Author Archives: Denise Simon

JV Team, Baraq Wears the Zero Jersey Himself

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Do you really want this man Baraq Obama running a war? Do you want him making decisions on matters of national security anymore?

In January of 2014, Baraq Obama called ISIS/ISIL the JV team. Three weeks ago, he demanded that Susan Rice his Deputy National Security Advisor at the White House draft a letter to John Boehner, Speaker of the House to secure a repeal of the Authorization for Use of Military Force for Iraq. Boehner made a few calls to members of Congress telling them what he had received and how outrageous the request is.

Thousands of Kurds, Christians and Yazidis have died at the hands of Baraq Obama while he chooses golf rather than Commander in Chief leading a force for the good of Iraq and the Peshmerga. long time allies of the West.

Even Peshmerga has an exclusive women’s fighting division. Actually Peshmerga has a woman commander.

 

So, how bad is ISIS/ISIL?

ERBIL, Iraq — On Friday, Assad Haig received a call from his mother’s phone number. On the other end was a militant of the Islamic State. Haig’s family, the man said, were going to be executed.

Haig is 23 years old. He works in the Kurdish capital of Erbil. He comes from Sinjar, a town that was overrun by Islamic State militants on Aug. 3. Almost every relative he has ever known — 63 in total — was in Islamic State custody at the time he got the call. Most of them are, or were, women and small children.

Just a week before, Haig’s dozens of relatives in Sinjar were still free. “My mother called and said IS were coming into the city,” Haig recalled of that morning. He struggled to hold back tears as he clasped his hands together in an attempt to keep them from shaking. “I begged them to leave everything and just run, but it was hard with so many kids. My little sister Rama, she is just three, and Iyhab is only five.”

Haig tried to call his mother back repeatedly. When someone finally answered it was a male voice on the line.

“They will be executed tomorrow, the man told Haig.”

“We took them all. They belong to us now,” the man said before the line went dead.

All but Haig’s father, who escaped to the Sinjar Mountains, and his grandmother, who is 84 and can’t walk. IS left her alone in the family home but threatened to return and shoot her if she didn’t leave Sinjar. She has no way of leaving the home on her own.

Most residents of Sinjar, like Haig, are Yazidi, an Iraqi minority group estimated to number 600,000. The ancient Yazidi religion is shrouded in mystery, and a misunderstanding of Yazidi beliefs has led to many labeling them “devil worshipers,” resulting in centuries of mass persecution.

Details of the Islamic State takeover of Sinjar just over a week ago are still sketchy. Those who escaped said captives were given two options: convert to Islam, or die. Others reported mass executions of men, while women and children were taken prisoner.

On Sunday, Iraq’s human rights minister Mohammed Shia al-Sudani told Reuters he had evidence that at least 500 Yazidis had been executed by IS, among them women and children. Some had been buried alive.

IS media posted photos of some of the executions online. Several images showed around 20 men said to have been killed in Sinjar, with a quote from the Koran saying, “Slay them where you catch them.”

Kamil Amin, the spokesman for Iraq’s Human Rights Ministry, said that many Yazidi women under 35 had been captured and were being held in Mosul.

“We think that the terrorists by now consider them slaves and they have vicious plans for them,” Amin told the Associated Press.

Many fear that IS militants are following ancient battle customs practiced by the Prophet Mohammed and his men.

In stories about conquering villages of people considered “infidels” or “apostates,” both the Koran and the Old Testament of the Bible speak of killing the men and taking the women and children for sale as slaves. The practice of having sex with female slaves is mentioned several times in the Koran.

“Blessed are the believers who restrain their carnal desires except with their wives and slave girls, for these are lawful to them,” reads one verse of the Koran.

“Prophet, we have made lawful to you the wives whom you have granted dowries and the slave girls whom God has given you as booty.”

Accounts from witnesses so far suggest IS tactics against the Yazidi population are mimicking such practices, but the militant group hasn’t yet released official statements about their intentions.

Haig prepared documents listing every one of his missing relatives — their names, ages, and phone numbers — to submit to the Kurdish police and US authorities. His grandmother helped him complete the list by phone from Sinjar. As he read through the papers on Friday, he was overcome with grief when he reached the names of his mother and sisters.

