Huawei opens cybersecurity center in Belgium amid US crackdown

Chinese tech giant Huawei has opened a ‘cybersecurity and transparency’ center in the Belgian capital of Brussels in a bid to convince Europeans that its products do not pose any security risk, despite what the US says.

On Tuesday, the Chinese company’s executives inaugurated the Huawei European Cybersecurity Center, which would allow European customers of Huawei to review the source code used in the firm’s products. The move comes as Huawei seeks to win over the Europeans, who are now facing intense pressure from the US as it urges them to bar the Chinese tech giant from developing their national telecommunications networks.

“Both trust and distrust should be based on facts, not feelings, not speculation, and not baseless rumor,” Ken Hu, a deputy chairman of Huawei, told the crowd that gathered for the opening event in Brussels. His words came as a rebuke at Washington which has so far presented no solid evidence to substantiate its claims that Huawei equipment could be used by Beijing to spy on other nations.

“[The] Chinese government has no intention and has never asked any company, any Chinese company” to “install either backdoor or [to] collect data [and send it] back to China,” said Huawei's Western Europe President Vincent Pang.

Despite US efforts, Europe has so far remained Huawei’s biggest market outside of China and the company hopes to play a major role in developing the continent’s 5G networks.

The Brussels facility is not the first such center opened by Huawei in Europe. Earlier, the Chinese giant established a similar center in Germany’s Bonn. It also funds a government-run British testing site, the Huawei Cyber Security Evaluation Centre, which has existed since 2010. Huawei offered to establish a similar center in Poland following the arrest of a Chinese Huawei employee there on spying charges in early 2019.

https://www.rt.com/news/453098-huawei-transparency-center-brussels/

Idaho lawmakers kill bill that would have ended child marriage under 16 in state

The Idaho state House on Thursday killed a bipartisan bill that would have ended child marriage in the state.

The legislation would have made changes to the state’s current law, which allows children under the age of 16 to marry with consent from the child’s parents and a judge.

The bill proposed setting the minimum age to marry at 16 and requiring 16- and 17-year-olds to have the consent of their parents and the court in order to marry. This would still have put Idaho’s marriage age below that of many other states, where the legal age is 18.

The GOP-led state House voted 28-39 to reject the bill, according to the Idaho Statesman.

Opponents to the bill argued that it would result in too much government and judicial oversight. Some also cited the state’s abortion laws, which allow a girl under the age of 18 to get an abortion with the consent of one parent or a judge.

“If we pass this legislation, it will then become easier in the state of Idaho to obtain an abortion at 15 years old than it will to decide to form a family and create a family for a child that has been conceived,” State Rep. Christy Zito (R) said on the House floor, according to the Statesman.

Idaho has the highest rate of child marriage in the country, the Statesman reported, citing a national report from advocacy group Unchained at Last.

Last year, Delaware became the first state to ban child marriage, setting the minimum age for marriage in any circumstance at 18.

A number of other states, including New York and Texas, have also recently passed laws to raise the minimum legal age to marry.

https://thehill.com/homenews/state-watch/432157-idaho-lawmakers-kill-bill-that-would-have-ended-child-marriage-in-the

Justin Trudeau Loses Another Cabinet Minister as Corruption Scandal Grows

Treasury Board President Jane Philpott, a member of Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s cabinet, resigned her post on Monday because she “lost confidence” in the administration’s handling of the SNC-Lavalin scandal.

In her resignation letter, Philpott declared herself a true believer in Trudeau’s agenda but said her confidence in his leadership was shaken by former Justice Minister Jody Wilson-Raybould’s testimony that she was improperly pressured to avoid prosecuting engineering giant SNC-Lavalin for corruption.

“The solemn principles at stake are the independence and integrity of our justice system. It is a fundamental doctrine of the rule of law that our Attorney General should not be subjected to political pressure or interference regarding the exercise of her prosecutorial discretion in criminal cases,” Philpott wrote.

Perhaps the most cutting line in Philpott’s letter of resignation was when she declared, “There can be a cost to acting on one’s principles, but there is a bigger cost to abandoning them.”

