‘Suspicious activity reports’ show that counter-terrorism program tracks innocent Americans.

‘Suspicious activity reports’ show that counter-terrorism program tracks innocent Americans.(RT).

The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) and other rights organizations released 1,800 so-called suspicious activity reports sent by various levels of law enforcement to two California intelligence fusion centers. The centers, along with 70 others, were created after 9/11 in an effort to coordinate information sharing.

   
The records obtained by the ACLU do not show evidence of valuable counter-terrorism intelligence, media outlets reported on Thursday.

"An off-duty supervising dispatcher with Sacramento PD noticed a female subject taking pictures of the outside of the post office in Folsom on Riley Street this morning," reads a suspicious activity report created June 4, 2010, as quoted by AP. "The female departed as a passenger in a silver Mazda."

NPR reported on other seemingly trivial filings, including two Middle Eastern men who bought US$1,700 in cigarettes, a Sikh who received a suspicious tattoo, and an inmate in Sacramento who had a drawing that read, "I Hate America."

The ACLU and other groups want the Obama administration to reexamine and remedy the program - officially named the Nationwide Suspicious Activity Reporting Initiative - so that it focuses on terrorism investigations. It has requested that the program “stop targeting people engaging in constitutionally protected behavior like taking photographs."
"We want the administration to stop targeting racial and religious minorities," ACLU lawyer Linda Lye said.

It is unclear how long the suspicious activity reports stay in the program’s system. One photographer named in a California report told NPR that he was worried about what may happen to him if he tries to leave and re-enter the country.

"Am I going to have problems at the border?" Hal Bergman asked. "Are they going to take my laptop when I come back in the country? It makes me nervous that I'm not committing a crime, and the government is building records about what I'm up to."

Last year, the Senate released a report stating that the multi-billion dollar fusion center program had collected information on innocent people but had not produced much valuable counter-terrorism information.

The report concluded that the Department of Homeland Security program had exhibited waste and grown beyond its original intended scope.

A Homeland Security Department spokesman said at the time that the Senate report was "out of date, inaccurate and misleading” and insisted that local officials still benefited from the coordination.

In early 2013, the General Accountability Office (GAO) said the program could not track its own effectiveness. It added that 53 federal agencies are now integrated into the program. That number is in addition to the regional fusion centers where activity reports are collected.

Is Your Smart Meter Spying On You?

Is Your Smart Meter Spying On You? HT: Washington's Blog  

Preface: The original intent of smart meters may been good … conserve energy by setting up a “smart grid” to maximize the efficiency of energy distribution. But there are questions about potential health effects from smart meters.  And – in this era of pervasive spying – it’s important to know where the threats to our privacy are coming from.
Burglars, Hackers and the Government All Want to See Your Smart Meter Data
NBC News reports:

Researchers examining the privacy implications of smart-meter technology found that one German provider’s devices contained vulnerabilities that allowed them to snoop on unencrypted data to determine whether or not the homeowners were home.
After signing up with the German smart-meter firm Discovergy, the researchers detected that the company’s devices transmitted unencrypted data from the home devices back to the company’s servers over an insecure link. The researchers, Dario Carluccio and Stephan Brinkhaus, intercepted the supposedly confidential and sensitive information, and, based on the fingerprint of power usage, were able to tell not only whether or not the homeowners were home, away or even sleeping, but also what movie they were watching on TV.

The New York Times points out:

Writing in Friday’s issue of the journal Science, the environmental scientist Jan Beyea foresees a world in which epidemiologists could harvest data on how people live from day to day — their use of electric blankets or microwave ovens, for example — and correlate such activities with the likelihood of developing certain health conditions. The meter data could serve as a check on information obtained from the questionnaires that are used in such studies, he said.
With data from thousands or millions of smart meters, researchers could design tools to measure how many times a day a refrigerator door was opened, relevant to dietary and obesity research, or sleep patterns, relevant to a wide range of health research, he wrote.

Network World notes:

Smart meters provide highly detailed energy-use data. The info can be used by police to find and to bust indoor pot farms, by insurance companies to determine health care premiums, and by criminals to determine if you own high-dollar appliances and when is the best time to steal them. And that’s only the tip of the potential privacy invasion iceberg.
***
In central Ohio, police file at least 60 subpoenas each month for energy-use records of people suspected in indoor marijuana growing operations, reported the Columbus Dispatch. Most of the houses with indoor pot growing operations are reportedly in quiet neighborhoods without much traffic. DEA agent Anthony Marotta said the subpoena is only one tool used to catch “grow house” operators. Police get a tip about suspicious activity, but if undercover officers don’t discover anything illegal during a stake out, then utility consumption records can be sought. “How else can I get an indicator to get probable cause if I can’t see anything?” Marotta said to reporter Dean Narciso.
***
The U.S. Department of Energy warned [PDF] that smart grid technology can provide a highly detailed household profile of energy consumption and said policies are needed to restrict utilities from sharing consumer usage data with third parties. The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) outlined Potential Privacy Impacts that Arise from the Collection and Use of Smart Grid Data [PDF].
From reading it, a person might wonder if smart meters will be real-time surveillance spies. It suggests that insurance companies might use the smart meter data to determine health care premiums, such as if there is high usage at night which would indicate sleep behavior problems. Besides looking to bust pot farmers, law enforcement might use the data as “real-time surveillance to determine if residents are present and current activities inside the home.” The press might wish to see the smart meter data of celebrities. Criminals may want to see the data to determine the best time for a burglary and what high dollar appliances you might have to steal. Marketers might want the data for profiling and targeting advertisements. Creditors might want the data to determine if behavior indicates creditworthiness.
***
Lockheed Martin general manager of Energy and Cyber Services said the smart grid could include as many as 440 million new hackable points by the end of 2015, reported Computerworld.

