Watching a media report online I was quite surprised to hear the World Health Organization state they were frustrated by Nigerian government refusing to release the names of other passengers on a flight with a visibly contagious Ebola Patient. Here’s the backstory of why this specific outbreak is so potentially scary:

UPDATE:  The Liberian man, Patrick Sawyer was a U.S. Citizen (details below).

Quartz.Com […] last week’s developments could transform this outbreak from an unusually nasty regional epidemic to something much bigger.
On Jul. 24, Nigerian authorities confirmed that a Liberian man, Patrick Sawyer, had collapsed in Lagos after flying there from the Liberian capital, Monrovia, and tested positive for Ebola; Sawyer died on the night of July 24-25.
This is alarming. So far, Ebola has been confined to Guinea, Sierra Leone, and Liberia—war-torn and largely rural west African countries. But Lagos is different; not only is it Africa’s biggest city, with 21 million people. It’s also one of the world’s most densely populated. And perhaps scariest of all, it’s a center for international travel—meaning that if it’s not contained, the virus could easily go global. Sawyer’s was the first-ever recorded case of Ebola in Nigeria, according to the Nigerian Tribune. (more…)

11 Days ago Doctors Without Borders sent a dire message to the Western world: “The Ebola contagion is expanding exponentially and we cannot control the epidemic”. With that announcement they presented the following video:

At the time of production there were approximately 603 confirmed deaths in the region with 90% of those who contracted the virus dying within a week of symptom presentation. Within a week the “known” death toll has risen to 690 and continues to rise.   Far more are suspected to have died in villages where aid workers have not been able to reach.
The most proficient doctor in the treatment of the virus has died, and within the last 24 hours the Western media have been notified of two more aid workers infected.
A doctor from the U.S., and another American, a hygienist who was supporting the efforts, have been diagnosed and are fully symptomatic.
Last night, as a containment measure, the entire border in/out of Liberia was closed. Things are worsening rapidly.

BREAKING NEWS: Ebola outbreak forces Liberia to shut border crossings http://t.co/vLqNkzUFRN

— Greta Van Susteren (@greta) July 28, 2014

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BREAKING NEWS: Ebola forces Liberia to shut border crossings  (link)

*NOTE*  Did Dr. Kent Brantly’s family anticipate the border closure ? (see article below)

BOONE, N.C. (AP) — A second American aid worker has tested positive for the Ebola virus at the same hospital in Liberia where an American doctor became infected while helping to combat an outbreak of the deadly disease, a relief group official said Sunday.
Ken Isaacs, a vice president of Samaritan’s Purse, told The Associated Press that Dr. Kent Brantly — the 33-year-old medical director for the group’s Ebola care center on the outskirts of the Liberian capital of Monrovia — was stable and in very serious condition.

“We are hopeful and prayerful,” Isaacs told AP by telephone from the group headquarters in Boone, North Carolina. He said the doctor quickly recognized the symptoms and sought speedy treatment.
Isaacs identified the second American, Nancy Writebol, as a worker with an allied aid group SIM, or Serving in Mission, which runs the hospital where Samaritan’s Purse has an Ebola care center on the grounds. He said she was in stable and serious condition.
(more…)

Four years ago I was in a rather heated discussion about the ultimate ends to leftist ideology. The framework was around immigration and the general principles which Secretary of State Clinton and President Obama were supporting – only the discussion was not about America, it was about Europe.

However, many of the same principles apply to the current U.S. border crisis.  One of the principle outlines being discussed was if you follow the path of belief to it’s logical conclusion you will find the U.S. facing the same issues with multi-culturalism and unchecked immigration.
At the time we did not know what 2014 would present; however, if you look historically at the issues I believe you will find a general similarity between the current border crisis, and the explosion in Europe right before the “Arab Spring”.
This is where the foreign policy ideology of President Obama comes full circle and delivers a domestic consequence of remarkable similarity.  (more…)

It should be anticipated the Muslim Brotherhood will intensify calls for further attacks against Egyptian authorities – especially given the el-Sisi support for Israel’s efforts against Hamas.    The Brotherhood and Hamas are ideological brethren.   With Libya in a state of civil war and crisis, the Eastern Libya border to Egypt will be used by the severe Islamists as an incursion zone to attack.   

Remember the most hated man in the region (by the terrorists) is not Benjamin Netanyahu, it is Egyptian President Abdel Fattah Saeed Hussein Khalil el-Sisi .  President el-Sisi has deconstructed the terror networks, arrested the brotherhood members, and jailed the violent extremists.

VIA BBC – Gunmen have killed at least 15 soldiers in an attack on a checkpoint in western Egypt, security officials say.

