Author Archives: Denise Simon

The World is not Messy it is Evil

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United Nations human rights chief Navi Pillay is in charge of global investigations. She is a thug herself as she is more concerned with charging Edward Snowden or Israel for their defense mission against the terror organization, Hamas.

So then why would al Assad of Syria get a pass on torture? Evil IS the United Nations.

10,000 Bodies: Inside Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s Crackdown

Photographs of Corpses Offer Evidence of Industrial-Scale Campaign Against Political Opponents by Assad Regime, U.S. Investigators Say

At Hospital 601, not far from the presidential palace in Damascus, Syrian guards ran out of space to store the dead and had to use an adjoining warehouse where military vehicles were repaired.

A forensic photographer working for Syria’s military police walked the rows and took pictures of the emaciated and disfigured corpses, most believed to be anti-Assad activists. Numbers written on the bodies and on white cards, the photographer said, told regime bureaucrats the identities of the deceased, when they died and which branch of the Syrian security services had held them. (Graphic image follows.)

U.S. investigators who have reviewed many of the photos say they believe at least 10,000 corpses were cataloged this way between 2011 and mid-2013. Investigators believe they weren’t victims of regular warfare but of torture, and that the bodies were brought to the hospital from the Assad regime’s sprawling network of prisons. They were told some appeared to have died on site.

Last year, the Syrian military-police photographer defected to the West. Investigators later gave him the code name Caesar to disguise his identity. He turned over to U.S. law-enforcement agencies earlier this year a vast trove of postmortem photographs from Hospital 601 that he and other military photographers took over the two-year period, which he helped smuggle out of the country on digital thumb drives.

Over the ensuing months, U.S. investigators pored over the photos, which depicted the deaths and the elaborate counting system, and started to debrief Caesar and other activists involved in his defection. U.S. and European investigators have since concluded not only that the images were genuine, but that they offered the best evidence to date of an industrial-scale campaign by the government of Bashar al-Assad against its political opponents. U.S. Ambassador-at-large Stephen Rapp, head of the State Department’s Office of Global Criminal Justice, has compared the pattern to some of the most notorious acts of mass murder of the past century.

This account, based on interviews with war-crimes investigators in the U.S. and Europe, more than a dozen defectors, and opposition leaders working with Caesar, provides fresh details about Syria’s crackdown on its political opponents and the central role of Hospital 601 in processing bodies and documenting the deaths for the government.

Investigators haven’t finished analyzing the entire cache of photographs and are still trying to gather evidence to fully understand the regime’s role in the deaths. Prosecutors must be careful about jumping to conclusions before all the evidence is in, cautioned a senior U.S. official, who noted that investigators are far from finished debriefing Caesar.

The Federal Bureau of Investigation unit that investigates genocide and war crimes, and other agencies, hope to soon get a more detailed account of what happened at Hospital 601 from Caesar, officials said. Some U.S. officials want to use Caesar’s photographs, which show bodies that appear to have been strangled, beaten or disfigured, to build a case for a potential war-crimes prosecution of the Assad regime. It is unclear when, if ever, such a case might be brought.

When the issue was debated in the White House in 2012 and 2013, many administration officials argued that a concerted push for an international war-crimes prosecution would undermine any chance for pursuing a negotiated settlement to Syria’s civil war, according to participants. Bringing an indictment would give Mr. Assad and his backers little incentive to back down, they said.

“For the administration, it is a double-edged sword,” said Frederic Hof, who served as a top Obama administration adviser on Syria, of the photographic evidence. “On the one hand, it’s going to illustrate perhaps better than anything heretofore the absolute horror of what’s going on. On the other side, it raises the inevitable question: What are we actually doing about it?”

Numbers written on the bodies and on white cards told regime bureaucrats the identities of the deceased, when they died and which branch of Syrian authorities had held them, according to a Syrian military-police photographer now outside of Syria. Faces have been obscured at photo source’s request.

 

 

A White House official said the administration has long supported efforts to gather evidence of international crimes in Syria and earlier this year backed a United Nations Security Council resolution to refer war-crimes allegations to the International Criminal Court in The Hague. That resolution was vetoed by Russia and China.

