Obama asks Imam to "Pray for me" while ignoring Buddhists, Christians and Hindus

In the 30-minute visit, Obama, who wore a dark suit and took off his shoes, toured the
prayer hall and the Warriors Mausoleum.

“Pray for me”

• Comrade Obama visits a mosque and asks the Imam to pray for him.  But Obama does not visit a Buddhist or Hindu Temple or a Christian Church even though those groups make up 39% of the population.
• Obama’s a Muslim all right, no question about THAT.

(From 1389 Blog - Counterjihad!) – Visiting Malaysia’s National Mosque on Sunday, President Obama was asked by the institution’s imam to end oppression against Muslims worldwide, Malaysia’s national press agency Bernama reported via CNS News. 

“Pray for me,” Obama replied, according to Grand Imam Ismail Muhammad, who took him on a 25-minute tour of the mosque, called Masjid Negara in Malay [more about that here], in Kuala Lumpur. 

“Obama also said that every day when he wakes up he always does his best to put an end to oppression and conflicts affecting communities,” Bernama quoted Ismail as saying. 

The 70 year-old cleric said Obama had frequently replied with InsyAllah (Malay for “Allah willing”) and terima kasih (“thank you”) during the tour. 

“It was nice of him, although he could not speak much of the Malay language  but understood what I had said to him,” he said. 

Obama, who wore a dark suit and removed his shoes, also visited and paid his respects at the National Mausoleum at the mosque complex, where former prime ministers and deputy prime ministers are buried. 

Malaysia’s Star newspaper quoted Abdullah Muhammad Zin, religious advisor to Prime Minister Najib Razak, as saying it was “not common” for the leader of a superpower to include a visit to a mosque in his itinerary. 

“There can be no better way for Obama to honor Islam than by visiting Masjid Negara,” he said. 

Bernama quoted several other senior Muslim figures commenting on the visit. 

“This is out of the ordinary as I cannot recall any non-Muslim world leader visiting the National Mosque and this is a good start for Muslims here,” said Ustaz Wan Akashah Wan Abdul Hamid, a religious scholar. 

The news agency also cited a former National Mosque imam, Hassan Mahmood Al-Hafiz, as saying that “the willingness of the world leader to set foot on the Islamic landmark was a good omen, more so when Muslims were being wrongly linked to violence.” 

The National Mosque was built in 1965, several years after Malaysia won independence from Britain, on the site of a Brethren Church that had been appropriated by the Malaysian government for the purpose. (The church, which had stood there since 1922, was offered an alternative site.) 

Obama strolled alongside Syaikh Ismail to the prayer hall and made
a brief stop at the Warriors' Mausoleum, next to the National Mosque.

Relations between Malaysia’s Muslim majority (around 61 percent) and minorities including Buddhists (almost 20 percent), Christians (9 percent) and Hindus (6 percent) have been troubled at times. 

Invited to comment on Obama’s decision to visit a mosque but not a church while in the country, Council of Churches of Malaysia general secretary Hermen Shastri demurred, but said that those responsible for arranging the visit had “ensured that he is made aware of the religious freedom issues in the country.” 

A spokesman for the National Evangelical Christian Fellowship chairman, Rev. Dr. Eu Hong Seng, said he welcomed the fact Obama chose to tour the National Mosque. 

“Given the challenges and concerns for non-Muslim religions in Malaysia, especially Christianity, it would have been good for President Obama to also visit the places of religious worship of other religions,” he said. “This would help him better understand the issues facing non-Muslim religions in Malaysia.”

Religions of Malaysia

Buddhists Ignored by Obama
Comrade Obama eagerly visited a mosque but did not bother to visit the Buddhist shrine of Kek Lok Si, or "Temple of Sukhāvatī", in Penang, Malaysia.

Big Brother Scanner Targets Innocent Driver

Surveillance State Targets Innocent Man With Guns  

The bi-partisan 1984 Big Brother Surveillance Police State is watching and recording you 24 hours a day.

Before you throw someone under the bus of the police state because they broke some law and therefore deserve whatever brutal treatment the police wish to inflict, consider what happened to this man who was wrongfully singled out by the surveillance state.