National Geographic notes:

 ”It’s not hard to imagine a divorce lawyer subpoenaing this information, an insurance company interpreting the data in a way that allows it to penalize customers, or criminals intercepting the information to plan a burglary,” the private nonprofit Electronic Frontier Foundation noted in a blog post about smart meters.
***
The European Union’s data protection watchdog warned earlier this year that smart meters, while bringing significant potential benefits, also could be used track whether families “are away on holiday or at work, if someone uses a specific medical device or a baby-monitor, how they like to spend their free time and so on.” The European Data Protection Supervisor urged that member states provide the public with more information on how the data is being handled.
***
The California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC) … was involved in producing a comprehensive report on privacy with the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) that summarizes, often in chilling detail, the many ways in which privacy breaches could occur on the smart grid, and recommends best practices for preventing those breaches. “As Smart Grid implementations collect more granular, detailed, and potentially personal information, this information may reveal business activities, manufacturing procedures, and personal activities in a given location,” the NIST report said.

The San Francisco Chronicle reports:

Critics of “smart meters” have often warned that the advanced electricity and gas meters can invade privacy by revealing when someone is and isn’t home.
According to the American Civil Liberties Union, they have reason to worry.
The civil rights group on Wednesday reported that California’s three big, investor-owned utilities had disclosed individual account information on thousands of their customers last year, usually to government agencies armed with subpoenas.

Last year, the United States Congressional Research Service addressed some of the  issues involved:

Data recorded by smart meters must be highly detailed, and, consequently, it may show what individual appliances a consumer is using. The data must also be transmitted to electric utilities—and possibly to third parties outside of the smart grid—subjecting it to potential interception or theft as it travels over communications networks and is stored in a variety of physical locations.
These characteristics of smart meter data present privacy and security concerns that are likely to become more prevalent as government-backed initiatives expand deployment of the meters to millions of homes across the country. In the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (ARRA), Congress appropriated funds for the implementation of the Smart Grid Investment Grant (SGIG) program administered by the Department of Energy. This program now permits the federal government to reimburse up to 50% of eligible smart grid investments, which include the cost to electric utilities of buying and installing smart meters. In its annual report on smart meter deployment, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission cited statistics showing that the SGIG program has helped fund the deployment of about 7.2 million meters as of September 2011.15 At completion, the program will have partially funded the installation of 15.5 million meters. By 2015, the Institute for Electric Efficiency expects that a total of 65 million smart meters will be in operation throughout the United States.

The CRS discussed some of the laws which may govern smart meter data:

If smart meter data and transmissions fall outside of the protection of the Fourth Amendment, they may still be protected from unauthorized disclosure or access under the Stored Communications Act (SCA), the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act (CFAA), and the Electronic Communications Privacy Act (ECPA). These statutes, however, would appear to permit law enforcement to access smart meter data for investigative purposes under procedures provided in the SCA, ECPA, and the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA), subject to certain conditions. Additionally, an electric utility’s privacy and security practices with regard to consumer data may be subject to Section 5 of the Federal Trade Commission Act (FTC Act). The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) has recently focused its consumer protection enforcement on entities that violate their privacy policies or fail to protect data from unauthorized access. This authority could apply to electric utilities in possession of smart meter data, provided that the FTC has statutory jurisdiction over them. General federal privacy safeguards provided under the Federal Privacy Act of 1974 (FPA) protect smart meter data maintained by federal agencies, including data held by federally owned electric utilities.

The CRS report notes the incompleteness of the laws applying to smart meters. And – given that the FISA court has recently been shown to rubber-stamp mass surveillance on millions of Americans without any protection – we’re not sure that the current legal protections regarding smart meter data are worth the paper they’re written on.
England is just as bad. As the Telegraph writes:

The devices, which the government plans to install in every home by 2020, will also tell energy firms what sort of appliances are being used, allowing companies to target customers who do not reduce their energy consumption.

Privacy campaigners have expressed horror at the proposals, which come as two million homes have ‘spy’ devices fitted to their rubbish bins by councils who record how much residents are recycling.

***

In its impact assessment, however, the Department for Energy and Climate Change (DECC) says there “is theoretically scope… for using the smart metering communications infrastructure to enable a variety of other services, such as monitoring of vulnerable householders by health authorities or social services departments.”
It adds: “Information from smart meters could also make it possible for a supplier to determine when electricity or gas was being used in a property and, to a degree, the types of technology that were being used within the property. This could be used to target energy efficiency advice and offers of measures, social programmes etc to householders.”
Doretta Cocks, founder of the Campaign for Weekly Waste Collection, said: “This is Orwellian. We’re already under surveillance for what we put outside the home in bins and now we could be watched for what we’re doing inside as well.
***
Guy Herbert, general secretary of NO2ID, said: “Information from smart meters might be useful to energy providers and perhaps even their customers, but there’s no reason for any public authority to have access to it – unless they’ve a warrant to do so.
“This document is a prime example of government efforts to shoehorn data sharing and feature creep into every new policy.
***
The DECC document adds households could even have their power to some appliances turned off remotely to help the national grid if there is too much demand.
***
Consumer Focus, the watchdog, has also expressed concern about the privacy implications of the meters, saying consumers are “at risk of unfair, excessive, inequitable and inefficient charging” because energy companies could use the new data to introduce more complex tariffs to maximise profits at peak times.

And the Age reports that smart meter data from Australian homeowners is shared with random companies:

Detailed information about electricity customers’ power usage, which gives insights into when a house is occupied, is being shared with third parties including mail houses, debt collectors, data processing analysts and government agencies.
Customers with smart meters who sign up for Origin Energy’s online portal must consent to their data being shared with a string of third parties. The data is stored in Australia but shared with US company Tendril, which is described by Origin as a smart energy technology provider.
Australia’s privacy watchdog said the technology could threaten people’s privacy. ”We are starting to see people voicing concern about the level of data that these meters can collect,” federal Privacy Commissioner Timothy Pilgrim said.
***
Mr Pilgrim said electricity companies had a legal responsibility to delete or ”de-identify” personal information that was no longer needed. However, an Origin spokesman said the company kept former customers’ data for retrospective queries and ”tax and compliance purposes”.
The state government aims to install smart meters – which log electricity use every half-hour – in all Victorian homes by the end of next year.
***
Customer information can only be accessed by staff involved in billing. He said the electricity retailer only shared information with third parties when they had a ”legitimate business need to do so in order to meet our service obligations to our customers”.

