Author Archives: Denise Simon

The Temerity of Mook, Podesta and Hillary in Campaign Policy

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Beyond the whole server-gate email hell scandal, the Hillary campaign policy team led by Robby Mook and John Podesta; they concocted a campaign finance reform plan that leaves one shuddering and in shock.

Hillary Clinton set to unveil campaign finance proposal

“We have to end the flood of secret, unaccountable money.”

 NEW YORK — Kicking off a post-Labor Day push to rally support as Bernie Sanders maintains momentum and Joe Biden contemplates a White House bid of his own, Hillary Clinton on Tuesday will unveil a three-pronged campaign finance proposal that her team hopes will help her appeal to unconvinced liberals.

The policy platform — which largely reflects principles that Clinton regularly mentions on the campaign trail, to reliable cheers from Democrats — calls for the overturning of 2010’s Citizens United v FEC decision that paved the way for the creation of super PACs; the implementation of a more rigorous political spending disclosure regime; and a new public matching system for small donations to presidential and congressional campaigns.

“We have to end the flood of secret, unaccountable money that is distorting our elections, corrupting our political system, and drowning out the voices of too many everyday Americans,” Clinton said in a statement. “Our democracy should be about expanding the franchise, not charging an entrance fee. It starts with overturning the Supreme Court’s Citizens United decision, and continues with structural reform to our campaign finance system so there’s real sunshine and increased participation.”

The Democratic front-runner, who raised the most campaign funds of any candidate on either side of the aisle in the second quarter ($47.5 million), regularly rails against the Citizens United decision on the stump, using it as an example of the malfunctioning political system. She also frequently insists that she would use overturning the decision as a litmus test for appointing Supreme Court justices, a line that delights progressive voters, and a point that is included in her new proposal.

But portions of her plan are anathema to Republican candidates and their colleagues in Congress, and Clinton is not the only Democrat making such noises on the campaign trail. Sanders, for example, has also pushed public financing for campaigns.

To further complicate matters, a collection of liberal groups have questioned Clinton’s close ties to Wall Street and its big-money donors due to her time as first lady and as a senator from New York — not to mention the existence of Priorities USA Action, the primary super PAC backing her bid, which raised $15.6 million in the first half of 2015.

Still, her plan amounts to liberal red meat, hitting a handful of points championed by campaign finance reformers. And it comes as her campaign appears set to fight back more aggressively against Sanders’ surge and the negative headlines about her private email arrangement.

Clinton’s campaign finance proposal includes a plan to provide matching funds for small donations, along with lower limits for contributions to candidates who opt into the system. Campaigns would only be eligible to receive up to a certain level of the public matching funds, and they would have to raise a minimum number of small donations in the first place to qualify. The specific numbers and dollar figures are yet to be determined.

The campaign’s plan, which will come alongside a new video to be released on Tuesday, also formally repeats the candidate’s plan to only appoint Supreme Court justices who would overturn Citizens United — a case that was originally brought over an anti-Clinton video in 2008. It also reiterates her support for a constitutional amendment that would “establish common sense rules to protect against the undue influence of billionaires and special interests and to restore the role of average voters in elections.”

The third prong of the plan includes a proposal to force outside groups with large political spending budgets to disclose their largest donors in a timely fashion, as well as to disclose “significant transfers between” such groups. It also supports a proposal in front of the Securities and Exchange Commission to force publicly traded companies to disclose political spending to shareholders.

As a Republican-controlled Congress is unlikely to move on many of these proposals, Clinton also says she would sign an executive order that would require federal contractors to disclose their own political spending.

Clinton is set to campaign in the swing states of Ohio and Wisconsin this week, after an address explaining her support of the Iran agreement in Washington on Wednesday.

*** Now for just one interesting fact on Hillary and Bill:

Nemazee is well connected by the way.

There’s a Lot More to Arrested Financier Hassan Nemazee’s Past Than Just Being a ‘Clinton Fundraiser’

2009: Nemazee was much more than just a Clinton fundraiser — he was a bipartisan financier of the influence bazaar that American politics has become

WhoWhatWhy.com reports exclusively on the background of Hassan Nemazee, the top Hillary Clinton fundraiser who was arrested and charged with forging loan documents. Early media accounts cast the event as an embarrassment for Ms. Clinton and the Democratic Party involving the financial misdoings of one prominent backer. Actually it is much more.  Behind the Nemazee arrest lies a sprawling cautionary tale of presidents, would-be presidents, and the shadow world of wealthy operators who cozy up to them for their own gain.  It reaches into the Bush operation as well as that of the Clintons, and is a microcosm of an influence bazaar that has gone global along with the economy.

