The Hemingway Report

Wednesday, June 22, 2016

Who knew it would be this easy

All you need is love

Video 250

Tuesday, June 21, 2016

FBI comes to their senses

After outcry, FBI releases full transcript of Orlando nightclub shooting call

The FBI on Monday afternoon released a full transcript of the 911 call Orlando Pulse nightclub shooter Omar Mateen made during his June 12 rampage inside the club, which left 49 people dead.

"I let you know, I'm in Orlando and I did the shootings," Mateen told the dispatcher in the 2:35 a.m. call, according to the transcript.

When the dispatcher asked for his name, Mateen replied: "My name is I pledge of allegiance to Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi of the Islamic State."

The Islamic State, also known as ISIS, or its leader, al-Baghdadi, were not mentioned in a partial transcript of the call the FBI released Monday morning. The agency said it didn't want to provide a platform to a terror group.

But after news organizations and public officials like Republican House Leader Paul Ryan complained, the agency released the full, unredacted transcript of the call in the afternoon.

In explaining its change of mind, the FBI said in a news release: "As much of this information had been previously reported, we have re-issued the complete transcript to include these references in order to provide the highest level of transparency possible under the circumstances."

The ISIS reference was not a surprise. CNN has previously reported that Mateen pledged allegiance to ISIS during a 911 call from the gay nightclub, citing a U.S. official.

Summaries released:

In addition to the transcript, the FBI also released summaries of three calls between Mateen and crisis negotiators -- one at 2:48 a.m., another at 3:03 a.m. and the final one at 3:24 a.m.

In those calls, which lasted a total of 28 minutes, according to the FBI's timeline, Mateen identified himself as an Islamic soldier and "told the negotiator to tell America to stop bombing Syria and Iraq and that is why he was 'out here right now.' "

"When the crisis negotiator asked the shooter what he had done, the shooter stated, 'No, you already know what I did,' " according to the document.

He also claimed he had explosives in a vehicle outside the club and an explosive vest similar to those used by the Paris attackers, and warned of similar attacks in the days to come.

Authorities found no explosives, and so far have found no credible threats of additional violence, Hopper said.

The timeline released by the FBI shows that the first call to police came in at 2:02 a.m. Within two minutes, officers were on the scene. At 2:08 a.m., officers entered the club and "engaged the shooter."

According to the timeline and Orlando police Chief John Mina, that's the last time shots were fired inside the club until nearly three hours later when police used explosives to blow a hole in the club's wall and an armored vehicle to enter the club.

By 5:15 a.m., Mateen was dead, according to authorities.

Police response defended

Mina and others defended the police response against what they said were misconceptions by some in the media and public about how events unfolded.

He said the initial engagement by officers minutes after the rampage began drove Mateen into hiding in a club bathroom and stopped the shooting.

He also said officers were in and out of the club, repeatedly rescuing people.

Hopper called the work of law enforcement officers that night "nothing less than extraordinary."

As for what motivated Mateen, FBI Special Agent Ron Hopper of Orlando said that authorities have no evidence that a foreign terrorist group directed his violent plot. Instead, they said, it appears he was radicalized domestically.

Investigators have conducted more than 500 interviews trying to determine his precise motive for the shootings, Hopper said.

Paul Ryan speaks out

Attorney General Loretta Lynch's decision to release only the partial transcript created a minor firestorm.

"Selectively editing this transcript is preposterous," Ryan said in a statement. "We know the shooter was a radical Islamist extremist inspired by ISIS. We also know he intentionally targeted the LGBT community. The administration should release the full, unredacted transcript so the public is clear-eyed about who did this, and why."

Authorities also defended the decision, saying it was meant to avoid lending credence to terrorist leaders.

"We're not going to propagate their rhetoric, their violent rhetoric," FBI Special Agent Ron Hopper said.

He also said the decision not to release audio, or details of victims' calls to 911, was to avoid further traumatizing those who were inside the club.

Gun control measures

In the aftermath of the Orlando nightclub shooting, the four proposed gun control measures up for consideration by the Senate failed to reach the 60-vote threshold required to pass on Monday.

The Senate rejected a Republican proposal to update the background check system for gun purchases to include information on mental health records in a national database. The measure included a provision calling for law enforcement agencies to be alerted when a gun is purchased by an individual who'd been on a government terror watch list in the last five years

Senators also defeated a Democrats' proposal to expand background checks on individuals to include gun shows and online purchases.

A Republican proposal to delay gun sales to individuals included on a government terror watch list failed in a mostly party-line vote of 53-47. And a Democratic option, proposed by Democratic Sen. Dianne Feinstein's, that sought to bar all gun sales to those individuals on the terror watch list, failed 47-53. This is the second time this measure has been defeated. Feinstein pushed the same proposal in December after the mass shooting in San Bernardino.