In the ultimate irony, one of the biggest proponents of smart meters – Northern California’s main utility, Pacific Gas & Electric – was busted in April for spying on anti-smart meter groups:

On Thursday 4th April 2013, the California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC) approved a settlement in its investigation into Pacific Gas and Electric Company (PG&E) for spying on anti-Smart Meter groups.  PG&E will be required to pay $390,000 to the state’s General Fund.
This infiltration by PG&E was part of an on-going surveillance program conducted by PG&E and Edelman, a public relations firm PG&E hired in January of 2010 in response to escalating Smart Meter complaints and problems.
As part of this program, the director of the PG&E Smart Meter program, William “Ralph” Devereaux, other PG&E employees and third parties spied on groups with the knowledge of senior PG&E staff.  PG&E employees and senior management exchanged emails insulting and demeaning the members of the anti-SmartMeter groups.  For example, these PG&E customers were referred to “insurgents.”
PG&E coordinated moving an entire Smart Meter deployment yard to derail a non-violent protest and sent an employee to surreptitiously observe and report on the reactions of the protestors, who also transmitted pictures of them to PG&E.  This “spy” expressed his pleasure in observing and taking photos of anti-SmartMeter activists.

Note: Several utilities – including Pacific Gas & Electric – allow you to opt out of the smart meter program. If you insist, they will remove the smart meter from your home.

Want to disable Facebook facial recognition? Read this.

Want to disable Facebook facial recognition? Read this.(NakedSecurity).Facebook is acquiring facial recognition firm Face.com, for an estimated $60 million.Facebook already uses Face.com's facial recognition technology to help it put a name to faces in photos uploaded to the social network. Now, with the acquisition of Face.com, the technology is coming in house. So what does Facebook facial recognition actually do? There are billions of photographs on Facebook's servers. As your Facebook friends upload their pictures, Facebook will try to determine if any of the photos look like you. And if it finds what it believes to be a match, it may urge one of your Facebook friends to tag the photo with your name. That's what Facebook does with its facial recognition database right now. But nobody knows what it might do with it in the future. Questions which are raised by Facebook's facial recognition capabilities include how securely the database of information is stored, and how else might Facebook try to use it - including whether they might use the data to make money. So.. How can you disable Facebook's facial recognition technology? Sadly, you can't.Read the full story here.

MFS - The Other News

                          Morning Posting.

• Al Jazeera English - Live Streams From Egypt ! Here .
• Egypt protests on Twitter!  here.
• Liveblog - Egypt's protests erupt. here.
• Talks fail to end Egypt protests.Pro-democracy protests continue at Tahrir Square, a day after government held talks with opposition to end turmoil.Pro-democracy protesters are continuing their sit-in in Cairo's Tahrir (Liberation) Square for the fourteenth consecutive day, showing no signs of being appeased by talks held a day earlier between the government and opposition groups.People seeking President Hosni Mubarak's immediate ouster were still camped out in the square on Monday while life was slowly getting back to normal in other parts of the Egyptian capital following a fortnight of turmoil.Some analysts have called the Muslim Brotherhood's participation in the dialogue a major concession. The group had initially refused to participate in any negotiations unless Mubarak resigns.But Essam El-Erian, a member of the MB, Egypt's largest opposition group, told Al Jazeera that it has to participate "in any dialogue that can meet the demands of the people".Barack Obama, the US president, made new remarks on the political situation in Egypt after the meeting. He told the US television network Fox that Egyptians would not permit a repressive government to fill the Mubarak void, adding that the Muslim Brotherhood is only one faction in Egypt."But here's the thing that we have to understand, there are a whole bunch of secular folks in Egypt, there are a whole bunch of educators and civil society in Egypt that want to come to the fore as well."So it's important for us not to say that our own only two options are either the Muslim Brotherhood or a suppressed people."Our correspondent in Cairo said the pro-democracy protesters were still not pleased with Obama's stance on the crisis."Protesters tell me Obama still hasn't come up with any statement that they want to hear," he said."They want immediate change and the feeling among many of them is that the way US is handling this crisis is not good for the way America is perceived both here and in general in the wider region."Hmmmm......Trust me a lot of Americans don't like how Obama handles the events.Read the full story here.

• ElBaradei: The Israelis Have A Peace Treaty With Mubarak, Not With The Egyptian People.Mohamed ElBaradei, one of the key leaders of Egypt's protest movement, has brought his country's peace treaty with Israel into doubt in an interview with Der Spiegel.

SPIEGEL: Are you now saying that a government that included participation by the Muslim Brotherhood would continue on with Mubarak's policies toward Israel?

ElBaradei: No. Something the Israelis also need to grasp is that it's impossible to make peace with a single man. At the moment, they have a peace treaty with Mubarak, but not one with the Egyptian people. The Israelis should understand that it is in their long-term interest to have a democratic Egypt as a neighbor, and that it is prudent to acknowledge the legitimate interests of the Palestinians and to grant them their own state.

SPIEGEL: And, last but not least, do you think you will be Egypt's next president?

ElBaradei: That's not what I'm striving for. But if people's expectations are directed toward me, I will also not disappoint them. I would like to remain independent and maintain a certain distance -- both from the Muslim Brotherhood and US policy.Hmmmmm.......When it looks like a duck and sounds like a duck ,then chances are it is a duck?Read the full fairytale story here.

