XKEYSCORE

XKEYSCORE, What is it? - the secret program run by the NSA on the World Wide Web that converts all the data it can see into searchable events like web pages loaded, files downloaded, forms submitted, emails and attachments sent, porn videos watched, TV shows streamed, and advertisements loaded, which demonstrates how Internet traffic can be even more sensitive than phone calls.

What does it do? - It collects in bulk virtually all of our phone metadata.  If you call a suicide prevention hotline, it hears your call, and converts your voice call into readable language. HIV testing services, phone sex services, advocacy groups for gun rights and for abortion rights, all recorded and noted. Calling your girlfriend while out of the house for a secret tryst?
Schedule a job interview without letting your current employer know? Long Distance calls? Most of us, at one point or another, have spent hours on the phone discussing the most intimate details about our lives. There isn’t anyone alive today who didn’t grow up with at least some access to a telephone, we understand them well.

But we don't quite get the internet, do we? We don't actually realize what we are telling that listener in a darkened room. Bulk collection of phone metadata is, without a doubt, a violation of your privacy, but bulk surveillance of internet traffic is orders of magnitude more invasive!
We inadvertently share even more intimate details through online searches. The NSA’s programs tap the Internet directly and collect data, illegally violating your right to privacy. If government wants to search or seize your data, they must have a warrant. The warrant can only be issued if they have probable cause, and the warrant must be specific. Meaning the searchers who want to go through your data, literally all of it, need to suspect you of something before being allowed to. That is the law. But as it stands right now, the government can simply gather everything you do on the internet, then look for a violation of some law, or just wait until you do commit a crime, or until they need to suspect you of one. We are talking about a different law here.

How does Xkeyscore and other surveillance programs do it? All internet traffic travels through an international lacy maze of routes throughout the world.
For instance, an email message sent from Abbotsford, BC to Vancouver begins in British Columbia and ends in Canada, yet is routed through San Jose, San Francisco, Kansas City and Chicago. An email sent from Moscow, Russia, passes off to Frankfurt, Germany then Stockholm, Sweden before reaching its destination a few miles away in Yaroslavl, Russia.
A message from Mexico to Washington might be hijacked and sent through London and Moscow before being read in Washington. After having been captured en route!
Angela Merkel, Chancellor of Germany is still pissed at the USA over them spying on her, as are most other European countries. Many are accusing the US of using their spying abilities to give private American companies the advantage on international contracts! Dilma Rouseff, President of Brazil, was so infuriated by NSA spying that she is laying her own TransAtlantic cable to Europe!

There can be intercept points anywhere. And in some cases, so called splitters are implanted along those electronic routes that siphon off copies of everything along the line. Just like a wire tap might do. Better because Xkeyscore doesn't get distracted. But wiretaps are medieval science compared to what happens today. The NSA is capable of collecting and storing all information traveling electronically from anywhere to anywhere every second of every day and stored in the new NSA facility in Utah. Where everything you have ever typed, and everything anyone else has ever typed about you, can be cross-referenced. The NSA can profile you better than your own mother.

And many other government agencies in the USA and your country too, are using these kinds of surveillance and collecting systems. PRISM is a government code name for a data-collection effort. It collects stored internet communications based on demands made to internet companies such as Google. your internet history! Documents indicate that PRISM is the number one source of raw intelligence used for NSA analytic reports, and it accounts for 91% of the NSA's internet traffic acquired! Finfisher is another that infiltrates your computer. And the Hacking Team sounds like someone who would hack government computers like Anonymous, but it is exactly the opposite, a private company selling software that that hacks YOU under a government's control. Any despotic regime who will buy it!  (do we still hate WikiLeaks when they recently hacked the Hacking Team and revealed flaws in that architecture and their nefarious deals?) And there are likely hundreds more electronics watching you now, in service of various government agencies. With enough cross-referencing to reveal your toe fungus!
Do a search, get collected. Even if your shaky fingers get the search wrong and you end up at Madame Meralda's House of Chains and Pains, that is now part of YOUR intimate internet history. The faulty-fingered keystroke will be remembered. Forever.

And quit that old dog about, "I have nothing to fear because I'm not doing anything wrong." You don't know who is defining 'wrong'! Apple said years ago it had never heard of Prism.  Sure, believe an Apple IT guy didn't KNOW? Unlikely. President Ronald Reagan in 1981 authorized foreign intelligence investigations. Every one knew. And didn't these corporate execs pay any attention to the Snowden revelations?

But it is not just Google. AT&T is cooperating with the illegal surveillance. Undisputed documents show that AT&T installed a fiberoptic splitter at its facility in San Francisco that makes copies of all emails, web browsing and other Internet traffic to and from AT&T customers and provides those copies to the NSA.
But that is not new, General David Sarnoff, in 1941 as President of the Radio Corporation of America, agreed to illegally pass on all Japanese Consulate cable messages to Naval Intelligence.

A FISA court (Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court) order demands Verizon turn over all customer phone records including who is talking to whom, when and for how long to the NSA. This metadata, especially when collected in bulk and aggregated, allows the government to track the associations of various political and religious organizations. Praise the Lord? Maybe not. Vote for who? Dangerous.
FISA courts are held in complete secret. You do NOT get a lawyer. You do NOT question witnesses. You cannot cross-examine. You cannot verify the evidence against you. And you do not face your accuser.

The world's largest internet brands are claimed to be part of the information-sharing program since its introduction in 2007/ Microsoft, Yahoo, Facebook, PalTalk, AOL, Skype etc.  Collectively, these companies cover the vast majority of online email, search, video and communications networks.

Think a new US president would be different? The NSA access was enabled by changes to US surveillance law introduced under President Bush and renewed under President Obama in December 2012. Who can you trust?


And do you still believe these government snoops are keeping you safe? The standard buzz-phrase for all this finaglery. The chief of the NSA, General Keith Alexander, after being pressed by the Senate Judiciary Committee at an oversight hearing, admitted that the number of terrorist plots foiled by the NSA gathering of every single phone call made in or to America was only one or perhaps two. (after others glibly told us there were 54) So after gathering possibly trillions of bytes about what we are doing, all that stolen info translated into only two plots?
(They are now gathering info in Exabytes, which is a 1, followed by 18 zeros. And amounts to all words ever spoken by human beings!)


Remember those movies about Moscow or East Berlin during the Cold War? Where you went out to a park and whispered to your friend to avoid bugs planted in your own apartment by the Stasi?
It is almost here folks, and you're not the handsome third-man Orson Wells disappearing into the murky black shadows in Vienna. Nothing glamorous about losing your freedom. Now the shadowy figure in your movie hiding in between the cracks on your keyboard is called Xkeyscore. And it is looking out at you through your own webcam and listening to what you say and recording where you go on the electronic media.

You're the victim. Don't meet under trees or on park benches, they're probably already there.



Source of some info: Micah Lee, The Intercept. 


The Intercept    The news service of investigative journalist Glenn Greenwald.
Citizen Four streaming   Laura Poitras'  academy award winning documentary about Edward Snowden.
thoughtmaybe  Plenty of browsing here.

