14 Fort Hood Soldiers Fired, Suspended

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Army leaders are firing or suspending 14 officers and enlisted soldiers at Fort Hood, Texas, and ordering policy changes to address chronic leadership failures at the base that contributed to a widespread pattern of violence including murder, sexual assaults and harassment.

Two general officers are among those being removed from their jobs, as top Army leaders on Tuesday announced the findings of an independent panel’s investigation into problems at the Texas base.

Army to fire, suspend Fort Hood troops | khou.com

The actions, taken by Army Secretary Ryan McCarthy, come in the aftermath of a year that saw 25 soldiers assigned to Fort Hood die due to suicide, homicide or accidents, including the bludgeoning death of Spc. Vanessa Guillen. Guillen was missing for about two months before her remains were found.

The firings and suspensions include Army Maj. Gen. Scott Efflandt, who was left in charge of the base earlier this year when Guillen was killed, as well as Maj. Gen. Jeffery Broadwater, commander of the 1st Cavalry Divisions. The administrative actions are expected to trigger investigations that could lead to a wide range of punishments. Those punishments could go from a simple letter of reprimand to a military discharge.

The base commander, Army Lt. Gen. Pat White, will not face any administrative action. He was deployed to Iraq as the commander there for much of the year.

Army leaders had already delayed Efflandt’s planned transfer to Fort Bliss, where he was slated to take over leadership of the 1st Armored Division. Command of a division is a key step in an Army officer’s career.

Efflandt’s move was paused while the team of independent investigators conducted its probe into whether leadership failures contributed to the killings of several people, including Guillen, and who should be held accountable.

*** 26 Fort Hood soldiers died this year, officials announce 26 died this year.

According to investigators, Guillen, 20, was bludgeoned to death at Fort Hood by Spc. Aaron Robinson, who killed himself on July 1 as police were trying to take him into custody. Guillen was missing for more than two months before her remains were found. Her family has said Robinson sexually harassed her, though the Army has said there is no evidence supporting that claim.

The body of Pvt. Mejhor Morta was found in July near a reservoir by the base. In June, officials discovered the remains of another missing soldier, Gregory Morales, about 10 miles from that lake. All together, so far this year, 25 soldiers assigned to Fort Hood have died due to suicide, homicide or accidents, compared with 32 last year and 24 in 2018.

In an Associated Press interview last month, White said that he and other commanders bear responsibility for the problems. But he said it will take time to correct what some believe are systemic failures, and that some units will respond more quickly than others.

“I think all leadership is accountable for it, if you’re in this chain of command,” White said. “We have got to do everything we can to get this back on track.”

Under Army procedures, when a soldier is fired or suspended from a post, it can often lead to a fuller investigation into the matter. While some can move on to another Army job, a firing or suspension can often signal the end of a soldier’s career.

Army leaders have said this year that they are concerned that 20 years of war have led the service to focus so much on readiness that they have paid less attention to the well-being of the soldiers and their families.

Lawsuit: Facebook Unfairly Overlooked American Workers

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Another reason to get off of Facebook. Maybe Zuckerberg missed the memo, the official memo, rather the Presidential Executive Order that was signed on April 18, 2017.

In part: (b) Hire American. In order to create higher wages and employment rates for workers in the United States, and to protect their economic interests, it shall be the policy of the executive branch to rigorously enforce and administer the laws governing entry into the United States of workers from abroad, including section 212(a)(5) of the Immigration and Nationality Act (8 U.S.C. 1182(a)(5)).

***

The US Department of Justice accused Facebook on Thursday of discriminating against American workers, saying in a new lawsuit that the social media giant had given hiring preferences to temporary workers, including those who hold H-1B visas.

The DoJ said that Facebook had “refused” to recruit, consider or hire qualified US workers for more than 2,600 jobs that in many cases paid an average salary of $156,000 a year.

Instead, it opted to fill the positions using temporary visa holders, such as those with H-1B visas, the department added.

