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Ruth King

Triple Suicide Bombing in Chad Kills at Least 27 Attack was carried out by three females, says police spokesman

DAKAR, Senegal—A triple suicide bombing at a market on an island in Lake Chad has killed at least 27 people and injured 90 others, a Chad security official said.

Paul Manka, a Chad police spokesman, said three females carried out Saturday’s attack on Koulfoua Island.

Gen. Banyaman Cossingar, Chad gendarmerie director general, confirmed the attack, saying Nigerian Islamic extremist group Boko Haram is suspected.

The Lake Chad region, which straddles the borders of Chad, Cameroon, Niger and Nigeria, has been regularly targeted by the extremists. Chad’s government has already imposed a state of emergency in the area.

Terrorist Threat Has ‘Evolved’ Into a New Phase, Obama Says President asks Congress to vote on war resolution against Islamic State, ban people on no-fly list from buying guns By Damian Paletta And Carol E. Lee

President Barack Obama used a rare Oval Office address on Sunday to lay out his administration’s approach for dealing with the rising threat of domestic terrorism in the wake of last week’s San Bernardino massacre, calling for new gun control measures and tightened visa application processes, but suggesting no new military initiatives.

Mr. Obama said the attack underscores that the threat of terrorism in the U.S. “has evolved into a new phase.”
“This was an act of terrorism designed to kill innocent people,” he said. “As we’ve become better at preventing complex multifaceted attacks like 9/11, terrorists turns to less complicated acts of violence like the mass shootings that are all too common in our society.”

The president called on Congress to pass legislation to prevent people who are on “no fly” terrorism watch lists from buying guns in the U.S., and reiterated his call for lawmakers to pass a new authorization for his administration to use force against Islamic State, or ISIS, a vote he said would “demonstrate that the American people are united, and committed, to this fight.”

In addition, Mr. Obama called for new measures to tighten national security, including a review of the visa program that one of the San Bernardino attackers used to enter the U.S. last year.

Reshaping America’s Views of Veterans Fully realizing the benefits that vets can bring to civilian life means changing the distorted way they are perceived. By David McCormick…..See note please

One of the ways to help our veterans is to shut down the useless and corrupt Veterans Administration…..see FAILING OUR VETERANS- A NATIONAL DISGRACE

http://www.familysecuritymatters.org/publications/detail/failing-our-veterans-a-national-disgrace

A newspaper writer laments: “On their return home after their long absence from society, and from industry, many of these brave men . . . find it difficult to get the opportunity at once to return to their old avocations. Their places in the workshops or elsewhere are filled up; and having but little money, and having lost to some extent the facility for securing employment or the friends who might have helped them to find it, they are greatly discouraged and disheartened, and their families suffer.”

Sound familiar? That’s the New York Times in June 1865. And yet here we are, 150 years on, with vets dying while waiting for medical care, 50,000 vets homeless, unemployment among post-9/11 vets consistently above the average, and just half of those who go to college actually finishing.

The tragedy persists, despite repeated recitations of the grim facts. We can’t change how America treats vets until we change how America perceives them. That requires stories, not facts. As the supreme storyteller Joseph Conrad said, “My task is to make you hear, to make you feel, and, above all, to make you see.”

A Liberal’s Truth-Telling on Terror Hearing ISIS declared fascist was refreshing. Too bad the speaker wasn’t a Democrat. By L. Gordon Crovitz

“Politicians who deny the role of radical Islam have no answer to San Bernardino or to the next San Bernardino. As ISIS lures more radicalized Muslims to commit terrorism in infidel lands, refusing to confront the enemy for what it is becomes a form of suicide.”

Last week a liberal politician named Hilary broke a taboo by calling Islamist terrorism by its proper name. Shocking things happened: Members of the politician’s political party broke with their leader’s policy. Legislators switched their votes to create a large majority supporting military attacks against Islamic State, or ISIS, in Syria. A conservative newspaper called the liberal politician statesmanlike enough to be head of the government.

This politician was in Britain, not in the U.S., and the speaker was Hilary Benn, not Hillary Clinton. Following the ISIS-inspired massacre in San Bernardino, Calif., perhaps more liberals in the U.S. can also start speaking forthrightly about terrorism and get smarter about stopping it.

The President Plays Defense Obama finally admits the California terror reality but offers no new strategy.

President Obama showed Sunday night that he realizes the growing threat from Islamist terror is a grave risk to his political standing in his last year in office. What he didn’t show is that he is willing to consider any changes to his failing strategy to defeat the threat from Islamic State.

The President’s 13-minute Oval Office speech, only the third of his tenure, at last acknowledged that last week’s attack in San Bernardino by a radicalized Islamist couple was an “act of terrorism.” It would have been hard for him to say otherwise after his own FBI director, James Comey, had admitted this reality on Friday. Mr. Obama was looking increasingly detached from reality, and the speech was an attempt to recover from his claims that the growing jihadist threat is “contained.”

