Tag Archives: George Bush

Robert Spencer: Osama bin Laden’s Miscalculations 4 (1)

by Robert Spencer

Did each side misjudge the other?

A fascinating article in the New York Post Monday reveals that “Osama bin Laden had been ‘very eager to replicate the 9/11 attacks’ against the US — and actively plotted to blow up oil tankers, derail trains and use private jets as weapons, according to a trove of seized documents.” Yet while there have been numerous jihad attacks in the U.S. since 9/11, none matched its magnitude. Osama wasn’t able to replicate, for as it turns out, he misjudged the U.S. as drastically as the U.S. misjudged him and his movement.

“The plots,” the Post reported, “were spelled out in more than 500,000 letters and files seized by the Navy SEAL team that executed the mass-murdering al Qaeda leader in 2011, according to Nelly Lahoud, an Islamic scholar who spent years carefully studying the trove.” In his eagerness to bring about another 9/11, but aware that airport security had dramatically increased, bin Laden told his followers to “consider chartering private jets to attack the US.” He also “spelled out a detailed plan to slaughter American commuters on a train.” Osama “wanted to have around 40 feet of track removed so that a ‘train could be derailed.’”

The jihad mastermind had other ideas as well: “In 2010, a year before his death, bin Laden plotted to target multiple crude oil tankers and major shipping routes around the Middle East and Africa.” This was because, according to Lahoud, Osama saw “the importance of oil for the industrialized economy” as “similar to blood for human beings. So, if you cause somebody to bleed excessively, even if you don’t kill him you will at least weaken him. He really wanted to do to the American economy.”

He certainly did severe damage to the American economy. The war on terror cost the United States trillions of dollars, and all it gave us was a diminished presence on the world stage, an onerous and irritating security apparatus in airports, and an emboldened jihad force worldwide that continues to pose a problem for governments around the world (often self-inflicted, in the form of mass Muslim migration).

But apparently Osama thought that his victory would be more comprehensive and immediate. According to Lahoud, he made a “huge miscalculation” in predicting how the U.S. would respond to 9/11. “He thought,” she says, “that the American people would take to the streets, replicate the anti-Vietnam war protests and they would put pressure on their government to withdraw from Muslim majority states.” All he expected as retaliation for taking down the Twin Towers was “a limited airstrike.”

A huge miscalculation indeed. But the U.S. miscalculated as well. Six days after 9/11, George W. Bush went into a mosque in Washington, accompanied by the head of a Hamas-linked group and another Muslim leader who is now in prison for financing al-Qaeda, and proclaimed that “Islam is peace.” This discouraged those who were trying to understand the beliefs, motives, and goals of the jihadis from investigating even the jihadis’ own statements, for fear of giving the impression that 9/11, and jihad terrorism in general, had something to do with Islam. The false assumption that Islam was a religion of peace deformed the American response to 9/11 in numerous ways, leading to wrongheaded policies on both the domestic and international fronts, with consequences that have yet to play out fully.

When Donald Trump tried to correct one of those wrongheaded policies by restricting immigration from several Muslim countries that would not or could not provide adequate information about the people who wanted to enter the United States, he was roundly denounced as an “Islamophobe,” as those who have spoken honestly about the motivating ideology behind jihad terror have been for years, and Joe Biden repealed the policy on his first day in office. How many jihad terrorists, including al-Qaeda members, are in the country now as a result of this, awaiting their best opportunity? We’ll find out.

There were miscalculations on both sides. Both thought that the other posed a threat that was smaller than it actually was. The Post notes that “al Qaeda had just $200,000 in its coffers in 2006 and was unable to support its increasingly fractious jihad.” It would be another miscalculation, however, to take that as a sign that the jihad is largely a spent force. Al-Qaeda is just one of many jihad groups around the world. Since the death of bin Laden, his group has been largely eclipsed by another jihad group that emerged from it, the Islamic State (ISIS). Bin Laden may have underestimated America in 2001; other jihadis are sizing America up in 2022, and it would be much harder to underestimate us now.


FPM: https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2022/05/osama-bin-ladens-miscalculations-robert-spencer/


Robert Spencer is the director of Jihad Watch and a Shillman Fellow at the David Horowitz Freedom Center. He is author of 23 books including many bestsellers, such as The Politically Incorrect Guide to Islam (and the Crusades)The Truth About Muhammad and The History of Jihad. His latest book is The Critical Qur’an. Follow him on Twitter here. Like him on Facebook here.

William F. Jasper: NSA Whistleblower Kirk Wiebe Exposes Digital Election Rigging Using CIA’s Hammer and Scorecard 4 (1)

by William F. Jasper

Is all talk about the use of CIA computer programs called Hammer and Scorecard to digitally change millions of votes and steal the election for Joe Biden sheer “nonsense”? It is according to Snopes, as well as the other establishment-anointed “fact checkers” such as PolitiFact.com, FactCheck.org, BuzzFeedNews.com, and MSN.com. So that settles the matter, right? Actually, it does not.

As has been reliably shown in critical reports by diverse sources (see hereherehere, and here), including The New American (see here), Snopes is notorious for its left-leaning bias. Ditto for many of the other “fact checkers” that comprise the gaslighting chorus that pretends to debunk any claim that contradicts the party line laid down by the Fake News industrial complex: “Nothing to see here, just silly conspiracy theories, move along.” (We’ll return to Snopes and the Big Media-aligned coterie of fact-check fraudsters later on.)

Legendary NSA “Spooks” Binney and Wiebe Weigh In

In an interview with The New American’s senior editor William F. Jasper on December 21, National Security Agency (NSA) whistleblower J. Kirk Wiebe discussed the massive vote tampering that took place in the 2020 presidential election. He included evidence of vote fraud done via computer describing the criminal use of the CIA-developed Hammer and Scorecard programs, which many voices in the Fake News echo chamber claim don’t exist. He also discussed the Dominion Voting Systems software and machines used in many states, and the abysmal state of security and integrity of our voting system, a point that many independent studies by nonpartisan experts have been warning about for years.

https://youtu.be/RaWPyG1MLLs

Wiebe served in the NSA for decades and has been a key sentinel in many major national security crises and challenges. Together with the legendary Dr. William Binney and Ed Loomis, he helped develop many of the software programs and technologies that are crucially important in finding, monitoring, and tracking terrorists globally, as well keeping tabs on foreign state actors such as Russia, China, Cuba, and Iran. Wiebe, Binney, and Loomis were pioneers in the computer age for Signals Intelligence (SigInt).

For his many contributions to our nation’s security, Wiebe was awarded the Meritorious Civilian Service Award, NSA’s second highest distinction. Wiebe, Binney, and Loomis left the NSA when they learned that programs they had helped develop to keep America safe from foreign enemies were being used illegally by the NSA to spy on virtually all Americans. The trio became whistleblowers to alert American elected officials and the American people that the federal alphabet spy agencies are out of control.

Much of the media that treated them as heroes when they were exposing the illegal surveillance-state operations of the Republican Bush administration had little to no interest in their continued warnings when the Democrat Obama administration continued — and expanded — the illegal surveillance. Obama’s Director of National Intelligence (DNI) James Clapper publicly lied and committed perjury in congressional hearings when he stated that NSA has not/does not illegally spy on and collect data (including phone calls, texts, and emails) of millions of Americans. Yet, not only was Clapper not prosecuted for perjury and criminal violation of the privacy rights of tens of millions of Americans, he was rewarded with a commentator job at CNN. Meanwhile Wiebe, Binney, and Loomis continue to be considered media outcasts because they refuse to go along with the party line narrative of Big Media and the Deep State “Intelligence Community” (IC).