The attackers used grenade launchers and heavy machine guns when they attacked the desert post some 390 miles (630km) west of Cairo, officials said.  It is not yet clear who carried out the assault.  Militants have intensified a campaign against the security forces since the Islamist president Mohammed Morsi was ousted from power just over a year ago.  (link)
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UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) – A U.N. expert panel has concluded that a shipment of rockets and other weapons that was seized by Israel came from Iran and represents a violation of the U.N. arms embargo on Tehran, according to a confidential report obtained by Reuters on Friday.
The finding comes just days ahead of the next round of negotiations in Vienna between Iran and six world powers aimed at securing a deal that would gradually lift international sanctions on Tehran — including the arms embargo — in exchange for curbs on the controversial Iranian nuclear program.
Despite Israel’s public statements that the seized arms were destined for Gaza — an allegation that Gaza’s governing Islamist militant group Hamas dismissed as a fabrication — the experts said the weapons were being sent to Sudan.
The experts do not speculate in the report about why the arms were being sent to Sudan, a country which Western diplomatic and intelligence sources have told Reuters has in the past been a conduit for Iranian arms shipments to other locations in Africa, as well as the Gaza Strip. (more…)

….which begs the obvious question:  Then why the heck would you go on TV and tell the kidnappers you know where they are ?

(Via Fox News) Nigeria’s defense chief is claiming that the country’s military has located nearly 300 schoolgirls abducted by Islamic extremists but cannot go in with force to free them.

Air Marshal Alex Badeh told demonstrators supporting the country’s much criticized military on Monday that Nigerian troops can save the girls, according to The Associated Press. But he added, “we can’t go and kill our girls in the name of trying to get them back.” (more…)

I’m going to outline the soup to nuts case of an Iran-Contra type weapons program that ultimately is at the heart of why President Obama and Secretary Clinton went to such lengths to cover-up the Benghazi operations. [context matters – sorry about the length.  /SD]

In December 2011 the New York Times published an article outlining the U.S. State Department initiative to buy shoulder fired missiles (MANPADS) away from the “rebels” in Libya.   (Story Here)

In February 2012 the U.S. Assistant Secretary of State for Political-Military Affairs Andrew J. Shapiro said:

“Once the stalemate broke [in Libya] and the fighting rapidly shifted in the [Libya’s Transitional National Council] TNC’s favor in August, we immediately deployed a State Department expert from the MANPADS Task Force to Benghazi.

Mark Adams, who you will hear from shortly on the panel, is the head of our MANPADS Task Force and spent considerable time on the ground in Libya … The initial primary objective was to reach an agreement with the TNC to set up a MANPADS control and destruction program that would enable us to set up what we call our Phase I efforts. Phase I entailed an effort to rapidly survey, secure, and disable loose MANPADS across the country. To accomplish this, we immediately deployed our Quick Reaction Force, which are teams made up of civilian technical specialists”.   (link)

Ultimately, The question for the Gowdy Special Committee is what were we doing with those missiles we were purchasing?   Where did they go ?   Was that operation the entire construct of the joint State Dept/CIA objective in Benghazi?…  And if so, was the missile capture an Iran-Contra type weapons scheme to divert missiles from Libya, through Turkey, into the hands of the Syrian “rebels”.

THAT is the substantive issue the Special Committee should seek. (more…)

If Eli Lake leaves the Daily Beast you will see this level of exposition stop immediately.  Despite his leftist leanings on the subject of Libya and Islamic extremism Mr. Lake is perhaps the most accurate of all reporters on the specifics.  We  give him props for swimming against the tide of his colleges and outlining the falsehoods present in the Obama ‘head-in-the-sand’ hypocrisy around Islam.  -SD

(Via Eli Lake – Daily Beast) In 2012, the Obama administration produced a draft National Intelligence Estimate that reached a surprising conclusion: al Qaeda was no longer a direct threat to America. That classified assessment, which has never before been publicly disclosed, was in keeping with the message coming from the White House. President Obama rode to re-election in 2012 partly on the success of the raid that killed Osama bin Laden. At rallies and in press conferences, the president and top officials publicly said al Qaeda was on the run.

But some senior U.S. intelligence officials, like Defense Intelligence Agency Director Gen. Michael Flynn, fought hard against that assessment, which amounted to an official pronouncement of the American intelligence community’s collected wisdom. Flynn and his faction won a partial victory, striking the judgment that the terrorist group no longer posed a threat to the homeland. “Flynn and others at the time made it clear they would not go along with that kind of assessment,” one U.S. intelligence officer who worked on the al Qaeda file told The Daily Beast. “It was basically: ‘Over my dead body.’” (more…)