Category Archives: Whistleblower

MI5 and the FBI: Terrorists on Twitter-Social Media

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Twitter is the least cooperative technology company calling terrorists on the internet ‘freedom fighters. This was revealed in testimony this week.

Twitter has come under criticism from some analysts who say the social media company has failed to swiftly remove accounts that recruit potential terrorists and incite violence, raising concerns that the United States has not done enough to combat the Islamic State’s rapid expansion of its propaganda operations online.

Mark Wallace, CEO of the Counter Extremism Project, said on Wednesday that the Islamic State (also known as ISIS or ISIL) terrorist group has effectively used social media sites such as Twitter to propagandize and radicalize individuals, including Americans. His nonprofit project recently chronicled 66 U.S. citizens who are accused of joining or attempting to join the Islamic State, plotting attacks in the United States, providing financial support to extremist groups, or disseminating radical propaganda.

“These individuals have very different backgrounds and experiences, but the one characteristic they seem to share is active participation on social media,” he said in testimony to the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform.

The terror group known as Islamic State or Daesh has deployed and exploited unprescendented use of social media, where the effectiveness is beyond definition. Intelligence agencies in the West are grappling with solutions pushing the protections of free speech and use of the internet.

In part from Newsweek: The head of Britain’s internal counter-intelligence service MI5, has warned that ISIS and other extremist groups “continue to aspire to mass casualty attacks against the U.K.” and that an increasing proportion of their communication online and via encrypted channels is out of reach of Britain’s security services.

“All of this means the threat we are facing today is on a scale and at a tempo that I have not seen before in my career,” Andrew Parker said in his keynote speech made at a lord mayor’s event in London on Wednesday night.
Parker also warned of the “three-dimensional threat” that ISIS pose—at home, overseas and online. “We are seeing plots against the U.K. directed by terrorists in Syria; enabled through contacts with terrorists in Syria; and inspired online by Isil’s [ISIS] sophisticated exploitation of technology.”

Parker said MI5 must evolve its activities in order to combat modern threats, and emphasized that the agency’s ability to intercept communications has “been a key component in MI5’s toolbox throughout our history.”

The MI5 boss said he imagined the forthcoming defence review would garner more public interest than previous debates on similar matters. “But I hope that the public debate will be a mature one, ” he added. “Informed by the three independent reviews, and not characterized by ill-informed accusations of ‘mass surveillance’, or other such lazy two-worded tags.”

When it comes to the very similar requests by FBI Director, James Comey, his pleas are in earnest yet, tech companies and the U.S. Constitution actually prevent some actions due to the 1st Amendment. It is a slippery slope for both sides.

FBI Director James Comey called for a national conversation about how far tech companies should be allowed to go in applying encryption to their devices, saying law enforcement faces growing and overlapping challenges in accessing data needed to prosecute crimes.

During a speech at the Brookings Institution Thursday, Comey said the new forms of encryption being developed for mobile devices, as well as the rapid growth of the devices themselves, make it tough for the FBI to keep up with ways criminals can “go dark.”

“With going dark, those of us in law enforcement and public safety have a major fear of missing out,” Comey said. “Missing out on predators who exploit the most vulnerable among us; missing out on violent criminals who target our communities; missing out on a terrorist cell using social media to recruit, plan and execute an attack. We have seen case after case — from homicides and car crashes to drug trafficking, domestic abuse and child exploitation — where critical evidence came from smartphones, hard drives and online communication.”

To advance the discussion, Congress is holding hearings with counter-terrorism experts and they too make a compelling argument siding with Comey.

The Real Truths about UNRWA, Anyone Care?

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This is the best that the U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations, Samantha Power could do to respond to Hamas using children as human shields:

Samantha PowerVerified account ‏@AmbassadorPower 17 Jul 2014

Yest. UN found Hamas weapons hidden in its facility. provides aid/shelter to Palestinians—abhorrent that Hamas wld endanger its work.

UNRWA found Hamas rockets in UN facilities in Gaza but decided that fact was not really a war crime or a violation. Per the UNRWA official statement, just an additional condemnation is sufficient.