Wiebe Confirms General McInerney’s Cyber Warfare Thesis

On November 11, The New American conducted a video interview with Lt. General Thomas G. McInerney (USAF, retired), who has been the most high-profile expert warning about the digital side of the election rigging in tandem with the more traditional vote-stuffing methods. The three-star general, a highly decorated Vietnam War fighter pilot (over 400 combat missions) and top USAF/NORAD commander and DOD official, emphasizes that what we have recently experienced is not simply vote fraud, but actual cyber warfare carried out by “enemies foreign and domestic.” General McInerney laid out the criminal use of the secret Hammer-Scorecard program by the Obama administration (including DNI Clapper, CIA chief Brennan, and FBI director Comey) to throw U.S. elections.

https://youtu.be/CMMbZH-H4ks

Using his vast national security experience and hi-tech knowledge, Kirk Wiebe has joined together with General McInerney, General Paul Vallely (USA, retired), Dr. Binney, and other military and national security professionals to expose this existential threat to our Republic and our freedom. Wiebe argues that this massive election fraud, on an unprecedented scale, is the latest step in the ongoing, treasonous coup effort against President Trump by members of the Deep State, including high-level members of the Intelligence Community, which he served for many years.

Snopes and the “Factchecker” Posse Fail in Their Debunking Effort

Back to Snopes. The title for its November 9 attack on the Hammer-Scorecard thesis is, “Is There a ‘Hammer and Scorecard’ Operation to Manipulate Vote Counts?” Snopes then answers its own question with a subtitle that reads: “The director of the U.S. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) called the rumors ‘nonsense.’”

The body of the article begins:

In the days after news outlets called the 2020 U.S. presidential election and projected that Joe Biden would be the 46th president of the United States, the internet was flooded with various unfounded claims about voter fraud. One popular rumor concerned something called “Hammer and Scorecard.” While this rumor was wide ranging, it basically held that a “deep state” supercomputer named “Hammer” and a computer program called “Scorecard” were being used to alter vote counts.

Reiterating, in the next paragraph, that the existence of Hammer-Scorecard is only a “rumor,” Snopes goes on to state, “We should note that Christopher Krebs, the director of the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) in the U.S. Department of Homeland Security — a position he was nominated to in 2018 by U.S. President Donald Trump — has called the ‘Hammer and Scorecard’ rumors ‘nonsense.”

Snopes then imbeds a tweet from Krebs at CISA:

Is Chris Krebs a Reliable Authority?

Snopes appears to believe that an argument from authority (especially a biased authority with conflicts of interest) can pass for dispositive evidence. Chris Krebs may appear to be an impressive authority by reason of his (former) position, but as we have shown (“Media Darling and Fired Cyber Security Chief Chris Krebs Is a Deep State Operative”), Krebs cannot be reasonably considered an impartial, nonpartisan observer. First of all, as we pointed out, Krebs and his agency have no competence or authority to issue any pronouncements concerning election fraud, as CISA and Krebs have acknowledged — after the fact, though the Krebs-CISA admissions have not received even a scintilla of the coverage that the media have lavished on their statements denying there was any election fraud.

Secondly, publicly available evidence indicates that Krebs (along with his CISA deputy, Matt Travis) is indeed a very partisan political hack, with deep ties to James Clapper, Michael Chertoff, Bill Gates, and other virulently anti-Trump individuals and groups. All of which is, naturally, completely ignored by Snopes, PolitiFact and the rest of the “fact checker” posse. They all rely heavily on the Krebs/CISA statements to “debunk” Scorecard-Hammer.

On the other hand, we have Generals McInerney and Vallely and NSA cyber experts Wiebe and Binney making very specific charges and assertions about Scorecard-Hammer — and providing evidence, along with their acknowledged expertise. Do Scorecard-Hammer exist? Snopes/Krebs say it’s just “rumor.” Well, the shortcut to a superabundance of solid evidence, including court documents, affidavits, court rulings, and testimony, showing that the program was indeed created by the CIA, can be accessed through the meticulously researched, in-depth reporting by investigative journalists Mary Fanning and Alan Jones at TheAmericanReport.org, which we will be covering in greater detail in forthcoming articles and interviews.

In short, among the evidence Fanning and Jones cite is the March 3, 2018 ruling by U.S. District Judge Richard J. Leon in the case of Dennis Montgomery, et al, Plaintiffs, v. James Comey, Defendant, in which Judge Leon states that counsel for the government assured the court that Montgomery’s hard drives are being kept in a “secure facility.” Dennis Montgomery is the CIA contractor/inventor/technical whiz (his detractors say “con man”) who invented Hammer for the CIA for the “War on Terror.” Judge Leon states that the government counsel, representing James Comey and the FBI, “represented to this Court that the ‘hard drives are in a secure facility with the Intelligence Community’s Office of Inspector General” and that there was “no risk” that they were “going to be destroyed anytime soon.” Montgomery’s 47 hard drives reportedly contained over 600 million pages of illegally harvested surveillance data.

In his interview with The New American, Kirk Weibe stated that earlier this year, nearly eight months before the November election, he, along with his wife and Dr. Binney, delivered a thumb drive with 85,000 documents from Montgomery’s hard drives to the House Intelligence Committee in Washington, D.C. The purpose of providing the documents to Congress, he said, was to show them the gravity of our current situation and to warn them that these capabilities could be used in the November election. His warnings, apparently, went unheeded.

Related article and video:

Snopes Defends Teaching Child Rape to Children

ELECTION STEAL – General McInerney exposes the REAL vote fraud the media are hiding: CIA computer program flips votes

TNA: https://thenewamerican.com/nsa-whistleblower-kirk-wiebe-exposes-digital-election-rigging-using-cias-hammer-and-scorecard/


William F. Jasper is an American journalist and author, and a senior editor of The New American, and long-time member of the John Birch Society.

Mike Maharrey: While You Were Obsessing Over Impeachment 0 (0)

by Mike Maharrey

Well, they did it!

The House impeachment hearings were little more than political theater — a partisan fistfight with the majority party coming out the “winner.” In the process, it created the illusion of deep division and disagreement. Devoted Democrats and Republicans are both convinced that their team is fighting for their interests against a determined foe on the other side of the aisle.

But while everybody obsessed over the political theater playing out on CNN, Fox News and MSNBC, they completely missed the sideshow that could actually impact their lives. Even as Democrats and Republicans engaged in a contentious public spectacle in the media spotlight, they worked in concert behind the scenes to steal your liberty and your wealth.

While you argued over the gory details of impeachment with your friends on Facebook, Congress passed the 2020 National Defense Authorization Act. The nearly 3,500-page bill authorizes $738 billion in defense spending in Fiscal Year 2020. It creates a “Space Force,” so the U.S. can expand its empire into the cosmos. And Congress rejected a provision that would have made it just slightly harder for the president to unilaterally send American troops into combat. In other words, Congress agreed that it would not bother to do its job and declare war before sending the U.S. military to conduct offensive combat operations as required by the Constitution. It will continue to let the president make that call on his own. You know – the president the House just impeached.

Even worse, the current iteration of the NDAA extended provisions written into the 2012 National Defense Authorization Act that effectively authorize government kidnapping. The vaguely worded sections purport to authorize the arrest and “indefinite detention” of anybody the president decides might be associated with “terrorism” and subject them to the law of war. In effect, the government can deem you a terrorist and lock you away without due process. Government kidnapping may sound like hyperbole, but that’s exactly what the NDAA authorizes in effect.

Speaking of war, while all eyes were glued to the three-ring circus in D.C., the Washington Post released documents revealing that the U.S. government has been lying to us about the war in Afghanistan for decades.

“A confidential trove of government documents obtained by The Washington Post reveals that senior U.S. officials failed to tell the truth about the war in Afghanistan throughout the 18-year campaign, making rosy pronouncements they knew to be false and hiding unmistakable evidence the war had become unwinnable.”