(Techdirt)  -  Automatic license plate readers can scan plates at a rate of one per second. Nationwide, several hundred million plate/location records have been captured and stored by a variety of contractors.

Mathematics alone says mistakes will be made. Except when mistakes are made with ALPRs, they tend to put citizens on the bad side of men with guns.

According to the Prairie Village Post, earlier this month lawyer Mark Molner was driving through a Kansas City suburb on his way home from his wife’s sonogram. All of a sudden, his BMW was blocked in front by a police car as another officer on a motorcycle pulled up behind him. (His pregnant wife witnessed the incident from a nearby parked car.)

According to what Molner told the Post, one of the officers then approached his car with his gun out.

"He did not point it at me, but it was definitely out of the holster,” Molner told the Post. “I am guessing that he saw the shock and horror on my face, and realized that I was unlikely to make (more of) a scene.”

The mistake prompting this guns-drawn approach of Molner's video could have been made by anybody. The ALPR read a "7" as a "2" and returned a hit for a stolen vehicle. The hit also returned info for a stolen Oldsmobile, which clearly wasn't what Molner was driving. But that could mean the plates were on the wrong vehicle, which is also an indication of Something Not Quite Right.

The PD's statement on the incident is fairly sensible and measured.

“The officer has discretion on whether or not to unholster his weapon depending on the severity of the crime. In this case he did not point it at the driver, rather kept it down to his side because he thought the vehicle could possibly be stolen. If he was 100 percent sure it was stolen, then he would have conducted a felony car stop which means both officers would have been pointing guns at him while they gave him commands to exit the vehicle.”

That makes sense, but there's still a chance this situation could have been averted. Molner's plate triggered the hit several miles before he was pulled over as pursuing police were unable to verify the plate due to traffic density. But it appears the officers made a last-minute decision to perform the unverified stop shortly before Molner would have driven out of the PD's jurisdiction. The stop occurred on the city/state boundary between Kansas and Missouri.

This lack of verification is what bothers Molner.

“I’m armchair quarterbacking the police, which is not a good position to be in,” Molner told the Post. “But before you unholster your gun, you might want to confirm that you’ve got the people you’re looking for.”

So, when the plate reader kicked back a bad hit, the cops did attempt to verify the plate, but it looks very much like they overrode procedural safeguards in order to prevent possibly losing a collar.

“History has stopped. Nothing exists except an endless present in which the Party is always right.”  
George Orwell
    1984    

Boehner challenger fired from Christian university

Are You Having a 23 Year Boner?

A Tea Party candidate challenging House Speaker John Boehner got a few chuckles, and a lot of Internet views, with a recent raunchy campaign ad about "electile dysfunction" -- but the spot has cost him one of his day jobs.

J.D. Winteregg, one of two candidates running against Boehner in the Republican primary for Ohio’s 8th District, got into trouble with Cedarville University, a Baptist school in Ohio where he taught as an adjunct professor. He confirmed to FoxNews.com that his contract was not renewed, on the heels of that ad.

 

He said he was contacted by a supervisor who informed him his contract would lapse because the commercial “did not correspond with university values,” reports Fox News.

A Must See Ad

When The Moment Is Right

The commercial, titled “When the Moment is Right,” parodies erectile dysfunction commercials and urges Ohioans to cure their “electile dysfunction” by voting out Boehner.

“Winteregg in Congress will help you every time the moment is right to have your voice heard at the federal level,” the ad says, later adding, "If you have a Boehner lasting more than 23 years, seek immediate medical attention."

Winteregg told FoxNews.com he had worked as an adjunct professor of French for three years at the university, in addition to teaching at a high school.

Mark Weinstein, a spokesman for the university, told FoxNews.com that Winteregg will finish out the semester but is not scheduled to teach any future classes. He said the university did not believe the video represented Cedarville’s values, but could not confirm why Winteregg’s contract was not renewed.

Winteregg said he has no regrets about the ad, saying he believes what Boehner has done in Congress is more offensive.

"I’m all in with this,” he said. “You got to do this the right way. People lose elections because they are passive, and I’m going to fight for this."

