Monitoring America

Nine years after the terrorist attacks of 2001, the United States is assembling a vast domestic intelligence apparatus to collect information about Americans, using the FBI, local police, state homeland security offices and military criminal investigators.

The system, by far the largest and most technologically sophisticated in the nation's history, collects, stores and analyzes information about thousands of U.S. citizens and residents, many of whom have not been accused of any wrongdoing.

The government's goal is to have every state and local law enforcement agency in the country feed information to Washington to buttress the work of the FBI, which is in charge of terrorism investigations in the United States.

Other democracies - Britain and Israel, to name two - are well acquainted with such domestic security measures. But for the United States, the sum of these new activities represents a new level of governmental scrutiny.

This localized intelligence apparatus is part of a larger Top Secret America created since the attacks. In July, The Washington Post described an alternative geography of the United States, one that has grown so large, unwieldy and secretive that no one knows how much money it costs, how many people it employs or how many programs exist within it.

* Technologies and techniques honed for use on the battlefields of Iraq and Afghanistan have migrated into the hands of law enforcement agencies in America.

* The FBI is building a database with the names and certain personal information, such as employment history, of thousands of U.S. citizens and residents whom a local police officer or a fellow citizen believed to be acting suspiciously. It is accessible to an increasing number of local law enforcement and military criminal investigators, increasing concerns that it could somehow end up in the public domain.

* Seeking to learn more about Islam and terrorism, some law enforcement agencies have hired as trainers self-described experts whose extremist views on Islam and terrorism are considered inaccurate and counterproductive by the FBI and U.S. intelligence agencies.

* The Department of Homeland Security sends its state and local partners intelligence reports with little meaningful guidance, and state reports have sometimes inappropriately reported on lawful meetings.

The need to identify U.S.-born or naturalized citizens who are planning violent attacks is more urgent than ever, U.S. intelligence officials say. This month's FBI sting operation involving a Baltimore construction worker who allegedly planned to bomb a Maryland military recruiting station is the latest example. It followed a similar arrest of a Somali-born naturalized U.S. citizen allegedly seeking to detonate a bomb near a Christmas tree lighting ceremony in Portland, Ore. There have been nearly two dozen other cases just this year.

"The old view that 'if we fight the terrorists abroad, we won't have to fight them here' is just that - the old view," Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano told police and firefighters recently.

The Obama administration heralds this local approach as a much-needed evolution in the way the country confronts terrorism. However, just as at the federal level, the effectiveness of these programs, as well as their cost, is difficult to determine. The Department of Homeland Security, for example, does not know how much money it spends each year on what are known as state fusion centers, which bring together and analyze information from various agencies within a state.

More HERE

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Secrets Your Government Hides From You

Dave Gaubatz

Having worked for the U.S. government for twenty four and a half years and holding our nation’s highest secrets, I would be the first to say there are times information collected by the government should be classified and not released to the public. Having said that, it has been my experience as a counter-terrorism and counter-intelligence officer and analyst that only 10 percent of what is collected should be classified. The other 90 percent should be released to the public.

Why then would our government classify the vast enormous amount of intelligence collected and not openly provide this to the people? Readers should keep in mind the government works for the people, not the other way around. There are 3 primary reasons the government classifies information and only one of them is for legitimate reasons:

1: Legitimate reason: The release of certain information would cause ‘grave’ consequences for our national security and our military forces.

2. Illegitimate reason: The release of certain information would cause major embarrassment to some government departments or leaders. In other words when government employees make serious mistakes the information is simply classified so the public will never know of the errors. One such example is ‘friendly fire’ incidents during war time. The government classifies these types of incidents so they can avoid having to answer to the families of the injured or killed military personnel. In addition many friendly fire incidents were in actuality ‘murders’ committed by our own troops against their fellow soldiers.

Many readers who know of my counter-terrorism research since leaving federal service are aware that my team and I have visited over 250 Islamic Centers in the U.S. I personally spent several days at an Islamic center in Knoxville, TN. The Mosque had hundreds of books and DVD’s pertaining to violence and the methodology of treason and sedition against the U.S. While at the mosque I had an opportunity to spend several hours with a senior Muslim worshipper. The man began explaining ‘friendly fire’ incidents in Iraq. He began by telling me his nephew was in a military prison because he had intentionally killed several of his fellow troops. Why? Because they were considered the enemy, not the Muslims fighting for Saddam Hussein. This Muslim man continued informing me that there are numerous such killings of American troops by American Muslim soldiers. He followed up by showing me numerous references in the mosque that justified this action. He said the media and U.S. government will not report these ‘murders’ because it could cause a backlash against American Muslim troops.

