Free Republic

Former enemy could broadcast 'Welcome to America'The Obama administration is looking to negotiate with the Socialist Republic of Vietnam, the government that emerged after a war costing more than 58,000 American lives, to carry a “Welcome to America” radio program over its state radio station, WND has discovered. If the U.S. Broadcasting Board of Governors, or BBG, has its way, its Voice of America program will work in tandem with the Voice of Vietnam, or VOV, to broadcast the 15-minute prime-time radio program Monday through Friday across the communist nation. BBG is looking for a distributor to do its bidding...

Project to protect Egyptian temples gets more fundingAmid surging violence in the Mideast, from Gaza to Syria to Iraq, the Obama administration is stepping up efforts in Egypt to preserve a multi-deity temple to the “creator god” Horus and the “crocodile god” Sobek. After footing a multi-million-dollar bill to help the government of Egypt lower the water level at the Temple of Kom Ombo and other archeological sites, U.S. taxpayers are now shelling out more cash to extend the project beyond its contractual end date, according to procurement documents WND discovered via routine database research. The Groundwater Lowering Activity for...

African visitors to U.S. conference to be taught about subsidies, assistancePresident Obama has begun touting his upcoming “U.S.-Africa Leaders’ Summit” as an opportunity for African nations “to become partners with America on behalf of the future we want for all of our children.” The event, according to the White House, will “build’ on the president’s trip to Africa in the summer of 2013 in which U.S. taxpayers paid $60 to $100 million for the Obama family’s lavish comforts and entertainment. While the summit’s official theme is “Investing in the Next Generation,” a close inspection reveals that U.S. taxpayers again ultimately...

Goal is 'greater accountability' ... for foreign nations' governments...[C]hanges to government transparency are in the works with a plan to spend up to $600 million of U.S. taxpayers’ money to launch programs to “foster greater accountability of institutions and leaders to citizens.” However, Obama’s plan won’t benefit the U.S. taxpayers, who will be on the hook for the changes. His plan is to help make foreign governments more accountabile to their citizens. The Democratic, Responsive, and Accountable GOverNance, or DRAGON, project is to develop strategies to encourage citizens “to participate actively in governance,” according to a “concept paper” that WND...

Millions of dollars dumped into questionable foreign health campaignsThe Obama administration will continue bombarding individual nations with “family planning” and health-care messages costing tens of millions for each campaign, despite acknowledging that some of its past efforts largely failed. The administration casts partial blame for these failures on foreign government recipients, some of whom neglected to adequately cooperate with U.S. plans to change cultural beliefs, for example, about contraception and family size. Islamic leaders in nations such as Jordan rebuffed previous persuasive efforts to increase sterilization and other approaches to reducing birth rates. The administration backed off from that tactic,...

(Based an actual encounter in an inner-city Trenton, NJ charter school). A poem.Keeper of Names By Steve Peacock Why do so many black students’ names end with “-quan” and “-asia,” the middle-aged white teacher inquires of the sole black educator in the break room. As I understand it, she replies humbly, (so as not to claim expertise on the matter), “quan,” like “DaeQuan,” has African roots. But what about “asia”? We’ve got Ta’Asia, Ti’Asia, Sequasia, Shyasia? I am truly unsure, she says. Still, he persists. There’s also Arquasia, Tintasia, and… I said I don’t know. Then there’s Quintasia, Sashasia… Oh...

$1.7 billion plan to preach humanity's 'goodness'The federal program Job Corps will tap into a proposed $1.7 billion budget not simply to provide career-development services to at-risk men and women but to raise awareness of the “inherent goodness” found in each human being. The money will be spent to make people feel good. The “I Am Somebody” initiative for fiscal year 2015 will teach appreciation of “ethnic diversity” in response to problems among job training and other employment-assistance recipients, according to the project Statement of Work, or SOW, which WND located via routine database research. “Recently Job Corps students have...

Solution is to spend more tax money thereAmerican taxpayers are sending some $1.5 billion to Egypt annually, but the Obama administration is finding it difficult to fulfill its policy goal of awarding contracts to companies in the Middle East nation and in others that receive aid in an effort to improve their economies. The problem is simply that there aren’t enough foreign organizations qualified to help in the U.S. effort, especially in Egypt. So a “simple” solution has been implemented: spend even more taxpayer funds to teach other governments and NGOs – as well as the U.S. government itself –...

Bureau boss overseeing shipments has Benghazi connectionsThe State Department bureau tasked with secretly sending to embassies plastic and liquid explosives operates under the guidance of Under Secretary of State for Management Patrick F. Kennedy, whom a congressional panel last year separately found to be largely responsible for security lapses in Benghazi, WND has learned. A series of WND articles recently exposed the purchase and international transport of many hundreds of pounds of plastic, sheet and linear explosives along with thousands of containers of high-energy liquid explosives. Weeks after a State official laughed in response to WND’s inquiry, the department belatedly...

C4, blasting equipment destined for embassies?The U.S. State Department has ordered hundreds of pounds of plastic explosives and thousands of containers of liquid explosives, WND has discovered, shipping them to the location of U.S. centers that typically send sensitive materials to overseas embassies. According to procurement documents WND obtained through routine database research, State recently put in four separate orders for high explosives – purchases accompanied by tens of thousands of feet of detonating cords with hundreds of blasting caps and fuse igniters. The ultimate destination of these products and their cost is unknown, but the government contracting office responsible...