Senate Republicans said the Democratic measure that would ban gun sales to people on the terror watch list would violate individuals' Second Amendment rights. They said many people mistakenly end up on the federal terror watch list.

Meanwhile, Florida Governor Rick Scott said Monday that the Obama administration has rejected the state's request for $5 million in federal emergency funds following the nightclub shooting. The governor's press office referenced in a statement the $253,000 in federal assistance the state will receive to help pay overtime for the first responders following the attack.

Monday, June 20, 2016

Rewriting history

DOJ scrubs Islam references from transcripts of Orlando terrorist's calls to police

This is truly fucking unbelievable!!!

Please...someone convince me Barry's not a Muslim. How much more obvious can it get?

OMAR MATEEN 911 CALL TO ORLANDO POLICE DISPATCH ON JUNE 12:

Orlando Dispatch: Emergency 911, this is being recorded.

Omar Mateen: In the name of God the Merciful, the beneficial [in Arabic] OD: What?

OM: Praise be to God, and prayers as well as peace be upon the prophet of God [in Arabic]. I let you know, I’m in Orlando and I did the shootings.

OD: What’s your name? OM: My name is I pledge allegiance to [omitted]. OD: Ok, What’s your name?

OM: I pledge allegiance to [omitted] may God protect him [in Arabic], on behalf of [omitted].

OD: Alright, where are you at?

OM: In Orlando.

OD: Where in Orlando?

[Omar hangs up phone]

If Barry can't defend Islam by calling terrorist attacks "workplace violence" the next best thing is to 'improve' the actual 911 call by removing any reference to Islam which in effect is rewriting history.... something this administration is well versed at.

http://insider.foxnews.com/2016/05/10/state-dept-edited-video-rosen-psaki-2013-exchange-iran-talks

The same situation took place in Benghazi. They had to protect the Muslim killers so what did they do? Blame an obscure video no one ever heard of.

Does anyone see a pattern here or am I the only one?

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The Department of Justice is scrubbing references to radical Islamic beliefs from the transcripts of calls Orlando terrorist Omar Mateen made to police during his massacre, Attorney General Loretta Lynch said Sunday.

A partial transcript of the conversations between authorities and Mateen, who killed 49 and wounded 53 in the June 12 attack at a Florida gay nightclub, is set to be released on Monday. But Lynch, who appeared on numerous Sunday talk shows, said the transcripts will not include Mateen's oath of loyalty to ISIS or any other religious justification for the attack.

“What we’re not going to do is further proclaim this man’s pledges of allegiance to terrorist groups, and further his propaganda,” Lynch told NBC. “We are not going to hear him make his assertions of allegiance [to the Islamic State].”

Bet if he swore allegiance to the Pope it would be a different story. In his defense of Islam refusing to call them terrorists Barry said this recently:

“Calling a threat by a different name does not make it go away.” But changing the facts through omission on the 911 call is perfectly legit?

The calls could confirm Mateen's motives in the wake of Facebook postings from the killer that already reveal Islamist leanings.

“I pledge my alliance to (ISIS leader) Abu Bakr al Baghdadi..may Allah accept me,” Mateen wrote in one post during the attack. “The real Muslims will never accept the filthy ways of the west” …“You kill innocent women and children by doing us airstrikes..now taste the Islamic state vengeance.”

Other posts include warnings to the U.S. and Russia to stop bombing the Islamic State and a prediction that more ISIS attacks would follow Mateen's assault.

But that "radical Islam" angle is likely to be missing from Monday's release.

Critics blasted the move by the administration, which has rejected branding terrorist acts as motivated by radical Islam and has sought to paint the Orlando attack as a gun control issue.

"This is not just a simple wording issue," Ric Grenell, a Fox News contributor and former aide to UN Ambassador John Bolton told Fox and Friends Monday morning. "The fact that Loretta Lynch is somehow redacting the specific enemy that is being called out here is a PR move."

Former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani, also on Fox and Friends Monday, said it does not help law enforcement to try to bury the motivations or allegiances of criminals and terrorists.

"Why didn't they do this with the Mafia, to spare Italian-Americans?" Giuliani asked. "Why? Because if you did, you would never make the connection [which ultimately] brought them down."

Mateen died in a hail of gunfire after police blew a hole in the side of the venue following a three-hour hostage standoff. But before his final moments came, Mateen declared allegiance to Islamic State leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi -- right in the midst of the slaughter.

The move to edit the transcripts of Mateen's calls harkens back to April, when French President Francois Hollande's reference to "Islamist terrorism" was left out of an official White House video during an international summit in Washington D.C. The White House later told several news outlets the dropped phrase was a "technical issue."

President Obama famously has tried not to use the phrase "radical Islamic terrorism" in his remarks, a position many Republicans have lambasted him for. Obama has said he believes that phrase gives a measure of legitimacy to terror groups.

