Dad: San Bernardino shooter agreed with ISIL, 'obsessed with Israel'

Source: USA Today

The father, who is also named Syed Farook, told La Stampa that his son took on an overly conservative outlook on Islam and at least once expressed support for ideas promoted by Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the leader of the Islamic State militant group, also known as ISIL or ISIS.

"He said he shared the ideology of al-Baghdadi to create an Islamic state, and he was obsessed with Israel," the father told a reporter in an interview outside the home of this other son, Syed Raheel Farook, in Corona, Calif.

The father said he counseled his son to be patient because, he said, in time political changes in the Middle East will accomplish his desires.

"I kept telling him always: stay calm, be patient, in two years Israel will no longer exist," the elder Farook told the newspaper. "Geopolitics is changing: Russia, China, America too, nobody wants the Jews there."

Read more: http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/2015/12/06/dad-san-bernardino-shooter-agreed-isil-obssessed-israel/76890108/

German Vice Chancellor warns Saudi Arabia over Islamist funding

Source: Reuters

German Vice Chancellor Sigmar Gabriel urged Saudi Arabia on Sunday to stop supporting religious radicals, amid growing concern among some lawmakers in Berlin about the funding of militant mosques by the world's biggest oil exporter.

The unusual criticism of the Gulf state follows a report by Germany's foreign intelligence agency which suggested that Saudi foreign policy was becoming more "impulsive".

The German government rebuked the BND agency for making such suggestions about Saudi Arabia, an important business partner that is involved in international talks to find a political solution to the Syria crisis.

"We need Saudi Arabia to solve the regional conflicts," Sigmar Gabriel, the head of the Social Democrats (SPD) who share power with conservative Chancellor Angela Merkel, told the mass-circulation newspaper Bild am Sonntag.


Read more: https://ca.news.yahoo.com/german-vice-chancellor-warns-saudi-arabia-over-islamist-135521960.html

Safeway ordered to pay almost $42 million for website sales

A federal judge in San Francisco has ordered Safeway to pay almost $42 million to customers nationwide who bought groceries from the market chain’s website and were unaware that they were being charged 10 percent above store prices.

U.S. District Judge Jon Tigar granted $30.9 million in damages and $10.9 million in interest Monday to online shoppers who had registered with Safeway.com between 2006, when the website opened, and November 2011, when the company reworded its policy to declare that online prices “may differ from your local store.”

Safeway did not send notices of the change to pre-November 2011 customers, who can seek refunds of at least some of the surcharges they paid after that date. Tigar has not said how many customers will be eligible for refunds or how they can apply, details that may be worked out in future hearings.

Safeway said Friday it will ask the Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco to overturn Tigar’s earlier ruling that it had misled customers about their prices.

http://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/article/Safeway-hit-with-near-42-million-judgment-for-web-6678059.php

Israeli organ trafficking suspect arrested in Istanbul

A Turkish court on Dec. 5 arrested an Israeli organ trafficking suspect, who was sought by Interpol’s red notice and detained at Istanbul’s Atatürk Airport on early Dec. 4.

He was reportedly in Turkey to convince struggling Syrian migrants to sell their organs.

Boris Walker was detained over alleged “organ trafficking” and “fraud” at 2:40 a.m. immediately after he arrived in Istanbul on a flight from Bangkok.

A court ruled for Walker’s arrest for 40 days, after which he is expected to be extradited to Israel.
According to a report by daily Vatan, Walker wanted to expand his illegal business in Turkey, targeting struggling Syrian migrants.

http://www.hurriyetdailynews.com/video-israeli-organ-trafficking-suspect-arrested-in-istanbul.aspx?PageID=238&NID=92093&NewsCatID=509

They have excellent propaganda and pay well...nt

F.B.I. Treating San Bernardino Attack as Terrorism Case

Source: NY Times

On the day she and her husband killed 14 people and wounded 21 others in San Bernardino, Calif., a woman pledged allegiance to the Islamic State in a Facebook post, officials said Friday, as the F.B.I. announced that it was treating the massacre as an act of terrorism.

