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Tuesday, May 28, 2013
Sheik Obama Tells Islamists His United States Is Willing To Surrender
The
king of double speak, President Obama, has just admitted that he has no
intention of keeping Americans safe from Islamist aggression here or
abroad. This should come as a tremendous comfort to terrorism’s big
money backers. Saudi Arabia and Qatar will no longer have to worry about
the Obama Administration getting in the way of their terror financing
and global Islamic aspirations.
I am referring to Sheik Obama’s recent National Security speech.
Over the last 5 years, Obama has gone to great lengths to shield and
encourage aggressive Islamist influence inside the United States and
elsewhere. Nothing is an act of terror unless Obama says so. No one is
our enemy unless the boy King proclaims it so and anyone who says
different find himself or herself vilified, investigated and harassed by
federal authorities. Unless of course they are Muslims. Granted access
to the highest levels of government, Muslims now help shape Obama’s new
anti-American national security policies.
Do not be fooled by the token drone strike or the alleged masterful
use of special operations to eradicate terrorism’s leaders. If the
missiles fired are not finding targets in Saudi Arabia and Qatar chances
are the Sunni leaders of global Islamic terrorism are directing them
The people with the RPG’s and AK-47’s have never really been the big
problem. It is the people who provide the money to recruit, train, arm
and execute small and large offensives in the Islamist war on US
Judeo-Christian freedoms and liberty. The same people who escaped
criminal responsibility for the 911 attacks. Saudi Arabia and Qatar’s
terrorism sponsors that direct Obama’s Islamic appeasement strategy and
anti-American foreign policy. That is the problem.
Obama’s true loyalties were on display a few days ago. He does not
surprise me. Neither will the predictable gullibility of the ignorant
masses who believe his lies. After all, government paychecks and
handouts buy a lot of misguided loyalty from those that conveniently
proclaim executive branch criticism as racially motivated.
Obama’s regurgitated shift from combat operations to intelligence and
law enforcement based terrorism opposition is another deception.
Obama ended operations in Iraq only to fuel the growth of Islamist
insurgency that is tearing Iraq apart. He publicly ordered the
withdrawal of troops from Afghanistan, but the Taliban continue the
fight. Obama wants America to believe that Al Qaeda is no longer a
threat, a ”shell of its former self” and Muslim Brotherhood appeasement
is now beneficial to US national security interests. Yet America is
excoriated as one country after another is being radicalized by a
re-packaged Al-Qaeda and it‘s affiliates. Moreover, all over the world,
Islam is destroying Christian houses of worship and enslaving or
murdering its faithful as its violent Sharia influences spread. Not a
peep about this in Obama’s National Security address. No outrage. No
condemnation for these unprovoked attacks on non-believers. Just talk
about closing Gitmo and setting Islamists free.
For five years, Obama has attacked American traditions and snapped to
attention when Islamic influences cry foul. Somehow, Fort Hood, the
Boston Marathon bombing and citywide lockdown, Americans murdered on US
soil in Libya by Al Qaeda and the global Islamic attacks on Christian
faithful seem to escape our myopic President. Treasonous Islamic
activism is at an all time high in America. Yet our Justice Department
has not only ignored it, but also embraced it.
Obama’s loyalties are no longer debatable.
Make no mistake the threat of Islamic jihad—both violent and
stealth—has never been higher in America. The war waged on America by
Islam started long before the first World Trade Center bombing. It will
continue until our enemies have destroyed our economy and reshaped
American law. The only people who could possibly believe different are
Islamists themselves or people on their payroll.
Sheik Obama Tells Islamists His United States Is Willing To Surrender Filed under Email Featured, Foreign Policy, Islam 770
The
king of double speak, President Obama, has just admitted that he has no
intention of keeping Americans safe from Islamist aggression here or
abroad. This should come as a tremendous comfort to terrorism’s big
money backers. Saudi Arabia and Qatar will no longer have to worry about
the Obama Administration getting in the way of their terror financing
and global Islamic aspirations.
I am referring to Sheik Obama’s recent National Security speech.
Over
the last 5 years, Obama has gone to great lengths to shield and
encourage aggressive Islamist influence inside the United States and
elsewhere. Nothing is an act of terror unless Obama says so. No one is
our enemy unless the boy King proclaims it so and anyone who says
different find himself or herself vilified, investigated and harassed by
federal authorities. Unless of course they are Muslims. Granted access
to the highest levels of government, Muslims now help shape Obama’s new
anti-American national security policies.
Do not be fooled by the
token drone strike or the alleged masterful use of special operations
to eradicate terrorism’s leaders. If the missiles fired are not finding
targets in Saudi Arabia and Qatar chances are the Sunni leaders of
global Islamic terrorism are directing them
The people with the
RPG’s and AK-47’s have never really been the big problem. It is the
people who provide the money to recruit, train, arm and execute small
and large offensives in the Islamist war on US Judeo-Christian freedoms
and liberty. The same people who escaped criminal responsibility for the
911 attacks. Saudi Arabia and Qatar’s terrorism sponsors that direct
Obama’s Islamic appeasement strategy and anti-American foreign policy.
That is the problem.
Obama’s true loyalties were on display a few
days ago. He does not surprise me. Neither will the predictable
gullibility of the ignorant masses who believe his lies. After all,
government paychecks and handouts buy a lot of misguided loyalty from
those that conveniently proclaim executive branch criticism as racially
motivated.
