The Obama administration has created a “resettlement surge center” which has produced a pouring of 100 Syrian refugees in the U.S. per day. The very real risk to Americans – the lack of proper vetting of these individuals by the quick processing that is being done, almost all of them reported to be Muslims.

Over 100 Syrian refugees have been admitted every day in June according to the federal government’s own database from the Refugee Processing Center. More than 1,000 were admitted in May. The rate of those admitted has sky-rocketed when compared to the 3,755 accepted in fiscal year 2016.

The Conservative Review reported these numbers, and that approximately 100-250 were admitted during the first six months of fiscal year 2016. It noted that the Associated Press reported in April that the federal government set up a “resettlement surge center” in Amman, Jordan in February. The center is now interviewing approximately 600 people a day.

The “vetting” process, already questioned by leaders in the country, has been fast-tracked from 18-24 months to just three months. The “refugee mill” can now go through thousands of applications every month.

The Center for Immigration Studies published concerns raised by the comments of Simon Henshaw, principal deputy assistant secretary of the State Department’s Bureau of Population, Refugees, and Migration, when he certified that 12,000 applicants were interviewed in February, March, and April. He wrote:

So the fact that 225 Syrian refugees were admitted into the United States in a new single-day record for Syrian refugee approvals is beside the point. What is of importance here is that 12,000 were interviewed in such a short time driven by the urgency to meet the September deadline.

Henshaw made these statements during a meeting on the “Refugee Crisis in the Middle East,” organized by the Center for Migration Studies (CMS) in May.

Obama promised and the U.S. Congress has acquiesced to 10,000 Syrians being admitted by September 30 when the fiscal year ends. In September 2015, President Obamadirected the U.S. government to admit 10,000 Syrian refugees into the country. Now,according to the regional refugee coordinator at the U.S. Embassy in Anman in April, “The 10,000 [number] is a floor and not a ceiling, and it is possible to increase the number.”

A video excerpt from an October 2015 House Homeland Security Committee hearing reveals exactly why U.S. and state leaders have called for “a screeching halt” to Syrian resettlement in the country, as reported by Breitbart Texas.

Congressman Lamar Smith (R-TX) asked federal security and crime directors whether terrorists would use federal programs to gain access to this country in order to commit terrorist acts. The Director of the National Counterterrorism Center answered, “We have certainly seen terrorist groups talk about, think about, exactly what you are describing, Mr. Smith. Trying to use available programs to get people not only into the United States, but into western European countries as well. So we know that they aspire to do that.”

At the time Smith added, “As I say, both the profile and the motive of terrorist organizations, and your admission that there is some risk involved, to me would persuade the administration to go slow, rather than fast, when it comes to admitting individuals who might do us harm.” Smith noted that both FBI Director James B. Comey and Homeland Security Secretary Johnson admitted they do not currently have the ability to properly screen and conduct sufficient background checks on these refugees.

Besides the risk of terrorist attacks in the U.S., there is also a huge financial cost to the U.S.

Senator Jeff Sessions for one, has chastised U.S. representatives for their response to President Obama’s refugee plan. As reported by Breitbart News, admitting 10,000 refugees into the United States “presents a net lifetime cost to taxpayers of $6.5 billion, meaning that under the current plan to admit 85,000 refugees this fiscal year, taxpayers will be on the hook for $55 billion,” he said.

Moreover, Americans would be wise to take heed of what has happened to citizens in Europe. Europeans have suffered intense economic, social, and criminal consequences (theft, murder, rape, and other violence), for the refugee policies and the invasion of these migrants in European countries.

Germany alone has been flooded with more than 1.1 million migrants in 2015, as reportedby Breitbart London. It also reported that a famous German social worker broke his silence on sexual abuse and theft committed by migrants in Germany, and said that what happened in Cologne on New Year’s Eve is happening in German towns every day.

Migrants burned down an asylum centre just a few days ago in Dusseldorf, Germany. They were reported to be upset because they allegedly did not receive a wake-up call in time for their Ramadan breakfast. They have also protested by smearing blood, vomit and feces all over the wall of asylum homes. Migrants screamed “Allah hu Akbar” and tried to break down a border fence in Greece, reported Breitbart London in April.

