Category Civil Society

Aug 8 2014

WHO Declares “Health Emergency”, Admits “Stretched To Limit” On “Out Of Control” Ebola Outbreak As Nigeria Cases Soar


Re-Post from ZEROHEDGE Submitted by Tyler Durden on 08/08/2014 08:30 -0400

CDC Director Frieden’s worst nightmare is coming true – Nigeria, of which he was “deeply concerned” due to the population density in Lagos for instance, has admitted 139 patients are now being monitored for Ebola (up from 8 mere days ago). This, along with “the outbreak moving faster than we can control it,” drive the World Health Organization (WHO) to declare West Africa’s Ebola epidemic, an “extraordinary event” and now constitutes an international health risk. As Reuters reports, the agency said that, all states with Ebola transmission – so far Guinea, Liberia, Nigeria and Sierra Leone – should declare a national emergency, as former WHO official warned “governments appear to not have been engaged as necessary.”

Nigeria has escalated rapidly – just as CDC Director Frieden had feared:

  • *NIGERIA SAYS TWO MORE CASES OF EBOLA CONFIRMED IN LAGOS
  • *NIGERIA SAYS 6 SUSPECTED CASES OF EBOLA BEING INVESTIGATED
  • *NIGERIA SAYS 139 PEOPLE BEING MONITORED FOR EBOLA

As Reuters reports,

The Geneva-based U.N. health agency said the possible consequences of a further international spread of the outbreak, which has killed almost 1,000 people in four West African countries, were “particularly serious” in view of the virulence of the virus.

“A coordinated international response is deemed essential to stop and reverse the international spread of Ebola,” the WHO said in a statement after a two-day meeting of its emergency committee on Ebola.

The declaration of an international emergency will have the effect of raising the level of vigilance on the virus.

“The outbreak is moving faster than we can control it,” the WHO’s director-general Margaret Chan told reporters on a telephone briefing from the WHO’s Geneva headquarters.

“The declaration … will galvanize the attention of leaders of all countries at the top level. It cannot be done by the ministries of health alone.”

Contagion is still not well understood…

It also said inexperience in dealing with Ebola outbreaks and misperceptions of the disease, including how it is transmitted, “continue to be a major challenge in some communities”.

“If we do not in global solidarity come together to help these countries, they will be set back for many years,” Chan said. She noted the three hardest-hit nations had only begun to emerge and rebuild after “years of conflict and difficulties”.

What is fascinating is that WHO does not ask for international trade or travel bans

  • *WHO: NO GENERAL BAN ON TRAVEL OR TRADE
  • *WHO: SHOULDN’T BE INTERNATIONAL TRAVEL OF EBOLA CASES, CONTACTS

because:

  • *WHO’S CHAN: STOPPING AIRLINE ROUTES WOULD HURT ECONOMIES

Which is a somewhat stunning reason and not shared by Russia:

If flights from the countries affected by the Ebola virus are not halted, the disease could reach Europe and become a new plague, Alexei Pushkov, the head of the State Duma international affairs committee, said Tuesday.

“Unless all flights are stopped from Ebola affected countries, there is a risk it will reach Europe, becoming the plague of the 21st century,” Pushkov said on Twitter.

Aug 8 2014

Most of Government’s Own Watchdogs Say They’re Stonewalled


This is the most transparent administration in history! lol

Re-Post from by Melisa Quinn August 07, 2014

More than half of the federal government’s inspectors general have joined to lodge a formal complaint that the Obama administration places “serious limitations” on their ability to uncover waste, fraud, and abuse.

A total of 47 of the 73 government watchdogs sent the unprecedented letter to leaders of two congressional committees, Fox News reported.

In their complaint, the inspectors general say:

Agency actions that limit, condition, or delay access thus have profoundly negative consequences for our work: they make us less effective, encourage other agencies to take similar actions in the future, and erode the morale of the dedicated professionals that make up our staffs.

The watchdogs include IGs from the National Security Agency, Department of Homeland Security, and Department of Justice. They wrote Tuesday to the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee and the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee.

They call on the oversight leaders to reaffirm the commitment of Congress to helping IGs combat waste, fraud, and abuse, and to exert “all available powers to enforce” access to agencies that refuse to comply.