Syria has dismissed Caesar’s photographs as fabrications. In January, before U.S. investigators judged the photos authentic, Syria’s Ministry of Justice said many of the dead shown in the photos were civilians and soldiers killed by “terrorist groups.” It branded Caesar a fugitive lacking credibility, and said the photo trove was part of a campaign instigated by enemies of the nation. Syrian officials at the U.N. didn’t respond to requests for further comment.

Caesar, a high-school dropout from Damascus who has told U.S. officials he is in his 40s, was conscripted into the Syrian military, where he specialized in crime-scene photography. He told investigators he eventually became head of the division that photographed bodies for government records. It was part of Syria’s system, similar to those run by governments around the world, to document civilian and military deaths.

Caesar and the other photographers on his team were stationed at the military-police headquarters in Damascus, he told investigators. In more peaceful times, he was accompanied by a doctor and by a member of the Syrian judiciary whenever he went to take pictures of crime scenes and accidents.

“We had this routine,” Caesar said, according to a person present at his questioning. “As the revolution started out, we continued that same routine.” It was the body count and the venues that changed.

Initially, the Syrian government took many of the bodies of activists to a military hospital in Damascus known as Tishreen, or 607, he told investigators. Tishreen also was the site of military funerals for top Syrian officers, according to activists working with Caesar. Because the military didn’t want the bodies of activists and officers taken to the same facility, it decided to make 601 the central collection point for activists’ bodies, according to investigators who debriefed Caesar.

As the government stepped up its crackdown, Caesar told investigators, he and his team snapped pictures of between 15 and 20 bodies a day. In those early months, bodies were identified by name, he said.

Bodies were brought to 601 from 24 Syrian prisons and laid out in what Caesar and activists described to investigators as the hospital’s auto-repair warehouse.

It isn’t clear from the photos where the people were killed. U.S. investigators believe most died at government detention facilities because they appeared to have been dead for hours or days. A series of photographs taken on Nov. 1, 2012, show a prisoner, apparently alive, grasping a gloved hand before later turning up dead, according to officials who reviewed Caesar’s archive.

Caesar told investigators he didn’t have political affiliations and that before the war he never thought much about his job snapping pictures of the dead. “It was his day job,” said an activist who helped him escape. “He did what he was ordered to do.”

But as the bodies piled up and evidence of torture became more pronounced, Caesar’s attitude began to change. He confided in a close relative who knew activists working with the opposition, and in the summer of 2011 Caesar agreed to start smuggling photographs out of the hospital.

Caesar downloaded the images onto a government computer at his office and stored them on thumb drives that he hid in his shoes and passed to the opposition, Caesar and defectors working with him told investigators.

In October 2011, with the death toll in the prison system rising, the Syrian government introduced a numerical system to track the dead, according to Caesar’s account. Earlier pictures showed bodies marked with names. New ones showed numbers.

The numbers—written on white cards and taped to the bodies, or written directly on foreheads, arms and chests—provided a running count of how many had been killed, U.S. investigators believe.

Cherif Bassiouni, who chaired several United Nations war-crimes investigation commissions and teaches at DePaul University, reviewed Caesar’s photographs on behalf of the Syrian opposition and studied Syria’s use of numbers to identify bodies. He said the record-keeping system bore similarities to the method used by Soviet intelligence services in the 1950s.

Mr. Bassiouni said the Syrian government, like the Soviets, assigned prisoners a unique number when they were alive and a separate one when they died. In Nazi Germany, prisoners received only one number, which stayed with them in life and in death, he said.

The system appeared designed to maintain internal military discipline and track which branch of the military did what, Mr. Bassiouni said.

Last year, Syrian officers added two Arabic letters into the numeric system to indicate when the body count had surpassed 5,000 and 10,000, investigators concluded based on Caesar’s account and an analysis of the photos. It may have been a way to disguise the scale of the killing to anyone who doesn’t know how the record-keeping works, Mr. Bassiouni said.

The State Department’s Mr. Rapp has said the Syrian system stood out from recent mass killings in Rwanda and Liberia because of the level of documentation.