3. Illegitimate reason: The government collects information on U.S. citizens that are illegal under U.S. laws. How and why do they do this? Under U.S. laws it is illegal to collect intelligence on U.S. citizens without going through very stringent guidelines. The government knows how to use ‘loop holes’ to collect illegal intelligence on U.S. citizens. They simply make it a criminal case instead of an ‘intelligence’ case. The government can collect without restriction as much ‘mundane’ information on any U.S. citizen as long as they classify the investigation as criminal versus counter-intelligence or counter-terrorism. Little do the American people know that vaults and vaults of information is collected on citizens for possible future use against them, even when there is no legitimate reason for the intelligence to be collected. The information is classified and it literally takes an act of Congress to find out what information the government has collected on you.

Now for the ‘meat’ of this article. I will provide Americans three things they should know that is contrary to what the government informs you of:

1. In the U.S. we have several military installations that contain our country’s highest weapons programs and the technology for future weapons one can not even imagine to understand. What is kept from the American people is that scientists, engineers, and others are given access to these installations on a daily basis. My primary duties as a Federal Agent were the protection of our nation’s highest technology. Almost on a daily basis there are foreigners from Saudi, Iran, Iraq, Jordan, Egypt, etc… who work on the sensitive U.S. military installations and have free access to ‘roam’ the bases: essentially they collect intelligence on our troops, weapons technology, and vulnerabilities. In turn they report the intelligence to their respective Embassies. Should Americans not know that our U.S. military bases are not as safe as the government wants us to believe?

2. Another ‘secret’ that should not be classified is that the U.S. government has major corporations such as Boeing, Northrop, Lockheed Martin and many others who work on ‘Top Secret’ programs. How many reports do the American people hear through our media and government officials that foreigners are caught on a regular basis ‘stealing’ classified information? Why would this type information be classified? The only reason it is classified is because our senior military and government officials would be put on the spot and have to answer some very embarrassing questions.

3. The Saudi government is not the friends of America. They support Al Qaeda and desire Sharia law implemented worldwide. The Saudi government is responsible for pouring thousands of pieces of ‘hate material’ into our public libraries and schools. They encourage the Maj. Hassan’s and Mohammed Mohamed (Oregon). Our government knows the Saudis’ intention is to destroy Israel and America, but Saudi Arabia pumps billions of dollars into our politicians pockets, our major media outlets, major universities, and into such organizations such as CAIR. While in Saudi Arabia a couple of months prior to ‘Operation Iraqi Freedom’ I was the lead collector of intelligence targeting Saudi Arabia. If the American people want the truth about Saudi Arabia they should demand a Congressional Hearing on this topic. The hundreds of reports my fellow Agents and I wrote about Saudi Arabia would astonish you…. and upset you to know we deal with Saudi Arabia as our friends, when behind the scenes they are educating suicide bombers to kill innocent Americans.

Now I believe it is important to explain why this article is being written. I had mentioned I worked for the government for 24.5 years. There are literally millions and millions of documents that are classified, but should not be. There are numerous people such as Maj. Hasan from Ft. Hood the government has information on and fully understand they are a serious risk to our national security, but due to political correctness and to avoid being labeled an Islamophobe, the information is classified and military members are warned (with the threat of possible court-martials) that to discuss these issues is prohibited. The murders committed by the 11 Sept. 2001 hijackers did not have to happen. There were literally thousands of intelligence reports revealing this attack, yet the reports remain sealed in vaults.

SOURCE

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A foretaste of totalitarianism

The first two years of the Obama-Pelosi-Reid administration has given most Americans a taste of what it is to live in a nation where the central government is run by people who do not give a damn for public opinion or the Constitution.

It took barely a year for Americans to come together in a Tea Party movement to oppose Obamacare. That hideous piece of legislation interposes the government between all Americans and their physicians, inflicting a bureaucratic nightmare that, if permitted to exist, will surely kill Americans denied timely care.