A handful of Senators compel John Kerry to sanction UNRWA over the weapons which Kerry has refused to do.

The UNRWA Vision Projectcame about because of an astonishingly brave kid in Gaza, Mohammad aged 8 whose life was changed forever when a single shell hit his house and blinded him. We need to make this project a reality for hundreds of children in Gaza.  Please donate today to end their suffering and help bringing them a brighter future.

Vision Project for Gaza children
 His father: H/T EoZ:Nidal was a legitimate target under the laws of war by any definition,. He used his family, including Mohammed, as human shields.

No one was killed in the Israeli airstrike targeting Nidal, although Mohammed’s siblings were injured.

A week later, Nidal met with two other senior Hamas terrorists in a mosque at 3:30 AM, way before dawn prayers. Israeli forces did not miss that time and all three were killed. Hamas detained an AP reporter looking at the rubble of the mosque because they didn’t want him to see evidence that the mosque was in fact a terrorist headquarters.

Mohammed Badran is blind because his father was a disgusting Hamas terrorist who valued his own life above that of his family.

Gunness knows that Mohammed’s father was a Hamas terrorist. He won’t ever admit it out loud.

Because  this is all about money, and Chris Gunness is more than happy to cynically use this victim of Hamas policy to raise money.

US Taxpayer-Funded Official Speaks Before Hamas-Tied Terror Group

UNRWA spokesman delivered speech in front of group designated as terrorist organization

FreeBeacon: A senior official with a U.S.-funded United Nations organization has come under scrutiny for delivering a speech this week before an anti-Israel organization that has been designated as a terrorist organization by the U.S. Treasury Department for providing funds to the terror group Hamas.

Chris Gunness, spokesman for the U.S. taxpayer-funded UN Relief Works Agency (UNRWA), which operates Palestinian refugee camps known for promoting terrorism against Israel, delivered a speech earlier this week before Interpal, a UK-based charity organization, which is listed as a specially designated global terrorist organization for funneling money to Hamas.

Gunness’ appearance fueled accusations by many in the pro-Israel community that UNRWA is a biased organization that abuses the more than $200 million it receives annually from the United States.

UNRWA employees, including teachers at its Palestinian schools and others, have been caught making anti-Semitic statements, promoting hatred of the Jewish state, and accused of participating in terrorist training.

Gunness’s appearance before the Hamas-tied organization comes amid an effort on Capitol Hill to suspend UNRWA’s funding and hold it accountable for its ties to terror groups and incitement against Israel.

While UNRWA did not promote the event, pictures of Gunness speaking before Interpal appeared on Twitter earlier this week.

Gunness talked “about little Mohammad, who was blinded when an Israeli shell hit his home in July 2014,” according to a tweet by Interpal.

Another user noted that the “UNRWA man tells the story of a child who froze to death [because] of slow pace of reconstruction in Gaza.”

When asked about the event, Gunness directed UNRWA’s Washington, D.C., spokesman to submit a statement to the Washington Free Beacon.

“UNRWA Spokesman Chris Gunness spoke at an event in the UK Parliament sponsored and attended by British Members of Parliament about a project supported by a legally registered UK charity to help approximately 300 blind and visually impaired Palestinian children in Gaza in need of special assistance,” UNRWA spokesman Chris McGrath told the Free Beacon.

While Interpal remains legal in the UK, it was designated by the United States as a terrorist organization in 2003.

“Interpal, headquartered in the UK, has been a principal charity utilized to hide the flow of money to HAMAS,” according to the Treasury Department’s findings. “Reporting indicates it is the conduit through which money flows to HAMAS from other charities, e.g., the Al Aqsa Foundation, and that it oversees the activities of other charities.”

“Reporting also indicates that Interpal is the fundraising coordinator of HAMAS, a coordination point for other HAMAS-affiliated charities,” according to Treasury. “This role is of the type that includes supervising activities of charities, developing new charities in targeted areas, instructing how funds should be transferred from one charity to another, and even determining public relations policy.”

