Wednesday, April 30, 2014
Students Pledge 'One Nation Under Allah'
Rocky Mountain High School in Fort Collins, Colorado, says the Pledge of Allegiance once each week on Monday. “Last Monday, the student body recited the pledge in Arabic replacing ‘under God’ with ‘under Allah.’” One Nation Under Allah! Let that sink in.
How is this any different from pledging allegiance to Adolf Hitler? Islam and Nazism are world-conquering ideologies. Islam’s ultimate goal is to take over the world by conversion, force, or forced conversion.
RBut who would have thought that the once-Christian West would denounce its heritage and embrace is world-wide enemy?
The following is from The Daily Dose, April 28, 2014:
The principal at Rocky Mountain High School in Fort Collins, Colorado, is facing a hailstorm of criticism from some very angry parents and residents.
The school recites the Pledge of Allegiance weekly, on Mondays. Last Monday, a member of their “Cultural Arms Club” led the student body in an Arabic version of the pledge, replacing the words “under God” with “under Allah.”
Principal Tom Lopez denies any attempt to push an Islamic agenda, saying, “These students love this country. They were not being un-American in trying to do this. They believed they were accentuating the meaning of the words as spoken regularly in English.”
Principal Lopez doesn’t make any sense. Speaking unintelligible words in Arabic in some way accentuates their meaning? That is an extremely weak argument in defense of an ill-advised decision.
He said the cultural clubs seeks to “destroy the barriers, embrace the cultures” that exist within the high school.
That would translate into “destroy the barriers to Islam and embrace it,” correct, Mr. Lopez?
Either Principal Lopez is stupid or he is purposely undermining the foundational principles of this nation. Take your pick. Either way, he should not be leading a public school.
“CAIR representative Hooper told Fox News he was dumbfounded by complaints about the Arabic version of the pledge.
“How on earth is it un-American to recite the Pledge of Allegiance in another language,” Hooper asked. “It doesn’t make sense unless the people complaining are anti-Muslim or anti-middle eastern bigots.”
Credit to Godfatherpolitics.com
Read more at http://godfatherpolitics.com/15370/students-pledge-one-nation-allah-arabic/#jixH5EzZeECe9uPS.99
What You Should Know About FBI's Giant Biometric Database
Since 2008, the FBI has been hard at work transforming its massive fingerprint database (IAFIS) into an even more massive biometric database called Next Generation Identification. NGI will include iris scans, palm prints and images of faces that can be scanned using face recognition technology and matched to age, race, address, ID number, and immigration status, among other things.
According to documents obtained by the Electronic Frontier Foundation, the FBI's efforts to amass as much identifying data as possible is going quite well: the database, which contained 13.6 million images of 7 to 8 million people in 2012, is expected to hold 52 million photos by next year. Most of the images come from local and state law enforcement. Although the FBI has said it doesn't intend to collect social media images, there are no rules in place barring the accumulation of pictures from sources other than law enforcement.
AlterNet spoke with Jennifer Lynch of the Electronic Frontier Foundation on the privacy dangers posed by NGI.
Tana Ganeva: What's the goal of Next Generation Identification? Why aren't fingerprints good enough?
Jennifer Lynch: I think it's a good question about why fingerprints aren't good enough. I think you'd have to talk to the FBI to get their opinion on that. My sense is that a possible reason is that other types of biometrics can be captured without having to come into actual physical contact with a person. For example, with face recognition you can take a picture of somebody even without their knowledge and you can do it from a certain distance.
The NGI database is also including iris scans and palm prints. Iris scans are already being used inside prisons to monitor prisoners as they move from location to location within the prison. One of the reasons is because you can collect an iris scan without having to be in the same physical space as the prisoner. So that could be one reason. The FBI has said in the past that having more biometrics, different types of biometrics allows them to identify people better, but I don't know if that justifies having so much biometric information on people.
Some of it might also be driven by the information-sharing environment within the federal government. So the Department of Defense has a database that's somewhat interoperable with the FBI's database. And DoD has been collecting multiple forms of biometrics, so that could also be driving the change.
TG: Are there any barriers to how they can share the information?
JL: It's a good question. but I don't think there are any blocks, certainly not with DoD sharing information with the FBI. Now, DoD is not supposed to be collecting information on US citizens, so I think there would be a real issue if they had unfettered access to the FBI's database.
TG: What about the role of local and state law enforcement?
JL: Probably most of the records are coming from local law enforcement—18,000 tribal, state and local enforcement agencies across the country that are providing biographic and biometric information to the FBI's database. So every time a mugshot's taken by one of these local agencies, it gets uploaded and stored by the FBI in addition to being stored in whatever state level criminal database there might be. So a lot of the data that's already in the FBI's database is coming from state and local law enforcement. They can also access it.
We've gotten some memoranda of understanding between the FBI and some of the states. These are states ... that already were using face recognition in their criminal mugshot databases and those states have volunteered to turn over their whole database of mugshots to the FBI, which all of the sudden gets a whole state's database of biographic and biometric information.
