Category Archives: Citizens Duty

Sequestration of the IRS

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Conservatives are angry that the more than $1 trillion CRomnibus legislation recently passed. There are many good reasons for that, however, there are some tactical methods underway as a result of the legislation most of all the Internal Revenue Service.

Since the IRS targeting program broke, certain measures have been taken most of which includes lawsuits to gain access to the no longer missing emails and communications of those colluding against conservative organizations.

Inside the CRomnibus was a deep cut to the IRS budget. Yippee, or not so fast. These conditions may delay income tax returns processing and the same applies to refunds.

The War On The IRS: Congress Cuts Its Funding To Lowest Level Since 1998

House GOP Appropriators bragged that this year’s IRS budget is the lowest since 2008. But it is actually worse than that. In inflation adjusted dollars, the agency’s funding is lower than it has been since 1998, when Buffy was still slaying vampires and people were listening to Aerosmith before it was nostalgic.

For context, in 1998, taxpayers filed about 125 million individual returns. Last year, the agency had to process 145 million.

Technology has made some of that work easier—more than 90 percent of individual returns are now filed electronically, vastly reducing the amount of work for IRS staffers. But technology has also forced the agency to respond to growing numbers of hackers and identity thieves.

And while processing returns may be easier, taxpayers must sort through increasingly complex rules—most as result of laws passed by the same Congress that cuts the IRS budget. The agency ought to be providing more assistance and education to help them but, thanks to those budget reductions, it is providing less.

According to the Government Accountability Office, IRS has cut staff by 9 percent since 2009. Examinations of business returns dropped from 50 percent to one-third. In 2014, callers waited twice as long for an IRS response than they did in 2009, and fewer said they received service. The IRS has cut training costs by more than 80 percent.  The agency estimates its audit rate for partnerships and other pass-through business–where fraud and error are rampant– was 0.5 percent in 2011.

Now the IRS faces the unenviable task of trying to track who has health insurance under the Affordable Care Act, and calculate penalties for those who do not. Worse, it must sort out whether people received the right subsidies, and, if they did not, it must correct them.

Many tax administration experts have long feared the agency will be unable to get this right. And lower funding will make the task even more difficult. That, of course, is exactly what many anti-ACA lawmakers have in mind.

The IRS Commissioner is telegraphing a warning about the IRS. A possible shutdown is forecasted. Then a hiring freeze has been invoked.

“Our hiring — already limited at a ratio of one hire for every five people who leave — will be frozen with only a few mission-critical exceptions,” he wrote in an email to employees. “We will stop overtime except in critical situations.”

But there’s potentially more to come, as IRS leadership decides what else to cut over the next nine months of the fiscal 2015 budget, he warned. Koskinen also said IRS leadership is “consulting with the leadership of the NTEU” — referring to the National Treasury Employees Union, meaning the cuts in some way could affect employees.

Read more: http://www.politico.com/story/2014/12/irs-budget-cuts-113651.html#ixzz3MHlLxtg0 

 

 

Congress Blind-Sided on Cuba Shift is False

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First the White House said no to Cuba and the prisoner swap.  Alan Gross was a top asset sent to Cuba to investigate and impede the Cuba/Russian spy network designed to infiltrate United States Southern Command. There was some great success is the Cuban spies providing intelligence back to the island and then far beyond.

The White House going back to 2009 has announced a series of policy changes regarding Cuba. These objectives were in cadence with the State Department, the U.S. Treasury and the Commerce Secretary as well as the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. Several congressional committees were well aware of the epic shift of appeasement to the Communist country. Congress was hardly blind-sided including a prisoner swap as this has been a tactic of the White House.

It seems to grow the economy and to increase trade, the White House policy wonks think it is a prudent move to open diplomacy with a communist country after-all it works with China.

