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Background Briefing recently interviewed Johathan Taplin about his book, Move Fast and Break Things: How Google, Facebook and Amazon Cornered Culture and Undermine Democracy, and his op-ed at The New York Times, Google’s Disturbing Influence Over Think Tanks.

Some highlights: The New America Foundation funded a group called The Open Markets Group, which was headed by a guy named Barry Lynn; and they were the most important group of scholars looking at monopoly in America. When the EU sanctioned Google with a 2.7 billion dollar fine, The Open Markets Group put out a statement applauding the EU and saying American anti-trust regulators should follow their example. Eric Schmidt, the Executive Chairman of Google, who provides most of the financing for the New American Foundation, was incredibly angry about this and essentially told the leader of New America, Ann Marie Slaughter, that she had to get rid of the Open Markets Group. She then wrote Barry Lynn an email saying that they had to leave by September 1, and essentially fired them. This is exactly the kind of political pressure that Google plies all over the world in terms of not just academic institutions, but think tanks and others in order to keep the political narrative in their favor and not have people who oppose them.

They pay off academics and think tanks, getting them to write favorable articles (totaling a hundred from each) about Google and denying their monopoly. This is how Google curries influence by dominating the communications channels of Washington D.C.

Eric Schmidt, who is the biggest funder of the New American Foundation and who is one of the top executives at Google, was the number one visitor during the Obama administration. He was logged in more times visiting the White House than any other single person in the entire eight years of the administration.

Google’s regulatory capture: not only was Schmidt the most frequent White House visitor, more than any other CEO, by a long shot. But then Schmidt was able to put people from Google into the various agencies in the Obama administration. So, the person who ran the Patent Office was formerly the person who ran Google’s patent practice; the person who was the Assistant Attorney General for anti-trust in the Obama administration was the person who had been Google’s anti-trust attorney. Google had people high-up in The Federal Communications Agency. It was pernicious, it was everywhere…

One could say “Eric Schmidt is a liberal” and “he’s helping Hillary Clinton”, but literally the day after Clinton lost he was out there communicating with Ivanka Trump and Jared Kushner in the hopes of getting in bed with Trump. Not only did he extend invitations to them to come to his conference in Italy; but he also went to the White House and railed on about how Trump was going to be a great help to the economy with his new initiatives; so, its very clear that he has very little political conscience what-so-ever; he’s just going to go where the money is.

People from all sides are recognizing the Google has too much money and power to frame narratives, to shape and influence culture; its platforms such as Facebook and Youtube are not only the way 3/4 of Americans get real news, but also conduits of propaganda: e.g., Steve Bannon and the Mercers used market targeting in their campaign to defeat Hillary Clinton, used social media very skillfully with fake news, used Russian bots to amplify their effect. An interesting note along with that, the intelligence community observes that Eric Schmidt’s daughter worked for SCL, the company that controlled Cambridge Analytica - the company that Mercer owns and that Steve Bannon’s on the board of.

They couldn’t have done what they did if there hadn’t been these two open platforms, Facebook and Youtube, which you could totally manipulate; there was nobody at the control of these platforms to block fake news in favor of Trump. However, there is no pornography on Youtube, which means that Youtube has very sophisticated technology which could filter out fake news, propaganda, etc., if desired.

Google’s market capture is profound, its users provide content and profiles (which marketers value, of course) which competitors cannot match. Google is not just a virtual monopoly, not just one of the most wealthy companies, it is the richest company and perhaps the most powerful monopoly ever. More:

New York Times, “Is It Time to Break Up Google?”, 22 Aug 2017:

By Johathan Taplin

In just 10 years, the world’s five largest companies by market capitalization have all changed, save for one: Microsoft. Exxon Mobil, General Electric, Citigroup and Shell Oil are out and Apple, Alphabet (the parent company of Google), Amazon and Facebook have taken their place.

They’re all tech companies, and each dominates its corner of the industry: Google has an 88 percent market share in search advertising, Facebook (and its subsidiaries Instagram, WhatsApp and Messenger) owns 77 percent of mobile social traffic and Amazon has a 74 percent share in the e-book market. In classic economic terms, all three are monopolies.