On August 25th, Hassan Nemazee, a top fundraiser for Hillary Clinton,  was arrested and charged with forging loan documents in order to borrow $74 million from Citibank. He could face up to 30 years in prison. Early media accounts cast the event as an embarrassment for Ms. Clinton involving the financial misdoings of one prominent backer. Actually it is much more.

Behind the Nemazee arrest lies a sprawling cautionary tale of presidents, would-be presidents, and the shadow world of wealthy operators who cozy up to them for their own gain.  It reaches into the Bush operation as well as that of the Clintons, and is a microcosm of an influence bazaar that has gone global along with the economy.

Hassan Nemazee, who served as a finance director for Hillary Clinton’s 2008 presidential campaign, began raising sizable sums for the Democratic National Committee in the mid-nineties. In 1998, in the midst of the Lewinsky affair, Nemazee collected $60,000 for Bill Clinton’s legal defense fund in $10,000 increments from relatives and friends.

The following year, President Clinton nominated the money manager and investor to be ambassador to Argentina. Then an article in Forbes raised questions about his business practices. Among other things, Nemazee, an Iranian-American, had magically turned himself into an “Hispanic” by acquiring Venezuelan citizenship in order to fulfill the minority-ownership requirement of a California public pension fund. The nomination was withdrawn.

That embarrassment did not, however, hamper Nemazee’s rise within the Democratic Party. By 2004 he was New York finance chair for John Kerry’s campaign, and in 2006 he served under Senator Chuck Schumer as the national finance chair of the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee (DSCC).  During this period the committee raised about $25 million more than its Republican counterpart.
By 2008, Nemazee was one of Hillary Clinton’s inner circle, and was being publicly touted as a top foreign policy adviser. When another major fundraiser, a clothing manufacturer named Norman Hsu, was arrested and unmasked as a swindler, it was Nemazee who was trotted out to defend Ms. Clinton and argue that she knew little about Hsu.
But she should have known plenty about Nemazee. In 2005, Nemazee and his business partner, Alan Quasha, went deep into the Clinton circle to hire Terry McAuliffe, the Clinton confidante and former chairman of the Democratic Party, for Carret Asset Management, their newly acquired investment firm. During the interregnum between McAuliffe’s party chairmanship and the time he officially joined Hillary Clinton’s campaign as chairman, Nemazee and Quasha set McAuliffe up with a salary and opened a Washington office for him.  There he worked on his memoirs and laid the groundwork for Ms. Clinton’s presidential bid.
In March 2007, Nemazee, at the behest of McAuliffe, threw a dinner for Ms. Clinton at Manhattan’s swank Cipriani restaurant, which featured Bill Clinton and raised more than $500,000. In 2008, after Barack Obama gained the nomination, Nemazee raised a comparable sum for him.
But it is not fair to characterize Nemazee as an embarrassment to Democrats alone. Nemazee’s profile is considerably more complicated. For legal representation in his current troubles, for example, Nemazee has retained Marc Mukasey, a partner in Rudolph Giuliani’s law firm and the son of Michael Mukasey, who served as George W. Bush’s last Attorney General.
There’s more than choice of counsel involved. Before moving into the Democratic camp, Nemazee had backed such Republican senators as Jesse Helms, Sam Brownback and Alfonse D’Amato. None could be described as Clinton fans. Nemazee’s business partner, Alan Quasha, who specializes in buying up troubled companies, has also played both sides of the partisan divide. Quasha gave to both Bush and Al Gore in 2000, and in the 2008 race gave to Republicans Mitt Romney and Rudy Giuliani as well as Democrats Barack Obama and Chris Dodd.
The strikingly trans-partisan and trans-national nature of this high-stakes influence game is best exemplified by the relationship between Quasha’s oil company, Harken Energy, and George W. Bush. Harken provided a home for Bush in the 1980’s when his own oil businesses failed, offering him handsome compensation and a solid financial base from which to enter politics. Bush was named to the Harken board and received a range of benefits from the company while devoting most of his time to his father’s presidential campaign and then his own outside career efforts.
Harken is a curious outfit. Its early funding sources were opaque, and its investors and board members had a dizzying array of connections into global power centers — and ties to the Saudi leadership and the former Philippine dictator Ferdinand Marcos, the Shah of Iran, as well as to the Swiss Bank, UBS, which has been charged by the US government with providing cover for  Americans who were evading taxes.
Around the time George W. Bush joined its board, Harken received an unusual and sizable cash infusion from the Harvard Management Company, which handles Harvard University’s endowment, the largest in the nation. Robert G. Stone, Jr., a figure with ties to US intelligence and to the Bushes, was head of the Harvard board of overseers that approved financial strategies. Former employees of Harvard Management have recently made highly-publicized charges that the company engaged in Enron-style investment practices. (Prior to going to work for Nemazee and Quasha, Terry McAuliffe had publicly criticized Bush for his financial dealings with Harken, disparaging that company’s own Enron-like accounting. Both Quasha and Nemazee, like Bush, have Harvard degrees, and both have sat on prestigious Harvard committees in recent years.)
Nemazee’s role as a foreign policy adviser to Hillary Clinton can be better understood through his own Iranian connections.  His father was a shipping magnate who was close with the Shah of Iran and served as the Shah’s commercial attaché in Washington; Nemazee was a founding member of the Iranian-American Political Action Committee, a lobbying group. Recent strains have been reported between President Obama and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton over policy toward Iran. Clinton has advocated a harder line toward the Islamic fundamentalists who took over when the Shah of Iran was overthrown in 1979, while Obama has stressed dialogue.
With Nemazee’s arrest for financial fraud certain to attract some sustained coverage, it remains to be seen whether it will be treated as yet another isolated case of financial wrongdoing, or lead to a deeper look at the influence bazaar that American politics has become.

