ISIS New Mansion for Their Headquarters

Posted on June 15, 2015June 15, 2015 by Denise Simon

WASHINGTON — An internal State Department assessment paints a dismal picture of the efforts by the Obama administration and its foreign allies to combat the Islamic State’s message machine, portraying a fractured coalition that cannot get its own message straight.

The assessment comes months after the State Department signaled that it was planning to energize its social media campaign against the militant group. It concludes, however, that the Islamic State’s violent narrative — promulgated through thousands of messages each day — has effectively “trumped” the efforts of some of the world’s richest and most technologically advanced nations.

It also casts an unflattering light on internal discussions between American officials and some of their closest allies in the military campaign against the militants. A “messaging working group” of officials from the United States, Britain and the United Arab Emirates, the memo says, “has not really come together.” More here.

Islamic State leaders claim to be living in luxury in a vast mansion seized from a billionaire Arab sheikh.

The jihadi group’s social media sites posted photographs of the spectacular mansion, under the headline: ‘A castle for the tyrants of Qatar in Palmyra’.

The sprawling hilltop mansion is similar in style to the soon-to-be London home of the current emir, who was educated at Harrow and Sandhurst.

Sheikha Mozah bint Nasser Al Missned, 55, one of the three wives of Qatar’s former emir Sheikh Haman bin Khalifa Al Thani, bought three prime properties in London’s Regent’s Park for an estimated £120million in 2013.

Once completed, the 13-bedroom palace will be the London home of Sheikh Hamad’s son, the 35-year-old Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad.

It is expected to be the most valuable residential property in London in private hands, with estimates claiming it will be worth about £280million.

It will also be the first residential property in the UK to break the £200million mark.

The family also own the Shard – the tallest skyscraper in Europe, Harrods and the Olympic Village.

In recent years, Qataris are thought to have bought almost one in 30 homes in London worth more than £2million.

Photo essay of the mansion is here.

The Fourth Reich, the essay of 2015 on Islamic State.

In a hard-hitting essay on ISIS (Islamic State of Iraq and Syria) for The Daily Mail, the 2001 Nobel Prize winning author, V.S. Naipaul, wrote: “ISIS could very credibly abandon the label of Caliphate and call itself the Fourth Reich.” Among the writings on Islam and Muslims in recent years, Naipaul’s, as in the books Among the Believers and Beyond Belief, have been perhaps the most incisive and penetrating in exploring the extremist politics of the global Islamist movement from inside of the Muslim world. And that ISIS on a rampage, as Naipaul observed, revived “religious dogmas and deadly rivalries between Sunnis and Shi’as, Sunnis and Jews and Christians is a giant step into darkness.”

Ever since the relatively obscure Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi stepped forth on the pulpit of the Great Mosque in Mosul, Iraq, on June 28, 2014 to announce the rebirth of the Caliphate (abolished in 1924 by the Turkish leader Mustafa Kemal Ataturk), with al-Baghdadi himself assuming the title of Caliph Ibrahim, the ruling head of the ummah, or worldwide community of Muslims, many might agree with Naipaul, despite the hyperbole — he has left out a potentially nuclear Iran — that “ISIS has to be seen as the most potent threat to the world since the Third Reich.”

It is baffling to read about or watch the sweep of terror spawned by ISIS in the name of Islam — a world religion with a following approaching two billion Muslims. It is insufficient merely to point out that the barbarism of ISIS reflects its origins in the fetid swamps of the Sunni Muslim insurgency of post-Saddam Iraq. But ISIS is neither a new presence in the Arab-Muslim history, nor is the response to it by Western powers, primarily Britain and the United States, given their relationship with the Middle East over the past century.

We have seen ISISes before, and not as al-Qaeda’s second coming.

The first successful appearance of an ISIS in modern times was the whirlwind with which the Bedouin warriors of Abdulaziz ibn Saud (1876-1953) emerged from the interior of the Arabian Desert in 1902 to take hold of the main fortress in Riyadh, the local capital of the surrounding region known as Najd. Some twenty-four years later, this desert warrior-chief and his armies of Bedouin raiders defeated the ruling Sharifian house in the coastal province of Hejaz, where lie Islam’s two holy cities, Mecca and Medina. The full detailed summary and essay is here.