Go to J.D. Winteregg for Congress

Bank of America "Misplaces" $4 Billion

A Billion Here, A Billion There

I guess there are too many "cooked books" to "reconcile".

Gary Rule #1   -   People are fucking idiots.

It is reassuring to know that the people running the banks are still fucking idiots.

America’s biggest bank discovered a $4 billion accounting "error" on Monday, and is suspending its share buyback program and planned quarterly dividend. The mistake went unnoticed for several years and brings into question how ‘healthy’ Bank of America is.

After reporting the miscalculation to the Federal Reserve, Bank of America will also have to re-do its stress tests, to ensure it isn’t "too big" and has sufficient capital reserves, the New York Times reports.

Stocks have fallen 6.27 percent on the news, the most since November 2012. Shares tumbled to $14.95 by market close in New York on Monday, erasing all of the 2014 gains reports RT News.

The "error" was sourced to Merrill Lynch, where lower-level employees botched the numbers they submit to the financial authorities for a quarterly securities filing.

The gaffe also went undiscovered by the bank’s board of directors as well as PricewaterhouseCoopers, its external auditor. The US Federal Reserve also missed the blunder.

Stress tests, called Comprehensive Capital Analysis and Review, are a way for the US Federal Reserve to assess whether financial intuitions have adequate capital. The protocol is part of the Dodd-Frank Act, which seeks to avoid a repeat of the 2008 collapse with precautionary regulations.

In March Bank of America passed its Federal Reserve stress test even though it provided faulty information. Citigroup Inc. was one of five banks that failed the test. According to Bank of America’s first quarter earnings report, it has $134 billion in Tier 1 capital, which has now been reduced to $130 billion.

“Bank of America must address the quantitative errors in its regulatory capital calculations as part of the resubmission and must undertake a review of its regulatory capital reporting to help ensure there are no further errors,” the US Federal Reserve said in a statement.

White People Banned From Using The Word ‘Fiesta’

 

Retard Alert!

• A single leftist moron Mexican born student was "insulted" that white students wanted to raise money for charity by holding a Mexican themed Cinco de Mayo party.
• In caving in to this madness the fraternity president said, “We felt that the possibility of offending even one member of the Dartmouth community was not worth the potential benefits of having the fundraiser.”

Another ridiculous politically-correct brouhaha has broken out at Dartmouth College, America’s most hopelessly and disturbingly fragile Ivy League school.

This time, the fracas is over a fundraiser for cardiac care that the Phi Delta Alpha fraternity and the Alpha Phi sorority had planned to jointly sponsor, reports Campus Reform.

Problems arose because a single student, junior Daniela Hernandez, was offended by the party’s theme of “Phiesta.”

As a result, the soiree, which was scheduled for Saturday, has been canceled by the presidents of the respective Greek organizations.

Had the party happened, it would have included a live band as well as virgin piña coladas and strawberry daiquiris. There would also have been burritos, chips and salsa, and guacamole.

The cash raised at the event would have gone to benefit cardiac treatments.

However, Hernandez’s deep offense about racial insensitivity was enough to call it off.

The self-proclaimed “Mexican-born, United-States-raised, first-generation woman of color” declared in an angry email that “there are various problematic structures and ideologies regarding a Cinco de Mayo-inspired event,” according to Campus Reform.

She decreed her distaste for “the Americanization of Cinco de Mayo and its construction as a drinking holiday in the United States, cultural appropriation and the inappropriate usage of cultural clothing, and the exploitation of groups of people and cultures for the sake of business opportunities”—and, apparently, charity opportunities.

“It was sadly unsurprising that a culturally-themed party was seen as a casual venture for such a privileged institution such as Dartmouth,” Hernandez proclaimed.

Phi Delt president Taylor Catchcart explained why the Greek organizations folded.

“We felt that the possibility of offending even one member of the Dartmouth community was not worth the potential benefits of having the fundraiser,” he said.

(Capitalism is Freedom)

Child with black ‘jihadi’ flag at rally in London

The Death of the West

And the insanity of deliberately importing millions

of Muslims into the West goes on and on.

MPs and counter-extremism campaigners today called for new efforts to combat the radicalization of young Londoners after a child was pictured carrying a black “jihadi” flag associated with al Qaeda on a London street.

