A New Jersey man has spent the past 22 years training with and scouting terror-attack locations for Hezbollah — and provided the group with intelligence on the Port Authority, Grand Central Terminal, the New York Stock Exchange and the city’s two airports, according to a new federal indictment against him.

Alexei Saab, 42, of Morristown — also known as Ali Hassan Saab, Alex Saab, or “Rachid” — was charged Thursday in a nine-count indictment for allegedly providing material support to the deadly organization.

Saab was arrested in July, and remains in federal custody, officials said.

As far back as in 2003, he gave Hezbollah photos and other detailed intel on New York City landmarks and transportation hubs.

Saab surveilled dozens of locations in New York City—including the United Nations headquarters, the Statue of Liberty, Rockefeller Center, Times Square, the Empire State Building, the federal offices at 26 Federal Plaza, and local airports, tunnels, and bridges, including the George Washington Bridge.

The detailed information recovered from his computers included photographs and details on the structural weaknesses — or “soft spots” — of these locations, officials alleged.

He has also surveilled sites in cities around the US — including the Washington Monument and Boston’s Fenway Park, The Post has learned.

The charges do not allege that Saab conducted any recent surveillance.

“According to the allegations, while living in the United States, Saab served as an operative of Hezbollah and conducted surveillance of possible target locations in order to help the foreign terrorist organization prepare for potential future attacks against the United States,” said Assistant Attorney General for National Security John C. Demers said in a press statement.

“Such covert activities conducted on U.S. soil are a clear threat to our national security and I applaud the agents, analysts, and prosecutors who are responsible for this investigation and prosecution.”

Saab joined Hezbollah in 1996, and his earliest activities with the group include spying in Lebanon on the movements of Israeli and Southern Lebanese Army soldiers, and intelligence-gathering in Istanbul, the indictment alleges.

He trained in the use of firearms, including AK-47s, and in 2000 he received extensive training in military tactics, including how to construct bombs and other explosive devices, the indictment alleges.

In 2005, Saab attempted to murder a suspected Israeli spy, pointing a firearm at close range and twice pulling the trigger, only to have the gun malfunction both times, officials said.

In 2004 and 2005, Saab attended explosives training in Lebanon during which he received detailed instruction in, among other things, triggering mechanisms, explosive substances, detonators and the assembly of circuits, the indictment alleges.

In 2000, Saab lawfully entered the United States using a Lebanese passport, and he became a naturalized US citizen in 2008, the indictment alleges.

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Hamza bin Laden is claimed to have died in the secret hit job by the US government and intelligence agencies are braced for a retaliation.

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Fears are mounting that an atrocity on the scale of 9/11 is being plottedCredit: Getty Images – Getty

The Sunday Mirror has been told by security sources there have been warnings of an al-Qaeda resurgence and spectacular attacks.

One western intelligence analyst said: “There is a strong will still out there for another 9/11 so the bin Laden nightmare is far from over – even though it is likely the founder’s only possible terrorist heir has been killed.

“Operationally, Hamza was inexperienced but as a scion of the most famous terror mastermind the world has known, he was irresistible.”

“Osama bin Laden knew his son’s true value and hoped that one day Hamza would take up the challenge of leading al-Qaeda so he could not be allowed by the west to rally support for a new and more dangerous al-Qaeda.”

Hamza was reportedly present when his killer dad plotted 9/11.

Nearly 3,000 people were killed in hijacked plane attacks on the World Trade Centre’s twin towers in New York and on the Pentagon in Washington DC.

The father and son also spent time together as they fled to Pakistan during the US invasion of Afghanistan.

It comes as the United Nation warns a huge 30,000 strong army of Isis fighters may still be alive and are bent on revenge after the collapse of their so-called Caliphate in Syria and Iraq.

A report said: “Their future prospects will be of international concern for the foreseeable future.

“Some may join al-Qaeda or other terrorist brands that may emerge. Some will become leaders or radicalisers.”

The report is based on information supplied by intelligence agencies of UN member states, and offers a glimpse into security services fears around the world.

