THIS WEEK IN REVIEW

US: The federal government is stockpiling the personal information of gun owners in direct violation of the law. Judge Napolitano explains that the feds are supposed to gather that information for statistical purposes only and are required by law to destroy identifiable information, such as names and addresses. This is because the states have primary jurisdiction over guns. Fox News 2016 Aug 4 (Story)

Israel accuses World Vision’s Gaza representative of funding Hamas, a terrorist group. World Vision, a US-Christian relief organization, expressed shock at the accusation and says it has no reason to think it is true, because the group conducts regular audits and internal controls to ensure that all aid reaches intended beneficiaries. Mohammad El Halabi, World Vision’s manager of operations in Gaza, has been arrested, and an Israeli security official says that Halabi confessed to siphoning off $7.2 million a year, about 60% of the World Vision’s Gaza funding, to pay Hamas expenses. Hamas denies any ties to Halabi. Reuters 2016 Aug 4 (Story) (Cached)

Khizr Khan, father of a Muslim US soldier who died in Iraq in 2004, spoke at the DNC and said that Donald Trump “vows to build walls and ban us from this country”. Globe and Mail posted 2016 Aug 4 (Story)

Khan, who says he immigrated to the US in 1980 to escape Pakistan’s military rule, holds law degrees from Pakistan and the University of Missouri. He berated Donald Trump for not reading the US Constitution, but has praised Pakistani Allah K. Brohi, a pro-jihad Islamic jurist whose interpretation of human rights include the right to kill and mutilate those who violate Islamic laws. [Reading the Constitution and honoring it are quite different matters.] Breitbart 2016 Aug 2 (Story) (Cached)

More than 50,000 people, mostly women and children, have fled from South Sudan into Uganda over the past three weeks to escape the violence of civil war. More than 2.6 million people have been displaced since the war began three years ago. France23 2016 Aug 3 (Story)

Pristina, Kosovo: Forty people were injured in a stampede at a beer festival when someone shouted ‘ISIS’ as a joke. UK Mirror 2016 Aug 2 (Story) (Cached)

Russian warplanes destroyed all buildings and military equipment at the Division-13 base affiliated with the US-backed Free Syrian Army rebels. The incident happened near Idlib. Al-Masdar News 2016 Jul 31 (Story)

Syria: A Russian military helicopter was shot down over the rebel-held territory of Idlib. No group has claimed responsibility. Hours later, a helicopter dropped containers of toxic gas near the site where the Russian helicopter was shot down. A pro-rebel organization, the Syrian Civil Defence, accused the Assad government of committing the poisonous-gas war crime. Russia and Assad’s regime blamed the gas attack on the rebels themselves. HuffPost 2016 Aug 2 (Story) (Cached)

The sarin gas attack in Ghouta, Syria, in 2013 provides perspective to the latest gas attack in Syria. The 2013 UN report did not name the culprit of the attack, but former UN weapons inspector, Richard Lloyd, and MIT Science, Technology, and National Security Policy Professor, Theodore Postol, concluded in their study of the Ghouta gas case that all possible launch points for the primary weapons were inside rebel-held territory, indicating that the rebels were responsible. New American posted 2016 Aug 2 (Story) (Cached)

US: Debbie Wasserman Schultz, former Chair of the DNC, was the first official to resign from the party after emails revealed collusion against Bernie Sanders and favoritism for Hillary Clinton. Now, three more high-level DNC officials also are resigning for the same reason. RT 2016 Aug 2 (Story) (Cached)

FBI employee pleads guilty to acting as a spy for China. Kun Shan Chun, a naturalized US citizen born in Guangdong, China, collected information about surveillance technology from his post as an electronic technician at the FBI’s Manhattan Office and transmitted it to Chinese officials. Reuters 2016 Aug 2 (Story) (Cached)

Louisiana’s state legislature unanimously passed a law requiring police to obtain court orders before using a stingray device. These devices mimic cell-phone towers, tricking mobile devices into connecting to the stingray instead of the tower. This allows law enforcement to sweep up communications and to track the person with the device. This law is said to be a blow to the surveillance state, but there are numerous exceptions to the law that, although reasonable in themselves, could provide a cover for surveillance-as-usual. Tenth Amendment Center 2016 Aug 1 (Story) (Cached)

Maryland: Marilyn Mosby is the State Attorney General who authorized an investigation into the death of Freddie Gray while he was transported in a police van. At that time, she made public allegations against six officers. Three of them were acquitted, one had a mistrial, and charges against the other two were dropped. Five of the officers now are suing her, alleging that she brought charges against them, not to pursue justice, but to placate public opinion and quell pending riots. Townhall posted 2016 Jul 30 (Story) (Cached)

Michigan: Six more officials from the state’s health and environmental departments have been charged with concealing and manipulating evidence of dangerous lead levels in the tap water at the city of Flint. A total of nine state officials now have been charged. PBS News Hour posted 2016 Jul 30 (Story)