“Facebook intentionally created a hiring system in which it denied qualified US workers a fair opportunity to learn about and apply for jobs,” the justice department said.

Trump DOJ Sues Facebook For Allegedly Reserving Jobs For Foreign Workers Instead Of Americans  photo

The social media company instead sought to channel such jobs to temporary visa holders it wanted to sponsor for green cards or permanent residency, it added.

H-1B visas are often used by the technology sector to bring highly skilled foreign guest workers to the United States. But critics say the laws governing these visas are lax, and make it too easy to replace US workers with cheaper, foreign labor.

“Facebook has been cooperating with the DoJ in its review of this issue and while we dispute the allegations in the complaint, we cannot comment further on pending litigation,” company spokesman Daniel Roberts said.

The Facebook lawsuit is the latest example of the Trump administration clashing with Silicon Valley over attempts to restrict immigration for foreign workers.

Trump and Republican lawmakers have also clashed with the company in other areas, such as accusing the platform of stifling conservative voices.

The justice and labor departments have both investigated big tech companies in the past over allegations similar to those against Facebook, but they have rarely brought charges due to loopholes in the law.

Tech companies and industry groups have contested moves to limit immigration of foreign workers by saying there are not enough American students graduating with science and engineering degrees to meet the demand for filling jobs in areas such as artificial intelligence.

In June, Trump issued a presidential proclamation that temporarily blocked foreign workers entering on H-1B visas – an attempt the administration then said would open up 525,000 jobs for US workers.

Among the top 30 H-1B employers are major US firms including Amazon, Microsoft, Walmart, Alphabet’s Google, Apple and Facebook, according to a report by the Economic Policy Institute (EPI) in May.

The EPI report said most companies using H1B visas take advantage of program rules in order to legally pay such workers below the local median wage for the jobs they fill.

Real Financial Data on Dominion Voting Systems

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by: Adam Andrzejewski

Forbes

Key points:

 

  • Dominion Voting Systems is the second largest vendor in the non-transparent and entrenched election system industry where three vendors control 88-percent of the market.
  • Recent Dominion contracts with major counties and cities across America set service agreements for years or even decades—helping lock-in the company’s dominant market position and prevent competition.

 

Dominion Voting Systems was paid $118.3 million to provide election services during the past three years, according to public records. Their revenues came from 19 states and 133 local governments including counties, cities, and even a couple of school districts.

IMAGECAST® PRECINCT - Dominion Voting Systems photo

Since presidential election of 2020, Dominion has come under wide public scrutiny, particularly in Georgia, Arizona, Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin—critical toss-up states with close winning margins.

In their Dunn & Bradstreet filings, Dominion claimed annual sales of $36.5 million with contracts in 22 states and 600 local jurisdictions. However, the Penn Wharton Public Policy Initiative estimated that Dominion was in 1,645 jurisdictions with $100 million in annual revenues (2018).

So, our auditors at OpenTheBooks.com tracked Dominion’s revenues using state and local government spending disclosures, i.e. their checkbooks. (Dominion is a private company and, therefore, is not required to disclose financials. However, public bodies must be transparent, because they spend taxpayer money.)

Compiling the records required open record requests in 49 of the 50 states and in 11,400 local governments. Only California, which we are suing, rejected our sunshine request.

Here is a state-by-state description of our findings. (Download our raw payment data spanning 2017 through 2019.)

Georgia: In 2019, a $107 million ten-year contract with Dominion procured by the Secretary of State covers 30,000 touch screen voting machines and the installation of a “verified paper ballot” voting system. $89 million in payments were front-loaded into the first two-years of the contract.

New Mexico: Dominion received $52 million from the state government. Services included the full suite of hardware and software information-technology agreements.

Michigan: $31.5 million flowed from the state government ($30.8 million) and 22 localities over the last three years. Top spending local governments included Detroit ($457,880); Livonia ($65,310); Saginaw ($53,314); Dearborn ($22,975) and Antrim County ($20,056).