Original Article

WASHINGTON — It has been quite the week in Congress, with lawmakers battling over a forced impeachment resolution for President Donald Trump, partisan squabbling, and rampant infighting within the House Democratic Caucus.

Things have become so vexed in the Capitol that Rev. Patrick Conroy, the House of Representatives’ official chaplain and a Jesuit priest, prayed to “cast out all spirits of darkness” on the House floor Thursday morning during his opening prayer.

Read more:‘I abandon the chair’: A congressman presiding over the House got sick of partisan fighting and literally dropped the gavel and left

“This has been a difficult and contentious week in which darker spirits seem to have been at play in the people’s House,” Conroy said. “In your most holy name, I now cast out all spirits of darkness from this chamber. Spirits not from You.”

“I cast out the spirit of discouragement, which deadens the hope of those who are of good will,” he added. “I cast out the spirit of petty divisiveness, which clouds the sense and the desire to be of fruitful productivity in addressing the issues more appropriately before this House. I cast out any sadness brought on by the frustration of dealing with matters detrimental to the honorable work each member has been called to engage in.”

Conroy then prayed to God to “anoint your servants here in the House with a healing balm to comfort and renew the souls of all in this assembly.”

“May your spirit of wisdom and patience descend upon all so that any spirit of darkness might have no place in our midst,” he added.

Conroy typically leads the opening prayer on the House floor, while leaders of other religious groups will often take his place to perform as guests.

Read more: Reliable, friendly, and masters of one-way communication: Meet the dog mayors of America

The last time Conroy made headlines was in the spring of 2018, when then-House Speaker Paul Ryan attempted to fire him as House chaplain. According to several lawmakers at the time, Ryan became frustrated with one of Conroy’s prayers in which he called for a fair tax code while Republicans were pushing through their landmark Tax Cuts and Jobs Act.

Conroy ultimately rescinded the resignation that Ryan had requested after many members of Congress came to his defense. He then continued in his role as House chaplain, a position he has held since 2011.

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Con Edison is still baffled over what caused the weekend’s major blackout — and warned on Monday that more outages could be coming with a heat wave on the way.

“We expect that there could be service outages — those things happen during heat waves,” the power company’s chief spokesman, Mike Clendenin, said during a morning appearance on PIX11.

Insisting that the company invests $2 billion every year to prepare for soaring electricity demands when the mercury rises, Clendenin claimed Con Ed will be “prepared.”

“We know it’s going to be intense,” he said of forecasts predicting temperatures reaching 100 degrees this week. “This heat wave coming up is something else and we’ve got to get ready for it.”

But he admitted that engineers still have no idea what caused Saturday’s outage that left 73,000 without power in Manhattan.

“We are very, very focused on examining exactly what transpired and caused that outage,” Clendenin told the station, saying they have no idea why breakers “did not isolate the problem” of a “significant” transmission disturbance.

“There’s a lot of patience and poise that New Yorkers displayed during the outage itself. The same kind of patience and diligence is gonna be needed as engineers and experts dive into the date and actually analyze how equipment tripped off, or what went wrong, that led to the large outage,” said Clendenin. “Unfortunately, with outages like this, it takes a little bit of time and understanding.”

Confirming that the blackout was not connected to heat or overusage, he said that “fortunately, there was no major or extensive damage” — conceding that that would have left the power out for even longer.

Clendenin tried to shake off criticism of the company — with Gov. Andrew Cuomo warning Con Ed “can be replaced” — by insisting that it provides “the absolute best grid that New Yorkers expect and deserve.”

“In fact, New York’s grid is probably better than any other grid you’ll find anywhere else in the United States,” he told PIX11, saying they were “open to anyone’s ideas” on becoming even better.

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Midtown Manhattan was surreal Saturday night.

The center of our little island is supposed to be the center of the universe — yet I am writing this after eating a lukewarm peach for dinner by (hot) candlelight in 90-degree temperatures with the windows shut tight, racing against time to finish it before my computer runs out of its last moments of electricity.

Yes, we want to be the center of finance, tech and media, but we cannot even keep the lights on for a Saturday evening. Meanwhile, our fearless leader, Mayor Bill de Blasio, is radioing it all in from Iowa, where they have plenty of power.