Faceoff with Russia

Posted on June 15, 2015June 15, 2015 by Denise Simon

Russia a threat to Baltic states after Ukraine conflict, warns Michael Fallon

Russian president Vladimir Putin could repeat the tactics used to destabilise Ukraine in Baltic members of the Nato alliance, the defence secretary has warned.

Michael Fallon said Nato must be ready for Russian aggression in “whatever form it takes” as he acknowledged tensions between the alliance and Moscow were “warming up”.

His comments came after prime minister David Cameron called on Europe to make clear to Russia that it faces economic and financial consequences for “many years to come” if it does not stop destabilising Ukraine.

Ukrainian forces pulled out from the strategically important town of Debaltseve after fierce fighting, which had continued despite the ceasefire agreed following international talks.

‘Nato’s resolve’

Lieutenant James Byrn, 1st Brigade Combat Team, 3rd Infantry Division, US Army, said: “We’re actually here training, obviously with our Polish and other Nato allies, just to demonstrate Nato’s resolve and to prepare our allies to be able to work with us and us work with them jointly, in order to succeed against any potential adversaries we may face.”

The exercises span various locations in Poland and the Baltic states, and will involve troops from Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia as well as Denmark, Finland, the United States, Germany, France and Portugal. Last year the exercise involved 4,500 troops from several nations.

*** Russian troops took control of Ukraine’s Crimea region. The Kremlin also is backing militant separatists fighting Kiev.

In response to all of this, Washington stepped up military exercises in Europe to help calm its friends and allies. The Marines have been heavily involved in this “European Reassurance Initiative,” now called Operation Atlantic Resolve. The Marines have been stockpiling tanks and other equipment in Scandinavia since last year, 2014.

The Marine Corps’ Maritime Prepositioning Force (MPF) and Marine Corps Prepositioning Program – Norway (MCPP-N) have been operationally invaluable in supporting our Nation’s interests across the world. These two unique programs provide the essential elements needed to support and execute crisis response, global reach, and forward presence. The Marine Corps’ Prepositioning Programs enable the rapid deployment of Marine Air Ground Task Forces (MAGTFs) and/or augment individual Marine units forward deployed. These forces are uniquely capable of strengthening alliances, securing strategic access, and defeating hostile adversaries. MPF and MCPP-N are keystones in the Marine Corps’ capability for setting the conditions for national security.

*** RIGA, Latvia – Soldiers from the 3rd Infantry Division offload an M1A2 Abrams Main Battle Tank from the transportation vessel “Liberty Promise” March 9 at the Riga Universal Terminal docks. More than 100 pieces of equipment, including the tanks, M2A3 Bradley Fighting Vehicles and assorted military cargo, will move on to sites in other areas of Latvia as well as Estonia and Lithuania in support of Operation Atlantic Resolve.

WASHINGTON — Russian SU-24 fighter-bombers buzzed a U.S. Navy destroyer in international waters in the Black Sea late in May, just days after the Royal Air Force scrambled to intercept nuclear-capable Bear bombers near British airspace. These dangerous Russian games of chicken are now regular occurrences and come hard upon a Russian threat in March to aim nuclear missiles at Danish warships if Denmark joins NATO’s missile defense system.

As tensions between the West and Moscow sharpen over Ukraine, NATO countries have seen a dramatic spike in provocative actions that risk a harrowing accident or devastating miscalculation. A NATO-Russia military-to-military dialogue would reduce these risks — if President Vladimir Putin and the Kremlin allow it.

NATO has ratcheted down its political dialogue with Moscow in protest over Russia’s illegal seizure of Crimea and involvement in the conflict in eastern Ukraine. But the alliance should seek to engage Russia on a professional military level to minimize the danger of missteps or misunderstandings when their forces operate in close proximity or near each other’s territory. They would have good antecedents to draw on: a set of Cold War agreements whose titles clearly convey their purposes.

Peeling Back More Layers of Hillary’s Camp

Posted on June 15, 2015June 15, 2015 by Denise Simon

First, Hillary’s campaign operation is an approved list of journalists allowed access.

