EFTA02367909.pdf

From: Gregory Brown Sent: Sunday, May 21, 2017 1:07 PM To: undisclosed-recipients: Subject: Greg Brown's Weekend Reading and Other Things.. 05/21/2017 DEAR FRIEND </a <=p> Consider This </=pan> Trying to come to terms with=President Trump's proposal to increase the US military budget by an additional $54 billion I ran across a 2015 article in ProPublica — We Blew $17 Billion in Afghanistan. How Would You Have Spent It? —=/b> And boy did it blow my mind. It is estimated that the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq will eventually cost American taxpaye=s $4 to $6 trillion, if not more. The truth is that everything we spent in these unnecessary wars is a waste but =he $17 billion that fell through the cracks is unconscionable, especially when=the President wants to cut programs for the poor, children and elderly to give =he military an additional $54 billion. The U.S. government has wasted b=llions of dollars in Afghanistan, but until ProPublica in 2015, no one has added it all up.40=A0 Project after project blundered ahead ignoring history, culture and warnings of failure. And Congress has barely bli=ked as the financial toll has mounted. Here's just what the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction found.Q=A0 ProPublica listed all of the US programs in Afghanistan and their waste and across the page government programs where the money wou=d have been better spent. See for yourself how that money could have been use= at home as well as the actual ProPublica article in its entirety via the web t=nk below. Web Link: Behold, American taxpayer, what happened to nearly a half billion of your dollars i= Afghanistan: EFTA_R1_01366530 EFTA02367909 =p class="MsoNormal">One example of the many: In 2008, the Pentagon bought 20 refurbished cargo planes for the Afghan Air Force, but as one top U.S. officer put it, "just about everythi=g you can think of was wrong." No spare parts, for example. The planes were a=so "a death trap," according to the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction. So $486 million was spent on worthless planes that no one c=uld fly. We did recoup some of the investment. Sixteen of the planes were sold =s scrap for the grand sum of $32,000. That's six cents a pound.=/span> And what a bill it is. There4,=99s a widely held idea of "just" as in "just a few million." Like the military officer who wrot= that the $25 million blown on a fancy headquarters nobody used was "probably not=bad in the grand scheme of things." But those millions add up. To billions. The problem, contrary to popular=assumptions, is not unscrupulous contractors. Follow the long trail of waste and you'll=be standing at the doors of the military, the State Department and the U.S. Agency for International Development. It's their bad decisions, bad purchases =nd bad programs that are consistently to blame. ProPublica examined more th=n 200 audits, special projects and inspections done by SIGAR since 2009 and built a database to add up the tot=l cost of failed reconstruction projects. Looking at the botched projects collectively — rather than as one-off headlines — reveals a=grim picture of the overall reconstruction effort and a repeated cycle of mistakes. • In just six years, the IG has tallied at least $17 billion in questionable spending. This includes $3.6 billion in outright wa=te, projects teetering on the brink of waste, or projects that can't =E2404) or won't — be sustained by the Afghans, as well as an additional $13.5 billion that th= average taxpayer might easily judge to be waste. Exhibit A for "=ou be the judge": $8.4 billion was spent on counter-narcotics programs that were so ineffective that Afghanist=n has produced record levels of heroin — more than it did before the =ar started. • Often the programs' ambitions were o=t of whack with the reality of life in Afghanistan. After the invasion, the U.S. rushe= forward with bold plans to create a democratic, fiscally secure, ethical go=ernment and society — out of whole cloth. It was the same country-building =ravado that had earlier tripped up the U.S. in Iraq when it dismissed the local culture=and ignored corruption. • "Pie in the sky" projects, as one USAID worker called them, were routinely =aunched without any thought to the financial and technological ability of the Afgha=s to maintain them. It turned out that the Afghans couldn't afford mo=t of them, so even the best programs could end up becoming waste. 2 EFTA_R1_01366531 EFTA02367910 • <=pan style="font-size:12ptline-height:107%;font-family:georgia,serif">No=e of the programs were required to prove they had even limited success. Officials tracked dollars spent, not impact. For instance, no one evaluated whether Afghan security forces actually learned =o read and write after going through a $200 million literacy program.