TG: One of the more seemingly disturbing developments is that they're collapsing the barrier between the criminal and non-criminal sections. Why do you suppose they're doing that and what problems might arise?
JL: I think what they're trying to do is just come up with a uniform classification system. So it seems like just an outgrowth of trying to classify information.
But the problem is that then of course people who've had to supply their biometric information for a non-criminal purpose are having their information searched every time there's a criminal search. And if you're providing your information just to get a job or to do a background check, that shouldn't go into some sort of criminal database to be scanned every time a law enforcement investigation is taking place.
TG: The estimated breakdown between criminal and non-criminal images is about 46 million to 4 million. But even the so-called "criminal images" are just arrestees, so anyone who's had a run-in with police would be there, like low-level offenders, people picked up in a protest, etc.
JL: Yeah, that definitely puts you in the criminal database. Another thing we've seen is the increased use of mobile biometric collection devices. So it's happened mostly with mobile fingerprint scanners but in a few different areas, most notably in San Diego county, a bunch of law enforcement agencies are using tablets to take pictures of people right on the street and I think the big issue with that is that it takes a lot for an officer to go out on the street, find somebody doing criminal conduct and bring that person in the station, have a booking photo happen. It takes almost nothing to stop a person on the street and take their picture. And you take out all those operational safeguards that might stop an officer from collecting a facial recognition image.
You increase the risk of racial profiling and some of the issues we've seen with, for example, stop-and-frisk in New York.
TG: That's interesting, because one could argue that this is just your picture in a database somewhere, unlike the more physical violent intrusions like stop-and-frisk. What are some of the ways something like this could really, concretely, harm somebody?
JL: So, face recognition is not infallible. Under controlled lighting conditions and when the angle is controlled of a person's face, it's relatively accurate at identifying somebody. But if you're trying to compare a picture of a person on the street in a surveillance camera photo with a mugshot in a database there's a lot of false positives. A lot of people listed as looking like that person, but who were never anywhere near the crime scene.
It means those people now have to worry about defending their innocence. What if you were sleeping alone that night? Or doing something that's not criminal, but maybe you don't want people to know about and all of the sudden you have to give that information to the police just to defend your innocence.
TG: Beyond the spooky sci-fi aspect, why would you say face recognition is more alarming than other biometrics?
JL: I think for a few different reasons. One is that it's not really accurate at matching face image to face image as fingerprint to fingerprint. But the other reason is that it's possible to capture a face image at a distance. It's very easy. And there are surveillance cameras everywhere. And once face recognition technology improves, it will be possible to monitor people as they travel through society. It would be impossible to be anonymous in society anymore. And it has a chilling effect on people's speech, and activities, and their willingness to engage in discussion, religious discussion, associate with people they might not know.
And we've seen that with Muslim communities in New York, there's been some great research done on this and facial recognition just increases the risks.
TG: The FBI's response to concerns about privacy abuses and dangers is that it's harmless because it just generates investigative leads, not concrete findings.
JL: It seems to be their argument. I think it's a little bit naive because what humans tend to do is trust in technology and think that technology is going to solve all of their problems and believe despite any type of disclaimers that a computer is going to identify the right candidate. So I think that technology doing the identification presents risks.
TG: Are there any efforts to rein in or regulate this technology?
JL: We hoped that Sen. Al Franklin was going to move forward with some limitations of how the FBI could collect the data, but it appears he's more concerned about private collection of face recognition data. The other thing is that it's basically impossible to get anything through Congress these days.
Credit to Alternet.org
The West Prepares: These Are All NATO Aircraft Deployments In Response To The Ukraine Crisis
It's all the Russians' fault? This does not exactly look like de-escalation to us...
Credit to Zero Hedge
Credit to Zero Hedge
The Real Unemployment Rate: 20%
According to shocking new numbers that were just released by the Bureau of Labor Statistics, 20 percent of American families do not have a single person that is working. So when someone tries to tell you that the unemployment rate in the United States is about 7 percent, you should just laugh. One-fifth of the families in the entire country do not have a single member with a job. That is absolutely astonishing. How can a family survive if nobody is making any money? Well, the answer to that question is actually quite easy. There is a reason why government dependence has reached epidemic levels in the United States. Without enough jobs, tens of millions of additional Americans have been forced to reach out to the government for help. At this point, if you can believe it, the number of Americans getting money or benefits from the federal government each month exceeds the number of full-time workers in the private sector by more than 60 million.
When I was growing up, it seemed like anyone that was willing to work hard could find a good paying job. But now that has all changed. At this point, 20 percent of all the families in the entire country do not have a single member that has a job. That includes fathers, mothers and children. The following is how CNSNews.com broke down the numbers…
A family, as defined by the BLS, is a group of two or more people who live together and who are related by birth, adoption or marriage. In 2013, there were 80,445,000 families in the United States and in 16,127,000—or 20 percent–no one had a job.
To be honest, these really are Great Depression-type numbers. But over the years “unemployment” has been redefined so many times that it doesn’t mean the same thing that it once did. The government tells us that the official unemployment rate is about 7 percent, but that number is almost meaningless at this point.