The girl, apparently no older than 12, was seen holding the flag during a rally by supporters of the extremist preacher Anjem Choudary outside the Saudi Arabian embassy in Charles Street on Friday.

Several other children, some looking no older than five or six, also joined adult protesters to decry the “crimes” of Saudi Arabia.

The flag, featuring the “shahadah” — a declaration of the belief of the oneness of Allah — has become identified with Islamist and terrorist groups, including al Qaeda and its affiliates in countries including Syria and Somalia reports the London Evening Standard.

The images come only weeks after London Mayor Boris Johnson called for children subject to radicalisation to be taken into care and prompted new demands for action to protect the young from extremist parents.

Keith Vaz, the chairman of the Commons Home Affairs Select Committee, said: “Social services and police need to be very vigilant to make sure that children are not being radicalised and subjected to a form of dangerous psychological abuse.

“Parents should take care not to allow their children to be involved in supporting in any way the activities of al Qaeda. For adults this is matter of choice. For those too young to understand this could be the first step on the road to radicalization.”

Ghaffar Hussain, from the counter-extremism think tank the Quilliam Foundation, said the pictures were “disturbing” and added: “There is a very real issue with children being radicalized and brought along to these demonstrations to be given hate messages. It’s something that needs to be tackled. Children are being normalised into extremism. It’s very dangerous.”

Although the “shahadah” is common in Islam, its depiction on a black background is commonly used by extremists in Syria and Egypt with similar flags used as the backdrop for videos recorded by suicide bombers. London Assembly member Murad Quresh said: “It is a flag used by jihadis. It’s the black rather than green colour that makes it distinctive.

Muslim Patrols in London

Welcome to London

“It should be of huge concern that young children are coming under the influence of Anjem Choudary and his mob.”

But Mr Choudary said today: “There has been controversy over these flags but they have been around since the time of Muhammad himself and are loved, cherished and belong to every single Muslim.

“Black or white flags carrying this statement have always been carried in battles between Muslims and non-Muslims to distinguish the two camps of Islam and Kufr (non-Islam).”

Mizanur Rahman, a spokesman for the campaign group Muslim Prisoners, which organised the demonstration, said: “There is nothing controversial about inviting famous speakers or flying the traditional Islamic flag. What is controversial is the crimes against Islam and Muslims in the UK and abroad.”

Muslims protest outside the French Embassy in London with
a sign that say "Shariah for France."

Chinese Communists in ‘barbaric’ campaign against Christianity

Thousands of Chinese Christians have mounted an extraordinary defence of a church
in a city known as the 'Jerusalem of the East'.  

Godless Fucking Communism

• "There are bad people out there trying to damage our church so we must defend it," said Li Jingliu, a 56-year-old former factory worker who has been sleeping in one of its back offices since last week.
• Meanwhile the whores in our government and business fall all over themselves to dry hump every Communist they can find in order to line their pockets with cold, hard cash. 

Demolition teams began destroying parts of a Chinese church that has become a symbol of resistance to the Communist Party’s draconian clutch on religion, activists and witnesses said on Monday.

Sanjiang church in Wenzhou, a wealthy coastal city known as the "Jerusalem of the East", made headlines earlier this month when thousands of Christians formed a human shield around its entrance after plans for its demolition were announced.
 

Church members accused Communist leaders in Zhejiang province of ordering an anti-church crackdown and claimed there were plans to completely or partially demolish at least 10 places of worship.
 

Officials rejected those accusations, alleging the church had violated building codes reports the UK Telegraph.
 

After mounting their high-profile occupation in early April, many protesters withdrew from Sanjiang church after its leaders appeared to have negotiated a compromise with the government.

Photographs sent to The Telegraph and posted on social
media sites showed at least four excavators that appeared to be
ripping down large sections of the church’s exterior.

^{Church members accused Communist leaders in Zhejiang province
of ordering an anti-church crackdown.}

However, that deal appears to have broken down in recent days with reports that some church leaders and worshippers had been harassed and detained by security agents and officials.

On Monday morning demolition teams began tearing down parts of the church in Wenzhou, a city around 230 miles south of Shanghai that has one of the country’s largest congregations.