Obama’s regurgitated shift from combat operations to
intelligence and law enforcement based terrorism opposition is another
deception.
Obama ended operations in Iraq only to fuel the growth
of Islamist insurgency that is tearing Iraq apart. He publicly ordered
the withdrawal of troops from Afghanistan, but the Taliban continue the
fight. Obama wants America to believe that Al Qaeda is no longer a
threat, a ”shell of its former self” and Muslim Brotherhood appeasement
is now beneficial to US national security interests. Yet America is
excoriated as one country after another is being radicalized by a
re-packaged Al-Qaeda and it‘s affiliates. Moreover, all over the world,
Islam is destroying Christian houses of worship and enslaving or
murdering its faithful as its violent Sharia influences spread. Not a
peep about this in Obama’s National Security address. No outrage. No
condemnation for these unprovoked attacks on non-believers. Just talk
about closing Gitmo and setting Islamists free.
For five years,
Obama has attacked American traditions and snapped to attention when
Islamic influences cry foul. Somehow, Fort Hood, the Boston Marathon
bombing and citywide lockdown, Americans murdered on US soil in Libya by
Al Qaeda and the global Islamic attacks on Christian faithful seem to
escape our myopic President. Treasonous Islamic activism is at an all
time high in America. Yet our Justice Department has not only ignored
it, but also embraced it.
Obama’s loyalties are no longer debatable.
Make
no mistake the threat of Islamic jihad—both violent and stealth—has
never been higher in America. The war waged on America by Islam started
long before the first World Trade Center bombing. It will continue until
our enemies have destroyed our economy and reshaped American law. The
only people who could possibly believe different are Islamists
themselves or people on their payroll.
Two employees of the US embassy in Venezuela were shot and wounded
early Tuesday in the capital Caracas, in a murky incident that local
media and a police source said took place at a strip club.
“We can confirm that two members of the US embassy in Caracas were
injured during an incident early this morning,” State Department
spokesman Patrick Ventrell told reporters in Washington.
“Medical staff inform us that their injuries are not
life-threatening,” he added, noting that they were hurt at “some sort of
a social spot” but without specifying the venue or nature of their
injuries.
US diplomatic sources later confirmed to AFP that the two men were shot.
The Venezuelan media identified the two men as Roberto Ezequiel Rosas
and Paul Marwin, and said they were military attaches at the embassy,
but neither the State Department nor the embassy in Caracas would
confirm those reports.
“My understanding is that they are other agency personnel, not from the State Department,” Ventrell said.
Venezuelan television channel Globovision reported on its website
that the incident took place at the Antonella bar located in a shopping
center in the Chacao district of Caracas, after an altercation with
other bar patrons.
Bar staff told AFP on condition of anonymity that the venue is indeed
a strip club that only admits men over the age of 30, but refused to
say anything about the alleged incident involving the US embassy
personnel.
A district policeman, who also spoke to AFP on condition of
anonymity, said a shooting incident had been reported just outside the
Antonella bar, involving three Americans.
In the entryway of the club, there are photos of female strippers.
Venezuela has the highest murder rate in South America with 54
homicides per 100,000 inhabitants. In the first quarter of 2013 alone,
there were 3,400 murders, according to government statistics.
Several diplomats have been assaulted in recent months in the country.
The United States and Venezuela, which have had no ambassadors since
2010, have had strained relations since Caracas accused Washington of
backing a coup that briefly ousted the late Hugo Chavez in 2002.
President Nicolas Maduro, Chavez’s former vice president, has
maintained a confrontational stance with the US government since his
election on April 14, calling President Barack Obama the “grand chief of
devils.”
Foreign Minister Elias Jaua, however, said two weeks ago that the new
government was prepared to normalize relations with the United States,
beginning with a return of Venezuela’s ambassador to Washington.
Despite the tensions, Venezuela sells the United States 900,000 barrels of oil a day.
One State Department mid-level official has resigned
over the security failures related to the Sept. 11 attack on the U.S. mission
in Benghazi and three others have been placed on "administrative leave." But lawmakers
and experts are asking why the disciplinary action stops there.
Assistant Secretary of State for Diplomatic Security
Eric Boswell resigned. Deputy
Assistant Secretary for Embassy Security Charlene
Lamb, Deputy Assistant Secretary for Near Eastern Affairs Raymond Maxwell, and a third as yet
unidentified diplomatic security official were placed on "administrative leave"
pending further action.
"The ARB identified the performance of four
officials, three in the Bureau of the Diplomatic Security and one in the Bureau
of Near East Asia Affairs," State Department Spokeswoman Victoria Nuland said in a statement
late Wednesday evening. "The Secretary has accepted Eric Boswell's
decision to resign as Assistant Secretary for Diplomatic Security, effective
immediately. The other three individuals have been relieved of their current
duties. All four individuals have been placed on administrative leave pending
further action."
Lamb, Maxwell, and the still unnamed DS official
have not "resigned." As federal employees, they are entitled to an
administrative process to determine what, if any disciplinary action might be
taken against them. It's possible they could simply be reassigned to new roles
inside the State Department after the Benghazi issue blows over.
Nuland's statement indicates that State is pointing
to the
report of the Accountability Review Board (ARB) that was
released Wednesday as the source of the names of officials to be disciplined.
