Facebook has become so pervasive in this culture that not having a profile is considered ‘abnormal’

The common concern among bosses is that a lack of Facebook could mean the applicant’s account could be so full of red flags that it had to be deleted.
Slate.com tech reporter Farhad Manjoo wrote in an advice column that young people shouldn’t date anyone who isn’t on Facebook.'If you’re of a certain age and you meet someone who you are about to go to bed with, and that person doesn’t have a Facebook page, you may be getting a false name. It could be some kind of red flag,' he says.
Manjoo points out that these judgements don't apply to older people who were already productive adults before social media became widespread.
The tech news site Slashdot summed up Der Taggspiegel's story about social networking as 'not having a Facebook account could be the first sign that you are a mass murderer.'Hmmmmm......Is Obama or the rest of the family on facebook?Read the full story here.

Video - " Thank You Suckers! " - Mark Zuckerberg Awarded CIA Surveillance Medal.

Want to disable Facebook facial recognition? Read this.

Want to disable Facebook facial recognition? Read this.(NakedSecurity).Facebook is acquiring facial recognition firm Face.com, for an estimated $60 million.Facebook already uses Face.com's facial recognition technology to help it put a name to faces in photos uploaded to the social network. Now, with the acquisition of Face.com, the technology is coming in house. So what does Facebook facial recognition actually do? There are billions of photographs on Facebook's servers. As your Facebook friends upload their pictures, Facebook will try to determine if any of the photos look like you. And if it finds what it believes to be a match, it may urge one of your Facebook friends to tag the photo with your name. That's what Facebook does with its facial recognition database right now. But nobody knows what it might do with it in the future. Questions which are raised by Facebook's facial recognition capabilities include how securely the database of information is stored, and how else might Facebook try to use it - including whether they might use the data to make money. So.. How can you disable Facebook's facial recognition technology? Sadly, you can't.Read the full story here.

Report : "More lesbians than straight women in Singapore, Malaysia".

Report : "More lesbians than straight women in Singapore, Malaysia".(BM).SINGAPORE: While most observers have discounted the online study of Facebook ads that revealed there are more lesbians than straight women in Singapore and Malaysia, the information does put forward a number of questions.
Flocations, a travel start-up company in Singapore, ran tests on targeting a number of women with Facebook ads and the results were not what they expected, the company said in a press release.
They discovered that in Singapore and Malaysia, the number of “women interested in women” far outnumber those who are “interested in men”. In Singapore, that’s 14,800 to 6,100. The difference is even greater in Malaysia, at 65,160 to 8,480 (with several other parameters added in).
However, the figures in the United States seem pretty normal, with 1.6 million showing an interest in men, while a tenth of that indicating an interest in women.
The company said that “this is not enough information” to determine overall trends, necessarily in the country, but it highlights the ongoing struggle facing women in Southeast Asia, say activists and women’s rights advocates.
“I think there is a lot to the concept ‘women seeking women’,” began Nora Ismail, an Indonesian women’s sexual health researcher based in Sinagapore. She told Bikyamasr.com that a lot of those women may not be lesbians, “but are searching for satisfaction they couldn’t get with their husbands.“And to put it bluntly, they want to be aroused and have good sex. But to look for an affair with a man would be detrimental if caught in society, but with women it is more tolerated,” she added.
Others tend to agree. One Singapore housewife said she has had affairs with other women and that when her husband found out, “he didn’t really get angry. He was more interested.”While the study shows that online, at least via Facebook ads, women in Singapore and Malaysia appear to be searching for other women.Hmmm......Islam is the state religion and most dominant religion of Malaysia. About 61 percent of the total population of Malaysia practice Islam.Read the full story here.

Facebook's 25 staffers to Handle Requests for User Information from Law Enforcement.

Facebook's 25 staffers to Handle Requests for User Information from Law Enforcement.(Forbes).If Facebook were a country, it would be the third largest in the world and Joe Sullivan would be head of Homeland Security.
The dirt Facebook holds on its users makes it as attractive to cops as to criminals. Among Sullivan’s responsibilities are daily decisions about how much user information to give to law enforcement when it comes calling. And, as a digital nation’s DHS, Sullivan and his team actively police the site for user data worth volunteering to the authorities. Still, he says, “we err on the side of not sharing and have picked quite a few fights over the years.”
Users may have constitutional rights against unreasonable searches by the state, but the only Facebook Constitution is the company’s dense terms of service agreement.
It focuses on prohibitions for users, such as bullying, creating fake accounts or uploading images of violence or nudity, as well as Facebook’s rights to intellectual property uploaded to the site. It doesn’t spell out when Facebook may dive into data for ­policing purposes or hand it over to the authorities.
Should Facebook give users a Miranda warning before they sign up—that anything they post and do on the site can and will be used against them?
Most of his security team is based at headquarters in Menlo Park, Calif. and sits at clusters of desks close enough to take dead aim at one another with Nerf darts. Broken roughly into five parts, the team has 10 people review new features being launched, 8 monitor the site for bugs and privacy flaws, 25 handle requests for user information from law enforcement, and a few build criminal and civil cases against those who misbehave on the network; the rest are handling security situations as they arise and acting as digital bodyguards protecting Facebook staffers (“We have someone trying to hack an employee’s account every day,” says Sullivan). If you include the physical security guards who patrol Facebook headquarters, Sullivan’s team numbers 70 people.Read the full story here.

'Why I've taken Google, Facebook to court'

                                           Mr. Rai who filed the unusual lawsuit, is editor of
a Hindi and Urdu language weekly tabloid in Delhi. He studied law in college in
the north Indian city of Lucknow.