As one three-star general put it, “What are we trying to do here? We didn’t have the foggiest notion of what we were undertaking. If the American people knew the magnitude of this dysfunction .?.?. 2,400 lives lost.”

This seems, maybe, just a tiny bit, significant. But the news barely saw the light of day. It was completely buried under an avalanche of impeachment reporting.

The sad truth is that these papers that have been mostly ignored provide legitimate grounds for impeachment – not just of Donald Trump, but Barack Obama and George W. Bush to boot. But when it comes to war, Congress maintains a bipartisan consensus supporting the endless, unconstitutional foreign interventions and the presidents who run them. And the media is complicit, focusing on the fake wrestling matches on Capitol Hill instead of reporting on real wars

And while we’re on the subject of bipartisan consensus, let me remind you that Congress reauthorized sections of the Patriot Act in the latest stopgap spending bill. This means the federal government will be able to continue to spy on you without a warrant and in complete disregard of the Fourth Amendment. Rep. Thomas Massie (R-Ky.) predicted it would happen.

Today, while everyone is distracted by the impeachment drama, Congress will vote to extend warrantless data collection provisions of the #PatriotAct, by hiding this language on page 25 of the Continuing Resolution (CR) that temporarily funds the government. To sneak this through, Congress will first vote to suspend the rule which otherwise gives us (and the people) 72 hours to consider a bill. The scam here is that Democrats are alleging abuse of Presidential power, while simultaneously reauthorizing warrantless power to spy on citizens that no President should have… in a bill that continues to fund EVERYTHING the President does… and waiving their own rules to do it. I predict Democrats will vote on a party line to suspend the 72 hour rule. But after the rule is suspended, I suspect many Republicans will join most Democrats to pass the CR with the Patriot Act extension embedded in it.

And indeed they did.

And finally, while Congress-critters battled it out on the House floor, behind the scenes, congressional leaders worked with the Trump administration to hammer out a $1.4 trillion spending agreement. According to an Associated Press report, the deal “fills in the details of a bipartisan framework from July that delivered about $100 billion in agency spending increases over the coming two years instead of automatic spending cuts that would have sharply slashed both the Pentagon and domestic agencies.”

So, let’s review. While America was mesmerized by the pro-wrestling event on Capitol Hill, Congress agreed to maintain the government’s “authority” to kidnap you, to keep spying on you without a warrant, to continue unconstitutional wars, and to spend you deeper into debt.

Political theater makes for splashy headlines and heated debates, but it really has very little impact on your life. The political class, including the mainstream media, would prefer you pay attention to the fluff, not to the things that really matter. Perhaps instead of obsessing over impeachment or the latest debate over a Trump tweet, you would be better served to pay attention to what they don’t want you to pay attention to.

TAC: https://tenthamendmentcenter.com/2019/12/20/while-you-were-obsessing-over-impeachment/


Michael Maharrey [send him email] is the Communications Director for the Tenth Amendment Center. He is from the original home of the Principles of ’98 – Kentucky and currently resides in northern Florida. See his blog archive here and his article archive here. He is the author of the book, Our Last Hope: Rediscovering the Lost Path to Liberty. You can visit his personal website at MichaelMaharrey.com and like him on Facebook HERE

Kathleen Marquardt: WHISKEY IS FOR DRINKING AND WATER IS FOR FIGHTING 0 (0)

by Kathleen Marquardt

If whiskey is for drinking and water is for fighting, as Mark Twain famously said, then the 2015 Montana Legislature affirmed the truismTristan Scott, Flathead Beacon

In the mid-90s, before the Internet, the U.S. government held a meeting via satellite link between Washington, D.C., and cities and towns across western Montana, Idaho, eastern Washington, and Oregon. The subject was the Columbia River Basin.

I was living in Helena, Montana. The meeting was held in a school or some building like a school on a Saturday morning. The room had about a dozen round tables with six chairs each, and we all watched the presentation on a screen. In attendance were the press, people from farming and Ag organizations, local officials and others like me – wanting to know what was afoot.  After the viewing, we had one of those infamous consensus meetings.

The major point of that meeting was that the Columbia River Basin needed to be returned to the state it was before Columbus. In unspoken words, NO WHITE MAN. But a lot more was presented to drown that in political gobbledygook.

Understandably, the global elite want that area to be re-wilded, to be part of the Wildlands Project. But at this meeting/Charrette, they let us know that they would start by removing only the non-indigenous peoples. Plus dams – dams gotta go.

Now, some 25 years later, we are seeing exactly how this is being accomplished via the western Montana portion of the Columbia River Basin Project – the proposed Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribes (CSKT) Montana water compact.

The fact is, the CSKT Compact has nothing to do with water rights, Indians, culture, fish, or the environment.  It is all about money for a small group of tribal elite and state officials who covet more power, political positions, and power over others. It seeks revenge for spiteCatherine Vandemoer, Ph.D., Sovereign Nation

I have been trying  to put together a short-ish synopsis of the machinations over the CSKT compact. But the backstory is that the feds are using the treaty to bring about the unlawful expansion of the tribal government authority over Non-Indians. “This compact proposes that the State of Montana expand the authority and jurisdiction of tribal governments over non-members and non-Indians where federal law has specifically prohibited it. People, the Montana legislature does not have the authority to remove constitutional provisions and statutory protections from its citizens,  . . .” [1] ,  On top of this, the CSKT Compact, is an attempt to create a new type of federal water right “ . . .using the wording from the Hellgate Treaty that states that the tribes have a right to take fish. And from those simple words that even a horse trainer can understand, the proponents of this compact would like us to believe that the right to take fish, equates to an aboriginal, time immemorial, tribal reserved, federal water right. Again, they are asking the Montana State legislature to conjure up…and I do mean conjure up… a federal water right where currently one does not exist. We simply do not have that authority.” [2]

The compact between Montana, the federal government, and the tribes is so complicated that the fur has been flying for well over a hundred years, and recently, another 1,000+-page compact has been written. I suggest you go to Western Water Rights and watch the video of the Perfect Storm for the full story from the first tribal agreement. It is extremely well laid out.

But here is the dirty, rotten, nasty underbelly of this whole Machiavellian plot. Remember how Agenda 21 was signed in Rio by President George H.W. Bush, but never ratified by Congress? Actually, never even brought up in Congress. Yet, instead, President Clinton put V.P. Al Gore in charge of using the President’s Commission on Sustainable Development to embed all the aspects of Sustainable Development into every department of the federal government.

That same tactic is being used here. Catherine Vandemoer, Ph.D.  Chair, Montana Land and Water Alliance, out of Polson, Montana, wrote me that, “ . . . the state is implementing the CSKT Compact without Congressional approval both on and off the reservation by:

On Reservation—State, BIA, and Tribes implementing CSKT Compact in a federal irrigation project without Congressional approval

State and BIA participating in planning, possible design, funding of projects associated with compact water management plans, including measuring devices, headgate operations,

Tribes aggressively implementing and directing a compliant BIA  how to manage storage and reservoir levels, instream flows, and canal deliveries  according to plans specified in the CSKT Compact appendices which affects water delivery to irrigation and stock,  and violates US-irrigation district contracts.

There is an existing federal operations plan that has not been followed since 2014 because they have been implementing

Off-reservation—State implementing Milltown Dam water right

The compact calls for CSKT “co-ownership” of the water flow from the Milltown Dam water right on the Clark Fork River, and thus “splits” the water right between two tributaries to protect instream flow.

The state had planned to implement this with or without the Compact, but with the Compact they didn’t have to go through their regular permitting process to achieve that transfer of use and point of diversion.