• Mubarak offered refuge in Germany.German parliamentarians have agreed to allow the out-of-favor Egyptian president into Germany for an extended health checkup as anti-Mubarak protests enter their 14th day. Legislators from Chancellor Angela Merkel's ruling coalition and their Free Democratic partners welcomed the idea to give President Hosni Mubarak what they called a face-saving way to leave power. Foreign Minister Guido Westerwelle, however, refused to comment on the issue during a speech on a local German television. Westerwelle said the government would not make any speculation on such crucial matters. This comes after US media reported that Mubarak would depart for Germany as part of an exit strategy to allow the transition of power in Egypt. The deputy head of the Germany's Left Party, Jan van Aken, earlier said there were images showing German-made weapons being used by the Mubarak regime against protesters. The US is sending warships and other military assets to Egypt as anti-government protests gain momentum. Two US warships have already arrived in the Red Sea, one of which is carrying up to 800 troops. Officials in Washington say the US is preparing for a possible evacuation of Americans from Egypt.Meanwhile, the Pentagon has denied contemplating military intervention in Egypt. It stressed that sending American warships solely serves the purpose of evacuating US citizens in the event that the situation deteriorates.Meanwhile, Egypt's main opposition group, the Muslim Brotherhood, has hailed the Leader of Iran's Islamic Revolution Ayatollah Seyyed Ali Khamenei for supporting the Egyptian revolution. A senior member of the Muslim Brotherhood, Kamal al-Halbavi expressed his gratitude towards Ayatollah Khamenei and all those who backed the Egyptian revolution. Al-Halbavi added that as many political parties are active in Egypt, the national constitution should change to let people choose their parliamentary representatives.Al-Halbavi added that the nation's will must be respected even if they decide to establish an Islamic government.Hmmmm......"If they decide to establish an Islamic government"Well i did not expect a Jewish-Roman Catholic Government from you guys!Read the full story here.

• HT:CanadaFreePress.Obama linked to Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood.President Barack Obama's connection to a key player in the Egyptian rebellion: the radical Islamic group known as the Muslim Brotherhood.While the news media continue its Egyptian-uprising coverage, most of the denizens of U.S. newsrooms are turning a blind eye to President Barack Obama’s connection to a key player in the Egyptian rebellion: the radical Islamic group known as the Muslim Brotherhood which co-sponsored last year’s disasterous “Gaza Aid Flotilla.” The organizer of the blockade-busting action was a known radical group called Free Gaza. The “Free Gaza” flotilla was far more than a collection of innocent “peace activists” trying to provide humanitarian aid to Gaza, as they were portrayed by most news organizations.Free Gaza sponsored the flotilla that engaged in deadly clashes with Israeli special forces troops and among its members were Weather Underground founders William Ayers and Bernadine Dohrn—who perpetrated a series of terrorist attacks—as well as Jodie Evans, the leader of the radical activist organization Code Pink. Besides the U.S. radicals, Islamic groups such as Hamas, Hezbollah and Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood contributed to the flotilla.As is well-known in the United States, Ayers and Dohrn were close associates of President Obama for years in Chicago. Meanwhile, Jodie Evans was a fundraiser and financial bundler for Obama’s presidential campaign. In fact, one of Obama’s fundraisers was held in the home of Ayers and Dohrn.Evans later worked on Attorney General Jerry Brown’s successful run for the governorship of California.“Ayers’ and Dohrn’s continued activities appear to elude the attention of the people responsible for reporting the news without bias. They are terrorists, plain and simple, so why would anyone be surprised to discover their connection to an anti-Semitic organization that supports terror groups such as Hamas, Hezbollah, the Muslim Brother and even al-Qaeda?” asks former New York Police detective Michael Snopes.Obama supporters in the midst of discussion regarding the current Egyptian civil unrest are claiming that the Muslim Brotherhood is not a terrorist organization and that its members are not major players in the Egyptian protests and uprising. They also claim there are no connections between the Obama administration and radical Islamists such as the Muslim Brotherhood, in spite of the activities of Ayers, Dohrn and Evans, who are known associates of the U.S. President.“If the House Republicans, who are now the majority, wish to investigate the current administration and its abysmal performance on national security incidents, they should start with the President’s relationship with far-left radicals and Islamic fascists,” said Det. Snopes.Hmmmm......Hellooooooo......Issa?Read the full story here.

• HT:EU Observer.Turkey clarifies 'fascist' EU claim. BRUSSELS - The European Commission has said Turkish EU affairs Minister Egemen Bagıs could have been "better chosen" his words after he used a Holocaust commemoration event in Auschwitz to say the EU risks emulating "fascist methods of [the] 1930s".On Thursday (3 February) a spokeswoman for EU enlargement commissioner Stefan Fule said Mr Bagis later gave clarifications by phone after his initial comments raised eyebrows in Brussels and further afield."Minister Bagis explained to the commissioner that his words were intended to express his concern at the rising role of some extremist groups in the EU and ... that this could contribute to a potential lessening of tolerance towards minorities," said Natasha Butler. Rising intolerance in the EU and the efforts of Turkish diplomats to save the lives of Jews being persecuted by the Nazi regime were among the topics raised by Mr Bagis is his controversial speech on Tuesday. "The EU, founded in order to eliminate the threats of that period to peace, is today under the risk of being overtaken by a racist mentality that cannot internalise its own values and emulates the fascist methods of 1930s," he told an audience inside the former German concentration camp. "Unfortunately today Turkey and the Turkish people in Europe bear the consequences of being different... Turkish people, implicitly or openly, are being told this: 'You are different and you have no place among us.'""The best response to these people would be to support and adopt the values of the European Union and principles of democracy more. The only remedy for this distorted mentality is Turkey's accession to the EU."Hmmmm....."Turkey is comparing not allowing Turkey into the EU with the Holocaust, while they themselves deny the Armenian Genocide"Read the full story here.