Services included machines, equipment repair, election services, ballot marking printers, vote tabulators and ballot boxes, modem cell services contracts, election coding, and voting machine coding.

Nevada: Clark County, the largest in Nevada, contracted for $28.7 million to have the company run its elections through 2032. The Secretary of State’s Office paid Dominion for $510,130.

California:  In 2019, the County of Santa Clara contracted with Dominion for up to $16.2 million to run their election services for the next eight-years. San Francisco’s 2019 contract covers five-years for an amount not to exceed $12.7 million.

$11.1 million in payments to Dominion came from just 15 counties and cities. The largest payer was Alameda ($5.2 million). Other counties included San Francisco ($4.2 million, Butte ($376), Glenn ($42,350), Monterey ($233,291), San Benito ($173,049), Santa Cruz ($583), Shasta ($3,975), Sierra ($9,571), Siskiyou ($127,314), Kern ($127,267), San Luis Obispo ($500,536), and San Mateo ($457,703).

Illinois: Cook County, the second most populous county in the country, signed a $31 million ten-year contract with Dominion in 2018. Competitor Election Systems & Software (ES&S) sued alleging equipment scanning problems and lack of state certification; later, ES&S dropped the case. Chicago has a ten-year $22 million deal.

From 2017-2019, payments of $6.2 million from six counties and cities flowed to Dominion. Cook County ($5.5 million) and the City of Chicago ($533,018) were the largest payers. Other counties included DuPage ($70,520), Kankakee ($9,900), Macoupin County ($15,153), and Winnebago ($18,900).

Arizona: We found the 2019-2022 contract in Maricopa County at total taxpayer cost of $6.1 million over three-years. The City of Phoenix also paid Dominion $48,300.

New York: The state spent $95.8 million with Dominion from 2008 through 2014 then renewed the contract through 2021.

From 2017-2019, $4.4 million from 44 government entities paid Dominion. Here are the top five counties: Suffolk ($1.1 million), Niagara ($539,334), Orange ($336,480), Monroe ($301,435), and Madison ($300,884). Interestingly, there were six school districts paying Dominion for election services.

Purchase descriptions ranged from batteries, compact flash memory cards, receipt paper for voting machines, warranty and support for “imagecast voting,” EMS 3-day training, absentee central count ballots and election day ballots, “pre marked test ballots,” firmware and hardware warranty, voting systems, and much more.

Pennsylvania: $1.1 million from five counties contracted with Dominion: Armstrong ($701,560), Crawford ($201,880), Washington ($121,880), Somerset County ($39,286), and Warren ($10,532). The disclosures did not list the services purchased.

Wisconsin: Dominion voting machines are used in the counties of Racine, Washington, and Ozaukee. In the large counties of Dane and Milwaukee, ES&S machines are used.

We were not able to capture government checkbook data on Dominion expenditures in Wisconsin.

 

 

Cuba and China: ‘Havana Syndrome’ was Caused by Directed Microwave Radiation

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3 -4 years?

Source: A NEW REPORT BY the United States National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine, has found that the so-called ‘Havana Syndrome’, which afflicted American and Canadian diplomats in Cuba and China in 2016 and 2017, was likely caused by directed microwave radiation. The study, which was commissioned by the US Department of State, is the latest in a long list of scientific assessments of the mysterious syndrome. The case remains a source of debate in the scientific, diplomatic and intelligence communities.

In 2017 Washington recalled the majority of its personnel from the US embassy in Havana, and at least two more diplomats from the US consulate in the Chinese city of Guangzhou. The evacuees reported experiencing “unusual acute auditory or sensory phenomena” and hearing “unusual sounds or piercing noises”. Subsequent tests showed that they suffered from sudden and unexplained loss of hearing, and possibly from various forms of brain injuries. In April of 2019 the Canadian embassy evacuated all family members of its personnel stationed in the Cuban capital over similar health concerns.

