FOX NEWS was bought by Arabs a while back, if you pay attention it never really attacks the the arab nations when wrong doing has happened....IS THIS THE DOORWAY TO SHARIA LAW? Pan-Arab Al-Jazeera buys Current TV from Al Gore

 

 

LOS ANGELES —

With its purchase of left-leaning Current TV, the Pan-Arab news channel Al-Jazeera has fulfilled a long-held quest to reach tens of millions of U.S. homes. But its new audience immediately got a little smaller.

The nation’s second-largest TV operator, Time Warner Cable Inc., dropped Current after the deal was confirmed Wednesday, a sign that the channel will have an uphill climb to expand its reach.

“Our agreement with Current has been terminated and we will no longer be carrying the service. We are removing the service as quickly as possible,” the company said in a statement.

Still, the acquisition of Current, the news network that cofounded by former Vice President Al Gore, boosts Al-Jazeera’s reach in the U.S. beyond a few large U.S. metropolitan areas including New York and Washington nearly ninefold to about 40 million homes.

Gore confirmed the sale Wednesday, saying in a statement that Al-Jazeera shares Current TV’s mission “to give voice to those who are not typically heard; to speak truth to power; to provide independent and diverse points of view; and to tell the stories that no one else is telling.”

Al-Jazeera, owned by the government of Qatar, plans to gradually transform Current into a network called Al-Jazeera America by adding five to 10 new U.S. bureaus beyond the five it has now and hiring more journalists. More than half of the content will be U.S. news and the network will have its headquarters in New York, spokesman Stan Collender said.

Collender said there are no rules against foreign ownership of a cable channel — unlike the strict rules limiting foreign ownership of free-to-air TV stations. He said the move is based on demand, adding that 40 percent of viewing traffic on Al-Jazeera English’s website is from the U.S.

“This is a pure business decision based on recognized demand,” Collender said. “When people watch Al-Jazeera, they tend to like it a great deal.”

Previous to Al-Jazeera’s purchase, Current TV was in 60 million homes. It is carried by Comcast Corp., which owned less than a 10 percent stake in Current TV, as well as DirecTV. Neither company announced plans to drop the channel.

In 2010, Al-Jazeera English’s managing director, Tony Burman, blamed a “very aggressive hostility” from the Bush administration for reluctance among cable and satellite companies to show the network.

Even so, Al-Jazeera has garnered respect for its ability to build a serious news product in a short time. In a statement announcing the deal, it touted numerous U.S. journalism awards it received in 2012, including the Robert F. Kennedy Journalism Award Grand Prize and the Scripps Howard Award for Television/Cable In-Depth Reporting.

But there may be a culture clash at the network. Dave Marash, a former “Nightline” reporter who worked for Al-Jazeera in Washington, said he left the network in 2008 in part because he sensed an anti-American bias there.

Al-Jazeera English went on the air in November 2006. It moved quickly to establish a strong presence on the Internet, launching web streaming services and embracing new social media services such as Twitter in part to compensate for its lack of a presence on U.S. airwaves.

The English news network has a different news staff and a separate budget from the Arabic network, which launched in 1996. They and the company’s growing stable of other Al-Jazeera branded channels are overseen by Sheik Ahmed bin Jassim Al Thani, a member of Qatar’s royal family.

Sheik Ahmed took over last year following the abrupt resignation of the company’s longtime Palestinian head, Wadah Khanfar, who was widely credited with helping build Al-Jazeera into an influential global brand. In his departure note to staff, he said he was leaving behind “a mature organization” that “will continue to maintain its trailblazing path.”

Both the English and the Arabic channels actively covered the protests, violence and political upheaval that have become known as the Arab Spring.

Current, meanwhile, began as a groundbreaking effort to promote user-generated content. But it has settled into a more conventional format of political talk television with a liberal bent. Gore worked on-air as an analyst during its recent election night coverage.

Its leading personalities are former New York Gov. Eliot Spitzer, former Michigan Gov. Jennifer Granholm and Cenk Uygur, a former political commentator on MSNBC who hosts the show called “The Young Turks.” Current signed Keith Olbermann to be its top host in 2011 but his tenure lasted less than a year before it ended in bad blood on both sides.