Yesterday, at about 7 p.m., the lights in our apartment just west of Midtown flickered — hard.

We had seen this before. This past winter — Feb. 16, to be exact — as my husband and I were eating dinner, our lights went out, then went back on.

We looked at each other and then suddenly, boom! A manhole had exploded right outside our window. The next two manholes exploded in succession, each boom rattling the windows harder, and sending our next-door neighbor, two small dogs in tow, over to ask what she should do.

Our answer: nothing. The entire street in front of us was in raging flames; even the firefighters were standing well behind their trucks, which were well behind the fire, waiting for a good half-hour for Con Ed to turn off the power before they could put water on it. We couldn’t evacuate directly into a fire; we just stood, far from the windows … and the lights didn’t go out.

That incident took, maybe, half an hour, but it has caused months of chaos since then. Con Ed has spent the last five months digging up our street — 50th Street, just a five-minute walk west of the business capital of the nation — and refilling it, sometimes digging and refilling on the same day, trying to replace yards of burned-out infrastructure across two blocks while still allowing car and truck traffic to snake by. They work during the day; they startle us by waking us up in the middle of the night with klieg lights.

SEE ALSO

Video shows moment lights turn back on after NYC blackout

I have no idea if a Saturday night 49th Street substation “incident” — not far from our little one in February — has anything to do with the fact that Con Ed has been desperately digging up our street, one block north, for half a year.

I do know that our infrastructure is fragile — and our emergency response is inadequate. Walking around Midtown Saturday evening was an exercise in picking which dystopia you wanted to focus on.

Thousands of people spilled out of canceled theater performances — spilling into streets and avenues, where they were vulnerable to a wave of cars, buses and trucks moving past nonworking traffic signals, should this have been a terror attack.

Diesel generators kicked in at the World Wide Plaza office building on the West Side, spewing toxic fumes for more than an hour into the windows of nearby elderly tenement residents just a few hundred feet away

Their choice was to shelter in the heat or breathe in poison — this, 12 years after New York supposedly designed a “sustainable” plan for the environment.

Times Square was half-dark and half-light, depending on what venues had invested in generators that, long-term, make the island even hotter for people without air conditioning.

The MTA did a truly heroic job in getting trains stuck in tunnels to the next station so that people could clamber upstairs, but the power cut in Midtown meant that a dozen lines — traveling from Brooklyn to The Bronx — were paralyzed. You weren’t going anywhere if couldn’t go through Manhattan.

Original Article

George Orwell was a brilliant individual.  A man of incredible insight – and foresight.

In his unfathomably predictive novel 1984, Orwell warns of Big Brother:

“(O)stensibly the leader of Oceania, a totalitarian state wherein the ruling party Ingsoc wields total power ‘for its own sake’ over the inhabitants.

“In the society that Orwell describes, every citizen is under constant surveillance by the authorities, mainly by telescreens.…The people are constantly reminded of this by the slogan ‘Big Brother is watching you’: a maxim that is ubiquitously on display.

“In modern culture, the term ‘Big Brother’ has entered the lexicon as a synonym for abuse of government power, particularly in respect to civil liberties, often specifically related to mass surveillance.”

As brilliant as Orwell was, something continuously struck me as incorrect as I read 1984.

Orwell’s government – was extraordinarily competent in its totalitarian imposition of technological power.

In Reality – no government in the history of man has ever been even remotely close to that competent.

For Orwell’s Big Brother dystopia to become Reality – Big Government would need private sector help.

Enter private sector Big Tech.

Big Tech has delivered much of the technology Orwell envisioned.  As but one of many examples – Orwell’s telescreens:

“(D)evices that operate as televisions, security cameras, and microphones….(T)elescreens are used by the ruling Party in the totalitarian fictional State of Oceania to keep its subjects under constant surveillance, thus eliminating the chance of secret conspiracies against Oceania.”

We’re already all the way there – via Big Tech.