We have been transported back to the early 20th century, when arguments about “the curse of bigness” were advanced by President Woodrow Wilson’s counselor, Louis Brandeis, before Wilson appointed him to the Supreme Court. Brandeis wanted to eliminate monopolies, because (in the words of his biographer Melvin Urofsky) “in a democratic society the existence of large centers of private power is dangerous to the continuing vitality of a free people.” We need look no further than the conduct of the largest banks in the 2008 financial crisis or the role that Facebook and Google play in the “fake news” business to know that Brandeis was right.

While Brandeis generally opposed regulation — which, he worried, inevitably led to the corruption of the regulator — and instead advocated breaking up “bigness,” he made an exception for “natural” monopolies, like telephone, water and power companies and railroads, where it made sense to have one or a few companies in control of an industry.

Could it be that these companies — and Google in particular — have become natural monopolies by supplying an entire market’s demand for a service, at a price lower than what would be offered by two competing firms? And if so, is it time to regulate them like public utilities?

Consider a historical analogy: the early days of telecommunications.

In 1895 a photograph of the business district of a large city might have shown 20 phone wires attached to most buildings. Each wire was owned by a different phone company, and none of them worked with the others. Without network effects, the networks themselves were almost useless.

The solution was for a single company, American Telephone and Telegraph, to consolidate the industry by buying up all the small operators and creating a single network — a natural monopoly. The government permitted it, but then regulated this monopoly through the Federal Communications Commission.

AT&T (also known as the Bell System) had its rates regulated, and was required to spend a fixed percentage of its profits on research and development. In 1925 AT&T set up Bell Labs as a separate subsidiary with the mandate to develop the next generation of communications technology, but also to do basic research in physics and other sciences. Over the next 50 years, the basics of the digital age — the transistor, the microchip, the solar cell, the microwave, the laser, cellular telephony — all came out of Bell Labs, along with eight Nobel Prizes.

In a 1956 consent decree in which the Justice Department allowed AT&T to maintain its phone monopoly, the government extracted a huge concession: All past patents were licensed (to any American company) royalty-free, and all future patents were to be licensed for a small fee. These licenses led to the creation of Texas Instruments, Motorola, Fairchild Semiconductor and many other start-ups.

True, the internet never had the same problems of interoperability. And Google’s route to dominance is different from the Bell System’s. Nevertheless it still has all of the characteristics of a public utility.

We are going to have to decide fairly soon whether Google, Facebook and Amazon are the kinds of natural monopolies that need to be regulated, or whether we allow the status quo to continue, pretending that unfettered monoliths don’t inflict damage on our privacy and democracy.

It is impossible to deny that Facebook, Google and Amazon have stymied innovation on a broad scale. To begin with, the platforms of Google and Facebook are the point of access to all media for the majority of Americans. While profits at Google, Facebook and Amazon have soared, revenues in media businesses like newspaper publishing or the music business have, since 2001, fallen by 70 percent.

According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, newspaper publishers lost over half their employees between 2001 and 2016. Billions of dollars have been reallocated from creators of content to owners of monopoly platforms. All content creators dependent on advertising must negotiate with Google or Facebook as aggregator, the sole lifeline between themselves and the vast internet cloud.

It’s not just newspapers that are hurting. In 2015 two Obama economic advisers, Peter Orszag and Jason Furman, published a paper arguing that the rise in “supernormal returns on capital” at firms with limited competition is leading to a rise in economic inequality. The M.I.T. economists Scott Stern and Jorge Guzman explained that in the presence of these giant firms, “it has become increasingly advantageous to be an incumbent, and less advantageous to be a new entrant.”

There are a few obvious regulations to start with. Monopoly is made by acquisition — Google buying AdMob and DoubleClick, Facebook buying Instagram and WhatsApp, Amazon buying, to name just a few, Audible, Twitch, Zappos and Alexa. At a minimum, these companies should not be allowed to acquire other major firms, like Spotify or Snapchat.

The second alternative is to regulate a company like Google as a public utility, requiring it to license out patents, for a nominal fee, for its search algorithms, advertising exchanges and other key innovations.

The third alternative is to remove the “safe harbor” clause in the 1998 Digital Millennium Copyright Act, which allows companies like Facebook and Google’s YouTube to free ride on the content produced by others. The reason there are 40,000 Islamic State videos on YouTube, many with ads that yield revenue for those who posted them, is that YouTube does not have to take responsibility for the content on its network. Facebook, Google and Twitter claim that policing their networks would be too onerous. But that’s preposterous: They already police their networks for pornography, and quite well.

