Terrorists to lose Australian citizenship under Scott Morrison's proposed law

The Prime Minister has proposed new laws to make it easier to strip Australian citizenship from those convicted of terrorism offences.

Under current laws, the Federal Government can only strip citizenship from people who have been sentenced to at least six years' jail.

"We will be removing that requirement," Mr Morrison said.

"It will only be if they are convicted of a terrorist offence, the current wording of the law, we believe it is unrealistic and needs to reflect the genuine threat that has been posed by those engaged in this activity," Mr Morrison said.

The Government is also wanting to change the threshold for stripping Australian citizenship.

"The Minister will only need to be reasonably satisfied that a person would otherwise have another citizenship, which is a change from the standard existing today," Mr Morrison said.

"We will be reviewing all the onshore and offshore cases in relation to these matters."

Legislation is due to be introduced in coming weeks, and comes in the wake of the deadly Melbourne terror attack earlier this month.

"For those who would engage in this sort of activity, and they have citizenship elsewhere, and we have reason to believe they do, they can go," the Prime Minister said.

Mr Morrison and Home Affairs Minister Peter Dutton have also ramped up pressure on Parliament's powerful intelligence and security committee to finish considering new laws allowing law-enforcement agencies to access encrypted messages.

Three further public hearings are scheduled to be held by the committee through until December, before it considers its final recommendations to Parliament.

But Mr Morrison is suggesting it should hurry up, given Parliament will rise for the long summer break in two weeks.

"I would insist on seeing [the laws] passed before the end of the next sitting fortnight," he said.

The Federal Opposition supported the original changes to the law to allow terrorists to be stripped of their citizenship in 2015, and said it would look at the new proposal.

"There is nothing more important than keeping Australians safe, and we will always listen to the advice of our security agencies on what they require to keep Australians safe," Shadow Attorney-General Mark Dreyfus said in a statement.

"We will examine this legislation on its merits through the Parliamentary Joint Committee on Intelligence and Security process, once it is presented.

"We will work cooperatively with the Government, as we have done with the 10 national security bills that have been put forward by the Government since 2013."

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2018-11-22/scott-morrison-proposes-law-to-take-citizenship-from-terrorists/10544668

Christopher Steele's Russia Intel Sucked, Contradicted CIA Assessment: Solomon

It turns out that Christopher Steele, the former MI6 spy tasked with creating an opposition research dossier on then-candidate Donald Trump using "Kremlin sources," actually had terrible intelligence on Russian matters, reports The Hill's John Solomon.

In a business matter unrelated to the dossier, Steele boasted in a Feb. 8, 2016 email to a potential private-sector client that Russian President Vladimir Putin might be losing his grip on power.

"I also don’t believe any Russian client or associate will admit to a Western business contact that PUTIN has been weakened or is on the way out, as the intel suggests, out of fear of being branded an oppositionist," Steele cautioned the recipient. "We shall see but I hope you find them informative/useful anyway." -The Hill

Steele was very hush-hush to the prospective client of his firm, Orbis Business Intelligence, writing "All are sensitive source, of course, and need handling accordingly with anyone Russian or Ukrainian."

Not only was Steele's information dead wrong, it flew in the face of CIA intelligence indicating that Putin was in fact gaining power.

…more than two-and-a-half years later, Steele’s intelligence seems debunked in retrospect.

Putin is firmly entrenched in power and, in the summer and fall of 2016, he pulled off one of his most daring feats against the Western world with his meddling in the U.S. presidential election.

Yet, even more alarming at the time was the fact that Steele’s reporting in February 2016 flew in the face of the CIA’s own assessment of Moscow, ironically given that exact same month to Congress in the agency’s annual global threats assessment. -The Hill

https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2018-11-21/christopher-steeles-russia-intel-sucked-contradicted-cia-assessment-fbi-struggled

No wonder Steele is afraid to come to the United States and testify in front of lawmakers!

Statistics Canada blames guns, gangs as homicide rate hits 10-year high

Canada's national homicide rate last year was the highest it's been in a decade, Statistics Canada says, because of a spike in gang-related violence and shootings.

In a report released Wednesday, the agency said there were 660 reported homicides in Canada last year.

Not only was that an increase of nearly eight per cent from 2016, it also pushed up the homicide rate to 1.8 victims for every 100,000 people — the highest since 2009.

Much of the increase was linked to a dramatic rise in the number of gun-related killings, which itself was driven by more gang-related violence.

"Gang-related homicides committed with a firearm represented 12 per cent of all homicides in 2015," Statistics Canada said. "By 2017, this proportion had grown to 21 per cent."

The federal Liberals and Conservatives earlier this month presented competing plans for tackling guns and gangs, which had emerged as significant public-safety concerns even before Statistics Canada's findings were released on Wednesday.

The Trudeau government announced on Nov. 7 a plan to spend $86 million on expanded intelligence and border-security measures for the RCMP and Canada Border Services Agency — part of a five-year, $327-million funding promise made earlier this year to stop criminal gun and gang activities.

The same day, Conservative Leader Andrew Scheer laid out his own proposal. It would include more punitive measures for gang members, including longer jail sentences and limited parole and bail opportunities for repeat and violent offenders.