                                




NEW DELHI — (AFP).Google and Facebook on Monday fought in the Delhi High Court to quash criminal charges that they are responsible for obscene online content. The companies, which are set to be joined in their action by Microsoft and Yahoo!, have filed petitions asking for a lower court case brought by a local journalist against 21 Internet firms to be stayed.
On Friday, the Indian government gave its sanction for the firms to be tried for serious crimes such as fomenting religious hatred and spreading social discord, offences that could land company directors in prison.
Lawyers acting for the search engine and social networking site told Delhi High Court Justice Suresh Kait that they were not responsible for material posted by users on their platforms."Search engines such as Google cannot control websites being searched by users," Google-India's lawyer Neraj Kishan Kaul told the packed court."(The) summons reflects a complete lack of understanding in how it works," Kaul told the judge, referring to a summons issued to the Internet companies by a lower criminal court on December 23.Kaul also insisted that Internet companies could not be held responsible for filtering content."There are serious constitutional issues of freedom of speech," the lawyer said.Facebook India's lawyer Sidharth Luthra said evidence presented against the defendants by the complainant, 39-year-old journalist Vijay Rai, needed to be "tested" before it could be admitted at trial.Rai has submitted a compact disc of evidence he says was taken from the Internet that risks causing religious strife."Unlike search engines, Facebook is a closed group and even as we trying to create a global community we try and respect local laws," Luthra told the judge, adding that Facebook has safeguards against abuse and obscenity.Google and Facebook's lawyers told the court that they act to remove content deemed to contravene laws in the countries in which they operate.Read the full story here.

MFS - The Other News

                        Morning Posting.

• Updated !Earthquakes in the last 24 hours in the world seismic activity Japan 5.0 and Vanuatu 5.2! More info here.

• Japan : For the most accurate info on the nuclear disaster go to : Paul Langley's Nuclear History Blog.Here.

• American-born al-Qaeda cleric Awlaki killed: Yemeni defense ministry.(AlArabiya).Anwar al-Awlaki, a U.S.-born Muslim cleric linked to al-Qaeda’s Yemen-based wing, was reportedly killed, along with several of his companions, the Yemeni Defense Ministry said on Friday.“The terrorist Anwar al-Awlaki has been killed along with some of his companions,” it said in a statement sent by text message to journalists.The ministry did not elaborate on the circumstances of Awlaki’s death in a statement released to the media.However, tribal sources told an Al Arabiya correspondent that two cars suspected of carrying Awlaki and his companions between the province of al-Jawaf Ma’rib were targeted.Awlaki had been implicated in a botched attempt to bomb a U.S.-bound plane in 2009.U.S. authorities have branded him a “global terrorist” but Sana’a had previously appeared reluctant to act against him.Eloquent in English and Arabic, Awlaki encouraged attacks on the United States and was seen as a man who could draw in more al-Qaeda recruits from western countries.Washington had linked Awlaki to a shooting rampage in November 2009 at a U.S. army base and to the botched Christmas Day attack that year on a U.S. airliner.A Yemeni court, under mounting U.S. pressure to fight al-Qaeda after a foiled air cargo bomb plot in late October last year, had ordered his arrest by any means for his alleged al-Qaeda links.“Awlaki is a problem,” U.S. President Barack Obama’s counter-terrorism adviser John Brennan said in January, 2010. “He’s clearly a part of al-Qaeda in (the) Arabian Peninsula (AQAP). He’s not just a cleric.”Brennan directly accused Awlaki of having links with Major Nidal Hasan who is suspected of shooting dead 13 people at Fort Hood military base in Texas, and who is set to face trial in a military court on March 5, 2012.Awlaki may also have had contact with Nigerian student Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, accused of trying to blow up the Christmas Day plane, Brennan said.In July, 2010, Washington placed Awlaki on its list of terrorism supporters, freezing his financial assets and banning any transactions with him.In May last year, the United States said it was actively hunting Awlaki.“He has an agenda just like al-Qaeda to strike targets in Yemen, throughout the world including here in the United States,” the White House spokesman said.But an Awlaki relative has insisted the imam “is not a fighter of al-Qaeda.”“He is just a preacher,” he said.Awlaki comes from a well-off family. His father is a former minister of agriculture and was the president of the university of Sana’a.He was born in New Mexico in 1971, attended school in Yemen and graduated from Colorado State University in civil engineering. He also holds a master’s degree in education leadership from San Diego State University.He made a name for himself delivering sermons in English in mosques across the United States, where he also worked for a charity association founded by Yemeni cleric Abdul Majeed al-Zendani, whom the U.S. government has identified as a “global terrorist.”Awlaki was arrested in Yemen in 2006 for his role in kidnapping the son of a rich Yemeni family and demanding ransom money “to finance al-Qaeda,” Yemeni security sources said.Two years later he was set free on condition that he report to police daily, but he fled to the eastern Shabwa region. Awlaki went to ground after an air raid on December 24, 2009 struck a meeting of al-Qaeda leaders in Wadi Rafadh, in Shabwa province, killing 34.In May this year, a Yemeni tribal source said Awlaki narrowly escaped a U.S. drone attack three days after American commandos killed al-Qaeda chief Osama bin Laden.The strike in Shabwa was the first reported U.S. targeting of other key figures in the terror network after a commando raid killed bin Laden inside Pakistan on May 2.Awlaki was married with five children.Read the full story here.More here.