<=r> • Those who signed off on the failed projects appeared to suffer no consequences. As head of SIGAR John Sopko puts it: Reconstruction efforts are "like a child sports game where everyone=gets a trophy." If this a=counting wasn't bad enough, consider this: SIGAR has only examined a small percentage of the $110 billion effort to rebuild and remodel Afghanistan. The waste totals are likely much higher. Still, =t's often hard to grasp what this kind of money means to the average American. Perhaps the most meaningful wa= to underscore what has been lost is to look at what the money could have paid =or at home. To set the scene, in 2010, as the U.S. was drastically increasing its investment in Afghanistan, a quarter of America's ho=eowners — more than 11million — were underwater on their mortgages, and the =ountry hovered near a 10 percent unemployment rate. Congress was routinely gutting federal programs. • The $14.7 million spent=on a storage facility the military never used? That could have paid for about 9,800 rape kits to be tested — enough to clear the backlog for the entire state of Tennes=ee. • The $456,000 police-training facility that was=so poorly constructed it literally melted in the rain? That could have funded =ore than 180,000 dinners for low-income kids, enough for an entire summer. • The $335 million spent on a power plant that the Afghans don't use? That could have paid for permanent housing for 3=,000 homeless Americans and $250,000 grants to 20 small-business owners to help =hem commercialize new technologies. Take the money wasted on those worthless planes, plus that spent on an unused consulate, and fixing the buildings constructed with hazardous materials. That could have restored the $714 million cut from the National Institute of Health's budget, which funds scientific resea=ch into new treatments for disease. Despite such trade-offs, there's been little collective outrage from either the =ublic or Congress about the massive waste in Afghanistan. The military, the S=ate Department and USAID provided detailed public responses to the findings in each of SIGAR's reports, sometimes disputing the conclusions and recommendations. The reports and their =esponses can be read here. This week a Defense Department spokesman told ProPublica that the Pentagon "disagrees with the ass=rtion that $17B in projects are 'questionable.'" Often those responsible for t=e failed projects treat SIGAR's findings like unnecessary niggling. Their rejoinder, in essence: "Hey, it's a war zone, what do you e=pect?" There's little time spent on pondering the bigger question: If it's a war zone, why were we pouring billions i=to reconstruction? Under the chapter 4)=93 Fingers in Ears: Ignoring History, Advice and Culture Link<=i> — the ProPublica article points out that the U.S. is a slow learner= Again and again, the U.S. disregarded expert advice, the local culture or past mistakes in both Afghanistan and Iraq 40=8040 sometimes, ignoring all three in a single failed project. First of al=, large- scale projects are almost impossible to achieve success when there was still active fighting, as anyt=ing big drew the 3 EFTA_R1_01366532 EFTA02367911 attention of the insurgency. "Very frequently on those PowerPoints you would see this pipeline t=at already had been reconstructed had been blown up again. Or an electri=ity grid," said former U.S. Ambassador William Taylor, who worked as director of the Iraq Reconstructio= Management Office from 2004 to 2005. "That led us to several lessons in Iraq that have general applicability, which ar=: Smaller projects at the local level, by and large, are to be preferred.Q=80Q That didn't stop the U.S. years later from trying to =uild a nationwide electricity system in Afghanistan that crossed through Taliban strongholds at the height of fighting. Or sinking billions into roads that spanned the country and were routinely blown up by insurgents. Offici=ls also identified over-gifting as a problem in Iraq. Iraqis would give a "head nod" to whatever the U.S. offered, because they weren't=footing the bill, former U.S. Ambassador Ryan Crocker told Iraq's inspector general. =nce the projects were built, the Iraqis couldn't pay to operate or maintain=them. And yet in Afghanistan, the military, the State Department and USAID repeatedly defended unsustainable projects by sa=ing that the Afghans had agreed to them. Corruption also prominently und=rmined the security forces in Iraq and many efforts at governance. SIGAR, however, said the U.S. moved forward for years in Afghanistan with no strategy in place to deal with corruption, a failure investigators found baffling. "Somethin= that quite's pertinent to Afghanistan that we could have learned in Iraq is the problem of the local culture of corruption," said Charles Tiefer, who investigated recon=truction on the Commission for Wartime Contracting in Iraq and Afghanistan. Then =here was the military, the State Department and USAID's frequent failures to consider the local cult=re in either country, a costly misstep that caused many ill-considered projects t= tank. =/b> The chapter — =b>Building in our Image: An Overly Ambitious Effort from the Start Link — speaks for itself. In 2011, a =ask force of financial gurus brainstorming business projects for the military had an idea: Alternate fuels! That's what Afghanistan needs to jumpstart its economy and bring in foreign investors.c=pan> A few years earlier a geological survey had found that the northern part of the country was blessed with natural gas reserves. C=mmercializing that resource would be a boon for Afghanistan, the task force figured, particularly since the country rel=es on imported gasoline it can barely afford. It seemed like a good id=a on paper. But, as expert after expert has noted, Afghanistan is not the U.S. It's not even Pakistan. Getting the gas=out of the ground and moved around the country would be a feat. There is no dist=ibution system in Afghanistan for that kind of compressed gas — and building one in a war-torn co=ntry that has trouble keeping the lights on with generators was an expensive, if not laughable, notion. But that didn't seem to matter. The task force sunk $43 million into a proof-of-concept gas stat=on anyway. 