 

 

 

Pope Francis is Breaking the Catholic Doctrine, Revolt at Vatican

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On the very same day that the Kentucky clerk, Kim Davis is ordered released from jail by a local judge for adhering to her inalienable rights to her belief system, a religious debate is underway throughout America.

Anyone remember the Obama administration suing the Little Sisters of the Poor due to Obamacare and birth-control?

Inalienable rights, cannot be surrendered, sold, suspended or transferred at the behest of any government and Kim Davis stood stern.

Meanwhile, while so many issues challenge America, one place to normally seek stability, sense or morality is church, but such is not the case with the Catholic Church or the Vatican.

Due to Pope Francis and what most of the media is not saying, the Papacy and the Vatican is in crisis, in Rome and honestly across the globe.

The edge of a movement is underway at home and worldwide, the rise of the moral and religious compass.

A Conservative revolt is brewing in the Vatican as Pope Francis introduces more inclusive measures

VATICAN CITY — On a sunny morning earlier this year, a camera crew entered a well-appointed apartment just outside the 9th-century gates of Vatican City. Pristinely dressed in the black robes and scarlet sash of the princes of the Roman Catholic Church, the Wisconsin-born Cardinal Raymond Burke sat in his elaborately upholstered armchair and appeared to issue a warning to Pope Francis.

A staunch conservative and Vatican bureaucrat, Burke had been demoted by the pope a few months earlier, but it did not take the fight out of him. Francis had been backing a more inclusive era, giving space to progressive voices on divorced Catholics as well as gays and lesbians. In front of the camera, Burke said he would “resist” liberal changes — and seemed to caution Francis about the limits of his authority. “One must be very attentive regarding the power of the pope,” Burke told the French news crew.

Papal power, Burke warned, “is not absolute.” He added, “The pope does not have the power to change teaching (or) doctrine.”

Burke’s words belied a growing sense of alarm among strict conservatives, exposing what is fast emerging as a culture war over Francis’s papacy and the powerful hierarchy that governs the Roman Catholic Church.

This month, Francis makes his first trip to the United States at a time when his progressive allies are heralding him as a revolutionary, a man who only last week broadened the power of priests to forgive women who commit what Catholic teachings call the “mortal sin” of abortion during his newly declared “year of mercy” starting in December. On Sunday, he called for “every” Catholic parish in Europe to offer shelter to one refugee family from the thousands of asylum-seekers risking all to escape war-torn Syria and other pockets of conflict and poverty.

Yet as he upends church convention, Francis also is grappling with a conservative backlash to the liberal momentum building inside the church. In more than a dozen interviews, including with seven senior church officials, insiders say the change has left the hierarchy more polarized over the direction of the church than at any point since the great papal reformers of the 1960s.

The conservative rebellion is taking on many guises, in public comments, yes, but also in the rising popularity of conservative Catholic websites promoting Francis dissenters; books and promotional materials backed by conservative clerics seeking to counter the liberal trend; and leaks to the news media, aimed at Vatican reformers.

In his recent comments, Burke was also merely stating fact. Despite the vast powers of the pope, church doctrine serves as a kind of constitution. And for liberal reformers, the bruising theological pushback by conservatives is complicating efforts to translate the pope’s transformative style into tangible changes.