And as investigators look past Mateen's religious convictions, Lynch said a top goal is to build a complete profile of the gunman in order to help prevent another massacre like Orlando.

“We are trying to re-create the days, the weeks, the months of this killer’s life before this attack,” Lynch said. “And we are also asking those people who had contact with him to come forward and give us that information as well.”

Mateen was the focus of two FBI investigations into suspected terrorism. However, the probes were concluded without further action, and Mateen was allowed to legally buy firearms.

Lynch said the Justice Department is “going to go back and see what changes could have been made,” regarding how the investigations were handled.

Lynch said she’s traveling to Orlando Tuesday to meet with federal investigators.

While speaking to CBS’ “Face The Nation,” Lynch said that a key goal of the probe was to determine why Mateen targeted the gay community. The victims were predominantly gay and Hispanic since it was "Latin Night" at Pulse.

Lynch, speaking on “Fox News Sunday,” declined to say whether federal authorities will charge anybody in connection with the mass murder. She also declined to comment on why the wife of the shooter has not been arrested, amid purported evidence that she either helped her husband plot the murders or suspected his intentions and did not alert authorities.

Lynch also expressed support for Texas GOP Sen. John Cornyn's amendment, which is scheduled for a vote Monday in the Senate and would allow the federal government to delay a gun sale to a suspected terrorist for as long as 72 hours. Afterward, prosecutors would have to persuade a judge to block the sale permanently.

Lynch said such an amendment would give the federal government the ability to stop a sale to somebody on the terror watch list.

Meanwhile, thousands of people packed Lake Eola Park in Florida Sunday evening for a vigil to honor the victims of the shooting. The park was filled with people holding white flowers, American flags, and candles.

At the end of the gathering, people held up their candles as the name of each victim was read, creating a ring of fire around Lake Eola. They chanted "One Orlando," ''Orlando United" and "Somos Orlando," Spanish for "We are Orlando."

"That event has gotten the attention of the world," said Evania Nichols, an Orlando resident. "And, for Orlando — a city that's always been incredibly inclusive no matter your skin color, no matter your background — it's brought about a movement that I think is starting here and I really hope continues."

Looks like we're in trouble

This computer is so smart it can envision Hillary's emails before she writes them.

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Chinese supercomputer is the world's fastest — and without using US chips

A Chinese supercomputer built using domestic chip technology has been declared the world's fastest. The news highlights China's recent advances in the creation of such systems, as well the country's waning reliance on US semiconductor technology.

The Sunway TaihuLight takes the top spot from previous record-holder Tianhe-2 (also located in China), and more than triples the latter's speed. The new number one is capable of performing some 93 quadrillion calculations per second (otherwise known as petaflops) and is roughly five times more powerful than the speediest US system, which is now ranked third worldwide.

The TaihuLight is comprised of some 41,000 chips, each with 260 processor cores. This makes for a total of 10.65 million cores, compared to the 560,000 cores in America's top machine. In terms of memory, it's relatively light on its feet, with just 1.3 petabytes used for the entire machine. (By comparison, the much less powerful 10-petaflop K supercomputer uses 1.4 petabytes of RAM.) This means it's unusually energy efficient, drawing just 15.3 megawatts of power — less than the 17.8 megawatts used by the 33-petaflop Tianhe-2.

More significantly than its specs, though, is the fact that the TaihuLight is built from Chinese semiconductors. "It's not based on an existing architecture. They built it themselves," Jack Dongarra, a professor at the University of Tennessee and creator of the measurement system used to rank the world's supercomputers, told Bloomberg. "This is a system that has Chinese processors."

The US has banned the export of high-performance chips to china

The previous fastest supercomputer, China's Tianhe-2, was built using US-made Intel processors. There were plans to upgrade the Tianhe-2's performance last year, but in April 2015 the US government placed an export ban on all high-performance computing chips to China. The Department of Commerce said that exporting such technology was "acting contrary" to American national security or foreign interests, and suggested that an earlier Chinese supercomputer — the Tianhe-1A — had been "used in nuclear explosive activities."

Supercomputers are thought by both the US and China to be integral for national security and scientific research. Such systems are used for a variety of tasks, including civilian work like climate forecasting and product design. However, they're also useful for more high-stakes research, including cybersecurity and nuclear weaponry. According to its creators, the TaihuLight will be used in the fields of manufacturing, life science, and earth system modeling.

China's investment in high-performance chips and supercomputers in recent years has been significant and effective. In 2001, there were no Chinese supercomputers in the world's top 500 ranking. Now, there are 167 — more than the US, which has 165 entries. The development of TaihuLight was funded under the so-called "863 program," a government project aimed at ending reliance on foreign technology.