Congress has not approved the compact yet the state water right abstract for Milltown dam listed the co-ownership and compact-related conditions

In 2017 our organization wrote to the state Department of Natural Resources (DNRC) to point out that the compact hadn’t been approved and the abstract was in error, and to inquire as to whether the state was going to go through its regular process

After getting a nasty response, the state changed the abstract to list them as full owner, but indicated as soon as compact passed would be co-ownership.

However, they are implementing that right now without having completed the state process for a change in the use and place of use of the water, which was required without the compact.

You don’t have to understand all those terms, you just need to understand that this project is be embedded into state, tribal, and local governments without Congressional approval, and probably without Congress knowing it is being done. Plus, this is not just about Montana waters, it will have a most destructive affect on all western waters.

The furthest west hatched lines designate the Flathead Indian Reservation Article II Treaty of Hellgate. The green area is what this new compact is turning over to that small reservation to have full control over the waters.

The compact begins with an incorrect definition of the reservation that paves the way for the expansive taking of water within reservation boundaries:  all land within the exterior boundaries of the Indian Reservation established under the July 16, 1855 Treaty of Hellgate, notwithstanding the issuance of any patent, and including rights-of-way running through the Reservation.”   

This flawed premise is used to rationalize giving all water running through and under the reservation to the CSKT.

Additionally the compact gives the federal government time immemorial water rights for every drop of water in Flathead Lake, and concedes significant instream flows with various priority dates throughout 11 counties in western Montana in the Clark Fork and Kootenai River basins.

This is a water grab (which becomes a land grab, because you can’t use land that doesn’t have water) the size no one has seen before outside the USSR. Those Americans who think that this has no relevance to them, better think twice – at least. This is not the beginning of the taking of water rights in this country; it is happening all over in various tactics and schemes. But it is the biggest. And it has been in the works for at least 30 years.

You can think, oh well, that’s in Montana; it won’t bother me. I am in Ohio, or Arizona. Understand, this is just the first place – sort of a testing ground. And, no, they don’t need Indian reservations to stage the take-over of water rights. We cannot survive without water so, if you haven’t stood up for your rights before, start now. Whiskey may be for drinking, but let’s see you survive long without water.

[1] Theresa Manzella, member of Montana State House of Representatives, “My testimony to the Montana House on the CSKT Water Compact.

[2] Ibid.


APC: https://americanpolicy.org/2019/11/25/whiskey-is-for-drinking-and-water-is-for-fighting/

Read Kathleen Marquardt’s Biography

Alex Newman: Orwellian Nightmare: Data-mining Your Kids 0 (0)

by Alex Newman

One of the most troubling aspects of the “education reforms” currently being advanced by the Obama administration and its allies is the unprecedented monitoring and tracking of students — invasions of privacy so pervasive George Orwell might blush. Everything from biometric data to information on children’s beliefs and families is already being vacuumed up. Opponents of the “reform” agenda have highlighted the cradle-to-grave accumulation of private and intimate data as among the most compelling reasons to kill the whole process.

Aside from data produced by the looming Common Core-aligned national testing regime, most of the data-mining schemes are not technically direct components of the plot to nationalize education standards. However, the vast collection of personal information and the accompanying data-mining are intricately linked to the federally backed standards in multiple ways, not to mention myriad other federal schemes. Despite protestations to the contrary, the new standards and the data collection go together hand in hand.

Efforts to portray the data gathering via Common Core-aligned testing as a “state-led” plot notwithstanding, the Obama administration is reportedly considering raising phone taxes by executive decree to help subsidize the necessary technology. Why federal tax increases would be needed to pay for education and data-mining schemes that the federal government is supposedly not involved in has not been explained by officials, but experts and analysts say the reason is obvious.

Implementing Intrusions

Already, there are numerous systems being used and deployed across America aimed at compiling unprecedented amounts of data on students. Some are run by private organizations with government assistance; others are operated by authorities directly. All of them are extremely controversial, however, with parents and privacy advocates outraged.

Among the data schemes that have received a great deal of attention in recent months is “inBloom.” As with the new national education standards called Common Core, it is also funded by Bill Gates and the Carnegie Corporation. With at least nine states participating in the $100 million program already, the non-profit entity, which shares data with whomever authorities choose, is quickly gobbling up vast quantities of information.

Respected experts such as attorney Michael Farris, president of ParentalRights.org, pointed out that the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child committee has repeatedly pressured governments to create similar national databases on children, albeit using different pretexts. Even liberals have expressed opposition. “Turning massive amounts of personal data about public school students to a private corporation without any public input is profoundly disturbing and irresponsible,” said New York Civil Liberties Union Executive Director Donna Lieberman, slamming authorities for failing to disclose the scheme or offer parents an opt-out.

In conjunction with inBloom, other systems are being funded and largely directed by the federal government itself. Using the same unconstitutional process as the one used to foist Common Core on state governments — a combination of federal bribes, waivers, and more — the Obama administration all but forced cash-strapped states to start monitoring and tracking student information, or to expand their existing systems.

Previous administrations and U.S. lawmakers also contributed to the problem, with the foundations having been laid dec­ades ago. Before Obama, the Bush-era No Child Left Behind Act, for instance, among myriad other demands, called on states seeking federal funds to create “unique statewide identifiers” for each student. Under Obama, the process has accelerated at an unprecedented rate.

The stimulus-funded “Race to the Top,” a so-called school improvement scheme demanded by Obama, only distributed taxpayer funds to states that agreed to build and expand data systems, with the secretary of education specifically requesting interoperable databases to facilitate the collection and transfer of data. Massive bribes to states from the $50 billion “State Fiscal Stabilization Fund” conditioned on acceptance of Common Core and expanded data tracking, also part of the “stimulus” package, were critical in advancing the plot as well.

Boasting about the “stimulus”-funded coercion of state governments on data regimes during a speech to UNESCO, the deeply controversial UN “education” agency, Education Secretary Arne Duncan lauded the program.

“More robust data systems and a new generation of assessments can assist teachers and principals to improve their practices and tailor their instruction in ways that were largely unthinkable in the past,” Duncan continued. “We have advanced data systems that we are constantly improving.” Duncan wants other governments and the UN to follow the Obama administration’s lead on data gathering, he explained.

The administration helped pay for expanding “state” systems with an eye toward integrating them. Some $315 million in federal grants, for example, were used to bribe state governments and help them comply. However, the specific grant scheme, known as the Statewide Longitudinal Data Systems (SLDS) program, actually began handing out taxpayer money in 2005.

As of 2009, the latest year for which figures are available on the Department of Education’s website, 41 states and Washington, D.C. had been awarded federal SLDS grants to expand their data systems on students. Experts say all 50 states now maintain or are capable of maintaining huge databases on the vast majority of American kids.

According to the Department of Education, the goal of the SLDS grants is to have states “expand their data systems to track students’ achievement from preschool through college.” The Education Department’s National Center for Education Statistics offers slightly more detail about the SLDS scheme online: “Through grants and a growing range of services and resources, the program has helped propel the successful design, development, implementation, and expansion of K12 and P-20W (early learning through the workforce) longitudinal data systems,” it explains. “These systems are intended to enhance the ability of States to efficiently and accurately manage, analyze, and use education data, including individual student records.”

Cradle to Career Data Collection

Of course, all of the data collected must be shared with the U.S. Department of Education and other entities within and outside the federal government. Acting unilaterally, U.S. Education Secretary Arne Duncan even purported to overrule federal privacy laws by promulgating new “regulations” gutting the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA). Some lawmakers expressed outrage, but the process continues.

“As part of what you described as a ‘cradle to career agenda,’ the Department of Education is aggressively moving to expand data systems that collect information on our nation’s students,” wrote Rep. John Kline (R-Minn.), now chairman of the House Education and Workforce Committee, in an early 2010 letter to Duncan. “The Department’s effort to shepherd states toward the creation of a de facto national student database raises serious legal and prudential questions.”