The members of the Tea Party are not just Republicans, not just Democrats, and not just independents. They are quintessentially Americans that swiftly concluded that a serious mistake was made when Obama was elected. On the anniversary of the original tea party, Sen. Reid was forced to make a humiliating retreat, dropping the $1.1 trillion "budget" bill intended to shackle the newly elected members of Congress and to impose still more debt and control over Americans.

The Obama administration is shot through with control freaks, nags and busybodies, not the least of whom is the First Lady, Michelle Obama. On the signing of a bill giving the governmental control over food in the nation’s schools she said that obesity is “not just an economic threat, it’s a national security threat as well.” That is just absurd. It is a feeble excuse to interpose the federal government between parents and the schools to which they are compelled to send their children.

“We cannot leave it up to the parents,” said Michelle Obama. Not surprisingly, a Rasmussen Reports poll revealed that 75% of those asked did not agree with the First Lady.

Hardly a day goes by when some member of the Obama administration doesn’t say or do something absurd. In mid-December, the U.S. Surgeon-General, Regina Benjamin, said “there is no risk-free level of exposure to tobacco smoke.”

She claimed that even occasional smoking or exposure to second-hand smoke “causes immediate damage to your body that can lead to serious illness or death.” That is not based in any valid analysis and it ignores the rising levels of life expectancy in America. It is just another piece of the hysterical anti-tobacco agenda of busybodies who have no right to tell anyone whether they should smoke or not.

The most dangerous thing Americans do every day is to get behind the wheel or be a passenger in an automobile. Auto accidents annually kill 40,000 or more.

Recently, at the Cancun, Mexico conference of global warming charlatans, the U.S. Secretary of Agriculture, Tom Vilsack, said that “climate change is one of the greatest threats facing our planet” as if human beings had anything to say or do about it. He might was well have said that the United Nations must begin to control the Sun, the oceans, and the clouds.

Finally, after being banned by the Environmental Protection Agency in 1980, the agency decided that saccharin, a sweetener substitute for sugar, was neither toxic nor a cancer-causing agent, a fact determined in the late 1990s by the International Agency for Research on Cancer. The EPA routinely bans chemicals claiming they could cause cancer, ignoring the fact that too much exposure to any chemical, including salt or sugar, is unwise.

These and a thousand other examples are reasons to distrust the Obama administration in particular and the federal government in general. As it continues to grasp more and more power over lifestyle decisions that belong to individuals, it threatens the very reason America was founded.

More HERE

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ELSEWHERE

McConnell: Government will stay afloat: "Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky said yesterday that he and the Democratic leader have agreed on a spending measure to keep the government running through March. Passing the bill would prevent the government from running out of money for daily operations and forcing a shutdown. McConnell of Kentucky said on CNN’s State of the Union that he and Majority Leader Harry Reid of Nevada reached a deal on the measure."

Are economic forces redrawing congressional map?: "New population data from the Census Bureau this week will reshuffle political clout among the states, and the power shift may be amplified by economic forces as well as demographic ones. Simply put, some states have been gaining people because they offer cheaper housing or more abundant jobs. ... Economic opportunities are one major factor behind those choices, researchers say."

Tax deduction for mortgage interest could be on the chopping block: "Perhaps the most sacred of all the sacred cows in the tax code, the home mortgage deduction has long been seen as crucial to a major element of the American dream — owning your own home. It has also been a boon to home builders, construction workers, the financial services industry and local governments that benefited from fatter real estate tax revenue. But nearly a century after coming into existence, the mortgage deduction may face a day of reckoning."

My Twitter.com identity: jonjayray. My Facebook page is also accessible as jonjayray (In full: http://www.facebook.com/jonjayray). For more blog postings from me, see TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, GUN WATCH, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, IMMIGRATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, EYE ON BRITAIN and Paralipomena

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The Big Lie of the late 20th century was that Nazism was Rightist. It was in fact typical of the Leftism of its day. It was only to the Right of Stalin's Communism. The very word "Nazi" is a German abbreviation for "National Socialist" (Nationalsozialist) and the full name of Hitler's political party (translated) was "The National Socialist German Workers' Party" (In German: Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei)

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