Current has largely been outflanked by MSNBC in its effort be a liberal alternative to the leading cable news network, Fox News Channel.

Current hired former CNN Washington bureau chief David Bohrman in 2011 to be its president. Bohrman pushed the network to innovate technologically, with election night coverage that emphasized a conversation over social media.

Current TV, founded in 2005 by former vice president Gore and Joel Hyatt, is expected to post $114 million in revenue in 2013, according to research firm SNL Kagan. The firm pegged the network’s cash flow at nearly $24 million a year.

 

 

http://www.uticaod.com/news/x1896978522/Pan-Arab-Al-Jazeera-buys-Current-TV-from-Al-Gore

More Than 11,000 Died in the Year 2012 at Hands of Islamic Extremism, Says Report

While it is no mystery that Islamic extremists have been wreaking havoc on innocent people across the world for well over a millennium, the 2012 death toll of those claimed by its hands is still as disturbing as ever. As the world rings in 2013, the jihadist-monitoring site “The Religion of Peace” (TRP) has tallied the number of people killed in the last year by Islamists, placing the death toll at 11,267 carried out across 2,459 savage terror attacks.
Since we, in today’s day and age, have become desensitized to numbers (understandably so given the carnage taking place across the world on a daily basis), an overview of some of these horrific terror attacks places the gravitas of the matter in proper perspective. While we won’t list all 2,459 attacks here, the Religion of Peace website painstakingly took the time to chronicle each documented terror attack since 2012 commenced, including the siege on our American outpost in Benghazi that left Ambassador Chris Stevens, two Navy SEALs and another civil servant dead.
Below are several screenshots outlining a mere fraction of the online chart to provide context. You will find that these terror attacks carried out by Islamists around the world have spared no one in their bloodlust and quest for dominance. Among those targeted are children, Christian worshippers, elderly Jews, those who hail from a “rival” sects of Islam, women, teachers, Buddhists, Hindu activists and so on. Also included in the list are Israelis wounded or killed by Hamas rocket attacks and suicide bombings as well as attacks on Israeli tourists abroad.






In more “civilized” parts of the world including Europe and North America, while blatant acts of terrorism have been curbed since the horrific 9/11 attacks that claimed the lives of nearly 3,000 innocent people, Islamist-led honor killings, assaults and general harassment is still on the rise. Consider that on New Year’s eve alone, 1,193 cars were burned to a cinder by rioting Muslims in France. It has become a kind of twisted “holiday tradition” among the more extreme Islamic residents of the country.
With all the violence in 2012, one shudders to think what 2013 will hold.

 

http://www.theblaze.com/stories/report-more-than-11000-died-in-the-year-2012-at-hands-of-islamic-extremism/

Obama signs massive defense bill upping Iran sanctions

 

 

US President Barack Obama signed into law a wide ranging defense bill, including about $633 billion in spending and beefed up sanctions on Iran late Wednesday night.

The bill was approved by the House and Senate by a wide majority in late December. Obama signed the spending legislation along with a bill staving off the much-feared ‘fiscal cliff,’ which would have raised taxes.

The defense package includes stringent new sanctions on Iran’s energy and shipping sectors in a fresh attempt to hobble the Islamic Republic’s economy and hamper its nuclear ambitions.

The sanctions build upon penalties that Congress has passed — and Obama has implemented — that target Tehran’s financial and energy sectors.

Officials in Washington argue that the sanctions have undermined Tehran’s economy and robust oil sales, thwarting its suspected pursuit of a nuclear weapon. Iran insists its nuclear program is for peaceful purposes.

Democratic Sen. Bob Menendez and Republican Sen. Mark Kirk, who have shepherded sanctions bills through Congress, sponsored the latest package that also would close a major loophole — the ability of Iran to circumvent sanctions and barter oil for precious metals. Turkey has been bartering gold for oil.

The sanctions would designate Iran’s energy, port, shipping and ship-building sectors as “entities of proliferation” and prohibit transactions with these areas. The legislation also would penalize individuals selling or supplying commodities such as graphite, aluminum and steel to Iran, all products that are crucial to Tehran’s ship-building and nuclear operations.

