Facial Recognition is Coming to US Airports, Fast-Tracked by Trump

Russell Brandom, The Verge |

Most Americans have seemingly convinced themselves that as a society we will never pay a great price for going into so much debt and that we will never pay a great price for the horrendous crimes against humanity that we are committing on a daily basis.  If you don’t understand what I am talking about, just keep reading the rest of this article.  Just as there are consequences for our actions individually, so there are also consequences for our actions as a society.  And although our national day of reckoning has been put off for quite some time, when it does finally arrive the pain is going to be absolutely unimaginable.

Just recently, I was astounded to learn that the total amount of credit card debt in the United States has crossed the trillion dollar mark.  It boggles my mind that so many Americans could be so foolish, because credit card debt is one of the worst forms of debt in existence, and financial experts all over the country have spent an extraordinary amount of time and energy trying to get this message across to people.

But even though people know that going into credit card debt is bad, they just keep on doing it anyway.  We have become a “buy now, pay later” society that gives very little consideration to long-term consequences.

On a national level, we are now nearly 20 trillion dollars in debt, and a historic showdown over government spending and debt threatens to absolutely paralyze the federal government at the end of this month.  At this point many believe that it will be virtually impossible for Congress to avoid a government shutdown on April 29th, and once it begins Donald Trump’s entire agenda will come to a complete and total crashing halt until the crisis is resolved.  The following comes from David Stockman…

In the meanwhile, everything else — health care reform, tax cuts, infrastructure — will become backed-up in an endless queue of legislative impossibilities. Accordingly, there will be no big tax cut in 2017 or even next year. For all practical purposes Uncle Sam is broke and his elected managers are paralyzed.

The Treasury will be out of cash and up against a hard stop debt limit of $19.8 trillion in a matter of months. But long before that there will be a taste of the Shutdown Syndrome on April 28 owing to the accumulating number of “poison pill” “riders” to the CR.

These include the virtual certainty of riders to the House bill to “defund” Planned Parenthood and sanctuary cities. Other extraneous amendments will also possibly include funds demanded by the White House to start the Mexican Wall, enhance deportations and fund some of Trump’s $54 billion defense increase.

I am so glad that Stockman mentioned Planned Parenthood, because the decision whether or not to continue funding Planned Parenthood is going to be one of the central issues of this upcoming crisis.

Currently, the U.S. government gives Planned Parenthood roughly $500,000,000 a year.  By law, none of that money is supposed to be used to provide abortions, but everyone knows what the real deal is.

Some Planned Parenthood clinics do provide other services, but at the end of the day Planned Parenthood’s core business is abortion.  In fact, since Roe v. Wade was decided in 1973 they have killed far more babies than anyone else in the United States by a very wide margin.

And for decades, the U.S. government has been the number one source of funding for Planned Parenthood.  In fact, there are questions as to whether or not Planned Parenthood would be able to continue as a viable business without money from the federal government.

Over the years, when members of Congress have voted to shower Planned Parenthood with hundreds of millions of dollars a year, they have not done it in the heat of the moment.  Rather, their votes have been the result of cold, calculated decision-making processes.

In other words, the members of Congress that have been voting to keep funding Planned Parenthood year after year have the blood of millions of dead children on their hands, and there is very little difference between them and Facebook killer Steve Stephens.

When Stephens broadcast the cold-hearted murder of a 74-year-old man on Facebook on Sunday, he instantly became a worldwide celebrity.  And even though most people in the country have now seen his face, he continues to somehow elude authorities.

What Stephens has done is absolutely horrific, and when he is finally caught he will pay greatly for his crimes.

Just like Stephens, America is on the run today.  We keep thinking that we will never have to pay a price for the tens of millions of children that we have killed, and our government continues to fund the slaughtering of the innocents that goes on every single day in this nation.

But now Congress is going to be given one more chance to make the right decision.

The Republicans have control of the White House, the Senate and the House of Representatives.  They have the power to defund Planned Parenthood, but it is going to take a tremendous amount of resolve.

That is because under the current rules it is going to take 60 votes to get a spending agreement through the Senate, and so the Republicans will need at least 8 Democratic votes to get any bill to Trump’s desk.

Sadly, the Democrats are pledging to stretch out a government shutdown indefinitely if Republicans try to defund Planned Parenthood.

So what will the Republicans do?  Well, they could change the rules in the Senate to require only a simple majority vote on spending bills, and that would essentially be the “thermonuclear option”.

Or they could give in, but if they do that it would likely mean that Planned Parenthood will never be defunded, because the Republicans will never have a better opportunity than they do right now.

And I have a feeling that is what is going to happen.  I have a feeling that the Republicans are going to give in at some point and agree to keep giving Planned Parenthood half a billion dollars a year.

If that is indeed what happens, both the Democrats and the Republicans that help pass such a bill will be cold-blooded killers just like Facebook killer Steve Stephens, only those Democrats and those Republicans will have far more blood on their hands than Stephens does.

Most people do not realize this, but without a doubt this is one of the most critical moments in modern American history.  And if the funding of Planned Parenthood continues, I have a feeling that is going to mean that our national day of reckoning is much closer than most people would dare to imagine.