“Some people say they have been raping the women, maybe 6 or 10 men with one woman,” he said, staring vacantly out the window, in tears. “Some say they have even forced FGM [female genital mutilation] on them.”


Assad Haig holds documents that list the names and ages of his missing relatives. (Tracey Shelton/GlobalPost)

On Friday, as Haig was en route to the US Consulate in Erbil to yet again beg for help, he received a call from a man claiming to be an IS member. The man informed him that his family had been collectively sentenced to death for refusing to convert to Islam.

“They will be executed tomorrow,” the man told Haig.

Haig’s father was the only one who escaped IS capture. He fled to the Sinjar Mountains above the city where he remains trapped with thousands of others. An estimated 50,000 people were stranded there for the past week, with no supplies, no food, and no shelter, slowly dying from starvation and thirst. Reports on Sunday said that about 20,000 had managed to escape the mountains after US bombings of IS targets helped cleared the way.

In a report released on Aug. 8, UNICEF said at least 25,000 children were among those trapped in the mountains, and 40 were already confirmed dead from starvation or dehydration. The real number of dead is assumed to be much higher, the report said.

The US has been conducting humanitarian drops of food and water and launching targeted strikes against militants near Sinjar and Erbil since late last week. Iraq and Turkey were also reportly making aid drops beginning Wednesday. But on Friday, Haig said nothing had yet reached the desperate, besieged families he’s in contact with. The mountain range spans 60 miles, and air drops of large containers can only be so precise.

“Every time I see on the television they have air dropped supplies I call my father and he says, no. There are no helicopters, no food, no soldiers,” Haig said. Haig’s father turns on his phone every day to check in, then off to conserve the battery.

Some reports said the first US drops of food and water exploded on impact, but Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel said Friday that 80 percent of US air drops had reached their targets.

Relief supplies continued to be delivered by air throughout the weekend, with the US reporting a total delivery of 36,224 ready–to-eat meals and 6,822 gallons of water. At time of writing, British aircraft were also en route to deliver supplies.

For Haig, the wait and the uncertainty are unbearable. He’s filed reports with both the Kurdish military and the US seeking help to find his family. On Thursday he attempted to drive to Sinjar himself, but was turned back by Kurdish forces.

“It’s all lies! No one is fighting the IS. No one is helping to get my family back,” he said. “Give me a weapon and I will go to fight. Give the weapons to all the Yazidi men. Just give us a chance to fight for our families or die trying. That’s all I ask.”

http://www.globalpost.com/dispatch/news/regions/middle-east/iraq/140810/man-lost-63-relatives-the-islamic-state

WASHINGTON—Days before the takeover of the Iraqi city of Mosul by the militant group calling itself the Islamic State, U.S. intelligence analysts were sharply divided over whether the group would seize the city, according to people familiar with the debate.

View Graphics

 

U.S. officials saw initial indications the group might seek to take Mosul and urged Iraqi action, to no avail. But on the day of the June 10 takeover, U.S. officials played down its significance. “Obviously, this has got our attention in Mosul, but it doesn’t change the calculus,” said Rear. Adm. John Kirby, the chief Pentagon spokesman.

Although U.S. spy agencies have monitored and warned about the Islamic State over the past year, they often have underestimated the group’s ability to make rapid operational gains, U.S. officials said. That was the case a week ago when militants launched a dramatic and successful offensive in Iraq’s Kurdish region.

WASHINGTON, Aug. 11, 2014 – The Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant poses a threat to the civilized world, Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel said in Sydney today.

Click photo for screen-resolution image
Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel and Australian Defense Minister David Johnston hold a news conference in Sydney, Aug. 11, 2014. DoD photo by Navy Petty Officer 2nd Class Sean Hurt  
(Click photo for screen-resolution image);high-resolution image available.

At a joint news conference, Hagel and Australian Defense Minister David Johnston spoke about what their respective countries are doing in Iraq.

The United States will continue to support the Iraqi security forces “in every way that we can,” Hagel said. “We will, again, build partnerships, as we are now, recognizing the threat not just to the United States, but to the civilized world.”