From Blacklisted News

 Posted by Blacklisted News, July 10, 2015. 

Document shows CIA reaction to finding no WMDs in Iraq.

The National Security Archive has posted several newly available documents, one of them an account by Charles Duelfer of the search he led in Iraq for weapons of mass destruction, with a staff of 1,700 and the resources of the U.S. military.
Duelfer was appointed by CIA Director George Tenet to lead a massive search after an earlier massive search led by David Kay had determined that there were no WMD stockpiles in Iraq. Duelfer went to work in January 2004, to find nothing for a second time, on behalf of people who had launched a war knowing full well that their own statements about WMDs were not true.
The fact that Duelfer states quite clearly that he found none of the alleged WMD stockpiles cannot be repeated enough, with 42% of Americans (and 51 percent of Republicans) still believing the opposite.
A New York Times story last October about the remnants of a long-abandoned chemical weapons program has been misused and abused to advance misunderstanding. A search of Iraq today would find U.S. cluster bombs that were dropped a decade back, without of course finding evidence of a current operation.
Duelfer is also clear that Saddam Hussein’s government had accurately denied having WMD, contrary to a popular U.S. myth that Hussein had pretended to have what he did not.
The fact that President George W. Bush, Vice President Dick Cheney, and their team knowingly lied cannot be overemphasized. This group took the testimony of Hussein Kamel regarding weapons he’d said had been destroyed years ago, and used it as if he’d said they currently existed. This team used forged documents to allege a uranium purchase. They used claims about aluminum tubes that had been rejected by all of their own usual experts. They “summarized” a National Intelligence Estimate that said Iraq was unlikely to attack unless attacked to say nearly the opposite in a “white paper” released to the public. Colin Powell took claims to the U.N. that had been rejected by his own staff, and touched them up with fabricated dialogue.
Senate Select Committee on Intelligence Chairman Jay Rockefeller concluded that, “In making the case for war, the Administration repeatedly presented intelligence as fact when in reality it was unsubstantiated, contradicted, or even nonexistent.”
On January 31, 2003, Bush suggested to Blair that they could paint an airplane with U.N. colors, fly it low to get it shot at, and thereby start the war. Then the two of them walked out to a press conference at which they said they would avoid war if at all possible. Troop deployments and bombing missions were already underway.
When Diane Sawyer asked Bush on television why he had made the claims he had about Iraq’s

George always did need hand holding.

supposed weapons of mass destruction, he replied: “What’s the difference? The possibility that [Saddam] could acquire weapons, if he were to acquire weapons, he would be the danger.”
Duelfer’s newly released internal report on his hunt, and that of Kay before him, for the figments of propagandists’ imagination refers to “Saddam Hussein’s WMD program,” which Duelfer treats as an on-again, off-again institution, as if the 2003 invasion had just caught it in one of its naturally cyclical low tides of non-existence. Duelfer also describes the nonexistent program as “an international security problem that vexed the world for three decades,” — except perhaps for the part of the world engaged in the largest public demonstrations in history, which rejected the U.S. case for war.
Duelfer openly states that his goal was to rebuild “confidence in intelligence projections of threat.” Of course, having found no WMDs, he can’t alter the inaccuracy of the “projections of threat.” Or can he? What Duelfer did publicly at the time and does again here is to claim, without providing any evidence for it, that “Saddam was directing resources to sustain the capacity to recommence producing WMD once U.N. sanctions and international scrutiny collapsed.”
Duelfer claims that former Saddam yes men, rigorously conditioned to say whatever would most please their questioner, had assured him that Saddam harbored these secret intentions to start rebuilding WMD someday. But, Duelfer admits, “there is no documentation of this objective. And analysts should not expect to find any.”
So, in Duelfer’s rehabilitation of the “intelligence community” that may soon be trying to sell you another “projection of threat” (a phrase that perfectly fits what a Freudian would say they were doing), the U.S. government invaded Iraq, devastated a society, killed upwards of a million people by best estimates, wounded, traumatized, and made homeless millions more, generated hatred for the United States, drained the U.S. economy, stripped away civil liberties back home, and laid the groundwork for the creation of ISIS, as a matter not of “preempting” an “imminent threat” but of preempting a secret plan to possibly begin constructing a future threat should circumstances totally change.
This conception of “preemptive defense” is identical to two other concepts. It’s identical to the justifications we’ve been offered recently for drone strikes. And it’s identical to aggression. Once “defense” has been stretched to include defense against theoretical future threats, it ceases to credibly distinguish itself from aggression.
And yet Duelfer seems to believe he succeeded in his assignment.

© Blacklisted News 2015

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

58% of us could see what was happening at the time between George Bush and Saddam Hussein, and without prompting, only reading and looking for ourselves, could pose the questions and filter out truth from the non-answers. It amounted to a coup of the United States Government and the future subjugation of the American people.


The USA PATRIOT Act is an Act of Congress that was signed into law by President George W. Bush

on October 26, 2001. Its title is a ten-letter backronym (USA PATRIOT) that stands for "Uniting and Strengthening America by Providing Appropriate Tools Required to Intercept and Obstruct Terrorism Act of 2001".

The HSA (Homeland Security Act) was cosponsored by 118 members of Congress, it was signed into law by President George W. Bush in November 2002. HSA created the United States Department of Homeland Security and the new cabinet-level position of Secretary of Homeland Security. It is the largest federal government reorganization since the Department of Defense was created via the National Security Act of 1947. It also includes many of the organizations under which the powers of the USA Patriot Act are exercised.

Charles Duelfer

More 9/11 truths?

... Susan Lindhauer , a former CIA asset tells a fascinating story. From her book, Extreme Prejudice ... Watch at your own risk of possibly reassessing what you believe.

Ethics anyone?

So the State Department is going to release Hilary Rodham Clinton's emails in January of NEXT year.  They are going to release the emails left over from the critical ones she already deleted? What are they doing, rewriting them?  There are 55 THOUSAND pages!
The same State Department that doesn't see the ethics problem with a high government official using private servers and mixing personal email with United States of America business? A person traveling everywhere in the world bringing American policy to so many countries? Was there any oversight at all on this? One would think the CIA, FBI the Secret Service, the Post Office and anyone else charged with protecting the American public would be all over someone in government hiding emails from scrutiny.

Wouldn't that be the perfect formula for someone within the government to plan a coup d'tat of your own government? Get up to whatever hanky-panky you like without your own security people knowing about any of it. Dangerous precedent.
But did Bush and Cheney set the precedent already by placing themselves above the law of the land?

Didn't someone somewhere twig to this deception? Didn't someone say, "Hilary, this is not a private corporation, you cannot hide communications, you are doing the people's work. This has to go on record somewhere. Everything you do, write or send has to be vetted by someone."
Didn't someone say to President Obama, "We have no knowledge of what she is doing?"

Didn't one single Senator, at least in the opposition Republican party ask why they had no information on Hilary's goings on? Didn't one single CIA or FBI officer say it was unacceptable to bypass the security of government controls? Especially with the furor over Benghazi on her watch where an American Ambassador was killed!