If we do not stop what we are doing, someday our crimes will catch up to us, and the debt that we will owe at that point will be far beyond what we can bear to pay.

TSA Busted in Massive $100 Million, 40,000 lb Cocaine Smuggling Conspiracy

San Juan, Puerto Rico – In a case highlighting the infiltration of the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) by transnational criminal organizations, twelve current and former TSA officers and airport staff were indicted for allegedly trafficking over 20 tons of cocaine — worth over $100 million — into the U.S. over an 18-years timeframe.

Last Wednesday, a federal grand jury returned an indictment against the twelve defendants, who are charged with conspiracy to possess with intent to distribute cocaine.

From 1988 to 2016 the conspirators allegedly smuggled about 40,000 pounds, or twenty tons, of cocaine through Luis Muñoz Marín International Airport in San Juan, Puerto Rico, and into the United States, according to the DOJ.

The DOJ press release detailed how the massive trafficking operation allegedly worked:

During the course of the conspiracy, the defendants smuggled suitcases, each containing at least 8 to 15 kilograms of cocaine, through the TSA security system at the Luis Muñoz Marín International Airport (LMMIA). Sometimes as many as five mules were used on each flight, with each mule checking-in up to two suitcases. From 1998 through 2016, the defendants helped smuggle approximately 20 tons of cocaine through LMMIA.

Six current and former TSA employees, José Cruz-López, Luis Vázquez-Acevedo, Keila Carrasquillo, Carlos Rafael Adorno-Hiraldo, Antonio Vargas-Saavedra, and Daniel Cruz-Echevarría allegedly smuggled multi-kilogram quantities of cocaine while employed as TSA Officers at the San Juan airport. Their full time responsibilities were to provide security and baggage screening for checked and carry-on luggage that was to be placed on outbound flights from the LMMIA. During the duration of the conspiracy, these TSA employees smuggled multi-kilogram quantities of cocaine through the TSA X-Ray machines within LMMIA and onto airplanes without detection.

“These individuals were involved in a conspiracy to traffic massive quantities of illegal narcotics to the continental United States,” said Rosa Emilia Rodríguez-Vélez, U.S. Attorney for the District of Puerto Rico. “These arrests demonstrate the success of the AirTAT initiative, which has successfully allocated a dedicated group of state and federal law enforcement officers, whose mission is to ensure that our airports are not used in the drug traffickers’ illicit businesses.”

Defendants Edwin Francisco Castro, Luis Vázquez-Acevedo and Ferdinand López are alleged to have operated as facilitators between drug trafficking organizations and the TSA employees who smuggled the cocaine into the airplanes. Defendant Miguel Ángel Pérez-Rodríguez, an airport security company employee, was a source of supply of cocaine to the drug trafficking organization, according to the superseding indictment.

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The DOJ press release notes the strategic nature of the operation:

Defendant Javier Ortiz began assisting drug trafficking organizations as an employee of Airport Aviation Services (AAS) as a baggage handler/ramp employee. During the time of the conspiracy Ortiz used to pick up suitcases he knew contained cocaine from the mules at the airline check-in counter. Ortiz would then place the suitcases into the X-Ray machines being monitored by the TSA drug trafficking organization members, who cleared the suitcases. After the suitcases had been cleared by TSA members, Ortiz took the suitcases to their designated flight, making sure no narcotic K-9 unit or law enforcement personnel were present when the suitcase went from the checkpoint to the airplane. Once the suitcases were loaded into the airplane, defendant Ortiz would make a phone call to a drug trafficking organization member indicating the all clear and the mules would then board the airplane. Ortiz also paid the TSA employees for clearing the suitcases through TSA security.

Defendant Tomas Dominguez-Rohena assisted the drug trafficking organization by taking the suitcases he knew contained cocaine after they had been cleared by TSA members or smuggled passed security to their designated flight. Defendant José Gabriel López-Mercado was a mule for the criminal organization.

“This investigation was initiated by TSA as part of its efforts to address employee misconduct and specific insider threat vulnerabilities. TSA has zero tolerance for employees engaged in criminal activity to facilitate contraband smuggling,” said José Baquero, federal security director for Puerto Rico and the US Virgin Islands, in the Monday press release.

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The indictment was a result of an internal TSA investigation by the Airport Investigations and Tactical Team (AirTAT), a 2-year-old multi-agency initiative.

If convicted, the defendants face prison terms of between 10-years to life in prison.

Not surprisingly, this is the second such bust of TSA officials in only 2 years for transporting massive amounts of cocaine.

In November 2015, three former TSA agents were indicted on charges of defrauding the government and smuggling cocaine.

According to the indictment, 35-year old Joseph Scott, 32-year-old Michael Castaneda, and 27-year-old Jessica Scott, all former TSA agents at San Francisco International Airport, were involved in an ongoing operation to help transport drugs through airport security.

Still feel safe with the TSA protecting the nation’s airports?

Trump’s Travel Ban Plainly Excludes Countries Tied to 93% of All US Terrorism

On Friday, the world erupted in chaos after President Donald Trump signed an Executive Order suspending entry into the United States for people traveling from Iran, Iraq, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria and Yemen.