U.S. Policy
Congress has played an active role in shaping policy toward Cuba, including the enactment of legislation strengthening and at times easing various U.S. economic sanctions. While U.S. policy has consisted largely of isolating Cuba through economic sanctions, a second policy component has consisted of support measures for the Cuban people, including U.S. government-sponsored broadcasting (Radio and TV Martí) and support for human rights and democracy projects. The Obama Administration has continued this similar dual-track approach. While the Administration has lifted all restrictions on family travel and remittances, eased restrictions on other types of purposeful travel, and moved to reengage Cuba on several bilateral issues, it has also maintained most U.S. economic sanctions in place. On human rights, the Administration welcomed the release of many political prisoners in 2010 and 2011, but it has also criticized Cuba’s continued harsh repression of political dissidents through thousands of short-term detentions and targeted violence. The Administration has continued to call for the release of U.S. government subcontractor Alan Gross, detained in 2009 and sentenced to 15 years in prison in 2011, and maintains that Gross’s detention remains an impediment to more constructive relations.
Legislative Activity
Strong interest in Cuba is continuing in the 113th Congress with attention focused on economic and political developments, especially the human rights situation, and U.S. policy toward the island nation, including sanctions. The continued imprisonment of Alan Gross remains a key concern for many Members. In March 2013, Congress completed action on full-year FY2013 appropriations with the approval of H.R. 933 (P.L. 113-6), and in January 2014, it completed action on an FY2014 omnibus appropriations measure, H.R. 3547 (P.L. 113-76)—both of these measures continued funding for Cuba democracy and human rights projects and Cuba broadcasting (Radio and TV Martí). Both the House and Senate versions of the FY2014 Financial Services and General Government appropriations measure, H.R. 2786 and S. 1371, had provisions that would have tightened and eased travel restrictions respectively, but none of these provisions were included in the FY2014 omnibus appropriations measure (P.L. 113-76).
For FY2015, the Administration is requesting $20 million for Cuba democracy projects (the same being provided for FY2014) and $23.130 million for Cuba broadcasting.


Congressional Research Service
Cuba: U.S. Policy and Issues for the 113th Congress FY2014)

The House Appropriation Committee reported out H.R. 5013 (H.Rept. 113-499), the FY2015 State Department, Foreign Operations, and Related Programs Act, on June 27, 2014, which would make available $20 million “to promote democracy and strengthen civil society in Cuba,” and provide not less than $28.266 million for Cuba broadcasting. The Senate Appropriations Committee reported out its version of the appropriations measure, S. 2499 (S.Rept. 113-195), on June 19, 2014, which would provide up to $10 million for Cuba democracy programs and an additional $5 million for programs to provide technical and other assistance to support the development of private businesses in Cuba; the Senate measure would also provide $23.130 million for Cuba broadcasting.
With regard to U.S. sanctions on Cuba, the House version of the FY2015 Financial Services and General Government Appropriation bill, H.R. 5016 (H.Rept. 113-508), approved July 16, 2014, has a provision that would prohibit the use of any funds in the Act “to approve, license, facilitate, authorize or otherwise allow” people-to-people travel.
Several other initiatives on Cuba have been introduced in the 113th Congress. Several would lift or ease U.S. economic sanctions on Cuba: H.R. 214 and H.R. 872 (overall embargo); H.R. 871 (travel); and H.R. 873 (travel and agricultural exports). H.R. 215 would allow Cubans to play organized professional baseball in the United States. H.R. 1917 would lift the embargo and extend nondiscriminatory trade treatment to the products of Cuba after Cuba releases Alan Gross from prison. Identical initiatives, H.R. 778/S. 647 would modify a 1998 trademark sanction; in contrast, H.R. 214, H.R. 872, H.R. 873, and H.R. 1917 each have a provision that would repeal the sanction. H.Res. 121 would honor the work of Cuban blogger Yoani Sánchez. H.Res. 262 would call for the immediate extradition or rendering of all U.S. fugitives from justices in Cuba.

So this begs the question, who really benefits on the Cuban side, when the benefits to America are in the zero category?

From Fox Business: There is a price that the Cuban regime will exact from American companies to do business there if U.S.-Cuba relations are fully normalized, a price that likely won’t benefit the country’s lower classes, but will instead line the pockets of Castro & Co., experts on Cuba warn.

Because of its tight grip, the Castro regime has kept Cuba’s GDP hamstrung. It’s economy is now at a tiny $72.3 billion, less than half that of the state of Iowa, notes Richard J. Peterson, senior director at S&P Capital IQ. In fact, the average worker earns less than $25 a month.