Yet the President devoted most of his speech to defending the strategy he has pursued for 16 months against Islamic State without much success. He cited his bombing campaign, but he didn’t mention that the vast majority of sorties drop no bombs because of the limits he has placed on the military. He mentioned the recent allied bombing of Islamic State’s oil infrastructure, but then why has the U.S. waited so long to take this initiative?

Islamic State Lays Booby Traps in Ramadi Iraqi officials say the planting of explosives is delaying an offensive to retake the city: By Karen Leigh And Ghassan Adnan

BAGHDAD—Islamic State is laying sophisticated booby traps in Ramadi to thwart an Iraqi offensive, with devices that can trigger an explosive domino effect and snipers who target bomb-disposal experts, military officials said on Sunday.

After seizing Ramadi in May, the militants connected large, scattered webs of improvised explosive devices, or IEDs, to one trigger wire, expanding the reach of an individual bomb. Iraqi military officials said the booby traps are delaying an offensive to retake the city.

“All of the delays we’re having, the reason was the heavy planting of IEDs,” said Gen. Hattem Al Magsosi, the head of the army’s Explosive Ordnance Division.

Islamic State’s use of IEDs has allowed small groups of insurgents to maintain control of cities against overwhelming numbers of troops, Iraqi military officials said.

Obama Has Just Begun By Victor Davis Hanson

How much damage can he do in his last year of office?

Insidiously and inadvertently, Barack Obama is alienating the people and moving the country to the right. If he keeps it up, by 2017 it will be a reactionary nation. But, counterintuitive as it seems, that is fine with Obama: Après nous le déluge.

By sheer force of his personality, Obama has managed to lose the Democratic Senate and House. State legislatures and governorships are now predominantly Republican. Obama’s own favorable ratings rarely top 45 percent. In his mind, great men, whether Socrates or Jesus, were never appreciated in their time. So it is not surprising that he is not, as he presses full speed ahead.

Obama certainly has doubled down going into his last year, most recently insisting on letting in more refugees from the Middle East, at a time when the children of Middle Eastern immigrants and contemporary migrants are terrorizing Europe. What remaining unpopular executive acts might anger his opponents the most? Close down Guantanamo, let thousands more refugees into the United States, free thousands more felons, snub another ally, flatter another enemy, weigh in on another interracial melodrama, extend amnesty to another million illegal aliens, make global warming laws by fiat, expand Obamacare, unilaterally impose gun control? In lieu of achievement, is the Obama theory to become relevant or noteworthy by offending the public and goading political enemies?

NONIE DARWISH MOMENT: THE TRUTH ABOUT THE SAN BERNARDINO TERROR ATTACK

http://jamieglazov.com/2015/12/06/nonie-darwish-moment-the-truth-about-the-san-bernardino-terror-attack/

This special edition of The Glazov Gang presents The Nonie Darwish Moment. An ex-Muslim who is the author of The Devil We Don’t Know, Nonie focuses on The Truth About The San Bernardino Terror Attack, stressing how it is high time to stop shaming Americans for wanting to protect their nation.

Don’t miss it!

The Internet Of Things (IoT) Has Arrived – What You Should Know By Chuck Brooks

We have entered a new era of scientific breakthroughs and technological applications that will change life as we know it. Accelerated technological development is transforming our civilization. The pace of innovation is growing so rapidly that it is becoming exponential as each year passes.

Futurist Dr. Michio Kaku characterizes this blazing technological shift as moving from the “age of discovery” to the “age of mastery.”

This next decade beckons many new technological discoveries and applications. This includes genetic engineering and regeneration of body parts, new cures for diseases, artificial intelligence, augmented reality, nano-technologies, robotics, ultra-high speed trains and self-driving cars, renewable energies, sustainable agriculture, big data, 3-D Printing, digital security, quantum computing, mobility, and paper thin flexible personal computers.

If you read the MIT Technology Review on a weekly basis, you will be provide continual insights into the trends of disruptive transformation. It also important to know some key stats and terms … and implications of the Internet of Things (IoT):

The Problem with Sweden

Here she goes again. Swedish Foreign Minister Margot Wallstrom, demonising Israel.

‘According to the Swedish newspaper Expressen, Wallstrom – who has triggered several diplomatic incidents with Israel since taking up her post in October 2014 – was asked in the Swedish parliament by Liberal MP Mathias Sundin why she has not condemned in strong terms the recent wave of terrorism in Israel.

Wallstrom said that the attacks were “terrible” and “must not happen,” and added that Israel has “the right to defend itself.”But then she went on to say that the response cannot be “extrajudicial executions” or a reaction that is “disproportionate” so that the “numbers of dead on the other side” is several times greater.
Israeli Ambassador to Sweden Isaac Bachman immediately responded, telling Expressen that “To focus on the actions terrorism victims take in self-defense only serves to draw attention away from the horrors of terrorism. Instead, we should condemn and act to stop the perpetrators, the financiers and the inciters of terrorism.”

He added that Israel has a better record than any other Western country in minimizing civilian casualties while fighting terrorism.