How did the USA get so far away from the management of it's own officials? Was it George HW Bush, when he was Director of the CIA, who established separate cells within the CIA to begin a shadow government?

Did they carefully build it under HW's presidency and continued until George W Bush stole the election from Al Gore and with Dick Cheney as the implementer and watchdog put more pieces together until the American people were so befuddled with terrorists under every bed that they ignored the phoney wars and the stealthy coup taking place right before their eyes?

What is happening to what used to be the standard of democracy around the world? Where we now have corporations in charge of the government? Where laws are now being usurped by trade deals and sovereignty is dwindling with the water supply. And the militarized police are now the military charged with keeping the piece while fomenting unrest themselves with hot war tactics?

Homeland Security and the Patriot Act has started it's intended purpose, to subjugate the people of America into a basic slavery? The liberty and freedoms are going fast, while people stare at you with disbelief when you tell them. They don't want to face it. No one asks where the money comes from for the new massive HQ of the NSA in Utah. Or even what is it's purpose? Surely they have enough metadata now to keep analysts busy for decades.
It is the nature of Americans to be trustworthy, loyal, hard working and honest. They simply cannot believe the track their own elected people are speeding down. There is just too much fifties style memories flooding through their minds when the world was right and proper.

So we have Hilary running for the top job. And so many Americans keep the faith, in spite of the mounting evidence of unethical conduct. She doesn't come off a wonderful record in the State Department, she is trying to emerge through allegations of wrong doing, secret email accounts, distrust, and lies about her record in office. The fact is no one knows what she did there. And a mounting army of disbelievers are questioning her purpose, including a house committee on Banghazi. As President of the  United States where would Hilary Clinton take the country?

50 years ago President Dwight Eisenhour warned against 'unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex.'  That phrase entered the political lexicon, signifying the notion that a permanent ruling class, encompassing the Pentagon and its corporate suppliers, was on the verge of controlling the American government, even in peacetime.

 The problems of course, is that the preferred political plan in these times, is just keep smiling and never answer any questions.
And it may work, many elected politicians have no idea where Bengazi is. Or Baghdad, or hundreds of other world centers, because those places simply don't matter to them. Getting re-elected is paramount. And many more believe that no matter what party takes power in the White House, the direction of America will not change.


It has come true folks, your elected officials and the wannabes chasing them have with impunity undermined the integrity of the Unites States. And no one had the courage to say to Hilary,  "You cannot do business on behalf of America in secrecy."

If Hilary's political ambitions are not finished now, one could expect that in January they will be. Maybe. There might be much more to come, even if Hilary utters no words in her defense.
But that's a long way ahead. Lots of time to fix those emails, start a few more wars and invent a few more bogeymen to distract the people.
Besides, America doesn't really need the people's votes anymore, that shadow government, that permanent ruling class, can elect anyone they want, the people are just there to make it look real.

Whoever is elected will do just as they are told, like all the recent presidents in either party. It is now the American way. The Powers That Be need only to suppress the few remaining free voices.

Hilary Rodham Clinton's credibility problem notwithstanding, she could end up presiding over the dismantling of America.

Without a protest.



Vote early and often.

Baltimore - lots of WHYs.

On the death of Freddy Gray in Baltimore. See if you arrive at a conclusion by the timeline?
Have a look by the Google Earth map so you can see exactly where the events happened ....

 

This will be simplified here ...7 points in all, one not included in the initial police report but discovered on private surveillance video later.

Starting with,

 #1, 8:39 am. where officers, Lt. Brian W. Rice and Officers Edward M. Nero and Garrett E. Miller were on bike patrol near the corner of North Avenue and Mount Street. Lieutenant Rice made eye contact with Gray, who takes off running from W. North Avenue. He is chased and is caught by Officers Miller and Nero at,

 #2,  8:?? am  Presbury St. and N. Mount St. This is where the TV video taken by bystanders shows him being put into the police van by several officers with hands cuffed. He is never belted in.

Then the police van drives only a block before stopping at, 

#3, 8:46 am. Baker and N. Mount St. Where Officers Miller and Nero and Lieutenant Rice called Goodson to stop,  removed Mr. Gray from the van and placed him in leg restraints. Mr. Gray was loaded head first onto the floor of the van. Still not belting him in.

Q. were they actually planning to give Gray a so-called 'rough-ride' and wanted to put on the leg cuffs without the people one block away seeing them do it and taking more video? In that position it could be an extremely rough ride if the driver sped up and then jammed on his brakes several times, and from Gray's position, would result in him slamming helplessly into the bulkhead in his compartment, quite possibly breaking his neck?

Instead of going straight ahead for only another 4 blocks, to the police station, driver Officer Goodson instead travels southeast for about 10 blocks, maybe a half mile away to,

Q. Why did he drive far away from the police station if it wasn't to do a rough ride?

 #4, 8:54 am. N. Freemont Ave and Mosher St. Where the truck stops again for the driver to 'check on him'. Gray still unsecured by a seatbelt.

 Q. Was driver Goodson only looking to see what damage may have been inflicted on Gray at this time? He was supposed to continue to Central Booking with his prisoner who had said he needed a medic! Was Goodson in communication with other police and what were they instructing him to do?

But then he proceeds even farther away to stop at,

 #5, 8:59 am. Dolphn and Druid Avenues. Officer Goodson radios for help to 'check his prisoner'. 

Q. Did Goodson become worried after his previous check and saw that Gray was comatose, about to die, and needed help right away?

Officer William G. Porter arrived and he and Goodson went to the back of the van. Mr. Gray at that time requested help and indicated that he could not breathe and needed a medic. Porter helped sit Gray up on a bench but still never belted him in. 

Q. Might a sudden hard braking while Gray was propped up on the bench in shackles result in even a harder fall? A spinal breaking fall?

Then a call came to pick up another man arrested way back at the original scene on North Avenue and N. Mount St. So Goodson drove there instead of to Central Booking even though it was obvious that Gray needed medical attention?.

#6, 9:?? am. Officers Nero, Miller and Porter. Sgt. Alicia D. White and Officers Porter and Goodson all observed Gray who was now unresponsive. No medical assistance was called for in spite of Gray's condition. The other prisoner is loaded into the left compartment of the police van.

#7, 9:24 am. Western District police station. A medic was called as Gray was not breathing, he was rushed to the University of Maryland’s Shock Trauma Center, where he died a week later.

The questions pile on. Why move Gray a block away out of sight of the gathering crowd with cameras to restrain him, but not belt him in? Why drive him so far away from the Police station when it was only a couple of minutes and a few blocks away? Then when the driver did check his passenger, Why continue driving away from his destination?  Then even again, Goodson went back to the original scene and the other officers were there with one passenger? Why did that passenger say he heard Gray thrashing and kicking when we now know he was not even breathing and was unable to kick or bang around? 

Was that suggestion put into the 2nd prisoner's head by the now worried officers?

Did the 'rough ride' plan go terribly wrong and the police were then trying to cover the consequences of their actions?