The United States has launched airstrikes against ISIL targets in recent days, and has airdropped relief supplies to tens of thousands of Yezidis who have fled to Mount Sinjar in northern Iraq to seek refuge. American teams in Iraq will continue to assess the ISIL threat and what will best help the Iraqi security forces, Hagel said.

Australia is participating alongside the United States in airdropping supplies to the Yezidis — members of a religious sect in the region.

—–

Exactly what universe is Baraq Obama from or where is he headed? Surely by now he has his sights exclusively on playing Pebble Beach, the PGA West and perhaps Spanish Bay….FORE America, this will not go well in the coming months.

 

 

ISIL Against the World, America Next?

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The leftist argument for quite some time is that the United States never should have gone into Iraq. It is a popular ethos but way off base if one would bother with the real history and reasons. So, Barack Obama pulled America troops out in 2011 ending the war, telling the world that Iraq is now stable.

The very moment coalition troops exited Iraq the vacuum was filling up again. Barack Obama blames Iraqi leadership for the failed ‘status of forces’ agreement, when that was yet another lie on behalf of the White House. Yet, if Barack Obama wanted to actually keep Iraq stable after the American exodus, then why did Barack Obama refuse all later requests for military support by Maliki which were requests of urgency that began in 2012?

After this past week of the Pershmerga and Yizidis being trapped on top of a mountain by ISIS, Barack Obama told us that America could not turn a blind eye to the innocent desperations on that mountain. The Pentagon with Obama’s nod authorized only a handful of air-strikes but they were not offensive at all versus ISIS, they were only gestures of defense to protect American personnel in Irbil and Baghdad. While Barack Obama was on the golf course this weekend at Martha’s Vineyard, the United State was evacuating our personnel from Irbil and Baghdad, leaving behind only very essential personnel. (Cant have another Benghazi).

Now, as hostilities were building, al Maliki is under pressure to step down and he refuses so he has surrounded his palace with military forces and dispatched additional forces throughout the ‘green zone’ fending off a coup.

Meanwhile, ISIS continues to be bold issuing public threats to Jordan, Turkey, and the West. Some in America are taking notice by voicing concern that the United States is in the crosshairs of ISIS. Sure the threat is there but we have our government to protect our homeland right?

Must watch video: The World at War

ISIS recruits globally and does so effectively and as a result of seizing banks and military hardware, the terror group is worth an estimated $1.8 billion and that buys a lot of terror and fighters.

http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2014-08-11/suspected-american-isis-supporter-arrested-new-yorks-jfk-airport

Having demanded “American blood,” the news that a suspected American militant who pledged allegiance to the Islamic State terrorist group in chilling Twitter rants is being held without bail after his arrest at New York’s Kennedy Airport is somewhat concerning. Donald Ray Morgan, 44, who has a previous conviction for firing a gun, had allegedly been brokering deals for military-grade weapons and ammo in his home state of North Carolina and was indicted for being a felon in possession of a firearm, according to The Daily News. The presiding judge noted, his actions “clearly implied to me that he is trying to go to Syria or Iraq as the next step and trying to be actively engaged.”

 

As The Daily News reports,

FBI agents nabbed Donald Ray Morgan, a 44-year-old ex-convict from North Carolina, on Aug. 2 when he returned to the U.S. after an eight-month stay in Lebanon, where his wife lives.

 

Morgan, who has a previous conviction for firing a gun, had allegedly been brokering deals for military-grade weapons and ammo in his home state and was indicted for being a felon in possession of a firearm.

 

But what caught counter-terrorism agents’ attention were his chilling Twitter rants from the Middle East under the alias “Abu Omar al Amreeki.”

 

“It’s possible that he traffics in guns to people in this organization (ISIS),” Moore said in Brooklyn Federal Court.

 

Besides pledging allegiance to chief ISIS thug Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, his tweets strongly suggested he may have been preparing for jihad in Syria, Iraq or possibly the states, law enforcement officials feared.

 

He also referred to himself as a mujahedeen, or jihad fighter.

——

http://www.cbsnews.com/news/is-isis-more-dangerous-now-than-al-qaeda-was-pre-911/

As the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) — or simply “The Islamic State” as the group now says it should be called — continues to sweep through northern Iraq, U.S. lawmakers are sounding the alarm that it could be just as dangerous as al Qaeda in the days before it launched the Sept. 11 attacks on the U.S.