Public outcry follows WND report on plans for U.S. militaryAn Obama administration plan to have U.S. military personnel oversee the construction of latrines for a Kenyan girls’ school has come to an abrupt halt, after WND’s exclusive report on the diversion of defense resources. The U.S. Navy had been tasked with carrying out the project, which would have involved the construction of a building containing 16 female “dry-pit latrines” for the Mpeketoni Secondary School in Kenya, President Obama’s “home country,” as first lady Michelle Obama once publicly put it. The Naval Facilities Engineering Command on Tuesday terminated the project without...

Plan calls for 'gender team' to collect data on abusesCulturally embedded mistreatment of women and girls has earned Pakistan a reputation as one of the world’s worst nations in which to be female. The Obama administration, however, is setting out to reverse that cultural phenomenon, courtesy of U.S. taxpayers. Indeed, the administration is deploying a team of experts to “travel extensively” throughout Pakistan to assess existing U.S. efforts to reverse “gender disparity” and to collect data about ongoing gender-related abuses and discrimination. The gender team likewise will propose steps for future U.S.-funded actions. This U.S. Agency for International Development endeavor...

'Terminator' coming alive as agency explores humanoids 'for Earth applications'While the federal government’s increased use and advocacy of drones over U.S. skies is widely known, its promotion of another technological advancement has received less attention: the accelerated deployment of “humanoid robots” into American society. WND has discovered that NASA is recruiting help from industry and academia to speed up the commercialization of such robotic humanoids “for Earth applications.” Among the applications is warfare, the agency said. NASA said technical hurdles remain before sending human-like machines into combat operations and other “hazardous and remote environments.” Among the obstacles are “object recognition/detection”...

U.S. subsidizing massive in-person surveyIn the latest addition to the Obama administration’s growing aid-to-Kenya portfolio, the U.S. will help subsidize a nationwide citizen-health assessment in every Kenyan county without exception. While the estimated project cost remains undisclosed, a separate Kenya-based trade-promotion project unveiled late last week came with an additional $70 million price tag. The Kenya National Bureau of Statistics, with U.S. taxpayer help, will implement the 2014 Kenya Demographic and Health Survey, or KDHS. Kenya will coordinate the efforts with United Nations agencies, the U.S. government and “other partners.” The U.S. will fund a KDHS requirement to deploy contractor...

Government document puts naval engineering group in charge of Kenya pit toiletsThe Obama administration lately has demanded much from American soldiers, who now face possible reductions in the number in their ranks as well as higher payments toward their health benefits. That’s in addition to duty in Afghanistan, or worse. In the latest slap to the face of U.S. Department of Defense personnel, Obama now is asking those soldiers to oversee the digging of toilets at a girl’s school in Kenya, his “home country,” as First Lady Michelle Obama once publicly put it. The Naval Facilities Engineering Command is tasked...

The Obama administration is infusing millions of additional dollars into the stabilization and strengthening of county governments across Kenya to protect taxpayers there by having Americans foot the bill. Without opening the endeavor to competitive bidding, the U.S. Agency for International Development simply changed the terms of an existing Kenya aid program and put more money into it. Kenyans had been facing additional financial costs for their own local governments before the agency extended the contract by assigning new responsibilities to Development Alternatives Inc., or DAI. But the change by USAID means that Americans, not Kenyans, will be on the...

Obama administration hiding costs, names of decision-makers from publicA planning document uncovered by WND reveals that the Obama administration is hiding certain details from the public – including costs and the names of decision-makers – regarding “special projects” governing the federal government’s global deployment of U.S. and ally drones. The document indicates the government is extending support of unidentified Overseas Contingency Operations, or OCOs, for up to 15 additional months. A break in service also could have affected what was, as of January, the “imminent release” of armed MQ-1 Predator and MQ-9 Reaper surveillance drones to new Foreign Military Sales,...

Seek 'biosignature' spying ability to 'identify, locate specific individuals'The federal government doesn’t just want the ability to track down your car; it wants to be able to track down your body as well. Just as details are emerging about a controversial, nationwide vehicle-surveillance database, WND has learned the federal government is planning an even more invasive spy program using “physiological signatures” to track down individuals. The goal of this research is to detect – as well as analyze and categorize – unique traits the government can exploit to “identify, locate and track specific individuals or groups of people.” According to...

Global health-care initiatives continue expensive expansionThe federal government’s portfolio of international health-care initiatives has grown so enormous that the Obama administration is infusing another quarter-billion dollars simply to help operate this global bureaucracy. The estimated return on this taxpayer-funded venture: 250 new support staff. This discovery comes at a time when new information reveals that Obama’s growing health-care bureaucracy at home will eliminate the equivalent of 2.3 million private-sector jobs within a decade. The U.S. Agency for International Development – based on its own estimate – now is poised to spend the equivalent of a million dollars on each temporary...

Thus far there is just one "witness" scheduled to testify Wednesday (2/5/14) at the House Foreign Affairs Committee hearing, which is titled "Al-Qaeda’s Resurgence in Iraq: A Threat to U.S. Interests." Mr. Brett McGurk, Deputy Assistant Secretary for Iraq and Iran from the U.S. Department of State’s Bureau of Near Eastern Affairs, apparently is going to help sort out the situation for this critical committee. Upon reading the hearing title, unconsciously I released a barely audible “Uh-oh,” wondering where such a hearing might lead us. While it is too early to make assumptions about the direction of U.S. policy on...