As Kline points out in the letter, there is good reason to believe that the administration is again flouting federal law. “Congress has never authorized the Department of Education to facilitate the creation of a national student database,” he explained. “To the contrary, Congress explicitly prohibited the ‘development of a nationwide database of personally identifiable information’ … and barred the ‘development, implementation, or maintenance of a Federal database.” Despite no mention of the Constitution, multiple federal statutes are cited in the correspondence.

Apparently, the administration does not take kindly to having its alleged violations of the law exposed. While it couldn’t fire Rep. Kline, the Education Department did reportedly dismiss its top privacy official, then-Family Policy Compliance Office chief Paul Gammill. According to a 2010 report in Inside Higher Ed, Gammill was fired after he “argued in internal meetings and documents that the department’s approach to prodding states to expand their longitudinal student data systems violated the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act.” The Education Department refused to comment on the case, though it openly admits that one of the long-term goals of the SLDS program is to “make education data transparent through Federal and public reporting.”

According to the Department of Education, grants awarded to states under the program are aimed at supporting the creation and implementation of systems “that have the capacity to link individual student data across time and across databases” and “promote the linking of data collected or held by various institutions, agencies, and States.” Among the data to be included are the yearly test records of individual students mandated under the 1965 Elementary and Secondary Education Act. “States are encouraged to include additional information in their longitudinal data systems,” the department continued.

In another Education Department document offering “guidance” on the SLDS schemes, further insight is offered into what sort of information authorities are seeking and collecting. Among the “Personally Identifiable Information” outlined in the report: name, parents’ names, address, Social Security number, date of birth, place of birth, mother’s maiden name, and more.

Other private and protected data that might be collected, the document suggests, include the “political affiliations or beliefs of the student or parent; mental and psychological problems of the student or the student’s family, sex behavior or attitudes; illegal, anti-social, self-incriminating, and demeaning behavior; critical appraisals of other individuals with whom respondents have close family relationships; legally recognized privileged or analogous relationships, such as those of lawyers, physicians, and ministers; religious practices, affiliations, or beliefs of the student or the student’s parent; or income.” While the collection of such data in surveys and questionnaires funded by federal tax dollars requires parental consent under federal law, state-level collection does not. Plus, experts say there are numerous other potential loopholes as well.

So Much for Student Privacy

Much of the information vacuumed up at all levels of government already makes its way into a national Department of Education scheme known as “EDFacts.” The department describes it online: “EDFacts is a U.S. Department of Education (ED) initiative to collect, analyze, report on and promote the use of high-quality, kindergarten through grade 12 (K-12) performance data…. EDFacts centralizes data provided by state education agencies, local education agencies and schools.” Under EDFacts, state education agencies submit some 180 data groups. The federal National Center for Education Statistics, meanwhile, describes over 400 data points to be collected.

The U.S. Department of Labor, separately, admits that it is working to “integrate workforce data and create linkages to education data.” According to the department’s “Workforce Data Quality Initiative,” the SLDS will “enable workforce data to be matched with education data to ultimately create longitudinal data systems with individual-level information beginning with pre-kindergarten through post-secondary schooling all the way through entry and sustained participation in the workforce and employment services system.” When combined with information from the IRS, ObamaCare, the NSA, and countless other federal data-collection schemes, the picture that emerges has critics very nervous.

As technology advances, the federal government’s Orwellian data gathering will — without action to stop it — almost certainly expand beyond most people’s wildest nightmares. In fact, it already has. Consider, for example, a February 2013 report by the Department of Education dubbed Promoting Grit, Tenacity, and Perseverance: Critical Factors for Success in the 21st Century. Included in the 100-page report is information about technology already being used in an Education Department-funded tutoring program.

“Researchers are exploring how to gather complex affective data and generate meaningful and usable information to feed back to learners, teachers, researchers, and the technology itself,” the report explains. “Connections to neuroscience are also beginning to emerge.” (Emphasis added.) The technological tools already being used by federally funded education schemes to probe students’ minds and “measure” the children include, as described in the report, “four parallel streams of affective sensors.”

Among the devices in use today through a federally funded tutoring scheme is a “facial expression camera” used to “detect emotion” and “capture facial expressions.” According to the report, the camera is linked to software that “extracts geometric properties on faces.” There is also a “posture analysis seat” and a “pressure mouse.” Finally, the report describes a “wireless skin conductance sensor” strapped to students’ wrists. The sensors collect “physiological response data from a biofeedback apparatus that measures blood volume, pulse, and galvanic skin response to examine student frustration.” Again, these systems are already being used in government-funded programs, and with technology racing ahead, developments are expected to become increasingly troubling.

Another Education Department report, entitled Enhancing, Teaching and Learning Through Educational Data Mining and Learning Analytics, acknowledges similarly alarming schemes. “A student learning database (or other big data repository) stores time-stamped student input and behaviors captured as students work within the system,” it notes. “A predictive model combines demographic data (from an external student information system) and learning/behavior data from the student learning database to track a student’s progress and make predictions about his or her future behaviors or performance.” (Emphasis added.)

All across the country today, Big Brother-like technological developments in biometrics are also making schools increasingly Orwellian. Earlier this year in Polk County, Florida, for example, students’ irises were scanned without parental consent. “It simply takes a picture of the iris, which is unique to every individual,” wrote the school board’s “senior director of support services” in a letter to parents. “With this program, we will be able to identify when and where a student gets on the bus, when they arrive at their school location, when and what bus the student boards and disembarks in the afternoon. This is an effort to further enhance the safety of our students. The EyeSwipe-Nano is an ideal replacement for the card based system since your child will not have to be responsible for carrying an identification card.”

In San Antonio, Texas, meanwhile, a female student made national news — and exposed what was going on — when she got in a legal battle with school officials over her refusal to wear a mandatory radio-frequency identification (RFID) device. The same devices are already being implanted under people’s skin in America and abroad — albeit voluntarily. Also in the biometric field, since at least 2007, children in states like Pennsylvania, West Virginia, and New Jersey have been fingerprinted at school under the guise of “school lunch” programs and other pretexts.

Despite fierce opposition, the trend toward using biometric data to identify and track students while collecting unimaginable amounts of information is accelerating. The federal government is helping lead the way toward abolishing any vestiges of privacy, and aside from NSA spying on virtually everyone, students appear to be among the primary targets. Without major resistance, experts predict that someday — perhaps even in the very near future — biometric identification will become ubiquitous. Combined with all of the other data being collected, the federal government may finally achieve what was sought by tyrants throughout history: detailed 24/7 information on everything, about everyone.

TNA: https://www.thenewamerican.com/culture/education/item/16193-orwellian-nightmare-data-mining-your-kids


Alex Newman is a correspondent for The New American, covering economics, education, politics, and more. He can be reached at anewman@thenewamerican.com. Follow him on Twitter @ALEXNEWMAN_JOU or on Facebook

 

Jesse Lee Peterson: LET’S DECLARE MAXINE WATERS AND DEMOCRATS CRAZY 0 (0)

Jesse Lee Peterson slams politicos more concerned about welfare of illegal aliens

by Jesse Lee Peterson

MoveOn.org and other left-wing agitators have planned demonstrations across the U.S. for Presidents Day in response to Donald Trump’s decision to declare a national emergency for border wall funding.

“Donald Trump has declared a #FakeNationalEmergency – an illegal power grab from an unhinged man to push his racist, dangerous policies,” MoveOn.org states on its site.