Unfortunately, there is limited CCTV footage, some video from a private owner at a small grocery store that the police evidently copied, was stolen when the store was later torched during the riots.  Coincidence? Happenstance? Or enemy action?

Hmm? One might expect that there is much more private video out there, if and when it will turn up is anyone's guess.

It will unfold of course, but seems hard to change from the original time-line or the actions as already stated by the police who were involved. 

You can use Google Earth yourself to actually follow the chain of events from Google Street View to get a feeling for the area and the environment of the people who live there. It is a sad event for all.

We expect there will be lots more WHYs to come.

addenda - May 23/2016 - Baltimore police officer Edward Nero found NOT guilty for his part leading to the death of Freddie Gray.

Government oil slick

This is what Prime Minister Harper said in the summer of 2012 when he dictated that our BC Coast Guard base on Kitsilano Point be closed - "the closing of a Vancouver coast guard station is in keeping with this government’s emphasis on public safety."  Is that a real comment? We are closing a public safety station help public safety? Is our Prime Minister living in a real world?

And they closed it in Feb 2013. The former base possessed a conventional vessel capable of responding to an oil spill, but the vessel was stripped for parts and sold after the base shuttered its operations. This reallocation is 'best for the public', they said.
The Coast Guard station would be moved to Richmond and serviced by one lumbering Hovercraft that takes over 30 minutes to get around Point Grey to be of any good to distress calls from English Bay. (in actuality it took over 3 hours!)
And there is another Station in Stanley Park that has an inflatable and would have the same response time going into Burrard Inlet, around Stanley Park and through Lions Gate before getting to English Bay. The very idea that the False Creek Station was closed indicates a lack of understanding about the Vancouver area geographics. Have the Feds ever even looked at a chart of this area? Their plan was “to put as many of the resources as we can into actually having rescue boats in the water. That’s where we put our investments going forward.” - Stephen Harper. Really?

In summer, and indeed, most of the year, we have hundreds of boats in English Bay, including these world traveling freighters. We are not the frozen port of Montreal or Halifax where people keep their boats moored for 10 months. Vancouver Coast Guard Kitsilano Station was the busiest base in Canada responding to more than 350 calls per year! And we have yet again seen the reaction from a Federal Government in Ottawa that has no idea what lies across the Rockies. And if they do know there is a thriving port here they choose to ignore us. Yet again. We wonder if they know there is an actual province out here! But then our BC votes don't actually count in Federal elections, do they? We think we needn't vote for Federal Conservatives in BC at all!

Cutting costs has resulted in a delayed response to our oil spill. If the Kitsilano Station was still open at the entrance of False Creek it might have taken 6 minutes to have a boat checking out that spill. As it was in fact, no one was active for 6 hours after the spill was detected. And the City of Vancouver was not told that our precious waters were fouled for 13 HOURS! And then when the Richmond Coast Guard was contacted they responded that 'we don't do oil spills!'

So now Vancouver Mayor, Gregor Robertson is telling that the response was inadequate and shows lack of leadership with the Federal and Provincial governments. We think he should be screaming bloody murder!  Christy Clark, our beloved Premier, covering her own ample ass, and stuttering away when asked what her government has done so far, says Mayor Robertson 'doesn't understand how the 'unified command works'.  How much do you need to know about a toxic oil leak contamination in our pristine waters?

Federal Industry Minister, James Moore, commenting from the high towers of Ottawa, says the spill is 80% cleaned up, but from aerial film, it looks like it is all over the English Bay, from Kitsilano to West Van beaches. Even into Georgia Straight. And it seems like 80% is the standard figure for media consumption. Moore says the West Coast people are making political jabs without having the facts. Nice deflection Moore, trying to make your critics seem political. We wonder what you can see of our waters from 3000 miles away? Does he forget he is an MP from BC?
Later a plane was flown over English Bay and it was announced that of 2700 liters of oil, there was only 6 liters left on the water! Yes, we all laughed at that audacity!

So we have people saving ducks on our shores.  We have agencies warning us not to swim in our water. Don't even touch it! Recently we had Orcas in English Bay, thrilling people everywhere. Humpbacks are nearby, our water is so clear and fresh. Now we have it spoiled. And the worst is yet to come when Prime Minister Harper pushes through the Northern Gateway oil pipeline and the Kinder-Morgan double pipeline to Burrard Inlet. And already those oil corporations have spun us with crap about how responsible they are. And how there is no danger to Vancouver area or our whole western coast.
And keep in mind folks, that bunker fuel oil, does evaporate. The Tars Sands Bitumen that Enbridge and Kinder-Morgan will be pipe-lining to tankers in BC, does not. Bitumen sinks to the bottom and can contaminate our waters for years, even decades! (Google Kalamazoo spill)

What'll happen now? Minister Moore is telling us the ship owners based in bankrupt Greece will pay for it all. Sure. You cannot sweep oil spills under the rug, because they tend to seep through. We bet the taxpayer will be on the hook for this one for lack of Federal leadership and the guts to enforce the paying of the bill. Business trumps everything in Conservative governments. And did you know that Exxon has still not paid the fines from the Valdez spill? Twenty-six years ago! Tied up in court while they fight it.
One other point - This was a brand new ship on its maiden voyage! The Matrathassa. And Enbridge is telling us about their tankers, they will be new too! Not reassuring is it?

What will it do to Vancouver's image? Do tourists want to come to a place where people are warned not to go near the water?  Do they want to sit on a beach with oil rings around the rocks? Or dead oily birds washed up?  Or black oil rings around the white yachts.  Or toxic smells wafting through the outdoor cafes? What does this do to the economy of the area?

What about the provincial government? Clark's stammering response tells you a lot, she just wants out of here, maybe another trade trip to India. Deferring to Mary Polak who is not sure about anything except who controls her paycheck.

Whatever happens in the next while, we need to pay attention. And see if the promises get followed through. We think Stephen Harper will simply tell media to stop reporting. And they will.
We think that appropriate action would be to refuse to elect toadies in the BC Federal Conservative Party that turn against British Columbians on the first plane to Ottawa. We need to punish them gravely. And what difference would it make to send other MPs to Ottawa? It doesn't make any difference now who goes there, why would we reward more Conservatives for incompetence?

And trusting Christy Clark and her BC Liberals with our beautiful city and coast is a non-starter, it is she who doesn't understand. The 'unified command' may be the people of BC. What can we expect from a Federal government that needs a Freedom of Information Act to reveal anything and a Provincial government that meets in secret parks and keeps no records?

This spill is only a starter and could be an omen of things to come. Does anyone still believe shipping companies can respond to a spill of bitumen in Burrard Inlet or the distant Douglas Channel from Kitimat?
You can take action, but you must have a memory of things when you go into that voting booth. That is where your power begins. Vancouver is a treasured jewel in Canada, and most of the people here think that way.  Get rid of those who don't understand.

And there is nothing political about asking you to toss out politicians who care little about anything but themselves.

They don't represent you at all.