“In the US, Interpal is listed as an organization involved in funding terror, and their ties with Hamas are well known and documented in detail,” said Gerald M. Steinberg, president of the watchdog group NGO Monitor. “So INTERPAL’s hosting of UNRWA’s spokesman, Chris Gunness, is another reason for a full investigation of the UN organization and its employees.”

“This agenda highlights the urgency of ending all funding for UNRWA, particularly the hundreds of millions provided every year by American, European, Canadian and Australian taxpayers,” Steinberg said.

Gunness’s appearance before the organization prompted questions during Tuesday’s State Department briefing. Spokesman John Kirby declined to address the questions and would not say whether the Obama administration was concerned with this behavior.

Asked Wednesday to further address Gunness’ actions, State Department spokesperson Julia Mason told the Free Beacon that administration officials have repeatedly emphasized to UNRWA that it must strive to remain “free from bias.”

“We have seen the reports on this event, though we did not attend,” Mason said. “We understand that the UNRWA spokesperson attended an event at the British Parliament to benefit wounded Palestinian children, hosted by several of its members.”

“We have long made known our commitment to UNRWA’s absolutely essential work in helping Palestinian refugees—including many refugee children,” she added. “And we have made clear our position that UNRWA must be able to work independently and free from bias.”

The State Department “regularly” discusses with UNRWA “the importance of maintaining the organization’s neutrality,” Mason said. “That includes raising concerns regarding any engagements with U.S.-designated terrorist organizations.”

Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (R., Fla.) filed legislation this week that would cut off U.S. funding to UNRWA as a result of concerns that the organization is promoting terrorism.

The bill would withhold U.S. contributions to UNRWA until officials can certify that no employees of the organization have ties to terrorism or anti-Semitic incitement.

UNRWA also would be forced to submit to an independent audit meant to determine if it is diverting funds to terrorist entities.

“In response to the increased terror and violence in Israel, we must hold those who are responsible for inciting this violence accountable and that includes UNRWA,” Ros-Lehtinen said in a statement.

“The U.S. can’t continue to send $400 million to UNRWA while ignoring the systemic and endemic anti-Israel, anti-Semitic bias and the blatant incitement to violence we see from its employees,” the lawmaker said. “UNRWA employees and facilities are consistently tied to foreign terrorist organizations and a full accounting of the agency’s affiliations should be required before another dime is spent on this divisive organization.”

UN officials were recently forced to suspend several UNRWA employees after it was revealed by the NGO Monitor organization that they had sought to promote anti-Semitic violence. Several teachers at UNRWA-run schools promoted terrorist attacks against Israelis, according to NGO Monitor’s findings.

So, the Most Transparent Administration in History, Nah

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Not being timely or responsive to letters or to requests is a means to use avoidance as a weapon and the Obama White House is perfect at this, a lesson used by several agencies.

There are also lawyers that are assigned by the White House that in fact scrutinize all Freedom of Information Act requests before they are advanced through the system.

Obama administration sets new record for withholding FOIA requests

PBS, WASHINGTON — The Obama administration set a record again for censoring government files or outright denying access to them last year under the U.S. Freedom of Information Act, according to a new analysis of federal data by The Associated Press.

The government took longer to turn over files when it provided any, said more regularly that it couldn’t find documents and refused a record number of times to turn over files quickly that might be especially newsworthy.

It also acknowledged in nearly 1 in 3 cases that its initial decisions to withhold or censor records were improper under the law — but only when it was challenged.

Its backlog of unanswered requests at year’s end grew remarkably by 55 percent to more than 200,000. It also cut by 375, or about 9 percent, the number of full-time employees across government paid to look for records. That was the fewest number of employees working on the issue in five years.

The government’s new figures, published Tuesday, covered all requests to 100 federal agencies during fiscal 2014 under the Freedom of Information law, which is heralded globally as a model for transparent government. They showed that despite disappointments and failed promises by the White House to make meaningful improvements in the way it releases records, the law was more popular than ever. Citizens, journalists, businesses and others made a record 714,231 requests for information. The U.S. spent a record $434 million trying to keep up. It also spent about $28 million on lawyers’ fees to keep records secret.

