Health Care Systems and Medical Devices at Risk for Increased Cyber Intrusions for Financial Gain

• 2 pages
• April 8, 2014

(U) Cyber actors will likely increase cyber intrusions against health care systems—to include medical devices—due to mandatory transition from paper to electronic health records (EHR), lax cybersecurity standards, and a higher financial payout for medical records in the black market.

(U) The deadline to transition to EHR is January 2015, which will create an influx of new EHR coupled with more medical devices being connected to the Internet, generating a rich new environment for cyber criminals to exploit. According to open source reporting from SANS, Ponemon, and EMC²/RSA, the health care industry is not technically prepared to combat against cyber criminals’ basic cyber intrusion tactics, techniques and procedures (TTPs), much less against more advanced persistent threats (APTs). The health care industry is not as resilient to cyber intrusions compared to the financial and retail sectors, therefore the possibility of increased cyber intrusions is likely.

(U) A SANS report dated February 2014, indicates health care security strategies and practices are poorly protected and ill-equipped to handle new cyber threats exposing patient medical records, billing and payment organizations, and intellectual property. Data analysis revealed multiple devices (e.g., radiology imaging software, digital video systems, faxes, printers) and security application systems (e.g., Virtual Private Networks (VPN), firewalls, and routers) were compromised. Once medical devices are compromised, malicious traffic is transmitted through VPNs and firewalls. The biggest vulnerability was the perception of IT health care professionals’ beliefs that their current perimeter defenses and compliance strategies were working when clearly the data states otherwise.

(U) According to a Ponemon Institute report dated March 2013, 63% of the health care organizations surveyed reported a data breach in the past two years with an average monetary loss of $2.4 million per data breach. The majority of each data breach resulted in the theft of information assets. Lastly, 45% reported that their organizations have not implemented security measures to protect patient information.

(U) An EMC²/RSA White Paper published in 2013 indicated that in the first half of 2013, over two million health care records were compromised, which was 31% of all reported data breaches. Cyber criminals are selling the information on the black market at a rate of $50 for each partial EHR, compared to $1 for a stolen social security number or credit card number. EHR can then be used to file fraudulent insurance claims, obtain prescription medication, and advance identity theft. EHR theft is also more difficult to detect, taking almost twice as long as normal identity theft.

(U) Reporting Notice

(U) The FBI encourages recipients of this document to report information concerning suspicious or criminal activity to the local FBI field office. The FBI’s 24/7 Strategic Information and Operations Center can be reached by telephone at 202-323-3300 or by e-mail at SIOC@ic.fbi.gov. FBI regional phone numbers can be found online at http://www.fbi.gov/contact/fo/fo.htm. When available, each report submitted should include the date, time, location, type of activity, number of people, and type of equipment used for the activity, the name of the submitting company or organization, and a designated point of contact.

FBI Cyber Division Bulletin: Health Care Systems and Medical Devices at Risk for Increased Cyber Intrusions
Public Intelligence
Tue, 06 May 2014 00:46:12 GMT

 
Charleston Voice
Beyond the technology companies who have been involved in the NSA spying program revealed by Edward Snowden via Glenn Greenwald at The Guardian, there is a large list of corporations who are providing essential services to the NSA.