• Mubarak may not be able to step down soon: Clinton.Washington: US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has said Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak might not be able to quit his post as early as being demanded by the protesters as the transition process will take some time to roll out.Clinton described Mubarak's assurance of not running for the presidency again and the dialogue on constitutional reform initiated in the country as "significant actions" but said if Mubarak resigns immediately, presidential election would have to be held in 60 days under the Egyptian constitution.Referring to the Egyptian constitution, she said if the President were to resign, he would be succeeded by the Speaker of the house and presidential elections would have to be held in 60 days, and suggested that this is too short a time to arrive at final constitutional reforms."Now, the Egyptians are the ones who are having to grapple with the reality of what they must do. And maybe I misheard it, but on CNN this morning... one of the leaders in the Muslim Brotherhood, and Al-Baradei, they were saying, 'Well, it's going to take time. Now, that's not us saying it, it's them saying it," she said.Hmmmm.......Somebody realised that it's going to blowup in their faces?Read the full story here.

• HT:BusinessInsider.Senior US Marine Says "Multiple Platoons" Are Headed To Egypt.A senior member of the US Marine corps is telling people "multiple platoons" are deploying to Egypt, a source tells us. There is a system within the US Marines that alerts the immediate families of high-ranking marines when their marine will soon be deployed to an emergency situation where they will not be able to talk to their spouses or families.That alert just went out, says our source.This senior Marine told our source that the Pentagon will deploy "multiple platoons" to Egypt over the next few days and that the official reason will be ‘to assist in the evacuation of US citizens."Our source was told that "the chances they were going over there went from 70% yesterday to 100% today."Hmmmmm............."That the official reason will be..."How about unofficially?Read the full story here.

• HT:IsraelMatzav.Video : 'A new position every 12 hours'.For those of you who have been having a hard time keeping score at home, ABC News' Jake Tapper walks us through the evolving White House positions on Egypt over the past two weeks.Read and see the full story here.

• Turkey's AKP following wrong Iran, Israel policies, says CHP expert.Foreign policy under a Republican People’s Party, or CHP, government will be less divisive than that of the present administration, according to the party’s new vice-chairman on foreign relations.While the ruling Justice and Development Party, or AKP, has made some strides in the foreign policy realm, it has pursued bad policies vis-a-vis Israel, Iran and the European Union, said Osman Korutürk, a career diplomat now tasked with directing the CHP’s foreign policy.Foreign policy under a Republican People’s Party, or CHP, government will be less divisive than that of the present administration, according to the party’s new vice-chairman on foreign relations.“What was good about our relations with Israel in the past was that behind closed doors, we openly talked about mistakes. As a result of our direct contacts, we were able to warn them. If you raise your objections behind closed doors, you are reacted to differently and with sincerity,” Korutürk said. “But if you do this on TV, they get defensive and things get out of hand.”As a result of the AKP’s failure to act discreetly, Turkey’s position has been shaken, he said. “Today, if we go back to mediation between Syria and Israel, do we have a chance to do so? No, we don’t. Israel sees us as a [biased] party. So, others are involved in mediating.”Touching on Iran, Korutürk said although they had different regimes, the two countries’ relations were based on mutual respect. “This should be maintained. But at the same time, we should be able to say it loud and clear if we believe Iran is making a mistake.”Instead of voting against new sanctions on Iran at the United Nations Security Council, Turkey could have abstained, said Korutürk.“We, as Turkey, are always against embargos. But our discourse seen as advocating the Iranian view has caused reservations among our Western partners as to whether we are actually changing our direction,” he said.Hmmmm......Erdogan and Ahmadinejad two hands on one belly!Read the full story here.

• HT:BloggersBase."Democracy" at all costs".The modern elitist crowd is one of moral relativism and short sightedness. There inability or unwillingness to face fact and deal with truth is why the Western World is in the mess it is is. Acting purely on emotion and ideas, no matter how faulty, they create confusion, consternation, frustration, and anger. American politicians claim that Egyptian leader Hosni Mubarak needs to listen to his people while Barack Obama ignores his. Politicians have lived up to the disgust and hatred people have had for them for years. Worse yet, they don't seem to care about how they are viewed. They continue forward with their lies and manipulations and people keep voting for them. In the end, the liars in office are the fault of the people at, or not at, the polls.Barack Obama went to Cairo and gave a speech that basically blamed America and the West for everything that is going wrong in the Middle East and other islamic nations. Not once did he attempt to place blame on their own ignorant hatred for their problems. This is Obama's view of the world. When things go wrong, it isn't the fault of the person that caused it, you have to be able to blame someone else. He does, why should everyone?The change Obama was wanting is in the process of happening. The World is about to become a more dangerous place. Leftists and islamists are in the same court and the leftists refuse to acknowledge that. Thew islamists will use them until they finally get what they want and then the leftists will be decimated. The look of surprise on their faces as they are sent to the gulags will not create sympathy. They are seen now, as they will then, as the cowards they truly are.The Bush doctrine of spreading democracy may have been a noble idea but is a travesty when put into practice. There is a big war coming. It will involve Western Democracy versus islamic "democracy". The stronger willed will win. As of right now, the will favors the islamists.Hmmmm.....Thanks to Obama the Chances of WW III have become a near future reality!Read the full story here.

• HT:ExposeTheMedia.Bye-Bye Bounce: Rassmussen 40% Strongly Disapprove Of Obama.The Rasmussen Reports daily Presidential Tracking Poll for Saturday shows that 23% of the nation’s voters Strongly Approve of the way that Barack Obama is performing his role as president. Forty percent (40%) Strongly Disapprove, giving Obama a Presidential Approval Index rating of -17. Since passing legislation to allow the current tax rates to remain the same, Obama had enjoyed elevated approval ratings. It appears that when Obama abandons his leftist ways and pursues centrist or conservative policies, his numbers improve. If he gets this message, he might be able to dig himself up enough votes next year to get reelected. Something to watch for over the next couple of months.Rasmussen notes that the decline coincides with events unfolding in Egypt. I would say Obama’s WTF State of the Union address probably had something to do with it too. All that “investment” talk did not really fool anybody.Hmmmmm........The ones who still aprove of him ,better get an urgent appointment with their GP they might be braindead soon!Read the full story here.