Cuba is in crisis, it needs a bailout. Its crony communism has failed, it is steeped in debt, and its money is running low. Historically, Cuba has enjoyed lifelines in the form of money and oil from Venezuela, which had been generously supplying 100,000 free barrels of oil a day, estimates show, nearly two-thirds of Cuba’s consumption needs.

But Venezuela is on the brink of financial collapse as oil continues to plunge toward $60 a barrel, according to sources there, and it cannot supply Cuba the oil it needs. Plus Venezuela is now enduring three health epidemics: Malaria, dengue fever and chikungunya. Russia has also subsidized Cuba’s economy, but it, too, faces a severe economic contraction as oil nosedives.

Cuba needs tourism dollars, it needs trade and bank credits to save itself from bankruptcy. But it wants all that even while it keeps its failed government model in place. But it wants all that even while it keeps its failed government model in place. Cuba is run by a Soviet-style nomenklatura filled with party elites who call the shots behind the scenes, and who have gotten spectacularly wealthy in the process, all while abusing its people and business partners. Critics of the government, perceived enemies of the state, even those calling for basic human rights continue to be arbitrarily imprisoned without charge or due process, many beaten, even killed.

The Cuban power elite are the Castro brothers and their families, their party chieftains and army leaders. The Cuban economy has changed little since the collapse of the Soviet Union. Unchecked by a probing, independent media or Congress, the Cuban power elite enjoy rich salaries, vacations overseas, yachts, Internet access, beach compounds and satellite dishes to see U.S. movies, notes Cuban émigré and lawyer Nelson Carbonell, author of “And the Russians Stayed: The Sovietization of Cuba” (William Morrow & Co., 1989). The communists in Cuba routinely expropriate the assets of foreign investors, and have seized and control everything of value, including hotels, car distributors, banks, the sugar industry, resorts.

Just as Friedrich Engel, co-author of the Communist Manifesto, once said holds true of Cuba today, that “once in the saddle,” a new ruling class “has never failed to consolidate its rule at the expense of the working class and to transform social leadership into exploitation.”

If relations are fully normalized, American tourist dollars would pour into companies owned by the Castro regime, since tourism is controlled by both the military and General Raul Castro, warns the Cuba Transition Project (CTP).

That means rum, tobacco, hotels and resorts are all owned and operated by the regime and its security forces. Cuba’s dominant company is the Grupo Gaesa, founded by Raul Castro in the nineties and controlled and operated by the Cuban military, which oversees all investments. Cuba’s Gaviota, run by the Cuban military, operates Cuba’s tourism trade, its hotels, resorts, car rentals, nightclubs, retail stores and restaurants. Gaesa is run by Raul’s son-in-law, Colonel Luis Alberto Rodriguez Lopez-Callejas.

The number of foreign companies doing business in Cuba have been cut by more than half since the 1990s, to 190 from some 400. Reasons include: Being forced to partner with army-controlled groups; hire workers through state agencies; and the freezing of bank deposits. Complaints have poured in from former senior executives at Dow Chemical, General Mills, Bristol-Myers Squibb, Colgate-Palmolive, Bacardi, American Express Bank, PepsiCo, Warner Communications, Martin Marietta Aluminum and Amex Nickel Corporation. Iberia, Spain’s national airline which at one time accounted for 10% of foreign commerce with Cuba, killed its Havana routes because they were unprofitable.

If U.S.-Cuba relations are normalized, fresh, new American dollars will only enrich the elite, “dollars will trickle down to the Cuban poor in only small quantities, while state and foreign enterprises will benefit most,” warns CTP, adding U.S. travelers to Cuba could still be “subject to harassment and imprisonment.” Over the decades, tourists visiting Cuba from Canada, Europe and Latin America and spending money there have only strengthened Cuba’s totalitarian state, it notes. There is a chance the free-flow of information from free trade could spark change long-term, but that could trigger an immediate, violent crackdown from the Cuban government, much like what occurred during the Arab spring.

Another significant factor: Corruption is rampant in Cuba, it has no independent, transparent, legal system, Cuba appoints its judges and licenses lawyers, and it repeatedly arrests peaceful pro-democracy activists.

