Federal Prisons, Incubation Centers for Militant Islam

Posted on January 6, 2016January 6, 2016 by Denise Simon

Mandatory sentencing is a topic that the White House is manipulating with Judges across the country using the Justice Department to do it. This takes away sentencing that have been rendered and Obama lets prisoners out before the sentence is complete. The reason is prison over-crowding. While that is the case, Districts Attorneys even reduce charges all the time. Result is there are few consequences for violent criminal acts. What is worse, is what actually goes on in prison and who is at the core of radicalizing prisoners. It is important to know Islamic organizations in America have postured themselves to be the source of religious training and sessions with inmates. Then they later have their sentences commuted or get out early and the rest is a growing threat to our homeland.

Ripe for radicalization: Federal prisons ‘breeding ground’ for terrorists, say experts

FNC: America’s federal prisons have become a “breeding ground” for radical Islam, warn critics, who say imprisoned terrorists are more likely to spread their beliefs than renounce them.

As law enforcement authorities lock up more home-grown terrorists, experts are warning the success could turn sour if jailhouse jihadists are allowed to infect fellow inmates. Prisons have long been criticized for a culture that can make some inmates more dangerous than when they entered, but the possibility that typical felons could become lone wolf terrorists upon earning parole is a disturbing new wrinkle.

“Over the years, our Federal prisons have become a breeding ground for radicalization.”

– Rep. Stephen Fincher, R-Tenn.

“If we continue to downplay the threat, we do so at our own peril,” said Patrick Dunleavy, author of “The Fertile Soil of Jihad: Terrorism’s Prison Connection.”

The aggressive recruitment of Americans by ISIS has resulted in a spike in domestic terror-related convictions. Some 71 people are imprisoned in the U.S. on ISIS-related charges, including 56 individuals arrested in 2015, the most terrorism arrests in a single year since September 2001, according to George Washington University’s Program on Extremism.

(Alton Nolen, who is accused of beheading a former co-worker at a food processing plant in Oklahoma, is believed to have converted to Islam while doing time.)

In addition, the FBI has said it is currently conducting more than 900 investigations into ISIS-linked radicalization, including cases in all 50 states.

There are hundreds more federal inmates serving time for terrorist activities related to other terror groups. An estimated 100 are scheduled for release in the next five years, according to the Congressional Research Service. Still more terror suspects could be transferred to U.S. prisons from Guantanamo Bay in the coming months.

Terrorists held at Guantanamo Bay could soon be transferred to U.S. prisons, where critics say they could influence other inmates. (Associated Press)

“We have never been faced with such a large number of terror inmates before,” said Rep. Peter King, R-N.Y., during a recent Homeland Security Committee hearing on countering violent extremism in prison.

King and others say the federal Bureau of Prisons must do a better job of monitoring and, if necessary, isolating inmates who could radicalize others behind bars.

Dunleavy, a retired deputy inspector in the criminal intelligence unit of the New York Department of Correctional Services, said criminals have been radicalized in prisons for years, and predicted it will only get worse. He cited Chicago gang member Jose Padilla, who converted to radical Islam while doing time in jail in the 1980s, and was later accused of plotting to set off a radiological “dirty bomb” in the U.S. He is now serving a 21-year sentence for conspiring to commit acts of terror overseas.

More recently, ex-convict Alton Nolen was arrested in a September, 2014 attack at his former place of employment, a food processing plant in the Oklahoma City suburb of Moore. Nolen, who is awaiting trial, allegedly beheaded a 54-year-old female worker while yelling Islamic slogans. Dunleavy believes Nolen converted to Islam while serving time in an Oklahoma prison after attacking a police officer in 2010.

In between Padilla and Nolen, Dunleavy says there were “scores of others” who became radicalized in state and federal prisons, either by listening to fellow inmates or hearing sermons on contraband devices smuggled into prisons and shared.

Kevin James, who while serving time at Sacramento’s New Folsom Prison on robbery charges in 2004, founded his own jihadist movement and recruited fellow inmate Levar Washington to join his cause. Upon Washington’s release in 2005, he plotted to attack Los Angeles-area synagogues, the Israeli Consulate, the Los Angeles airport and U.S. military recruiting offices. James, remained in federal prison, where some critics fear he could be radicalizing more inmates to his cause.