“I saw three or four excavators out front, demolishing the church, and three or four out back, demolishing the annex building. I also saw a small excavator going inside the church doing demolition work inside,” said one witness who claimed there were around 100 police around the church, including armed officers.

“All the roads are blocked, you can't get close to the church,” said a local Protestant leader, who asked not to be named for fear of reprisals from the government. “The two sides of the main hall are being demolished.”

Photographs sent to The Telegraph and posted on social media sites showed at least four excavators that appeared to be ripping down large sections of the church’s exterior.

Other images showed black police vans, military trucks and security agents standing on the main road outside.

It was not immediately possible to verify those pictures. Nor was it clear whether authorities planned to destroy the entire church, which has a large red cross on its spire, or just part of the structure.

Church members told The Telegraph authorities had attempted to silence the congregation and said they believed their communications were being monitored. “My phone is not safe,” said one.

Bob Fu, a US-based Christian activist, said: “This government-orchestrated barbaric forced demolition represents a serious escalation against religious freedom in Zhejiang. The Chinese regime chooses to disregard its own laws and the will of its best citizens.”

China is on course to become 'world's most Christian nation' within 15 years.

Toyota & 5,000 Jobs To Leave California For Texas

Welcome to Socialism

Toyota's Los Angeles area headquarters and its

5,000 jobs are moving to Texas.

(Forbes.com)  -  For Japanese auto brands, the logic of keeping their U.S. sales and administrative arms in California is breaking down under the outrageous penalties of conducting business in the Golden State and the changing dynamics of the North American automotive industry. So Toyota is leaving, according to Automotive News.

And where is Japan’s biggest automaker relocating its sales and marketing operations in America? Why, North Texas, of course. The to Plano, Texas, will involve most of the 5,000 managers and employees at Toyota’s current Torrance, Calif., headquarters, the magazine said.

Texas Gov. Rick Perry apparently didn’t even have to make a recruiting trip to southern California to get Toyota to do this, although he has helped lure plenty of companies with that gambit over the last several years.

And yet Texas has scored one of the biggest prizes so far in its very focused, state-on-state battle with the administration of Gov. Jerry Brown to get plum companies now headquartered in California to abandon the bluest state for the reddest one.

Clearly, Perry caressed a trump card in the fact that Toyota has enjoyed a deep relationship with Texas through its $2.2-billion truck-assembly complex near San Antonio.

Plus, the fact is that, as Toyota has become a more U.S.-centric company with important assets all over the country, it makes sense for the Japanese market leader to distribute its operations in a new way. Toyota’s 14 North American manufacturing facilities now build 71 percent of the vehicles the company sells in the United States, up from 55 percent in 2008.

A half-century ago, Toyota and other Japanese brands clustered in southern California when they began their assault on the U.S. market because California offered the single best market opportunity for Asian brands coming to America and because the state’s location closest to Japan made logistics easiest.

 

For most of the time since then, California’s justified reputation as America’s automotive, societal, cultural, and economic bellwether continued to ratify the Japanese brands’ focus there. Consider how Toyota was able to grow its Prius hybrid line into the segment’s dominant brand by starting with an emphasis in California.

Fleeing California
In 2006 Nissan North America moved its headquarters from
Gardena, California (above) to Nashville, Tennessee.

Hello Texas.
Occidental Petroleum moves HQ to Texas - More Jobs Leave California.
Click here to see the story. 

Good-Bye California
In 2013 Raytheon relocated its headquarters to McKinney, TX,
from Southern California.  Throughout North Texas, Raytheon has
8,000 employees, and in addition to IIS, Raytheon’s Missile
Systems, Space and Airborne Systems, and various corporate
operations are in the area.

But now Toyota and most of it Japanese rivals are treating North America like their domestic market — meaning that a California lens isn’t always the best one. Maybe a new headquarters in Flyover Country will be.

Toyota’s oldest U.S. manufacturing operations, for example, are in Georgetown, Ky. The company now is making Corollas in Mississippi and exporting them to Latin America. It produces vehicles from Indiana to Alabama. And Toyota performs much of its engineering work in Michigan.