• Pelosi: Total Coincidence My Brother-In-Law Secured $737 Million Federal Loan For His “Green” Energy Firm.(SFGate).SantaMonica — Department of Energy officials and House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi have slammed as absurd reports from conservative blogs that inflated the connection between Pelosi’s brother-in-law and a Nevada solar power project that received a $737 million federal government loan guarantee this week. . . .Ronald Pelosi joined Pacific Corporate Group in April, roughly three years after it had invested in SolarReserve, a company official confirmed Thursday. The official said Ronald Pelosi doesn’t stand to profit or lose from the firm’s stake in SolarReserve because he doesn’t have an interest in the fund that made that investment.The Pacific Corporate Group official said Thursday that no one from the firm had contacted the White House in connection with the application.“This is an absurd suggestion,” Department of Energy press secretary Damien LaVera said of any connection between Ronald Pelosi and the loan guarantee announcement. “Many months of rigorous technical, financial and legal due diligence was done by nonpolitical career employees to scrutinize every aspect of this transaction — over a period of years.Nancy Pelosi, at an event Thursday in San Francisco to drum up support for President Obama’s jobs plan, told The Chronicle that she was not familiar with the solar firm, its federal loan application or any association her brother-in-law had with the firm.Ronald Pelosi is “a great guy,” she said, adding that she was sorry he had been “dragged into this.”Hmmmmm.....Oooooh look another Unicorn, lead by a leprechaun.Read the full story here.

• Don’t tell anyone what Barack Hussein Obama is promising the Palestinians behind closed doors.(KleinOnline)By Aaron Klein The Obama administration told the Palestinian Authority it cannot significantly help advance a Palestinian state until after the 2012 presidential elections, a top PA official told KleinOnline.The official, however, said the U.S. will press for a Palestinian state quickly if President Obama is reelected.“The main message we received from the U.S. is that nothing will happen in a serious way (toward a Palestinian state) before the 2012 elections,” said the official.“Obama will not accept the Palestinian request of a state at the (United Nations) Security Council and cannot help on the ground for now,” said the official.“We were told to wait for Obama’s reelection, and that before then nothing serious will happen for a state,” the official continued. “But after the reelection, the U.S. said the schedule will be short to reach a Palestinian state.”Obama’s policies toward Israel have been highlighted in local and national campaigns, with many Democrats fearing voter turnoff due to the perception the president is anti-Israel.Obama’s treatment of Israel was a significant issue in the recent election of Republican Bob Turner to former Congressman Anthony Weiner’s seat in a district that had not elected a GOP candidate since 1923.Also, presidential contenders like Rick Perry and Michele Bachmann have been strongly criticizing Obama on Israel.Hmmmm......Why is he sure that he will be reelected?Read the full story here.

• And, So It Begins: Unions and Professional Left To Join #OccupyWallSt Protesters.(BigGovernment).On Saturday, September 17, Marxist protesters (NeoComs) planned to take over Wall Street. While they had wanted to have some 20,000 protesters come to New York, converge on and stay for months in order to ‘tear down the machine,’ their numbers were far fewer, and their goal of occupying Wall St. never materialized as police relegated them to Zuccotti Park a block away.In talking to several on the first day of their protest, their inspiration seemed to be a Marxist blend of Communism and Anarchism, sprinkled with a tinge of comic-book (or Hollywood) flare from the character ‘V’ from ‘V for Vendetta.’ By Day Three, however, they made their demands more clear, calling for the seizure of workplaces and schools, as well as the ‘de-privatization of everything.’Over the last two weeks, their numbers have dwindled to just a few hundred and there have been well over a hundred arrests. The protesters have been ordered to remove their Guy Fawkes masks and, for the most part, have set up a campground in downtown Manhattan, with take out food called in for them from around the nation.While they’ve had visits from such Left-wing luminaries as Michael Moore, Susan Sarandon, Roseanne Barr, and Dr. Cornell West, they have not had as much coverage from the mainstream media nor have they had the support of the real jackboots in the fight for a Marxist revolution—today’s union bosses.

That is, they haven’t had union support until now.

On Thursday morning, via GatewayPundit, the New York-based Transit Workers of America Local 100 reportedly voted to support the Wall St. protesters. Local 100 is the same union that represents many of New York’s train and bus lines and the union that disrupted New Yorkers’ holiday shopping season in 2005 by going out on strike for three days in late December.

According to the Village Voice:

We spoke to TWU Local 100’s spokesman Jim Gannon, who told us that the executive board voted unanimously last night at their regular monthly business meeting to support Occupy Wall Street. TWU Local 100 has 38,000 members, the vast majority of whom work in New York City transit. (TWU has 200,000 members in 22 states.) Gannon said, “A motion was brought up to endorse the protests’ goals; I don’t know why it took us so long to do it. Right now we’re going to be involved in a march and rally on the 5th of October. We’ll gather at City Hall at 4:30 and march to Zuccotti Park.”

In addition, a blog called Teamster Nation has been covering and supporting the Wall Street protesters since early on. [It is not believed, however, that Teamster Nation is the official blog for the Teamsters.]By late Thursday afternoon, New York magazine was reporting that several unions, as well as the more professional of the Left-wing extremist groups have joined in #Solidarity with the protesters:Next week, the site will welcome members of New York’s organized labor coalitions including the United Federation of Teachers, 32BJ SEIU, 1199 SEIU, Workers United, and Transport Workers Union Local 100, which voted unanimously last night to support the occupation. Other groups standing in solidarity include the Working Families party, the Coalition for the Homeless, and MoveOn.org.While it’s not known whether the unions will be sending over protesters to actually occupy Wall Street or, rather, just to march with the protesters and sing L’internationale for a few hours.

- Note: Hopefully, if the unions do march with protesters, the unions can finally teach the protesters the proper ending to “The workers, united, will never be…” [hint: It is not 'defeated' and it rhymes with 'united.']Regardless of the ultimate turn out, it does appear that the Masked Movement of Marxists is gathering some steam. Whether or not it becomes a Tahrir moment, as Al Gore would like to see, is debatable. However, as protesters are clearly upping the ante by enlisting the help of union bosses, it bears watching closelyHmmmm.......Obama's 'army on the march'?“.I bring reason to your ears, and, in language as plain as ABC, hold up truth to your eyes.” Thomas Paine, December 23, 1776.Read the full story here.