“At least we aren’t poisoning each other’s chalices anymore,” said the Rev. Timothy Radcliffe, a liberal British priest and Francis ally appointed to an influential Vatican post in May. Radcliffe said he welcomed open debate, even critical dissent within the church. But he professed himself as being “afraid” of “some of what we’re seeing”

Rather than stake out clear stances, the pope is more subtly, often implicitly, backing liberal church leaders who are pressing for radical change, while dramatically opening the parameters of the debate over how far reforms can go. For instance, during the opening of a meeting of senior bishops last year, Francis told those gathered, “Let no one say, ‘This you cannot say.’ ”

We have a serious issue right now, a very alarming situation where Catholic priests and bishops are saying and doing things that are against what the church teaches

Since then, liberals have tested the boundaries of their new freedom, with one Belgian bishop going as far as calling for the Catholic Church to formally recognize same-sex couples.

Conservatives counter that in the climate of rising liberal thought, they have been thrust unfairly into a position in which “defending the real teachings of the church makes you look like an enemy of the pope,” a senior Vatican official said on the condition of anonymity in order to speak freely.

“We have a serious issue right now, a very alarming situation where Catholic priests and bishops are saying and doing things that are against what the church teaches, talking about same-sex unions, about Communion for those who are living in adultery,” the official said. “And yet the pope does nothing to silence them. So the inference is that this is what the pope wants.”

A measure of the church’s long history of intrigue has spilled into the Francis papacy, particularly as the pope has ordered radical overhauls of murky Vatican finances. Under Francis, the top leadership of the Vatican Bank was ousted, as was the all-Italian board of its financial watchdog agency.

One method of pushback has been to give damaging leaks to the Italian news media. Vatican officials are now convinced that the biggest leak to date — of the papal encyclical on the environment in June — was driven by greed (it was sold to the media) rather than vengeance. But other disclosures have targeted key figures in the papal cleanup — including the conservative chosen to lead the pope’s financial reforms, the Australian Cardinal George Pell, who in March was the subject of a leak about his allegedly lavish personal tastes.

More often, dissent unfolds on ideological grounds. Criticism of a sitting pope is hardly unusual — liberal bishops on occasion challenged Benedict. But in an institution cloaked in traditional fealty to the pope, what shocks many is just how public the criticism of Francis has become.

In an open letter to his diocese, Bishop Thomas Tobin of Providence, Rhode Island, wrote: “In trying to accommodate the needs of the age, as Pope Francis suggests, the Church risks the danger of losing its courageous, countercultural, prophetic voice, one that the world needs to hear.” For his part, Burke, the cardinal from Wisconsin, has called the church under Francis “a ship without a rudder.”

Even Pell appeared to undermine him on theological grounds. Commenting on the pope’s call for dramatic action on climate change, Pell told the Financial Times in July, “The church has got no mandate from the Lord to pronounce on scientific matters.”

In conservative circles, the word “confusion” also has become a euphemism for censuring the papacy without mentioning the pope. In one instance, 500 Catholic priests in Britain drafted an open letter this year that cited “much confusion” in “Catholic moral teaching” following the bishops’ conference on the family last year in which Francis threw open the floodgates of debate, resulting in proposed language offering an embraceable, new stance for divorced or gay Catholics.

That language ultimately was watered down in a vote that showed the still-ample power of conservatives. It set up another showdown for next month, when senior church leaders will meet in a follow-up conference that observers predict will turn into another theological slugfest. The pope himself will have the final word on any changes next year.

Conservatives have launched a campaign against a possible policy change that would grant divorced and remarried Catholics the right to take Communion at Mass. Last year, five senior leaders including Burke and the conservative Cardinal Carlo Caffarra of Bologna, Italy, drafted what has become known as “the manifesto” against such a change. In July, a DVD distributed to hundreds of dioceses in Europe and Australia, and backed by conservative Catholic clergy members, made the same point. In it, Burke, who has made similar arguments at Catholic conferences, issued dire warnings of a world in which traditional teachings are ignored.

The pope does not have the power to change teaching (or) doctrine

But this is still the Catholic Church, where hierarchical respect is as much tradition as anything else. Rather than targeting the pope, conservative bishops and cardinals more often take aim at their liberal peers. They include the German Cardinal Walter Kasper, who has suggested that he has become a proxy for clergy members who are not brave enough to criticize the pope directly.

Yet conservatives counter that liberals are overstepping their bounds, putting their own spin on the pronouncements of a pope who has been more ambiguous than Kasper and his allies are willing to admit.