Rep. Maxine Waters (D-Calif.), “The Wicked Witch of The West” with the low IQ, went on MSNBC and called on Americans to protest across the country to send President Trump a message that his declaration of a national emergency on the U.S.-Mexico border is “fake.”

As President Trump predicted, Democrats have become unhinged by his move to fund the border wall. In addition to their protests, Democrats have filed lawsuits to slow or block attempt to allocate funds towards a border wall by challenging the president’s declaration of an emergency.

Trump did everything possible to work with Democrats before declaring an emergency. Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., and Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., refused to negotiate in good faith, and Democrats left the president no choice.

The Constitution gives Congress sole authority for appropriating funds when it passes budgets. But Congress passed the National Emergencies Act in 1976, giving the president vast powers in the event of a national emergency. The declaration will allow the president to divert billions of dollars of federal money towards the wall. The White House said it has identified up to $8.1 billion, including over $6 billion from the Pentagon, that will be available to fund the border wall now that the emergency is declared.

Democratic Presidents Jimmy Carter, Bill Clinton and Barack Obama – along with Republican Presidents George H.W. Bush and George W. Bush – have declared national emergencies prior to Trump’s declaration.

Democrats are insane, evil or both. No rational person or group would knowingly encourage the invasion of their homeland. Maxine Waters and Democrats opposed to the border wall are playing politics with the lives of the American people, and they pose a serious threat to our national security.

Order Rev. Jesse Lee Peterson’s book, “The Antidote: Healing America from the Poison of Hate, Blame, and Victimhood.”

Waters called the president’s national emergency declaration “fake.” The only thing fake is her concern for the black Americans who live in her district. Maxine Waters has been in Congress for 28 years. Most of her district is crime-ridden, impoverished and overrun by illegal aliens. Waters doesn’t live in the district she represents, so she doesn’t understand the plight of her constituents. She lives in a multi-million-dollar mansion in a very affluent part of Los Angeles.

Waters’ 43rd Congressional District consists of 697,985 residents. It ranks 37th out of 436 other congressional districts in the U.S. as to the number of foreign-born residents; as of 2012, that number stood at 31.6 percent of a population. Of those, 36.6 percent were categorized as white and 23.9 percent were categorized as black. Of these, 46.9 percent were counted as Hispanic or Latino. Therefore, those counted as white – not Hispanic or Latino – represented 14.4 percent of the district. No wonder she’s advocating for illegal aliens!

The illegal alien population in California is estimated at 3 million. Illegal aliens create an enormous financial burden on Californian residents. The annual expenditure of state and local tax dollars on services for illegal aliens is $25.3 billion. Nearly half of those expenditures ($12.3 billion) result from the costs of K-12 education for the children of illegal aliens. According to the Federation For American Immigration Reform (FAIR)), billions more are spent on public assistance services, administration of justice functions, and general governmental services for illegals.

According to a Pew Research Center study, there were 12.0 million immigrants from Mexico living in the U.S. in 2016 (just from Mexico alone!).

In addition to the financial burden, the drugs and crime flooding across the southern border is wreaking havoc on American towns and cities. Every day, 130 Americans die due to opioid overdoses. Ninety percent of the heroin that reaches America comes through Mexico. Almost 25 percent of federal inmates are illegal aliens.

Maxine Waters and Democrats are more concerned about the welfare of illegal aliens than they are about American citizens. The Democrats’ support for open borders and the abolition of the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) is threatening our national security and allowing dangerous criminals and drugs to flood across the border.

Border security is the most important issue facing our nation. The mass invasion by illegal aliens and the crime and drugs that follow hurts all Americans. It’s especially devastating to low-income Americans who are forced to compete for jobs, education and healthcare services with illegal aliens. Inner city blacks and those living in border states are hurt first and foremost.

Maxine Waters and the Democrats are out of touch with the American people. Waters doesn’t care about blacks – she only cares about power. The Wicked Witch of The West must go!

WND: https://www.wnd.com/2019/02/lets-declare-maxine-waters-and-democrats-crazy/

Read Jesse Lee Peterson’s Biography

NATO is Operating as Designed—to Siphon Off American Wealth 0 (0)

NATO is Operating as Designed—to Siphon Off American Wealth“The blueprint for NATO was drawn by Nikolai Lenin, the Soviet dictator, and expanded by his successor Joseph Stalin.”

by Bill Lockwood

President Trump this week once more rocked the globalists and internationalists with his renewed criticism of what has been considered one of the cornerstones of American foreign policy: The North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO). Trump’s criticism focused upon the fact that the United States continues to pay the lion’s share of operating costs of the organization, while other member nations pay pittance by comparison.

For 2017, NATO’s military budget is $1.38 billion, the civilian budget is $252 million and its NATO Security Investment Program is $704 million. In this budget the U.S. contributes over 22 percent followed by Germany with a little over 14.65 percent, France at 10.6 percent and Britain 9.84 percent. There are 13 more members of NATO that pay less than 1 percent of their GDP to its budget.

Why Does America Pay the Lion’s Share?

Established in 1949 in the aftermath of WWII, NATO was sold to the American public as well as to the Senate as a necessity to keep the Soviet Union out of Western Europe. But as informed citizens are aware, NATO was specifically structured to be one of those “entangling alliances” to siphon off American wealth, as well as a stepping-stone to World Government. This is easily understood when one considers the roots of NATO.

The blueprint for NATO was drawn by Nikolai Lenin, the Soviet dictator, and expanded by his successor Joseph Stalin.  The basic 5-point plan for communistic global conquest is summarized in the following four points.

  1. Confuse, disorganize, and destroy the forces of capitalism around the world.
  2. Bring all nations together into a single world system of economy. [The United Nations’ International Monetary Fund as well as the World Bank helped achieve this goal. So also have the so-called “Free Trade Agreements.” BL]
  3. Force the advanced countries [read, United States] to pour prolonged financial aid into the underdeveloped countries.
  4. Divide the world into regional groups as a transitional stage to total world government. Populations will more readily abandon their national loyalties to a vague regional loyalty than they will for a world authority. Later, the regionals [such as NATO] can be brought all the way into a single world dictatorship of the proletariat. (Joseph Stalin, Marxism and the National Question, 1942, as quoted by G. Edward Griffin, The Fearful Master, A Second Look at the United Nations, 1964, p. 68)

One can readily see that the entire design or “regional” organizations was to be “transitional” to world government. More importantly, “regional governments”—or treaties—were necessary to bleed the American taxpayer to bankroll the entire scheme. This is exactly what is occurring and the frequent mantra that today’s world is a “new global community” plays directly into the orientation of Stalinist Russia.

Globalist Founders

Alger Hiss was one of FDR’s top advisors and was an ardent Soviet spy, having been convicted and sent to prison in 1950 for perjury involving statements relating to his communist activities. He was directly involved in the creation of The United Nations. His good friend, and advisor to later presidents, was John Foster Dulles. Dulles also was an avid globalist, pushing the United States towards Lenin’s world dictatorship. When Harry Truman signed America into the UN’s NATO alliance Dulles was enthusiastic. The “treaty” was part of the regional strategy towards globalism.

NATO involves first, a military “entangling alliance.” Article 5 of the NATO treaty binds the United States in an “agreement” that in the case of an “armed attack” against any NATO member other members of NATO, such as the United States, would consider it “as an attack against them all.” This contravenes the U.S. Constitution which assigns to Congress the power to declare war.

But NATO is not simply a military alliance. It is political as well (Steve Byas, article on John Foster Dulles, The New American, 3-5-2018). Dulles told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee the treaty should be ratified “not as a military instrument but as a step in a political evolution that has behind it a long and honorable history, and before, it a great and peaceful future.” Note the language. NATO was considered by insiders to be a transitional stage toward a more solid global government.