• Issa questions whether White House pressured Ford to pull ‘bailout’ ad.(TheHill).Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Calif.) said in a letter to the Ford Motor Company on Thursday that he was "deeply concerned about undue political pressure exerted by the White House."The House Oversight Committee chairman's letter comes on the heels of reports earlier this week that the company had pulled an ad critical of the auto bailout following a phone call with administration officials.Ford denied Tuesday that the ad was removed because of political pressure, saying instead that it had simply been taken out of their ad rotation as scheduled."For those asking, the ad ran as part of a planned rotation and continues to run online. It contains the unscripted comments of a Ford owner. We supported emergency government support for our competitors and continue to support the decisions we made," Ford said in a statement posted to their Facebook page.But Daniel Howes, a conservative columnist for The Detroit News, said that the advertisement was pulled "in response to White House questions." In the ad, a man is asked why "buying American" was important to him when choosing a Ford pickup.“I wasn’t going to buy another car that was bailed out by our government. I was going to buy from a manufacturer that’s standing on their own: win, lose or draw," he responds. "That’s what America is about, taking the chance to succeed and understanding when you fail that you gotta’ pick yourself up and go back to work. Ford is that company for me."The auto bailout, which primarily benefited Ford competitors Chrysler and GM, was a cornerstone of the president's stimulus plan and supported by Ford. But conservatives have been increasingly critical of the auto bailout and stimulus as a whole as unemployment continues to lag.In the letter to Ford, Issa asks for a full explanation of the company's decision to pull the advertisement and whether any current or former employee of the Obama administration, United Auto Workers, or Democratic Party contacted the company about the ad. Issa also asks whether the company temporarily pulled the ad from its YouTube page."Given the close relationship between American automobile manufacturers, workers unions and the U.S. Government in the wake of a series of loans, grants, and stimulus programs, accusations of White House interference in private business matters to support its own political and policy agendas are very serious issues and warrant a full airing of the facts," Issa wrote.The White House has denied that it asked Ford to remove the ad, with White House Communications Director Dan Pfeiffer calling Howes's column "false."Read the full story here.

• A 'Furious' revelation - Feds sold guns to drug gangs.(NYPost).By Michael A. Walsh. This just might be the smoking gun we’ve been waiting for to break the festering “Fast and Furious” gun-running scandal wide open: the Department of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives apparently ordered one of its own agents to purchase firearms with taxpayer money, and sell them directly to a Mexican drug cartel.Let that sink in: After months of pretending that “Fast and Furious” was a botched surveillance operation of illegal gun-running spearheaded by the ATF and the US attorney’s office in Phoenix, it turns out that the government itself was selling guns to the bad guys.Agent John Dodson was ordered to buy four Draco pistols for cash and even got a letter from his supervisor, David Voth, authorizing a federally licensed gun dealer to sell him the guns without bothering about the necessary paperwork.“Please accept this letter in lieu of completing an ATF Form 4473 for the purchase of four (4) CAI, Model Draco, 7.62x39 mm pistols, by Special Agent John Dodson,” read the June 1, 2010, letter. “These aforementioned pistols will be used by Special Agent Dodson in furtherance of performance of his official duties.”On orders, Dodson then sold the guns to known criminals, who first stashed them away and then -- deliberately unhindered by the ATF or any other agency -- whisked them off to Mexico.People were killed with Fast and Furious weapons, including at least two American agents and hundreds of Mexicans. And the taxpayers picked up the bill. So where’s the outrage? There’s none from the feds. Attorney General Eric Holder has consistently stonewalled Rep. Darrell Issa, Sen. Chuck Grassley and other congressional investigators.In a constantly evolving set of lies, Holder has denied knowing anything about Fast and Furious while at the same time withholding documents from the House and Senate committees looking into the mess while muzzling some witnesses and transferring others.Justice calls the allegations about Dodson’s operation “false.” But Grassley says that’s “a lie,” as he told Greta van Susteren the other day. “The ATF ordered this ATF agent to purchase these guns and in turn sell them, and supposedly track them,” he said. “But he was a lone wolf in the operation -- they wouldn’t give him any help for 24-hour surveillance.”So now the wheels have come off the official explanation for Fast and Furious. Of course, that explanation never made much sense in the first place.For one thing, the ATF had no authority to track the guns once they were in Mexico; for another, nobody bothered to inform the Mexicans of this intrusion on their national sovereignty.Further, we now know that a host of federal agencies (including the ATF, the FBI and IRS, Immigration and Customs Enforcement, the Drug Enforcement Administration and, very probably, top officials at the Department of Homeland Security) were all in the loop at various levels, as was the White House.So calling “Fast and Furious” a cockamamie operation gone wrong just isn’t going to cut it anymore.There are two possible explanations. The first is that the anti-gun Obama administration deliberately wanted American guns planted in Mexico in order to demonize American firearms dealers and gun owners. The operation was manufacturing “evidence” for the president’s false claim that we’re to blame for the appalling levels of Mexican drug-war violence. If this is true, then Holder and Co. have got to go -- and the trail needs to be followed no matter where it leads. For the federal government to seek to frame its own citizens is unconscionable.A second notion is that the CIA was behind the whole thing, which accounts for all the desperate wagon-circling. Under this theory, the Agency feared the los Zetas drug cartel was becoming too powerful and might even mount a coup against the Mexican government. So some 2,000 weapons costing more than $1.25 million were deliberately channeled to the rival Sinaloa cartel, which operates along the American border, to keep the Zetas in check.Of course, there’s a third explanation -- that both scenarios are true, and that those in charge of Fast and Furious saw an opportunity to shoot two birds with one Romanian-made AK Draco pistol.Time for a special prosecutor, who’s both fast and furious.Read the full story here.