An anti-migrant video went viral across Europe in November. Drone footage showed the crisis created by these migrant men, dubbed by those fearful of their intentions, as a “Trojan Horse” of fighting men infiltrating the countries. It was reported that “Only a fraction of them are Syrian, as they enter unfiltered, without any documents and without any legitimate right to claim asylum. Women and children are rarely seen, except in the cherry-picked sob stories of the media.”

Even the Dalai Lama has warned that there are too many migrants pouring into Europe. He said the solution to problems is the repatriation of migrants, reported Raheem Kassam, Editor in Chief of Breitbart London.

The left-of-center media in Europe and in the United States have gone overboard to down-play and editorialize about the crime caused by migrants in Europe, including in Cologne, Germany’s, mass migrant rape on New Year’s Eve, as exposed by Breitbart London.

The Paris terrorist attack mastermind posed as a Syrian refugee to enter Europe. After the attacks in November, Breitbart London reported that at least two of the attackers were thought to have “slipped in among the hundreds of thousands of migrants making their way across the continent, prompting a senior French security official to comment that Europe’s borders are ‘like a sieve.’”

Five of the wealthiest Muslim countries have refused to take even a single Syrian because of the risk of terrorism, reported Breitbart London in September 2015.

In mid-May, Breitbart London reported that the Director-General of the United Nations Office in Geneva admitted that most of the migrants from Syria are not fleeing persecution or war.

Lana Shadwick is a writer and legal analyst for Breitbart Texas. She has served as a prosecutor and associate judge in Texas. Follow her on Twitter @LanaShadwick2.

By Jay Syrmopoulos

It’s one of the most secretive and powerful organizations: the Bilderberg Group. With virtually no mainstream corporate media coverage of the event, the ultra-exclusive 2016 meeting of the Bilderberg Group, being held at the Taschenbergpalais hotel in Dresden, kicked off on June 9.

Nearly 130 politicians, financiers, and industrialists are attending this year’s conference, with the guest list including the chief of the International Monetary Fund, as well as the former heads of the CIA and MI6. What were once considered among the world’s most secretive meetings, the Bilderberg Meetings, have been held annually since 1954. Until recently, the entire existence of the meetings had been generally brushed off by the mainstream media as nothing more than fringe “conspiracy theorist” paranoia.

The annual meeting of the global power players — including representatives from government, private industry, media, finance, think tanks, academia, as well as numerous other organizations representing both private and public interests — began their closed-door meetings amid a heavily armed security presence, and extremely little in the way of transparency — with journalists being arrested.

“No minutes will be taken. No reporters will be allowed in. There will be no opening press conference, no closing statement, and participants will be asked not to quote each other,” the UK Independent says of the 64th Bilderberg Conference, which began on Thursday at the Taschenbergpalais hotel in Dresden, Germany.

Participants are bound by what’s known as the Chatham House Rule, which allows people to make use of the information they’ve received, but not reveal the identity or affiliation of the person who gave it to them. With so many high-powered attendees and so little media coverage, many question the actual intent of the annual meeting.

Some perceive the gathering as a giant “corporate lobbying” event, while others assign more nefarious intentions of creating regimes of global governance to the meetings. The one thing that is certain is that the gathering allows for the world’s power players to meet in secret and have “off the record” discussions without the public being aware of the details discussed, nor the informal agreements agreed to by attendees.

“All those finance ministers sitting round discussing the ‘geopolitics of energy and commodity prices’ with the group chief executive of BP, the vice-chairman of Portuguese petroleum giant Galp Energia, and the CEO of Royal Dutch Shell. And then afterwards saying nothing to their respective parliaments about what they discussed. It’s so off-the-chart inappropriate that it beggars comprehension,” according to The Guardian.

Make no mistake that the fortunes of kings are created at this event, as the fates of future presidents and prime ministers have seemingly been decided at Bilderberg.

“Bill Clinton was a conference attendee in 1991, as a mere governor of Arkansas, a year before he was elected U.S. President. Tony Blair was only a shadow minister when he got his invitation … in 1993,” said The Independent.

Coincidentally, (or more likely not) Blair became the prime minister of the United Kingdom in 1997.