Defectors, former patients and local residents said 601 also functioned as a hospital for sick prisoners. Before a prisoner would be sent to 601, guards would write a number on his or her forehead, according to two Hospital 601 detainees who were there at different times in 2013.

“Forget your name. You’re now this number,” one former prisoner now living in Europe recalled being told by a guard.

The former prisoner, Mazen Besais Hamada, said he was blindfolded and loaded onto an ambulance in January 2013 for the drive to the hospital from the detention center where he was held. Mr. Hamada said he was given the number 1,858.

Conditions inside the hospital were gruesome, according to survivor accounts and witness reports compiled by Syrian human-rights groups, including the Violations Documentation Center in Syria, which is now based in Turkey.

“If you were at a demonstration, you would prefer to be shot and killed instead of shot and injured and taken to 601,” said Qutaiba Idlbi, a 24-year-old Syrian activist who said he was twice arrested and tortured by the regime before fleeing to the U.S. and seeking asylum.

Both Mr. Hamada and another former patient at the hospital described beds containing as many as four prisoners. They said they had to step over dead bodies in the morning to use the bathroom, where guards temporarily stored the corpses. Mr. Hamada said he eventually was freed by a judge.

A former surgeon at the Tishreen military hospital, where activists’ bodies initially were sent, said in an interview that doctors weren’t allowed to know patients’ names—only the numbers they were assigned—because the regime was concerned doctors might recognize a family name and reach out to relatives. The doctor said when a patient died, the family name was disclosed so the doctor could prepare a death certificate. He said the doctors were required to cite “a heart attack, a stroke, a normal medical reason,” even if they knew the cause of death was torture.

The doctor’s account of preparing misleading death certificates is consistent with information collected by activists.

By 2013, Caesar’s team was photographing between 50 and 60 bodies a day at 601, he told investigators.

Caesar began to worry when his bosses at military-police headquarters told him they wanted him to start training another photographer to take over his slot, according to activists working with him. Caesar started to suspect that the regime was on to him.

Last summer, shortly before a chemical-weapons attack attributed by Western nations to the Assad regime killed upward of 1,400 Damascus residents, Caesar told opposition contacts he wanted to leave the country. Syria has denied responsibility for the chemical attack.

To throw off the regime while Caesar was smuggled out of the country, the opposition Free Syrian Army faked the photographer’s death, according to David Crane, a former war-crimes prosecutor who has interviewed Caesar, and activists who were involved.

All told, Caesar helped smuggle more than 50,000 pictures out of Syria—his own and many others he downloaded that were taken by other photographers, according to activists working with him.

Working through the images, some of which show the same bodies from different angles, activists have identified around 6,700 individual victims so far. A senior U.S. official said the numbering system shown in the photos “is consistent with there being more than 10,000 victims.”

In January, a six-member international team of experts interviewed Caesar and examined the photos for any signs they were faked to discredit the Syrian regime. In a report presented to the U.N., the group concluded the photos were genuine.

The senior U.S. official said a separate American analysis of around 27,000 of the images turned up “no evidence of forgery or falsification in the pictures themselves.” The U.S. and other Western governments are expecting to see another 25,000 photos.

Mr. Crane, a member of the legal team that scrutinized the photos presented to the U.N., said “the last time we saw this kind of bureaucratic processing of humans was at Nuremberg.”

—Jess Bravin contributed to this article.

Write to Adam Entous at [email protected] and Dion Nissenbaum at [email protected]

Points of Light has Points to Hamas

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President George H.W. Bush created a foundation called Points of Light Foundation designed as a charity to support volunteers in several countries. President #41 has very little to do with the foundation since its founding, but it is a non-partisan organization.

Then in 2007, the POL was headed by Michelle Nunn, a democrat who is running for U.S. Senate in Georgia. Michelle’s father, Sam Nunn has been very involved in another lobby group Globe Zero which has a charter to eliminate all global nuclear weapons. A factoid is that the present Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel was also a board member of Globe Zero.

Back to Michelle Nunn, it seems a document was leaked somehow regarding her actions while the Chairman of Points of Light today. Why is this important? Well it seems POL under her chairmanship gave money to Islamic factions that moved money to Hamas.