The ARB was led by Tom Pickering and
Adm. Mike Mullen.In a press briefing Wednesday,
Pickering explained the logic the ARB used to come up with its disciplinary
recommendations.
"We fixed it at the assistant secretary level, which
is in our view the appropriate place to look, where the decision-making in fact
takes place, where, if you like, the rubber hits the road," he said.
That explanation left lawmakers, employees inside
the State Department, and outside experts scratching their heads, because
Assistant Secretary of State for Near Eastern Affairs Beth Jones will apparently escape any disciplinary action, letting
her subordinate Maxwell take the fall.
"The report says that there were ‘systemic failures
and leadership and management deficiencies at senior levels within two bureaus
of the State Department,' namely the Diplomatic Security (DS) and Near East
(NEA) bureaus," wrote
former NSC Middle East official Elliott
Abrams. "Why is the head of the DS bureau forced out, and the head of NEA
allowed to remain?"
Sen. Marco
Rubio (R-FL) challenged Deputy Secretaries of State Bill Burns and Tom Nides
in a Thursday Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing on why the
disciplinary actions were limited to officials at the assistant secretary and
deputy assistant secretary level.
"And why I find that quite
puzzling is because Benghazi and Libya in general is not some remote outpost,
is not Luxembourg. I mean, this is a country that we were involved in
militarily not so long ago in a high-profile intervention," he said.
Rubio wanted to know
whether Stevens had raised his concerns about security to Burns or Secretary of
State Hillary Clinton during their
trips to Libya earlier in 2012. Burns said that security had been discussed,
but not in specifics.
"And you know, as
Secretary Clinton has said, all of us as senior leaders in the department are
accountable and responsible for what happened. And I certainly fault myself,"
said Burns. "You know, I accompanied the remains of my four colleagues back
after the attack in Benghazi... And on that long flight home, I certainly had a
lot of time to think about sharper questions that I could have asked, sharper
focus that I could have provided."
When pressed by Rubio
over whether the March and July cable requesting more security had reached the
upper echelons of the State Department, Burns said they had.
"Well, they certainly would have been
reviewed up through assistant secretary level, and it may be that some of my
colleagues on the 7th floor saw them as well." Burns said. "There were
certainly memos that came up to the 7th floor that talked about the
deteriorating security situation in eastern Libya, yes, sir."
Maxwell, according to several State Department
sources, had been slated to retire in September but was asked to stay on as DAS
for the Maghreb after the attack. Maxwell might have been in a position to
directly receive the requests for more security in Benghazi, giving him a
direct connection to the security failures, those sources speculated. Those
details are confined to the classified version of the ARB report. But State
Department officials insist that he would not have been able make any decisions
about such matters with consulting with Jones, who would have had the final say.
"Either they have some kind of
documentary evidence that puts Maxwell in a bad light specifically, or this
could be the Foreign Service elite protecting itself. Maxwell is not a member
of the elite, but Jones is," one senior
foreign policy hand who has worked in the State Department said.
Jones, who had already retired, was brought back to
State by Deputy Secretary Bill Burns
after Assistant Secretary Jeff Feltman
moved to the U.N. Jones is close to Burns, fueling speculation that her stature
allowed her avoid punishment.
"Being on the Seventh Floor appears to grant
immunity. I'm sure that's what is being said around the water coolers at State,
and from what I can see they are not wrong. Pickering led what was called an
‘Accountability Review Board.' A better name might have been ‘Accountability
for Mid Level Officials Review Board,'" Abrams wrote.
The "lawful interception" fig leaf obscures real state of surveillance
Submitted by sosadmin on Fri, 08/10/2012 - 12:23
Last month I wrote
about how cell phone spoofing technology manufacturers are hawking their
goods to police departments, advertising the secret sniffing devices as
ideal for covertly monitoring protests.
We know this because a spook-tech purveyor made the mistake of being
forthright about his product with the wrong person: Eric King of Privacy
International. To his enormous credit, representatives of the
surveillance industrial complex have called King an "Anti-lawful
interception zealot blogger."
Reading those words – “lawful interception” – reminded me to write this.
I’ve been thinking about that phrase for a while. I come across it daily on the websites and promotional materials of corporations that profit off of world governments’ seemingly insatiable
appetites for surveillance tools; it’s the go-to rhetorical defense
when anyone raises privacy concerns about these technologies. “We are
complying with all necessary state and federal laws,” the refrain goes.
“These tools enable lawful interception so law enforcement can keep us
safe,” and so on.
Hearing the refrain repeated ad nauseam by people who work in the billions of dollars rich (and growing) surveillance industry begs the question: What does “lawful interception” really mean?
Unfortunately, it is a euphemism which masks an ugly reality. Our digital communications privacy law is woefully obsolete, where it hasn’t been degraded.
The phrase contains the word “lawful,” which makes it sound nice, but
it is a dangerous fig leaf that effectively obfuscates the nasty truth
about surveillance law in the United States today.
From the federal USA Patriot Act and the FISA Amendments Act to little-known but powerful administrative subpoena
statutes in states, US surveillance law presently grants government
agencies wide latitude to spy on our communications without or with
minimal judicial oversight. Making matters worse, the processes and even
sometimes the laws themselves are shrouded in secrecy.
The most extreme example is also the most threatening. NSA
whistleblowers say the agency retains all of our electronic
communications, no matter who we are or what we’ve done. It's possible
that the government is here playing on a technicality, enabling them to
collect and store our information without warrants, while claiming it is
following the law. As long as a human being never looks at our emails,
they haven’t really been collected, the argument goes.