“Every day that goes by, ISIS builds up its caliphate and it becomes a direct threat to the United States of America. They are more powerful now than al Qaeda was on 9/11,” Rep. Peter King, R-N.Y., said on NBC’s “Meet the Press” Sunday.

Experts say the Islamic jihadist group has indeed been able to accomplish an enormous amount in a short period of time. And in global reach, fundraising capabilities and pure operational ability, they are certainly outpacing Osama bin Laden’s al Qaeda.

 

“Al Qaeda in the pre-Sept. 11 phase was capable of engaging in strikes and bombings,” Tom Sanderson, a terrorism expert at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, told CBS News. But what ISIS has now, he said, “is more significant and more varied than what al Qaeda had in terms of its actual combat capabilities where they are fielding artillery. They are holding much greater territory than al Qaeda had, they are governing people, they have a more diverse funding base… they have a greater localized funding base than al Qaeda.”

The group is in fact a rival faction to modern-day al Qaeda, whose general command cut ISIS off from its network in February because it disobeyed orders from leader Ayman al-Zawahri.

The Internet has afforded ISIS the ability to recruit all over the world. The group gained power and experience fighting in Syria, where an estimated 10,000 to 20,000 foreigners have traveled to join the fight, including 1,500 and 2,500 Sunni extremists from Europe and 100 to 200 Americans who hold Western passports and have far easier access to the U.S. if their terror activities go undetected by authorities.

 

 

Al Qaeda “simply did not have the technology that ISIS has now, the social networking that enables them to reach a much greater audience,” Sanderson said.

Still, big does not always mean organized.

Juan Zarate, CBS News’ Senior National Security Analyst, said that ISIS is probably less well-organized than pre-9/11 al Qaeda, which spent years meticulously training and plotting to attack the United States. And Sanderson said the surprise element of its attack on the United States was part of what made the group so lethal.

But ISIS could also be benefiting from the years of groundwork laid by its predecessor-turned-rival.

“ISIS, especially with the announcement of the Islamic State, is piggybacking off of the global networks and inspiration that al Qaeda fomented post-9/11 and give them, in some ways, a global infrastructure on which to build. It’s not as if they’re starting from scratch,” said Zarate.

One of the group’s biggest advantages over al Qaeda is the fact that it has seized a vast swath of territory and virtually erased the border between Iraq and Syria. Unlike al Qaeda, “in some ways…rented from the Taliban in Afghanistan,” Zarate said, ISIS has gained strength from the territory it occupies.

“In the 21st century any operating room for a terrorist group is a prescription for disaster because they have the ability not just to build up their local strength but to allow themselves global reach,” he added.

ISIS has a local fundraising base from Iraq and Syria, where it brings in revenue from the granaries, oil wells and power plants it has captured. Last week, it seized Iraq’s largest dam, gaining control of enormous power and water resources as well as access to the river that runs through Baghdad. Trafficking, extortion and kidnap-for-ransom operations bring in millions of dollars.

“There’s no daddy for ISIS when it comes to funding,” Sanderson said. By contrast, al Qaeda was dependent on bin Laden’s personal fortune, which was not limitless, and donors from the Gulf states that could impose a certain amount of pressure and control over the group.

 

Plus, ISIS has captured millions of dollars of American weaponry abandoned by Iraqi troops that fled the fight early on in the jihadist group’s takeover. David Rohde, a columnist for Reuters and The Atlantic said on CBS News’ “Face the Nation” Sunday called that a “disaster.”

“What’s so astonishing about the Islamic State is that they’re able to maneuver, use this weaponry. They can move 1,000 guys very quickly and that they defeated the Peshmerga [Kurdish forces] so quickly I think surprised many people,” Rohde said.

There is one glaring similarity between the two groups, Zarate said, and that is the extent to which the U.S. does not entirely know what ISIS will do next.

“There were massive blind spots as to what al Qaeda was doing or planning and I think you’ve started to hear the same threads or chords of insecurity on the part of U.S. counterterrorism officials about blind spots with respect to ISIS,” he said.