Tens of thousands of federal prison inmates have converted to Islam while serving time, and many others have found other religions. Most do not subscribe to a violent interpretation of the faith, but it takes only a few to create a threat, according to Mark Hamm, a professor at Indiana State University who specializes in the field of prison radicalization.

“It is not the sheer number of prisoners following extremist interpretations of religious doctrines that poses a threat,” Hamm told FoxNews.com. “Rather, it is the potential for the single individual to become radicalized.”

Estimates of the number of terrorists behind bars could be too low because some could be serving time on weapons-related crimes, rather than terror-related. Those suspects are especially dangerous, Dunleavy said, because their involvement in terror plots may not be disclosed to prison officials who might otherwise be able to monitor them.

As far back as 2010, well before ISIS was formed, the Senate Foreign Relations Committee issued a report that identified three dozen U.S. citizens who had converted to Islam while in U.S. prisons, and then traveled to Yemen to train at Al Qaeda camps upon being released.

According to the FBI, radicalized inmates are of concern for a number of reasons, including the possibility they could urge other prisoners to attend radical mosques upon their release from prison; could pose a risk to prison security inciting violence; and could pass on skills used in terrorism activities.

King, who has had several hearings on Islamic radicalization, said lapses in how prisoners are monitored and how religious service providers are vetted continue despite numerous oversight reports.

In June, the federal Bureau of Prisons disclosed in a letter to Senate Judiciary Chairman Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, that it failed to complete a background check on a religious services contractor who had a well-documented past of advocating violence against critics of Islamic extremism.

While monitoring prisoners is potentially more difficult, lawmakers believe the government could at least minimize the risk of radical clerics being invited into prisons to proselytize – and radicalize.

“Over the years, our Federal prisons have become a breeding ground for radicalization,” said Rep. Stephen Fincher, R-Tenn., who introduced a measure that would compel the BOP to study prison radicalization and beef up background checks for clergy and other workers allowed access to inmates. “By allowing volunteers to enter the system without first having to undergo a comprehensive background check, some of the most vulnerable members of society have become susceptible to radicalization.”

Obama Released Felons, They Killed with Illegal Guns

Posted on January 6, 2016January 6, 2016 by Denise Simon

Obama’s America: Lock up Guns, Release Violent Gun Felons

CR, Horowitz: Isn’t it sadly ironic that the man who wants to flood the country with Islamic refugees and criminal aliens is concerned about expanded background checks on law abiding gun owners?

As Mark Levin pointed out last night, Obama has protected sanctuary cities and dangerous criminals, yet claims to be concerned about the public safety threats of an inanimate object. In addition, one of the critical agenda items for this president’s final year is the release of thousands of violent drug and firearms felons from federal prison. Among some of the recent prison releases were criminals convicted for armed robbery and firearms violations.

Unfortunately, Republicans in Congress are pushing legislation that will help promote Obama’s dangerous and hypocritical agenda by retroactively releasing a number of felons who committed crimes with firearms and had a relatively long rap sheet.

What happens when you release hardened criminals, especially from federal prison?

On November 2, U.S. District Judge Eleanor Ross (Obama appointee) gave just one-year of probation to a defendant who admitted buying a gun for her felon boyfriend in a straw purchase, which he later used to shoot and kill Omaha Police Officer Kerrie Orozco.

Consider the case of Raleigh Sizemore, who recently murdered Richmond, Kentucky police officer Daniel Ellis, by shooting him in the head in the course of attempting to rob a gas station. Prior to this, Ellis had been convicted of operating a meth lab—which caught fire—and criminal mischief, and was sentenced to 10 years but made parole in April of this year, after serving just over three years. A week before he killed Officer Ellis, a warrant was issued for his arrest for violating his parole. This is exactly the type of person Obama and some Republicans want to release with more regularity.

The appalling hypocrisy of Obama as it relates to violent criminals juxtaposed to peaceful gun owners is best illustrated by a narrative the president himself used in his speech today. In the irony of all ironies, Obama invoked the act of Zaevion Dobson, a high school football player in Tennessee who shielded three girls from death with his own body during a drive-by shooting, to exhort Congress into passing gun control.