But we can't be sure about any of this because the government won't tell us how it interprets key portions of surveillance law.
Our relationship with the government is precisely the opposite of
what it should be. We know very little about it, and it knows virtually
everything about us.
Known knowns, known unknowns
The lack of clarity around surveillance law notwithstanding, what we
know is enough to give us serious pause when we hear surveillance
technology purveyors justify their tools by claiming they are deployed
only for “lawful interception.”
In a must-read article featuring
ACLU privacy expert and counsel Catherine Crump, we learn that the
federal government doesn’t think it needs a warrant to read our emails.
Let that sink in: The federal government doesn’t think it needs a warrant in order to read our emails.
As Crump says,
No data is more personal than email
correspondence...Email is deeply personal and private. It is an
unfiltered view of our thoughts and a catalog of our relationships
stretching back for years. Government agents should not be allowed to
troll through all of our most private correspondence without proving to a
judge that they have probable cause to believe that a search will turn
up evidence of a crime.
Here's something else we know:
Where it hasn't affirmatively made the law more permissive to
government spies and more invasive against our personal privacy,
Congress has allowed giant loopholes in electronic communications
privacy law to wreak havoc on the security of our digital communications
and data. In most cases, the law on the books today in the United
States does not explicitly address new technologies like GPS tracking
via mobile phones, license plate readers, face recognition
identification schemes, or mega-databases that contain unimaginably
comprehensive data profiles of each of us.
We have ample reason
to believe that where the law does not explicitly prevent police from
tracking us or surveiling us with new technology, the police and federal
government are likely doing so without pesky judicial oversight. In the
first two weeks of August the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals
issued two decisions underscoring both this problem and the issue of
official impunity, making both worse.
In one case on GPS tracking, the court's ruling will likely give
police departments more reason to disregard Fourth Amendment
considerations in the applications of cutting edge surveillance tools.
Again, Catherine Crump:
…the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit issued a disappointing but fortunately narrow decision in
a case involving warrantless tracking of a vehicle with a GPS device.
The three-judge panel refused to exclude GPS tracking evidence under
what’s known as the “good faith” exception, ruling that when the
tracking took place, law enforcement agents reasonably relied on binding
circuit court precedent in concluding that no warrant was necessary.
The tracking happened before the Supreme Court issued its decision in United States v. Jones that GPS device tracking triggers Fourth Amendment protections....
In this most recent round of briefing in the Ninth Circuit, Mr.
Pineda-Moreno argued that, after Jones, the GPS tracking evidence in his
case should be thrown out, because a warrant is the constitutional
minimum (the ACLU filed an amicus brief in
his support). Today the Ninth Circuit disagreed, but on narrow grounds
that limit the decision’s relevance for the rest of us. It held that, given
the state of Ninth Circuit case law at the time Mr. Pineda-Moreno was
tracked, the agents reasonably relied on binding Ninth Circuit precedent
in believing it was lawful to attach a GPS device to a car without a
warrant. And given that reasonable reliance, the Court held
that the evidence gathered by GPS tracking could be used against Mr.
Pineda-Moreno.
The court found that the evidence used to convict Mr. Pineda-Moreno
was legit, even though it doesn’t stand a constitutional test according
to the Supreme Court, because police believed they were obeying the law
when they used the technology to warrantlessly track him. The
implications of this unfortunate decision are clear: Police have been
given a green light to ignore the spirit of the Fourth Amendment when
using new technologies that the drafters of the Constitution could not
have imagined. If it isn't explicitly covered, the police can run wild
until a court or a legislature explicitly tells them to stop and get a
warrant.
Another 9th Circuit Court of Appeals decision from August
2012 underscores why we should be skeptical of “lawful interception”
claims -- and stand ready to confront official impunity and government
secrecy. EFF’s Cindy Cohn wrote
on the Al Haramain warrantless wiretapping case, in which claimants
sued the US government for spying on them without judicial oversight:
First, the Court ruled that Congress in passing this section of FISA created a cramped statute that, at least in section 1810, only
allows a claim for redress if the government uses the information it
illegally gathers, and creates no a remedy against the government for
the unlawful collection of information. Apparently, when it
came to granting a legal claim for damages, Congress intended to allow
the government to do as much wiretapping in violation of the law as it
wanted to, and only allow individuals to sue for use of the information
illegally collected. It seems unlikely that the American people believe
that the line should be drawn in this strange way.
“Lawful interception” therefore means very different things to
different people. To civil libertarians, it means getting a warrant to
invade someone’s privacy, to look at their private communications or
real-time location information. Full stop.
But to many law enforcement agencies, from your local police
department all the way up to the NSA -- and even to Congress and some
courts -- it has in most cases come to mean ignoring commonsense
application of the spirit of the Fourth Amendment to new technologies
wherever the law doesn’t explicitly regulate their use. It means the
government can spy on us with total freedom in dark rooms scattered
across our national landscape, and we don’t have an opportunity for
redress unless it uses that private information against us in court.
As Cohn wrote, it’s unlikely most people agree with that interpretation. Nonetheless, it’s the prevailing order of our time.