COME GEORGIA, KNOW YOUR CANDIDATES AND TELL ANOTHER VOTER

Yes….wow is right. For a full summary of this matter of Michelle Nunn go here and the whole 144 page document is included.

Did Dem Senate Candidate Michelle Nunn Help Fund Hamas?

by Daniel Greenfield

‘In 2007 it was being run by Michelle Nunn, a political princess whose father was the Dem Senator from Georgia, and whose daughter now wants to inherit his seat.

Back at Points of Light, Michelle Nunn had transformed Points of Light into a generic social justice enterprise feeding money to a network of allied left-wing groups. Nunn got a $300,000 salary and even groups linked to terrorists got paid… as Eliana Johnson reports.

According to the IRS Form 990s that Points of Light filed in 2008 and 2011, the organization gave a grant of over $33,000 to Islamic Relief USA, a charity that says it strives to alleviate “hunger, illiteracy, and diseases worldwide.” Islamic Relief USA is part of a global network of charities that operate under the umbrella of Islamic Relief Worldwide. Islamic Relief USA says on its website that it is a legally separate entity from its parent organization, but that they share “a common vision, mission, and family identity.”

Islamic Relief Worldwide has ties to Hamas, which the U.S. designates as a terrorist organization. In June, Israel banned the charity from operating in the country because, according to Israeli officials, it was funneling cash to Hamas. In 2006, Israelis arrested Islamic Relief Worldwide’s Gaza coordinator, Ayaz Ali. They said he was working to “transfer funds and assistance to various Hamas institutions and organizations.” Ali admitted to cooperating with local Hamas operatives while working in Jordan and, on his computer, Israeli officials found photographs of “swastikas superimposed on IDF symbols,” and of Nazi officials, Osama bin Laden, and al-Qaeda in Iraq leader Abu Musab al-Zarqawi.

Islamic Relief USA highlighted the work of Islamic Relief Worldwide in Palestine in its 2012 annual report, in which it talks generally about the work of Islamic Relief charities in the region without drawing a distinction between the branches. The organization has raised eyebrows before. According to a 2012 report, its bank account was closed by UBS and it was “under constant scrutiny by other banks due to nervousness about counterterrorist regulations.” The group’s terror ties extend beyond Hamas, according to a former Israeli intelligence official. He says that Islamic Relief Worldwide’s country director in Palestine, Muneed Abugazaleh, met in April 2012 with Dr. Omar Shalah, a leader of the terror group Islamic Jihad and of the Riyad al-Saleheen Charitable Society, which is affiliated with the group. He is also the brother of Ramadan Shalah, the leader of Islamic Jihad.

Aside from the terrorism issue, what does any of this have to do with POL’s original mission of volunteerism?

Islamic Relief USA is largely oriented toward Muslim conflict zones. It’s raising money currently for Syria and Gaza. Considering that Gaza is run by Hamas, some serious questions need to be asked.’

Ryan Mauro has some more details on the interconnections.

Although IRUSA says it is a “legally separate and independent” affiliate of IRW, the two share leadership and resources. IRUSA transferred $4.8 million, $5.9 million and $9.4 million to IRW in 2007, 2008 and 2009, respectively. IRUSA’s December 31, 2010 financial report states, “The majority of IRUSA’s programs are administered through grants with [IRW],” with a total of nearly $22 million that year alone.

Which essentially means that if you’re funding IRUSA, you’re funding a group linked extensively to terrorists. And not just Hamas.

Just in case you need more on Hamas, his is a video by the son of the founder of Hamas speaking out against Hamas, he is now a Christian. http://t.co/CzM7pHiAgD

Additionally in the document, Michelle Nunn also is coordinating activity to fight back against eh SCOTUS ruling on Citizens United, you know the case that Barack Obama pushed back hard on in his State of the Union Address. It is also at the core of the IRS targeting program.

 

 

 

Smuggling, Surrender and Sovereignty

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Where is the Federal Bureau of Investigation? The global smuggling network includes the U.S. southern border and then has many elements within cities throughout the America.

Under the Department of Homeland Security and with the wink of approval by the Department of Justice and the White House, surrender of security at the Southern border is real. Lines of sovereignty have disappeared.