Government bureaus, the IGs write, typically prevented them from obtaining relevant information by calling it “privileged.” These restrictions, they add, risk “leaving the agencies insulated from scrutiny and unacceptably vulnerable to mismanagement and misconduct — the very problems that our offices were established to review and that the American people expect us to be able to address.”

Hans von Spakovsky, senior legal fellow at The Heritage Foundation, told The Daily Signal that the IGs’ letter is both unprecedented and telling:

This unprecedented complaint by a majority of the federal government’s inspectors general that the Obama administration is obstructing their ability to investigate corruption shows just how far the administration is willing to go to hide its wrongdoing.

The IGs describe three specific instances in which government agencies would not give them access to records and other information needed to do their oversight work properly:

  • The Peace Corps refused to provide records of reported sexual assaults that were needed for an investigation into how the agency handled such cases.

In a statement to Fox News, a Peace Corps spokeswoman reaffirmed the agency’s commitment to “working with the inspector general to ensure rigorous oversight while protecting the confidentiality and privacy of volunteers who are sexually assaulted.”

  • The Department of Justice would not produce three separate reviews until officials learned that the documents would be of assistance to the agency’s leadership.

DOJ spokesman Brian Fallon told Fox that the inspector general received all information requested, but that “because the documents at issue included grand jury material, credit reports, and other information whose dissemination is restricted by law, it was necessary to identify exceptions to the law to accommodate the inspector general’s request.”

  • The Environmental Protection Agency’s Chemical Safety and Hazard Investigation Board refused to provide requested documents during an investigation.

House Oversight Chairman Darrell Issa, R-Calif., said of the 47 IGs’ letter:

If there is anyone who should have transparency [from the government], it should be the watchdogs inside the government working for the president.

Because many IG reports and activities are not public until their completion, Issa said, “some of the best examples of obstruction probably are the ones the IGs don’t want to say in a public format.”

Inspectors general played a crucial role in investigating allegations that the Internal Revenue Service targeted tea party and other conservative groups seeking tax-exempt status. They also identified internal weaknesses at the Export-Import Bank.

Inspectors general for both the IRS and the Export-Import Bank agencies signed the letter.

In the wake of the Watergate scandal, Congress in 1978 passed the Inspector General Act establishing the initial 12 IG offices. The law stipulates that each official watchdog has “complete, unfiltered, and timely access to all information and materials available to the agency that relate to that inspector general’s oversight activities, without unreasonable administrative burdens,” the letter to the congressional committees states.

Issa, saying “there has never been a letter even with a dozen IGs complaining,” called the letter unprecedented. He added:

This is the majority of all inspectors general saying not just in the examples they gave, but government wide, they see a pattern that is making them unable to do their job.

The Oversight Committee chairman said he intends to hold hearings to delve into issues raised by the IGs’ letter when lawmakers return to Washington in September.

This post has been  updated. Read the 47 IGs’ letter: IG Access Letter to Congress

Aug 6 2014

More Leaks on federal 4th Amentment violations!


If you don’t believe this read the book IMPEACHABLE OFFENSES by Aaron Klein & Brenda J. Elliott

Here Comes Snowden 2.0… And How The Government Determines If You Are A “Terrorist Threat”

 Re-Post from ZEROHEDGE
Tyler Durden's picture

Submitted by Tyler Durden on 08/05/2014 19:03 -0400

Moments ago CNN blasted a headline stating that the US believes there is a new, post-Snowden leaker exposing national security. Why? The reason is the following article that was released a few hours ago by the Intercept, and which is an expose on yet another classified system called Terrorist Identities Datamart Environment (TIDE), in which we read: “The documents, obtained from a source in the intelligence community, also reveal that the Obama Administration has presided over an unprecedented expansion of the terrorist screening system. Since taking office, Obama has boosted the number of people on the no fly list more than ten-fold, to an all-time high of 47,000—surpassing the number of people barred from flying under George W. Bush.” And there is Snowden 2.0.