The Daily Mail’s David Martosko was reportedly denied access to the Hillary Clinton campaign as a pool reporter Monday morning, initiating yet another tussle between the Democratic candidate’s camp and the political press corps:

Martosko said a member of Clinton’s camp told him he had not been approved as a print pool reporter when he arrived to cover the campaign’s New Hampshire swing. He was then sent up various rungs until he got to Clinton press aide Nick Merrill, who issued several apparently contradictory explanations, including that the Daily Mail was a foreign publication, then that the campaign was taking a day off to discuss pool procedures, then that no pool reporter had been designated for the day.

Merrill later responded to Politico’s Dylan Byers, saying, “We want a happy press corps as much as the press corps does. And we work very hard to achieve that in tandem with them. It’s a long campaign, and we are going to do our best to find equilibrium and best accommodate interest from as many news outlets as possible, given the space limitations of our events.”

Second, the campaign is operating on thin dimes or no dimes.

Experienced, adult political operatives who want to do grassroots work for Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign currently have no choice but to work as unpaid, full-time interns, raising new questions about how the White House frontrunner runs her own labor force as she prepares to double down on young people’s role in the American economy.

The Clinton campaign is currently in the midst of what multiple Democratic sources described as a “hiring freeze” for paid organizing positions in the early campaign states where the former Secretary of State is laying the foundations of a massive national staff, with few if any paying jobs available for field operations.

Clinton’s camp has made headlines about its frugality and a hard sell on its fellowship program, which allows aspiring politicos between the ages of 18 and 24 to spend this summer as full-time campaign volunteers. The result, however, is the human-resources reality of a campaign – one scheduled to hold at least 26 fundraisers this month alone – that isn’t just taking on college students with political science degrees but expecting political veterans to gamble their careers on her without pay.

Third, she said she has lots of old friends and she is using them. As Hillary goes rogue leftists, her camp is exploiting those connections.

Senior policy advisor, Maya Harris hails from a family of female overachievers. Her late mother, Shyamala Harris, immigrated from India in the 1950s to obtain her PhD in endocrinology from U.C. Berkeley, and went on to make breakthrough discoveries in breast cancer research. Her big sister, Kamala Harris, is California’s attorney general, and is now running for U.S. Senate. At age 29, Maya herself became one of the nation’s youngest-ever law school deans when she took the reins of the Lincoln Law School of San Jose, a night school that prepares students for the California bar.

Then—as if choosing a spouse specially equipped to keep up with all this hard-charging ambition—Harris married fellow Stanford Law student (and her best friend) Tony West. West would go on to become the third-highest ranking official in the Obama Justice Department. Their friendship blossomed when Harris’ 4-year-old daughter Meena engaged West in games of hide-and-seek while her then-single mom was registering for classes. Following family tradition, Meena is now a Harvard law grad.

“It’s all justice all the time,” Harris laughs when asked about family dinner talk.

Harris’ mother, who mostly raised her girls alone (Harris’ Jamaican-born father was a Stanford economist), was swept up in the civil rights movement in and around Berkeley, so Harris grew up imbued with a healthy dose of activism. But the girls’ trailblazing mother also modeled a life of mentorship—always supporting her graduate students while also demanding high standards. “She was tough on them,” Harris recalls. “Until her dying day she never lost sight of this notion that if you’ve been able to walk through doors, you don’t just leave the doors open. You bring others along.” Many more details here.

Obama Favoring Mullahs with Cash Infusions

Posted on June 15, 2015June 15, 2015 by Denise Simon

The Mullahs of Iran have a new standard of confidence on the West lifting financial sanctions after the final deal on the nuclear program is completed. That date is slated for June 30, yet there are signs that date could slide. Who has given the Mullahs this concept of lifted sanctions? The White House.

TEHRAN — With a little more than two weeks before the deadline for a nuclear deal, Iran’s president, Hassan Rouhani, said Saturday that he expected relief from economic sanctions within a “couple of months” after an agreement with six world powers was signed.

Mr. Rouhani echoed statements by other Iranian leaders hinting that the deadline might not be met. “We will not waste time, but we should also not restrict ourselves to a specific deadline,” he said.

