As has become common in the aftermath of terrorist attacks, shortly after the bomb attacks in Brussels, people have been blaming... oh, pretty much the entire Muslim population. How 1.7 billion people who are either adherents of, or loosely connected to, the world's second-biggest religion could be responsible for these attacks is beyond me. Many took to Twitter to tweet their support for 'the removal of Islam' via the hashtag 'StopIslam', blaming the religion for the lives lost in the Brussels terrorist attacks (and those before), thus pretty much pointing the finger at all Muslims for the existence of terror itself.

Tweets using the trending hashtag include either anti-Islam sentiment, or support for Islam by Muslims who use the hashtag to repeat the obvious: that they are "Muslim, but not a terrorist." Apparently, people forget that the biggest victims of terror are Muslim. Indeed, by saying that Muslims are responsible for these terror attacks, one is saying that (to name a few examples)...

• the 37 Muslim Afghan civilians who died at an airport as a result of an attack by the Taliban in December 2015;
• the 750 Muslim Iraqi civilians who died as a result of attacks by terrorist groups in the month April 2014;
• the 15 Syrian civilians who died near a hospital as a result of terror attacks by Daesh in December 2015;

...are all, in one way or another, responsible for attacks in the West.

It boggles the mind.

Saudi Arabia is the world's largest source of funds for Islamist militant groups such as the Afghan Taliban and Lashkar-e-Taiba - but the Saudi government is reluctant to stem the flow of money, according to Hillary Clinton.

"More needs to be done since Saudi Arabia remains a critical financial support base for al-Qaida, the Taliban, LeT and other terrorist groups," says a secret December 2009 paper signed by the US secretary of state. Her memo urged US diplomats to redouble their efforts to stop Gulf money reaching extremists in Pakistan and Afghanistan.

"Donors in Saudi Arabia constitute the most significant source of funding to Sunni terrorist groups worldwide," she said.

Three other Arab countries are listed as sources of militant money: Qatar, Kuwait and the United Arab Emirates.


The cables highlight an often ignored factor in the Pakistani and Afghan conflicts: that the violence is partly bankrolled by rich, conservative donors across the Arabian Sea whose governments do little to stop them.

The problem is particularly acute in Saudi Arabia, where militants soliciting funds slip into the country disguised as holy pilgrims, set up front companies to launder funds and receive money from government-sanctioned charities.

After string of extremist incidents targeting heart of Europe over past year, leaders may have to resort to much tougher measures.

Authorities in Europe and across the world tightened security at airports, railway stations, government buildings and other key sites after deadly attacks Tuesday on the Brussels airport and its subway system.

With Brussels in lockdown and the French prime minister saying that Europe is "at war," European leaders held emergency security meetings and deployed more police, explosives experts, sniffer dogs and plainclothes officers, with some warning against travel to Belgium.

The nervousness was felt far and wide. In New York City, authorities deployed additional counter terrorism units to crowded areas and transit locations.

After a string of extremist attacks targeting the heart of Europe over the past year, some analysts say Europe will finally have to implement a much tougher level of security not only at airports, but also at "soft targets" like shopping malls — the kind that Israelis have been living with for years.

The leading expert on food at the United Nations says sharp price fluctuations in the price of food has little to do with actual supply. Nowadays, rapacious out-of-control investment banks such as Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley and Barclays Capital now dominate food speculation through the commodities markets. They dwarf the amount traded by actual food producers and buyers needlessly tipping millions into hunger and poverty.

The United Nations Food and Agriculture Organisation currently estimates that about 795 million people of the 7.3 billion people in the world, or one in nine, are suffering from chronic undernourishment in the period 2014-2016. We are not talking of poverty here but life threatening food shortages driven by the pursuers of profit.

About one in eight people, or 13.5 percent of the overall population, remain chronically undernourished in developing regions. As the most populous region in the world, Asia is now home to two out of three of the world's undernourished people.

By 2014, food speculation by banks and hedge funds had risen to $126bn, a figure that has doubled from 2008. From 2000 to 2015 global food prices rose a staggering 94 percent and although they have been falling consistently over the last year, prices are still only 14 percent lower than all-time highs.

To give some perspective, speculative investment in agricultural commodities five years ago was 20 times the amount spent by all countries on agricultural aid and Goldman Sachs, for instance, earned $600 million from it. It was George Bush who deregulated this market with the Commodities Futures Modernization Act in 2000. Hence the astronomic price rises that followed and it is now estimated that 115 million people has suffered as a direct result.

Various attempts have been made to curb speculation of food prices but most countries have done nothing significant.

Series of Terror Attacks Hits Brussels

The twin blasts that rocked Brussels Airport and further explosions on the city's Metro have come just four days after Salah Abdeslam, who was wanted in connection with the November 13 Paris terror attacks, was captured by Belgian police.