• Crony Socialism: Obama Gives $737 Million to Solar Firm Linked to the Pelosi Clan.(GatewayPundit)By Jim Hoft.It’s as if Solyndra never happened. The Obama Administration is giving $737 million to a Tonopah Solar, a subsidiary of California-based SolarReserve. PCG is an investment partner with SolarReserve. Nancy Pelosi’s brother-in-law happens to be the number two man at PCG.Team Obama is spending $737 million to create 45 permanent jobs.The Hill reported, via Free Republic:

The Energy Department announced Wednesday that is has finalized a $737 million loan guarantee for a Nevada solar project.
The decision comes several weeks after a California-based solar manufacturer that received a $535 million loan guarantee from the Obama administration in 2009 filed for bankruptcy and laid off 1,100 workers, setting off a firestorm in Washington.
The $737 million loan guarantee will help finance construction of the Crescent Dunes Solar Energy Project, a 110-megawatt solar-power-generating facility in Nye County, Nev. The project is sponsored by Tonopah Solar, a subsidiary of California-based SolarReserve.
Crescent Dunes is the latest solar project to receive a loan guarantee from the Energy Department in recent weeks. The department announced a $1.2 billion loan guarantee to Abengoa Solar for a solar generation project in California and a $150 million loan guarantee to 1366 Technologies for a Massachusetts solar manufacturing project earlier this month.
The Energy Department says the project will result in 600 construction jobs and 45 permanent jobs.It looks like Rep. Allen West was right.
Obama IS trying to destroy the economy.Hmmmm....."Thugocracy" in it's natural Habitat?Read the full story here.

• Shock: ABC News Blows EnergyGate Wide Open.(DougRoss).As one commenter noted after reading ABC News' reporting on EnergyGate and Solyndra:

There seems to be an inverse relationship between the president's popularity and the mainstream media's willingness to tell stories that need to be told. As Obama continues to slide in the polls, I'm sure we will find out all kinds of stuff that may have helped 2.5 years ago. While its too late now for everyone impacted by this administration's economic choices, there's hope that everyone will vote more responsibly next year... on both sides of the aisle.

Here's the reader's digest version:

• Kaiser's company, Solyndra, received a $535 million loan guarantee from DOE.

• Kaiser's company received the loan before DOE received final copies of outside reviews of the deal.

• Steven Spinner raised $500,000 for Barack Obama's 2008 presidential campaign.

• Spinner then became one of Energy Secretary Steven Chu's key loan advisers.

• Spinner later wrote that he "helped oversee the more than $100 billion" in loans and guarantees.

• Spinner executed 29 stock trades in energy companeis while serving as a DOE adviser

• Spinner held shares in at least four companies that received DOE loans

• Spinner's wife's law firm collected around $2.5 million while representing Solyndra

• Spinner's wife's law firm also represented two other companies that received $34 million from DOE

• Steve Westly raised $500,000 for Barack Obama's 2008 presidential campaign.

• Westly then became one of Energy Secretary Steven Chu's key advisers.

• Westly was an investor in five firms that received half a billion dollars in energy grants and loans from DOE.

• John V. Roos raised $500,000 for Barack Obama's 2008 presidential campaign.

• Roos' law firm (the same firm Spinner's wife worked for) collected around millions from DOE-funded companies.

 Put simply, if the Climatards are willing to waste billions enriching themselves in the name of green energy, then they can't really take the global warming scam seriously.In other words, the green tech movement no more believes in the global warming grift than you or I.And, once again, where's the special prosecutor?Postscript: The Bush administration rejected Solyndra's requests for loans for two years citing incomplete documentation.Hmmmm.....The MOST CORRUPT Administration EVAH?Read the full story here.

• Dick Morris: Obama May Not Run in 2012.(ObamaFailBlog).Another political pundit is joining the "Obama May Not Run in 2012" bandwagon. You'll remember that I wrote this on September 14, 2011:

Obama won't run so he can avoid becoming the new Jimmy Carter. Jimmy Carter has never been held up as a thought-leader on the left, despite being drummed out of office at the relatively young age of 56. He's had 30 years to be the left's go-to guy for policy ideas. Instead, he is irrelevant. His irrelevance is directly tied to his landslide defeat in the 1980 election. Obama's ego couldn't handle that sort of defeat.Source: Obama Fail Blog

And now, Dick Morris - who is more politically astute than most pundits, in my opinion - is starting to think it may happen:

In an interview with conservative radio icon Sean Hannity, former President Clinton adviser and campaign manager Dick Morris stated that, after speaking with a Democratic strategist, he thinks it is “very possible” that President Obama might acquiesce to requests from the Democratic leadership in Congress and bow out of the 2012 race, leaving the door open for him to return sometime in the future.“I asked a top Democratic strategist the other day and he thought that it was possible that, in January, Harry Reid comes to Obama and says, ‘Look you cost us control of the House last year, you’re going to cost us control of the Senate this year. For the good of the party you have to step aside’” said Morris.Source: CNS News

Morris also mentions that a decision not to run in 2012 doesn't mean Obama will retire from politics. Rather, it would be the beginning of a larger strategy:

Morris added that he thinks that this strategy could also set up Obama for a presidential run in a later election.“The twenty second amendment does not preclude non-consecutive terms, he is young, (he could) preserve himself as a possible candidate down the road” said Morris. “We’ve seen how Bill Clinton is much more popular now then he was when he was leaving office, same with Jimmy Carter.”Source: CNS News

Once again, I wrote basically the same thing in "Eight Reasons Why Obama Won't Run in 2012":

4.) Obama's legacy will benefit from stepping down. You can bet Obama will blame his decision not to run on everyone but himself. He will let his supporters cry "racism!" while he simply stands by, voting "present" by saying nothing. There will be endless discussions and debates about what went wrong, what could've been done differently. His supporters won't have to explain away a landslide defeat. Instead, they can focus on how things could've worked if Obama just had a little more time. We just weren't ready for a man of such greatness!