Gangs

The moves and promises came after a rash of shootings this year, including a mass attack on Toronto's Danforth Avenue in July that killed an 18-year-old woman and a 10-year-old girl and injured 13 others.

Statistics Canada reported that Toronto accounted for the most firearms-related homicides of all cities last year, but British Columbia and Quebec were largely responsible for pushing up the national homicide rate.

"With 2.45 homicides per 100,000 population, the homicide rate in British Columbia was up 32 per cent, making it the province's highest rate since 2009," the agency said. "This increase occurred in both urban and rural areas and can be partly explained by more gang- and firearm-related homicides."

https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/stats-can-homicide-rate-1.4914646

They blame guns and gangs but it's not Trudeau

US Abortions Hit Lowest Number Ever Since Roe V Wade

The U.S. saw the lowest number of reported abortions ever between 2014 and 2015, according to a Wednesday CDC surveillance report.

The report provides the most recent nationally representative data on abortion, excluding California, Maryland, and New Hampshire which do not publicly report abortion totals.

Abortion rates have fallen steadily since the 1980s. The CDC’s report marks the lowest number of abortions reported since Roe V. Wade legalized abortion in 1973.

The U.S. saw the lowest number of abortions ever reported between 2014 and 2015 since abortion was legalized in 1973 after Roe V. Wade, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).

Between 2014 and 2015, the total number of reported abortions decreased two percent, falling to a rate of 11.8 abortions per 1,000 women aged 15 to 44 years, according to a Wednesday CDC surveillance report. A total of 638,169 abortions were reported in that year, according to the CDC.

The report contains the most recent nationally representative data on abortion in the U.S.

Between 2006 and 2015, the total number of reported abortions also decreased 24 percent, according to the report. Between 2006 and 2010, the number of reported abortions decreased by 19,280 per year. The number of reported abortions also fell between 2011 and 2015, decreasing by 23,087 per year, according to Wednesday’s report.

White and black women accounted for the largest percentages of all abortions between 2014 and 2015, according to the report. Just over 14 percent of all women who obtained abortions in that year were married, while 85.7 percent were unmarried, according to the report.

California, Maryland, and New Hampshire do not publicly report abortion totals and are not included in the CDC’s report.

“It’s always good news when abortions decline but these numbers are hard to take seriously when the state that performs the most abortions [California] is not included in the report,” Abby Johnson said in a Wednesday statement. “There is also no record of the many complications of abortion that women experience, likely because those instances are shoved under the mat in many abortion clinics,” she added.

Johnson is the founder of pro-life group And Then There Were None (ATTWN), which helps abortion workers leave the industry. It also helps women who’ve had abortions and are suffering. The group has helped over 400 abortion workers leave their jobs since its founding in 2012.

The District of Columbia, New York and New Jersey saw the highest percentage of abortions in 2014, according to Abort73. Public funds paid for 88,466 abortions in California and 45,722 abortions in New York in 2014, Abort73 also reported.

“The other concern about this report is the noted widespread use of the dangerous abortion drug, RU-486. I was careful to steer women away from this drug when I worked at Planned Parenthood because of the debilitating pain it put women through,” Johnson said.

A medication abortion occurs when a woman takes a mifepristone pill at a clinic and a second pill of misoprostol between six and 48 hours later, usually at home, according to Planned Parenthood. The pill is used to end pregnancies up to 10 weeks.

“Medication abortions are significantly riskier than surgical abortions because there are follow-up appointments that are required, and a lot of women do not follow-up afterwards,” Johnson told TheDCNF Nov. 14 by phone, explaining that the majority of deaths occur after “retained products of the fetus still in the uterus become septic.”

The CDC identified six abortion-related deaths between 2014 and 2015, according to the report.

https://dailycaller.com/2018/11/21/us-abortions-low-roe-v-wade/

Vote down my deal and ‘risk no Brexit at all’: Theresa May warns MPs

Brexit might not happen after all, warned Prime Minister Theresa May during a typically feisty PMQs, as she implored MPs to support her withdrawal agreement.

May claimed the refusal to sign up to her deal would create uncertainty and open up the prospect of the UK remaining in the EU post-March 29, 2019 – the date set for Brexit.

Responding to a question from Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn on the prospects of a no-deal, May said the alternative to her deal with the EU would lead to “more uncertainty, more division or it could risk no Brexit at all.”

Risking the anger of Brexiteers, May refused to say whether there were any circumstances in which Britain would leave the EU without a deal. In a notable change in rhetoric, May didn’t confirm that no-deal remained an option, despite repeatedly claiming over the last two year that it was “better than a bad deal.”

Earlier, new Work and Pensions Secretary, Amber Rudd, noted that parliament “will stop” a no-deal Brexit, appearing to contradict previous statements from the PM who had warned that failure to back her deal could lead to such a scenario.

Rudd told the BBC: “It is my view that parliament, the House of Commons, will stop ‘no deal’. There isn’t a majority in the House of Commons to allow that to take place.”

It comes hours before May meets with Jean-Claude Juncker, the President of the European Commission, in Brussels, as pressure increases on her to improve the draft Brexit deal and avert a crushing defeat in parliament.

https://www.rt.com/uk/444561-may-brexit-threat-eu/