4 EFTA_R1_01366533 EFTA02367912 Then there was another very key problem: no customers...A0 The average Afghan would have to shell out more than an entire year's worth of salary to convert their cars to=run on compressed natural gas. It costs about $700 and most Afghans bring home $69= annually. So unsurprisingly, the only people who used the station were the 120 Afghans the U.S. paid to convert t=eir cars. The scale of what that project wanted to achieve was inappropriate in almost every aspect, and ProPublica found, it wasn4>=99t unique in that regard. Afghanistan is at the bottom of almost every conceivable development ranking. Yet much of t=e reconstruction effort has seemed as if the U.S. and its allies were trying to create a new Afghanista= in their own image — both in the Western ideals superimposed on the Af=hans and in the sheer ambition of the projects. These 80 Countries Had a Lower GDP Than the $17.1 Billion We Blew in Afghanistanapan> The chapter: Over-Gifting: Af=hans Can't Afford, Don't Need What They Got — is self-explanatory. Q=A0In a 14-year flurry of giving, the U.S. built the Afghans an array of big-ticket projects, but whether they could afford to maintain, or even operate, this largess was rarely considered in any meaningful way. The World Bank r=nks Afghanistan's ability to pay its bills as one of the world's(GB1] lowest. Right now, the country is significantly propped up by foreign aid whose future is uncertain. International donors have so far only committed at current levels through 2=17. A former SIGAR official listed three key tests for sustainability: Do they have the money? The technical capacity? The p=litical will? "Afghanistan generally fails all three." American "over-gifting" was a problem on virtually every project. Consider health care. In 2011, the inspector general for USAID issued a bleak assessment of=the ability of the Afghans to sustain any of the agency's health progra=s. The Afghan government paid the tab for just 6 percent of the nation's h=alth care expenditures. <= class="MsoNormal">Yet USAID replaced a hospital in Gardez with a new, la=ger facility, saddling the Afghans with at least a 180 percent, and possibly as much as a 524 percent, increase in that annual bill. (Or it will when the hospital is finally completed. It's years behind schedule.) Not far from that hos=ital, USAID replaced another that had cost $98,000 per year to run with one that costs $587,000 annually — nearly six times as much.</=> 5 EFTA_R1_01366534 EFTA02367913 Sure, the Afghan Ministry of Public Health agreed t= fund the new hospitals, but USAID didn't address a fundamental question: Cou=d it actually afford to do so? Without donor money, the answer is unequivocally "no." And that's the answer for almost every single=aspect of the Afghan government, according to a dozen of military and civilian Afghan experts. One of the largest, most notorious, capital projects in Afghanistan is roads. So far the U.S. and other donors have spent more than=$4 billion total on multiple projects to build more than 5,700 miles of them. =et the U.N. says 85 percent of the country's roads are undrivable.Q=A0 The Afghans do little to care for them. USAID tried to mold the Ministry of Public Works into a competent bureaucracy, bu= so far it remains ineffective. There's about a "$100 million m=intenance gap and inadequate technical staff" at the ministry for "routine= periodic, preventive, emergency and winter maintenance," USAID told SIGAR. Adding to their quick deterioration: the roads were built to U.S. weight standards, but Afghan tr=cks are notoriously overweight, Sopko said. The chapter: </=pan>Doomed to Repeat: An Afghan Security Force That Can't Maintain Its Numbers, Buildings, Equipment. Even Its Fro=t Lines. — suggests that if Afghans can't maintain their own military whatever=we do will fail. One only has to look to Iraq, where the Pentagon spent more than $20 billion to build an army and hailed =t a resounding success. Until ISIS came and the Iraqi security forces crumbled.=span> Meanwhile in Afghanistan, a f=r poorer and less sophisticated country, the military has replicated that training program, but tripled the investment, spending $65 billion — nearly 60 percent of the entire reconstruction budget. The plan: Create a well-schooled, 352,000-strong national Army and police force, and a robus= air force able to secure the country on its own — all in a matter o= years. But this formidable objective ignored the Afghans' =ervasive corruption, fledgling leadership, and rudimentary capabilities. Not t= mention Afghanistan's complete inability to pay the bills of such a large, modern military — which=costs upwards of $5 billion per year (If the Afghans spent every cent they collected in revenue on security and noth=ng else, they still couldn't cover the cost.) The Pentagon=has also had a perplexing tendency to repeat mistakes made in Iraq. The chapter= "A" Is For Effort: In Afghanistan No One Has To Prove Success —=means that whatever we do will fail. For five years, USAID poured $150 million into a project with warm, but fuzzy, aspirations: helping isolated, unstable Afghan communities grow and feel mo=e connected to their government. It was a part of the military's broa= campaign to win "hearts and minds." In all that time, t=ough, USAID was never able to define what, exactly, the objectives of the "Local Governan=e and Community Development" program were, let alone if it had met them.=C24> The agency also had a hard time keeping track of what contractors were actually doing, SIGAR reported. 