5.) Obama will cash in on his non-defeat. There will be books. Speaking tours. Television appearances. More books. Obama will become the ideological equivalent of William F. Buckley for the left. Meanwhile, he'll be raking in the dough from his unfortunate political demise and his increased gravitas. If you doubt this, look at Paul Krugman. That guy is a complete moron who likely has never had a real job in his life and yet he's held up as a sort of economic oracle. Obama could do that and then some. He will be the former President of the United States of America, after all.

8.) Obama will be back. He'll only be 51 years old when he leaves office. After eight years of Hillary, he can come back. Or he could spend a few more years rallying unions, causing riots, writing books and revealing his true hard left ideological views. Either way, he'll be back. And by then, we be so much closer to full-on European socialism and so many people will believe Obama was driven out by racism, America will buy in again.
Read and see the full story here.

• Obama administration 'awards' $5 million in “performance bonuses” for Food Stamp Sign Up .(JW).In its quest to promote taxpayer-funded entitlement programs, the Obama Administration has actually rewarded one state with a $5 million bonus for its efficiency in adding food-stamp recipients to already bulging rolls.It’s part of the administration’s campaign to eradicate “food insecure households” by improving access and increasing participation in the government’s Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP). Incidentally, the program was recently changed to SNAP to eliminate the stigma that comes with a name like food stamps. Just a few months ago the federal agency that administers the program, the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA), launched a multi-million-dollar initiative to recruit more food-stamp participants even though the number of recipients has skyrocketed in the last few years.This week Oregon officials bragged that the USDA has given the state $5 million in “performance bonuses” for ensuring that people eligible for food benefits receive them and for its “swift processing of applications.” The money comes on the heels of a separate $1.5 million award from the feds for making “accurate payments of food stamp benefits to clients.” So welfare recipients are clients? .It marks the fifth consecutive year that Oregon has been “recognized” by the federal government for “exceptional administration” of the entitlement program, according to the announcement posted on the state’s Department of Human Services web site. The state official who runs SNAP assures that her staff will “continue working very hard to exceed expectations” so that Oregonians can “put healthy foods on their table quickly.”Could this be why the number of food-stamp beneficiaries in Oregon has increased dramatically in the last few years? Since 2008 the state has seen a 60% boost in the number of food-stamp recipients, which means that more than 780,000 people (one out of five Oregonians) get groceries compliments of Uncle Sam.As if this weren’t bad enough, the feds are also giving the state a two-year grant to test an “innovative approach” to the food-stamp “client eligibility review process.” This will make it even easier for people to get food stamps because it grants state officials a waiver that allows them to grant the benefit without interviewing the candidate.Hmmmm......."Creating Jobs is our priority"?Read the full story here.

• New Homeland Security Fence to Prevent Illegal Crossings… On Canadian Border.(SHTF).Amid the recent cancellation of a virtual fence on the southern Arizona-Mexico border that cost taxpayers an estimated $1 billion dollars and would have curbed the migration of some of the 400,000 to 1 million southern migrants yearly, the government is confident that, while they can’t stop the illegal inflows from Mexico, they are prepared to effectively tackle the Canadian dilemma head on.With all of the violence, drug smuggling, free health care, education vouchers, and black market jobs stemming from illegal crossings along the Canadian border, it only makes sense that the Department of Homeland Security and the U.S. Customs and Border Protection agency is preparing to invest billions of dollars to secure the 4000 mile long demarcation point that separates Canada from the United States.The United States is looking at building fences along the border with Canada to help keep out terrorists and other criminals.The U.S. Customs and Border Protection agency has proposed the use of “fencing and other barriers” on the 49th parallel to manage “trouble spots where passage of cross-border violators is difficult to control.”The border service is also pondering options including a beefed-up technological presence through increased use of radar, sensors, cameras, drones and vehicle scanners.U.S. Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano noted last month the challenges of monitoring the vast, sparsely populated northern border region. She stressed manpower, but also a greater reliance on technology.Relatively speaking, Washington has focused more energy and resources on tightening security along the border with Mexico than at the sprawling one with Canada.But that may be changing.A U.S. Government Accountability Office report recently warned that only a small portion of the border with Canada is properly secure. It said U.S. border officers control just 50 kilometres of the 6,400-kilometre boundary.…the agency would use fencing and other barriers such as trenches to control movement and sometimes delay people trying to sneak across the border, increasing the likelihood they could be caught, says the report.It doesn’t provide details about what the fences might look like, but suggests they would be designed to blend into the environment and “complement the natural landscape.”Predator drones, camouflage fencing, and Janet Napolitano. It’s on now.Sorry Canada, we’ve had enough, and we’re not going to take it any more.Read the full story here.

• Iranian-Afghan “Parents” Hide Child in a Suitcase,suspicion of'organ traffiking'.(KTG). That’s unbelievable! A pair of foreigners hid an eight-year-old boy in a suitcase and loaded it into the storage space of a coach bus! Operators of the bus and passengers were more than stunned when Igoumenitsa Port Authorities asked the bus personnel to open the suitcase: A child was curled inside the luggage. The bag belonged to an Iranian with German passport. The man was accompanied by an Afghan woman who had with her another child, two years old.There is suspicion that the horror transport has to do with human organs trafficking.The couple is being interrogated separately from each other, so authorities will find out why the child was in the suitcase and if the child belongs to them.Igoumenits Port Authorities. Western Greece, acted upon a tip-off, says Greek newspaper Proto Thema on its online edition. It was a miracle that the child survived his enclosure and did not die of suffocation.Read the full story here.