Wilson-Raybould herself resigned abruptly in February. She hailed Philpott as “incomparable” on Monday and saluted her “constant and unassailable commitment to always doing what is right and best for Canadians.”

Trudeau’s top aide and close friend Gerald Butts resigned later in February, insisting there was no wrongdoing in the effort to protect SNC-Lavalin from prosecution, but he will return to the spotlight on Wednesday to testify before the House of Commons Justice Committee.

The Toronto Sun on Monday judged Butts may have become the key figure in the battle for Trudeau’s political survival, saying:

The most damning evidence put forward by Wilson-Raybould is from two text messages her chief of staff, Jessica Prince, sent to her following meetings she had with the PMO [Prime Minister’s Office]. Butts apparently told her “there is no solution here that does not involve some interference.”

Trudeau Chief of Staff Katie Telford apparently also told her “we don’t want to debate legalities anymore.”

Both of these — the Butts one in particular — suggest they knew what they were doing was not in line with the law, yet didn’t care.

The Conservative and NDP MPs on the committee will need to grill Butts on these issues. Canadians want answers.

In other words, Butts’ testimony may determine whether Trudeau’s efforts to protect SNC-Lavalin are upgraded from “inappropriate” to “illegal.”

Trudeau’s defense strategy appears to depend on carefully chipping away at Wilson-Raybould’s credibility without flatly accusing her of lying, a strategy that will presumably widen to include Philpott as well. According to the latest polls, it’s not working – Trudeau’s numbers are collapsing, Canadians say they are following the story closely, and some 67 percent of them believe Wilson-Raybould instead of Trudeau.

https://www.breitbart.com/national-security/2019/03/05/canadas-snc-lavalin-scandal-cabinet-minister-quits-trudeau/

NSA Quietly Shuts Down Mass Cell Phone Spying Program Exposed by Edward Snowden

The National Security Agency (NSA) has reportedly abandoned part of their infamous surveillance apparatus exposed by former contractor Edward Snowden, and used for the mass collection of Americans’ communications records; including phone logs, metadata and text messages.

The New York Times noted that House minority leader national security adviser Luke Murry told The Lawfare Podcast that the NSA “hasn’t actually been using it for the past six months,” and that he’s “not certain that the [Trump] administration will want to start that back up” (despite collecting 530 million US phone records in 2017)

Keep in mind, the NYT report isn’t claiming the NSA has abandoned other programs such as XKeyscore – which the agency uses to search and analyze global internet data. When asked by German broadcaster Norddeutscher Rundfunk “What could you do if you would use XKeyscore?” Edward Snowden replied:

You could read anyone’s email in the world, anybody you’ve got an email address for. Any website: You can watch traffic to and from it. Any computer that an individual sits at: You can watch it. Any laptop that you’re tracking: you can follow it as it moves from place to place throughout the world. It’s a one-stop-shop for access to the NSA’s information.

… You can tag individuals … Let’s say you work at a major German corporation and I want access to that network, I can track your username on a website on a form somewhere, I can track your real name, I can track associations with your friends and I can build what’s called a fingerprint, which is network activity unique to you, which means anywhere you go in the world, anywhere you try to sort of hide your online presence, your identity. –Edward Snowden

Of note, former Director of National Intelligence, James Clapper, was caught lying to Congress about the NSA’s bulk data collection. In response to a 2013 question by Sen. Ron Wyden (D-OR) “Does the NSA collect any type of data at all on millions, or hundreds of millions, of Americans?,” Clapper replied: “No sir, not wittingly.”

https://thefreethoughtproject.com/nsa-abandons-surveillance-program/

>>5521354

No dumb ass another minister quit

Clapper: ‘I Didn’t Lie’ to Congress About NSA Spying — ‘I Just Simply Didn’t Understand’ the Question

Tuesday on CNN’s “New Day,” host John Berman asked former National Intelligence Director James Clapper about The Intercept’s Glenn Greenwald saying he lied to Congress about the NSA program used to spy on Americans’ phone records.

Clapper denied lying to Congress in 2013, explaining he “simply just didn’t understand the question” he was asked.