These seven countries originally came from the Obama administration and were labeled as “countries of concern.”

“There were further travel restrictions already in place from those seven countries,” Sean Spicer said Sunday on ABC’s “This Week.” “What the president did was take the first step through this executive order of ensuring that we’re looking at the entire system of who’s coming in, refugees that are coming in, people who are coming in from places that have a history or that our intelligence suggests that we need to have further extreme vetting for.”

Trump is simply building off of restrictions the Obama administration already put in place in 2015 on certain travelers who had visited Iran, Iraq, Sudan, or Syria on or after March 1, 2011. Libya, Somalia, and Yemen were added to the list only months after the original limitations.

So, all Trump did was temporarily ban those countries instead of merely keeping the current restrictions.

Sounds reasonable, right? Well, if we look at the bigger picture, and the history of these seven countries — especially in regards to terrorism — something very fishy appears.

Those seven countries have never produced a terrorist in the United States who has ever caused the death of a single American. Yes, you read that correctly.

Only seven percent of all terrorist-related acts in the United States have originated from people in those countries, and not a single one of them has killed a US citizen. 

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As the Daily Caller reports:

In 2006, Mohammed Reza Taheri-azar, a naturalized American citizen born in Tehran, Iran, plowed a Jeep into a crowd of people on the campus of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill “to punish the government of the United States.” No one died in the attack. Nine people were injured, but none of them seriously. Taheri-azar was arrested and now resides in prison.

In 2016, Somali refugee Abdul Razak Ali Artan injured 13 people — none critically — when he drove a Honda Civic into a group of people on the campus of Ohio State University. Artan then got out of his car and stabbed people with a butcher knife. Police on the scene then shot and killed him.

Also in 2016, Dahir Adan, a Kenya-born Somali immigrant and naturalized U.S. citizen, armed himself with a pair of steak knives and entered the Crossroads Center shopping mall in St. Cloud, Minnesota. Adan then stabbed — and punched — 10 people. Victims who were hospitalized were all released by the next day. An off-duty police officer shot and killed Adan inside a Macy’s store.

Taheri-azar, Artan and Adan are the only three Muslims from the seven nations covered by Trumps’ executive order to commit terrorist acts in the United States since September 2001.

Out of the 43 people who carried out terrorist attacks on US soil, only three of them came from the seven countries on Trump’s list — the other 40 terrorists came from countries who were not banned.

This handful of attacks on American soil hardly justifies restricting the travel from these countries once we look at the countries Trump did not ban — who are responsible for 93% of all terrorism in the United States causing death on a massive scale.

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During the same period those three terrorists mentioned above attempted to cause harm to Americans, 40 terrorists from Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, Egypt, the United Arab Emirates, Kyrgyzstan, Kuwait, Nigeria, Afghanistan, Lebanon, and Guinea wreaked havoc in America.

However, people from those countries are still welcome to apply for U.S. visas and travel permits.

So why is it that all these other countries were left off the ban list when it is common knowledge that they are responsible for the overwhelming majority of the terrorism within the United States?

Well, if we zoom out again, we can a propose a potential reason for Trump conveniently leaving these known producers of terrorism off the list.

Trump, being the international businessman that he is, has business holdings worldwide. None of those holdings are in those seven banned countries. On the other hand, however, Trump holds major business stakes in several of the countries absent from this list.

As the Free Thought Project previously reported, during his campaign, Trump registered eight companies tied to hotel interests in Saudi Arabia alone. In case you’ve been under a rock for the last 17 years, the majority of hijackers on 9/11 came from Saudi Arabia. And, last year, the federal government declassified a 28-page report, detailing the fact that they covered up the Saudi Arabian government’s role in the attacks on 9/11.

Saudi Arabia is responsible for the death of 2,369 Americans — they are not on the list.

Trump also has holdings in Egypt, whose citizens killed a total of 162 Americans. Trump Marks Egypt and Trump Marks Egypt LLC are the President’s business dealings in this country, who, conveniently, is also absent from his list.

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Another country, who is also absent from Trump’s list is the United Arab Emirates. Trump’s organization has a plethora of holdings in this country, including a licensing and management deal in Dubai for two golf courses and a whole neighborhood of luxury villas currently under construction.

A total of 314 Americans were killed by UAE citizens between 1975 and 2015, according to CATO.

Trump also does business in Turkey as he currently licenses his name to two luxury towers in Istanbul. As we’ve reported many times in the last year, Turkey has repeatedly been caught aiding the Islamic State through protecting their oil routes as well as providing them sanctuary and even training. 

As the debate of immigration and border walls heats up, it is important for those on both sides to have all the information available to make sound decisions. Please share this article so that those who are ignoring these facts can see the truth.

Matt Agorist is an honorably discharged veteran of the USMC and former intelligence operator directly tasked by the NSA. This prior experience gives him unique insight into the world of government corruption and the American police state. Agorist has been an independent journalist for over a decade and has been featured on mainstream networks around the world. Follow @MattAgorist on Twitter and now on Steemit