“This disappointing track record is hardly the mark of an administration that was supposed to be the most transparent in history,” said Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas, who has co-sponsored legislation with Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., to improve the Freedom of Information law. Their effort died in the House last year.

The new figures showed the government responded to 647,142 requests, a 4 percent decrease over the previous year. It more than ever censored materials it turned over or fully denied access to them, in 250,581 cases or 39 percent of all requests. Sometimes, the government censored only a few words or an employee’s phone number, but other times it completely marked out nearly every paragraph on pages.

On 215,584 other occasions, the government said it couldn’t find records, a person refused to pay for copies or the government determined the request to be unreasonable or improper.

The White House touted its success under its own analysis. It routinely excludes from its assessment instances when it couldn’t find records, a person refused to pay for copies or the request was determined to be improper under the law, and said under this calculation it released all or parts of records in 91 percent of requests — still a record low since President Barack Obama took office using the White House’s own math.

“We actually do have a lot to brag about,” White House spokesman Josh Earnest said.

Earnest on Wednesday praised agencies for releasing information before anyone requested it, such as the salaries and titles of White House employees. He cited more than 125,000 sets of data posted on a website, data.gov, which include historical temperature charts, records of agricultural fertilizer consumption, Census data, fire deaths and college crime reports.

“When it comes to our record on transparency, we have a lot to be proud of,” he told reporters aboard Air Force One. “And frankly, it sets a standard that future administrations will have to live up to.”

Separately, the Justice Department congratulated the Agriculture and State departments for finishing work on their oldest 10 requests, said the Pentagon responded to nearly all requests within three months and praised the Health and Human Services Department for disclosing information about the Ebola outbreak and immigrant children caught crossing U.S. borders illegally.

The government’s responsiveness under the open records law is an important measure of its transparency. Under the law, citizens and foreigners can compel the government to turn over copies of federal records for zero or little cost. Anyone who seeks information through the law is generally supposed to get it unless disclosure would hurt national security, violate personal privacy or expose business secrets or confidential decision-making in certain areas. It cited such exceptions a record 554,969 times last year.

Under the president’s instructions, the U.S. should not withhold or censor government files merely because they might be embarrassing, but federal employees last year regularly misapplied the law. In emails that AP obtained from the National Archives and Records Administration about who pays for Michelle Obama’s expensive dresses, the agency blacked-out a sentence under part of the law intended to shield personal, private information, such as Social Security numbers, phone numbers or home addresses. But it failed to censor the same passage on a subsequent page.

The sentence: “We live in constant fear of upsetting the WH (White House).”

In nearly 1 in 3 cases, when someone challenged under appeal the administration’s initial decision to censor or withhold files, the government reconsidered and acknowledged it was at least partly wrong. That was the highest reversal rate in at least five years.

The AP’s chief executive, Gary Pruitt, said the news organization filed hundreds of requests for government files. Records the AP obtained revealed police efforts to restrict airspace to keep away news helicopters during violent street protests in Ferguson, Missouri. In another case, the records showed Veterans Affairs doctors concluding that a gunman who later killed 12 people had no mental health issues despite serious problems and encounters with police during the same period. They also showed the FBI pressuring local police agencies to keep details secret about a telephone surveillance device called Stingray.

“What we discovered reaffirmed what we have seen all too frequently in recent years,” Pruitt wrote in a column published this week. “The systems created to give citizens information about their government are badly broken and getting worse all the time.”

The U.S. released its new figures during Sunshine Week, when news organizations promote open government and freedom of information.

The AP earlier this month sued the State Department under the law to force the release of email correspondence and government documents from Hillary Rodham Clinton’s tenure as secretary of state. The government had failed to turn over the files under repeated requests, including one made five years ago and others pending since the summer of 2013.

The government said the average time it took to answer each records request ranged from one day to more than 2.5 years. More than half of federal agencies took longer to answer requests last year than the previous year.

Those Making Decisions About Destiny

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Spooky and deviant people packaged in philanthropic paper and bows have darker missions that is not conspiracy but fact.