“I was born a papist, I have lived as a papist, and I will die a papist,” Caffarra said. “The pope has never said that divorced and remarried Catholics should be able to take Holy Communion, and yet, his words are being twisted to give them false meaning.”

Some of the pope’s allies insist that debate is precisely what Francis wants.

“I think that people are speaking their mind because they feel very strongly and passionately in their position, and I don’t think the Holy Father sees it as a personal attack on him,” said Chicago Archbishop Blase Cupich, considered a close ally of the pope. “The Holy Father has opened the possibility for these matters to be discussed openly; he has not predetermined where this is going.”

Stefano Pitrelli contributed to this report.

Obama and Kerry Have Vertigo Over this Iran Deal

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Both Barack Obama and John Kerry are suffering from all the symptoms of vertigo, the spinning of lies, the dizziness of power and the imbalance of a lopsided deal with Iran over the nuclear program.

On September 8, 2015, Former Vice President Dick Cheney spoke at the American Enterprise Institute on the notable terror history and chilling consequences of an Iran deal.

Let us examine some facts with regard to Iran and how the negotiation table was a long flawed dialogue from the start.

During the uprising and war in Yemen last March, the Houthis, an Iranian terror proxy took at least 4 Americans hostage. The State Department chose to keep this a secret during the Iranian talks. It is rumored that 1 hostage has been released, while the conditions of the remaining hostages is unknown. Couple this basis with the 4 Americans jailed in Iran. Yet, no efforts have been forthcoming to ensure Iran releases any of them.

Jeddah, Sana’a and Riyadh, Asharq Al-Awsat—The Iranian embassy in Yemen’s capital Sana’a is offering financial, strategic, and military advisory support to the Houthi rebels in country, Yemen’s Foreign Minister Riyadh Yassin said on Sunday.  

Speaking to Asharq Al-Awsat, Yassin said Iran’s embassy in Sana’a had become a “Houthi operations room” and that Iranian intelligence and military experts at the embassy were helping the Houthis plan attacks against government loyalists and forces from the Saudi-led coalition targeting the group.  

He added that the embassy is “equipped with resources not even the Yemeni government is in possession of” and that it was also being used to distribute financial support to the Houthi militias currently stationed in different parts of the country.  

The Shi’ite Houthis, backed by Iran and Yemen’s ousted former president Ali Abdullah Saleh, occupied Sana’a in September 2014. They then launched a coup the following February deposing Yemen’s internationally recognized President Abd Rabbuh Mansur Hadi and his government.  

Yemeni government loyalist forces and a coalition of Arab counties led by Saudi Arabia are currently engaged in a ground and air offensive against the Houthis, seeking to reinstate Hadi and the government.  

On Sunday coalition warplanes bombed several targets in the capital, according to eyewitnesses speaking to Asharq Al-Awsat.  

They said over 15 individual strikes were carried out, including several targeting the headquarters of Yemen’s Special Security Forces, who are loyal to ex-president Saleh. The sources said most of the HQ’s compound has now been destroyed following the air raids.  

The coalition has announced a plan to retake Sana’a with the aid of government loyalists on the ground, known as the Popular Resistance, to follow gains made in the country’s south which have seen the southern port city of Aden and almost all southern provinces liberated from Houthi control.  

The coalition is now closing in on the Houthis in Sana’a and also in the group’s northern stronghold of Saada. The group last month declared a state of emergency in both areas.  

Local sources told Asharq Al-Awsat on Sunday the Houthis now have a plan in place in anticipation of the impending attack on the capital.  

They said the Houthis plan to “spread a wave of chaos” prior to the entry into the capital of coalition forces and those from the Popular Resistance, which will include assassinations of any figures they deem may cooperate with the latter against them—such as political activists and university professors.  

Meanwhile, on Sunday Saudi hospitals received 852 Yemenis injured as a result of the conflict, in a joint initiative between the King Salman Center for Relief and Humanitarian Works and the Ministry of Health.  

This comes as the King Salman Center on Saturday launched the second phase of a joint humanitarian relief project with the United Nations, delivering aid worth some 22 million US dollars to help Yemenis caught up in the conflict.  

In May Saudi Arabia’s King Salman Bin Abdulaziz increased Saudi Arabia’s aid commitment to Yemen to over half a billion dollars.

 

Meanwhile, ask any sailor deployed in the region about the daily confrontations with Iran.

Iranian warships confront U.S. Navy on ‘daily basis’

U.S. naval forces operating in and around the Strait of Hormuz, a critical shipping lane, are “routinely approached by Iranian warships and aircraft” on a “nearly daily basis,” according to a Pentagon official familiar with operations in the region.