• Video - Liberals Try to Remove Anti-Obama Signs in New Orleans.(MRCTV).It's a story as old as time it seems. Liberal comes across speech they don't like. Liberal does everything it can to silence said speech.A New Orleans resident posted a couple signs on his own private property criticizing President Obama. Some liberals wondered by and didn't like that the signs made fun of President Obama. These liberals freaked out so much that the media, police, and a bunch of liberal politicians got involved.In fact, city councilwoman Susan Guidry hates this guy's expression of his opinion so much that she openly admits that she will use ANY technicality she could find to squash it. She literally goes through a list of backhanded attacks she might use against the homeowner while being interviewed by WWLTV saying "whatever we can use we will". Of course she is reportedly just "concerned about public safety".Now, I'm not positive what country, or planet for that matter, these liberals live on but I've always been under the impression that here in America freedom of speech was a protected right given to us by God and protected from infringement by the constitution. Heck, I'm not even the kind of person who would put up big provocative political signs on my property (and I don't agree with everything on those signs) but I am certainly the kind of person who will push back against those who try to drum up bogus technicalities in order to infringe on speech they don't like.If this attack on free speech goes unabated and succeeds it will be yet another dark day for the USA.Read and see the full story here.

• Congressmen Want FTC Probe of Facebook.(Politico).Lawmakers are asking the FTC to investigate Facebook following reports that the social network has been collecting data even from users logged out of their profiles.The concerns from Capitol Hill came Wednesday in a letter by Reps. Ed Markey (D-Mass.) and Joe Barton (R-Texas), who have repeatedly questioned Facebook’s privacy practices.The duo expressed deep concern with the findings of one Australian security blogger, who discovered this week Facebook was gathering data even from logged out users whenever they visited Web pages that feature the social network’s signature “Like” button.Facebook has maintained it never tracked its users’ browsing habits and sought only to use information it collected for security and statistical purposes. And even though Facebook has since worked to address users’ concerns, Markey and Barton said in their latest letter they “remain concerned about the privacy implications for Facebook’s 800 million subscribers.”They further asked the FTC to detail anything the agency has already done to examine Facebook’s use of cookies.“As co-chairs of the Congressional Bi-Partisan Privacy Caucus, we believe that tracking user behavior without their consent or knowledge raises serious privacy concerns,” the lawmakers wrote.Read the full story here.

• Turkey to Iran ....let's help each other get the Kurds.(InfidelBloggers).By Epaminondas.If there ARE any natural allies for the USA (and Israel) it’s the Kurds, victims of Iran, Turkey, Iraq for HUNDREDS OF YEARS of oppression, repression, and pogroms.Israel, are you LISTENING? Erdogan and his islamist people are NOT untouchable or unreachable on their arrogant march. Iran IS AFRAID of internal, and genuine threats.Turkey woos Iran for joint strike on Kurdish insurgents.Read the full story here.

• Russian aircraft carrier to carry out exercises in Med Sea.(HurriyetDaily).Russia is sending its northern fleet led by the country's only aircraft carrier, the "Admiral Kuznetsov," to the Mediterranean Sea for exercises, daily Hürriyet reported on its website Thursday.The Kuznetsov will sail the waters in the Barents Sea for a week and carry out drills there first, the report said.The carrier will then start a three-month voyage to the Mediterranean Sea via the Northeast Atlantic. It will be joined by anti-submarine ship "Admiral Chabanenko" and other vessels.It was not yet decided which ports the ships would visit but it was possible that the fleet could take part in military exercises with fleets of other countries in the region while it is in the Mediterranean.The last time the Admiral Kuznetsov sailed in Mediterranean waters was in the winter of 2008-2009, when it visited ports in Turkey and Syria.Hmmmm......"May you live in interesting times?Read the full story here.

• Sultans and numbers.(HurriyetDaily).By Burak Bekdil.In an interview with CNN last weekend, Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan argued that a) there have been just a few rockets targeting Israel, and b) a great number of Palestinians have been killed by Israel. Here is the original transcript from that interview:

Erdoğan: “Here’s what’s being said – and this is upsetting to hear. They say that Palestine is bombing and disturbing the people of Israel and many Israelis have been killed. I’m very clear in my remarks; I would like to see accurate statistics of how many Israelis have been killed by the bombs thrown by Palestinians or with the rockets that were launched by them. Ten, 20, 100, 200? How many? Please document it. Let us know. But on the other hand, we know that hundreds of thousands of Palestinians were killed. Only as a result of the Gaza attack, thousands of people were killed. These are very clear remarks.”Hundreds of thousands of Palestinians? Sounds like coffeehouse chat in Konya. Mathematically – and simplistically – speaking, “hundreds of thousands” should mean any figure between 200,000 and 900,000, or an average of 550,000. Considering Palestinian demographics, one merely feels like pleading “Have mercy, Mr. Prime Minister!” It should be an elementary qualification of a statesman to have a fair notion of order of magnitude when making speeches supported by numbers.