The Clinton Foundation is not especially included in this group but the same model of collusion is applied.

Going back to 2009, the agenda was being crafted for the next four years and had a probability of the next eight to ten years. It is working and chilling.

Note, they even call themselves the ‘Good Club’….really?

They’re called the Good Club – and they want to save the world
Paul Harris in New York reports on the small, elite group of billionaire philanthropists who met recently to discuss solving the planet’s problems
It is the most elite club in the world. Ordinary people need not apply. Indeed there is no way to ask to join. You simply have to be very, very rich and very, very generous. On a global scale.

This is the Good Club, the name given to the tiny global elite of billionaire philanthropists who recently held their first and highly secretive meeting in the heart of New York City.

The names of some of the members are familiar figures: Bill Gates, George Soros, Warren Buffett, Oprah Winfrey, David Rockefeller and Ted Turner. But there are others, too, like business giants Eli and Edythe Broad, who are equally wealthy but less well known. All told, its members are worth $125bn.

The meeting – called by Gates, Buffett and Rockefeller – was held in response to the global economic downturn and the numerous health and environmental crises that are plaguing the globe. It was, in some ways, a summit to save the world.

No wonder that when news of the secret meeting leaked, via the seemingly unusual source of an Irish-American website, it sent shock waves through the worlds of philanthropy, development aid and even diplomacy. “It is really unprecedented. It is the first time a group of donors of this level of wealth has met like that behind closed doors in what is in essence a billionaires’ club,” said Ian Wilhelm, senior writer at the Chronicle of Philanthropy magazine.

The existence of the Good Club has struck many as a two-edged sword. On one hand, they represent a new golden age of philanthropy, harking back to the early 20th century when the likes of Rockefeller, Vanderbilt and Carnegie became famous for their good works. Yet the reach and power of the Good Club are truly new. Its members control vast wealth – and with that wealth comes huge power that could reshape nations according to their will. Few doubt the good intentions of Gates and Winfrey and their kind. They have already improved the lives of millions of poor people across the developing world. But can the richest people on earth actually save the planet?

The President’s House of Rockefeller University is on the Upper East Side of Manhattan. The university’s private campus, full of lush green trees, lies behind guarded entrances and a metal fence. It overlooks the East River, only a few blocks away from the United Nations.
It was here, at 3pm on 5 May, that the Good Club gathered. The university’s chancellor, Sir Paul Nurse, was out of town but, at the request of David Rockefeller, had allowed the club to meet at his plush official residence. The president’s house is frequently used for university events, but rarely can it have played host to such a powerful conclave. “The fact that they pulled this off, meeting in the middle of New York City, is just absolutely amazing,” said Niall O’Dowd, an Irish journalist who broke the story on the website irishcentral.com.

For six hours, the assembled billionaires discussed the crises facing the world. Each was allowed to speak for 15 minutes. The topics focused on education, emergency relief, government reform, the expected depth of the economic crisis and global health issues such as overpopulation and disease. One of the themes was new ways to get ordinary people to donate small amounts to global issues. Sources say Gates was the most impressive speaker, while Turner was the most outspoken. “He tried to dominate, which I think annoyed some of the others,” said one source. Winfrey, meanwhile, was said to have been in a contemplative, listening mood.

That the group should have met at all is indicative of the radical ways in which philanthropy has changed over the past two decades. The main force behind that change is Gates and his decision to donate almost all his fortune to bettering the world. Unlike the great philanthropists of former ages, Gates is young enough and active enough to take a full hands-on role in his philanthropy and craft it after his own ideas. That example has been followed by others, most notably Soros, Turner and Buffett. Indeed, this new form of philanthropy, where retired elite businessmen try to change the world, has even been dubbed “Billanthropy” after Gates. Another description is “philanthro-capitalism”. Much more here.

Examples:

Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation grants money to measure your child’s moods via bracelets. Reported by the Chicago Tribune, schools are the basis of the testing and database modeling, where behavior modification is the sole objective.