Many of them aren’t publicly known as much of the spending is done on “black budgets.” But thanks to leaks by Snowden, it has been revealed that as much as 70% of the US intelligence budget goes to private contractors. (via policymic)
While earning a living and ensuring that a company provides a great return for investors is a proper function, helping the greatest violation of human privacy in the history of the world is not.
We will add companies to this list as research and information reveals them. Please help us dig for facts as well. If you know of a corporate contract with NSA, contact us to let us know!
Georgia Power “is the largest subsidiary of Southern Company, one of the nation’s largest generators of electricity.” It provides electricity to the NSA spying facility in Augusta, Georgia.
“Before a partnership in 2006 with Georgia Power, outages were a regular occurrence on post, particularly during the summer, when heavy demands were placed on the system.” (Augusta Chronicle)
SourceAmerica (formerly NISH) is a nonprofit organization that fits agency needs with the skills of job seekers with disabilities. It is providing grounds maintenance and snow removal contractors in Utah. (via DefenseOne)
Corporate Office Properties Trust (COPT), a publicly traded company based in Maryland, owns the forthcoming San Antonio facility, the Texas Cryptologic Center, and leases it to the NSA. (viaHouston Chronicle)
Vupen is a French hacking tools company, under contract with the NSA (via Mashable)
Intercontinental Hotels operate the hotel rooms at Fort Gordon. “The company has upgraded rooms, added wireless Internet, accommodated pets and improved customer service.” they’ve done a “phenomenal job” and allowed Fort Gordon to focus on its core mission. (Augusta Chronicle)
Rocky Mountain Power provides electricity to the new Utah Data Center in Bluffdale, UT. “Utah’s largest electric utility has known for several years the Utah Data Center would need a lot of energy to power its huge banks of computers. That gave Rocky Mountain Power ample time to ensure it had the resources to meet that additional demand on its system.” (via Salt Lake Tribune)
SAIC has a somewhat symbiotic relationship with the NSA: The agency is the company’s largest single customer, and SAIC is the NSA’s largest contractor. (via crocodyl)
Big-D Construction is one of three major contractors who built the Utah Data Center (via Wired) and reports are that they’ll be in a continuing relationship to service the center’s facilities as needed.
SI International, Inc. of McLean, Va., is a key NSA contractor now owned by Serco Inc. of the UK, the world’s largest outsourcing company. SI runs some of the NSA’s support and management functions. Its niche is advising intelligence and defense agencies on their acquisition and outsourcing strategies. (via crocodyl)
Narus, Part of Boeing – developed and provides the software “programs that conduct “deep packet inspection,” examining Internet traffic as it passes through the 10-gigabit-per-second cables at the speed of light.” (via Wired)
Baltimore Gas and Electric provides the electricity to NSA HQ in Maryland. In 2006, the grid was maxed out, encouraging the agency to look to other locations in order to continue its “mission” and expand it. “The cost of electricity at Fort Meade, provided by Baltimore Gas and Electric, was probably one of NSA’s single biggest expenses, said Matthew Aid, author of The Secret Sentry:
The Untold History of the National Security Agency (Bloomsbury Press, 2009). He estimated the agency could end up spending 95 percent less on electricity in Utah than in Maryland.” (via NextGov)
BAE Systems has been awarded a multi-year $127 million contract to provide infrastructure and software development support to the National Security Agency’s (NSA) High Performance Computing Infrastructure Group. (via BusinessWire)
Zachary Piper hires cable technicians to pull, terminate, and test miles and miles of copper and fiber cables for NSA in Utah.
Hensel Phelps and Kiewit – this joint venture has been awarded a design-build contract for the new Maryland-based “High Performance Computing Center 2 (HPCC2) via DataCenterDynamics)
exp Federal, Inc. provides facilities security escorts and guides to the Utah Data Center.
Raytheon developed and operates the NSA’s “Perfect Citizen” program (via CNET)
Arrowhead Global Solutions is a leading provider of satellite and terrestrial telecommunications, professional services, server-based communication networks and integrated information technology solutions. It is awarded contracts with the NSA regularly.
SI International provides human resources support services (viaPRNewswire) at NSA HQ and potentially elsewhere.
PUBLIC UTILITIES AND CORPORATIONS
CPS Energy, Texas
PREVIOUS CONTRACTS – RESEARCH FOR CURRENT CONTRACTS PENDING:
IBM
General Dynamics
L-3 Communications
TopSecretProtection
Harris Corporation
Dakota State University
via offnow.org
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Oppose Corporations Helping NSA Spying
noreply@blogger.com (Charleston Voice)
Tue, 06 May 2014 00:20:07 GMT

Tonight on The KBS the guys, Kev Baker, John Sinclair “The Whistler” & Martin Hardy are joined by regular guest & researcher, Dulan.

As the violence intensifies in the East of Ukraine, the guys give their views on what is going down on the edge of Europe.

And, in a true Truth Frequency “Sync”, Kev and the guys decided a few weeks back to keep on top of the cutting edge viral info brought to them by Dulan, as Kev and the team felt this would potentially become a big story, and with the first cases hitting the USA, the guys have been proved right. Tune in to get the latest on the MERS virus and so much more…

website: www.facebook.com/Truthtube451

As WW3 Looms, The Elites Unleash Their Brand Of MERS-Y
kevbaker
Tue, 06 May 2014 00:00:00 GMT

Twitter / CAchemtrails: http://t.co/ct7kGu1yXz.