The pace of sanctions relief is a sticking point. The Iranian supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who has the final word on any nuclear deal, has demanded that all sanctions be lifted on the day the agreement is signed. Mr. Rouhani’s timetable would allow the United States, the European Union and the United Nations to wait to lift their sanctions until the day the deal takes effect. The United States and its negotiating partners want the sanctions lifted piecemeal, as Iran meets its obligations under the deal.

Mr. Rouhani also said Iran wanted the deal to be approved by the United Nations Security Council, as a hedge against a nullification move by a future leader of a negotiating country.

Mullahs see Obama’s favors for their benefit:

The U.S. makes more concessions to Iran in a prelude to a nuclear deal.

The Obama Administration has long insisted that any nuclear deal will have no effect on U.S. determination to stop Iran’s regional ambitions or support for terrorism. As the political desire for a deal grows more urgent, however, this claim is proving to be hollow. Consider Hayya Bina, or “Let’s Go,” a Lebanese civil-society initiative founded in 2005 by publisher and producer Lokman Slim. Hayya Bina works largely with Lebanon’s Shiites on a variety of health, environmental and citizenship issues, largely as a way to offer a moderate alternative to Hezbollah’s efforts to dominate that community.

The group has received modest funding from the State Department and groups like the International Republican Institute. But as the Journal’s Jay Solomon reported last week, the State Department sent Hayya Bina a letter, dated April 10, which “requests that all activities intended [to] foster an independent moderate Shiite voice be ceased immediately and indefinitely.” To underscore the point, the letter added that Hayya Bina “must eliminate funding for any of the above referenced activity.” Why cut funding? The State Department said the programs weren’t meeting expectations. But it hardly went unnoticed in Lebanon that the cuts came barely a week after the U.S. and Iran struck their framework nuclear agreement in Switzerland April 2. Hezbollah is Iran’s Lebanese subsidiary and has made a practice of going after its domestic opponents, including Mr. Slim.

The withdrawal of U.S. funding “is another desperate PR attempt by the Obama Administration to appease the Iranian regime in order to reach a nuclear deal,” says Ahmad El Assaad, a prominent Lebanese Shiite opponent of Hezbollah. Then there is the curious case of Buhary Seyed Abu Tahir, a Dubai-based Sri Lankan businessman who in 2004 was cited personally by President George W. Bush as the “chief financial officer and money launderer” for the nuclear-proliferation network of Pakistani scientist A.Q. Khan. According to a 2004 investigation by Malaysian authorities, in 1994 or 1995 Mr. Khan asked Mr. Tahir to ship uranium centrifuges to Iran. “BSA Tahir organized the transshipment of the two containers from DUBAI to IRAN using a merchant ship owned by a company in Iran,” according to a Malaysian report. “BSA Tahir said the payment for the two containers of centrifuge units, amounting to about USD $3 million was paid in UAE Dirham currency by the Iranian. The cash was brought in two briefcases.” The Bush Administration put Mr. Tahir on the U.S. Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) list of sanctioned persons. But the Treasury Department removed his name from that list on April 3, exactly one day after the framework agreement was announced. We asked a Treasury spokesperson why Mr. Tahir’s name was removed and if there was any connection to the Iran deal, and she said the “delisting was based on a determinaton by OFAC that circumstances no longer warrant the blocking of Tahir pursuant to Executive Order 13382.” That order, signed by President Bush in 2005, is “aimed at freezing the assets of proliferators of weapons of mass destruction.” Mr. Tahir’s delisting strikes us as the equivalent of a backdated check intended to whitewash Iran’s illicit acquisition of centrifuges as having anything to do with a nuclear-weapons program. If the Administration wants to deny this, we suggest it explain the timing publicly. Then there is Iran’s ballistic missile program. Ballistic missiles have long been considered an integral part of Iran’s nuclear program as the most effective way to deliver a weapon, and the Administration pushed for U.N. sanctions on Iran’s missiles in 2010.

When it came time to negotiate, however, the Administration gave in to Tehran’s insistence that it would accept no missile limitations, thus separating the missile and nuclear programs. But now that a deal is near, the Administration is reversing itself again, claiming that for the purposes of sanctions Iran’s missile program is “nuclear-related,” meaning the U.S. is prepared to lift the missile sanctions. And there’s more. “Of the 24 Iranian banks currently under U.S. sanctions,” noted the Associated Press in a story last week, “only one—Bank Saderat, cited for terrorism links—is subject to clear non-nuclear sanctions.” In other words, once the “nuclear-related” sanctions go, so go all the rest, notwithstanding Administration promises. It may be too late to prevent President Obama from striking this deal. But as its contours become clearer, it looks increasingly like a betrayal of our friends, a whitewash of history—and a gift to a dictatorship.