“I think we had certainly not done enough through the ’90s and into 2001 to disrupt al Qaeda’s infrastructure, training, plotting and in some ways we’ve allowed ISIS to gain a foothold by being fairly inactive in Syria to date so in some ways you can say we’re rather equivalent in terms of our passive posture.”

Experts and lawmakers have debated whether ISIS will carry out the next 9/11-style terror attack. With the group’s full capability somewhat of a mystery, it is hard to predict when they might turn their attention to the U.S.

But earlier this summer, former acting CIA Director and CBS News Analyst on Intelligence Michael Morell said that an increasing U.S. presence in Iraq could speed up that process.

 

“That’s one of the downsides of U.S. involvement,” he told CBS News. “The more we visibly get involved in helping the [Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki] government fight these guys, the more we become a target.”

And with President Obama’s decision to launch airstrikes in Iraq as a means to provide humanitarian aid and safety for thousands of Iraqi religious minorities being targeted by ISIS, that day could come sooner.

 

 

Putin vs. NATO and tomatoes

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Have you ever read an Executive Order signed by Vladimir Putin? Here is your chance. With the sanction war going on against Russia initiated by Barack Obama, Europe has feebly joined the cadence of the United States and Putin is fighting back. Russia is stopping all agricultural imports for at least a year.

When it comes to NATO, Putin is drawing out the weakness of member nations. NATO Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen is getting advise from U.S. General Breedlove as to how to address Putin’s aggression that is building in Ukraine.

 

Putin has indeed isolated the weakness of NATO by launching irregular warfare.

‘A linchpin of Russian strategy is what the committee calls “ambiguous warfare.” As one Russian defense theorist puts it, ambiguous warfare involves using irregular forces, cyberattacks and information warfare to “neutralize adversary actions without resorting to weapons (through indirect actions), by exercising information superiority.”

The trouble ambiguous warfare poses to NATO is that the Alliance’s collective-defense obligations, and the strategic doctrines pinned to them, call for responding to “armed” assaults. But Russian aggression against, say, Lithuania may not look like an outright assault. The Kremlin is more likely to use Russian-language media to agitate the country’s ethnic-Russian population while debilitating basic state functions through cyberattacks and the deployment of irregular commandos.’

 

Russia now has about 20,000 troops stationed “in an area along the entire border with eastern Ukraine.” The buildup nearly doubled the troop deployment in the last week by adding 8,000 more forces to 12,000 already there, the official said.

It comes a week after the United States and the European Union increased economic sanctions on Russia for supporting pro-Russian separatists fighting Ukraine government forces in the eastern regions of Donetsk and Luhansk, along the border with Russia.

‘This will no longer be Special War, but a real war — one which may not be possible to limit to Ukraine.

Nevertheless, Russia has a long habit of invading places in August — East Prussia and Galicia (1914), Poland (1920), Manchuria (1945), Czechoslovakia (1968), and Georgia (2008) — so all bets may be off. It’s clear that Putin is reluctant to back down in the face of Western economic pressure, scoldings, and admonitions, not least because consistently doubling-down has worked well for him many times in the past. I have no crystal ball, but if we learn in a few days, perhaps this weekend, that Russian “peacekeepers” are moving by the battalion into Southeastern Ukraine, you won’t count me among the surprised.’

 

The Cold War part two is brewing and Putin is so far tactically successful at his mission to rebuild the ‘Soviet Union’. General Dempsey admitted the Pentagon has pulled out and dusted off war game options from the Cold War, which should have been done in 2012 at least. Bring out the spies again and re-train them to the tactics some of which are listed here. Moscow has their rules, the question is what rules will America have and who will join her?

“Although no one had written them down, they were the precepts we all understood for conducting our operations in the most difficult of operating environments: the Soviet capital.” – Antonio Mendez, retired CIA Technical Operations Officer specializing in support of clandestine and covert CIA operations.

The Rules

1. Assume nothing.
2. Technology will always let you down.
3. Murphy is right.
4. Never go against your gut.
5. Always listen to your gut; it is your operational antennae.
6. Everyone is potentially under opposition control.
7. Don’t look back; you are never completely alone. Use your gut.
8. Go with the flow; use the terrain.
9. Take the natural break of traffic.
10. Maintain a natural pace.
11. Establish a distinctive and dynamic profile and pattern.
12. Stay consistent over time.
13. Vary your pattern and stay within your profile.
14. Be non threatening: keep them relaxed; mesmerize!

