Trump ally warns UK against ‘backdoor spying’ on Americans

Trump ally warns UK against ‘backdoor spying’ on Americans

A top US politician has warned the UK government against using sensitive backdoor technology to spy on Americans.

Ohio Representative Jim Jordan, a close ally of Donald Trump, wrote to Shabana Mahmood, the Home Secretary, on Friday, raising concerns about a lack of security cooperation, saying Britain may be using encryption to gain access to US citizens’ private data.

He pointed to the UK’s Investigatory Powers Act 2016, which allows the government to issue secret orders known as “technical capability notices”.

Mr Jordan heads the House judiciary committee, a powerful force on Capitol Hill, and he has led past investigations into US federal agencies, including the activities of the FBI and US spy agencies.

The UK may be building “backdoors into their encrypted services”, he wrote to Ms Mahmood.

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82 years ago … June 6 1944

82 years ago … June 6 1944

A half century is a long time in a world that moves quickly from one fad to the next. Living in their greatly favoured land, Canadians often seem all too ready to forget the great events that let them develop and prosper in freedom. Many even fail to remember that young Canadian men and women played a major role in the greatest seaborne invasion of all time, the Allied assault on Normandy on June 6, 1944, and in the long, wearying struggle that followed in the Norman countryside.

My Dad landed on June 6th and here I am today a senior citizen in a very battered and bruised nation nearly vanquished by an invasion orchestrated from within.

(more…)

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Europe isn’t serious about peace in Ukraine

Europe isn’t serious about peace in Ukraine

A successful drone strike on an oil terminal in St Petersburg this week has dramatically illustrated the increasing damage that Ukraine’s air campaign is doing to the Russian economy. Together with the bloody stalemate on the battlefield in eastern Ukraine, this is contributing to growing war weariness in Russia.

For the first time, Russian establishment figures have begun to call publicly for an early peace, even at the price of giving up key Kremlin demands. In the words of Russian commentator Alexander Nosovich in the newspaper Moskovsky Komsomolets, “the expert community is split between those in favor of continuing the special military operation until the goals are achieved, and those who believe it’s time to end it, since the worst-case scenario is not even defeat. It’s an endless special operation.”

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Hungary: News Aggregator Owner Admits To Have Suppressed Right-Wing Content for Years

Hungary: News Aggregator Owner Admits To Have Suppressed Right-Wing Content for Years

Gábor Holló, the CEO of leading news aggregator Hírkereső (the name, ironically, means “Newsfinder”) has recently admitted in an interview with liberal media outlet HVG that he interfered in the Hungarian parliamentary elections by censoring pro-Fidesz material and promoting a news outlet associated with the current prime minister.

Mandiner reports that in the interview, Holló said he used his control over news-ranking algorithms to influence the reach of Hungarian media outlets in line with his political preferences.

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Indian ‘idol immersions’ could harm Canadian ecosystems

Indian ‘idol immersions’ could harm Canadian ecosystems

Videos have been going around all-over social media over Ganpati idol immersions, much recently being submerged in Canadian lakes around areas in Ontario and British Columbia.

“Idol immersion” refers to the practice of submerging religious idols in rivers, lakes, or oceans after festivals, most notably during Ganesh Chaturthi and Durga Puja.

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Carson Jerema: CBC’s coverage of Henry Nowak murder an assault on reality

Carson Jerema: CBC’s coverage of Henry Nowak murder an assault on reality

The murder of British university student Henry Nowak is full of the expected tragedy and heartbreak, but also extreme injustice, rage, racial tensions, and what happens when an entire society goes mad on a particular brand of politics.

So naturally, CBC foreign correspondent Chris Brown skipped all that is interesting or relevant in the case, and instead presented his audience with coverage so outrageous that calling it propaganda would be an insult to Vladimir Putin. In an “analysis” article, titled How Britain’s far right hijacked the murder of Henry Nowak, he twisted the story by imagining a “far right” threat, rather than a story of reasonable concerns about how racial politics skewed the police response to the killing. (CBC news broadcasts of the story are only marginally better.)

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The rape of a white girl by 15 Bradford men warrants a full-scale public inquiry

The rape of a white girl by 15 Bradford men warrants a full-scale public inquiry

AS news lands with a fairy-lite flutter on media desks across the nation, that 15 Bradford men have just been jailed for 188 years for raping a young white girl, it’s worth reflecting on the words of local MP Robbie Moore from last year, when a dozen other Pakistani Muslim men got a total of 130 years prison time for raping two girls, one just 13.

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The New SPLC Indictment Is Probably Also Just The Tip Of The Iceberg

The New SPLC Indictment Is Probably Also Just The Tip Of The Iceberg

In April, shortly after the indictment of the Southern Poverty Law Center, The Federalist explained here that the indictment was probably just a start and should be regarded as the tip of the iceberg. An active investigation continued, we wrote, and more legal developments should be expected. That was correct: A grand jury just returned a more detailed superseding indictment alleging that the SPLC has been pouring money into the groups it purports to oppose.

Since that educated guess turned out to be correct, here’s the next one: This new version of the indictment is also probably the tip of the iceberg, and there are still more developments to come. You’re probably going to wait a long time to find out what happens to the SPLC, and there are reasons to expect delay from both sides of the pending criminal case.

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The West Owes Islam Nothing

The West Owes Islam Nothing

I don’t know what’s worse, junk science or junk history. There is unending propaganda about an Islamic Golden Age of the past that today’s Islamists want to recreate. Much the same as a century ago, fables about an “Aryan super-race” long before Western Christianity motivated a lethal totalitarianism. Neither is true, of course, and obscures the amazing story of how Western Civilization got us to where we are.

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