That may be technically "lawful", but it sure isn't right.
n Monday February 27th, 2012, WikiLeaks began publishing The Global Intelligence Files,
over five million e-mails from the Texas headquartered "global
intelligence" company Stratfor. The e-mails date between July 2004 and
late December 2011. They reveal the inner workings of a company that
fronts as an intelligence publisher, but provides confidential
intelligence services to large corporations, such as Bhopal's Dow
Chemical Co., Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman, Raytheon and government
agencies, including the US Department of Homeland Security, the US
Marines and the US Defence Intelligence Agency. The emails show
Stratfor's web of informers, pay-off structure, payment laundering
techniques and psychological methods.
Obama Leak Investigations (internal use only - pls do not forward)
Released on 2012-09-10 00:00 GMT
Email-ID
1210665
Date
2010-09-21 21:38:37
From
burton@stratfor.com
To
secure@stratfor.com
Brennan is behind the witch hunts of investigative journalists learning
information from inside the beltway sources.
Note -- There is specific tasker from the WH to go after anyone printing
materials negative to the Obama agenda (oh my.) Even the FBI is
shocked. The Wonder Boys must be in meltdown mode...
From: Reva Bhalla [mailto:reva.bhalla@stratfor.com]
Sent: Thursday, June 14, 2007 5:52 PM
To: 'Fred Burton'; 'Secure List'
Subject: RE: Humint - Afghanistan - Karzai (Strictly Protect -
Confidential)
how close is karzai to this brother?
From: Fred Burton [mailto:burton@stratfor.com]
Sent: Thursday, June 14, 2007 5:42 PM
To: 'Secure List'
Subject: Humint - Afghanistan - Karzai (Strictly Protect - Confidential)
(Strictly Protect - Confidential - For Our Internal Use Only - Do Not
Forward)
The brother of President Karzai of Afghanistan is under investigation by
DEA as a major narcotics trafficker. For political reasons, DEA has been
told to backoff by the White House and CIA. DEA is seeing a direct nexus
between terrorism and narcotics in Afghanistan with narcotics sales being
used to fund jihadist operations.
Imbedded DEA agents in CT ops in Afghanistan have turned up loads of
threat information and DEA sources are being used to ferret out jihadis.
Several US soldier lives were recently saved (this week) based on DEA
source information and safehouse raids in Afghanistan. SpecOps in
Afghanistan are using imbeds from DEA and ATF. FBI and ATF IED techs are
also being imbedded to learn the latest IED technology in anticipation of
the devices (eventually) showing up in CONUS.
Source: IBT
The Australian and German officials are concerned with the “always on” camera and privacy policies of Xbox One.
Software giant Microsoft revealed in the unveiling of Xbox One is the
console’s always ‘on’ Kinect camera is being questioned by activities
concerned with privacy. While Microsoft maintains that the company has
“very, very good policies around privacy,” it’s a fact that the Kinect
camera is always listening and watching even in a low powered state.
Microsoft exec Phil Harrison told Eurogamer that the Kinect camera
does not collect personal information unless the user’s “opt” into it
even if it is still listening and watching.
“We take it very seriously. We aren’t using Kinect to snoop on
anybody at all. We listen for the word ‘Xbox on’ and then switch on the
machine, but we don’t transmit personal data in any way, shape or form
that could be personally identifiable to you, unless you explicitly opt
into that,” Harrison said.
Australian authorities are concerned with this particular feature of
Xbox. Time Vines, director of Civil Liberties Australia, recently told
GamesFIX that he is concerned with the Xbox One and Kinect. He said that
Microsoft will have to answer questions about its product that has the
ability to listen and watch people all the time.
Vines stated, “people should have the ability to turn off the camera
or microphone, even if it limits the functionality of the machine.” He
added, “of course, if Microsoft doesn’t allow that [control], then
people should vote with their wallets and skip the next Xbox.”
German officials are alarmed as well by the spying capabilities of
Xbox in households. Peter Schaar, Berlin’s federal data protection
commissioner also expressed concerns about the Kinect camera. He told
Spiegel Online, “The Xbox One continuously records all sorts of personal
information about me. My reaction rates, my learning or emotional
states. These are then processed on an external server, and possibly
even passed on to third parties. A person cannot influence what
information is stored or deleted.”
However, Microsoft defended its product claiming that the “always on”
camera can be used for marketing research. Another Microsoft exec Phil
Spencer hinted at some of the marketing implications that can come from
Kinect’s watchful eye. In the past, he painted a picture of a scenario
where the Kinect camera can collect data for marketing purposes.
It’s a good thing we set aside the last Monday in May to honor our nation’s fallen heroes
and their families — the government is doing a lousy job of it. Our
soldiers’ final resting places are in jeopardy and survivors’ benefits
are being sacrificed, all in the name of sequestration. The president,
meanwhile, continues living the high life as if to say, “Sequester? What
Sequester?” Arlington National Cemetery is unquestionably both
the most famous and exclusive final resting place for our nation’s
heroes. It dates back to the Civil War and is comprised of the land
surrounding the Virginia home of Robert E. Lee, according to Daily
Finance.
However, Arlington is bursting at the seams. It currently contains
the remains of an estimated 400,000 soldiers, sailors, airmen and
Marines. Congress realized that the cemetery was approaching capacity in
the late 1990s, and so established the Millennium Project to expand Arlington’s boundaries.
$103 million was budgeted for this purpose — a shade over one-tenth
of a billion in an age when Congress bandies around figures in the
trillions without raising a sweat. But that budget has been cut by 8
percent due to sequestration cuts, and additional cuts may be in the
offing.