Christina Sarich
Published: Monday 5 May 2014
The secret cabal’s control over international markets is becoming less of a mystery as increasing numbers of markets reveal themselves so obviously to be fixed.
Just in case you haven’t been keeping up with the ‘tin-foil’ hat conspiracies, increasingly proven to be true, the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, is the center of a secret global economy that has bailed out American International Group Inc., huge insurance companies like AIG, Goldman Sachs Group Inc., Merrill Lynch & Co., J.P. Morgan,Societe Generale and Deutsche Bank AG, among others.
The secret cabal’s control over international markets is becoming less of a mystery as increasing numbers of markets reveal themselves so obviously to be fixed. The cabal cheats the 99 percent with Libor interest rates, foreign exchanges, and gold, silver, and platinum price fixing. Then there’s high-frequency trading (HFT), where Wall Street banks use supercomputers to monitor incoming stock market orders, analyze their likely impact on prices, and place orders ahead of those trades to capture a bit of the price impact, called ‘stealing’ if it were properly named.
HFT data helps to explain the frenzy in today’s markets: The most aggressive firms tend to earn the biggest profits, hence the incentive to trade as quickly and as often as possible. Furthermore, these traders make their money at the expense of everyone else, including less-aggressive high- frequency traders. It is simply the latest and greatest scam on stock holders looking for real value in a company, thinking they can compete with the big guys.
Just a few weeks ago, 132 nations decided they’ve had enough of the ‘secret’ money jig we’ve all been dancing to. One of the largest coalitions of developing nations in history has urged Secretary-General of the United Nations Ban Ki-moon, to provide, “as soon as possible…alternative options for banking services.” 132 countries, including China are done with the funny money scheme.
This comes on the heels of a mass cancellation of bank accounts in U.N. missions and those of foreign US diplomats. The G77 urges the secretary-general to review the “U.N. Secretariat’s financial relations with the JP Morgan Chase Bank and consider alternatives to such financial institutions and to report thereon, along with the information requested.”
JP Morgan is the left arm of the cabal, along with other ‘big banks’ who were benefactors of billions in our tax money. They have shorted silveralong with Citibank to increase their physical silver holdings by 500%. They are also the ‘big bank,’ along with Chase that failed to stopPonzi-schemer Bernard Madoff. Why do that? He was cut from the same clothe as their top executives.
JPMorgan Chase & Co CEO Jamie Dimon pleaded with and complained to the U.S. Justice Department a few years back but couldn’t convince the government to end its criminal probe of his bank because prosecutors couldn’t figure out just how crooked this banking system really was.
Banks like these helped crash our economies, and they are trying to do the same now, so that they can profit from it.
The problem for countries around the world is simple: Chase bank currently handles billions in accounts maintained by the United Nations and its agencies, in guess where – NEW YORK CITY.
The countries express a ‘deep concern’ over the decisions made by several other banking institutions, known puppets for the cabal, including JP Morgan Chase, in closing bank accounts for mostly developing countries. The resolution proposed, still subject to amendments cites a 1947 agreement between the US and UN, which:

“. . .guarantees the rights, obligations and the fulfillment of responsibilities by member states towards the United Nations, under the United Nations Charter and international law.”

It also points out the 1961 Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations as a regulatory framework for states and international organizations, specifcically the working relationship between the United Nations and the City of New York.
The countries have put forth the G77 as a means to utilize, “all necessary measures to ensure permanent missions accredited to the United Nations and their staff are granted equal, fair and non-discriminatory treatment by the banking system.”
At secret meetings around the G77 last month, representative after representative from these countries severely criticized the American banking system from cutting off banking services from the diplomatic community, specifically directing their outrage at JP Morgan Chase (formerly Chemical bank).
The accounts were closed when a request from the US treasury asked banks to report every single transaction of 70 ‘blacklisted’ diplomats as part of a monitoring system, just a new way that bankers are spying on all of us. Aside from a network of cameras, run buy the NSA, and a program with a codename of ‘Dishfire’ they also now indulge in practices which make you no different than America’s ‘enemies,’ or diplomats of emerging economies sick of being bullied by the petro-dollar:
1.  Every time you swipe your credit or debit card, the transaction is scored to gauge the risk of fraud.
2.  Banks use ‘behavior’ scores to figure out how you consume and deny you credit or increase your mortgage rates based on that behavior.
3.  Deposit behavior is also gauged. If you save a little or a lot, they are watching that and plugging in the data to determine whether or not to lend you more funny money.
4.  Investments and income are assessed utilizing a ‘wealth estimator.’ This also affects what financial products you have access to, and what you will pay for them.
5.  Both US and UK spy agencies avert internet encryption to look at your private emails, medical information and banking habits.
via nationofchange