“[T]he original thought behind this, and this program was put in place as a direct result of 9/11, and the point was to be able to track quickly a foreign communicant talking to somebody in this country who may have been plotting a terrorist plot, and was put in place during the Bush administration for that reason. I always regarded it as kind of a safeguard or insurance policy so that if the need came up you’d have this to refer to,” Clapper told Berman.

“As far as the comment, the allegation about my lying: I didn’t lie, I made a big mistake and I just simply didn’t understand what I was being asked about,” he added. “I thought of another surveillance program, Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act when I was being asked about Section 215 of the Patriot Act at the time. I just didn’t understand that.”

https://www.breitbart.com/clips/2019/03/05/clapper-i-didnt-lie-to-congress-about-nsa-spying-i-just-simply-didnt-understand-the-question/

Swedish prime minister refuses to strip citizenship: “ISIS fighters can return”

Stefan Löfven, Sweden’s Prime Minister and the leftist Socialist Party leader has ruled out the possibility of stripping Swedish Islamic State Fighters of their citizenships, and has said that they have the right to come back to the country.

Nyheter Idag recently reported that Löfven stated the Ministry of Foreign Affairs had previously warned those who were traveling in and around the region in which IS had been fighting, that those individuals who were captured shouldn’t anticipate any assistance from the Swedish government at a consular level.

The prime minster did, however, state that he would refrain from stripping the Islamic State fighters of their Swedish citizenship, asserting that it was their right to return to the country if they desired. He then said that upon their return, it would be up to the intelligence service and law enforcement to keep track of the returning terrorists whereabouts and to potentially arrest and prosecute them.

Löfven’s statement lies in stark contrast with what right-wing populist leader of the Sweden Democrats, Jimmie Åkesson, had to say regarding the issue. Åkesson stated, “If they choose to travel away to support the terrorist organisation Islamic State, in my opinion, they have used up all of their rights to call themselves Swedish. Then they should also not be a citizen.”

In a reaction to the comments given by Löfven, Paula Bierler, the Sweden Democrat’s migration policy spokeswomen, agreed with Åkesson, writing, “The people who left Sweden to join the Islamic State should be considered to have terminated their Swedish citizenship.”

Since 2012, at least 150 of the approximately 300 terrorists that left the country to fight for the Islamic State have now returned back to Sweden. According to Jan Jönsson, a local politician, at least 19 of these Islamic State terrorists are currently living in the Swedish Capital of Stockholm.

In Malmö, a southern city that’s become infamous for its no-go zones and significant Middle Eastern and North African migrant population, around twenty or so former Islamic State terrorists have purportedly been operating underground and illegal mosques and using them to recruit new radical Islamic terrorists for their jihad against the West.

Michael Helders, an anti-violence extremism activist stated that, former IS fighters are often ‘seen as heroes for young people who are at risk and radicalized.’ He added that, “It increases concern, of course, and creates instability. People are worried about their children.”

Of the 300 Islamic terrorists that left Sweden to join Islamic State and other terrorist organizations in Iraq and Syria, about half have returned to Sweden, whereas 50 are thought to have been killed, while another 100 remain in the Middle East.

As the dismantling of the Islamic State continues, we can expect this issue to remain at the forefront of political debate in many western European countries.

https://voiceofeurope.com/2019/03/swedish-prime-minister-refuses-to-strip-citizenship-isis-fighters-can-return/

Sattelite Images Of US-controlled Rukban Refugee Camp In Syria: Hundreds Of Graves And Insanitary Conditions

On March 5, the Russian Defense Ministry released stattelite images showing the situation in the Rukban refugee camp, which is located in the US-occupied part of eastern Syria, near the US military garrison of al-Tanf.

The released pictures allow to see the real living conditions in the refugee camp.

A waste deposit is located in close proximityto the living accomodations.

A notable part of the camp is tents and sheds, which means that no conditions allowing a permanent residence of thousands of people have been created. This is an especially acute problem during the winter.

No subsistence warehouses or meal stations are being observed.

Food and other goods can be get only in pop-up markets controlled by militants.