So who were the shooters in the Dobson case?

Brandon Perry had a couple of minor drug charges, along with a charge for “unlawful possession of a weapon” and for “alteration of distinguishing numbers.” He was back on the streets in no time and soon after killed Zaevion Dobson in cold blood. He himself was killed later that night in retaliation for the murder.

While Obama is busy violating separation of powers to impose more laws on peaceful gun owners, he is releasing the very sort of violent gun felons who killed Dobson

Perry’s accomplice in the Dobson murder, Christopher Bassett, was arrested along with two others a year prior to the shooting when police stopped his car for a busted taillight. He got out of the car and ran, as did one other passenger. They were both caught, and the police found three bags of marijuana and a digital scale in the car and on the suspects. They also seized “a small amount of white pills.” Bassett was let out on probation and was a part of the murder on that fateful night in December.

Brandon Perry and Christopher Bassett are exactly the sort of “low level” criminals, charged with drug and firearms violations, that Obama and congressional Republicans want to release from prison. But these people barely measure up to the profile of those Obama is releasing, and yet they still went on to commit murder. These two kids were never placed in the federal system. As I’ve noted many times, you have to be a big time drug dealer in order to actually serve hard time in a federal prison. Furthermore, it is these types of violent criminals, who commit many of their crimes as juveniles, that Obama and the Senate bill would retroactively release.

Hence, while Obama is busy violating separation of powers to impose more laws on peaceful gun owners, he is releasing the very sort of violent gun felons who killed Dobson, the very hero with which Obama used to promote this political agenda.

Only a coward would focus on the inanimate object, while ignoring the people who have used those objects to harm others. Yet, this powerful juxtaposition sums up Obama’s America and the moral bankruptcy of modern day liberalism.

Escalation by N. Korea with Hydrogen Bomb Launch

Posted on January 6, 2016January 6, 2016 by Denise Simon

Seismic event in country’s northeast measures 5.1 on Richter scale

North Korea nuclear brief

– Around 10 nuclear warheads
– Conducted 3 tests
– Maximum missile range of 4,000 km
– Seeks range to reach US

Earthquake, possible nuclear test, in North Korea

WASHINGTON — North Korea declared on Tuesday that it had detonated its first hydrogen bomb.

North Korea Says It Has Detonated Its First Hydrogen Bomb

NYT: The assertion, if true, would dramatically escalate the nuclear challenge from one of the world’s most isolated and dangerous states.

In an announcement, North Korea said that the test had been a “complete success.” But it was difficult to tell whether the statement was true. North Korea has made repeated claims about its nuclear capabilities that outside analysts have greeted with skepticism.

“This is the self-defensive measure we have to take to defend our right to live in the face of the nuclear threats and blackmail by the United States and to guarantee the security of the Korean Peninsula,” a female North Korean announcer said, reading the statement on Central Television, the state-run network.

The North’s announcement came about an hour after detection devices around the world had picked up a 5.1 seismic event along the country’s northeast coast.

It may be weeks or longer before detectors sent aloft by the United States and other powers can determine what kind of test was conducted. Ned Price, a spokesman for the White House National Security Council, said in a statement that American officials “cannot confirm these claims at this time.”

But he said the White House expected “North Korea to abide by its international obligations and commitments.”

The tremors occurred at or near the Punggye-ri nuclear test site, where three previous tests have been conducted over the past nine years.

In recent weeks, the North’s aggressive young leader, Kim Jong-un, has boasted that the country has finally developed the technology to build a thermonuclear weapon — far more powerful than the low-yield devices tested first in 2006, then in different configurations months after President Obama took office in 2009 and again in 2013.

The North Korean announcement said the test had been personally ordered by Mr. Kim, only three days after he signed an order on Sunday for North Korean engineers to press ahead with the attempt.

The announcer added that for the North to give up its nuclear weapons while Washington’s “hostile policy” continued would be “as foolish as for a hunter to lay down his rifle while a ferocious wolf is charging at him.”