Plus it is a debtor nation with a long history of defaulting on its loans. U.S. businesses risk having their operations confiscated by the government, and/or never seeing their loans repaid.

Cuba exports nickel, but that is largely controlled by Canadian interests, and its sugar industry is on the ropes. About 600 European suppliers have had over $1 billion arbitrarily frozen by the government since 2009, “and several investments have been confiscated,” CTP says.

In fact, Cuban law lets the government confiscate foreign assets for “public utility” or “social interest,” CTP says. Three CEOs of companies doing hundreds of millions of dollars’ worth of business in Cuba were arrested and stuck in jail without charges or due process: Cy Tokmakjian of the Tokmakjian Group, Sarkis Yacoubian of Tri-Star Caribbean, from Canada, and Amado Fakhre of Coral Capital of Great Britain.

All of this is why Cuba is ranked 176th out of 177 countries on the index of economic freedom put out by the Heritage Foundation, beating North Korea at dead last, but ranking worse than Iran and Zimbabwe.

Hamas, Terror Designation, Yes-No-Maybe

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There are countless militant terror organizations globally and there is a movement to re-look at designations such that enemies are being legitimized and are offered seats at negotiations and peace tables.  Hamas has a deep history of terror and is very integrated with other nation states without consequence to the detriment of Europe, Israel and the United States.

In the case of legal representation, Hamas has a nefarious lawyer who was recently sentenced to 18 months in prison for tax evasion.

The EU General Court has ordered that the Palestinian militant group Hamas be removed from the bloc’s terror blacklist. The move comes over four years after Hamas appealed its terror designation before the EU.  The lawyer for Hamas, Liliane Glock, told AFP she was “satisfied with the decision.”

Hamas official Izzat al-Rishq lauded the decision, saying the court had righted an injustice done to the organization, which he said is a “national freedom movement,” and not a terrorist organization, the Jerusalem Post reports.

But a deputy from Israel’s major right-wing Likud party, Danny Danon, said, “The Europeans must believe that there blood is more sacred than the blood of the Jews which they see as unimportant. That is the only way to explain the EU court’s decision to remove Hamas from the terror blacklist.”

“In Europe they must have forgotten that Hamas kidnapped three boys and fired thousands of rockets last summer at Israeli citizens,” he added.

Shortly after the ruling, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu called on the EU to keep Hamas on its list of terrorist organizations.

“We expect them to immediately put Hamas back on the list,” Reuters cites Netanyahu as saying in a statement. “Hamas is a murderous terrorist organization which in its charter states its goal is to destroy Israel.”

The EU and Israel have attempted to downplay the ruling, saying that groups standing within Europe as terror organizations will not change. Israeli and European officials say the court will be given a few months to rebuild its file against Hamas with evidence of the group’s activities, which will enable it to be placed back on the list of terror organizations, the Israeli news portal Ynet reports.

According to RT’s Paula Slier, Israeli politicians “across the political spectrum” have unanimously condemned what they call a “temporary” removal.

HAMAS BUOYED

Hamas says it is a legitimate resistance movement and contested the European Union’s decision in 2001 to include it on the terrorist list. It welcomed Wednesday’s verdict.

“The decision is a correction of a historical mistake the European Union had made,” Deputy Hamas chief Moussa Abu Marzouk said. “Hamas is a resistance movement and it has a natural right according to all international laws and standards to resist the occupation.”

The EU court did not ponder the merits of whether Hamas should be classified as a terror group, but reviewed the original decision-making process. This, it said, did not include the considered opinion of competent authorities, but rather relied on media and Internet reports.

It said if an appeal was brought before the EU’s top court, the European Court of Justice, the freeze of Hamas funds should continue until the legal process was complete.

In a similar ruling, an EU court said in October the 2006 decision to place Sri Lanka’s Tamil Tigers on the EU list was procedurally flawed. As with Hamas, it also said the group’s assets should remain frozen pending further legal action and the European Union subsequently filed an appeal.

The European Parliament has approved a non-binding resolution supporting Palestinian statehood. The text was a compromise, representing divisions within the EU over how far to blame Israel for failing to agree peace terms.