Plano is closer to all of those places than Torrance is. And while there’s still a significant divide between Toyota’s engineering and manufacturing operations, and the sales and marketing folks, the changing nature of the auto business means they need to get closer all the time.

Nissan made the first such move anyway, leaving its U.S. sales headquarters in California and relocating Nissan North America to Nashville in 2006.

Besides, California’s business climate is becoming an even bigger downer. California has become infamous with business executives and owners there not only for high tax rates and complex taxing schemes but also for overzealous regulations and regulators that have managed to stifle the entrepreneurial energy of thousands of companies.

Even Hollywood movie studios have been souring about producing flicks in California, increasingly reckoning that the sweet tax breaks and assistance packages now offered by so many other states offset the legacy advantages and ideal production climate in California.

About the only vast remaining pocket of dynamism in the California economy is Silicon Valley.

The Sheeple of California.
The meek, brainless and ball-less Sheeple of California continue to vote for the Socialist Democrats who live to kill jobs and tax people into poverty.

'Big Bang Theory' Banned by Communist China

 

The Communists Ban 'Penny'

Communist apparatchiks are frightened to death

of shows streaming on the Internet.

Communist China is stepping up censorship of foreign TV shows streamed online and has ordered leading video streaming websites to stop showing the popular shows The Good Wife, The Big Bang Theory, NCIS and The Practice.

The order has come down from the State Administration of Press, Publication, Radio, Film and Television and the watchdog has not given any reason for the ruling.

The popular show The Blacklist has also had episodes that criticized the Chinese government cut recently.

As reported in The Hollywood Reporter earlier this month, SAPPRFT said it was planning to increase censorship of foreign content and warned that online companies such as Youku, Tencent and Sohu would have to closely vet content before making it available to stream says the Hollywood Reporter.

Watching Penny would make anyone question the spoon-fed
horror of State approved entertainment.

Generally, the online streaming sites have operated with far more freedom to show edgy material such as The Walking Dead and House of Cards than the traditional media such as TV and cinema.

It’s long been baffling how the government allows a show like House of Cards to be seen in China, particularly the second season which had a storyline critical of Chinese government corruption.

However, it was generally suspected that the Kevin Spacey­­-starring depiction of sleaze, debauchery, graft and general malfeasance in Washington chimed with an acceptable message on the dangers of democratic institutions.

China's ambassador to the U.S., Cui Tiankai, has said he has seen every episode of House of Cards, which includes the line “Mao’s China is dead!”

The state news agency Xinhua wrote of how THR's coverage of the apparent crackdown had caused thousands of Chinese fans to protest online “at a perceived blow against freedom of choice” -- another sign of the surging popularity of Hollywood shows in China.

Meanwhile, the Chinese web giant Sina.com has made repeated apologies for allowing pornography onto its sites, which has led to it having its licenses for Internet publication and audio and video dissemination revoked.

"As one of the influential websites in China, Sina has failed to shoulder its due responsibility and we feel deeply sorry for that," Sina said in a statement to Xinhua.

The National Office Against Pornographic and Illegal Publications said that 20 articles and four videos posted on Sina.com were confirmed to have contained lewd and pornographic content following "a huge amount" of public tip-offs.

According to data from the research group Entgroup for 2012, Sohu has 144 U.S. and British TV shows, Tencent has 123 and Youku Tudou, 109. This compares with a quota of 34 foreign movies allowed into China on a revenue-sharing basis.

Banned by the Communists

Minnesota Senate votes to ban warrantless cellphone tracking

The Bill of Rights is Bi-Partisan

April 24, 2014. A bipartisan bill which would ban law enforcement from obtaining cellphone location tracking information without a warrant passed the Minnesota state senate on Tuesday. The vote was 56-1.

SF2466 was introduced by Sen. Brandon Petersen (R-Andover) and cosponsored by two democrat and two republican senators. It reads, in part:

A government entity may not obtain the location information of an electronic device without a tracking warrant. A tracking warrant granting access to location information must be issued only if the government entity shows that there is probable cause the person who possesses an electronic device is committing, has committed, or is about to commit a crime.