In addition to land acquisition, Arlington’s operating budget has been impacted.
“Arlington is absorbing this cut by using the last of the funds that
were recovered from previous fiscal years,” noted Jennifer Lynch, the
cemetery’s public affairs officer. What happens when those previous
surpluses are used up is unclear.
Sequestration is also impacting how we care for those our fallen military leave behind. Daily Finance noted:
The VA’s Survivors’ Pension Benefits program, which
provides needs-based financial help for the spouses and children of
fallen soldiers, is scheduled to lose $84.5 million, a 5.3 percent cut.
Another program, the Dependency and Indemnity Compensation, gives a
small monthly payment to the spouses and children of fallen soldiers.
It’s also facing a 5.3 percent cut, which will cost those survivors
$307.5 million.
The very idea of the sequester cuts, which are the source of all this
grief, came from the president himself. Moreover, rather than bringing
everyone together to work our a compromise, he totally disengaged
himself from the negotiation process. Lastly, President Obama had the
opportunity to make intelligent cuts by eliminating wasteful or
redundant programs and leaving others intact, but he preferred
across-the-board cuts — except when it came to his own creature
comforts.
Meanwhile, President Obama and his family have averaged one vacation
per month in 2013, ranging from a family stay at a luxury retreat in
Hawaii to a “fantasy golf weekend” in Florida with Tiger Woods. Taxpayer
costs for Obama vacations during his first term in office are estimated
at $20 million, according to Breitbart News.
The president celebrated this Memorial Day weekend with his 124th round of golf.
Wikileaks releases more Global Intelligence Files; some highlights
Submitted by sosadmin on Thu, 11/15/2012 - 15:15
Wikileaks has released another batch of emails from the private intelligence company Stratfor. Among them are some interesting bits of information, including:
Allegations that the White House and CIA ordered the Drug
Enforcement Agency (DEA) to cease investigating Afghanistan president
Ahmed Karzai's brother for drug trafficking that funded terrorism. The email reads
in part: "For political reasons, DEA has been told to backoff [sic] by
the White House and CIA. DEA is seeing a direct nexus between terrorism
and narcotics in Afghanistan with narcotics sales being used to fund
jihadist operations."
References to the Obama war on whistleblowers. One email,
dated September 2010, reads in full: "Brennan is behind the witch hunts
of investigative journalists learning information from inside the
beltway sources. Note -- There is specific tasker from the WH to go
after anyone printing materials negative to the Obama agenda (oh my.)
Even the FBI is shocked. The Wonder Boys must be in meltdown mode..."
A breakdown of the FBI's major "Going Dark" concerns,
as laid out by the Albany field office. The FBI has been publicly
hinting at what it says are major impediments to its "legal electronic
surveillance" operations. (For an interrogation of the supposed
"legality" of the FBI's surveillance, read this.)
In a document prepared for law enforcement, the Albany field office of
the FBI listed the Tor network, encryption and anonymous remailers as
technologies that impede total information awareness. Take a look at the
document here.
Possible Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC) attacks on Mexican drug cartel leaders. A May 2011 email reads: "Have been told by a very good contact that JSOC is looking at unilateral actions in MX targeting cartel HVT's."
An assessment that DHS fusion centers amount to "freaking amature [sic] hour."
Problems with the TSA and its reliance on contractors. One email claims a "senior agent at DHS" said: "Another issue is that DHS in general has too many contractors whose first interest is furthering their company's interests, and
many of these folks couldn't find their bottoms with both hands and a
mirror. Unfortunately, the few direct hire staff end up overwhelmed by
their contractor majority staffs....Contractor footnote: have observed
that the contractors are extremely adept at showing up at meetings in
large numbers, eating the donuts and drinking the beverages without
contributing anything more than body count."
DHS' assessment of the Occupy Wall Street movements.
One Stratfor email contains a link to a DHS bulletin for law
enforcement and the intelligence community on OWS. The last sentence of
that bulletin reads: "Due to the location of the protests in major
metropolitan areas, heightened and continuous situational awareness for security personnel across all CI sectors is encouraged."
Raymond Maxwell, the only official at the State Department's bureau of
Near Eastern Affairs to lose his job after the attacks, tells Josh Rogin
that he’s been scapegoated by Hillary Clinton’s team.
Following
the attack in Benghazi, Libya, senior State Department officials close
to Hillary Clinton ordered the removal of a midlevel official who had no
role in security decisions and has never been told the charges against
him. He is now accusing Clinton’s team of scapegoating him for the
failures that led to the death of four Americans last year.
Hillary Clinton laughs as she testifies before the House Foreign
Affairs Committee on Capitol Hill in January. (Chip Somodevilla/Getty
Images)
Raymond
Maxwell was placed on forced “administrative leave” after the State
Department’s own internal investigation, conducted by an Administrative
Review Board (ARB) led by former State Department official Tom
Pickering. Five months after he was told to clean out his desk and leave
the building, Maxwell remains in professional and legal limbo, having
been associated publicly with the death of Ambassador Chris Stevens and
three other American for reasons that remain unclear.
Maxwell,
who served as deputy assistant secretary of state for Near Eastern
affairs from August 2011 until his removal last December, following
tours in Iraq and Syria, spoke publicly for the first time in an
exclusive interview with The Daily Beast.