The world is a very messy place especially when it comes to human rights, dignity and law enforcement. The question is why? Does it come down to resources, money and indifference?

The United States has a history of a forward-leaning country that puts emphasis on stopping festering criminal and terror networks but given failed policy domestically and internationally, America has fallen silent. There are good people that do good work within government and they earn our recognition and praise yet sadly that work and success is being lost due in part to the sheer volume of a hidden and robust war caused by people, money and greed. The notion of paying any consequence for criminal activity has fallen silent, there are few consequences.

 

If people can be successfully smuggled throughout a global network and reach our Southern border only to be moved again inside our cities then anything can be smuggled without notice and successful smuggling is winning over prosecution.

Human Smuggling Case Evokes South America’s Terror-Linked History

‘A Somali man used Brazil as a staging ground to smuggle people, including members of a terrorist group into the United States, witnesses are expected to testify during a sentencing hearing Thursday in San Antonio.

Ahmed Mohammed Dhakane pleaded guilty in November to two counts of making false statements on his 2008 asylum application. He failed to disclose his terrorist affiliations and that he had acted as an alien smuggler.

The U.S. didn’t charge Dhakane with smuggling or terrorism counts, but prosecutors are hoping that testimony will convince the court that a terrorism enhancement, combined with several others, should be applied to Dhakane’s sentence to give him the maximum sentence of 20 years in prison.’ More here.

 

Armenians Smuggled Through U.S.-Mexico Border

‘This past Saturday, 44 year-old Grigor Chatalyan of North Hollywood was arrested for smuggling Armenians through the U.S.-Mexico border. The Armenians were reportedly first sent to Moscow to obtain fraudulent Russian passports. The next stop on the journey was Cancun, Mexico where they received permanent resident or passport cards in order to cross into the U.S., reported the Union-Tribune.

The costs paid by the Armenian nationals are reportedly up to $18,000 per person according to federal officials.

Overwhelmed agents trying to monitor and patrol America’s borders are constantly challenged with smugglers bringing unlawful travelers from many countries in addition to Armenia and Mexico. Breitbart’s Brandon Darby wrote about a UN report last July that “identifies both Mexican cartels and street gangs as conduits for individuals from Africa and Asia entering the U.S illegally.” More here.

EXCLUSIVE: Documents Detail Heinous Crimes Committed by Gang Members Being Housed in Nogales Processing Center

‘By U.S. legal standards many gang members operating in Central American countries and traveling north are classified as minors due to being under the age of 18. However, many young males are actively engaged in violent cartel and criminal activity, yet are treated as children when processed through the Department of Health and Human Services or Department of Homeland Security systems. Due to current policy, these “minor” gang members cannot be separated by Border Patrol agents from the rest of the general population of children. According to the FBI, MS-13 regularly targets middle and high school students for recruitment. The FBI also lists 18th Street as one of the most violent gangs in the country. Business Insider describes 18th Street as having special focus on document fraud and homicide.

According to sources inside the processing center, these unaccompanied MS-13 and 18th Street minors are being held for placement inside the United States.’ Read more here including documents.

MS-13 gang labeled transnational criminal group, a first for US street gang

MS-13 gang is a violent group engaged in the drug, sex, and human trafficking trades in the US. Designating MS-13 gang a transnational criminal organization helps US officials target it more aggressively.

By Howard LaFranchi, Staff writer

‘For the first time, a street gang operating in the United States has been officially designated a transnational criminal organization, empowering officials to more aggressively target the group, Mara Salvatrucha MS-13, which engages in the drug, sex, and human trafficking trades.

MS-13 is an El Salvador-based gang that over three decades has developed into a violent criminal force from Los Angeles to Washington, D.C.

But what countries are cooperating with the United States? Mexico is not cooperating and in fact is making conditions more severe and all their plans and operations are ill conceived.

FBI investigating gunfire on U.S. agents by Mexican authorities

A Mexican law enforcement helicopter crossed into U.S. airspace and fired two shots, just missing American Border Patrol agents and prompting a quick apology from Mexican authorities in what is the second incursion this year of Mexican forces into United States territory, U.S. law enforcement officials said Friday.