Talking Points Against the Obama Immigrant Policy

Posted on June 14, 2015June 14, 2015 by Denise Simon

Cost of Immigration and Customs Enforcement Just in 2012

U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) is the largest investigative agency in the Department of Homeland Security (DHS). With more than 20,000 employees worldwide, ICE is a key component of the DHS layered defense approach to protecting the United States. ICE has requested an annual budget of more than $5.8 billion for FY 2012, with budget figures in key categories detailed below.

Salaries and Expenses

Homeland Security Investigations

ICE Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) enforces trade and immigration laws through the investigation of activities, persons and events that may pose a threat to the safety or security of the United States and its citizens.

HSI’s Domestic Investigations investigates illegal trafficking in weapons (including weapons of mass destruction), the smuggling of narcotics and other contraband, human smuggling and trafficking, money laundering and other financial crimes, fraudulent trade practices, identity and benefit fraud, child pornography, child sex tourism, employers that hire illegal and undocumented workers, and health and public safety dangers.

HSI’s Office of International Investigations conducts investigative efforts in 69 Attaché offices in 47 foreign locations. The office works with foreign counterparts to identify and combat criminal organizations before they can adversely impact the United States, including the Visa Security Program, which focuses on high-risk visa-issuance locations to identify and interdict potential threats before they enter the United States.

Cost of Detention

Back in 2013: Keeping illegal immigrants behind bars costs $120 a day per inmate, or $2 billion a year. Congress has twice rebuffed White House budget requests to cut the quota so ICE can turn to less costly measures, such as ankle bracelets, to keep tabs on the immigrants it’s trying to deport. It’s “artificial,” Janet Napolitano, former secretary of Homeland Security, said at an April hearing. Without the mandate the agency could free low-risk offenders and put them on supervised release to ensure that detainees show up in court for deportation hearings, she said. “We ought to be detaining according to our priorities, according to public-safety threats, level of offense, and the like,” she said.

Getting Released

They are convicted rapists, child molesters, and kidnappers — among “the worst of the worst,” as one law enforcement agency put it. Yet the Globe found that immigration officials have released them without making sure they register with local authorities as sex offenders.

And once US Immigration and Customs Enforcement frees them, agency officials often lose track of the criminals, despite outstanding deportation orders against them. The Globe determined that Hernandez Carrera and several other offenders had failed to register as sex offenders, a crime. By law, police are supposed to investigate if such offenders fail to update their address within days of their release. But local officials said they did not learn that ICE had released the offenders until after the Globe inquired about their cases.

The following are some of the thousands of convicted criminals released by ICE in the US in recent years because their homelands refused to take them back.

“It’s chilling,” said Thomas H. Dupree Jr., a former deputy assistant US attorney general who led a 2008 federal court battle to keep Hernandez Carrera locked up. “These are dangerous and predatory individuals who should not be prowling the streets. In fact, they should not be in the United States at all.” Many more details here.

Street Protests and Fights

From the Daily Caller: A manhunt is underway in Fargo, N.D. after two separate groups of immigrants from unknown countries began waging what is being described as a “street war” against each other earlier this week.

According to Valley News Live, police are currently searching for Luke Goodrich and Isaac Nyemah for their involvement in an alleged armed home invasion that took place Wednesday morning.

The Fargo Police Department is asking for your assistance in locating two individuals of interest that are believed to…

Posted by Fargo Police Department on Wednesday, June 10, 2015

It is unclear how, but the two men are allegedly involved in trouble that began Sunday at a birthday party in a Fargo park.

A group of 70 people were gathered when an altercation of some sort ensued. Men affiliated with one immigrant group smashed out the window of a car with a crowbar. The same men vandalized another vehicle shortly after. Police were initially called to the park because a DJ had been hired and party-goers were drinking alcohol, in violation of park rules.