“The
overall goal is to restore my honor,” said Maxwell, who has filed
grievances regarding his treatment with the State Department’s Human
Resources Bureau and the American Foreign Service Association, which
represents the interests of foreign-service officers. The other three
officials placed on leave were in the Diplomatic Security Bureau,
leaving Maxwell as the only official in the Bureau of Near Eastern
Affairs (NEA), which had responsibility for Libya, to lose his job.
“I
had no involvement to any degree with decisions on security and the
funding of security at our diplomatic mission in Benghazi,” he said.
Watch the highlights of Hillary Clinton's testimony about Benghazi.
Maxwell
was removed from his job December 18, the day after the ARB report was
released, and subsequently placed on administrative leave, which is
meant to give the State Department time to investigate whether Maxwell
should be fired or return to work. Five months later, that investigation
seems stalled, and Maxwell sits at home, where he continues to be paid,
but is not allowed to return to his job.
The
State Department declined to comment on the reasons Maxwell and the
other officials were placed on administrative leave or on what the four
were told about the reasons for the decision. It did confirm that the
ARB did not recommend direct disciplinary action because it didn’t find
misconduct or a direct breach of duty by the officials. “As a matter of
policy, we don’t speak to specific personnel matters,” said State
Department spokeswoman Jen Psaki.
Since
the leave is not considered a formal disciplinary action, Maxwell has
no means to appeal the status, as he would if he had been outright
fired. To this day, he says, nobody from the State Department has ever
told him why he was singled out for discipline. He has never had access
to the classified portion of the ARB report, where all the details
regarding personnel failures leading up to Benghazi are confined. He
also says he has never been shown any evidence or witness testimony
linking him to the Benghazi incident.
Maxwell
says he had planned to retire last September, but extended his time
voluntarily after the September 11 attack to help the bureau in its time
of need. Now, he is refusing to retire until his situation is
clarified. He is seeking a restoration of his previous position, a
public statement of apology from State, reimbursement for his legal
fees, and an extension of his time in service to equal the time he has
spent at home on administrative leave.
“For
any FSO, being at work is the essence of everything, and being deprived
of that and being cast out was devastating,” he said.
Soon
after being removed from his job, Maxwell was visited at his home late
one evening and directed to sign a letter acknowledging his
administrative leave and forfeiting his right to enter the State
Department. He refused to sign, responding in writing that it amounted
to an admission he had done something wrong.
“They just wanted me to go away but I wouldn’t just go away,” he said. “I knew Chris [Stevens]. Chris was a friend of mine.”
“Behind Beth’s back, Maxwell ended up being put on administrative leave.”
The
decision to place Maxwell on administrative leave was made by Clinton’s
chief of staff, Cheryl Mills, according to three State Department
officials with direct knowledge of the events. On the day after the
unclassified version of the ARB’s report was released in December, Mills
called Acting Assistant Secretary of State for Near Eastern Affairs
Beth Jones and directed her to have Maxwell leave his job immediately.
"Cheryl
Mills directed me to remove you immediately from the [deputy assistant
secretary] position," Jones told Maxwell, according to Maxwell.
The
decision to remove Maxwell and not Jones seems to conflict with the
finding of the ARB that responsibility for the security failures leading
up to the September 11, 2012, attack on the U.S. mission in Benghazi
should fall on more senior officials.
“We
fixed [the responsibility] at the assistant-secretary level, which is
in our view the appropriate place to look, where the decision making in
fact takes place, where, if you like, the rubber hits the road," Pickering said when releasing the ARB report.
The
report found “systemic failures and leadership and management
deficiencies at senior levels within two bureaus of the State
Department,” namely the Diplomatic Security (DS) and Near East bureaus.
Deputy Secretary of State Bill Burns testified in December
that requests for more security in Libya, denied by the State
Department, did reach the assistant secretaries, and “it may be that
some of my colleagues on the seventh floor saw them as well."
But
Jones was not disciplined in any way following the release of the
report, nor was the principal deputy assistant secretary of State at
NEA, Liz Dibble, who is slated to receive a plush post as the deputy
chief of mission at the U.S. Embassy in London this summer. In the DS
bureau, the assistant secretary, the principal deputy, and the deputy
assistant all lost their jobs. In the NEA bureau, only Maxwell was asked
to leave.
Jones
and Dibble were responsible for security in Libya, Maxwell and three
State Department officials said. What’s more, when Maxwell was promoted
to his DAS position in August 2011, most responsibility for Libya was
carved out of his portfolio, which also included Algeria, Morocco, and
Tunisia. Although Maxwell did some work on Libya, all security-related
decisions were handled by Dibble and Jones, according to the three
officials.
One
State Department official close to the issue told The Daily Beast that
Clinton’s people told the leadership of the NEA bureau that Maxwell
would be given another job at State when the Benghazi scandal blew over.
Maxwell said Jones assured him he would eventually be brought back to
NEA as a “senior adviser,” but that Mills, Clinton’s chief of staff,
reneged.
“The
deal that NEA made with Cheryl Mills and the seventh floor was to keep
Ray within NEA and just give him another portfolio. For whatever reason,
it didn’t go down like that, and that was a complete shock to Beth
[Jones], because that was the deal that Beth made with Cheryl,” the
official said. “Behind Beth’s back, Maxwell ended up being put on
administrative leave.”