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132 Nations Want Out of the Cabal Banking System
noreply@blogger.com (Charleston Voice)
Tue, 06 May 2014 01:29:55 GMT

http://clearingthefogradio.org/saving-on-health-care-at-the-cost-of-peoples-health/

http://americanoverlook.com/m/article.php?id=16407

http://viralsurvival.com/2014/04/30/john-roberts-signed-off-on-obamas-removal-for-treason/

http://www.mlive.com/news/grand-rapids/index.ssf/2014/05/rep_justin_amash_reportedly_th.html

» Holder’s Latest Scandal: DOJ Now Pressuring Banks to Refuse Service to Gun Stores Alex Jones’ Infowars: There’s a war on for your mind!.

Operation Choke Point also targets other legal businesses for political reasons

Kit Daniels
Infowars.com
April 30, 2014

Comment from Alex Jones: This is a classic example of criminal racketeering. Holder is shutting down businesses just like the Nazis targeted the assets and later the companies of Jews in the 1930′s. The DoJ has been caught shipping guns to drug dealers, terrorists and gang members in Mexico under Fast and Furious, yet Holder is targeting legitimate, lawful gun shops. This is completely outside of the law and resembles the behavior of a dictatorship. Impeachment proceedings must begin immediately.

For the past several months, the U.S. Department of Justice has been pressuring banks to refuse service to businesses the DOJ is targeting politically, such as gun stores, in a program entitled Operation Choke Point.

Under the program, the DOJ, headed by Attorney General Eric Holder, is attempting to shut down various legal businesses, including firearm dealers, dating services, purveyors of drug paraphernalia and pornography distributors, by coercing financial institutions to close the bank andmerchant accounts associated with these businesses.

The businesses targeted follow a 2011 Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation bulletin which lists all of the above legal activities and others as “merchant categories that have been associated with high-risk activity” involving “disreputable merchants.”

“Although many clients of payment processors are reputable merchants, an increasing number are not and should be considered ‘high risk,’” the bulletin reads. “These disreputable merchants use payment processors to charge consumers for questionable or fraudulent goods and services.”

In other words, the FDIC, and now the DOJ, are trying to demonize gun shops by causing banks to view legal firearm dealers as no different than pushers of “ponzi schemes” and “get rich products,” two “high-risk” activities that are also listed in the bulletin.

In 2012, Bank of America told a gun company, McMillan Group International, that because the company was expanding into firearms manufacturing, the bank no longer wanted McMillan’s business.

“We have to assess the risk of doing business with a firearms-related industry,” the bank’s representative told operations director Kelly McMillan.

Last month, BitPay, a U.S.-based bitcoin processor, likewise refused to do business with gun dealerMichael Cargill of Central Texas Gunworks due to a similar policy.

And also in March, a Florida couple who own a gun store received a letter from BankUnited informing them that the bank was closing their business account, which they opened seven years prior, and gave them three days to transfer their money elsewhere.

“I was very angry,” Elizabeth Liberti told the Miami New Times. “They were very inconsiderate. We had all our credit cards going through that bank.”

“All of a sudden, we had to run and find another bank to keep our business going. We shut down for two weeks, and they wouldn’t even tell us why.”

BankUnited finally gave them a reason some time later.

“This letter in no way reflects any derogatory reasons for such action on your behalf, but rather one of industry,” wrote branch manager Ricardo Garcia. “Unfortunately your company’s line of business is not commensurate with the industries we work with.”

And it isn’t just gun stores that the Justice Dept. is targeting.

Last week, Xbiz, a news outlet pertaining to adult entertainment, reported that Chase Bank was sending out letters to hundreds of porn stars notifying them that their accounts would be terminated.

“I got a letter and it was like please cancel all transactions, please fix your automatic pay account and make sure everything’s taken care of by May 11,” actress Teagan Presley told Xbiz. “I called them and they told me that because I am, I guess, public and am recognizable in the adult business, they’re closing my account.”