Warren Buffett’s Foundation has an initiative controlling water and the food supply in Africa and Central America, all in the cause of enhancing agriculture to which population control and sustainability is achieved. To date, Central America is full of bloody criminals and Africa is a continent rife with terror. Buffett is a large funder of abortions globally.

George Soros, the spookiest of the Good Club, has an umbrella organization titled Open Society Institute that funds just about every dark nefarious operation globally, even the IRS scandal, suppressing free speech.

Ted Turner, the media mogul has a ‘one child’ policy emulating that of China.

It appears all of these members of the ‘Good Club’ continue discussion from a 1974 USAID study. Further as the decades pass with new trends emerging, more aggressive and edited objectives are financed.

The matter of eradicated diseases re-emerging, refugees and global financial strife has wrought other billionaires missions yet to be fully realized or understood but take caution.

 

 

HUD, Housing Urban Development, Fleecing-Scandals

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The truth and facts are in the details but details never seem to matter or to be an agenda stopper.

Is there just one government agency that operates without a scandal or fleecing the taxpayers? Housing and Urban Development is headed by Secretary Julian Castro and former mayor of San Antonio. By the way, his name has been floated as a candidate for Hillary’s running mate to ensure to Latino vote.

Obama himself has kept a close eye on Castro and is helping him build his resume for bigger political ambitions in spite of a history of scandals based in San Antonio.

HUD backs $9.5 million loan on property valued at $3.8 million

COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo. —The Department of Housing and Urban Development provided a $9.4 million loan guarantee to renovate an apartment complex here eight months after the owner convinced the county to value the complex at just $3.8 million, a Watchdog.org investigation found.

The loan for Apollo Village Apartments defaulted and the property was foreclosed on in 2012 with HUD losing as much as $4.5 million on the deal, public trustee records show.

Pete Sepp, president of the National Union of Taxpayers, said these government programs put a substantial amount of taxpayer money at risk and should be eliminated.

“Unfortunately, many government loan programs to individual business people aren’t necessarily dictated by the best interests of taxpayers or the laws of the marketplace,” he said after reviewing information Watchdog.org provided him on the loan. “It’s a classic dilemma we see with the federal subsidies programs.”

Instead of foreclosing, HUD sold the note to a private company for $5 million and the company foreclosed on the property six months later, selling the Apollo complex for $6.2 million – netting a $1.2 million profit the government could have realized to offset part of the loss, foreclosure and HUD records show.

“Apollo Village #101-11128 was insured by HUD through a 223f loan in the amount of $9,401,500.00 on March 23, 2009,” according to an email from Baumann.

The owner, represented by a Denver appraisal firm, filed a property tax appeal on May 27, 2008, and the County Board of Equalization reduced the value of the property from $7.199 million to $3.810 million on July 24, 2008, according to county records and the assessor’s office.

County records showed 36 units were condemned in 2008, and building permits for siding, roof and structural repairs were issued between 2009 and 2014.

HUD rules for market-rate apartments only allow the agency to guarantee 83.3 percent of the project’s value after the repairs are completed, which means HUD estimated the value of the repaired project to be about $11.3 million. Federal HUD officials said they did not have any appraisal information for the project, and the local office was looking to see if any documents were available. Read the report in full here.

There is more of course:

Why Are Over-Income Tenants Living in Public Housing?

A recent report from the Department of Housing and Urban Development’s (HUD’s) Office of Inspector General (OIG) and subsequent news articles have raised questions about the treatment of so-called “over-income” families living in federally assisted public housing. “Over-income” families had, at the time of their initial move-in, income low enough to be eligible to live in public housing (income at or below 80% of local area median income), but their incomes later increased above the eligibility threshold. The Inspector General report found that as many as 25,226 over-income families resided in public housing in 2014 (2.6% of all public housing residents). While the majority of over-income families had incomes that exceeded the initial income eligibility limits by less than $10,000, a small subset of families had incomes that were significantly higher.

As HUD has pointed out in its response to the OIG report, allowing over-income families to remain in public housing is not inconsistent with federal law or regulations. Read the report in total here.