Removing the safe harbor provision would also force social networks to pay for the content posted on their sites. A simple example: One million downloads of a song on iTunes would yield the performer and his record label about $900,000. One million streams of that same song on YouTube would earn them about $900.

I’m under no delusion that, with libertarian tech moguls like Peter Thiel in President Trump’s inner circle, antitrust regulation of the internet monopolies will be a priority. Ultimately we may have to wait four years, at which time the monopolies will be so dominant that the only remedy will be to break them up. Force Google to sell DoubleClick. Force Facebook to sell WhatsApp and Instagram.

Woodrow Wilson was right when he said in 1913, “If monopoly persists, monopoly will always sit at the helm of the government.” We ignore his words at our peril.

Sun “KIM’S COMING FOR EUROPE Japan’s PM warns North Korea will soon target EUROPE with nuke missiles as he hails Theresa May’s ‘smooth Brexit”, 31 Aug 2017:

Mrs May said Japan’s investment in Britain was “a powerful vote of confidence in the strength of the UK’s long-term economy” - The comments hint that the two countries could move quickly to strike a free-trade deal as soon as we quit the EU in 2019.

Japan and the UK pledged to work together to face down Kim Jong Un.

JAPAN’S prime minister today warned that North Korea could soon send nuclear missiles to Europe as he hailed Theresa May’s plan for a “smooth Brexit”.

Shinzo Abe called for the UK and other European countries must play a part in the fight against Kim Jong Un, saying the danger would not be confined to Asia.

Speaking ahead of a state banquet in honour of the PM, the leaders of Britain and Japan said they had discussed the threat from North Korea, which this week launched a missile over Japan in a new show of strength.

They agreed the threat is “unprecedented” and pledged to hold joint military exercises in a bid to show dictator Kim Jong Un that his crimes cannot go unpunished.

Mr Abe said: “That threat is felt not only by our country or Asia alone, it has become a global threat including Europe.

“North Korea will launch an ICBM [inter-continental ballistic missile] and the range would include almost the entire region of Europe.”

Mrs May demanded Kim’s ally China do more to restrain him, saying: “We need to ensure it’s not just words of condemnation, but that action is taken.”

READ MORE...

Michael Cohen, liaising with the Russian Federation.

Washington Post, “Top Trump Organization executive asked Putin aide for help on business deal”, 28 August, 2017:

A top executive from Donald Trump’s real estate company emailed Russian President Vladi­mir Putin’s personal spokesman during the U.S. presidential campaign last year to ask for help advancing a stalled Trump Tower development project in Moscow, according to documents submitted to Congress on Monday.

The request came in a mid-January 2016 email from Michael Cohen, one of Trump’s closest business advisers, who asked longtime Putin lieutenant Dmitry Peskov for assistance in reviving a deal that Cohen suggested was languishing.

“Over the past few months I have been working with a company based in Russia regarding the development of a Trump Tower-Moscow project in Moscow City,” Cohen wrote to Peskov, according to a person familiar with the email. “Without getting into lengthy specifics, the communication between our two sides has stalled.

“As this project is too important, I am hereby requesting your assistance. I respectfully request someone, preferably you, contact me so that I might discuss the specifics as well as arranging meetings with the appropriate individuals. I thank you in advance for your assistance and look forward to hearing from you soon,” Cohen wrote.

Click to page showing Trump-Russian links

Cohen’s email marks the most direct outreach documented by a top Trump aide to a similarly senior member of Putin’s government.

Cohen told congressional investigators in a statement Monday that he did not recall receiving a response from Peskov or having further contact with Russian government officials about the project. The email, addressed to Peskov, appeared to have been sent to a general Kremlin press account.

The note adds to the list of contacts between Trump associates and Russian officials that have been a focus of multiple congressional inquiries as well as an investigation led by special counsel Robert S. Mueller III exploring Russian interference in the 2016 election. U.S. intelligence agencies have concluded that the Kremlin intervened to help elect Trump.

Cohen’s email to Peskov provides an example of a Trump business official directly seeking Kremlin assistance in advancing Trump’s business interests.

Cohen told congressional investigators that the deal was envisioned as a licensing project, in which Trump would have been paid for the use of his name by a Moscow-based developer called I.C. Expert Investment Co.

Cohen said that he discussed the deal three times with Trump and that Trump signed a letter of intent with the company on Oct. 28, 2015. He said the Trump company began to solicit designs from architects and discuss financing.