The bill would also provide some $526 billion for the base defense budget, $17 billion for defense programs in the Energy Department and about $88 billion for the war in Afghanistan.

Obama had threatened to veto the measure because of a number of concerns, including limits on his authority to transfer terrorist suspects from the US military prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, for one year.

But Obama said that although he continued to oppose certain sections of the bill, “the need to renew critical defense authorities and funding was too great to ignore.”

The bill includes cuts in defense spending that the president and congressional Republicans agreed to in August 2011, along with the end of the war in Iraq and the drawdown of American forces in Afghanistan.

The measure also appropriates money for increased security at US diplomatic missions worldwide, int he wake of the deadly attack on the consulate in Benghazi, Libya.

Obama flew to Honolulu to continue his vacation with his family immediately after signing the bills. He had cut his holiday short to deal with fiscal cliff crisis late last week.

 

 

http://www.timesofisrael.com/obama-signs-massive-defense-bill-upping-iran-sanctions/

Iran Spy Network 30,000 Strong

 

 

Iran’s intelligence service includes 30,000 people who are engaged in covert and clandestine activities that range from spying to stealing technology to terrorist bombings and assassination, according to a Pentagon report.
The report concluded that Iran’s Ministry of Intelligence and Security, known as MOIS, is “one of the largest and most dynamic intelligence agencies in the Middle East.”
The ministry actively supports Iran’s radical Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) that has been involved in terrorist bombings from Argentina to Lebanon, according to the report produced by the Pentagon’s Irregular Warfare Support Program and published last month by the Library of Congress Federal Research Division.
The Washington Free Beacon obtained a copy of the 64-page unclassified report.
“MOIS provides financial, material, technological, or other support services to Hamas, Hezbollah, and al Qaeda in Iraq (AQI), all designated terrorist organizations under U.S. Executive Order 13224,” the report said.
The spy service operates in all areas where Iran has interests, including Afghanistan, Iraq, Kuwait, Lebanon, Central Asia, Africa, Austria, Azerbaijan, Croatia, France, Georgia, Germany, Turkey, Britain, and the Americas, including the United States.
Iranian activities in Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Ecuador, and Venezuela have raised alarm among U.S. government officials.
The effort appears part of “Iran’s strategy of establishing a presence in the backyard of the United States for purposes of expanding Shi’a and revolutionary ideology, establishing networks for intelligence and covert operations, and waging asymmetrical warfare against the United States,” the report said.
“In Latin America, Iran’s intelligence agencies—MOIS but mostly the Quds Force—use Hezbollah to achieve their goals.”
Israel also is a major target of the MOIS and support for Hezbollah in Lebanon is a major Tehran intelligence objective.
The ministry is under the direct control of Iran’s theocratic dictator, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, and all its ministers must become Islamic clerics as a precondition for the post. However, the agency recruits foreigners, including British nationals and Israeli Jews.
“To advance its goals, MOIS recruits individuals regardless of their beliefs, including Arabs or Jews to spy in Israel,” the report said.
One MOIS deputy minister, Saeed Emami, was appointed to a key post despite being Jewish by birth.
According to the report, Iranian intelligence is expanding operations in the Middle East and Mediterranean by setting up electronic eavesdropping stations.
“Two Iranian-Syrian [signals intelligence] stations funded by the IRGC reportedly have been active since 2006, one in the al-Jazirah region in northern Syria and the other on the Golan Heights,” the report said, noting that additional stations were planned for northern Syria.