How Google and Amazon Are ‘Spying’ on You:

“The study found that digital assistants (Google Home and Amazon Echo) can be ‘awake’ even when users think they aren’t listening….

“(T)he devices listen all the time they are turned on – and Amazon has envisioned Alexa using that information to build profiles on anyone in the room….

“Amazon filed a patent application for an algorithm that would let future versions of the device identify statements of interest, such as ‘I love skiing’, enabling the speaker to be monitored based on their interests and targeted for related advertising.

“A Google patent application describes using a future release of it smart Home system to monitor and control everything from screen time and hygiene habits, to meal and travel schedules and other activities.

“The devices are envisioned as part of a surveillance web in the home to chart a families’ patterns….”

Why Google’s Spying on User Data Is Worse than the NSA’s

Is Amazon Spying on Users Through Alexa? Thousands of Employees Listen to Conversations

Amazon-Owned Ring Has Reportedly Been Spying on Customer Camera Feeds

Microsoft Windows 10 Is Spying on Almost Everything You Do

Yes, Webcams Can Spy on You

Eleven Insanely Creepy Ways Facebook Is Spying on You Right Now

This is ALL insanely creepy.

Big Tech is…insanely big.

Microsoft (Market Cap: $1.1 trillion)

Amazon (Market Cap: $942 billion)

Google (Market Cap: $775 billion)

Facebook (Market Cap: $550 billion)

These four spying companies – are currently worth a combined $3.7 trillion.  Our nation’s entire economy – is $19.4 trillion.

Which mans these four companies – all by themselves – are worth 19% of the United States.

But it’s Big Tech doing the spying – not Big Government.

Anyone who looks at Big Tech’s all-encompassing spying ability and thinks Big Government is capable of doing anything remotely similar – hasn’t paid attention to the past 10,000 years of human history.

The ONLY way Big Government can impose Big Brother – is to partner with Big Tech.

Uh oh.

The Role of Tech Companies in Government Surveillance

Tech Companies Concede to Surveillance Program

Four High-Tech Ways the Federal Government Is Spying on Private Citizens:

“Right now, the government is tracking the movements of private citizens by GPS, reading private citizens’ emails, and possibly even reading what you’re saying on Facebook.”

Big Tech once offered at least token resistance to Big Government’s demands – at least after being outed for acquiescing to Big Government’s demands.

Facebook, Amazon, Google Call for Government Surveillance Reform:

“It first gained attention after the revelations of NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden in 2013. Congress is in the process of weighing reforms for the program. It must vote to renew Section 702 before the end of the year, otherwise it will expire.

“The letter, addressed to the chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, asks Congress to consider several reforms to the program to ensure greater transparency and privacy protections.”

We can now officially refer to those – as the Good Old Days.

Why would Big Tech fight Big Government – when they can get paid to join them?

And the Big Government-Big Tech surveillance state – is getting closer and closer to home.

In fact – just outside…and inside it.

Amazon’s Helping Police Build a Surveillance Network with Ring Doorbells:

“Police departments across the country, from major cities like Houston to towns with fewer than 30,000 people, have offered free or discounted Ring doorbells to citizens, sometimes using taxpayer funds to pay for Amazon’s products.

“While Ring owners are supposed to have a choice on providing police footage, in some giveaways, police require recipients to turn over footage when requested….

“(T)he sheer number of cameras run by Amazon’s Ring business raises questions about privacy involving both law enforcement and tech giants….(C)ritics have pointed out the retail giant’s (other) ventures with law enforcement, like offering facial recognition tools….

“More than 50 local police departments across the US have partnered with Ring over the last two years, lauding how the Amazon-owned product allows them to access security footage in areas that typically don’t have cameras — on suburban doorsteps….

“‘What we have here is a perfect marriage between law enforcement and one of the world’s biggest companies creating conditions for a society that few people would want to be a part of,’ said Mohammad Tajsar, staff attorney at the ACLU of Southern California.”

That’s the outside of your home.  Here’s the in….

The Government Just Admitted It Will Use Smart Home Devices for Spying:

“If you want evidence that US intelligence agencies aren’t losing surveillance abilities because of the rising use of encryption by tech companies, look no further than the testimony…by the (then) director of national intelligence, James Clapper….