6 EFTA_R1_01366535 EFTA02367914 That, howev=r, didn't stop USAID from literally doubling down on the program in 2009, increasing its budget to $373 million. SIGAR=E244ks conclusion: scattered, small successes but no wins on any overarching goals. Ashley Jackson, a longtime non-governmental organization worker, was blunter. USAID, she said, &=uot;would have been better off setting the money on fire." The chapter: Consequence-Free Zone: No One Is Ever Blamed For Failure Link — obviou=ly when there is no consequence of failure don't expect success. =As an example that site an unfinished courthouse in North of Kabul, which is a shell of rebar and cracking concre=e. So instead of being the centerpiece for Afghan national security trials, a prominent place to prosecute suspected insurgents, judges preside over a makeshift courtroom in a nearby building =ith fold-out tables. The Afghan contractor hired to build the courthous= had only been in business for about six months and there was very little documentati=n on why his company was chosen to do the work, Harmon said. The contra=tor hired a subcontractor that military commanders knew actively supported the Taliban. But since th=se commanders failed to share this information throughout the organization, the subcontractor had access =o a U.S. military-controlled area for two days — a serious security lap=e, according to a SIGAR report. With just basic foundation work done on the justice center, the contractor disappeared, tak=ng almost $400,000 of U.S. taxpayers' money with him. The military subsequently abandoned the project. The consequences for those mismanaging this misbegotten project? Nothing. Th= final chapter: Success or Failure: =e Spent $8 billion and There's Now More Heroin Than Ever — sums up o=r success in Afghanistan. Today Afghanistan is the king of heroin. It sits on a narco throne as "the global leader in illicit opium cultivation and produ=tion," according to SIGAR. After a 13-year effort by the U.S.to <http://U.S.to> end Af=hanistan's drug trade, it is now the world leader in heroin production. Plans to promote alternative farming and eradicate poppy fields have only led to more poppie= planted. Law enforcement training has been insufficient. About $109 million was spent on substance abuse treatmen= programs and education. </=pan> And that $8.4 billion the U.S. spent to end =ts reign over the last 13 years appears to have only enhanced its standing. The Pentagon, USA=D and the State Department had a grand plan to eradicate poppy fields, develo= Afghan law enforcement and promote alternative farming livelihoods. Yet the drug trade still "poisons the Afghan financial sector and undermines t=e Afghan state's legitimacy by stoking corruption, sustaining crimina= networks, and providing significant financial support to the Taliban and other insurg=nt groups," SIGAR found. =br> The drug trade feeds corruption. Deali=g with both are intrinsically tied to reconstruction success, which is why the failure to h=ve an effective strategy. When a farmer grows poppy, he pays off the local officials, and the money goes up the cha=n and leads to corruption of entire institutions. Part of the program was to demonstrate to the Afghans that was why they shouldn't let the drug=trade go on. Didn't we learn from the disastrous "War On Drugs" here in America and Nancy Reagan's laugha=le "Just Say No" drug campaign? Obviously not. And this is indicative to why our hold strategy under both Presidents Bush and Obama has failed. We are tryi=g to force a square peg through a round hole and we 7 EFTA_R1_01366536 EFTA02367915 seem surprised that it is not working. But back to ProPub=ica's initial premise, think about what we could have accomplished with the billi=ns of taxpayers' dollars wastes in Afghanistan. </=> <=>So True</=> Prejudices are what fools use for reason. Francois Voltaire =/span> A new 'No Fly' List The Treasury Department =ssentially has a 1,000-page financial no-fly list. I am old enough to remem=er Richard Nixon's famous 'Enemies List" an= later watched the Federal Government's 'No Fly List4>=8000 which grew in response to the 9/11 attacks in 2001 from 16 people deemed "no transport&qu=t; because they "presented a specific known or suspected threat to aviation" to more than 103, 440 today. A=d because so many "False Positives" started to occur 41=80. when a passenger who is not on the No Fly List has a name that matches or i= similar to a name on the list — denying these passengers from board=ng a flight unless they can convince the airline that they are not that person. =C240n an effort to reduce the number of False Positives, DHS announced on April 28, 2008 th=t each airline would be permitted to create a system to verify and store a passenger's date of birth, to clear up watch list misidentifications. 8 EFTA_R1_01366537 EFTA02367916 False Positive passengers will not be allowed to board a flight unless they can differentiate themselves from the actual person on t=e list, usually by presenting ID showing their middle name or date of birth.=C24:0 In some cases, False Positive passengers have been denied boarding or have mis=ed flights because they could not easily prove that they were not the person o= the No Fly List. But what if you don't know that your name is on the list? And if it is, how do you get your name off this list, if indeed it is a False Positiv=? And what do you do if you are on another list that you have never heard about? I say all of this because I recent=y read a story in the Huffington Post by Ben Walsh —=Your Financial Life Could Be Ruined If Your Name Is On This Massive Government List — about another gov=rnment list that I had never heard of. Take the case of Muhammed Ali Khan tried to do one of the most boring, responsible things an American taxpayer can do: set up a government-guaranteed retirement savings account.