Satellite photographs analyzed by 38 North, a Washington research institute that follows the North’s nuclear activity closely, showed evidence of a new tunnel being dug in recent weeks.

Another test by itself would not be that remarkable. The North is believed to have enough plutonium for eight to 12 weapons, and several years ago it revealed a new program to enrich uranium, the other fuel for a nuclear weapon.

But if the North Korean claim about a hydrogen bomb is true, this test was of a different, and significantly more threatening, nature.

In recent weeks, Mr. Kim, believed to be in his early 30s and determined to accelerate the nuclear weapons program that his grandfather and his father promoted to give the broken country leverage and influence, boasted that North Korea had finally developed the technology to build a thermonuclear weapon.

When Mr. Kim first made the claim, in December, the White House expressed considerable skepticism, and several other experts say that the accomplishment would be a stretch, though not impossible.

Outside analysts took the claim as the latest of several hard-to-verify assertions that the isolated country has made about its nuclear capabilities. But some also said that although North Korea did not yet have H-bomb capability, it might be developing and preparing to test a boosted fission bomb, more powerful than a traditional nuclear weapon.

Weapon designers can easily boost the destructive power of an atom bomb by putting at its core a small amount of tritium, a radioactive form of hydrogen.

Lee Sang-cheol, the top nonproliferation official at the South Korean Defense Ministry, told a forum in Seoul last month that although Mr. Kim’s hydrogen bomb boasts might be propaganda for his domestic audience, there was a “high likelihood” that North Korea might have been developing such a boosted fission weapon.

And according to a paper obtained by the South Korean news agency Yonhap last week, the Chemical, Biological and Radiological Command of the South Korean military “did not rule out the possibility” of a boosted fission bomb test by the North, although it added it “does not believe it is yet capable of directly testing hydrogen bombs.”

For the Obama administration, which only six months ago defused the Iranian nuclear threat with an agreement to limit its capabilities for at least a decade, the announcement rekindles another major nuclear challenge — one that the administration has never found a way to manage.

The North has refused to enter the kind of negotiations that Iran did. Unlike Iran, which denies it has interest in nuclear weapons, the North has forged ahead with tests and told the West and China it would never give them up.

Mr. Obama, determined not to give the country new concessions, has neither acknowledged that North Korea is now a nuclear power nor negotiated with it. The White House has said that it would only restart talks with the North if the goal — agreed to by all parties — was a “denuclearized Korean Peninsula.”

China has also failed in its efforts to reign in Mr. Kim. He has never been invited to Beijing since his father’s death, and Chinese officials are fairly open in their expressions of contempt for him. But they have not abandoned him, or cut off the aid that keeps the country afloat.

With the test conducted Tuesday night — Wednesday in North Korea — three of the North’s four explosions will have occurred during Mr. Obama’s time in office.

Combined with the North’s gradually increasing missile technology, its nuclear program poses a growing threat to the region — though it is still not clear the North knows how to mount a nuclear weapon on one of its missiles.

The test is bound to figure in the American presidential campaign, where several candidates have already cited the North’s nuclear experimentation as evidence of American weakness — though they have not prescribed alternative strategies for choking off the program.

The United States did not develop its first thermonuclear weapons — commonly known as hydrogen bombs — until 1952, seven years after the first and only use of nuclear weapons in wartime, the weapons dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Russia, China and other powers soon followed suit.

Universities Hide 100,000 Foreign White-Collar H-1B Employees

Posted on January 5, 2016January 5, 2016 by Denise Simon

So, exactly which agency has sent a memo to selected universities across the country to hide these numbers? Who issued this edict? Heh….only one guess.

In order to hire an H-1B worker in place of a U.S. citizen or green card holder, the hiring company must show that there is no “minimally qualified” citizen or green card holder to take the job. Recruiting such minimally qualified candidates is generally done through advertising: if nobody responds to the ad then there must not be any minimally qualified candidates. Example: Employers are posting jobs that don’t really exist, seeking candidates they don’t want, and paying for bogus non-ads to show there’s an IT labor shortage in America. Except of course there isn’t an IT labor shortage.