“The technology at the two established SIGNIT stations indicates that Iran’s capabilities are still limited, with little scope for high-level strategic intelligence gathering,” the report said, noting they “appear to concentrate on supplying information to Lebanese Hezbollah,” Iran’s main proxy for terrorism and intelligence-gathering in the region.
Iran also has formed a “cyber command” to conduct both offensive and defensive cyber warfare operations following the June 2010 Stuxnet virus that crippled Iran’s uranium-enrichment infrastructure.
“The success of this virus is an indication of the weakness of Iran’s cyber development,” the report said.
The spy agency was linked to a series of assassinations in the 1990s called the “Chain Murders” that exposed it to western criticism.
According to the report, Russia was active in training Iranian intelligence operations beginning in the 1990s.
The Russian SVR spy service, the successor to the Soviet KGB, trained hundreds of MOIS operatives despite the two agencies’ different doctrines.
The cooperation was based on both nations’ goal of limiting U.S. political influence in Central Asia and efforts to stifle ethnic unrest.
“The SVR trained not only hundreds of Iranian agents but also numerous Russian agents inside Iran to equip Iranian intelligence with signals equipment in their headquarters compound,” the report said.
Iran’s intelligence is also cooperating with al Qaeda despite the Sunni-Shiite differences in religious ideology.
“Cooperation between Iran and al Qaeda is based on their shared opposition to U.S. hegemony in the region—Iraq and Afghanistan, chiefly—and dates to the 1990s,” the report said.
Iran helped a number of al Qaeda terrorists travel safely from Afghanistan to Iran after the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks.
“The fact that al Qaeda operates in many countries helps Iran achieve its goal of diverting U.S. attention away from Iran’s immediate neighborhood,” the report said. “In return, al Qaeda uses Iran as a place where its facilitators connect al Qaeda’s senior leadership with regional affiliates.”
“Iranians engage in two types of terrorist attacks,” the report said. “One type includes sabotage, espionage, and bombing of target locations, while the other involves the assassination of dissidents of the Islamic Republic of Iran. Both are perpetrated inside and outside of Iran.”
Between December 1979 and May 1996 a total of 17 Iranians were assassinated by the MOIS, including the July 1980 murder in Bethesda, Md., of Ali Tabatabaei, the Iranian Embassy press attaché in the United States under the Shah of Iran.
Known MOIS-linked assassinations of dissidents inside Iran included the murders of 22 people between November 1988 and December 1998.
The report said the IRGC’s Quds Force is the main covert action arm of the Tehran regime, but that both the MOIS and IRGC cooperate closely.
MOIS agents also use clandestine agents to infiltrate Iranian communities around the world, usually through charitable groups that claim to support Iranian refugees.
“MOIS also has agents who abduct individuals abroad, return them to Iran, and then imprison or kill them,” the report said.
For human spying, the Iranians are “extremely active,” the report said, noting a highly organized and focused program against nearby states.
The Iranians have also deployed many agents to influence the government in Baghdad.
Other Iranian intelligence networks have been discovered in Kuwait, Bahrain, and Turkey.
MOIS defector Gen. Ali Reza Asgari helped identify Iranian links to Hezbollah and also provided Israel with intelligence on Syria’s covert nuclear reactor, which was bombed in 2007 by Israel warplanes, the report said.
“The United States managed to successfully damage Iran’s uranium-enrichment program by intentionally providing defective tools, machines, and blueprints in 2000 and 2003,” the report said.
Iran created a special counterintelligence unit in response called Oghab 2, or Eagle 2, devoted to protecting the nuclear program from attack and sabotage.
However, the Stuxnet computer virus and other cyber attacks showed the counterspy unit to be marginally effective, the report said.