“Even though I don’t use my account, it’s my personal account that I’ve had since I was 18, when it was Washington Mutual before Chase bought them out.”

And when Presley went to Bank of America to open a new account, the bank also turned her away.

An adult industry attorney, Michael Fattorosi, told Xbiz that banks in the past have “notoriously closed adult accounts or people in the industry’s accounts, but nothing like this.”

That’s because this discrimination is coming straight from the Justice Dept.

Jason Oxman, the CEO of the Electronic Transactions Association, recently revealed the massive scope of Operation Choke Point, which he indicated was also targeting ammunition sales.

The DOJ is ensuring the banks’ cooperation by threatening them “with subpoenas, civil investigative demands, and other burdensome and costly legal demands,” he wrote on The Hill. “And it’s working – payments companies across the country are cutting off service to categories of merchants that – although providing a legal service – are creating the potential for significant financial and reputational harm as law enforcement publicizes its activities.”

The Justice Dept.’s ultimate goal is to shut down these businesses completely.

This article was posted: Wednesday, April 30, 2014 at 12:44 pm

Smoke and flames rise as three tanker cars carrying Bakken crude slide into the James River on Wednesday. (Photo: Waterkeeper Alliance Inc./cc/via flickr)The fiery train derailment that struck the town of Lynchburg, Virginia should serve as a wake-up call for the dangers of transporting crude by rail as well as for the need for a renewable transformation, environmental groups charge.

read more

Latest Oil Train Derailment a ‘Wake-up Call’ for Renewable Energy
andrea
Thu, 01 May 2014 16:43:57 GMT

Rocky Mountain High School, Colorado (Image from 999thepoint.com)
Florida conservatives, evidently alarmed by changing social and income demographics, are pushing legislation to combat what they say is the attempted indoctrination of American students with Islamic ideology.
Lawmakers are currently considering a so-called “anti-Sharia bill” which passed through the state Senate with a 24-14 vote on Monday. Sharia, which varies between cultures, is the basic path which devout Muslims try to follow. The rules, while strict by Western standards, often stretch past the confines of a mosque and regulate aspects of secular law, including crime, public policy, sex, diet, and economics.
“Those people who want to come to America, we welcome them, but when you come to America, you are going to be governed under American laws, when you come to Florida you are going to be governed by Florida laws, and we ought not to apologize for that,” Sen. Alan Hays, a Republican, told the Orlando Sentinel after the bill passed through the state Senate.
While the bill will now move to the state House of Representatives for approval, members of the Senate were still wondering who, exactly, is trying to impose Islamic restrictions on the mostly Christian Florida population. According to a recent analysis from the Pew Research Center, a mere one percent of Florida’s population is Muslim, compared to the 66 percent of Floridians who practice some form of Christianity.
“There is no record of Sharia law being implemented in the courts of Florida or any other state,” Sen. Eleanor Sobel, a Democrat who opposed the bill, told the Sentinel.
Officials were similarly confused when educators, in an apparent attempt to break down cultural barriers, came under attack from members of their community who were trying to do the opposite.
A controversy erupted in Volusia County, Florida in November when a student brought her social studies textbook home to her parents, who found that the curriculum dedicated a specific section to the history and beliefs of Islam. Experts told the Daytona News Journal that the rest of the book was full of references to Christianity and Judaism, but the first complaint blossomed into a contingency of parents who felt that their rights were somehow being infringed upon.
“We hope that the School Board will respect our voices in the process of education and reject voices of intolerance and censorship,” a petition calling on administrators to replace the book read. The document failed to explain how an education based on the knowledge of various religions equated to censorship.
Conservatives in Colorado were equally upset when a Muslim student led the rest of the school in the Pledge of Allegiance while replacing the traditional “under God” with “under Allah.” The pledge was adopted in US schools in 1942 at the height of World War II but was only amended to include “under God” a decade later, as a way for Americans to differentiate themselves from the Soviet Union’s atheism policy during the Cold War.
Colorado’s Cultural Arms Club, which advertises its mission to “destroy the barriers, embrace the cultures” that exist throughout the region, organized the “under Allah” pledge at Rocky Mountain High School. It quickly came under fire from parents who felt that it would be unpatriotic to utter the pledge in any form other than the traditional one.
“These students love this country,” school principal Tom Lopez told Fox News at the time. “They were not being un-American in trying to do this. They believed they were accentuating the meaning of the words as spoken regularly in English.”
The problem, Lopez said, was not that the school was trying to be more inclusive, but that a vocal fraction of the community was so up in arms.
“I’ve been shocked with prejudicial statements that have been made,” he continued. “I’ve been shocked with the lack of seeking understanding. There’s definitely some suspicion and fear expressed in these people’s minds. There’s some hate,” he said.
Like Principal Lopez, a growing number of pundits and lawmakers have called for more information on Islamic culture and beliefs. Even now, more than a decade after religious tension heightened in the wake of the September 11, 2001 terror attacks, nearly two-thirds of Americans asked about other world faiths admitted they had “little or no knowledge” about what Muslims believe, according to New York University professor Jonathan Zimmerman.
“To live together as citizens of a nation, we need to understand each other’s fundamental assumptions and beliefs about the world,” Zimmerman wrote in the New York Daily News. “And we can’t do that without understanding religion, which remains the basic wellspring of those beliefs for many of us.”
Delivered by The Daily Sheeple