=He was rejected because the Treasury Department thought he might be a terroris=. But he isn't. He's a software consultant from Fullerton, =alifornia. But he shares a first name (with a different spelling), last name and middle initial with a financier of a Pakista=i terror group. =p class="MsoNormal">That man, Mohammad Naushad Alam Khan, is on the Treas=ry Department's Specially Designated Nationals and Blocked P=rsons List (SDN). 4,=A0The 1,026-page catalog lists people and organizations that U.S. citizens and residents are barred from doing busine=s with because of their ties to terror cells, drug cartels or rogue states.=C2* The SDN is essentially a financial no-fly list that cuts people off from U.S. banks — and, as a result, t=e global financial system. The SDN has more than doubled in length in the last five years. Khan later found out tha= his credit reports from Experian and TransUnion had also been flagged as a potential match. Luckily the tr=uble that caused him, was relatively minor — after he got over the shock of seeing a terrorism flag on h=s credit report, he spent a few hours navigating customer service lines with the Treasury Department and the two credit bureaus. He got his retirement=account set up and his credit reports cleared after providing some personal information to show th=t he was not the man who had financially supported the 2008 Mumbai attacks. <=pan> Some other people wrongly believed to be on the SDN — either because they share a name with someone who is or because their name partial=y matches an alias used by someone on the list (and international criminals often have a lot of aliases= — are hurt far worse than Khan. As a result they can have their airli=e ticket purchases rejected or hotel reservations declined. Their bank account= can be frozen. Loans to buy a home or a car can be declined. =ire transfers can be seized and held for up to a year while the freeze is litigated, which can destroy small businesses= block real estate transactions or delay inheritances. <=p> Such delays impose "a tremendous burden," said Peter Djinis, a former anti-money laundering regulato= at the Treasury Department. "It can become a business disadvantage to people whose =ame just happens to be similar to that of someone actually on the list," he =aid. "This is a real problem." 9 EFTA_R1_01366538 EFTA02367917 "Bank accounts can be frozen. Loans to buy a home or a car can be declined. Wire transfers can be seized and held for up to a year." The Treasury Department's Offi=e of Foreign Assets Control, or OFAC, maintains the SDN list. The catalog=was created in 1940, but the department massively increased its efforts to bloc= terrorist financing after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. OFAC is a rela=ively small office compared to other parts the law enforcement and national security apparatus, although t=e Treasury Department claims that OFAC has enough staff and that its size is appropriate relative to U.S. sanctions programs. However, OFAC is esp=cially small relative to its mission of blocking thousands of people from the U.S. financial system. This means day-to-day enforcement is largely left up to the private sector.</=> A Treasury D=partment spokesman said that OFAC manages individuals and entities on its list in coordination with relevant U.S. government agencies, and has processes in place to ensure that designations=are applied appropriately, and to assist and provide due process to anyone who believes they should be removed. And due to a backlog a whole industry has popped up around this, producing what=is known as interdiction software — programs that banks use to see if = customers name matches one on the blocked list. This software produces a staggering volume of hits and leads to lots of false positives, like Khan's. Banks tend to be conservative in their risk management, and cast as wide a net as possible to try to stop anything improper. This=is because sanctions are enforced under the legal standard of strict liability, meaning any transaction with anybod= on the list is illegal, regardless of intention. Fines are steep, too: either $284,000 per violation, or twice the value of the transaction — whi=hever is higher. Companies that peddle interdiction software turn banks' worries into a selling point.4)=A0 Yet the software's results often don't live up to its promises, and financial institutions are struggling to deal with the mountains of data the software produces. The Treasury Department declined t= comment on interdiction software. Realize that that big banks, credi= card companies and payment processors at most, only have between 200 and 500 employees to sift through=hits and gather information to try to clear false positives from the OFAC list.=C2* When a potential client's name matches one on the list, the financial institution staffers then have to call OFAC to figu=e out if the person really is on the SDN or if they are dealing with a false positive. The SDN doesn't provide much in the way of specifics — a name, a few aliases, a nationality=and sometimes a date of birth. Financial institutions complain that they would like=more identifying information about the people on the SDN so they could vet their customers more quickly. 