The Senate Intelligence Committee is preparing to question top Obama administration intelligence officials behind closed doors on Wednesday on their explosive assessment that officially accused Russia of meddling in the 2016 presidential election to boost then-candidate Donald Trump.
The committee, led by Chairman Richard Burr, R-N.C., and Vice Chairman Mark Warner, D-Va., invited former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, former Central Intelligence Agency Director John Brennan, former National Security Agenda Director Michael Rogers (who retired earlier this year) and former FBI Director James Comey.
Remember, the anti-Assad forces otherwise known as rebels don’t have aircraft and don’t have bombs that would create craters in the ground. Oh yeah, notice that Russia has not produced their own investigations or conclusions as they pledged to do?
The exact same sort of wheel assembly we saw on the Douma chlorine bombs on the chlorine bomb used in Saraqib!
The details of samples taken are interesting in light of the Douma attack, soils samples and samples from the munitions confirm the presence of chlorine, although these were taken close to the time of attack.
Here’s samples from Khan Sheikhoun, showing the same three chemicals as detected in the Saraqib attack, all indicators of Sarin use.
THE HAGUE, Netherlands — 16 May 2018 —The Fact-Finding Mission (FFM) of the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW), confirmed in a report released yesterday that chlorine was likely used as a chemical weapon on 4 February 2018 in Saraqib, Idlib Governorate, Syrian Arab Republic.
The FFM determined that chlorine was released from cylinders by mechanical impact in the Al Talil neighbourhood of Saraqib.
The conclusions are based inter alia on the presence of two cylinders, which were determined as previously containing chlorine; witness testimony; environmental samples that demonstrated the unusual presence of chlorine in the local environment; and the number of patients at medical facilities shortly after the incident who showed signs and symptoms consistent with exposure to chlorine and other toxic chemicals.
The Director-General stated: “I strongly condemn the continued use of toxic chemicals as weapons by anyone, for any reason, and in any circumstances. Such acts contradict the unequivocal prohibition against chemical weapons enshrined in the Chemical Weapons Convention.”
The FFM’s report on the Saraqib incident has been shared with States Parties to the Chemical Weapons Convention. The report was also transmitted to the UN Security Council through the UN Secretary-General.
Background
In response to persistent allegations of chemical weapon attacks in Syria, the OPCW Fact-Finding Mission (FFM) was set up in 2014 with an on-going mandate “to establish facts surrounding allegations of the use of toxic chemicals, reportedly chlorine, for hostile purposes in the Syrian Arab Republic”. The FFM’s mandate is to determine whether chemical weapons or toxic chemicals as weapons have been used in Syria. It does not include identifying who is responsible for alleged attacks. Attribution was part of the mandate of the OPCW-UN Joint Investigative Mechanism, set up by the UN Security Council, which expired in November 2017.
The FFM has previously confirmed with a “high degree of confidence” the use of chlorine, sulfur mustard, and sarin as weapons.
The FFM is required to study available information relating to allegations of use of chemical weapons in Syria, including information provided by the Syrian Arab Republic and others. The FFM employs investigative methods to determine if chemical weapons have been used. It interviews witnesses and obtains environmental and bio-medical samples and physical evidence for analysis.
The Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons operates according to a strict confidentiality regime, which governs the operations of the Organisation, protects the integrity of its investigations, ensures the security of its technical experts, and determines what information can be made public.
As the implementing body for the Chemical Weapons Convention, the OPCW oversees the global endeavour to permanently and verifiably eliminate chemical weapons. Since the Convention’s entry into force in 1997 – and with its 192 States Parties – it is the most successful disarmament treaty eliminating an entire class of weapons of mass destruction.
Facebook removed 700 million in 2017. Staggering numbers.
So much for reliance on artificial intelligence software programs or high praise for them in pinpointing fake accounts. Is it any wonder what Facebook does to accounts, links and news on the platform and what shows up on your timeline or in trending? Perhaps we are now to rely on the new 10,000 Facebook editors. Consider, during the first quarter of 2018, Facebook deleted 865.8 million posts, the majority of which were spam, according to the report. Facebook also removed 28.8 million posts showing everything from nudity that violated its community standards to graphic violence and terrorist propaganda, the report said.
It is interesting that media has not fully responded, as journalists use Facebook trending items to determine lead stories. Perhaps headlines will change or perhaps not so much.
We’re committed to doing more to keep you safe and protect your privacy. So that we can all get back to what made Facebook good in the first place: friends. Because when this place does what it was built for, we all get a little closer.
Facebook has been running ads in markets still working to regain trust and still working to create new people relationships with each other. Users still don’t have a full understanding of user standards and what violations really mean.
Facebook’s first community standards enforcement report says the social media giant disabled 583 million fake accounts in the first quarter of 2018, relying heavily on artificial intelligence.
The report, released Tuesday, aims to show how Facebook is taking action against content that violates its standards. The staggering number of fake accounts it disabled in the period fell from 694 million in the fourth quarter of 2017. The report didn’t reveal earlier data.
The first-quarter report also said Facebook acted on 836 million pieces of spam content, 2.5 million pieces of hate speech content, 1.9 million pieces of terrorist propaganda content, 21 million pieces of adult nudity and sexual activity content and 3.4 million pieces of graphic violence content.
Facebook executives vowed to increase transparency in the wake of recent controversies involving the spread of fake news and the and the unauthorized harvesting of personal data.
“It’s a good move and it’s a long time coming,” Jillian York, director for international freedom of expression at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, told The New York Times of the new report. “But it’s also frustrating because we’ve known that this has needed to happen for a long time. We need more transparency about how Facebook identifies content, and what it removes going forward.”
The report said Facebook increasingly relies on AI to flag unsavory content. AI tools detected 98.5 percent of the fake accounts that were shut down, according to the report, and almost all of the spam content acted upon.
“Technology isn’t going to solve all of it, but we will make progress,” Guy Rosen, who heads Facebook’s team policing community standards, told The Financial Times.
The report acknowledged that Facebook’s metrics tracking its response to content that violates standards are still being refined.
“This is the start of the journey and not the end of the journey and we’re trying to be as open as we can,” said Richard Allan, Facebook’s vice president of public policy for Europe, the Middle East and Africa.
Facebook a day earlier announced it had suspended about 200 apps while it investigates whether any of them contributed to the misuse of data.
al Shabaab has operated as a terror organization in East Africa at least since 2012 and has pledged full allegiance to al Qaeda. The translation for the name, al Shabaab is ‘the youth’ or ‘the youngsters’. That is significant in this case. It operates mostly in Somalia and was known for the attack on the Westgate shopping mall in Nairobi, Kenya.
So, we have this extensive case in Minnesota and carry on luggage on flights leaving the United States out of Seattle, with millions of dollars inside.
MINNEAPOLIS (KMSP) – For five months, Fox 9 has been investigating what appears to be rampant fraud in a massive state program.
This fraud is suspected of costing Minnesota taxpayers as much as $100 million a year.
The Fox 9 Investigators reporting is based on public records and nearly a dozen government sources who have direct knowledge of what is happening.
These sources have a deep fear, and there is evidence to support their concerns, that some of that public money is ending up in the hands of terrorists.
In Memoriam
Available at Amazon.com 