Coming soon, to an inlet near you.

tar-sands-again

Ottawa fired a spill expert

Addenda: of the 2700 liters of bunker oil leaked, (somebody;s estimate) the Coast Guard is now telling us ONE day later that there is only 6 (SIX) liters left in English Bay.  Who is coming up with these ridiculous figures? Can we trust the Coast Guard to represent the truth? Something smells like fish oil to me!

Addenda #2 - The man on his boat who discovered the oil slick, called it in at about 5 PM The police helped get him through to the Richmond Station of the Coast Guard. He told them exactly what it was and how big the oil slick was and stayed in English Bay. When nothing happened he called them back at 5:30 and they told him the Coast Guard was already there. He waited. Called them back and said no Coast Guard, and was told they were 'on route'. He stayed and circled the area. The Coast Guard took over THREE HOURS before a boat appeared at about 9 PM.
So now we KNOW how long it take from Richmond to English Bay, 3 hours! The Kitsilano Station was minutes away had it still been there!
Time to toss out the indifferent Conservative MPs who are Harper Toadies and only represent the government TO YOU instead of representing you! 
This is way too important to just vote these guys in again.

Addenda #3 - Secreted among the information in a desperately balanced Federal budget, was the information that they have now closed a SECOND Coast Guard Station at Ucluelet. Vancouver's marine communications and traffic centre is also slated to close on May 6 and the Comox station will close sometime next winter or spring. Vancouver traffic will be monitored via radar from Victoria, while Ucluelet will be monitored from a communications centre in Prince Rupert. The Federal Conservatives don't seem to even realize we are a coastal nation.

Russians emerging as the new good guys?

This article by F. William Engdahl is not pro or anti Russian, only telling you about how Russia is handling the overwhelming onslaught of American propaganda and manipulation, emerging as a modern, progressive and independent society while leaving it's past safely tucked away but not forgotten.
Read it and get an important insight into that part of the world and what its future might bring. Posted on Facebook by Jim Marrs so you know it is good.

Is Russia emerging as a counterfoil to all the NWO and American intrigues coming out of Washington?


http://journal-neo.org/Russia's Remarkable Renaissance

F. William Engdahl is strategic risk consultant and lecturer, he holds a degree in politics from Princeton University and is a best-selling author on oil and geopolitics, exclusively for the online magazine New Eastern Outlook.

Mistaken Identity?

 

 I'm Abe Lincoln you assholes, not Napolean!

Pentagon - 9/11

So here we go again. 

Just wondering. Look at this . . .  You see, there is this an aircraft boneyard out on the Mohave desert. They say it is like a space research facility, but none of this inventory is going into space anytime soon.

This relatively unknown location in California is the largest airplane graveyard for commercial jets in the United States. And has been in operation since the '70s. Sometimes they filmed here for movies. But they closed it to public scrutiny in 2004. It is said to be used for spare parts. 
One could only wonder if those parts are carefully documented. Who keeps control of them and what records there may be about who took what and when?

Wonder what it would be like to discover if any parts were taken sometime in 2001? 

Because this piece appears to match an American Airlines 757 and yet does not show obvious abrasion or shearing damage and was photographed more than a hundred feet to the left of the flightpath, some researchers have speculated that it was planted. What was under that huge blue tarp carried away by several men? Why was it covered at all?

photographer unknown

  

Who can collect parts from here? Who controls the area? What authority is needed? What paperwork would there be about aircraft parts taken away from here? Hmm. Would there be a record of anything removed from this site anytime in the first part of 2001? Interesting? Maybe.

Just wondering.

A Tortured Future?

You can't hide from justice forever - not even for war crimes committed decades in the past, and not even when you're 93.  
That message resounded loudly in May, 2013 as Germany announced the arrest of Hans Lipschis, age 93, for complicity in mass murders that took place at the notorious Nazi death camp of Auschwitz-Birkenau, where he served as a guard in 1941-1945. And over 50 years later these war criminals are still being dug out of their spider holes by tenacious seekers of justice ....torture is never forgettable.

Klaus Barbie, the Butcher of Lyon,  so named for personally having horribly tortured French prisoners as the local chief of the Gestapo in Lyon. He was hunted down and caught by Nazi Hunters from France. He died in 1991 during his life imprisonment in a Lyon prison since 1987.  

Dr. Joseph Mengele, the Angel of Death, who tortured men, women and children and did medical experiments of unspeakable horror to them. He was sought by Nazi Hunters of the Israeli Mossad and was still on the run until his drowning death in Brazil in 1979.

Adolf Eichmann, Organizer of much of the holocaust and the extermination camps was caught by the Mossad in Argentina and put on trial in Israel. Found guilty of War Crimes, he was hanged in  1962.

Rudolph Hess, who spent the last 20 years of his life as the lone inmate of ancient Spandau Prison in Berlin.

The list of the 'most wanted' war criminals continues, the top 6, designated by the Simon Wiesenthal Center shows every one of them to be 93 or older! The relentless search for the guilty in these grotesque instances of death and torture never ends. Even 64 years after that war there are those who are still resolute in their direction. Many others on the Wiesenthal lists are known but are deemed suffering dementia or near death and so cannot be put on trial. But the gathering of evidence doesn't stop. And torture is never forgiven.

In the latest go around in the CIA torture revelations, the only person who has been prosecuted so far is the whistleblower who told us about it. No American soldier who hung a detainee by shackles in a cold dark room, or kept one naked and awake for days with pain and loud music, or beat one or put the dogs on him, or raped him or force-fed him through the rectum, has been prosecuted. And we are aware that the orders for this extraordinary rendition came from very high up, even Dick Cheney saying he would do it again, which implies he did it in the first instance. And Dick is now at odds with Dubya, his president, saying he also knew. And we now know the CIA has secret prisons all around the world for the express process of torture.

But the above mentioned Nazis and hundreds of others from WWII considered themselves soldiers too. And they were found out. The only thing constant is change, and someone will tell on you.
 
One only wonders who will apply the pressure to bring present day war criminals accused of torture and death to justice? Will they be allowed to fade into history or to blatantly defend their actions vociferously until we stop talking about them? Offense being the best defense? The strategy of the guilty to deaden the people's senses with sensory overload? It seems that many of those Nazi war criminals feared for their lives up until death. Why should today's counterparts be granted any measure of mercy?

So the resolve of men and women to chase down and catch modern day torturers should never fade into a silent dementia. No matter how aged the perpetrators become. These injustices to humanity must never disappear from our consciousness. Even if the rationale is that they did it to us.
We are supposed to be better than them.

And most secret agency spy chiefs today in all countries agree and understand that torture does NOT work. It is not a strategic necessity. Which only leaves the raison d'etre for using torture, as that certain people within those agencies find a distorted pleasure in the power to maim. As those Nazis mentioned above have proven. Absolute power corrupts.

Sane and honorable men need to keep up the pressure, the pursuit, dig them out, accumulate the facts and prosecute them, even if it takes another 64 years. Let it be known, they can't hide from justice forever.


Even if they try to hide in plain sight.


Torture 1940s same as 2000s?

afghanistan-pakistan-torture-psychologists 

CIA torture program 

Buying a new TV?

Read this before you consider buying a new 'smart' TV.