---

Contributed by RT of RT.com.

‘One nation under Allah’: FL conservatives push for anti-Sharia legislation
Contributing Author
Thu, 01 May 2014 16:00:58 GMT

Image courtesy: DNAInfo.com.
By Leo Hohmann
Teachers at a New York City high school fired a shot across the bow of the concept of a nationalized education industry Thursday, becoming the first in that state to refuse to administer a standardized test tied to the controversial Common Core national standards.
The boycott by teachers at Prospect Heights International School in Brooklyn comes amid a small but growing “opt out” movement in which thousands of parents across the country have refused to let their children sit for standardized tests tied to Common Core’s data-hungry student assessment industry.
The state assessments are given at least twice a year, and a growing number of parents are choosing to “opt out,” saying the tests cause anxiety and other health problems in young children. Still others have refused the tests because of data mining conducted on students by the companies that write and analyze the tests.
If the movement needed a jolt, it came from the most unlikely of places, a high school that caters mostly to New York City’s immigrant community. About 95 percent of the students at Prospect Heights are learning English as a second language.
The teachers held a press conference Thursday morning to announce their refusal to administer the NYC English Language Arts Performance Assessment. They were photographed by friends and family holding signs that said “Fewer tests, fewer tears” and other slogans. They said they refused to administer a test that is part of the new teacher evaluation system pushed by Mayor Bloomberg and the United Federation of Teachers as part of Common Core.
No fewer than half the parents at Prospect Heights have opted their children out of the test, according to an April 28 letter sent to the school system chancellor by 30 teachers and staff, a copy of which has been obtained by WND.
In accordance with Common Core standards, part of teachers’ annual evaluations is tied to the test scores their students receive on state-sponsored, standardized tests.
See just what’s going on in public schools, in “IndoctriNation: Public Schools and the decline of Christianity in America.”
“We understand our decision to abstain from administering the test may impact aspects of our evaluations. Despite the potentially negative consequences, our professional judgment dictates that we cannot participate in this assessment,” the letter from the teachers stated. “We are not willing to sacrifice the trust of our students, their feelings of self worth, and our professional duty to do what is best for them.
“In good conscience, as educators dedicated to the learning of our students and the welfare of our school communities, we are not administering this test.”
Fred Klonsky, in a blog picked up by ReclaimReform.com, an education reform website, photographed the teachers, one of which was his daughter, at Thursday’s protest.
“This morning teachers and staff at the International High School at Prospect Heights are rebelling against the wrong that standardized testing has become,” Fred Klonsky wrote. “Each staff member – teachers, psychologists and paraprofessionals – has signed on to a letter to the new New York City Schools Chancellor, Carmen Fariña.
“Among the dedicated teachers whose name is on the letter printed below is my daughter Jessica Klonsky. She is a teacher at this wonderful Brooklyn high school serving the community’s immigrant students. She is a veteran of more than a dozen years.”
This latest salvo in the battle against Common Core testing in New York is likely to echo loudly in states like Georgia, Alabama, California, New Jersey and Colorado, all of which have their own nascent “opt out” movements.
But this is the first time a group of teachers have taken such a bold move against Common Core in New York, which is considered a national leader in the opt-out movement. The NYC teachers sent the letter to Schools Chancellor Carmen Fariña urging her to drop the test for the city’s immigrant students still learning English.
The letter said the New York ELA Performance Exam was made “without any thought to the 14 percent of New York City students for whom English is not their first language.”