During these interactions between U.S. and Iranian forces, American aircraft and ships are routinely photographed by the Iranians for intelligence purposes, according to the official, who said that most confrontations between the sides are “conducted in a safe and professional manner.”

The disclosure of these daily run-ins comes following the release of footage by the Iranian military purporting to show a reconnaissance mission over a U.S. aircraft carrier station in the Strait of Hormuz. More here from JihadWatch.

Then comes the Iranian Parchin nuclear plant which has been a historical military dimension location going back as far as the Nazi regime that used it for the production of chemical weapons. Today, Iran has declared this location will never be subject to any inspections. Related information on Parchin and images taken from space, click here.

Iran says its construction work at the Parchin military facility, southeast of Tehran, is normal and it will not allow any inspection of the “conventional” site, Press TV reports.  

“Parchin is a conventional military site. The construction there is normal and even it was indeed confirmed by some officials from the United States that Parchin site and the activities there are something normal and it doesn’t have any relevance to the IAEA work,” Iran’s Ambassador to IAEA Reza Najafi said.  

“Of course, this is a military site and Iran will not let any inspector go there,” he added.  

​Najafi’s remarks came after IAEA Director General Yukiya Amano repeated his claims about construction work at Iran’s Parchin military site whose inspection some world powers demand.  

“These activities could undermine the capability of the IAEA on verification but as we do not have inspectors there and by way of observing through satellite imagery, we do not have further insight of these recent activities,” the IAEA chief said.  

 

He added that “much work needs to be done” to finish the probe, but reiterated that the investigations will be complete by mid-December, as agreed in a roadmap between Iran and the IAEA.   

On July 14, Iran and the IAEA signed a roadmap for “the clarification of past and present issues” regarding Iran’s nuclear program in Vienna, Austria.  

Iran provided some additional information on Parchin by August 15, further proving that it was complying with the mutual agreement with the UN agency.  

On August 27, the US Department of State acknowledged that Iran’s Parchin site is a “conventional” military facility. “I think it’s important to remember that when you’re talking about a site like Parchin, you’re talking about a conventional military site, not a nuclear site,” US State Department spokesman John Kirby said.  

“So there wouldn’t be any IAEA or other restrictions on new construction at that site were they to occur,” he added.  

Kirby’s remarks mark a deviation from past claims in the US about Parchin. Iran has repeatedly denied Western allegations about nuclear activity at the site. The comments came after the IAEA voiced reservation about the construction of “a small extension to an existing building” at Parchin.  

“Since (our) previous report (in May), at a particular location at the Parchin site, the agency has continued to observe, through satellite imagery, the presence of vehicles, equipment, and probable construction materials. In addition, a small extension to an existing building appears to have been constructed,” the IAEA report said.  

Following the report, Tehran criticized the agency’s statement about Parchin, saying construction work on the site “does not concern” the nuclear agency.

 

 

Released Guantanamo Back in the Battlefield

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U.S. suspects more freed Guantanamo inmates returned to battlefield

Reuters: The number of detainees freed from the U.S. Guantanamo detention camp who are suspected of “re-engaging” with militant groups overseas increased over the first six months of 2015, the Obama administration said on Thursday.

Figures released by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence showed that, as of July this year, of 121 detainees released since President Barack Obama took office in 2009, six were confirmed to have gone back to the battlefield and a further six were suspected of having done so.

Figures released in January had shown that Obama had released a total of 115 Guantanamo inmates, six of whom had returned to the battlefield, but only one of whom was then “suspected of re-engaging.”

Between January and July this year the administration released six detainees.

The data did not identify any individual detainees. The detention facility for terrorism suspects at the U.S. Naval base at Guantanamo, Cuba, which opened after the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks, now holds 116 prisoners.

The administration of Obama, a Democrat, has said the number of those who returned to fight after being transferred out of Guantanamo under his presidency is lower than under his Republican predecessor George W. Bush, who set up the facility.

Obama has vowed to close Guantanamo before he leaves office in January 2017 but he is hampered by a slow bureaucratic process and by laws passed by Republicans in Congress barring the transfer of detainees to prisons on U.S. soil.

Obama is due to submit a report to Congress soon outlining a new plan for closing the facility.

Gitmo detainee doc

 

 

 

 

 

The full 2 page document is located here.