A number that I find much more useful is the employment-population ratio. According to the employment-population ratio, the percentage of working age Americans that actually have a job has been below 59 percent for more than four years in a row…
That means that more than 41 percent of all working age Americans do not have a job.
When people can’t take care of themselves, it becomes necessary for the government to take care of them. And what we have seen in recent years is government dependence soar to unprecedented levels. In fact, welfare spending and entitlement payments now make up 69 percent of the entire federal budget. For much more on this, please see my previous article entitled “18 Stats That Prove That Government Dependence Has Reached Epidemic Levels“.
And what is even more frightening is that more families are falling out of the middle class every single day. As a recent CNN article explained, approximately one-third of all U.S. households are living “hand-to-mouth”. In other words, they are constantly living on the edge of financial disaster…
About one-third of American households live “hand-to-mouth,” meaning that they spend all their paychecks. But what surprised the study authors is that 66% of these families are middle class, with a median income of $41,000. While they don’t have liquid assets, such as savings accounts or mutual fund holdings, they do have homes and retirement accounts, with a median net worth of $41,000.“We don’t expect them to be living paycheck to paycheck,” said Greg Kaplan, study co-author and assistant professor of economics at Princeton University.
The American Dream is rapidly becoming an American nightmare.
When I was growing up, I lived in a pretty typical middle class neighborhood. Everyone had a nice home, a couple of cars and could go on vacation during the summer. I don’t remember ever hearing of anyone using food stamps or going to a food bank. In fact, I can’t even remember anyone having a parent that was unemployed. If someone did leave a job, it was usually quite easy to find another one.
But today, the middle class is being ripped to shreds and according to one new report there are 49 million Americans that are dealing with food insecurity in 2014.
How can anyone not see what is happening to us? America is in the midst of a long-term economic decline, but the mainstream media and most of our politicians seem to think that things are better than ever. They continue to try to convince us that “business as usual” is the right path to take.
But one-fifth of the families in the entire nation are already totally unemployed.
At what point will we finally admit that what we are doing right now is simply not working?
30 percent of all families unemployed?
40 percent?
50 percent?
If we stay on the road that we are on now, things are going to continue to get worse. Millions more jobs will be shipped overseas, millions more jobs will be replaced by technology and crippling government regulations will kill millions more jobs. The middle class will continue to shrink and government dependence will continue to rise.
Most people just want to work hard, put food on the table, pay their mortgages and provide a nice life for their families.
But the percentage of Americans that are successfully able to do that just keeps getting smaller.
Wake up America.
Your middle class is dying.
Credit to Endofthe americandream.com
Tuesday, April 29, 2014
Pentagon to Destroy $1B in Ammunition
The Pentagon plans to destroy more than $1 billion worth of ammunition although some of those bullets and missiles could still be used by troops, according to the Pentagon and congressional sources.
It’s impossible to know what portion of the arsenal slated for destruction — valued at $1.2 billion by the Pentagon — remains viable because the Defense Department’s inventory systems can’t share data effectively, according to a Government Accountability Office report obtained by USA TODAY.
The result: potential waste of unknown value.
Credit to Infowars
Britain, France deploy 8 fighter jets to Lithuania and Poland
Out of the eight planes, four UK Typhoon jets touched down in Lithuania and another four French Rafale jets landed in Poland’s northeast town of Malbork, UK and French defense ministries stated.
The additional jets in the area are to “provide reassurance to our NATO allies in eastern Europe and the Baltic states,” British Defense Minister Philip Hammond said.
“In the wake of recent events in Ukraine, it is right that NATO takes steps to reaffirm very publicly its commitment to the collective security of its members,” Hammond added.
The Polish city of Malbork has already received 70 French military personnel to support the new planes, according to French military spokesman Colonel Gilles Jaron.
Also on Monday, the US airborne division, which is to take part in NATO exercise ‘Spring Storm’ in May arrived in Estonia. Around 150 personnel arrived in the military transport aircraft to the Amari airbase, according to the country’s defense ministry.
Earlier, UK and France contributed AWACS early-warning aircraft to strengthen the fair defense system over Poland and Romania.
The United States announced last Tuesday that it is deploying 600 airborne troops on exercises in Poland, Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia as a show of solidarity with NATO members that border Russia and have been worried by the escalation of tensions.
In April, NATO said it will be increasing security in the Baltic region in light of escalating crisis in Ukraine. On top of the increasing presence of fighter jets, NATO also sent ships to patrol the Baltic Sea and eastern Mediterranean.
On Monday, Russia’s Defense Minister Sergey Shoigu has urged his Pentagon counterpart Chuck Hagel to help cool down the rhetoric over Ukraine and described NATO troops massing near Russian borders as “unprecedented.”
Speaking to Hagel by phone on Monday, Shoigu classified the growth of NATO activity in Eastern Europe as “unprecedented,” saying it was accompanied by “provocative” rhetoric about “containing”Russia.
The Baltic States gained independence from the USSR in 1991 and joined NATO in 2004 but lack sufficient aircraft to police their own skies, so larger NATO members take turns in patrolling for them.
Credit to Infowars
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