However, he said that the project was abandoned “for business reasons” when government permission was not secured and that the matter was “not related in any way to Mr. Trump’s presidential campaign.”

Cohen’s request to Peskov came as Trump was distinguishing himself on the campaign trail with warm rhetoric about Putin.

Cohen said in his statement to Congress that he wrote the email at the recommendation of Felix Sater, a Russian American businessman who was serving as a broker on the deal.

In the statement, obtained by The Washington Post, Cohen said Sater suggested the outreach because a massive Trump development in Moscow would require Russian government approval.

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Missile trajectory: it was launched from Pyongyang and flew in trajectory over Cape Erimo, Japan before landing in the distant Pacific.

      Apologies for the story source below [Infowars], but this particular story is confirmed and does not have a conspiratorial spin.

Infowars, “North Korea Fires Ballistic Missile Over Japan”, 28 Aug 2017:

Launch represents first missile test ever to pass over Japan on a high altitude trajectory.

North Korea launched an intermediate-range ballistic missile Tuesday that flew over the island nation of Japan.

The suspected Hwasong-12 missile was fired from Pyongyang at 5:57 a.m. and passed over the Tohoku region at the northern end of the country, the South Korean military said.

“It passed through the sky over Japan,” South Korea’s Joint Chiefs of Staff said, later noting that the missile traveled 2,700 kilometers at a maximum altitude of around 550 km.

Pentagon spokesman Col. Rob Manning similarly confirmed the missile’s flight path.

“We assess North Korea conducted a missile launch within the last 90 minutes,” Manning said. “We can confirm that the missile launched by North Korea flew over Japan.”

U.S. intelligence agencies were reportedly monitoring the launch site when Hwasong-12 missile equipment began to move in.

The Japanese government urged people living in Tohoku to take cover in underground shelters or solid buildings, Japanese broadcaster NHK reported.

A video posted to Twitter from the region revealed the warning message sent out to local residents over loudspeaker.

“I woke up with a Siren and an announcement that North Korea launched a missile that would possibly hit cities within Hokkaido,” a Twitter user said.

Joe @jtnarsico

I woke up with a Siren and an announcement that North Korea launched a missile that would possibly hit cities within Hokkaido.
11:30 PM - Aug 28, 2017 · Hakodate-shi, Hokkaido

A senior U.S. intelligence official speaking with NBC News said the launch represents the first missile test ever to pass over Japan on a high altitude trajectory. North Korea previously launched a missile over the country in 1998 and again in 2009 – although Pyongyang claimed the second launch was of a satellite and not a missile.

Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe vowed Tuesday morning to protect the country.

“We’ll make the utmost effort to protect the public,” Abe told reporters.

NHK later reported that the North Korean missile broke into three pieces during its 733 mile trip into the Pacific Ocean east of Hokkaido’s Cape Erimo.

Earlier this month Pyongyang put a plan on hold that called for launching four Hwasong-12 missiles over Japan and into waters near the U.S. territory of Guam.

The launch comes just hours after the U.S. and Japan ended the joint military exercise “Northern Viper” on Hokkaido.

On Saturday North Korea also launched three short-range ballistic missiles. Although U.S. Pacific Command initially reported that two of the missiles “failed in flight,” the agency later confirmed that both projectiles survived and flew “250 kilometers in a northeastern direction.”

U.S. Pacific Command also stated that one of the three missiles blew up “almost immediately” after launch.

The U.S. and South Korea, much to the dismay of Pyongyang, are currently carrying out the joint annual military exercise Ulchi-Freedom Guardian.

Reports Monday also indicated that North Korea is showing signs that indicate preparations for its sixth nuclear weapons test.

In a closed door parliamentary session, Seoul’s National Intelligence Service (NIS) told South Korean lawmakers that recent activity at the Punggye-ri nuclear test site suggests an underground detonation may be in the works.

Pyongyang, according to Kim Byung-kee, a lawmaker of South Korea’s ruling Democratic Party (DP) who attended the meeting, “has completed its preparation to carry out a nuclear test at Tunnel 2 and Tunnel 3 of the Punggye-ri nuclear test site.”

Byung-kee also said the NIS report detailed new construction at Tunnel 4, where excavation work paused last year.

This story is developing and will be updated as more information becomes available.