While there is a publicly posted agenda, this does little in the way of allowing for the public to have an informed say in, or understanding of the frameworks and decisions made in these private meetings between some of the most powerful individuals in society, who essentially control the levers of Western power, and whose decisions have an inordinate amount of influence over the lives of almost every person on the planet.

Considering that these attendees have such a significant presence within private industry, state and global governance, and the overall geopolitical direction of the world, the fact that the details are hidden from public purview is deeply disturbing to anyone that believes in an accountable and transparent global society.

To help readers better understand this complicated web of top-down control, Zero Hedge has created a chart laying out the linkages and various connections of those in attendance. The graphic below exposes various connections and links – public, private, financial, political, statutory and otherwise – between a small group of individuals that are at the core of Bilderberg and the rest of the world.

Click to expand image.

Jay Syrmopoulos is a political analyst, free thinker, researcher, and ardent opponent of authoritarianism. He is currently a graduate student at University of Denver pursuing a masters in Global Affairs. Jay’s work has been published on Ben Swann’s Truth in Media, Truth-Out, Raw Story, MintPress News, as well as many other sites such as TheFreeThoughtProject.com, where this articlefirst appeared. You can follow him on Twitter @sirmetropolis, on Facebook at Sir Metropolis and now on tsu.

Tim Shank can guarantee he’ll never leave home without his keys. Why? His house keys are located inside his body.

Shank, the president of the Minneapolis futurist group TwinCities+, has a chip installed in his hand that can communicate electronically with his front door and tell it to unlock itself. His wife has one, too.

"You have mental checklists as you’re coming and going out of your home," Shank says. "One of those things is my wallet, keys, all those things I have with me. Once you start to eliminate all those things, you start to see all the mind space it actually clears not to have to worry about them."

In fact, Shank has several chips in his hand, including a near field communication (NFC) chip like the ones used in Apple Pay and similar systems, which stores a virtual business card with contact information for TwinCities+. "[For] people with Android phones, I can just tap their phone with my hand, right over the chip, and it will send that information to their phone," he says. In the past, he’s also used a chip to store a bitcoin wallet.

Shank is one of a growing number of "biohackers" who implant hardware ranging from microchips to magnets inside their bodies.

Some biohackers use their implants in experimental art projects. Others who have disabilities or medical conditions use them to improve their quality of life, while still others use the chips to extend the limits of human perception. Shank, for instance, has experimented with a portable distance sensor that vibrates a magnet in his hand; it's like a sonar system that lets him sense how far away obstacles are. He also considered installing a chip that would track his body temperature. But not every use case is so ambitious—for some, the chips are merely convenient ways to store data and unlock doors.

Experts sometimes caution that the long-term health risks of the practice are still unknown. But many biohackers claim that, if done right, implants can be no more dangerous than getting a piercing or tattoo. In fact, professional body piercers are frequently the ones tasked with installing these implants, given that they possess the training and sterilization equipment necessary to break people’s skin safely.

"When you talk about things like risk, things like putting it in your body, the reality is the risk of having one of these installed is extremely low—it’s even lower than an ear piercing," claims Amal Graafstra, the founder of Dangerous Things, a biohacking supply company.

Graafstra, who is also the author of the book RFID Toys, says he first had an RFID chip installed in his hand in 2005, which allowed him to unlock doors without a key. When the maker movement took off a few years later, and as more hackers began to explore what they could put inside their bodies, he founded Dangerous Things with the aim of ensuring these procedures were done safely.

"I decided maybe it’s time to wrap a business model around this and make sure that the things people are trying to put in their bodies are safe," he says. The company works with a network of trained body piercers and offers online manuals and videos for piercers looking to get up to speed on the biohacking movement.

At present, these chips are capable of verifying users’ identities and opening doors. And according to Graafstra, a next-generation chip will have enough on-board cryptographic power to potentially work with credit card terminals securely.

"The technology is there—we can definitely talk to payment terminals with it—but we don’t have the agreements in place with banks [and companies like] MasterCard to make that happen," he says.

Paying for goods with an implantable chip might sound unusual for consumers and risky for banks, but Graafstra thinks the practice will one day become commonplace. He points to a survey released by Visa last year that found that 25% of Australians are "at least slightly interested" in paying for purchases through a chip implanted in their bodies.