TWS: In 2014, the report included: The semi-annual report on “Re-engagement of Detainees Formerly Held at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba” was released on Wednesday by the Director of National Intelligence (DNI). Out of a total of 614 former prisoners (up from 603 six months ago), intelligence has confirmed that 104 (up from 100) have re-engaged in terrorism/insurgent activities while another 74 are suspected of doing so. The latest report nudged the recidivism rate up to an even 29 percent from 28.9 percent last September.

If there is good news to be found in the report, it is that 3 of the 4 detainees confirmed to have reengaged are now deceased.  Only one of the newly confirmed relapsed terrorist is still at large, joining the 56 other previously confirmed and 48 other suspected of reengaging presently not in custody.

Furthermore, it appears that the Secretary of the Defense Department, Ash Carter has some issues with the movement of Gitmo detainees. His signature has to be applied for approval of transfer. Carter is assuming the same posture as the Secretary of Defense Hagel, before him, this is a problem.

DOD Sec. Says Gitmo Terrorists Need Indefinite Lockup as Obama Tries Closing Prison

SEPTEMBER 04, 2015

While President Obama works to deliver on his longtime promise to close the U.S. military prison in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba his Defense Secretary offers a jolt of reality; around half of the detainees—the world’s most dangerous terrorists—need to be locked up “indefinitely.”

So what are the commander-in-chief’s plans for the radical Islamic jihadists currently incarcerated in the top-security compound at the U.S. Naval base in southeast Cuba? The all-star terrorist roster includes 9/11 masterminds Khalid Sheikh Mohammed (KSM), Ramzi Binalshibh, Ali Abdul Aziz Ali and Mustafa Ahmed Adam al Hawsawi as well as Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri, the Al-Qaeda terrorist charged with orchestrating the 2000 attack on the Navy destroyer USS Cole. Where will the U.S. government take these terrorists if the president goes through with his plan, which started out as a campaign promise to restore America’s position as a global leader on human rights.

In all the years that Obama has talked of closing the Gitmo prison, he has never touched on what would happen to the terrorists held there. The president has tried emptying out the compound by releasing dozens of prisoners—many of them have rejoined terrorist causes—to foreign countries, but at least half of the remaining 116 are too dangerous to free. Obama’s own Defense Secretary, Ashton Carter, confirmed that recently, saying that “some of the people who are there at Guantanamo Bay have to be detained indefinitely, they’ve just got to be locked up.” This evidently applies to many of those who have been released over the years. For instance, an al Qaeda operative (Saudi Ibrahim al-Rubaysh) released from Gitmo appears on the U.S. government’s global terrorist list and Uncle Sam is offering a $5 million reward for information on his whereabouts.

The administration has considered relocating the captives to military facilities in the U.S., including Ft. Leavenworth in Kansas and the Navy Brig in Charleston, South Carolina. This has ignited outrage among officials in both states. Kansas Senator Pat Roberts was quick to say “not on my watch will any terrorists be placed in Kansas.” Roberts also co-authored a mainstream newspaper op-ed with South Carolina Senator Tim Scott vehemently rejecting the idea. “The notion that Kansas, South Carolina or any other state would be an ideal home for terrorist detainees is preposterous,” the piece reads. “Transferring these prisoners to the mainland puts the well-being of states in danger, posing security risks to the public and wasting taxpayer dollars. The detention facilities at Guantanamo are doing a fantastic job of holding these terrorists.”

The governors of both states—Nikki Haley of South Carolina and Sam Brownback of Kansas—have also vowed to take any action in their power to stop the transfers, including suing the federal government. A South Carolina newspaper editorial points out that the state is already taking a hit for the team by serving as the “de facto permanent home” to high-level nuclear waste associated with the nation’s weapons programs. “Fearing South Carolina is again about to become the home that no other state wants to be has leaders rightly standing up against federal plans to transfer terrorist detainees from the U.S. prison facility at Guantanamo Bay near Cuba to military prisons in South Carolina and Kansas,” the editorial states. “This goes beyond the states’ collective call of duty as there is no agreement on a plan for what to do with the detainees in the long term.”

Judicial Watch has covered Guantanamo extensively and has repeatedly traveled there to monitor the U.S. military commission proceedings against the world’s most dangerous terrorists. JW has witnessed a deep commitment to justice by military and civilian lawyers defending the captives and has reported on many of the perks that the incarcerated terrorists receive from American taxpayers. For instance, they get laptops and computer lessons, “Islamically permissible” halal meals and better medical care than U.S. veterans. Last year the Obama administration let Gitmo inmates operate a “Business School Behind Bars” with an accused Al Qaeda financier as the self-appointed “dean of students.” Khalid Sheikh Mohammed was also permitted to dispatch propaganda from his Guantanamo jail cell (undoubtedly aiding and abetting more terrorism) and a fighter in Osama bin Laden’s 55th Arab Brigade was allowed to published a sob letter in an international media outlet describing the “humiliating and brutal treatments” he suffers at the U.S. military prison.