“The investigation so far has developed indications of radicalization by the killers, and of potential inspiration by foreign terrorist organizations,” the F.B.I. director, James B. Comey, said at a news conference here. But he said that investigators had not found evidence that the killers were part of a larger group or terrorist cell. The couple died in a shootout with the police on Wednesday.

“There’s no indication that they are part of a network,” he said.

The woman, Tashfeen Malik, declared allegiance to the Islamic State on Facebook at roughly the time of the shooting on Wednesday, according to a Facebook spokesman. At a news conference in San Bernardino, David Bowdich, the F.B.I. assistant director in charge of the Los Angeles office, said he was aware of the post, which was taken down by Facebook on Wednesday, but he would not elaborate.

Read more: http://www.nytimes.com/2015/12/05/us/tashfeen-malik-islamic-state.html?_r=0

Dutch far-right leader Wilders tells Turks: 'You will never join EU'

Source: Reuters

Dutch far-right leader Geert Wilders, the most popular politician in the Netherlands, has told Turks "you are not welcome here" in a video that takes aim at Turkey's hopes of joining the European Union.

Wilders, who is fiercely anti-Islam, has surged in public opinion polls with his call for the closing of national borders in the face of a migrant crisis that has seen hundreds of thousands of people, mostly Muslims, fleeing to Europe this year to escape conflicts and poverty in the Middle East and beyond.

Turkey promised at an EU summit in Brussels last Sunday to help stem the flow of migrants in return for cash, an easing of visa restrictions for Turks visiting Europe and renewed talks on admitting Turkey as a member of the bloc.

In his English-language video posted online on Friday with Turkish subtitles, however, Wilders told Turks in typically blunt fashion: "Your government is fooling you into believing that one day you will become a member of the European Union. Well, forget it."

Read more: https://ca.news.yahoo.com/dutch-far-leader-wilders-tells-turks-never-join-155354933.html

Ben Giaimo--A Foreign Disciple of Confucius

How Many Mass Shootings Are There, Really?

On Wednesday, a Washington Post article announced that “The San Bernardino shooting is the second mass shooting today and the 355th this year.” Vox, MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow, this newspaper and others reported similar statistics. Grim details from the church in Charleston, a college classroom in Oregon and a Planned Parenthood clinic in Colorado are still fresh, but you could be forgiven for wondering how you missed more than 300 other such attacks in 2015.

At Mother Jones, where I work as an editor, we have compiled an in-depth, open-source database covering more than three decades of public mass shootings. By our measure, there have been four “mass shootings” this year, including the one in San Bernardino, and at least 73 such attacks since 1982.

What explains the vastly different count? The answer is that there is no official definition for “mass shooting.” Almost all of the gun crimes behind the much larger statistic are less lethal and bear little relevance to the type of public mass murder we have just witnessed again. Including them in the same breath suggests that a 1 a.m. gang fight in a Sacramento restaurant, in which two were killed and two injured, is the same kind of event as a deranged man walking into a community college classroom and massacring nine and injuring nine others. Or that a late-night shooting on a street in Savannah, Ga., yesterday that injured three and killed one is in the same category as the madness that just played out in Southern California.

While all the victims are important, conflating those many other crimes with indiscriminate slaughter in public venues obscures our understanding of this complicated and growing problem. Everyone is desperate to know why these attacks happen and how we might stop them — and we can’t know, unless we collect and focus on useful data that filter out the noise.

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/12/04/opinion/how-many-mass-shootings-are-there-really.html

Manager says former Stone Temple Pilots frontman Scott Weiland dead at 48

Scott Weiland, the former frontman for the Stone Temple Pilots and Velvet Revolver, has died. He was 48.

The singer's manager, Tom Vitorino, confirmed the death to The Associated Press early Friday morning. Vitorino said he learned of Weiland's death from his tour manager but did not provide further details.

Weiland's current band, Scott Weiland & the Wildabouts, was scheduled to play at a Medina, Minnesota, concert venue, according to the venue's website. The website showed the event was cancelled. It did not give a reason.

Local authorities couldn't immediately be reached for comment by the AP.

https://ca.news.yahoo.com/manager-says-former-stone-temple-pilots-frontman-scott-063920711.html