Teachers refuse to do standardized tests
-NO AUTHOR-
Fri, 02 May 2014 02:39:23 GMT

(Washington Times) President Obama’s trips this year to the golfing playgrounds of Palm Springs and Key Largo cost taxpayers nearly $3 million for flight expenses alone, according to Air Force records.
The activist group Judicial Watch said the trips in February and March cost $2,952,278 for flight expenses of Air Force One.
Mr. Obama combined his trip to Palm Springs with an event to highlight California’s severe drought. Critics noted he spent the rest of the weekend golfing on exclusive courses in the desert that use about 1 million gallons of water per day to keep them green.

Obama’s golf-trip flights cost $3 million
-NO AUTHOR-
Fri, 02 May 2014 01:54:18 GMT

Charleston Voice: Rothschild Governance Graphic Chart – Who They Own, Who They Control.

This past week, we received confirmation from some previously classified emails that were forcibly released to the public through a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit that the entire Obama White House communications team was in on the false narrative created in the wake of Benghazi. The emails between top White House communications staffers, including Ben
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Impeachment Demands Explode After Benghazi Truth Finally Revealed
Hunter Pearce
Thu, 01 May 2014 23:09:06 GMT

image source
Brandon Turbeville
Activist Post
Despite an attempt by Western media outlets to present the recently captured individuals in eastern Ukraine as OSCE (Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe) observers, evidence has now emerged demonstrating yet again that the presentation provided by these outlets is actually quite far from the truth.
Indeed, those men captured by pro-Russian militias in East Ukraine are not OSCE observers at all, but were sent to Ukraine by NATO countries and OSCE member nations under the auspices of the Vienna Document on military transparency. This group included no OSCE monitors whatsoever.
In fact, on April 26 Bloomberg reported the facts on the ground by saying:

In Ukraine, pro-Russian militants yesterday captured a bus carrying observers sent by member states of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, a 57-nation group that includes Russia and the U.S. focusing on conflict prevention and preserving human rights, Ukraine’s Interior Ministry said in a statement on its website. They were holding 13 people hostage in Slovyansk, it said.

The observers — who include four Germans and citizens of the Czech Republic, Denmark, Poland and Sweden — were sent under the Vienna Document on military transparency and included no OSCE monitors, according to the Vienna-based organization. They were accompanied by Ukrainian military officers. [emphasis added]

With this in mind, it is important to note the home countries of the individuals in question – Germany, Czech Republic, Denmark, Poland, and Sweden . All of these countries, in addition to being OSCE member nations, belong to NATO, the notoriously warmongering international treaty organization now standing as the opposition to Russia over the issue of Ukraine.
As Tony Cartalucci of Land Destroyer Report wrote in his own article, “Western Military ‘Monitors’ Turn Up In Eastern Ukraine,”

That the team members, all drawn from NATO member states, are not actual OSCE monitors, raises doubts over the legitimacy of their mission. NATO has decisively sided with the unelected regime currently occupying Kiev. The objectivity therefore of ”monitors” drawn from NATO states presents an immense conflict of interest.

Just as other international organizations, including the United Nations itself, are used by the West as cover for covert extraterritorial operations, it appears that the OSCE Vienna Document on military transparency has been abused in an effort to support Kiev’s unelected regime and its on going armed operations in the east of Ukraine.

Cartalucci also points out that one of the leaders in this disinformation and propaganda campaign is the U.S. State Department’s Voice of America. He writes,

Voice of America’s rhetoric, calling NATO officers “European monitors,” strains credibility. Calling anti-fascist eastern Ukrainians “pro-Russia insurgents” also presents a factual discrepancy – an insurgent being defined as “a person who fights against an established government or authority,” and the regime currently occupying Kiev being neither an “established government” nor an “authority.”

Author and historian Webster Griffin Tarpley echoed this sentiment and went even further in an interview with Press TV on April 27, 2014. He stated,

I would have to say first of all, we should stop calling them OSCE observers because all indications are that they are not. That is what the OSCE has been saying continuously since this started and you can see it on their website. There are basically two versions. The Western media say OSCE observers, but the mayor Mr. [Vyacheslav] Ponomaryov, the pro-Russian mayor of Slavyansk, knows them as spies. I’m afraid reality seems to be going in the direction of Mr. Ponomareyov.