The treaty itself states that member-states “will encourage economic collaboration between any and all of them.” Clarence Streit, Dulles’ fellow globalist, wrote in 1939 that he recommended the creation of regional groupings with the eventual goal of putting them together into a functioning world government. Streit pushed for the creation of NATO as a regional government within the framework of the United Nations. This is why Articles 51 and 52 of the UN Charter encourage the forging of “regional groupings” and cooperation.

United States Independence has always been in the crosshairs of the globalists behind NATO. In 1960, just 11 years after NATO’s founding, Elmo Roper of the Atlantic Union Committee stated:

For it becomes clear that the first step toward world government cannot be completed until we have advanced on the four fronts: the economic, the military, the political, and the social … the Atlantic Pact [NATO] need not be our last effort toward greater unity. It can be converted into one more sound and important step in working toward world peace. It can be one of the most positive moves in the direction of the One World. (Quoted by John McManus, in Changing Commands, The Betrayal of America’s Military, p. 20).

Jumping ahead to the Bush Administration of 1991, NATO was “reorganized.” Thousands of American soldiers were for the first time placed under German, British, and other blue-helmeted foreign commanders. Dick Cheney, Defense Secretary for the Administration, termed the move “an important milestone in the transformation of the alliance.” The transformation continues. Republican or Democrat, the goal is a world organization overriding the US Constitution.

Another precedent was established in during the Clinton Administration in 1994 when a British UN troop commander ordered US fighter planes from NATO to attack positions in Bosnia. Neither the British general, nor Boutros Boutros-Ghali, the UN Secretary-General, bothered to contact President Clinton nor our own Congress. The UN had already been given authority to employ US forces serving in NATO, a UN subsidiary, to utilize American military and money.

Now one can clearly see why Trump’s pressure on European countries to pay equivalent payments to NATO rattles socialist cages. Republican or Democrat, both sides of the aisle are grieved at the hindrance of their globalist designs. But the American people love President Trump, who has been the first president with backbone enough to lay it out for the American public by telling negotiators at the Brussels table that enough is enough.

Kathleen Marquardt: THE DEFINITION OF “IS” 0 (0)

Kathleen Marquardt: THE DEFINITION OF “IS” – “I do not want to believe that Trump is just using blue smoke and mirrors…”

by Kathleen Marquardt

No, this has nothing (or very little) to do with Bill Clinton. My question is, ‘Is President Trump’ for or against Sustainable Development? He and his cabinet give mixed signals. Yes, Trump has done more positive things than any president in the last decade, that I can remember, anyway. But then there is this:

Oh, boy! Here we go. Actually, Zinke needs to go.

I emphasized the text in bold to indicate the usual farce of Agenda21/2030 that is going to be the destruction of Western Culture. Keep in mind that the usual disclaimer for A21/2030 is “strictly advisory” and “soft-law”, horse pocky! This piece brags that the Department of Interior will be blanketing all public lands with public/private partnerships, as if this is a good thing. They are painting with words so pretty to make you think Interior is the most patriotic of all departments, while what they are doing is so insidiously evil the devil will celebrate them if they pull this off. Zinke calls it Made in America, but instead it is the unmaking of America, the tearing apart of the Constitution. PPPs help SD destroy property rights – the bedrock of freedom.

As Tom describes PPPs in the link below this one: “It is little understood by the general public how Public/Private Partnerships are actually used, not as a way to diminish the size of government, but in fact, to increase government’s power. In truth, many PPPs are nothing more than government-sanctioned monopolies. These privileged few businesses are granted special favors like tax breaks, free use of eminent domain, non-compete clauses in government contracts, and specific guarantees of return on their investments. That means the companies, in partnership with the government, can fix their prices, charging beyond what the market demands. They can use their relationship with government to put competition out of business. This is not free enterprise, nor is it government controlled by the people.”

In other words, PPPs are fascism in disguise. And, hopefully, America has seen enough of Sustainable Development in any form – Public/Private/Partnerships, carbon footprints, Common Core, social justice, you name it. Let’s tell Zinke that we just say, NO to calling an Agenda 21/2030 scheme “Made in America” as if it were baseball or apple pie, instead of the anti-American pile of horse-pocky that it is.

Secretary Zinke announces Creation of the “Made in America” Recreation Advisory Committee

“ Today, U.S. Secretary of the Interior Ryan Zinke announced the establishment of the “Made in America” Recreation Advisory Committee. The Committee will advise the Secretary of the Interior on public-private partnerships across all public lands, with the goal of expanding access to and improving infrastructure on public lands and waterways.

The duties of the Committee are strictly advisory and will consist of, but not be limited to, providing recommendations including:

Policies and programs that:

  • Expand and improve visitor infrastructure developed through public-private partnerships;
  • Implement sustainable operations embracing fair, efficient and convenient fee collection and strategic use of the collected fees;
  • Improve interpretation using technology;
  • Create better tools and/or opportunities for Americans to discover their lands and waters.”

For more information on public/private partnerships

Which will also lead you to a 3-part primer on PPPs.

After reading the above, one must question whose idea was this?

THE BIGGER PICTURE HIDDEN IN TRUMP’S CUTS TO CLINTON AND OBAMA LAND GRABS

Following up on an April executive order to have Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke review 27 “National Monuments,” Trump on Monday signed an order to cut back the Dec. 2016 Obama-created Bears Ears National Monument in Utah by eight percent (1.35 million acres to 201,876 acres). He also signed an order to cut the 1996 Clinton-created Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument – also in Utah — by nearly 50 percent (1.7 million to 1 million). The remainder of Clinton’s giant plaything will be broken into three separate areas: Grand Staircase National Monument, Kaiparowits National Monument, and Escalante Canyons National Monument.”

All of that leads to something I have been pondering.

Trump has done quite a few things to undo onerous regs and executive orders put in place by Obama, Clinton and Bush. Just today I read in The New American, “One of the very first actions of my administration was to impose at two-for-one rule on new federal regulations. We ordered that for every one new regulation, two old regulations must be eliminated … as a result, the never-ending growth of red tape in America has come to a sudden screeching and beautiful halt….

Within our first 11 months, we cancelled or delayed over 1,500 planned regulatory actions — more than any previous President by far….

And instead of eliminating two old regulations, for everyone new regulation we have eliminated 22 — 22. That’s a big difference. We aimed for two-for-one and, in 2017, we hit twenty-two-for one.”

Woohoo. That is wonderful. A great start. But . . .. But there is a gaping hole. Nothing has been done to stop the onslaught of Sustainable Development (SD) on property rights and the indoctrination of our children in the schools.

Betsy DeVos, the queen of Common Core is Secretary of Education. Our children are being brainwashed, dumbed-down, and turned into useful idiots, at best. Common Core is still going strong, our children are learning the five pillars of Islam, and there isn’t a single right from the Bill of Rights taught in the classrooms.

AFFH, Affirmatively Furthering Fair Housing is still alive and destroying property rights through the Department of Housing and Urban Development. People’s life savings and very lives are being destroyed by this as well as neighborhoods are being uprooted, whole classes of people are being dumped in neighborhoods not of their choosing just because of their race or their financial status. What most people do not understand is that AFFH is being embedded into every town, city, county and state the same way Sustainable Development was. When, like SD, AFFH has been put in place everywhere in this country, the name Affirmatively Furthering Fair Housing will be dropped (just like SD), and AFFH will be an unnamed cancer eating away at our lives.

Also thanks to Sustainable Development, cities and counties are notifying their residents that they cannot even maintain their properties without getting permission from the planning commissions and abiding by the International Building Codes. Our codes, the best in the world, no longer are acceptable – because every city, county, berg, state in the world must now obey the same standards and rules; it is far easier for the global elite to control us that way.