First, the “peacemakers:” Here is a rich assortment of Palestinian/Arab charity and peace groups that have operated in the past four decades, with philanthropic missions explicitly revealed by their stage names:

Hamas, the Palestinian Liberation Organization, the Palestinian Islamic Jihad, Fatah, the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine-General Command, the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine, the Abu Nidal Organization, the Black September Organization, the Palestinian Liberation Front, the Arab Liberation Front, As-Sa’iqa, the Palestinian Popular Struggle Front, the Palestinian Arab Front, Tanzim, Force 17, Fatah Special Operations Group, the Ahmed Abu Reish Brigade, the al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigade, the Army of Islam, Jund Ansar Allah, Fatah al-Islam, Jund al-Sham and Jaljalat.

Mr. Erdoğan is free to think that all of these groups have been formed to send flowers and candy to Israeli soldiers – yes, soldiers, since most of these militant groups claim there are no Israeli civilians. Women? They are soldiers who serve in the Israeli army. Elderly women? They once served in the Israeli army. Children and babies? They will serve in the Israeli army when they grow up.

Since Mr. Erdoğan seems to be in love with numbers, allow me to mention a few here:

- Over 7,000 rockets have been fired into the Israeli territory since Israel withdrew from the Gaza Strip in 2005. Perhaps Mr. Erdoğan believes these rockets came from the FARC in Colombia.

- Arab deaths in the Arab-Israeli conflict since 1950 total 46,000, including 11,000 during Israel’s War of Independence; or less than 50,000, including fatalities during and after Operation Cast Lead.

- Between the Oslo Accords in 1993 and July 2005, over 400 members of the Israeli security forces and 821 civilians were killed by Palestinians, mainly in suicide bombings, including not-yet-ranking soldiers aged 1-15.

- During the Second Intifada alone, 1,137 Israelis were killed by Palestinians.

- Between 2000 and 2010, 496 Israeli civilians (sorry again, I mean soldiers!) were killed in Israel along with another 242 in the Gaza Strip and West Bank. In the same period, 664 Palestinians were killed by Palestinians.

- Since the 1982 Lebanon War, 7,000-10,000 Palestinians have been killed in intra-fighting among various Palestinian charity groups.

No doubt “order of magnitude” should be taught at Turkish schools, including imam schools. I cannot decide whether Ottoman or Turkish sultans are better with numbers.Hmmmm.....Hear,Hear!Read the full story here.

• Israeli and Turkish air fighters play hard poker over Plot 12.(Hellasfrappe).Israel decided to play hard poker today and sent a fighter outside of Kastelorizo in response to sending Turkish intelligence aircraft that flew a few miles out of Israeli airspace! Immediately two Israeli fighter jets took off from the Israeli base to the region over the Rizokarpaso and informed the Office of Civil Aviation of Cyprus and not the FIR Ercan. The aircraft continued their flights to the Gulf of Mersin and flew parallel to the coast of southern Turkey just 15 miles up Phoenicia near Kastelorizo! The Israeli fighters followed the regulations stipulated by the FLIR Nicosia and certainly not those of Ercan which illegally considers the airspace over the occupied part of the island as its own, a report on defencenet said adding that when the situation was under control, the fighters headed south and returned to Israel. Shortly afterwards a Turkish F-16 tried to reach Israel but immediately 6 Israeli fighter jets chased it out of the area!Parallel to all of this, we also found out today that there is a large military presence in the region of "Venus" from the US, which consists of naval vessels of the 6th Fleet. Reports say they are now permanently stationed in the Mediterranean and apparently patrol the area where Nobel is doing the drilling, as well as monitor spy planes and electronic warfare. Also in the area are Israeli military forces.Even Russian ships, stationed in Syria, have incorporated patrol routes in their routine around plot 12 or "Venus" as have British naval forces and forces of UNIFIL as well. It is worth noting that the Cyprus Republic has committed a range of 5 miles radius around the plot 12. The "Piri Reis" actually sailed within 40-60 km south of Akrotiri in Limassol and the closest distance it reached from the Noble Ferrington platform was reported to be some 45 km, a separate report on onalert said. At the same time Turkish fighters and helicopters also made their appearance west of Paphos and in Akamas. In any case, and despite the violations recorded by FIR Nicosia, no harassment was reported.In other news, Amos Gilad, the Director of the Political and Military Office of Israel’s Ministry of Defence made a rush, and unscheduled visit to Athens today, in order to meet with Greek defence ministry officials, Athens press reports said. It is expected that the main subject of discussion cantered around the tension in the Eastern Mediterranean.Under Creative Commons License: Attribution.Read the full story here. More here.

• Iranian Interior Minister: Pakistan's Enemy Is Iran's Enemy.(Memri).Amid the U.S.-Pakistani crisis, Iranian Interior Minister Mostafa Mohammad Najjar has said that Pakistan would not be left alone in any eventuality, saying that Pakistan’s enemy is the enemy of Iran, according to an Urdu-language daily. The Iranian minister expressed the Iranian position at a meeting with his Pakistani counterpart Rahman Malik, according to a report in the Urdu-language daily Roznama Jang.The two ministers also discussed various bilateral issues, including security cooperation, combating drug trafficking, money laundering, and organized crime.Hmmmm.....well that didden't take long.Read the full story here.

• Muslim Attacks Belgian Policeman as his Wife is Booked for Wearing Burka.(IslamversusEurope).On Tuesday afternoon, in the Saint-Josse district of Brussels - a heavily immigrant-colonised neighbourhood - a 37-year-old Muslim was walking down the street with his burka-clad wife. Wearing the burka has been illegal in Belgium since the middle of July, so two policemen approached them and proceeded to carry out an identity check on the woman. The Muslim male objected vehemently to what they were doing. He struck one of the police officers and ordered his wife back to the house. Then he threatened to kill the police if they continued to pursue his wife. The male Muslim was arrested and charged with "insubordination" and "wilfully causing injuries". His wife is going to be fined for wearing the burka.Read the full story here.GoogleTranslated page here.