Jones
and Mills both declined to comment for this article, but a source close
to Mills denied that any kind of deal was made or reneged on regarding
Maxwell’s future employment. The decision to place Maxwell on
administrative leave was based on the classified portion of the ARB’s
report, which named Maxwell specifically, the source said, but since the
ARB didn’t say that Maxwell had committed a “breach of duty,” he
couldn’t be outright fired.
“Administrative
leave was the best option available within the very narrow authority
that anyone had. That was the harshest discipline the department could
mete out,” a State Department official involved in the decision making
process said. “There really weren’t any other options available. If they
could have been fired, they would have been.”
One
person who reviewed the classified portion of the ARB report told The
Daily Beast that it called out Maxwell for the specific infraction of
not reading his daily classified briefings, something that person said
Maxwell admitted to the ARB panel during his interview.
“The
crime that he is being punished for is not reading his intel. That
explains why Jones and Dibble were not disciplined,” this person said.
Maxwell
had no response to this allegation other than to say he has not been
officially counseled on what he did wrong and has not been allowed to
read the classified report. Also, he believes that Clinton’s staff, not
the ARB, was in charge of the review of the attack that took place
during her watch.
“The
flaws in the process were perpetrated by the political leadership at
State with the complicity of the senior career leadership,” he said.
“They should be called to account.”
“There are people who seem to have responsibility who have yet to be held accountable.”
Eight
months after the attack, congressional investigators and outside groups
are still pressing the State Department to explain how the ARB came to
the conclusion that four midlevel officials were the only ones with
responsibility for the failures that led up to the attack.
The
chairman of the House oversight committee, Rep. Darrell Issa (R-CA),
has announced that he will subpoena Pickering to compel him to submit to
a deposition. Rep. Jason Chaffetz (R-UT), the chairman of the
subcommittee on national security, told The Daily Beast in an interview
that he wants to know exactly why Maxwell and the three other officials
were placed on administrative leave and have not been granted due
process to defend themselves.
“I
certainly would like to hear their side of the story. It seems fair
that they should be given that opportunity. If they can’t get it within
the administration, I think Congress would love to hear their story,” he
said. “Secretary Clinton says she takes responsibility, but that seems
like lip service rather than the reality, because there are people who
seem to have responsibility who have yet to be held accountable, and I
don’t understand that.”
Chaffetz and Issa sent a letter
in January to State asking why Clinton, Deputy Secretary Tom Nides, and
Burns were not interviewed by the ARB. Undersecretary of State for
Management Patrick Kennedy admitted in October 10 congressional
testimony that he was in the loop on decisions regarding security
requests in Libya before the attack. He was interviewed by the ARB, but
not identified as having done anything wrong.
“The
ARB tried to blame everyone but hold no one responsible, except for
some of the lower level people who were not in control of the
situation,” said Chaffetz. “You have a report that seems incomplete at
best.”
Susan
Johnson, the president of the American Foreign Service Association
(AFSA), told The Daily Beast that administrative leave does damage to a
foreign-service officer’s reputation and career if it goes on for more
than a couple of weeks, much less several months. The treatment amounts
to a de facto disciplinary action, she said.
“There’s
a feeling that foreign-service officers often end up as scapegoats when
scandals rise to congressional or public attention,” she said. “Our
broader concern is to ensure some measure of fairness and transparency,
ensure some reasonable process that meets some kind of minimal standard
here.”
The
AFSA sent a letter to Burns in January asking a number of questions
about the review process and the criteria senior department leaders used
in choosing to discipline the four individuals removed from their jobs
in relation to the Benghazi attack.
“The
State Department began an administrative process to review the status
of the four individuals placed on administrative leave. That review
process continues, and Secretary Kerry will be briefed with an update,
and decisions will be made about the status of these employees,” Psaki
told the Beast. “This internal administrative process can take some
time.”
She
added: “It is also important to remember that the four people discussed
are all long-serving government officials who over the years have
provided dedicated service to the U.S. government in challenging
assignments.”
Maxwell just wants his day in court. He wrote a poem
on his personal blog in April which referred to the State Department’s
treatment of the four officials removed from their jobs after Benghazi
as a “lynching.”
Last week, he posted another poem about the growing Benghazi scandal.
“The
web of lies they weave gets tighter and tighter in its deceit until it
bottoms out -at a very low frequency – and implodes,” he wrote. “Yet all
the while, the more they talk, the more they lie, and the deeper down
the hole they go.”
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Josh Rogin is senior correspondent for national security and politics for Newsweek and The Daily Beast. He previously worked at Foreign Policy magazine, Congressional Quarterly, Federal Computer Week magazine, and Japan’s leading daily newspaper, The Asahi Shimbun. He hails from Philadelphia and lives in Washington, D.C.
For inquiries, please contact The Daily Beast at editorial@thedailybeast.com.
On Monday February 27th, 2012, WikiLeaks began publishing The Global Intelligence Files,
over five million e-mails from the Texas headquartered "global
intelligence" company Stratfor. The e-mails date between July 2004 and
late December 2011. They reveal the inner workings of a company that
fronts as an intelligence publisher, but provides confidential
intelligence services to large corporations, such as Bhopal's Dow
Chemical Co., Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman, Raytheon and government
agencies, including the US Department of Homeland Security, the US
Marines and the US Defence Intelligence Agency. The emails show
Stratfor's web of informers, pay-off structure, payment laundering
techniques and psychological methods.