• Rep. Bachmann blasts Obama, Democrats during GOP dinner in Helena.HELENA -U.S. Rep. Michele Bachmann, R-Minn., drew prolonged, loud cheers and laughs in her speech Saturday night at a Republican dinner as she praised Rep. Denny Rehberg and tore into Democratic President Barack Obama and former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi.Bachmann, a leading speaker on the Republican banquet circuit and founder of the House Tea Party Caucus, said the federal debt was "a heart-palpitating $8 trillion" when Pelosi, a California Democrat, became speaker of the House. It grew to $14 trillion in four years."There was a reason why we had to take the House of Representatives back," she said of the 2010 election. "We had to. We had to. And we did."With Obama in the midst of his "reign of error," she said, the Congressional Budget Office projects that if the president is re-elected - "and by the way, that will not happen" - by the end of his term, the United States will be $20 trillion in debt.She also blasted Obama's environmental, national security and foreign policies"My opinion is we can't shut this president down fast enough," Bachmann said to loud cheers.Hmmmmm.......Actions speak louder then words.Read the full story here.

• Fee revolt: Muslim Students 'mutiny' on Ryanair flight in Spain.Spanish police removed 100 students after they "mutinied" over bag fees this weekend on a Ryanair flight in the Canary Islands.The Irish Examiner sets the scene, writing : Anger erupted on the (Saturday) flight to Charleroi in Belgium after a passenger was stopped at the boarding gate and asked to pay extra for a piece of (over)-sized luggage he was carrying.When the passenger objected, friends who had already passed through the gate came to his defense and scores more joined in as the dispute escalated.Spanish officials say the flight was preparing to take off from the Lanzarote airport when one of the flight's pilots radioed police and asked for their assistance, according to The Scotsman newspaper.In a statement, Ryanair confirms "Lanzarote police required the entire aircraft be offloaded, each passenger identified. Following further disruptive behavior, the police required for security reasons that this entire group be refused travel."Only 64 passengers were allowed to re-board the flight, according to the various media reports. "The rest had to find other carriers or spend the night on Lanzarote," according to the Scotsman.The BBC adds "some of the students -- from the University of Brussels -- were later able to find alternative flights, but about 70 were still stuck on Lanzarote on Sunday evening."Hmmm.....I wonder what would have happened If they would have pulled this at a US Airport?Read the full story here.Ht IslamInEurope.

• Jewish Agency in 'Zyklon B' building.Organization rents offices in Hamburg building once used by company producing gas used to murder millions during Holocaust.The new Jewish Agency offices in Hamburg, Germany, are in a rather surprising location. The building chosen by the Agency was once rented by the company that marketed Zyklon B, the gas used to murder millions during the Holocaust.A few months ago, Agency Chairman Natan Sharansky and Aliyah Dept. Head Eli Cohen decided to seek new offices in Hamburg from where to manage the campaign to encourage aliyah among Jews in the area, provide information about Israel, and nurture ties between Israel and the Diaspora communities. At first, nobody could have imagined which location would be chosen, but in retrospect, the choice seems fitting.On Sunday, many attended a festive opening ceremony. No official representative of Israel was present, but 12 Hamburg residents who had already decided to make aliyah came to support the organization, along with many prominent members of the local Jewish community.Under the large red-brick building they discovered an old plaque in Yiddish which read, "The evil in the world which is not destroyed will rise again".Hmmmm.....How true these words are in this day and age!Read the full story here.

• Iran holds trial session for US hikers trio.The opening session of the trial of three US nationals detained in Iran for illegal entry and charged with espionage has wrapped up in Tehran. The trial, which heard the charges brought against Joshua Fattal, Shane Bauer and Sarah Shourd, was held behind closed doors in Tehran's Revolution Court on Sunday. Shourd was not present at the first session of the trial; however, her lawyer submitted a statement on her behalf.The three have pleaded not guilty. Bauer and Fattal, both 27, along with Shourd, 31, were arrested on Iranian territory in July 2009 after illegally crossing the border from the mountains of northern Iraq's Kurdistan region. Iran released Shourd on a bail of $500,000 in September 2010, 14 months after her arrest. The decision was made because of the detainee's health condition and based on humanitarian grounds.In an interview with Press TV on Sunday, Jafari-Dolatabadi said that crimes related to espionage are dealt with seriously in all countries, adding that the prosecutor must investigate the case accurately and comprehensively. "How they were arrested, what document they had, what they wanted to do, and what secret motives they had… all these made Tehran's Prosecutor General's Office to investigate more," the official said. He also said he would look into allegations by the defendants' lawyer that he had been denied access to his clients. The trial will continue but no date has been set for the next court session.Read the full story here.

• Iran produced smart ballistic missiles.Missiles are supersonic with a speed three times more than the speed of sound.Iran has mass-produced smart ballistic missiles capable of destroying naval targets, the commander of the Islamic Revolution Guards Corps (IRGC) says.Brigadier General Mohammad Ali Jafari made the remark during a news conference on Monday.According to the Iranain commander, the missiles are supersonic with a speed three times more than the speed of sound, immune to interception and feature high precision systems.General Jafari went on to say that the footage of the missiles will be soon released.He said that Iran is currently producing 500-km stealth radars and is also planning to mass-produce long-range passive radars, which are stealth and have a range of 1,100 km.Read the full story here.

• Turkey and Obama’s missile defense system.The idea of a missile defense system, or MDS, is a very important concept for the world these days. The MDS was first seriously thought about in the 1980s by Ronald Regan and was called the Strategic Defense Initiative, or SDI. The United States rejected the SDI at the time due to its high costs. Additionally, the Soviet Union and the United States were reviving their relations throughout the 1980s. Therefore, the U.S. had to give up on the SDI, which was opposed by the Russia and changed by former President George H.W. Bush. The project was not spoken about again until recent days.Today, people are talking about MDS again. President Barack Obama supports a new MDS project covering NATO countries. At this point, Turkey can be an efficient actor in world politics. Accordingly, this study focuses on Turkey’s attitude toward a new MDS.Turkey has been debating its axis of foreign policy, so if Turkey did not accept an MDS, then the EU and NATO could assert that Turkey is moving away from the West. Thereby, Turkey should account the costs and benefits of saying yes or no.Turkey has two nuclear threats: Israel and Iran.Hmmmmmmm...........Turkey has TWO nuclear threats??? Read the full story here.