Unsolved 'sonic attacks' mystery sours U.S.-Cuba relations | America Magazine

The latest study by the National Academies of Sciences resulted from the coordination of leading toxicologists, epidemiologists, electrical engineers and neurologists. The resulting 66-page report describes in detail the symptoms experienced by nearly 40 US government employees, who were examined for the purposes of the study. Its authors said they examined numerous potential causes, including psychological factors, infectious diseases, directed radio frequency energy, and even exposure to insecticides. Ultimately, the authors concluded that “many of the distinctive and acute signs, symptoms and observations reported by [US government] employees are consistent with the effects of directed, pulsed radio frequency (RF) energy”, according to their report.

However, the study does not attempt to answer the burning question of whether the symptoms experienced by the sufferers resulted from deliberate attacks, and if so, who may have been behind them. Some have accused the governments of Cuba and/or Russia of being responsible for the syndrome. However, the Cuban and Russian governments have strongly denied the accusations. The National Academies of Sciences report does state that the systematic study of pulsed radio frequency energy has a history of over half a century in Russia and the Soviet Union.

***

Description

In late 2016, U.S. Embassy personnel in Havana, Cuba, began to report the development of an unusual set of symptoms and clinical signs. For some of these patients, their case began with the sudden onset of a loud noise, perceived to have directional features, and accompanied by pain in one or both ears or across a broad region of the head, and in some cases, a sensation of head pressure or vibration, dizziness, followed in some cases by tinnitus, visual problems, vertigo, and cognitive difficulties. Other personnel attached to the U.S. Consulate in Guangzhou, China, reported similar symptoms and signs to varying degrees, beginning in the following year. As of June 2020, many of these personnel continue to suffer from these and/or other health problems. Multiple hypotheses and mechanisms have been proposed to explain these clinical cases, but evidence has been lacking, no hypothesis has been proven, and the circumstances remain unclear.

The Department of State asked the National Academies to review the cases, their clinical features and management, epidemiologic investigations, and scientific evidence in support of possible causes, and advise on approaches for the investigation of potential future cases. In An Assessment of Illness in U.S. Government Employees and Their Families at Overseas Embassies, the committee identifies distinctive clinical features, considers possible causes, evaluates plausible mechanisms and rehabilitation efforts, and offers recommendations for future planning and responses.

Obama’s normalizing relations did not work out so well. The big question now is whether there is a human rights violation and diplomatic consequence.

Hollywood, Film, Music and Television Protected as Essential During Pandemic

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We are well aware of the video/scandal by Angela Masden, the restaurant owner of the Pineapple Hill Saloon and Grill forced to close again.

One has to wonder about those campaign contributions from the Hollywood elites to Congressmen Adam Schiff and Brad Sherman, right? Maybe not so much. The Hollywood elites are branded as ‘essential’ during the pandemic lockdowns. Crazy…

So, this soiree was/is for  NBC has picked up a fourth season of Good Girls, from creator Jenna Bans.

Good Girls, whose third season was cut short by the coronavirus pandemic and resulting production shutdown, has done well ratings-wise.

Note that requirements for being essential include: This checklist covers:(1)Workplace policies and practices to protect employee health(2)Measures to ensure physical distancing(3)Measures to ensure infection control(4)Communication with employees and the public(5)Measures to ensure equitable access to critical services all of which every business in California, New York and New Jersey among other states not only meet with compliance, but many of the small businesses go way above and beyond those stipulations.

Further, after watching the video by Angela, note the requirements for catering –>

CRAFT SERVICES AND CATERING

❑All actors and crew shall wash or sanitize hands before handling any food.❑No buffets allowed.❑No communal food or drink service (no coffee pot, no single service coffee maker).❑All food and drink must be single serving only.❑Craft service dining must be held outdoors.❑Sit-down meals: either require eating in shifts, or seating areas large enough to allow for physical distancing of six (6) feet or more.

The 10 page protection document is found here.