The Russian military said that US-backed militants are preventing militants from leaving the site. It said that the Rukban area is no more a refugee camp. It’s a reservation area with hostages.

The Russian side pointed out that the US military is opposing to the evacuation of civilians and spreading rumors that they will be presecuted by the Damascus government. US-backed militants demand notable sums in USD from people who want to leave the camp.

At the same time, the statement added that about 35,000 people have declared their readiness to return to the government-controlled area. About 28,300 of them are going to return to the province of Homs, about 2,800 – to the province of Deir Ezzor, about 1,600 – Damacus province, about 1,600 – Hama province and 1,200 – Aleppo province.

https://southfront.org/sattelite-images-of-us-controlled-rukban-refugee-camp-in-syria-hundreds-of-graves-and-insanitary-conditions/

Cabal run human trafficking, CP center

Macron Attacks Brexit, Calls for ‘European Federalism’ in Pre-Election War Cry

Globalist French President Emmanuel Macron has made a direct address to the over 500 million people who live in the European Union, calling on them to support his vision of a more centralised and powerful “project” European Union which, he believes, could even entice the United Kingdom into cancelling Brexit.

The plea to voters to back an enhanced European Union which would take more control over its member nation states comes just months before the continental power bloc holds elections to select Members of the European Parliament for the next five-year term.

While the European Parliament itself is largely impotent, with the real power to propose and direct legislation given to the unelected European Commission, the vote is being seen as one that will inform the tone and direction of the European Union for the coming years. Given several recent polls and projections that suggest populist parties are likely to surge in the vote, loyal Europhiles including President Macron have made campaigning in the vote a personal interest.

An English language translation of the letter provided by the President’s Elysee Palace office reveals Macron’s preoccupation with Brexit, which he called a symbol of “the crisis of Europe, which has failed to respond to its peoples’ needs for protection from the major shocks of the modern world… the anger mongers, backed by fake news, promise anything and everything.”

Calling the Brexit vote a symbol of the “European trap”, which he claimed was caused by lies and irresponsibility, the French president wrote, “We cannot let nationalists without solutions exploit the people’s anger. We cannot sleepwalk through a diminished Europe.”

On these alleged lies and accusations of “fake news”, the loyal globalist had specific complaints. Somewhat counter-intuitively, Macron rhetorically asked of the level of information available to voters before the Brexit vote: “Who told the British people the truth about their post-Brexit future? Who spoke to them about losing access to the European market?

It is not clear whether Macron meant withdrawing from the Common Market as part of Brexit — which was made clear would happen during the Brexit campaign, and even in the government’s own leaflet calling on the British people to vote to remain — or losing the ability to trade with Europe at all, which has not been suggested as a possibility by any actor within Brexit negotiations.

Macron’s letter also had a series of improvements he wanted to see in the European Union, all of which means transferring further power and sovereignty away from member states to the centre in Brussels.

https://www.breitbart.com/europe/2019/03/05/macron-attacks-brexit-calls-european-federalism-pre-election-war-cry/

Khan’s London: Bacon, Jam, Butter Ad Banned from Public Transport

A supermarket ad containing mostly fresh produce but that contained butter, bacon, and jam was banned after London’s Mayor Sadiq Khan introduced a prohibition on advertising ‘junk food’ on the Underground.

Online food retailer Farmdrop, which aims to deliver “fresher, fairer groceries,” has claimed that Transport for London (TfL) rejected their advert because it contained items including “free-range eggs and butter from local farmers” in contravention of the war on “high fat, sugar and salt” foods.

In a blog post, the fair-trade shop shared the original poster (above), highlighting the offending items that it said had to be removed before the ad was approved by TfL: rashers of bacon, a jar of strawberry jam, free-range butter, and half a dozen free range eggs.

https://www.breitbart.com/europe/2019/03/05/khans-london-underground-ad-groceries-containing-meat-dairy-banned/

House Passes Universal Background Checks Bill

The most significant gun control bill to pass the House in more than two decades will now go to the Senate.

https://www.huffingtonpost.com.au/entry/house-background-check-pass_n_5c76d86fe4b08c4f5556b27b