• Is it a plane ,is it a rocket ?No it's Big Brother coming to a neighbourhood near you SOON !!Unmanned drones, controlled by Air National Guard from Hancock Airfield, will fly over the Adirondacks.If you feel like you’re being watched while floating in a canoe or driving along some lonely road in the Adirondacks this summer, you might be right.In June, the New York Air National Guard’s 174th Fighter Wing in Syracuse plans to begin regular unmanned surveillance flights from Fort Drum over the Adirondacks.The training mission of the drones, called Reapers, will mark the first ongoing flights east of the Mississippi with aircraft that don’t have people in them.The 174th’s New York flights will train pilots (who remotely fly the planes) and sensor operators (who monitor video shot from the plane). The Reapers, or MQ-9s, will be controlled from a station at Hancock Airfield, the same place from which the 174th is flying Reapers over Afghanistan.The New York flights will not be armed and should be undetectable by those on the ground.The new training mission shows the Syracuse air guard unit’s prominence in the growing role of unmanned military aircraft. It also hints at the looming issues of civil liberties and air safety that come with government surveillance by unmanned aircraft over American soil.Once the “sense and avoid” issue is resolved, domestic use of drones is expected to rise rapidly, according to the FAA.As of Dec. 1, the FAA had issued 273 authorizations to fly at least 72 different types of unmanned aircraft. Some are the size of birds and launched by hand. The Miami Dade police department recently bought a RQ-16 T-hawk drone, which takes off vertically, looks like a small robot and can fly as high as 10,000 feet for more than 40 minutes.An unarmed Reaper can fly up to 20 hours, cruise at roughly 180 mph as high as 40,000 feet, loitering over targets.For training maneuvers over New York, the Reapers will randomly follow vehicles or circle over buildings, giving pilots and operators experience watching something on the ground, Dorsey said.Hmmmm......Welcome to the Obama totalitarian policestate.How long before they start taking out US citizens on the streets?Read the full story here.

• HT:TheAmericanDream.Now That The Super Bowl Is Over, Here Are 17 Facts Which Prove America Is A Debt Pig That Is Deeply Addicted To Debt-Fueled Prosperity.Wasn't the Super Bowl wonderful this year? Congratulations to the Green Bay Packers! It is amazing how much money people will spend to attend this game each year. Just a few hours before kickoff, some tickets were selling for over $4000 a seat. Not that it wasn't a great show. It turned out to be a really great game and it was held in perhaps the most extravagant sports facility ever constructed in the history of mankind. Even the halftime show, featuring the Black Eyed Peas, was a spectacle of historic proportions. This year the Super Bowl truly was quite a grand party. In America, everything always has to be bigger and better. We take pride in constantly outdoing ourselves. Other nations of the world look at our great prosperity in envy. But do we ever stop to ask ourselves where all of this great prosperity has come from and if we can continue to afford it all?The sad truth is that we were once the wealthiest, most prosperous nation on the planet, but now we are deeply drowning in debt. America has become a debt pig that is deeply addicted to debt-fueled prosperity. We had more than any other nation on the planet by far, but that was never good enough for us. We always had to have more. So we borrowed and borrowed and borrowed. Now, average household debt is far larger than average household income, state and local governments across the nation are on the verge of default and our national government has piled up the biggest mountain of debt in the history of the world.Just read the statistics compiled below. Is there anyone out there that can deny that America has become a fat, bloated debt pig that is completely and totally out of control?So I hope that you enjoyed the spectacle of Super Bowl Sunday, because there won't be too many more times like this. The greatest debt-fueled party in the history of the world is rapidly coming to an end, and pretty soon it will be time to start turning out the lights.The following are 17 statistics about debt in America that are almost too outrageous to believe....Read the full story here.

• HT:BigGovernment.The (Non) Producers: Obama’s Bialystock and Bloom.Last week President Obama began the blitz which, barring Republican collapse (read on) could last for the next two years, pushing his State of the Union call for American taxpayers to hand over even more billions to underwrite a supposed ‘clean energy’ future.By chance, I read of this between sessions conferring in London and Brussels with leading experts on the disastrous folly of Europe’s experiment with the ‘clean energy economy’. We know that this is the same disaster that President Obama is now doubling down on as an economic recovery plan because he used to admit as much.But in his new push the president has toned down the European roots of his model, as well as the planetary salvation rationale for energy rationing. This is because, respectively, the success stories all proved to be black holes which European governments are now trying to walk back, and the public turned against the global warming campaign.So it was with great amusement that I caught, on my flight back this weekend, some art imitating life in a spectacularly appropriate way. Accountant Leo Bloom revealed to producer Max Bialystock, “under the right circumstances, a producer could actually make more money with a flop than he can with a hit”. Voila! There you have, in a Broadway second, President Obama’s ‘clean energy’ agenda.Obama’s wind and solar boondoggle so far includes – according to his own Council on Economic Advisors – $90 billion in ‘green energy’ stimulus spending for 190,000 inherently temporary jobs (think: census job, as each lasts only so long as the state support, meaning it is yet another state-created bubble). That is $450,000 per job. The pledge to create’ millions of such jobs at your expense is a vow to seal our bankruptcy.Hmmmm......Europe tried the "Green Way" it only resulted in price hikes and job loss!Read the full story here.