Aside from this rather stunning revelation, we also learn the following:

  • The second-highest concentration of people designated as “known or suspected terrorists” by the government is in Dearborn, Mich.—a city of 96,000 that has the largest percentage of Arab-American residents in the country.
  • The government adds names to its databases, or adds information on existing subjects, at a rate of 900 records each day.
  • The CIA uses a previously unknown program, code-named Hydra, to secretly access databases maintained by foreign countries and extract  data to add to the watchlists.
  • 16,000 people, including 1,200 Americans, have been classified as “selectees” who are targeted for enhanced screenings at airports and border crossings.
  • There are 611,000 men on the main terrorist watchlist and 39,000 women.
  • The top five U.S. cities represented on the main watchlist for “known or suspected terrorists” are New York; Dearborn, Mich.; Houston; San Diego; and Chicago. At 96,000 residents, Dearborn is much smaller than the other cities in the top five, suggesting that its significant Muslim population—40 percent of its population is of Arab descent, according to the U.S. Census Bureau—has been disproportionately targeted for watchlisting.
  • The top “nominating agencies” responsible for placing people on the government’s watchlists are: the Central Intelligence Agency, the Defense Intelligence Agency, the National Security Agency, and the Federal Bureau of Investigation.
  • In 2013, the main terrorism database included more than 860,000 biometric files on 144,000 people.
  • The database contains more than a half a million facial images, nearly a quarter of a million fingerprints and 70,000 iris scans.
  • The government maintains biometric data on people that it hasn’t identified–TIDE contains 1,800 “BUPs,” or “biometrics of unknown persons.”
  • In a single year, the government expanded its collection of “non-traditional” biometric data, including dramatic increases in handwriting samples (32 percent), signatures (52 percent), scars, marks, and tattoos (70 percent), and DNA strands (90 percent).

Snowden 2.0 speaks:

A U.S. government official told The Intercept that as of November 2013, there were approximately 700,000 people in the Terrorist Screening Database, or TSDB, but declined to provide the current numbers. Last month, the Associated Press, citing federal court filings by government lawyers, reported that there have been 1.5 million names added to the watchlist over the past five years. The government official told The Intercept that was a misinterpretation of the data. “The list has grown somewhat since that time, but is nowhere near the 1.5 million figure cited in recent news reports,” he said. He added that the statistics cited by the Associated Press do not just include nominations of individuals, but also bits of intelligence or biographical information obtained on watchlisted persons.

So how does the US government if you are a “potential terrorist”:

Most people placed on the government’s watchlist begin in a larger, classified system known as the Terrorist Identities Datamart Environment (TIDE). The TIDE database actually allows for targeting people based on far less evidence than the already lax standards used for placing people on the watchlist. A more expansive—and invasive—database, TIDE’s information is shared across the U.S. intelligence community, as well as with commando units from the Special Operations Command and with domestic agencies such as the New York City Police Department.

The documents also offer a glimpse into which groups the government is targeting in its counterterrorism mission. The groups with the largest number of targeted people on the main terrorism watchlist—aside from “no recognized terrorist group affiliation”—are al Qaeda in Iraq (73,189), the Taliban (62,794), and al Qaeda (50,446). Those are followed by Hamas (21,913) and Hezbollah (21,199).

Although the Obama administration has repeatedly asserted that al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula poses the most significant external terrorist threat to the United States, the 8,211 people identified as being tied to the group actually represent the smallest category on the list of the top ten recognized terrorist organizations. AQAP is outnumbered by people suspected of ties to the Pakistan-based Haqqani Network (12,491), the Colombia-based FARC (11,275,) and the Somalia-based al-Shabab (11,547).

The documents also reveal that as of last year, the U.S. had designated 3,200 people as “known or suspected terrorists” associated with the war in Syria. Among them were 715 Europeans and Canadians, as well as 41 Americans. Matt Olsen, the director of the National Counterterrorism Center, recently claimed that there are more than 12,000 foreign fighters in Syria, including more than 1,000 Westerners and roughly 100 Americans.

Of the 680,000 people caught up in the government’s Terrorist Screening Database—a watchlist of “known or suspected terrorists” that is shared with local law enforcement agencies, private contractors, and foreign governments—more than 40 percent are described by the government as having “no recognized terrorist group affiliation.” That category—280,000 people—dwarfs the number of watchlisted people suspected of ties to al Qaeda, Hamas, and Hezbollah combined.