 SF2466 would not only protect people in Minnesota from warrantless data gathering by state and local law enforcement, it will also end some practical effects of unconstitutional data gathering by the federal government reports the Tenth Amendment Center.

NSA collects, stores, and analyzes data on countless millions of people without a warrant, and without even the mere suspicion of criminal activity. The NSA tracks the physical location of people through their cellphones.

In late 2013, the Washington Post reported that NSA is “gathering nearly 5 billion records a day on the whereabouts of cellphones around the world.” This includes location data on “tens of millions” of Americans each year – without a warrant.

Through fusion centers, state and local law enforcement act as information recipients from various federal departments under Information Sharing Environment (ISE).  ISE partners include the Office of Director of National Intelligence, which is an umbrella covering 17 federal agencies and organizations, including the NSA. State and local law enforcement share data up the chain with the feds.

The NSA expressly shares warrantless data with state and local law enforcement through a super-secret DEA unit known as the Special Operations Division (SOD). That information is being used for criminal prosecutions.

A Reuters report last fall showed that most of this shared data has absolutely nothing to do with national security issues. Most of it involves routine criminal investigations.

This data sharing shoves a dagger into the heart of the Fourth Amendment.

“Safety should not come at the expense of civil liberties,” said Charles Samuelson, executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union of Minnesota.

SF2466 will prevent state law enforcement from gathering cell phone location data and sharing it up the chain and it will make information vacuumed up by the feds and shared down the chain inadmissible in court, stopping a practical effect of NSA spying.

 

NSA Spying On Congress - Judge Andrew Napolitano

US troops are off to the Philippines

"And this is how we shoot Communists."

The United States and the Philippines have reached a 10-year agreement that would allow a larger U.S. military presence in the Southeast Asian country as it grapples with increasingly tense territorial disputes with China, White House officials said Sunday.

The Enhanced Defense Cooperation Agreement allows for U.S. troops to be deployed “on temporary and rotational basis,” according to a primer issued by the Philippine government, but not a return of U.S. military bases. It also allows U.S. forces to train and conduct exercises with Philippine forces for maritime security, disaster assistance and humanitarian aid, White House officials told reporters at a briefing.

The agreement will be signed Monday at the main military camp in the Philippine capital, Manila, before President Barack Obama arrives on the last leg of a four-country Asian tour, following earlier stops in Japan, South Korea and Malaysia.

Officials accompanying Obama on a visit to Malaysia cited disaster response after last year's Typhoon Yolanda as the kind of cooperation the pact would facilitate reports Aljazeera.

US-Philippines Military Exercises

U.S. Military fights terrorists in the Philippines

While U.S. officials say the new security pact is not meant to counter Chinese assertiveness in the region, it would give American forces temporary access to selected military camps and allow them to preposition fighter jets and ships.

"We're not doing this because of China," Evan Medeiros, Obama's top Asia advisor, said when asked if the pact is meant as a deterrent to China.

TRANSLATION  -  We are doing this because of China.

The agreement would promote better coordination between U.S. and Filipino forces, boost the 120,000-strong Philippine military's capability to monitor and secure the country's territory and respond more rapidly to natural disasters and other emergencies.

It's all about oil.
China claims much of the open ocean
all the way down to Malaysia.

"Pre-positioned materiel will allow for timely responses in the event of disasters — natural or otherwise," stated the government primer.

While the U.S. military would not be required to pay rent for local camp areas, the Philippines would own buildings and infrastructure to be built or improved by the Americans and reap economic gains from the U.S. presence, it said, adding the pact was an executive agreement that would not need to be ratified by the Philippine Senate.

The presence of foreign troops is a sensitive issue in the Philippines, a former American colony.
.
Left-wing activists have protested against Obama's visit and the new defense pact in small but lively demonstrations, saying that the agreement reverses democratic gains achieved when huge U.S. military bases were shut down in the early 1990s, ending nearly a century of American military presence in the Philippines.

The Philippine Senate voted in 1991 to close down U.S. bases at Subic and Clark, northwest of Manila. However, it ratified a pact with the U.S. allowing temporary visits by American forces in 1999, four years after China seized a reef the Philippines contests.

The United States and the Philippines conducted joint military exercises.