Attorney General, Jeff Sessions, who loves Asset Forfeiture, is still the AG and is not reining in Asset Forfeiture. He has finally ordered an examination of the Bundy case, but should it have taken him the outrageous infractions exposed by the whistleblower to see there was malfeasance going on there?

There is a lot more, but I think the above shows that, unless things are in the works and will be unveiled soon, we might need to start putting pressure on Trump to do what he said he would do. A lot of the ‘Deplorables’ promised to keep his feet to the fire if he didn’t do the job he promised. If President Trump is to eliminate 20,000 more regulations, if they aren’t to stop Sustainable Development, they will be useless.

I do not want to believe that Trump is just using blue smoke and mirrors to keep us mollified by making all these other good moves while Sustainable Development continues on with no slow down, destroying the greatest country every built. And I am not exaggerating! Sustainable Development should be the first focus for the President right now. We are so close to the tipping point; in fact, we could already be there.

APC: https://americanpolicy.org/2018/01/16/the-definition-of-is/

Read Kathleen Marquardt’s Biography

To President Trump: The United Nations was Designed to Destroy Freedom 0 (0)

To President Trump: The United Nations was Designed to Destroy Freedom “Americans have been slowly indoctrinated toward Global Government…

by Bill Lockwood

President Trump’s speech to the United Nations General Assembly this week had much to commend it. Emphasizing national sovereignty and independence, he also rightly criticized the unfair cost burden to the United States. The American taxpayer shoulders 22 percent of the entire UN budget, more than double the next leading contributor, Japan. Yet, in spite of Trump’s defense of “national sovereignty” he praised the United Nations by urging that the world body live up to its “potential” by continuing to provide a world “forum” for peace which he called its “true vision.”  In these remarks, however, he is mistaken, for the United Nations is flawed by design.

Why is it that almost every American leader since Woodrow Wilson and Franklin Roosevelt have worked toward the lessening of our sovereignty and towards a World Government, working to erode it “piece by piece” in the words of more than one global leader?

For example, Zbigniew Brzezinski, President Carter’s national security advisor, a longtime CFR (Council on Foreign Relations) member, and a founder of David Rockefeller’s Trilateral Commission, explained to world leaders at the 1995 State of the World Forum:

We cannot leap into world government in one quick step. [It] requires a process of gradually expanding the range of democratic cooperation as well as the range of personal and national security, a widening, step by step, stone by stone, [of] existing relatively narrow zones of stability in the world of security and cooperation. In brief, the precondition for eventual globalization — genuine globalization — is progressive regionalization, because thereby we move toward larger, more stable, more cooperative units.

Almost the same words were used by Richard N. Gardner (CFR) in his April 1974 essay in Foreign Affairs, entitled “The Hard Road to World Order.”

Gardner opined that a “case-by-case approach can produce some remarkable concessions of ‘sovereignty’ that could not be achieved on an across-the-board basis.” Rather than pursuing “instant world government,” Gardner explained to the world that “the ‘house of world order’ will have to be built from the bottom up rather than from the top down”—by means of “and end run around national sovereignty, eroding it piece by piece.…”

Former President Bush, Sr. offered this about the original vision of the UN: “We have before us the opportunity to forge for ourselves and for the future generations a new world order, an order in which a credible United Nations can use its peacekeeping role to fulfill the promise and vision of the UN’s founders.”

His son, President George W. Bush signed the Declaration of Quebec in 2001 in which he gave “commitment to hemispheric integration and nation and collective responsibility for improving the economic well-being and security of our people.” By “our people” Bush meant people of the Western Hemisphere, not the people of the United States. He pledged that the United States will build a hemispheric family on the basis of a more just and democratic international order, such as the world is witnessing in the EU and now the African Union (AU).

These statements are not unlike former UN Secretary-General Boutros Boutros-Ghali’s “The time for absolute and exclusive sovereignty … has passed.” Or, like former President Obama’s speech to the UN in which he urged nations to surrender some of its sovereignty.

Again, the UN’s goals of world government by gradually eroding United States sovereignty could not be plainer than David Rockefeller’s (founder of the CFR) praise to the major media in 1991 for its complicity in this stealth design.

We are grateful to the Washington Post, The New York Times, Time Magazine and other great publications whose directors have attended our meetings and respected their promises of discretion for almost forty years …it would have been impossible for us to develop our plan for the world if we had been subjected to the lights of publicity during those years. But, the world is now more sophisticated and prepared to march towards a world government. The supranational sovereignty of an intellectual elite and world bankers is surely preferable to the national determination practiced in past centuries.

According to these major players, as well as dozens of others who have been coming out of the closet as Americans have been slowly indoctrinated toward Global Government, what is now occurring via the UN has been planned from its inception. This means that UN programs, including global wealth distribution, government control of production, government control of consumption (Sustainable Development), international taxes, world currency, globalized education for children, family planning, the World Bank and International Monetary Fund (IMF), which already siphons wealth of hard-working taxpayers in America–are all by design.

So, who is right on this? President Trump, who calls upon the UN to live up to its “true vision” which emphasizes national sovereignty; or, the long list of globalists who praise the UN for its gradual implementation of eroding national sovereignty? Obviously, not Trump.

Almost 15 years ago, Michael Hirsch wrote a piece in Newsweek in which he frankly confessed that transforming America into a global policeman and moving toward Global Government is not accidental. Entitled Death of a Founding Myth, he stated,

While the isolationists … tempted millions with their siren’s appeal to nativism—the internationalists were always hard at work in quiet places making plans for a more perfect global community. In the end the internationalists have always dominated national policy. Even so, they haven’t bragged about their globe-building for fear of reawakening the other half of the American psyche, our berserker nativism. And so they have always done it in the most out-of-the-way places and with little ado.

In December 1917 the Inquiry, a group of eager reformers who included a young Walter Lippmann, secretly met in New York to draw up Wilson’s Fourteen Points. In 1941, FDR concocted the Atlantic Charter in the mists off Newfoundland. The dense woods of New Hampshire gave birth to the Bretton Woods institutions—the IMF and the World Bank—in 1944.

And a year later the United Nations came to life at the secluded Georgetown estate of Dumbarton Oaks….So what emerged took us more or less by surprise. We had built a global order without quite realizing it, bit by bit, era by era, with our usual schizoid approach: alternating engagement and withdrawal….Like it or not—and clearly large numbers of Americans still don’t—we Americans are now part of an organic whole with the world that George Washington wanted to keep distant.

Americans have been stealthily and semi-secretly maneuvered into globalism. Why this has occurred is seen in simply glancing at some of the original founders of the UN. The first secretary-general of the UN was America’s own Alger Hiss, later convicted in court of being a Soviet spy.

Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin played a key role in it early years, as did our own John Foster Dulles, who wrote the following in 1950: “The United Nations represents not the final stage in the development of the world order, but only a primitive stage. Therefore, its primary task is to create the conditions which will make possible a more highly developed organization.”

Later, Dulles had this to say, “I have never seen any proposal made for collective security with teeth in it, or for world government or for world federation, which could not be carried out by either the United Nations or under the United Nations Charter.”

Like most programs to control free people by socialistic programs, the UN is following the totalitarian path laid out by its founders. It is on track. President Trump needs to realize that the UN is indeed living up to its potential. Global Government. This is why national “sovereignty” and “independence” of nations, particularly America, is anathema to the world body. It is all about transferring the wealth of America to socialist nations. It also explains why the major media globalist elites spin out of control at the mention of such concepts by Trump.

If America is to survive we must get out of the United Nations and the United Nations must get out of the United States. There is currently legislation in Congress called the American Sovereignty Restoration Act of 2017 (H.R. 193), which proposes to do exactly that. It is sponsored by Rep. Mike Rogers (R-AL). Americans need demand its Congressional leaders support it.

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