In shrug chart format:

And the punchline: a dystopia in which Tom Cruise drops out of drone and shoots you before you have even done anything.

“We’re getting into Minority Report territory when being friends with the wrong person can mean the government puts you in a database and adds DMV photos, iris scans, and face recognition technology to track you secretly and without your knowledge,” says Hina Shamsi, director of the American Civil Liberties Union’s National Security Project. “The fact that this information can be shared with agencies from the CIA to the NYPD, which are not known for protecting civil liberties, brings us closer to an invasive and rights-violating government surveillance society at home and abroad.”

Much more in the full Intercept article.

But wait, because this is where it gets even more surreal.

Presenting the US disinformation propaganda bureau in its full grandure. From HuffPo:

The Associated Press dropped a significant scoop on Tuesday afternoon, reporting that in the last several years the U.S. government’s terrorism watch list has doubled.

A few minutes after the AP story, then consisting of three paragraphs, was posted at 12:32 p.m., The Intercept published a much more comprehensive article. The original article, which has since been updated and expanded, appears below:

ap story

The government, it turned out, had “spoiled the scoop,” an informally forbidden practice in the world of journalism. To spoil a scoop, the subject of a story, when asked for comment, tips off a different, typically friendlier outlet in the hopes of diminishing the attention the first outlet would have received. Tuesday’s AP story was much friendlier to the government’s position, explaining the surge of individuals added to the watch list as an ongoing response to a foiled terror plot.

The practice of spoiling a scoop is frowned upon because it destroys trust between the journalist and the subject. In the future, the journalist is much less willing to share the contents of his or her reporting with that subject, which means the subject is given less time, or no time at all, to respond with concerns about the reporting.

The government’s decision to spoil a story on the topic of national security is especially unusual, given that it has a significant interest in earning the trust of national security reporters so that it can make its case that certain information should remain private.

After the AP story ran, The Intercept requested a conference call with the National Counterterrorism Center. A source with knowledge of the call said that the government agency admitted having fed the story to the AP, but didn’t think the reporter would publish before The Intercept did. “That was our bad,” the official said.

Asked by The Intercept editor John Cook if it was the government’s policy to feed one outlet’s scoop to a friendlier outlet, a silence ensued, followed by the explanation: “We had invested some quality time with Eileen,” referring to AP reporter Eileen Sullivan, who the official added had been out to visit the NCTC.

“After seeing you had the docs, and the fact we had been working with Eileen, we did feel compelled to give her a heads up,” the official said, according to the source. “We thought she would publish after you.”

AP spokesman Paul Colford responded to questions about the timing of the stories in a statement to The Huffington Post: “Pulitzer Prize-winning AP reporter Eileen Sullivan has been covering this territory for a long time. She gathered and reported additional news today as part of her expertise on this subject.”

Not even Orwell could have foreseen the government waging such an open propaganda war…

In the meantime, don’t be cyncial of the world’s most “transparent” administration: be hopeful; after all you still haven’t been killed for a crime you never committed.

Aug 6 2014

D’oh Moonbat John Kerry Says Africa Should Not Farm To Feed Population Because It Might Create Global Warming…


The nickname Lurch is very fitting for him as he doesn’t have a brain!

Aug 6 2014

UPDATE – CDC Activates Defcon 1 – Nigerian Ebola Patient Was Not Initially Quarantined – Nurse Dies and Five Others Infected As Result – Region Death Toll Now 932 With 45 Deaths In Past 72 Hours….


It just keeps getting worse!

Aug 6 2014

The debate is work for you stuff or get free stuff from the government nt


Re-Posted from POWERLINE written on August 5, 2014 by John Hinderaker

Charles Koch: How to Get Our Economy Moving Again

If there is anyone in the world who knows how to create wealth and generate good, high-paying jobs, it is Charles Koch. In USA Today, Koch sets out a basic prescription for how to improve our economy, accompanied by some eye-popping statistics:

Like most Americans, I am deeply concerned about our weak economic recovery and its effects on millions of families. Opportunity, especially for the young and disadvantaged, is declining. High underemployment has become our new norm. …

Too many businesses focus on getting subsidies and mandates from government rather than creating value for customers. According to George Mason University’s Mercatus Center, such favors cost us more than $11,000 per person in lost GDP every year, a $3.6 trillion economic hit.