“Clapper made clear that the internet of things – the many devices like thermostats, cameras and other appliances that are increasingly connected to the internet – are providing ample opportunity for intelligence agencies to spy on targets, and possibly the masses. And it’s a danger that many consumers who buy these products may be wholly unaware of….

“Privacy advocates have known about the potential for government to exploit the internet of things for years. Law enforcement agencies have taken notice too, increasingly serving court orders on companies for data they keep that citizens might not even know they are transmitting. Police have already been asking Google-owned company Dropcam for footage from cameras inside people’s homes meant to keep an eye on their kids.”

Orwell got the tech right – just not Big Government’s ability to create it for totalitarian ends.

Freedom has allowed for the free markets – that allowed the rise of the private sector Big Tech Orwell thought Big Government would produce.

And now Big Tech and Big Government are partnering – to end that freedom.

Well…for we plebeians, anyway.

I’m sure Big Tech and Big Government will be just fine.

Original Article

A worship leader celebrated President Trump‘s historic meeting with Kim Jong Un Sunday as a “prophecy fulfilled” in the country that he described as the “darkest, hardest” place in the world for Christians.

Sean Feucht, penned lyrics for his song “Finish What You Started (Song for North Korea),” which was released in 2012 as part of an album called ‘Songs For Nations,” in the exact spot on the Korean Demilitarized Zone where Trump and Kim embraced before their 50-minute meeting — their third — in pursuit of peace. The song calls for peace and hope.

CHRISTIAN PERSECUTION CLOSE TO ‘GENOCIDE LEVELS,’ LARGELY IGNORED DUE TO ‘POLITICAL CORRECTNESS’: REPORT

Through his non-profit, Light A Candle Project, the Bethel Music singer/songwriter goes into some of the most heavily persecuted areas for Christians worldwide and has seen incredible things happen. But he told Fox News he “never imagined that the song would come true.”

Sean Feucht, Bethel Music worship leader and founder of Light A Candle Foundation, wrote lyrics for a song for North Korea in the same spot President Trump embraced Kim Jong Un on soil in the Hermit Kingdom. (Courtesy of Sean Feucht)

“Oh my God you can do anything, Oh my God Nothing is too hard for you,” Feucht wrote these words from the North Korean side of the DMZ eight years ago.

He shared an image on Instagram with his 97,000 followers of his blue guitar case in the exact spot where Trump and Kim walked Sunday, the first time a sitting president walked into the Hermit Kingdom.

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“Oftentimes we have no idea how God can use our simple songs and prayers to change history,” he added. “Long ways to go still but celebrating small steps (or giant leaps) today!”

South Korea’s President Moon Jae-in said “President Trump is the maker of peace in the Korean Peninsula” in announcing the Trump-Kim meeting.

3 MILLION EVANGELICALS MARCH IN BRAZIL: ‘OUR COUNTRY BELONGS TO JESUS’

“I never expected to meet you at this place,” Kim, who appeared overjoyed in the moment, told Trump through an interpreter.

“I was proud to step over the line,” Trump told Kim later, inside the Freedom House on the South Korea side, according to the Associated Press. “It is a great day for the world.”

Christians around the world have been praying for peace on the Korean Peninsula, especially for believers in South Korea, one of whom told Feucht she is still singing his song regularly in prayer meetings for North Korea.

WILL TRUMP SOLIDIFY MORE CHRISTIAN VOTERS IN 2020? THIS EVANGELICAL LEADER THINKS SO

North Korean defectors describe situations of life back home, where they quietly sing Christian hymns every Sunday while someone is on alert for informers. Another cowered under a blanket or in the toilet to pray, and another detailed a fellow prison inmate who’d been severely beaten for refusing to renounce her Christian faith.

And while this is a sign of hope to many, Open Doors USA told Fox News in February that Christian persecution was “worsening” in the nation where God is virtually outlawed and Kim is treated as a deity.

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Feucht believes what his song says about God: “You’re faithful to the end. You will finish what you started.”

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