10 EFTA_R1_01366539 EFTA02367918 But the government is often =amstrung because it has limited personal information about the people on the list, often because the SON targets are concealing as much about their lives as possible. The Tre=sury Department says that it compiles and releases as much identifying information about the people on the list a= it can in order to reduce the number of false positives. The department =eclined to release data on the number of transactions or transfers halted due to false positives. =/p> =span style="font-family:georgia,serif">"It can become a business disadvantage to people whose name just happens to be similar to that of som=one actually on the list." Peter Djinis, a former anti-money laundering regulator at the Treasury Department False hits — people like Khan — are 4>=9Ca bigger problem, not a smaller problem," explained Djinis, the former regulator. And=clearing up false hits is a labor-intensive process. The safe, simple option for the financial institution is often to just stop doing business with a customer whose name gets flagged. The complex nature=of financial transactions makes this process even more difficult for customers with names that are likely to get wrongly flagged. For instance, a simple money transfer abroad might involve two retail banks and an intermediary ba=k to facilitate. The transfer can be held up if software run by any of =he three banks flags any party involved. Some financial institutions have tri=d to fix this by buying more software to help sort through the results — which is great for=the software providers, and could help the people the system has wrongly flagge=. "We are going to make so, so much money selling them stuff to fix this," the software executive said. =The application of the SDN list has become "guilt by association," said Shereef Akeel, a civil rights lawyer in Michi=an who has worked on the issue. The Treasury spokesman said the department wasn=E244t worried that enforcing the list raised any civil rights issue. =/p> The vast num=er of false positives, Akeel said, "actually compromises our national security ... because everyone is busy lookin= at all these other names, they don't have enough time to really catch the =ad guys." Instead, Akeel said, the burden falls on people like Khan, who have to try to prove that they are not someone else. =lthough Khan succeeded in setting up his retirement fund, but there's no way for=him to proactively tell every U.S. financial institution that he isn't Moh=mmad Naushad Alam Khan. =/p> 11 EFTA_R1_01366540 EFTA02367919 In response to 9/11 we have allowed the governmen= to extend the reach of Big Brother broad surveillance far beyond the levels permitted=by the US Constitution and the Bill of Rights. And because so many of th= programs overlap and interrelate among one another without a central server and intense backbone monitoring false positives will continue if not increase. So if you find yourself in a similar position of Muhammad Ali Khan there are ways to cure the problem that you can do yourself. 4)=A0 =C24) 4)=A0 =C24) 4)=A0 The Great Show on Earth <=span> After 146 continuous years of entertaining and amazin= generations of audiences across America the Ringling Brothers and Barnum=& Bailey Circus affectingly known as "The Greatest Show on Earth" will give its farewell show toda=, May 21st, in Uniondale, N.Y. <=p> The Ringling brothers (originally Rungeling) were seven American siblings of German and French descent =ho transformed their small touring company of performers into one of America&#=9;s largest circuses in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. The broth=rs were born between 1852 and 1869 with a sister Ida, (whose two s=ns John Ringling North and Henry Ringling North guide the circus into the mode=n age and under their management, the circus switched from tents to air conditioned venues in 1956) were born in McGregor, Iowa and raised in Baraboo, Wisconsin. The siblings were children of German and French immigrants, August Frederick and Marie Salome Rungeling, who simplified his name to Ringling once in America. In 1884 five of the seven Ringling brothers: Albert, =ugust, Otto, Alfred T., Charles, John, and Henry founded a small circus in Baraboo= Wisconsin, United States. This was about the same time that Barnum & Ba=ley were at the peak of their popularity. Similar to dozens of small circ=ses that toured the Midwest and the Northeast at the time, the brothers moved their circus from town to town in small animal-drawn caravans. Their circus=rapidly grew and they were soon able to move their circus by train, which allowed them to have the largest traveling amusement enterprise of that time. Bailey's European to=r gave the Ringling brothers an opportunity to move their show from the Midwest to the eastern seaboard. Faced with the new competition, Bailey took his show west of the Rocky Mountains for the first time in 1905. He died the next year, and the circus was sold to the Ringling Brothers. 12 EFTA_R1_01366541 EFTA02367920 <=pan style="font-size:12ptline-height:107%;font-family:georgia,serif"> The Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus is = combination of the Barnum & Bailey's Greatest Show on Earth, a circus created b= P. T. Barnum and James Anthony Bailey, was merged with the Ringling Bros. World&#=9;s Greatest Shows and debuted in New York City. The Ringling brothers had purchased Barnum & Bailey Ltd. following Bailey's death in 1906, but ran the cir=uses separately until they were merged in 1919 debuted in New York City. T=e posters declared, "The Ringling Bros. World's Greatest Shows and the Barnum & Bailey Greatest Show on Ear=h are now combined into one record-breaking giant of all exhibitions." Charl=s E. Ringling died in 1926, but the circus flourished through the Roaring Twenties. In 1927 John Ringling move the circus' headquarters to