"It’s on the minds of people," he says. "It just needs to be brought to fruition."

Other implantable technology has more of an aesthetic focus: Pittsburgh biohacking company Grindhouse Wetware offers a below-the-skin, star-shaped array of LED lights called Northstar. While the product was inspired by the on-board lamps of a device called Circadia that Grindhouse founder Tim Cannon implanted to send his body temperature to a smartphone, the commercially available Northstar features only the lights and is designed to resemble natural bioluminescence.

Grindhouse founder Tim Cannon with his Northstar implant looking out over the skyline of Pittsburgh from Mt. WashingtonPhoto: Ryan O'Shea

"This particular device is mainly aesthetic," says Grindhouse spokesman Ryan O’Shea. "It can backlight tattoos or be used in any kind of interpretive dance, or artists can use it in various ways."

The lights activate in the presence of a magnetic field—one that is often provided by magnets already implanted in the same user's fingertips. Which brings up another increasingly common piece of bio-hardware: magnetic finger implants. Hackers say these small magnets allow users to sense the presence ofelectromagnetic fields, to diagnose electrical problems like faulty wiring, and even to pull small metal objects like paper clips and bottle caps toward you, making you into something of a low-rent Magneto. Despite the power of these implants, they're fortunately not strong enough to trip metal detectors, wipe hard drives, or interfere with MRI scans.

Tim Cannon's hand (right) minutes after implant with Justin Worst's healed Northstar implantPhoto: Ryan O'Shea

"Most [Northstar clients] already have the magnets," says Zack Watson, a piercer who installs implants for Grindhouse. "The magnets are kind of like a baby step into the heavy mod community. It’s not so much visible as it is modifying the body to get that magnetic vision, and then the byproduct is that you’re able to activate the implant."

According to O'Shea, a second-generation Northstar will include a Bluetooth transmitter and gesture-recognition sensors, which will let it communicate with a smartphone to control Internet of Things-type technology. That's not the only reason many early adopters may eventually choose to upgrade their implants. Another has to do with the limited battery life.

"[The device] will die, much like a pacemaker will die," he says. "When a pacemaker does die, it is removed in a procedure and is completely replaced with a new unit. That is similar to what will happen with Northstar."

Luckily for users, the Northstar can be inserted or replaced in about 15 minutes by a skilled piercer, says O'Shea.

"It’s just a small incision, usually in the side of the hand," he adds. "The skin is separated from the hand there, and the device is just inserted, and the skin is stitched up."

As long as they're inserted properly, the implants leave minimal scarring, says Watson. He has magnets in his hand that let him do "little parlor tricks" and pick up needles while he works. "My kids are convinced I have a magic finger," he says. Meanwhile, an RFID chip in his hand lets him unlock his phone and automatically load his Instagram portfolio for potential customers to see.

"My phone has a reader in it, and you’re able to use that reader to scan my hand," Watson says. "It’s a cool way to show off your work."

Grindhouse is also working on an enhanced version of the Circadia device that tracks founder Cannon’s body temperature. Cannon says that in the future, Circadia could potentially track other vital signs like blood oxygen, heart rate, and blood glucose. That, however, could pose tricky regulatory challenges for the company, he acknowledges, potentially bringing the device closer to medical sensors regulated by the Food and Drug Administration.

The line between medical devices and personal electronics has already begun to grow fuzzier. In recent months, the FDA has tentatively said it doesn’t want to impose the same red tape on "low-risk devices" like fitness trackers that it would impose on medical equipment. Even the White House has weighed in, saying it'sexploring options to bridge the gap between expensive, regulated hearing aids and cheaper amplification or tracking tools technically not certified for medical use.

Grindhouse’s foray into blood sugar tracking would follow projects like the Open Artificial Pancreas System, which lets diabetes patients build their ownautomatic blood sugar regulation tools using a Raspberry Pi computer to talk to an insulin pump and a glucose monitor. Some in the biohacking community have already used custom-built tools to overcome other disabilities or limitations. Artist Neil Harbisson, for instance, who was born color blind, used an implanted antenna to translate colors into audible sounds.