USAID and Cuba, Really?

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USAID spends billions annually on missions and projects that go without notice globally but rest assured that the money is spent well as USAID is managed through the State Department….ah ha ha ha.

While we see Central American countries are failed states and their population is on an exodus through our southern border, USAID did not do too well at spending our money down there did they?

Well now there is Cuba… several months ago, there was a failed twitter campaign in Cuba designed to alter the social and create political dissent. This program was layered up so well that it took months to uncover the people and agencies involved but Cuba figured it out quickly. More about this failed program here, it is interesting reading.

Now we have dispatched young people for another program and they get paid under $6.00 per hour to do the State Department’s work.

Here goes:

WASHINGTON (AP) — An Obama administration program secretly dispatched young Latin Americans to Cuba using the cover of health and civic programs to provoke political change, a clandestine operation that put those foreigners in danger even after a U.S. contractor was hauled away to a Cuban jail.

Beginning as early as October 2009, a project overseen by the U.S. Agency for International Development sent Venezuelan, Costa Rican and Peruvian young people to Cuba in hopes of ginning up rebellion. The travelers worked undercover, often posing as tourists, and traveled around the island scouting for people they could turn into political activists.

In one case, the workers formed an HIV-prevention workshop that memos called “the perfect excuse” for the program’s political goals — a gambit that could undermine America’s efforts to improve health globally.

But their efforts were fraught with incompetence and risk, an Associated Press investigation found: Cuban authorities questioned who was bankrolling the travelers. The young workers nearly blew their mission to “identify potential social-change actors.” One said he got a paltry, 30-minute seminar on how to evade Cuban intelligence, and there appeared to be no safety net for the inexperienced workers if they were caught.

“Although there is never total certainty, trust that the authorities will not try to harm you physically, only frighten you,” read a memo obtained by the AP. “Remember that the Cuban government prefers to avoid negative media reports abroad, so a beaten foreigner is not convenient for them.”

In all, nearly a dozen Latin Americans served in the program in Cuba, for pay as low as $5.41 an hour.

5 Things to know:

1.”THE PERFECT EXCUSE”: The young spies from Costa Rica created an HIV-prevention workshop that they called “the perfect excuse” to recruit political activists, a ruse that could undermine USAID’s credibility in critical health work around the world.

2.THEIR EFFORTS WERE FRAUGHT WITH INCOMPETENCE AND RISK. Cuban authorities questioned who was bankrolling the travelers, and there was no safety net for the young Latin Americans, who were doing work that was explicitly illegal in Cuba.

3.VENEZUELANS AND PERUVIANS WERE DEPLOYED TO CUBA’S COLLEGE CAMPUSES. The objective was to recruit university students with the long-term goal of turning them against their government. Potential recruits were listed by name, and then profiled, their leadership qualities assessed in a spreadsheet.

4.WHETHER ANY OF THE POLITICAL OBJECTIVES WERE EVER REALIZED IS UNCLEAR. In fact, their Cuban contacts in recent interviews with the AP said they were astonished to discover that their foreign friends were acting on behalf of the U.S. government.

5.THE CONTRACTOR, CREATIVE ASSOCIATES INTERNATIONAL, CHANGED ITS STRATEGY. In September 2010, Creative Associates shifted from sending outsiders into Cuba to develop dissidents among college students to getting exit visas for the new leaders and training them off the island. Other beneficiaries in Cuba would receive cash payments to run the recruitment efforts.

 

The AP found USAID and its contractor, Creative Associates International, continued the program even as U.S. officials privately told their government contractors to consider suspending travel to Cuba after the arrest of contractor Alan Gross, who remains imprisoned after smuggling in sensitive technology.

“We value your safety,” one senior USAID official said in an email. “The guidance applies to ALL travelers to the island, not just American citizens,” another official said.

The revelations of the USAID program come as the White House faces questions about the once-secret “Cuban Twitter” project, known as ZunZuneo. That program, launched by USAID in 2009 and uncovered by the AP in April, established a primitive social media network under the noses of Cuban officials. USAID’s inspector general is investigating that program, which ended in September, 2012.