Sarasota, Florida. And in 1929, the American Circus Corporation signed a contract to perform in New York City. John R=ngling purchased American Circus, owner of five circuses, for $1.7 million. Like most other businesses the circus suffered during=the 1930s due to the Great Depression, but managed to stay in business. A=ter John Nicholas Ringling's death, his nephew, John Ringling North, managed the indebted circus twice, the first from 1937 to 1943. Special dispensation was given to the circus by President Roosevelt to use the rails to operate in 1=42, in spite of travel restrictions imposed as a result of World War II. =any of the most famous images from the circus that were published in magazine and posters were captured by American Photographer Maxwell Frederic Coplan, who traveled the world with the circus, capturing its beauty as well as its harsh realities. North's cousin Robert took over the president of the s=ow in 1943. North resumed the presidency of the circus in 1947. A fire occurred on July 6, 1944, in Hartford, Connect=cut, during an afternoon performance that was attended by approximately 7,500 to 8,700 people. It was one of the worst fire disasters in the history of the United States. Although the Hart=ord Fire Department responded quickly, the fire was fanned by the fact that the canvas circus t=nt had been waterproofed through a mixture of highly flammable paraffin and gasoline. During the ensuing panic Emmett Kelly, the tramp clown, threw a bucket of water at the burning canva= tent, and a poignant photograph of his futile attempt was transmitted aroun= the world as news spread of the disaster. At least 167 people were killed in the disaster, and hundreds more were injured. Some of the dead remain unidentified to this day, even with modern=DNA techniques. <=pan style="font-size:12ptline-height:107%;font-family:georgia,serif"> 13 EFTA_R1_01366542 EFTA02367921 In the following investigation, it was discovered tha= the tent had not been fireproofed. Ringling Bros. had applied to the Army, which had an absolute priority on the materi=l, for enough fireproofing liquid to treat their Big Top. The Army had r=fused to release it to them. The circus had instead waterproofed the=r canvas using an older method of paraffin dissolved in gasoline and painted =nto the canvas. The waterproofing worked, but as had been repeatedly shown it was horribly flammable. Circus ma=agement was found to be negligent and several Ringling executives served sentences in jail. Ringling Br=thers' management set aside all profits for the next ten years to pay the claims f=led against the show by the City of Hartford and the survivors of the fire. The post-war prosperity enjoyed by the rest of the na=ion was not shared by the circus as crowds dwindled and costs increased. Publ=c tastes, influenced by the movies and television, abandoned the circus, which gave its last performance under the=big top in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania on July 16, 1956. An article in Life magazi=e reported that "a magical era had passed forever". In 1956, when John Ringling North and Arthur Concello moved the circus from a tent show t= an indoor operation, Irvin Feld was one of several promoters hired to work the advance for select dates, mostly in the Detroit and Philadelphia areas.0=A0 Irvin Feld and his brother, Israel Feld, had already made a name for themselves marketing and promoting DC area rock and roll shows. In 1959, Ringling Bros. started wintering in Venice, Florida. In late 1967, Irvin Feld, Israel Feld, and Judge Roy =ark Hofheinz of Texas, together with backing from Richard C. Blum, the founder =f Blum Capital, bought the company outright from North and the Ringling famil= interests for $8 million at a ceremony at Rome's Colosseum. I=ving Feld immediately began making other changes to improve the quality and profitability of the show. Irvin g=t rid of the freak show so as not to capitalize on others' deformations and to become more family orientated= He got rid of the more routine acts. <=pan style="font-size:12ptline-height:107%;font-family:georgia,serif"> In 1968, with the craft of clowning seemingly neglect=d and with many of the clowns in their 50s, he established the Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Clown College. A circus in Europe was purchased for $2 million just to have its star animal trainer, Gunther Gebel-Williams, for the core of his revamped circus. =Soon, he split the show into two touring units, Red and Blue, which could tour the country independently. The separat= tours could also offer differing slates of acts and themes, enabling circus goers to view both tours where possible. The company was taken public in 1969. In 1970, Feld's only son Kenneth joined the company and became a co-producer. The circus was s=Id to the Mattel Company in 1971 for $40 million, but the Feld family was retained as management.