Universities Hide Workforce of 100,000 Extra Foreign White-Collar H-1B Employees

Industry executives and university advocates have successfully duped nearly every reporter, editor and anchor nationwide about the scale and purpose of the H-1B professional outsourcing program.

Breitbart: The journalists–and Americans—have been kept in the dark while universities and many allied name-brand companies have quietly imported an extra workforce of at least 100,000 lower-wage foreign professionals in place of higher-wage American graduates, above the supposed annual cap of 85,000 new H-1Bs.

Less than one-sixth of these extra 100,000 outsourced hires are the so-called “high-tech” computer experts that dominate media coverage of the contentious H-1B private-sector outsourcing debate.

Instead, the universities’ off-the-books H-1B hires include 21,754 professors, lecturers and instructors, 20,566 doctors, clinicians and therapists, 25,175 researchers, post-docs and biologists, plus 30,000 financial planners, p.r. experts, writers, editors, sports coaches, designers, accountants, economists, statisticians, lawyers, architects, computer experts and much else. The universities have zero legal obligation to recruit Americans for these jobs.

These white-collar guest-workers are not immigrants — they are foreign professionals hired at low wages for six years to take outsourced, white-collar jobs in the United States. Many hope to stay in the United States, but most guest-workers return home after six years.

These white-collar guest-workers are the fastest-growing portion of the nation’s unrecognized workforce of roughly 1.25 million foreign college-grade temporary-workers, and they’s replacing experienced American professionals — plus their expensively educated children, and the upwardly striving children of blue-collar parents — in the declining number of jobs that can provide a rewarding and secure livelihood while the nation’s economy is rapidly outsourced, centralized and automated.

The American professionals who are displaced from these prestigious university jobs don’t just go into the woods and die. They flood down into other sectors, such as advocacy and journalism, or step down to lower-tier colleges and companies, where the additional labor-supply drives down white-collar wages paid by other employers.

So how does this off-the-books army of foreign professionals get to take jobs in the United States?

The Fake H-1B Cap

The media almost universally reports that the federal government has set a 65,000 or 85,000 annual cap on the annual number of incoming H-1B white-collar professionals.

Here’s the secret — the H-1B visas given to university hires don’t count against the 85,000 annual cap, according to a 2006 memo approved by George W. Bush’s administration.

Basically, universities are free to hire as many H-1Bs as they like, anytime in the year, for any job that requires a college degree.

The university exemption is so broad that for-profit companies can legally create affiliates with universities so they can exploit the universities’ exemption to hire cheap H-1B professionals. From 2011 to 2014, for example, Dow Chemical, Amgen, Samsung and Monsanto used the university exemption to hire 360 extra H-1B professionals outside the 85,000 annual cap.

That’s not an abuse of the law. It is the purpose of the 2006 memo, and it is entirely legal — providing the foreign professional allocates at least 55 percent of his or her time to work with a research center that is affiliated with a university. Even if an H-1B working at a university’s medical center is hired away by a company that works with the medical center, he’s still exempt from the annual cap.

Each foreign professional with a H-1B visa can stay for three years, and then get another three-year H-1B visa.

All told, the universities and their corporate allies brought in 18,109 “cap exempt” new H-1Bs from January to December 2015. They brought in 17,739 new H-1Bs in 2014, 16,750 in 2013, 14,216 in 2012, 14,484 in 2011, and 13,842 in 2010, according to a website that tracks the visas, MyVisaJobs.com. That’s an accumulated extra resident population of up to 95,140 foreign professionals working in universities in 2015.

Here’s a partial list of H-1B approvals, sorted by university for 2013 and 2014.

The MyVisaJobs.com website shows that the University of Michigan got 165 new H-1B hires in 2014. Harvard brought in 162, Yale hired 132, and so forth. Over the five years up to 2015, Johns Hopkins University accumulated a battalion of roughly 885 new H-1B professionals. That’s 885 prestigious and upwardly mobile jobs that didn’t go to debt-burdened American college-grads.

Iran unveils second underground missile site

Posted on January 5, 2016January 5, 2016 by Denise Simon

Oh, wonder if the Obama will give Tehran an Academy award for Iran’s theatrics, behavior and violations.

