America is fighting so many bad guys that it is a bit confusing at times……we are fighting a do nothing Congress, and China over trade and Russia over Ukraine and ISIS just because and then there is the big one…..the Ebola outbreak.
The battle against the Ebola virus is a fight that needs to be fought……if we can keep it in Africa then the US and the rest of the world will be safe from the pandemic that some are predicting……if you think that was a callous statement on my part then I will agree…it was….but everything we are doing appears to be just that….keep it in Africa.
As part of his promised “scaled-up response” to the Ebola outbreak in West Africa, President Obama is expected to announce during a visit to the CDC today that the US will be sending 3,000 military personnel in an effort that could cost up to $750 million over the next six months, the Washington Post reports. The American contingent, which will take about two weeks to set up, aims to build 17 health care facilities with 100 beds each and train up to 500 health workers a week, the AP reports; the US will set up headquarters in Monrovia, Liberia. “This is a really significant response,” one global health expert tells the Post. “This is really beginning to seem like a game-changer.”
The US announcement comes as the head of Doctors Without Borders warns that the international response is “dangerously behind,” adds the AP. The military workers will also help distribute home health-care kits and educate locals on how to handle the disease, according to the AP. “This humanitarian intervention should serve as a firewall against a global security crisis that has the potential to reach American soil,” says Sen. Chris Coons, who has been pushing for increased US intervention. The UN Security Council will hold a rare emergency meeting on Thursday to talk about the public health crisis.
Sounds like we are trying to keep the virus in Africa, at least to me, it does.
My next point is….where do we find an “extra” $750 million to fund this operation? Was it between the cushions on the Oval Office couch?
We should work to help with the control and the cure, if possible…….but it appears that the US will once again be doing the heavy lifting on this issue……
This is going to be today’s NYT’s OPED. (Technically, you’re not supposed to see this until after 12:01 Eastern, so I’ll have to paste the raw article as it hasn’t been cleared for pub yet).
Israel’s NSA Scandal
BC-OPED-BAMFORD-ISRAEL-NSA-ART-NYTSF
JAMES BAMFORD
© 2014 The New York Times
(HOLD FOR RELEASE: THIS STORY MAY NOT BE POSTED ONLINE, BROADCAST OR PUBLISHED BEFORE 12:01 A.M. EASTERN, ON WEDNESDAY, SEPT. 17, 2014.
By JAMES BAMFORD
c.2014 The New York Times
Distributed by The New York Times Syndicate
WASHINGTON – In Moscow this summer, while reporting a story for Wired magazine, I had the rare opportunity to hang out for three days with Edward J. Snowden. It gave me a chance to get a deeper understanding of who he is and why, as a National Security Agency contractor, he took the momentous step of leaking hundreds of thousands of classified documents.
Among his most shocking discoveries, he told me, was the fact that the NSA was routinely passing along the private communications of Americans to a large and very secretive Israeli military organization known as Unit 8200. This transfer of intercepts, he said, included the contents of the communications as well as metadata such as who was calling whom.
Typically, when such sensitive information is transferred to another country, it would first be “minimized,” meaning that names and other personally identifiable information would be removed. But when sharing with Israel, the NSA evidently did not ensure that the data was modified in this way.
Snowden stressed that the transfer of intercepts to Israel contained the communications – email as well as phone calls – of countless Arab- and Palestinian-Americans whose relatives in Israel and the Palestinian territories could become targets based on the communications. “I think that’s amazing,” he told me. “It’s one of the biggest abuses we’ve seen.”
It appears that Snowden’s fears were warranted. Last week, 43 veterans of Unit 8200 – many still serving in the reserves – accused the organization of startling abuses. In a letter to their commanders, to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and to the head of the Israeli army, they charged that Israel used information collected against innocent Palestinians for “political persecution.” In testimonies and interviews given to the media, they specified that data were gathered on Palestinians’ sexual orientations, infidelities, money problems, family medical conditions and other private matters that could be used to coerce Palestinians into becoming collaborators or create divisions in their society.
The veterans of Unit 8200 declared that they had a “moral duty” to no longer “take part in the state’s actions against Palestinians.” An Israeli military spokesman disputed the letter’s overall drift but said the charges would be examined.
It should trouble the American public that some or much of the information in question – intended not for national security purposes but simply to pursue political agendas – may have come directly from the NSA’s domestic dragnet. According to documents leaked by Snowden and reported by the British newspaper The Guardian, the NSA has been sending intelligence to Israel since at least March 2009.
The memorandum of agreement between the NSA and its Israeli counterpart covers virtually all forms of communication, including but not limited to “unevaluated and unminimized transcripts, gists, facsimiles, telex, voice and Digital Network Intelligence metadata and content.” The memo also indicates that the NSA does not filter out American communications before delivery to Israel; indeed, the agency “routinely sends” unminimized data.
Although the memo emphasizes that Israel should make use of the intercepts in accordance with United States law, it also notes that the agreement is legally unenforceable. “This agreement,” it reads, “is not intended to create any legally enforceable rights and shall not be construed to be either an international agreement or a legally binding instrument according to international law.”
It should also trouble Americans that the NSA could head down a similar path in this country. Indeed, there is some indication, from a top-secret 2012 document from Snowden’s leaked files that I saw last year, that it already is. The document, from Gen. Keith B. Alexander, then the director of the NSA, notes that the agency had been compiling records of visits to pornographic websites and proposes using that information to damage the reputations of people whom the agency considers “radicalizers” – not necessarily terrorists, but those attempting, through the use of incendiary speech, to radicalize others. (The Huffington Post has published a redacted version of the document.)
In Moscow, Snowden told me that the document reminded him of the FBI’s overreach during the days of J. Edgar Hoover, when the bureau abused its powers to monitor and harass political activists. “It’s much like how the FBI tried to use Martin Luther King’s infidelity to talk him into killing himself,” he said. “We said those kinds of things were inappropriate back in the ’60s. Why are we doing that now? Why are we getting involved in this again?”
It’s a question that American and Israeli citizens should be asking themselves.
(James Bamford is the author of three books on the National Security Agency, including “The Shadow Factory: The Ultra-Secret N.S.A. from 9/11 to the Eavesdropping on America.”)
Keywords:Opinion, world, Israel, National Security Agency, NSA, Middle East, Edward J. Snowden
This what we have always suspected and feared. The authoritative militarists in this country have no shame in crushing their political adversaries, doing whatever it takes.
Nasty, isn’t it? The US supplying all the tools necessary for Israel to blackmail innocent Palestinians.
“So my lad, Mustafa, if you don’t want everyone to know you’re gay, you just have to do a little thing for us…”
I understand building the clinics…..but what does it mean “stop the spread of Ebola”? and why troops?
Cool, thanx……