=/span> 14 EFTA_R1_01366543 EFTA02367922 After Walt Disney World opened near Orlando, Florida,=in 1971, the circus attempted to cash in on the resulting tourism surge by opening Circus World theme park in nearby Haines City, which broke ground on April =6, 1973. The theme park was expected to become the circus's winter home as well as to have the Clown College lo=ated there. Mattel placed the circus corporation up for sale by December 1973 despite its profit contributions, =s Mattel as a whole showed a $29.9 million loss in 1972. The park's=opening was then delayed until February 1974. Venture Out in America, Inc., a Gulf Oil recreational subsidiary, agreed to buy the combined shows =n January 1974, and the opening was further pushed back to 1975. While =he Circus Showcase for Circus World opened on February 21, 1974, Venture Out placed the purchase deal back into negotiations, and the opening of the whole complex was moved to an early 19=6. By May 1980, the company expanded to three circuses b= adding the one-ring International Circus Festival of Monte Carlo that debuted in l=pan and Australia. The Felds bought the circus back in 1982. Irvin Feld died in 1984 and the company has since been=run by Kenneth. Circus World was never successful, as its standard carnival-type rides were no match for Disney -=;s state-of-the-art attractions and was out of the way. The circus sold the pa=k to Arizona developers James Monaghan and Brian Burstein in 1984. <=pan style="font-size:12pt;line-height:107%;font-family:georgia,serif"> When in 1990 the Venice rail tracks could not support=the show's train cars, the combined circus moved its winter base to the Flo=ida State Fairgrounds in Tampa. In 1993, the clown college was moved from the Venice Arena to Baraboo, Wisconsin. =n 1995, the company founded the Center for Elephant Conservation (CEC)<=pan style="font-size:12pt;line- height:107%;font-family:georgia,serir>.=C2* Clair George has testified in court that he worked as a consultant in the early 1990s for Kenneth Feld and the Ringling Brothers and Barnum & Bailey Circus. He was involved in the surveillanc= of Jan Pottker (a journalist =ho was writing about the Feld family) and of various animal rights groups such as PETA. After three years in Baraboo, the clown college opera=ed at the Sarasota Opera House in Sarasota until 1998 before the program was suspended. On February 26, 1999, the circus company started previewing Barnum's Kaleidoscape, a one ring, in=imate, upscale circus performed under the tent; designed to compete with similar upscale circuses such as Cirque du Soleil, Barnum's Kaleidoscape was no= successful, and ceased performances after the end of 2000. Nicole Feld became the first female producer of Ringl=ng Circus in 2004. In 2009, Nicole and Alana Feld co-produced the circus. In 2001, a group led by the Humane Society of the United States, sued the circ=s over alleged mistreatment of elephants. the suit ended in 2014 with the cir=us winning $25.2 million in settlements. On March 3, 2015, the Circus announced that all elephants would be retired in =018 to the CEC. The retirement date was subsequently moved forward to May 2016. 15 EFTA_R1_01366544 EFTA02367923 On January 14, 2017, it was announced that the circus=will be closed in May 2017, and would lay off more than 462 employees between March=and May 2017. Declining attendance combined with high operating costs and loss of the elephants are among the reasons f=r closing. On May 7, 2017, its "Circus Extreme" =our will be shown for the last time in Providence, Rhode Island. The circus's last perf=rmance will be its "Out of This World" tour at Nass=u Veterans Memorial Coliseum on May 21, 2017, and will be its first (and only) performance at Nas=au Coliseum. <=pan style="font-size:12pt;line-height:107%;font-family:georgia,serif"> I =emember as a child during the 1950s and 60s going with my mother to the Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus at the old Madison Square Gar=en. I also remember that when=the circus came to town, we would go to see the Circus Parade with its elephants, other animals and clowns walking up 8th Avenu= from the Penn Station yards, up to the old Madison Garden on 49th Street and 8th Avenue. I remember goingrearly to see the 'side show' with its Bearded Lady, World's Stron=est Man, midget cl=wns and all sorts of strange and wonderful animals. I remember being mesmerized by =i style="font-family:georgia,serif;font-size:l2pt">The Flying Wallendas<=i>, amused by the clowns, charmed by the jugglers and enchanted by the elephants. And like most children, a t=ip to the circus wasn't complete without popcorn, cotton candy and a circus light th=t you swung around on a string. As Bob Hope would have said and on this last day, Thanks for the memoriesvery-very4,=A0best. <=> Donald Trump's disastrously bad week in Washington No Mr. President this isn't White Noise nor is it =oing Away 16 EFTA_R1_01366545 EFTA02367924 If you follow U.S. politics this =ast week was a doozy. Because for Donald Trump the week was the most damaging of his presidency. Except that I thought that last week was the worst week of the Trump Administratio=, starting with Sally Yates' damning testimony about Michael Flynn and ended with = series of wild tweets and an ever-changing story about exactly why he chose to fir= FBI Director James Comey. But this week began with the continued shockwaves from Trump's decision to fire F=l Director James Comey.... still being felt. With critics of the President describing the decision as 'Nixonian*=80. and then Trump hinting that there may be 'tapes=E24 of their meetings which only heightened the Watergate comparisons. Even by Trumpian standards, th= wild swings, erratic messaging and general chaos was beyond the pale -- raising real concerns about whethe= Trump was losing control of the ship of state. Each day, a fresh scandal appeared to engulf Trump's administration=at a speed not seen since he took office. =onday: We learned that then-President Obama warned Trump not to hire former National Security Adviser Michael Flynn. We =lso learned that Trump gave the Russians highly classified information. Tuesday: Trump fired FBI Di=ector James Comey, which Comey found out about on TV and that Trump asked Comey to shut down the FBI investigation into Michael