In this picture taken on July 17, 2015 and made available on Tuesday, Aug. 18, 2015, Venice mayor Luigi Brugnaro delivers his speech during a ceremony in St. Mark’s Square, in Venice. (AP Photo/Luigi Costantini).

Washignton Times, “Venice Mayor Luigi Brugnaro says people who shout ‘Allahu akbar’ in St. Mark’s Square will be shot”, 24 Aug 2017:

The mayor of Venice, Italy, turned heads during a conference Tuesday after he reportedly threatened that anyone who yells “Allahu akbar,” or “God is the greatest” in Arabic, in the city’s main square will be shot on sight.

Luigi Brugnaro, an Independent, made the threat while speaking in Rimini about the recent attack in Barcelona, Spain, where 13 people were killed and 130 injured when terrorists drove a van down the popular tourist street, La Rambla, The Times reported.

“In contrast with Barcelona, where they had not set up protection, we keep our guard up,” Mr. Brugnaro was quoted as saying. “If anyone runs into St. Mark’s Square shouting ‘Allahu akbar,’ we will take him down. A year ago I said after four steps, now after three. I will say it in Venetian: ‘Ghe Sparemo’ [We will shoot him].”

“In Venice, we arrested four terrorists who wanted to blow up the Rialto Bridge, saying they wanted to go to Allah. But we’ll send them straight to Allah before they can do any damage,” he added, Business Insider UK reported.

Business Insider UK rightly points out that the phrase, “Allahu akbar,” is repeated four times at the start of the Muslim call to worship, which is recognized five times a day. Given that Italy has the fourth-largest Muslim population in Europe, Mr. Brugnaro’s threat might prove difficult to carry out.

When considering that the population of North Korea has virtually the same genetics as South Korea (demographic “twins” - not all that different from Japan, either) an interesting case study is presented for the influences of social construction, as the contrasts of North Korean and South Korean society are vast despite indiscernible genetic differences. Nevertheless, let us not lose site of the obviously important evidence and factors of biological determinism either: the high i.q. of North Korea (like the south) can account for their capability to rapidly develop full nuclear capacity on their own.

DT, “North Korea shows Guam attack in new video as it warns of ‘merciless revenge’ against US over drills”, 22 Aug 2017:

North Korea has unveiled a propaganda video of its threat to fire missiles near the US territory of Guam as it threatened the US with “merciless revenge” for ignoring Pyongyang’s warnings over annual military drills with South Korea.

Displaying images of Donald Trump staring at a cemetery filled with crosses and Vice-President Mike Pence enveloped by flames, the nearly 4 minute video showed the island of Guam being targeted by intermediate-range ballistic missiles.

“Americans should live with their eyes and ears wide open. They will be tormented day and night by the Hwasong-12 rockets without knowing when they will be launched,” the caption reads, according to Yonhap. “They will be in jitters.”

“(We) just wish US policymakers should seriously think twice ahead of an obvious outcome (of a war),” another caption says, showing a photo of US Defence Secretary James Mattis. “Time is not on the US side.”

With the exercises continuing on Tuesday,  North Korea upped its rhetoric, saying it would be a misjudgment for the US to think that Pyongyang would “sit comfortably without doing anything,” the state-run Korean Central News Agency said, citing an unidentified military spokesman.

The ongoing drills and visits of US military officials to South Korea create the circumstances for a “mock war” on the Korean peninsula, KCNA said.

The comments represent a more belligerent tone after a war of words between the US and North Korea appeared to have subsided.

Mr Trump praised North Korean leader Kim Jong-un last week for waiting to launch missiles over Japan into waters near Guam, after previously warning of “fire and fury” if he continued to threaten the American homeland.

Tensions increased in July after North Korea conducted two intercontinental ballistic missile tests. Mr Trump has said military force is an option to prevent Mr Kim from gaining an ICBM that could deliver a nuclear weapon to the US.

Missile launch shown in new North Korean propaganda video, which threatens the US generally and Guam specifically.

North Korea targets Guam in propaganda video

Unperturbed street scene in Seoul, South Korea.

“Garden of Morning Calm”, South Korea.

  Oukabir confirmed shot dead in Cambrils

Daily Telegraph,  19 Aug 2017:

“Barcelona attack: Police raid home of imam linked to cell behind twin terror attacks.”