The incident, now the subject of an FBI criminal investigation, occurred about 5:45 a.m. Thursday in southern Arizona, about 100 yards north of the U.S.-Mexico border, as Mexican law enforcement officers were chasing kidnapping suspects trying to escape into the United States, U.S. officials said.

It is time to admit failure, it is time to challenge our State Department, it is time to confront the Department of Justice it is time that we force protections for our own safety and national security. It is a matter of time before something much more tragic is in our future.

ISIS, Genital Mutilation and Kerry Cool

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Yesterday, the United Nations ordered a full investigation into Israel for war crimes as defined by the International Criminal Court. Yet, where is the United Nations or any nation calling out Islam for beheadings, theft, extortion, genocide or even female genital mutilation? The United Nations is a twisted organization and our own U.S. Ambassador, Samantha Power ignores it as did the previous ambassador Susan Rice.

 

Isis ‘orders female genital mutilation’ for women in Mosul

UN official Jacqueline Badcock said the fatwa, or religious edict, applied to females between the ages of 11 and 46.

She said the unprecedented decree issued by the Islamists in control of the city was of grave concern. Iraq is facing a radical Isis-led Sunni insurgency, with cities in the north-west under militant control.

The ritual cutting of girls’ genitals is practised by some African, Middle Eastern and Asian communities in the belief it prepares them for adulthood or marriage. FGM poses many health risks to women, including severe bleeding, problems urinating, infections, infertility and increased risk of newborn deaths in childbirth.

‘Four million’

The UN General Assembly approved a resolution in December 2012 calling for all member states to ban the practice. The Isis edict could affect nearly four million women and girls in and around the northern Iraqi city of Mosul, the UN warns.   Read more here.

In Jordan, there another militia group that is allying with ISIS where others already have.

Local jihadist group pledges allegiance to Islamic State

A local jihadist group on Wednesday denounced Al Qaeda leaders as illegitimate and pledged its allegiance to the Islamic State (IS).

In a statement, the Sons of the Call for Tawhid and Jihad, the youth wing of Jordan’s hard-line Salafist movement, denounced leading Al Qaeda clerics Abu Mohammad Al Maqdissi and Abu Qatada as “illegitimate”, pledging heir full support for the Islamic State and its recently announced caliphate.

In the statement, the jihadists rebuked Maqdissi and Abu Qatada for their criticism of the IS and refusal to recognise their Islamic caliphate. The group went on to threaten Maqdissi — former head of the Jordanian Salafist movement and vocal critic of IS — urging him to “return to righteousness”. The statement, posted on jihadist web sites and forums, stressed “the right and duty of all to support IS”. The Sons of the Call for Tawhid and Jihad coalition of young jihadists reportedly represent over 70 per cent of Jordan’s 6,000-strong Jihadi Salafist movement.   More here.

While war crimes are escalating in Iraq, we cannot forget Bashir al Assad in Syria whose name and civil war has left the world stage. But he still has his own playbook and it appears it may soon fit nicely with ISIS.

Inside Assad’s Playbook: Time and Terror

By Bassam Barabandi and Tyler Jess Thompson

The announcement of ISIS’s caliphate is most helpful in draining time and distracting the world from Assad’s destruction of Syrian society. Now that ISIS has fully matured, the Assad regime and Iran offer themselves as partners to the United States. For the first time, Assad is striking ISIS in Raqqa and locations inside Iraq, in a perverse harvest of the terrorist seeds he planted to quash the civilian-led reform movement. Assad will continue to make himself appear helpful by offering intermittent air strikes, details of fighters released from prison, and intelligence.

The rise of ISIS in Iraq and events in Gaza and Ukraine have placed Assad’s war safely outside the headlines. Once again, the world is convinced it has higher priorities and may again conclude that Assad is a problematic, yet stabilizing dictator in a troubled region. Safe from public scrutiny, he can go back to his hidden room, manipulating various players. US coordination with Russia, Iran, Hezbollah, or the Assad government in the fight against ISIS will play directly into the Assad plan. It will prove to Assad that his manipulation of time and terror has once again worked.

In summary, it is important to know that the intelligence officials knew 3 days ahead of time that ISIS was taking on Mosul, what is worse however, al Maliki also knew and begged Barack Obama for air-strikes countless times as a pro-active measure and each time Barack Obama refused each request.