You may be afraid to even plug it in and decide to be happy with hand shadow puppets.  Or maybe retrieve your old tube TV from that landfill, warm it up and watch  I love Lucy from a more simple time of television history. Today is just too scary!


So read this - - - Jim Marrs.com news


Your TV is watching you, listening to you, and reporting on you. Dirty little flat-faced bastard!


Shhh. East Berlin was never like this!

Even Tony Soprano's basement isn't secure.

Stay under the covers.




Household-products-spying?

The CIA wants to spy on you

NSA intercepts computer deliveries to plant spyware

Feinstein's double standard

There has been a six year, 40 million dollar Senate Intelligence Committee investigation into the practices of the CIA. Completed in 2012, it was to study and/or expose the use of torture tactics banned by the current White House administration when President Obama took office.

It is suspected that some within the spy agency ignored the ruling and simply continued right on with what might be known as 'extra-ordinary rendition' at secret prisons around the world known as Black Sites. Hidden from the peeking eyes of potential Washington whistle-blowers. And perhaps American laws. This would include the use of torture, water-boarding, sleep deprivation, stress positions and other enhanced interrogation procedures. It is not known if the recipients of these secret attentions were all foreigners or even American citizens.

Dianne Feinstein, although masquerading as a Democrat, has been a staunch supporter of just about

You dare spy on ME?

anything the Republicans and any spy agency wanted, including everything George Bush and his henchman Dick Cheney wanted to do during their reign, in the interest of keeping terrorism away from the borders of the USA. She is the chair of the Select Committee on Intelligence.

The classified report, has about 15% of names and places redacted and runs to 6300 pages. The CIA is fighting its release saying that some officials of the CIA could be identified by foreign enemies even though pseudonyms are used.
They are even prepared to release a counter-argument. The agency is also worried that the report would show that certain officials repeatedly broke the law over time.
The full report will remain secret and only a 480 page redacted summery will be revealed.
(Could that be something like the Warren Report summary on the Kennedy assassination which had no relation to the actual facts contained in the long document whatsoever?)

The investigation searched over a million pages of CIA records but no CIA official was interviewed and no one has been charged. And the spy agency raised security concerns that the identity of certain CIA officers, some currently serving abroad could be revealed in the study.
(There was no mention of the outing purposely of  undercover CIA agent Valery Plame in a vengeful attack on her husband for defying the Bush White House)

All seemed fine with Feinstein until it was learned that the CIA had searched the computers used by the Committee investigators which she suddenly saw as illegal! The CIA had effectively spied on a Congressional committee and she furiously denounced the CIA on the Senate floor!

So Dianne Feinstein was okay with spying on anyone and everybody, including the total population of North America when it applied to the non-elite, the unwashed, but is now furious that the CIA might have spied on HER too!


What goes around comes around was never more true.

Questions, always questions

So Seal Team Six were the ones who raided the bin Laden compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan on May 2nd, 2011. Common knowledge now.
It was a carefully programmed successful effort to kill the man they deemed to be the terrorist leader of al Qaeda.
But now there are conflicting stories emerging about what actually happened. From Peter Bergen of CNN, a very reliable source and others jumping in now. But questions still appear.

One of the Seal Team Six members who arrived in the third floor bedroom and wrote a book on it (No Easy Day) says bin Laden was standing up and he shot him twice in the forehead.
A second man says (Esquire interview) bin Laden was lying wounded on the floor because he had been shot by someone outside through a window and he finished him off with two shots. A third seems to sort of agree with one. One said bin Laden was shot when he poked his head out the door as they stormed the building.

bin Laden's compound

There apparently was an instruction NOT to shoot bin Laden in the face because the CIA would need to analyze good pictures of bin Laden for its facial recognition experts to work effectively. And it was a CIA led operation.

That seems to imply that photographs were planned as part of the operation, yet none have surfaced.

Of course it was a lot easier to simply kill him right away, but would he have been a threat to 3 intensely trained and dangerous Navy Seals? We don't know if capture alive was an option for the team, but even wounded, wouldn't the CIA want the greatest intelligence prize ever in their grasp? Living breathing and talking? Would it have been a soldier's decision to finish him off? And as there were 23 Seal Team members ready to disappear back into the night skies via their helicopters to make their escape, why wouldn't they have just toted off bin Laden alive, to do what they wanted with him afterward? They evidently took his remains with them to be dropped into the sea.

Who IS this guy?

So while the Navy argues fore and aft about what exactly the three Seals were doing in that room. It would be totally easy to prove one or the other with a picture taken during the event. And now the building has been demolished since, so even blood remains on the floor cannot be analyzed for DNA. And no one says they saw any evidence of a dialysis machine. Bin Laden would have needed three times a week treatment.

One Seal says he shot him because he saw a weapon near. And another says the guns were discovered after a later search?
And one wonders, if bin Laden's bodyguards were involved in an intense firefight as the Team was entering the compound, why hadn't this savvy, internationally hunted terrorist not armed himself with one of those guns?

And then there is the old conspiracy theory that President Clinton got bin Laden long ago when he was thought to be hiding in caves in Tora Bora and they sent in a ton of cruise missiles and basically closed them all. And the succeeding theory that a photo-double had been used ever since. In order to keep the bogey man alive as a constantly ominous threat to America.

same man?

The old days of the truth will out are over. Too much fog to see clearly.
No information regarding evidence, such as DNA results or physical evidence etc, has been released to news organizations or the public, even through FOIA (Freedom Of Information Act) requests.
And all records of the raid have since been transferred to a CIA 'black hole' immune from FOIA requests as 'operational files'. And even the Department of Defense has purged all it's records relating to the raid. Why?


Questions, always questions.





Of course this small query is in no way intended to denigrate the courage of the Seal Team Six men who put their lives on the line as they undertook a dangerous mission. Their bravery is a given.

Excerpt : Islam in layman's terms

ISLAM IN LAYMANS' TERMS

Here is a perspective by Dr Peter Hammond.
Dr Hammond's doctorate is in Theology. He was born in Cape Town in 1960, grew up in Rhodesia and converted to Christianity in 1977.  Adapted from his book: Slavery, Terrorism and Islam: The Historical Roots and Contemporary Threat:

Islam is not a religion, nor is it a cult. In its fullest form, it is a complete, total, 100% system of life.
Islam has religious, legal, political, economic, social, and military components. The religious component is a beard for all of the other components. Islamization begins when there are sufficient Muslims in a country to agitate for their religious privileges.  When politically correct, tolerant, and culturally diverse societies agree to Muslim demands for their religious privileges, some of the other components tend to creep in as well.