O’Shea says Grindhouse isn’t at all opposed to regulation: The company already does extensive testing to make sure its products are safe and won’t break down in the body—not even after physical trauma—and would welcome regulations that ensure people don’t unwittingly put something toxic or otherwise dangerous into their bodies.

"With Northstar right now, if there’s something that you encounter that’s going to destroy the Northstar in your body, you’re probably already dead at that point," he asserts.

What the company doesn’t want to see, O'Shea says, is the same full-on regulation of medical devices brought to bear on implantable products like the Circadia, which could make them impractical for startups and hackers to develop and prohibitively expensive for many potential users.

In the meantime, with implants essentially flying under the regulatory radar, hackers are exploring how they can use the devices to manipulate and receive input from the world around them without a great deal of scrutiny from government bodies.

One of these hackers is artist, dancer, and self-proclaimed cyborg Moon Ribas, who has an Internet-connected implant in her arm that vibrates to alert her to earthquakes around the world—information she can incorporate into her choreographed routines.

"This would allow me to be here and be in space in the same time," she says.

Ribas is also working on a commercial implant that would let users feel a vibration when they face due north, potentially training them to develop a directional sense similar to some animals. That's a far cry from Tim Shank's comparatively unambitious door-unlocking implant.

"I like things that are related to nature, space, or animals," she says. "Everyone has his own interests—it’s just that it doesn’t fulfill me as much to think about having an implant to open a door."

(fastcompany.com)

Commander of the United Nations’ most dangerous peacekeeping mission is not a title that Major General Michael Lollesgaard relishes.

The Danish commander heads up the U.N.’s peacekeeping mission in Mali—known as MINUSMA—which is seeking to stabilize the vast Sahelian country amid ongoing threats from militant groups, including Al-Qaeda’s North African wing. In the process of doing so, the mission has suffered 101 casualties since it was established in 2013, 68 of which were due to “malicious acts”—i.e. attacks from militants or opposition groups—making it the deadliest deployment for blue helmets in recent years.

The mission has again come under siege in recent weeks after a series of attacks perpetrated by militants of a variety of stripes. Five Togolese peacekeepers were killed in May in Mopti, central Mali, after their vehicle came under fire and then hit a landmine. The attack was not claimed by any group, though a Malian militant group known as the Macina Liberation Front is believed to operate in the region. Days later, a base used by Chinese peacekeepers was besieged by mortar or rocket fire, resulting in the death of one U.N. soldier (three other non-U.N. personnel were also killed in a separate attack in Gao.) The attacks were claimed by Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM), which said that a branch of its group known as Al-Mourabitoun led by veteran Algerian jihadi Mokhtar Belmokhtar was behind the incident.

“I’m very sad about that fact,” says Lollesgaard from Bamako, referring to the MINUSMA casualty count. “It’s my responsibility, it’s my task to set up the troops in the best possible way, to make sure that the soldiers are as safe as possible.”

The recent attacks have led U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon to recommend that an extra 2,500 uniformed personnel be added to the ranks of MINUSMA, which currently has around 12,000 peacekeepers in the field. Lollesgaard says that the extra troops are required to upgrade the mission’s capacities in key areas—including countering improvised explosive devices (IEDs), which are increasingly used by militants in northern Mali—but that more boots on the ground will not provide a panacea to Mali’s problems.

“The only way to improve the situation here in the long term is to get the political process running,” says Lollesgaard. “You can add 5,000, you can add 10,000 [peacekeepers], but if we’re not getting progress in the implementation of the peace agreement, it will never be enough.”

The agreement referred to by Lollesgaard is a momentous peace deal signed by the Malian government and an alliance of rebels from the Tuareg ethnic group, who inhabit Mali’s vast and arid northern deserts, in June 2015. The deal was hammered out in light of the latest rebellion to seize northern Mali, a restive region that has seen four major uprisings since independence from France in 1960.

The most recent Tuareg rebellion occurred in 2012, when an organization called the National Movement for the Liberation of Azawad (MNLA) began campaigning violently for greater autonomy for the ethnic group in northern Mali.