It is stunning what Obama’s administration is keeping from Congress who under the War Powers Act must approved any intervention in a war zone. Not until there have been a few Congressional hearings is the truth being revealed on the dismissal by Barack Obama of Iraq calling for help which could have saved Iraq from ISIS.

Obama refused ‘repeated requests’ since August 2013 for drone strikes against ISIS

“Breaking on Capitol Hill is the news that Iraqi officials began requesting almost a year ago for the US to carry out drone strikes against ISIS – but the requests were shot down by the White House. That stunning revelation came during a hearing on the situation in Iraq this morning.”  More here.

The failures of Barack Obama’s National Security Council, his Joint Chiefs and most especially his State Department under John Kerry mount exponentially while he himself continues to fund-raise across the country as an implied Chairman of the Democratic National Committee. Wonder what Debbie Wasserman Schultz is really thinking.

 

 

 

 

U.S. Blacklist and NSA model Used by Putin

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Databases abound in the United States and they are all inter-connected where they are sold for countless purposes. Social media is the first location where user information is gathered without your knowledge or approval. Your information is scored and profiled. This same model has been included in a law that Vladimir Putin signed into a law in Russia. So Putin is doing the same thing that the Barack Obama has been doing. But for America, it is actually worse from what we know so far.

 

 

Vladimir Putin signs law requiring mass storage of Russians’ personal Internet data

President Vladimir Putin on Tuesday signed a law requiring Internet companies to store all personal data of Russian users at data centres in Russia, a move which could chill criticism on foreign social networking sites like Facebook and Twitter.

These companies, which do not have offices in Russia, have become a vital resource for opposition groups and refuse to hand over user data to governments. The use of Russian data centres would make them and other Internet companies subject to Russian laws on government access to information.

The Kremlin said the law was aimed at “improving the management of personal data of Russian citizens on computer networks” and that companies which do not comply with the legislation would be blocked.

Lawmakers who introduced the bill had complained that data stored abroad was at risk of being hacked and stolen by criminals.

The law could also cause problems for Russian companies such as tourism websites and airlines that rely on foreign-based online booking services.

Russia’s Association of Electronic Communication (RAEC), a group that lobbies on behalf of Internet companies, warned earlier this month that “many global Internet services would be impossible” under the new law. Internet companies have also warned that the two years before the measures come into force is not sufficient time for them to find or build data centres on which to store the data.

The Internet data law comes amid a number of measures cracking down on public dissent in Russia, including introducing jail terms of up to five years for repeated participation in unsanctioned protests and restrictions on the activities of non-governmental organisations.

It is also in line with other recent Internet restrictions, including a requirement for bloggers to register as media if they have more than 3,000 followers and a law directed against “extremist” language that could see Russians go to jail for up to five years for retweeting “offensive” information.

 

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The use of your information in the United States each day is becoming more disturbing. The White House has established a Blacklist and you could be on it again without your knowledge or approval. The criteria to get on the list is chilling such even taking your pet to the vet can add your name. Even if you die you may not be removed. The White House authorized this Blacklist and appears to be one of many entities in full authority of the Blacklist.

The Secret Government Rulebook For Labeling You a Terrorist

By and

The Obama administration has quietly approved a substantial expansion of the terrorist watchlist system, authorizing a secret process that requires neither “concrete facts” nor “irrefutable evidence” to designate an American or foreigner as a terrorist, according to a key government document obtained by The Intercept.

The “March 2013 Watchlisting Guidance,” a 166-page document issued last year by the National Counterterrorism Center, spells out the government’s secret rules for putting individuals on its main terrorist database, as well as the no fly list and the selectee list, which triggers enhanced screening at airports and border crossings. The new guidelines allow individuals to be designated as representatives of terror organizations without any evidence they are actually connected to such organizations, and it gives a single White House official the unilateral authority to place “entire categories” of people the government is tracking onto the no fly and selectee lists. It broadens the authority of government officials to “nominate” people to the watchlists based on what is vaguely described as “fragmentary information.” It also allows for dead people to be watchlisted.

Read more here.