Here's how it works:
As long as the Muslim population remains around or under 2% in any given country, they will be for the most part be regarded as a peace-loving minority, and not as a threat to other citizens. This is the case in:
>   United States -- Muslim 0..6%
>   Australia -- Muslim 1.5%
>   Canada -- Muslim 1.9%
>   China -- Muslim 1.8%
>   Italy -- Muslim 1.5%
>   Norway -- Muslim 1.8%

At 2% to 5%, they begin to proselytize from other ethnic minorities and disaffected groups, often with major recruiting from the jails and among street gangs. This is happening in:
>   Denmark -- Muslim 2%
>   Germany -- Muslim 3.7%
>   United Kingdom -- Muslim 2.7%
>   Spain -- Muslim 4%
>   Thailand -- Muslim 4.6%

From 5% on, they exercise an inordinate influence in proportion to their percentage of the population.  For example, they will push for the introduction of halal (clean by Islamic standards) food, thereby securing food preparation jobs for Muslims.  They will increase pressure on supermarket chains to feature halal on their shelves - along with threats for failure to comply.  This is occurring in:
>   France -- Muslim 8%
>   Philippines -- 5%
>   Sweden -- Muslim 5%
>   Switzerland -- Muslim 4.3%
>   The Netherlands -- Muslim 5.5%
>   Trinidad & Tobago -- Muslim 5.8%

At this point, they will work to get the ruling government to allow them to rule themselves (within their ghettos) under Sharia, the Islamic Law. The ultimate goal of Islamists is to establish Sharia law over the entire world.  When Muslims approach 10% of the population, they tend to increase lawlessness as a means of complaint about their conditions.  In Paris, we are already seeing car-burnings. Any non Muslim action offends Islam, and results in uprisings and threats, such as in Amsterdam , with opposition to Mohammed cartoons and films about Islam.  Such tensions are seen daily, particularly in Muslim sections, in:
>   Guyana -- Muslim 10%
>   India -- Muslim 13.4%
>   Israel -- Muslim 16%
>   Kenya -- Muslim 10%
>   Russia -- Muslim 15%

After reaching 20%, nations can expect hair-trigger rioting, jihad militia formations, sporadic killings, and the burnings of Christian churches and Jewish synagogues, such as in:
>   Ethiopia -- Muslim 32.8%

At 40%, nations experience widespread massacres, chronic terror attacks, and ongoing militia warfare, such as in:
>   Bosnia -- Muslim 40%
>   Chad -- Muslim 53.1%
>   Lebanon -- Muslim 59.7%

> From 60%, nations experience unfettered persecution of non-believers of all other religions (including non-conforming Muslims), sporadic ethnic cleansing (genocide), use of Sharia Law as a weapon, and Jizya, the tax placed on infidels, such as in:
>   Albania -- Muslim 70%
>   Malaysia -- Muslim 60.4%
>   Qatar -- Muslim 77.5%
>   Sudan -- Muslim 70%

After 80%, expect daily intimidation and violent jihad, some State-run ethnic cleansing, and even some genocide, as these nations drive out the infidels, and move toward 100% Muslim, such as has been experienced and in some ways is on-going in:
>   Bangladesh -- Muslim 83%
>   Egypt -- Muslim 90%
>   Gaza -- Muslim 98.7%
>   Indonesia -- Muslim 86.1%
>   Iran -- Muslim 98%
>   Iraq -- Muslim 97%
>   Jordan -- Muslim 92%
>   Morocco -- Muslim 98.7%
>   Pakistan -- Muslim 97%
>   Palestine -- Muslim 99%
>   Syria -- Muslim 90%
>   Tajikistan -- Muslim 90%
>   Turkey -- Muslim 99..8%
>   United Arab Emirates -- Muslim 96%

100% will usher in the peace of "Dar-es-Salaam" - the Islamic House of Peace.. Here there"s supposed to be peace, because everybody is a Muslim, the Madrasses are the only schools, and the Koran is the only word, such as in:
>   Afghanistan -- Muslim 100%
>   Saudi Arabia -- Muslim 100%
>   Somalia -- Muslim 100%
>   Yemen -- Muslim 100%

Unfortunately, peace is never achieved, as in these 100% states the most radical Muslims intimidate and spew hatred, and satisfy their blood lust by killing less radical Muslims, for a variety of reasons.

"Before I was nine I had learned the basic canon of Arab life. It was me against my brother; me and my brother against our father; my family  against my cousins and the clan; the clan against the tribe; the tribe against the world, and all of us against the infidel."  - Leon Uris,  The Haj

It is important to understand that in some countries, with well under 100% Muslim populations, such as France, the minority Muslim populations live in ghettos, within which they are 100% Muslim, and within which they live by Sharia Law.  The national police do not even enter these ghettos. There are no national courts, nor schools, nor non-Muslim religious facilities. In such situations, Muslims do not integrate into the community at large.  The children attend madrasses. They learn only the Koran. To even associate with an infidel is a crime punishable with death.  Therefore, in some areas of certain nations, Muslim Imams and extremists exercise more power than the national average would  indicate.

Today's 1.5 billion Muslims make up 22% of the world's population. But their birth rates dwarf the birth rates of Christians, Hindus, Buddhists, Jews, and all other believers. Muslims will exceed 50% of the world's population by the end of this century.

Adapted from Dr Peter Hammond"s book:  
Slavery, Terrorism and Islam: The Historical Roots and Contemporary Threat

Iran recently killed a woman because she had shot her rapist. It is not known what happened to the assailant. Six men raped another and she was stoned to death. Egypt recently sent eight men to jail for three years for appearing in a video of a same sex marriage. Kidnappings of women to be sold into sex slavery are common, and genocide, massacres and beheadings are becoming the norm in places like IS held territories in Syria and Iraq.
Would anyone be correct to expect a new religious world war to explode soon, (if it hasn't already)  Islam against everyone else on the planet? The USA cannot be blamed for the extent which Jihadist Islam has expanded, but may be possibly called upon to end it. With perhaps a few tactical nuclear weapons being used to settle it where it festers most?
Who knows.


Is Obama to blame? We don't think so ....  Front Page Magazine 2014

Dr. Peter Hammond;
The official government of Sudan, Ministry of Foreign Affairs website includes an article that declares that missionary Peter "Hammond should expect to be bombed when he comes to Sudan ... he should expect to be shot on sight"!
Dr. Peter Hammond is a missionary who has pioneered evangelistic outreaches in the war zones of Mozambique, Angola and Sudan. Often travelling by off road motorbike, Peter has travelled hundreds of thousands of miles to deliver Bibles to persecuted Christians in Africa and Eastern Europe. In the course of his missionary activities Peter has been ambushed, come under aerial and artillery bombardments, been stabbed, shot at, beaten by mobs, arrested and imprisoned. On some mission trips he has flown far behind enemy lines to the beleaguered Nuba Mountains in Central Sudan with tonnes of Bibles, books and relief aid.

Ebola - Are You Afraid?

There might be good reason to be scared out of your wits if you live in the USA!
With the death from ebola of Thomas Eric Duncan the world is very much suspicious and afraid. What we have seen so far is a cover your ass mentality stemming from the observations on TV of what has actually been happening.
The first person entering the US from Liberia with the deadly disease was Doctor Kent Brantly who has since been discharged and said to be cured. He was able to have access to an experimental drug. It is now run out and was not available to Duncan.
Over a period of days we learned Duncan had presented himself to hospital and was sent home. Then was rushed back by ambulance a few days later which we are all familiar with from the expanding coverage of TV, namely CNN.