• Horrific Video Shows Brutality of Attack on Ahmadiyyah.Horrifying video footage circulating among news organizations in Jakarta shows that Indonesian police were outnumbered and unable to prevent the brutal attacks on members of the Ahmadiyah sect that left three people dead on Sunday in a Banten village.In the 30-minute video —apparently shot in secret by the Indonesian Ahmadiyah Congregation (JAI) — only about 30 police officers can be seen guarding the home of Ahmadiyah cleric Ismail Suparman.They offer little resistance to a mob of about 1,500 people carrying bamboo planks and machetes, and are quickly overwhelmed.Edited excerpts of the video have begun airing on Indonesian TV stations, but the most graphic violence has been left off the air, perhaps to avoid stirring up further religious hatred.Twenty-one Ahmadi’s had been guarding Suparman’s house after he was detained by local police on suspicion he had been proselytizing, which is forbidden under a 2008 ministerial decree restricting Ahmadiyah’s actvities.The video shows police attempting to persuade the Ahmadi to leave the house, with one plain-clothed officer filmed warning the group that a mob was headed for the village.The mob subsequently stormed the village. There were no police barricades erected to prevent clashes.“Police get out. Burn these Ahmadiyah people!” one man shouted.A JAI official who shot the video said members of the mob wore green ribbons to differentiate friends from foes. “It was clear that they were prepared for an attack,” said the man, who spoke on the condition he not be named amid fears for his safety.The footage also shows the mob swarming around two lifeless bodies covered in mud. The Ahmadiyah man said the pair were chased to a nearby rice field where they were killed with bamboo and stone strikes to their heads.The crowd then dragged the bodies along the road. Others were filmed attacking the corpses.The three people who were killed were identified as Roni, 30, Mulyadi, 30, and Tarno, 25. Five other Ahmadiyah members were severely wounded in the incident, including 45 year-old Deden Sujana, whose right arm was nearly severed by a machete.Hmmmmm......Islam the religion of peace.Read the full story here. Warning extremely Graphic footage !Gruesome video emerges of attacks on Ahmadiyya Muslims here.

• HT:NewsRealBlog.The New York Times Equates The Roman Catholic Church To The Radical Islamic Muslim Brotherhood.The New York Times continues to operate in a delusional bubble. In an article last Friday about the Islamist Muslim Brotherhood, entitled “Islamist Group Is Poised to Be a Power in Egypt, but Its Intentions Are Unclear,” the reporter Scott Shane actually compared the Muslim Brotherhood to today’s Catholic Church:As the Roman Catholic Church includes both those who practice leftist liberation theology and conservative anti-abortion advocates, so the Brotherhood includes both practical reformers and firebrand ideologues.The comparison might have made sense five or six hundred years ago when the Catholic Church and the state were intertwined and the Church ordered heretics to be burnt at the stake. But, in case the Times hasn’t noticed, the Church has moved on since then while Islamic sharia law, on which the Muslim Brotherhood’s ideology is based, has not.For example, plenty of Catholics have renounced their faith or committed heresy in recent centuries without the Roman Catholic Church arranging, in league with the state, for them to be put to death or jailed. The Church frowns on marital infidelity but nobody in recent times has been put to death for that sin at the urging of the Church.The Times harbors a particular hostility against the Catholic Church because it promotes views on abortion, homosexuality and other social issues with which the Times strongly disagrees.Hmmmm........New Ground Zero imam: 'Apostates against Islam must be jailed'.Read the full story here.

• HT:CreepingSharia.UK begins crackdown on suspect Islamist groups.The government has already started to withdraw state cash from what it regards as suspect Islamist groups that had previously been funded to reach young Muslims at risk of being drawn to terrorist networks. New, tougher criteria are being applied, with hundreds of thousands of pounds being withdrawn from specific groups after it was deemed they were too soft on Islamic extremism.Ministers are also awaiting a report in the next fortnight from a Universities UK working group, which has been in preparation for a year, on how to combat Islamic extremism on university campuses.Hmmmm......Congressman King??Read the full story here.

• And now for something completely different!The ultimate marathon man: Belgian runner breaks record with 365 Marathons in a single year.A Belgian runner has set a new world record after completing an astonishing 365 marathons in as many days.Stefaan Engels, 49, crossed the finish line on his final race in Barcelona, Spain, after pounding the roads in several countries across Europe and North America in the last year.Dubbed the 'Marathon Man', Mr Engels was diagnosed with asthma as a child and told not to sports.He said he took on the incredible challenge as an example to others.'After running 20 triathlons in one year, I was not ready to go back to normal life,' he said.'I also wanted to inspire people by showing that if I could run a marathon a day for an entire year, that anyone could run or bike a little each day or do something about their weight problem.'Hmmmm......"He Learned his people how to run"?Read the full story here.

• And now for something completely different!'Super pack' of 400 wolves terrorise remote Russian town after killing 30 horses in just four days.A 'super pack' of wolves has been terrifying a town after leaving more than 30 horses dead in just four days.Four hundred bloodthirsty wolves have been spotted prowling around the edges of Verkhoyansk, in Russia, attacking livestock at will.Twenty four teams of hunters have been put together to get rid of the wolves, with a bounty of £210 for every wolf skin brought to officials.Stepan Rozhin, an administration official for the Verkhoyansk district in Russia, said: 'To protect the town we are creating 24 teams of armed hunters, who will patrol the neighbourhood on snowmobiles and set wolf traps.'But we need more people. Once the daylight increases, the hunters will start shooting predators from helicopters.'A pack of wolves this size is unheard of, with the animals usually preferring to hunt in smaller groups of just six or seven.The massive group is believed to be made from hundreds of packs and has left animal experts baffled.Dr Valerius Geist, a wildlife behaviour expert, said the harsh Siberian winter - where temperatures plummet to minus 49C - had killed off the animal's usual prey.Villagers have already managed to snare a number of the animals but the pack is so sizeable that is likely to take some time to deal with.Verkhoyansk, with a population of just 1,300, is one of the coldest and remotest places in the northern hemisphere and lies within an area known as Stalin's Death Ring, after the former dictator sent political exiles there due to the extreme conditions.Read the full story here.