  Moussa Oukabir confirmed shot dead in Cambrils
  ​Cambrils shoot out ’ was like a horror movie’
  Who are the victims? British boy, seven, among the missing
  Who are the suspects in the Spanish terror attacks?
  Everything we know about first attack on Spain in 13 years

Catalan investigators on Saturday raided the house of an imam in the town of Ripoll they believe may have overseen the cell which killed 14 people in twin terrorist attacks in Barcelona and the seaside resort of Cambrils.

Police are trying to piece together how a cell composed of multiple sets of brothers from the same sleepy Pyreenes town came to carry out the devastating attacks, amid reports they planned to blow up the Sagrada Familia.

The home of the imam, named as Abdelbaki Es Satty, was raided overnight from Friday to Saturday, with officers reportedly seeking - among other evidence - DNA samples which might link him to a building in the town of Alcanar believed to be where the attack was prepared.

El Pais, a leading Spanish daily, said they were investigating whether the imam, who apparently left Ripoll around a month ago, might be one of two dead bodies discovered in the Alcanar house. Sources involved in the investigation told El Confidencial they believed he was a “spiritual or idealogical leader” to the cell members, radicalising them and helping them to plan the attacks.

The sources cited the lack of previous terror links among the group, and said they had detected a number of trips by some members to France and Morocco. Police did not officially confirm or deny the reports.

A spokesperson for the Catalan force told the Telegraph they were working on the “principle hypothesis” that the cell was comprised of 12 members, 11 of whom have now been identified and hail almost exclusively from Ripoll.

Five members died at the hands of police in the attack on Cambrils late on Thursday night, which killed one woman and injured several others.

Telegraph, “Barcelona terror attack: van crashes into crowd at La Rambla, killing ‘at least 13”, 17 Aug 2017:

Terror in Barcelona as van hits crowd in Las Ramblas

Driver arrested after escaping scene on foot

Spanish media reports 13 people killed

A white van plowed into a packed summer crowd this evening in Barcelona’s historic Las Ramblas district. Barcelona police called it a terror attack and local media reported 13 dead and dozens more injured.

The driver was arrested around two and a half hours after the attack, reports said.

The vehicle hit pedestrians in Las Ramblas, a busy tree-lined promenade in the centre of the city.

Catalan police tweeted “there are mortal victims and injured from the crash” without specifying any numbers. Spanish media, including Cadena SER radio station and TV3, reported up to 13 dead, while other media had varying death tolls.

The street is one of the most well-known and popular parts of the city, visited by tourists and locals alike.

Images posted on social media appear to show people being tended to as they lay on the street.

Reports said the driver escaped the scene on foot and was holed up in a bar in Tallers Street. Armed police ran down the streets and through a market, checking in stores and cafes.

In photographs and videos, at least five people could be seen lying on the ground in the streets of the northern Spanish city on Thursday afternoon, being helped by police and others. Other video recorded people screaming as they fled the van.

Telegraph, “Barcelona attack victims: dead named, as fate of seven-year-old boy remains unconfirmed”, 19 Aug 2017:

Family and friends have confirmed the death of loved ones following the attack in Barcelona which killed at least 14 people and left many others injured.

   

   
 

Vice News, “ISIS claims responsibility for deadly Barcelona van attack”, 17 Aug 2017:

A speeding white Fiat van plowed into pedestrians walking down Barcelona’s popular La Rambla boulevard Thursday, killing at least 14 and injuring more than 100, in what Catalan police are calling a terror attack.
Advertisement

The Islamic State group, through its media arm Amaq news agency, claimed credit for the deadly attack.

Police arrested two suspects in connection with the attack, identifying one as Driss Oukabir, a Moroccan man in his late 20s and another, still unnamed, as a Spanish national from Melilla. Oukabir reportedly rented the van from the town of Santa Perpetua de la Mogada, just north of the city. Neither of the two men arrested were driving the van, according to a senior police official. Police are actively searching for the driver.

The van mowed down dozens of people driving for about 500m before the suspects fled on foot, according to local media. Police say it was an attack “intended to kill as many people as possible.” The Spanish newspaper El Pais, quoting unnamed police sources, reported the perpetrators of the crash were holed up in a bar on Tallers Street, near Las Ramblas. Police said rumors circulating on local media that a hostage situation had unfolded after the crash were unfounded.

Catalonia’s Interior Minister Joaquim Forn confirmed that 13 people were dead, and more than 100 wounded.