Officials said USAID launched “discreet” programs like ZunZuneo to increase the flow of information in a country that heavily restricts it. But the AP’s earlier investigation found ZunZuneo was political in nature and drew in subscribers unaware that the service was paid for by the U.S. government.

“USAID and the Obama administration are committed to supporting the Cuban people’s desire to freely determine their own future,” the agency said in response to written questions from the AP. “USAID works with independent youth groups in Cuba on community service projects, public health, the arts and other opportunities to engage publicly, consistent with democracy programs worldwide.”

In a statement late Sunday, USAID said the HIV workshop had a dual purpose: It “enabled support for Cuban civil society while providing a secondary benefit of addressing the desire Cubans expressed for information and training about HIV prevention.”

Creative Associates declined to comment, referring questions to USAID.

Both ZunZuneo and the travelers program were part of a larger, multimillion-dollar effort by USAID to effect change in politically volatile countries, government data show. But the programs reviewed by the AP didn’t appear to achieve their goals and operated under an agency known more for its international-aid work than stealthy operations. The CIA recently pledged to stop using vaccine programs to gather intelligence, such as one in Pakistan that targeted Osama bin Laden.

The travelers program was launched when newly inaugurated President Barack Obama’s administration was talking about a “new beginning” with Cuba after decades of mistrust, raising questions about whether the White House had a coherent policy toward the island nation.

Drawing on documents and interviews worldwide, the AP found the travelers program went to extensive lengths to hide the workers’ activities. They were to communicate in code: “I have a headache” meant they suspected they were being monitored by Cuban authorities; “Your sister is ill” was an order to cut their trip short.

“We worked it so that the government here didn’t know we were traveling to Cuba and helping these groups,” said Yajaira Andrade, a former administrator with a Venezuelan organization. “Because that was when (President Hugo) Chavez was in power, and if he had known about us — that some Venezuelans were working to stir rebellion — we would have been thrown in jail.”

To evade Cuban authorities, travelers installed innocent-looking content on their laptops to mask sensitive information they were carrying. They also used encrypted memory sticks to hide their files and sent obviously encrypted emails using a system that might have drawn suspicion.

It is illegal in Cuba to work with foreign democracy-building programs. Nevertheless, one contract was signed days after Gross’ detention.

“They arrested a contractor from another agency. That could be dangerous,” one Skype message between two project workers would later read. “Thank God he’s not one of ours.”

Documents show Creative Associates approved the use of the travelers’ relatives to carry cash to the Cuban contacts. But the family members weren’t to be told that the funds were from the U.S. government.

Hector Baranda, who was a college student in Cuba when he was befriended by a group of traveling Venezuelans, said he was surprised to hear from the AP they were working for the U.S. government and had profiled him.

“How would you feel if you offered your sincere friendship and received this kind of news?” Baranda asked.

The travelers’ project was paid for under the same pot of federal money that paid for the ZunZuneo program. But USAID has yet to provide the AP with a complete copy of the Cuban contracts under a Freedom of Information Act request filed more than three months ago.

Former Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, who was in office during the program and is a likely Democratic presidential candidate in 2016, said in her new book “Hard Choices” that she was pleased “to see change slowly creeping into the country.”

 

 

Israel delivers Gaza humanitarian Aid

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Sure we have seen for several weeks the hostilities between Israel and Gaza. When one does the research, Israel never starts these wars with Gaza yet Israel continues to offer humanitarian aid to Gaza while the world tells Israel don’t fight so hard to protect yourselves and don’t be so aggressive in killing those that are trying to kill you.

The West and in fact all those around the globe participating in the ‘Free-Gaza’ rallies and the pro-Palestinian demonstrations don’t even understand the history, the current facts on the ground or much less what has been at the core of issue that Hamas wants Israel dead…period.  In Europe friends of Hamas and Gaza yell death to Jews.

 

From IRNA:

GPO tour to Kerem Shalom humanitarian aid crossing http://youtu.be/lpNUVrIzqbU

The Government Press Office (GPO), today (Monday, 4 August 2014), held a foreign press tour, for two dozen media crews, of Kerem Shalom Crossing, where hundreds of trucks laden with food, medicines and fuel enter the Gaza Strip as humanitarian aid.