 

 

 

North Korea Expanding Nuclear Abilities

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IAEA: North Korea Apparently Building Nuclear Site   

FILE - A satellite image shows the area around the Yongbyon nuclear facility in Yongbyon, North Korea.

FILE – A satellite image shows the area around the Yongbyon nuclear facility in Yongbyon, North Korea.

North Korea appears to be renovating and building facilities at its Yongbyon nuclear site, a central element of its atomic weapons program, the U.N. nuclear agency’s head said on Monday.

A report by the Washington-based Institute for Science and International Security in April said satellite images showed that activity at the site’s main nuclear reactor may have resumed after a shutdown.

North Korea, which is believed to have carried out nuclear tests in 2006, 2009 and 2013, has not granted IAEA inspectors access to its facilities since 2009, reducing the agency to monitoring its nuclear activities from outside the country.

“We have observed renovation and construction activities at various locations within the site,” IAEA Director General Yukiya Amano told a closed-door meeting of his agency’s Board of Governors in Vienna, according to a text of his speech.

“These appear to be broadly consistent with the DPRK’s statements that it is further developing its nuclear capabilities,” he said, referring to North Korea’s official name, the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea.

Although North and South Korea recently averted a full-scale military confrontation, and agreed to improve ties after a rare exchange of artillery fire over their heavily fortified border, tensions on the Korean Peninsula remain high.

China, North Korea’s closest ally, called on Wednesday for a resumption of talks over Pyongyang’s nuclear program.

The so-called six-party talks — between China, the United States, Japan, Russia and the two Koreas — were last held more than six years ago despite numerous efforts to restart them.

The ISIS report in April said the main reactor at Yongbyon may be operating again at low power or intermittently, and that a centrifuge plant, a facility for the enrichment of uranium, had operated. It also said renovations might be imminent.

Amano did not say where within the Yongbyon site the renovation and construction activities were being carried out.

“We continue to monitor developments at the Yongbyon site, mainly through satellite imagery,” said Amano.

*** There is more:

WASHINGTON (AP) — North Korea is expanding its capacity to mine and mill uranium ore which could supply its nuclear weapons program or fuel nuclear reactors, according to new U.S. research.

The findings shed some light on how Pyongyang gets the raw material to fuel its nuclear ambitions that are raising international alarm.

The analysis is by Jeffrey Lewis, an arms control expert at the Monterey Institute of International Studies. It is being published Wednesday by the website 38 North, which specializes in North Korea.

Lewis writes that recent commercial satellite imagery, the latest from this May, shows that over the past year, North Korea has been modernizing a key facility next to its main uranium mine at the southern site of Pyongsan, not far from the frontier with rival South Korea.

That suggests North Korea is expecting to process significant amounts of uranium, although what it will do with the product remains unclear. A uranium mill is where uranium ore is turned into yellowcake, a key step before it is fabricated as reactor fuel or for enrichment in centrifuges.

Lewis says one possibility is that North Korea will enrich the uranium to expand its stockpile of nuclear weapons.

The North revealed nearly five years ago it has a uranium enrichment facility at its main nuclear complex at Nyongbyon, and there are signs the facility has since been expanded.

Another possibility, Lewis says, is that the North plans to produce fuel for an experimental light-water reactor under construction at its main nuclear complex at Nyongbyon and possible future reactors based on that model.

North Korea has conducted three nuclear test explosions since 2006 and its weapons stockpile could grow sharply in the coming years, analysts warn.

“The expansion of North Korea’s uranium mine and milling operation is one more piece of evidence pointing to Pyongyang’s nuclear ambitions, particularly a growing nuclear weapons stockpile that poses a clear threat to the United States, Northeast Asia and the international community,” said Joel Wit, a former State Department official and editor of 38 North.

International nuclear monitors were expelled from North Korea in 2009, so there’s scant independent information on its activities. But in 1992, North Korea declared to the International Atomic Energy Agency that it had two uranium mines and mills, including Pyongsan.

Lewis says Pyongsan appears to have operated intermittently over the past decade. Satellite images show spoil and residue from the mill has been dumped into a nearby pond that is unprotected and surrounded by farms, which would pose a health risk, he says.

Photos also show the mill has undergone significant refurbishment since 2014, with buildings being renovated and a terminus of a conveyor belt demolished and rebuilt.