  “It looked like something out of a film, guts and flesh.”

Officials initially described the incident as a “massive crash” and emergency services warned people to stay away from the area, closing metro and train stations in the general vicinity.

Eyewitnesses described the unfolding chaos as the reality of a terror attack set in.

“It looked like something out of a film — guts and flesh,” Alec Rugo, an American vacationing in Barcelona, told VICE News.

“It was really crazy. I didn’t know it was happening on the Ramblas,” said vacationer Moran Keren. “I saw some lady that I think was dying. It was crazy. A lot of people injured.”

Spanish Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy said he is in contact with the authorities and that the priority for now was to attend to the wounded. Barcelona’s mayor said she was suspending her vacation to attend to the emergency.

[...]

In the last 12 months across Europe, there have been multiple incidents where vehicles have been driven into crowds of people, killing well over 100 people in Nice, Berlin, London, and Stockholm combined.

New Observer, “Africans Storm Cadiz Beach as Invasion Force Tops 118,684 as of August 6”, 10 Aug 2017:

African invaders have been filmed storming a beach in the Spanish city of Cadiz, after crossing the 60 miles between that city and the North African coast—and then scattering before authorities could catch up with them, in a vivid demonstration of the mass Third World invasion of Europe, just as the official number of nonwhite invaders of Europe has topped 118,684.

       
The video clip, filmed on August 9 on the Cadiz beachfront, shows a rubber dinghy full of nonwhites racing towards the beachfront, and just before it lands, the Africans disgorge and break out in a run for the beach, racing passed shocked holiday makers as they storm up into the city to vanish.

Invasion groups such as these are not counted in the official figures, which, according to the United Nations’ “International Organization for Migration” (IOM), reached 118,684 of 6 August 2017.

Of this number 116,692 of the nonwhite invaders had landed by sea—mostly by being transported to Europe by either the European Union’s own naval units or the race-traitor private far leftist European “charity” boats.

According to the IOM, the main nationalities of the nonwhite invaders arrivals (in descendant order) for June 2017 were as follows:

To Italy: Nigeria, Bangladesh, Guinea, Ivory Coast, Gambia; and to Greece: Syria, Iraq, Republic of Congo, Pakistan, Afghanistan.

For July 2016, the main nationalities of the invaders arriving by land in Bulgaria were Syria, Afghanistan, Iraq, and Turkey.

However, the IOM figures do not tell the full story of the extent of the nonwhite invasion.

According to the European Union’s “European Asylum Support Office” (EASO) “Latest asylum trends – June 2017” report, in June this year, there were 58,403 “applications for international protection” made within the borders of the EU.

Of that number, “only” 7, 7 916 invaders claimed to be “Syrians,” only 14 percent of the total number of recorded applications. In June 2017, Nigeria became the second main citizenship of origin, with 4,010 applications lodged—an indication that the fake refugee invasion is increasingly becoming sub-Saharan African in origin.

New Observer, “Violent Africans Storm Spanish Enclave of Ceuta in “WW Z” Type Zombie Attack”, 7 Aug 2017:

At least 300 Africans—out of a mob of thousands—on Monday broke through the border fence surrounding the Spanish enclave of Ceuta in North Africa, in an attack which mirrored the mass zombie attack portrayed in the Hollywood film WW Z.”

     
The co-ordinated mass African attack started at 5 a.m. at the fence near Tarajalat. They stormed the fence en masse, nearly overwhelming the border guards.

Many were stopped, but around three hundred managed to break into the tiny enclave, which is located on the Moroccan coastline on the North African coast.

The invaders were remanded then to an immigration detention center where they submitted formal “asylum” requests, even though none of them come from countries which qualify in the slightest manner for “refugee” status.

Their intention is—as has previously been shown—to simply get to mainland Europe, where they quickly “vanish” while the race-denying liberals “consider” the “asylum” applications.

The African invaders were filmed celebrating their successful attack.

Last week, 73 African invaders used wire cutters to break through the razor-wire fencing to gain access to Ceuta. Spanish border police stopped another 180 invaders from entering through the hole.

Spain’s Interior Ministry estimated the number of invaders who had reached Spain via the border fence route had totaled 3,200 in 2016. So far in 2017, they say, that number has already doubled.

In February alone, about 850 African invaders pretending to be “refugees” stormed over the Ceuta border in a concentrated attack lasting four days.