This is what I saw and heard. I saw one man with a hazmat suit on, being washed down after working in the Texas hospital. He was standing on a plastic sheet while another man without any protective gear at all washed him down bare handed!
Then we heard that Duncan's bedding was still in his apartment  For days, with a woman and child there.  When they finally acted to remove the soiled bedsheets from the apartment, people next door, including children nearby, watched them come and go with the sealed toxic bags. And the hospital where Duncan was isolated had his contaminated bed stuff piled high in an ante room.

The head of the CDC, Dr. Tom Frieden, told us that we had no worries. Ebola was not going to become epidemic in North America.
Then Nina Pham who helped treat Duncan came down with it. A second nurse, Amber Vinson, flew on airliners forth and back while the talking heads continued to tell us we had no worries.

Then Nurse Pham was transported cross country to another hospital in Maryland. They evidently had the ability to quarantine her better than Texas Presbyterian. And while she was going to board a plane out of Texas, surrounded by doctors and nurses in white protective gear, she wearing a yellow suit herself, a man in only shirt and slacks hovered nearby, and not a one of the protectors told him to keep a distance! All seen on TV!

Suddenly they were monitoring 76 others who were from the hospital and could have had contact with Duncan. But none were given any special instructions except to take their own temperatures for 21 days.
Meanwhile some politicians called for the suspension of commercial air flights in and out of Liberia and the other affected countries in West Africa. They were criticized for going public with their concerns. Was Wall Street afraid people would stop flying? Stocks values would decline? Again the talking heads, the people who seemed to be knowledgeable and in charge, continued to say it would do no good to quarantine a whole region.
But Senegal closed it's own borders and has no one stricken with ebola. Cases also emerged in Spain and Germany where another man died. No one in health care was given any special training on what do to about ebola. Or even how to put on and secure the hazmat suits.

Respected doctors on CNN still told us we had no worries.
Others said they had so few facilities to treat ebola patients that it could be impossible to contain if it spread much further. One said there could be as few as 20 isolation beds available throughout the country! Some politicians said America needed to close its borders with Canada and Mexico, even while planes arrived via Britain or Belgium with more passengers from the West African region. (same thing they said about 9/11 after the terrorists flew into America on legal Visas!) And the health care spokespeople struggled to avert a panic situation while the MSM feasted.

A recent poll suggested that the level of trust of the ones in charge of the scary epidemic was plummeting. No wonder.

But we know why.
If you look at the 5000 Health Care facilities in America, hospitals are literally ALL 'for profit' operations. We hear that most of them have no preparation protocol, no training for nurses, nor equipment to handle serious contagions or ebola patients. And we do know why, don't we? It would all cost money!The bottom line trumps the American public's safety even though 70% of ebola patients die.
Is that why the airlines continue to fly in and out of West Africa? Bottom line? There is not an airline in North America that is equipped to handle a coughing, puking, feverish patient from Africa. Every other passenger would be at extreme risk.
And now a Carnival Cruise ship has someone on board who also worked at the Texas hospital and could have contact with Duncan! When this came to light the ship tried to put in to Belize but was turned away. Mexico also refused docking and the cruise ship is heading back to Texas with about 4000 holidayers on board and one quarantined passenger, but Carnival is being quiet about where the person is being held. Will that be 4000 more people who need specific monitoring?
Some of those first 76 health care responders from Texas Presbyterian have been told not to fly, ride a bus or even shop at a mall! Is this crisis expanding exponentially?
Amber Vinson went shopping and now they are looking for others from that same store. Frontier Airlines are seeking passengers on seven flights including people who flew AFTER Vinson was aboard. They have cleaned the plane several times and have taken it out of service.
At least the police took their duties seriously, creating a huge convoy of vehicles to escort the ebola patient Nina Pham from the airport with virtually no chance of anything preventing the ambulance from getting to the National Institutes of Health Hospital in Bethesda, Maryland. One of only four biocontainment hospitals in the nation. Good for them!

Why isn't someone acting with stronger proposals to curb the growing frantic scare? Why? There is a major political election due in short weeks. No candidate wants to alienate contributors to their campaign funds. And we know that no Republican candidate will dare interfere with the running of a private facility or criticize the unpreparedness of hospital governors!

And here is a big one - The CDC does not have any authority to force it's recommendations or suggestions on any hospital! CDC rules are only guidelines. And do we think that private, for profit hospitals will spend the small fortunes necessary to implement procedures and protocols to protect the public? The bottom line again rules the operation of a modern hospital in America! And to make matters worse, the CDC saw its discretionary funding cut by $585 million from 2010 to 2014 and the National Institutes of Health has faced $446 million in cuts during the same period. And we know there is probably more money working against Obama-care than is actually used in running the program!
So how does any private institution handle cost savings? Not by starting at the top with administrators salaries, but with the lowest paid cleaning staff, by making do with older equipment, and buying lower grade materials, We have all seen that before. Some of the nurses were taping up tears in their uniforms with regular tape! The procedures at Texas Presbyterian have been criticized by other health care professionals. But what hospital could anticipate the arrival of a Thomas Duncan?

So what next? President Obama has appointed a former Chief of Staff to Joe Biden as the Ebola Czar. Ron Klain will report to Homeland Security and Susan Rice. And no doubt he will gather a cadre around him of sycophants, to help perpetuate the job, but he will have no authority to enforce rules or regulations for private for profit hospitals! Klain has no history at all with medicine, he is a lawyer and a 'political operative'. Didn't they have a drug czar once who gave up in disgust? The fact that Klain is a lawyer may be okay, the fact that he was a lobbyist for Fannie Mae may not. Is his job just one more political appointment? An attempt to shepherd actions through this dilemma so as not to damage those in power?
Do you get the feeling that President Obama is not really in charge of anything? But just doing what someone is directing him to do?
Are you scared yet? It is a closed circle and the American public is excluded.
Even the WHO, the World Health Organization is admitting to failures, saying that their own response to Africa was marred by incompetency and ineffective bureaucracy!

Isn't that what we are all seeing daily on the news? Incompetency and a stumbling bureaucracy?
People covering their asses who really have no idea what they are doing? How does this happen within agencies of the government that are supposedly there to serve the interests of the people?

Doctors       ...................................     Officials

Easy, money elects politicians at all levels, who have no real interest in anything but personal progress. They in turn appoint others with a political agenda as the defining attribute. Qualifications are no longer part of the equation. These are restrictions placed on the brave doctors and nurses who work diligently to help those in dire peril. So we're not blaming them.
But when the crunch comes, we get exactly what is happening right now, the complete breakdown of a fallacious health system.
And those in control are the same people who built this mess and keep asking you to vote for them. Again.

Ebola has never spread to this many countries before, and millions of people are seeing why the epidemic is becoming pandemic! Yet Americans usually rise to the occasion and someone emerges out of the mess to set the course to a solution.  Cross your fingers but don't touch anything with them.

Are we afraid yet?
No?
Well I have not even touched on the idea that certain people feel that this disease might have become weaponized.


Hazmat suits come in various colors and with a little tuck at the waist they could become fashionable.

We hope not.