In the last 24 hours, many such trucks have entered the Gaza Strip. The Israel Electric Corp. has joined the effort and today delivered ten generators to UNRWA.

The deputy head of security at the crossing, Yair Ben Or, briefed the journalists and explained the daily routine at the crossing: “The crossing has operated continuously throughout Operation Protective Edge. Our employees have worked under daily mortar fire in order to provide necessary equipment to the Gaza Strip. Most of the supplies are medicines, bedding, clothing, agricultural produce and medical equipment.”

The journalists met with Kerem Shalom Crossing Director Ami Shaked who reviewed the main points of the crossing’s work. He said: “We deliver equipment and produce, most of which has been donated by UN organizations and agencies, the International Committee of the Red Cross and other humanitarian aid organizations. Despite the difficult situation and the daily attacks on the crossing, we have endeavored to work here around the clock in order to assure the proper entry of the products and the equipment.”

Shaked added that yesterday, 186 trucks entered carrying mainly medical equipment and medicines. The shipment was the largest since Operation Protective Edge began and included – inter alia – 3,000 units of blood, water tanks and generators to supply electricity to local hospitals. Thousands of liters of gasoline and diesel fuel were also delivered, as well as 87 tons of natural gas.

Since the start of Operation Protective Edge, 1,752 trucks with humanitarian aid have entered the Gaza Strip.  The journalists ended the tour with a visit to the fuel and gas terminal and spoke with the Palestinian truck drivers and the Israeli workers who load the goods.

Click below for the full photo album.

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While Israel has been on a ground operation to eliminate the tunnels, what has been found in tunnels includes motorcycles for suicide bombers, RPG’s, IED’s, small arms, food and more. Now is the time that Israel will use to determine their next course of action certainly based on the manuals they discovered in the tunnels as well.

Captured Hamas Combat Manual Explains Benefits of Human Shields

IDF forces in the Gaza Strip found a Hamas manual on “Urban Warfare,” which belonged to the Shuja’iya Brigade of Hamas’ military wing, the Al-Qassam Brigades. The manual explains how the civilian population can be used against IDF forces and reveals that Hamas knows the IDF is committed to minimizing harm to civilians.

Throughout Operation Protective Edge, Hamas has continuously used the civilian population of Gaza as human shields. The discovery of a Hamas “urban warfare” manual by IDF forces reveals that Hamas’ callous use of the Gazan population was intentional and preplanned.

This Hamas urban warfare manual exposes two truths: (1) The terror group knows full well that the IDF will do what it can to limit civilian casualties. (2) The terror group exploits these efforts by using civilians as human shields against advancing IDF forces.

The Manual

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In a portion entitled “Limiting the Use of Weapons,” the manual explains that:

“The soldiers and commanders (of the IDF) must limit their use of weapons and tactics that lead to the harm and unnecessary loss of people and [destruction of] civilian facilities. It is difficult for them to get the most use out of their firearms, especially of supporting fire [e.g. artillery].”

Clearly Hamas knows the IDF will limit its use of weapons in order to avoid harming civilians, including refraining from using larger firepower to support for infantry.

The manual goes on to explain that the “presence of civilians are pockets of resistance” that cause three major problems for advancing troops:

“(1) Problems with opening fire
(2) Problems in controlling the civilian population during operations and afterward
(3) Assurance of supplying medical care to civilians who need it”

Lastly, the manual discusses the benefits for Hamas when civilian homes are destroyed:

“The destruction of civilian homes: This increases the hatred of the citizens towards the attackers [the IDF] and increases their gathering [support] around the city defenders (resistance forces[i.e. Hamas]).”

It is clear that Hamas actually desires the destruction of homes and civilian infrastructure, knowing it will increase hatred for the IDF and support their fighters.

Why Shuja’iya is Important

It is also of no small importance that this manual belongs to the Shuja’iya Brigade. The IDF fought a major battle in the neighborhood of Shuja’iya, which had been turned into a terrorist stronghold. The discovery of this manual suggests that the destruction to the civilian population of Shuja’iya was a part of Hamas’ plan.

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