That is astonishing. Everyone knows (unless he is a liberal economist like Paul Krugman) that cronyism promotes inefficiency. But the magnitude of the problem is stunning: if the Mercatus Center analysis is correct, cronyism is deflating the economy by around 21%! Imagine if every American got a 21% raise: that is only a small part of what free market economic policies could accomplish, if they were not blocked by the Democratic Party. Then, of course, we have the problem of excessive government regulation:

Federal rules cost America an estimated $1.86 trillion per year, calculated the Competitive Enterprise Institute. At Koch Industries, we’ve seen how punitive permitting for large projects creates years of delay, increasing uncertainty and cost. Sometimes projects are canceled and jobs with them. Meanwhile, 30% of U.S. employees need government licenses to work. We need a system that rewards those who create real value, not impedes them.

The main thing standing between you and a higher income, assuming you own an alarm clock, is the government. More:

[W]e should eliminate the artificial cost of hiring. Government policies such as Obamacare have given businesses a powerful incentive to hire two part-time people to do one full-time job. This trend was reflected in June’s employment data, which included the loss of half a million full-time jobs. In 2007, 4.4 million Americans worked part-time jobs because they could not find full-time work. That number now stands at 7.5 million, up 275,000 in June.

The Obama administration hailed the June employment data as a triumph, even though the number of full-time jobs declined by a half million. They want you and your children to accept a “new normal” in which part-time employment as a barista is a reasonable expectation for a college graduate.

Government likes for its citizens to be lazy, incompetent and dependent. That’s bad for the citizens, but good for the government:

Finally, we need greater incentives to work. Costly programs, such as paying able-bodied people not to work, are addictive disincentives. By undermining people’s will to work, our government has created a culture of dependency and hopelessness.

Government control over the economy, promotion of dependence and cronyism have been tried. They have failed. It is time for something different:

Our government’s decades-long, top-down approach to job creation has failed. Its policies have made our problems worse, leaving tens of millions chronically un- or underemployed, millions of whom have given up ever finding meaningful work. In doing so, our government has not only thwarted real job creation, it also has reduced the supply and quality of goods and services that make people’s lives better and undermined the culture required to sustain a free society.

When it comes to creating opportunities for all, we can do much better. It’s time to let people seek opportunities that best suit their talents, for businesses to forsake cronyism and for government to get out of the way.

A friend who knows Charles Koch well describes him as a genius. I can believe it: creating tens of billions of dollars in wealth and tens of thousands of productive, high-paying jobs probably does require a touch of genius. But when it comes to politics and the economy, what Charles Koch has to say is just common sense.

Aug 3 2014

This open letter to illegal immigrants is something EVERYONE needs to read…


Very good needs to be communicated to all conservatives, tea party and the independents’ that will need to decide what they want!

deacon303's avatarWhiskey Tango Foxtrot

It is the Rule of Law that has made our country exceptional. The same Rule of Law will protect you if you want to become an American or a legal resident.

The law doesn’t apply evenly in your country of origin; the consequence of lawlessness is what made you run away. But now you are asking us to ignore our own laws and make exceptions that are favorable to you. Be careful what you ask for, you have personally lived the consequences of “exceptions” to the Rule of Law.

We are trying to make our corrupt government accountable. We feel the obligation to teach you how to make your own governments accountable! We welcome all of those that are yearning to be free, we ask you to respect our laws. Come here legally and in an orderly manner.

Our politicians are using you; you’ve been used and abused by yours…

View original post 128 more words

Aug 3 2014

A sample of what a Powerful Central Government can do!


The Bureaucracy is Out of Control

Re-Posted on Armstrong Economics August 1, 2014 by Martin Armstrong

Obama should just resign. He is outrageous. He supported the NSA and has claimed the CIA does not spy on Congress. Well, the Inspector General has released his report and oops – yes the CIA spies on Congress.

Let’s get real here. I have reported that for 2 years speaking and communicating with people on the House Financial Services Committee (banking), they were telling me that the NSA was sweeping up even their emails and phone calls way before Snowden. I was told that point-blank and not in confidence. Therefore, EVERY journalist had that SAME info and refused to report it. Snowden had to go to the Guardian in Britain to get the story out because WE HAVE NO PRESS WITH INTEGRITY that is still standing in the United States.