While Belgium's migration minister, Theo Francken, claimed "We got him," Foreign Minister Didier Reynders said at a German Marshall Fund forum that Abdeslam was "ready to start something from Brussels." Police found a number of heavy weapons, and they also believed that a new network of terrorists was developing around him.

The man who played a key role in organizing the Paris November 13 attacks and was finally arrested in a police raid last week, was busy setting up a terror network and preparing for more attacks, on Belgian soil in particular, the country's foreign minister revealed.

Salah Abdeslam was "ready to start something from Brussels," Foreign Minister Didier Reynders said at the German Marshall Fund's forum.

"We found a lot of weapons, heavy weapons in the first investigations, and we have seen a new network of people around him in Brussels," the minister revealed.

Reynders added that while searching for 10 possible accomplices in the Paris attacks, Belgian authorities discovered more than 30 people of interest to the investigation. The PM said that EU-wide intelligence sharing helped track Abdeslam, as well as information from Turkey in particular.

"We are sure that for the moment we have found more than 30 people involved in the terrorist attacks in Paris, but we are sure there are others," Reynders said.

France seeks the extradition of the Algerian-Belgian national who was captured in a raid, along with three other people, in Molenbeek on Friday. During the raid Belgian police shot and killed an Algerian man, Samir Bouzid, was also wanted in connection with the Paris attacks.

Reynders promised to deliver Abdeslam, who has been charged with "terrorist murder" to France within three months.

A federal judge ruled on Monday that Florida's practice of using prison populations to manipulate voting districts is unconstitutional, perhaps foreshadowing Virginia's Supreme Court case questioning the constitutionality of its congressional districts.

The Third District of Florida's Jefferson County has an interesting population. Out of the entire voting age population, 43.2 percent cannot legally vote in County Commission and School Board elections, according to The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU).

The district map for Jefferson County's Third District was drawn to include the Jefferson Correctional Institute with its 1,157 inmates, who make up more than a third of the district's population, the Palm Beach Post reports.

Gerrymandering, the practice of redrawing legislative district lines to gain political advantages, has become an issue of contention in both Florida and Virginia. For Florida's Jefferson County, including the inmate population in the Third District resulted in giving eligible voters almost twice the voting power.

Because of the additional 1,157 non-voting inmates included in the Third District's population, the amount of power that other districts - and local populations - have in local politics is diluted. The ACLU's attorney, Nancy Abudu, told ThinkProgress, "It's about access and the ability to influence, and making sure officials are responsive to their electorate."

However, a federal judge in Florida's Northern District has ruled that prison-based gerrymandering is a violation of the "one person, one vote" principle under the Equal Protection Clause of Fourteenth Amendment of the US Constitution. The County has until April 4 to redraw congressional district lines before the June qualifying election for commissioners and school board members. If it fails to do so, the court will impose its own interim plan.

US President Barrack Obama paid what the Western media hailed as a "historic" visit to Cuba, after decades of isolation imposed upon the island nation by the US and its Western allies.

While many claimed it was a sign of hope for US-Cuban relations, it could equally be equated with similar feigned rapprochements with nations like Syria and Libya, both of which were first offered false peace deals before betrayal and both of which have now been destroyed by years of US-backed proxy war, with Libya's government being overthrown and its leader along with three generations of his family virtually exterminated by US-NATO military operations.

And as if to prove President Obama's advocates wrong, the US president used this "historic" visit to publicly humiliate Cuban President Raul Castro regarding alleged human rights abuses the US claims are regularly carried out against "political prisoners."

Turkey's crackdown on the Kurdish population has taken a turn for the worse, with growing civilian deaths at the hands of the Turkish military amid a full-scale military operation in the southeast of the country, a French Left Front MEP told RT. Marie-Christine Vergiat, a French lawmaker from the European United Left-Nordic Green Left, was one of the 18 MEPs to have sent a letter to Turkish Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu, calling for an end to a crackdown in Diyarbakir's Sur district.

Vergiat said that so far the European Parliament had not received a response, adding that the EU is looking for something more than Turkey's promises to scale back and to use "appropriate force." Left-wing MEPs are demanding more information about what is happening in Turkey's Kurdish-dominated regions.

"The situation has been worsening since July, with over 20 cities put under curfew," Vergiat said. "The European Parliament is scheduled to send a delegation to Turkey and I hope more evidence is gathered on this issue."

The harrowing example of a populated area turned into a warzone is the southeastern town of Cizre, where Ankara carried out its military operation against Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) rebels back in February. At the time, Turkish state television announced that 60 "terrorists" were killed in a building basement.