http://freebeacon.com/iran-spy-network-30000-strong/

Endtime News Updates 1-3-13 with Hummingbird027

YOUR LOVE NEVER FAILS IT NEVER GIVES UP ON ME! THANK YOU FATHER! Kristian Stanfill - One Thing Remains - Passion 2012

They are getting their ducks in a row for when they are ready to declare MARTIAL LAW! Obama signs NDAA 2013 without objecting to indefinite detention of Americans

 

 

President Barack Obama signed the National Defense Authorization Act of 2013 on Wednesday, giving his stamp of approval to a Pentagon spending bill that will keep Guantanamo Bay open and make indefinite detention for US citizens as likely as ever.

The president inked his name to the 2013 NDAA on Wednesday evening to little fanfare, and accompanied his signature with a statement condemning a fair number of provisions contained in a bill that he nevertheless endorsed.

The NDAA, an otherwise mundane annual bill that lays out the use of funds for the Department of Defense, has come under attack during the Obama administration for the introduction of a provision last year that allows the military to detain United States citizens indefinitely without charge or trial for mere suspicions of ties to terrorism. Under the 2012 NDAA’s Sec. 1021, Pres. Obama agreed to give the military the power to arrest and hold Americans without the writ of habeas corpus, although he promised with that year’s signing statement that his administration would not abuse that privilege.
In response to the controversial indefinite detention provision from last year, Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-California) introduced an amendment in December 2012 that would have forbid the government from using military force to indefinitely detain Americans without trial under the 2013 NDAA. Although that provision, dubbed the “Feinstein Amendment,” passed the Senate unanimously, a select panel of lawmakers led by Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman Carl Levin (D-Michigan) stripped it from the final version of the NDAA two week later before it could clear Congress. In exchange, Congress added a provision, Sec. 1029, that claims to ensure that “any person inside the United States” is allowed their constitutional rights, including habeas corpus, but supporters of the Feinstein Amendment say that the swapped wording does nothing to erase the indefinite detention provision from the previous year.
“Saying that new language somehow ensures the right to habeas corpus – the right to be presented before a judge – is both questionable and not enough. Citizens must not only be formally charged but also receive jury trials and the other protections our Constitution guarantees. Habeas corpus is simply the beginning of due process. It is by no means the whole,” Sen. Rand Paul (R-Kentucky) said after the Feinstein Amendment was removed.
“Our Bill of Rights is not something that can be cherry-picked at legislators’ convenience. When I entered the United States Senate, I took an oath to uphold and defend the Constitution. It is for this reason that I will strongly oppose passage of the McCain conference report that strips the guarantee to a trial by jury,” Sen. Paul added.
Although the Pres. Obama rejected the indefinite detention clause when signing the 2012 NDAA, a statement issued late Wednesday from the White House failed to touch on the military’s detainment abilities. On the other hand, Pres. Obama did voice his opposition to a number of provisions included in the latest bill, particularly ones that will essentially render his promise of closing the Guantanamo Bay military prison impossible.
Despite repeated pleas that Gitmo will be closed on his watch, Pres. Obama failed to do as much during his first term in the White House. Thanks to a provision in the 2013 NDAA, the Pentagon will be unable to use funds to transfer detainees out of that facility and to other sights, ensuring they will remain at the top-secret military prison for the time being.
“Even though I support the vast majority of the provisions contained in this Act, which is comprised of hundreds of sections spanning more than 680 pages of text, I do not agree with them all. Our Constitution does not afford the president the opportunity to approve or reject statutory sections one by one,” Pres. Obama writes.
Congress, claims the president, designed sections of the new defense bill “in order to foreclose my ability to shut down the Guantanamo Bay detention facility.”
“I continue to believe that operating the facility weakens our national security by wasting resources, damaging our relationships with key allies and strengthening our enemies,” he says.
Elsewhere, the president claims that certain provisions in the act threaten to interview with his “constitutional duty to supervise the executive branch” of the United States.
Before the 2013 NDAA was finalized, it was reported by the White House that Pres. Obama would veto the legislation over the provisions involving Guantanamo Bay. Similarly, the White House originally said the president would veto the 2012 NDAA over the indefinite detention provisions, although he signed it regardless “with reservations” on December 31 of that year.
Since authorizing the 2012 NDAA, the president has been challenged in federal court by a team of plaintiffs who say that the indefinite detention clause is unconstitutional. US District Judge Katherine Forrest agreed that Sec. 1021 of the 2012 NDAA violated the US Constitution and granted a permanent injunction on the Obama administration from using that provision, but the White House successfully fought to appeal that decision.
Commenting on the latest signing, American Civil Liberties Union Executive Director Anthony Romero says, "President Obama has utterly failed the first test of his second term, even before inauguration day.”
“His signature means indefinite detention without charge or trial, as well as the illegal military commissions, will be extended,” adds Romero. "He also has jeopardized his ability to close Guantanamo during his presidency. Scores of men who have already been held for nearly 11 years without being charged with a crime--including more than 80 who have been cleared for transfer--may very well be imprisoned unfairly for yet another year. The president should use whatever discretion he has in the law to order many of the detainees transferred home, and finally step up next year to close Guantanamo and bring a definite end to indefinite detention."

http://rt.com/usa/news/obama-ndaa-detention-president-288/