Now they are all reporting the CIA spies on Congress (see New York Times). The executive branch led by the President controls the Judiciary as well and it is normally at war with Congress. Obama has used the NSA, IRS, and the CIA to attack everyone. At some point these people behind the curtain are the unelected. They threaten and blackmail people as part of their routine. I have seen this first hand and you do not grasp pure evil until you see it in their eyes. These types of people see themselves so above everyone else and bask in their power to destroy anyone or anything they deem inappropriate. Where this will all end is written in history and it is never pretty. Obama is either a stooge or part of the real danger to the survivability of our nation long-term intact.

Aug 3 2014

Obama says after Sept. 11 US ‘tortured some folks’


Obama is a fool we know that and he also talks with a forked tongue (on many subjects) since he is the same President that kills “Folks” with drones!

Aug 3 2014

Why does Obama alwasy use the word “Folks”?


Re-Posted from PowerLine on August 3, 2014 by Paul Mirengoff

Barack Obama and “folks” who kill folks

The word “folks” has a plasticity about it. “Folks” can refer to a group as small as one’s parents (“I’m going home to visit the folks”), the people in one’s community, or the “salt of the earth” inhabitants of a region or a country (the way Bill O’Reilly annoyingly uses the term). This plasticity is illustrated by the definition of “folksinger” that a local radio personality used in the early 1960s — someone who is only good enough to sing for his folks.

President Obama loves to say “folks” and apparently has for years. His Harvard Law Review colleagues brilliantly ridiculed him for it.

Why does the word appeal so much to Obama? Perhaps because it has no fixed meaning. Or maybe because it enables him — arrogant and standoffish though he is — to sound folksy. Perhaps too, he likes the fact that the word can be used to drain the individuality out of people. For collectivists, this has appeal.

It’s unusual to use the word folks to apply, transnationally, to the people of the world. Although the word does drain much of what makes us individuals, “folk” implies some commonality besides just being human. “We Are The World” is not a folk song.

Even so, it doesn’t shock the conscience to refer to people in other countries as “folks.” Foreigners are people too.

For me, however, it did shock the conscience to hear Obama say last week that “we tortured some folks.” He was referring to the use of certain harsh interrogation techniques on some of the terrorists we captured after 9/11 in an effort to obtain information that might prevent more attacks on the United States, our allies, and our interests.

By using the word, Obama drained the terrorists of what made them unique — and what made them the subject of harsh interrogation — namely, their desire to kill and terrorize. Even for a “one-worlder” like Obama, “folks” should not include those who reject the norms of civilization that bind people into some form of a collective suitable for that term.

The juxtaposition of the words “folks” and “torture” was also striking. To describe the subjects of U.S. interrogation, Obama used the most bland, least conclusory word he could come up with. To describe what was inflicted on them, he used the most emotionally charged, most conclusory word available.

Whatever Obama’s other shortcomings — and they turn out to be legion — he is a master at choosing his words. By saying “we tortured some folks,” Obama, it seems, decided to cast his country in the worst possible light.

He turned the terrorists into “just folks” through a choice of words that ignores the biographical context that landed them in our custody and the rationale for interrogating them at all. And he cast what we did to these “folks” in the worst possible light, using a term that typically encompasses far more severe interrogation techniques than the “folks” at Gitmo endured (assuming for the sake of this discussion that what they endured is encompassed by “torture” at all).

Obama did provide some context for the interrogations he deems torture. “You know, it is important for us not to feel too sanctimonious in retrospect about the tough job that those folks had,” Obama allowed. “And a lot of those folks were working hard under enormous pressure and are real patriots.”

Actually we should assume that all of them were working hard under enormous pressure. But note, again, the use — twice — of the “f” word. “Folks, Obama would have it, were torturing “folks.”

Regardless of whether some CIA interrogators went too far, the American president should be able to find the words to differentiate the interrogators from the terrorists. If he wants to give the terrorists the benefit of the doubt and call them “suspected terrorists,” that’s acceptable.

But a president who sees the interrogators and the terrorists as just a collection of “folks” isn’t fit to protect this country from the ongoing threat of terrorism.