Tarpley points out that, not only are the captured individuals from NATO countries generally, they are also from NATO bases specifically and are themselves active-duty NATO military officers. Tarpley states,

These are active-duty NATO military officers. They are four from Germany, one from Sweden, the Czech Republic, Denmark, and Poland. All NATO or European Union (EU).

The German officers come from a place called Geilenkirchen, which is a very important NATO base. This is where the AWACS planes are flown from. It’s one of the big NATO reconnaissance centers and they particularly belong to a unit of the German army, the Bundeswehr, which is called the center for enforcement or verification tasks. In other words, it’s military intelligence. What seems also to be the case, is that they were accompanied by five active-duty Ukrainian officers of the pro-Kiev forces, the ones that are controlled by the regime.

Tarpley also points out other questionable aspects of the situation surrounding the activities of the captured men. He says,

The complicating factor is they were riding around in OSCE vehicles. They were in a bus that seems to have been displaying OSCE markings. Now, when they were captured, there was obviously tremendous pressure exercised by the German Defense Ministry and the whole NATO apparatus on the OSCE to play along with this charade, pretending that they were sent by the OSCE, but it hasn’t worked.

On Friday evening in Vienna, on the first program of the Austrian television, Claus Neukirch, a high-ranking official of the OSCE, said this was not our group, not our visit, we were not the ones who did it. This is also admitted on the Deutsche Welle. Deutsche Welle is the international TV and radio of the German Foreign Ministry.

Tarpley also draws attention to what he sees as the danger for a wider false flag attack or provocative action by NATO if the OSCE Secretary General were to travel to Ukraine in order to begin negotiations with the captors. He states,

All of this exists really only in German, so today, the Ukrainian foreign minister struggling to keep up this fakery to maintain the camouflage, the Ukrainian foreign minister said, “oh, the Secretary General of the OSCE will be arriving here in order to begin negotiations or to take them over.” Very wisely the secretary general of the OSCE, an Italian diplomat named Lamberto Zannier, said “no, I’m not going.” He was very well advised not to go. Who knows what would happen to him if he got there?

The fact is that for the first couple of days, negotiations were conducted exclusively by the German Defense Ministry, who were the people that made the deal with Kiev to send these people in. This was embarrassing that the German Defense Ministry leaned on the OSCE to say “why don’t you go in and negotiate,” which the OSCE I think unwisely did.

I would say to Mr. Zannier, don’t go to Ukraine, rather you should denounce the abuse and perversion of an OSCE vehicle in the name of the OSCE by what is in fact NATO military intelligence, and if you’re caught behind military lines with no uniform, that’s sometimes called espionage, whether that’s the current situation or not, it’s not clear, but I would urge everyone to stop referring to them as OSCE observers, they are NATO military officers.

In the end, the alleged capture of innocent OSCE observers is nothing more than yet another heavily twisted propaganda ploy manipulated by the West and the U.S. State Department in particular for the purposes of drawing the U.S. into an even larger potential confrontation with Russia over the geopolitical trophy that is Ukraine.
Recently by Brandon Turbeville:

• Interview With Arnold Hoekstra, First Canadian To Be Fired For Vaccine Refusal
• First Canadian Fired For Refusing Vaccine
• The History and Science of Color Revolutions, Part 4

Brandon Turbeville is an author out of Florence, South Carolina. He has a Bachelor’s Degree from Francis Marion University and is the author of six books, Codex Alimentarius — The End of Health Freedom, 7 Real Conspiracies, Five Sense Solutions and Dispatches From a Dissident, volume 1 and volume 2, and The Road to Damascus: The Anglo-American Assault on Syria. Turbeville has published over 300 articles dealing on a wide variety of subjects including health, economics, government corruption, and civil liberties. Brandon Turbeville’s podcast Truth on The Tracks can be found every Monday night 9 pm EST at UCYTV.  He is available for radio and TV interviews. Please contact activistpost (at) gmail.com.



Captured OSCE Observers In Ukraine Are NATO Officers
Activist
Thu, 01 May 2014 20:52:00 GMT

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