In March 2012, Malian President Amadou Toumani Touré was overthrown in the capital Bamako by mutinying soldiers dissatisfied with his handling of the Tuareg rebellion. In the midst of the chaos, the MNLA seized control of northern Mali’s three major cities—Kidal, Gao and Timbuktu—initially with the backing ofIslamist militant groups including Ansar Dine. Once they had seized control and declared Azawad’s independence, however, the MNLA was overthrown by Ansar Dine and an AQIM splinter group, leaving the extremist militants in control of northern Mali from July 2012 until the start of 2013. At this point, and following a plea for foreign intervention by the Malian government, the French military launched a counter-operation—known as Operation Serval—to overthrow the militants, backed by African Union forces. The overthrow of the militants was swift, with most of northern Mali being returned to government control by February 2013. France still deploys more than 3,000 troops across five countries in the Sahel—a vast belt across Africa, separating the Saharan Desert from the savannas of central Africa—including in Mali, as part of Operation Barkhane, the successor mission to Operation Serval.

MINUSMA was established in the wake of this complex recent history in April 2013 with the mandate of overseeing a ceasefire, supporting peace and reconciliation and, significantly, protecting civilians. This last clause means that, according to Lollesgaard, peacekeepers are permitted to conduct “pre-emptive strikes” if they find militants whom they deem to be an immediate threat to the mission or civilians. But there is little support from Malian security forces in the north of the country, according to Marie Rodet, Mali expert and senior lecturer in the history of Africa at SOAS, University of London. “The state institutions haven’t been redeployed in northern Mali. The only security forces you have are [MINUSMA] and the French mission Barkhane,” says Rodet.

The U.N. mission draws its military personnel from some 48 countries—from near neighbors Niger and Burkina Faso to distant countries such as Bangladesh—and the varying levels of training that each troop-contributing country provides serves to complicate matters, according to Lollesgaard. He highlights a lack of counter-IED training as particularly significant—Al-Qaeda-affiliated militants regularly use landmines and roadside bombs to attack, such as when five Chadian peacekeepers were killed in Kidal, northeastern Mali, in May. “This [IED use] is a threat that is growing and growing and we need to adapt here, and it takes a lot of training. We would prefer that most of that training was done in the country before they arrive, but currently that’s not the case,” says Lollesgaard.

As well as within northern Mali, Al-Qaeda has been stepping up its attacks across West Africa. AQIM or its affiliates have claimed responsibility for at least three major attacks in the past eight months. One of these took place in the Malian capital Bamako, when gunmen raided the Radisson Blu hotel, killing some 20 people. The others occurred in the capital of Burkina Faso, Ouagadougou, where militants took control of a hotel and fired on a nearby cafe, killing 30 people; and in the coastal town of Grand Bassam in Ivory Coast, where 19 people were killed in an attack on a beach resort. The U.N. commander says he is concerned by the ability of militant groups to seep across the region’s borders, which he describes as “close to non-existent.” “They can operate within a number of countries without being attacked or influenced in any way. This is, of course, an issue,” says Lollesgaard.

As Lollesgaard indicates, the state of affairs in northern Mali has not progressed much since the peace deal was signed in June 2015. Both sides have criticized each other for stalling on the terms—which include the disarmament of militias and the integration of Tuareg groups into joint military patrols in the region—and, despite the U.N.’s pleading, not a huge amount seems to have changed on the ground. “The implementation of the agreement is at a very low point at the moment,” says Rodet.

Despite the manifold challenges facing MINUSMA and northern Mali as a whole, Lollesgaard is optimistic. He says that, should the political process pick up pace, he could envisage MINUSMA winding down within the next three to four years. Lollesgaard says the fact that Mali’s Foreign Minister Abdoulaye Diop spoke of an exit strategy for MINUSMA when addressing the U.N. in January was a good sign—“it’s always good to have an exit strategy.”

The force commander himself could be out of Mali by then—unit commanders usually rotate on a two-year cycle, and Lollesgaard is already 15 months into his term—but Lollesgaard says that, despite the high casualty count, there is no other mission he’d rather be working on. “It’s very challenging but I hope that people feel that we’re trying the best we can,” he says. “If somebody feels they can do it better or if the U.N. feels they can find someone to do it better then I’m happy to go home, but I’m not going to ask to do that.”

(Newsweek)