DUBAI (Reuters) – Iran unveiled a new underground missile depot on Tuesday with state television showing Emad precision-guided missiles in store which the United States says can take a nuclear warhead and violate a 2010 U.N. Security Council resolution.

The defiant move to publicize Iran’s missile program seemed certain to irk the United States as it plans to dismantle nearly all sanctions on Iran under a breakthrough nuclear agreement.

Tasnim news agency and state television video said the underground facility, situated in mountains and run by Iran’s Revolutionary Guards, was inaugurated by the speaker of parliament, Ali Larijani. Release of one-minute video followed footage of another underground missile depot last October.

The United States says the Emad, which Iran tested in October, would be capable of carrying a nuclear warhead and U.S. officials say Washington will respond to the Emad tests with fresh sanctions against Iranian individuals and businesses linked to the program.

Iran’s boasting about its missile capabilities are a challenge for U.S. President Barack Obama’s administration as the United States and European Union plan to dismantle nearly all international sanctions against Tehran under the nuclear deal reached in July.

Iran has abided by the main terms of the nuclear deal, which require it to give up material that world powers feared could be used to make an atomic weapon and accept other restrictions on its nuclear program.

But President Hassan Rouhani ordered his defense minister last week to expand the missile program.

The Iranian missiles under development boast much improved accuracy over the current generation, which experts say is likely to improve their effectiveness with conventional warheads.

The Revolutionary Guards’ second-in-command, Brigadier General Hossein Salami, said last Friday that Iran’s depots and underground facilities are so full that they do not know how to store their new missiles.

***

Iranian-Saudi Tensions May Distract Iran’s Efforts to Attack Israel

InvestigativeProject: The dramatic escalation in the Iranian-Saudi Arabian rivalry poses critical potential ramifications for Israeli national security, according to the former head of Israel’s National Security Council, Yaakov Amidror.

Amidror – also formerly the head of Israeli military intelligence – told the Jerusalem Post that he expects the Iranian-Saudi crisis to prolong the Syrian civil war, leading both sides to increase support for their respective proxies in that country.

Such a scenario can intensify Israeli concerns of unpredictable and radical terrorist organizations consolidating bases of operations on the Jewish state’s northern borders.

However, other analysts view Syrian fragmentation as a strategic benefit – at least temporarily removing Syria as a conventional military threat and forcing Iranian proxies, including Hizballah, to divert resources and manpower to the Syrian front instead of conducting major attacks against Israel.

According to this perspective, Iran will also be more preoccupied with confronting Saudi Arabia in other regional theaters – including Bahrain, Yemen, and Iraq.

“That doesn’t meant they won’t do anything [toward Israel]. This doesn’t mean, for instance, that this will influence Hezbollah [backed by Iran] not to carry out revenge attacks against Israel. But it means that whenever there is something, there will be someone in Iran who will say that they have other problems to think about; we will not be the only issue they will be focusing on,” Amidror said.

This assessment supports other analyses that believe Hizballah failed to effectively retaliate to Israel’s reported assassination of arch-terrorist Samir Kuntar. On Monday, Hizballah detonated a large explosive on the Israel-Lebanon border, targeting two military vehicles. Israel said it suffered no casualties. The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) followed with artillery fire against Hizballah targets in Lebanon, but limited its response to avoid escalating tensions.

The relatively weak show of force from Hizballah suggests that the terrorist organization continues to be bogged down in the Syrian civil war, unwilling and incapable of seriously challenging Israel at the moment. Fighting in Syria has cost Hizballah as much as a quarter of its fighters, Israeli military affairs journalist Yossi Melman points out.

Those losses “neutralized the Shi’ite-Lebanese organization’s ability to act against Israel,” he writes. At the least, it makes the prospect of opening a second front with Israel less appealing. Hizballah still enjoys an arsenal of more than 100,000 rockets it can fire at Israel when it opts for a confrontation.

Even though Hizballah and other Iranian proxies continue to enhance their presence in the Golan Heights for the purposes of targeting Israel, recent Iranian-Saudi tensions will likely force terrorist organizations at Iran’s behest to focus more of their efforts and resources on other fronts beyond the Jewish state.