***

Enter France…

Middle East/Hamas/European Union – Statement by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and International Development Spokesman

Paris, 17 December 2014

On 17 December the European Union’s [General] Court cancelled the inclusion of Hamas on the European list of terrorist organizations, where it had been since 2001.

This cancellation is based on procedural reasons alone.

In no way does it imply any questioning of the European Union’s determination to combat all forms of terrorism.

It does not alter our appreciation of the basic fact: Hamas was described as a terrorist group by the Council of the European Union on 27 December 2001. The European Union [General] Court has also decided to maintain the effects of the inclusion, such as the freezing of Hamas funds.

France will act to ensure that Hamas is included on the list again as soon as possible

America Loses to DPRK on the CyberWar

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Sony Cancels Release of ‘The Interview’

Studio Scraps Dec. 25 Debut After Terrorist Threats Prompted Movie Chains to Skip Film

CNN: U.S. Government to Announce North Korea As Responsible for Sony Hack

The cyberterrorists won.

Sony Pictures canceled its planned release of “The Interview” marking the success of a brazen hacking attack against the studio and terrorist threats against theaters that played the film.

The Sony Corp. studio’s 11th-hour decision, unprecedented in the modern movie business, came after the nation’s largest theater chains all said they would not play the raunchy Seth Rogen farce set in North Korea.

Sony executives were considering alternative options, including releasing it only via video-on-demand or on television, said a person at the studio. But even those approaches could entail serious challenges. Given that the film already set off the worst corporate hack in history, chances were high that companies with major VOD businesses would regard the film as too radioactive to touch.

“We are deeply saddened at this brazen effort to suppress the distribution of a movie, and in the process do damage to our company, our employees and the American public,” Sony said in a statement conceding defeat on Wednesday. “We stand by our filmmakers and their right to free expression and are extremely disappointed by this outcome.”

It sounds even more implausible than the plot of the lowbrow comedy itself, in which a pair of hapless television journalists is recruited by the Central Intelligence Agency to assassinate North Korean leader Kim Jong Un. As matters escalated this week, the film was thrust into the center of a nationwide debate over free speech, terrorism, international relations, journalistic ethics and cybersecurity.

The sight of the studio that released “Zero Dark Thirty” and “The Social Network” brought to its knees by hackers apparently affiliated with North Korea, one of the most isolated and impoverished nations on earth, set off alarm bells throughout Hollywood. On Wednesday, the production company New Regency canceled plans for a thriller set in North Korea, in which Steve Carell was to have starred, according to a person familiar with the matter. Production was to have begun in March. The cancellation was first reported by the Hollywood trade website Deadline.

Also in question is the status of several other scripts floating around Hollywood, including rights to the memoirs of North Korean defectors who spent years in the country’s notorious labor camps.

The reverberations will carry far beyond Hollywood, online security experts warned, saying that the episode could set a disturbing precedent. “This is now a case study that is signaling to attackers that you can get all that you want and even more,” said Pete Singer, a cybersecurity strategist and senior fellow at the New America Foundation.

Sony Corp. Chief Executive Kazuo Hirai retains confidence in Sony Entertainment CEO Michael Lynton and Sony Pictures head Amy Pascal, according to people familiar with the matter, and he doesn’t blame them for the attack.

The debacle’s roots stretch back at least to June of this year, when Sony executives deliberated over changes to the movie because of its political sensitivities. Though the studio never planned to release “The Interview” in Asia, Sony Corp. executives in Tokyo were concerned about the film because of Japan’s long and tense history with both North Korea and South Korea.

People claiming to be the hackers escalated their threats on Tuesday, warning of terrorist attacks on theaters that showed the film.

The Department of Homeland Security dismissed the terrorist threat as lacking credibility. But theater operators nonetheless asked Sony on Tuesday to delay the film’s opening, planned for Dec. 25, out of concern that the threats would depress box office sales across the industry during the critical holiday season. When Sony declined, the theaters decided Wednesday morning that they wouldn’t play the movie until the Federal Bureau of Investigation complete its probe of the matter, and maybe not even then.

Distribution executives at other studios worried that screening “The Interview” would depress ticket sales for other movies, and the concerns also threatened to keep business from surrounding stores and restaurants over the holiday season.

Sony executives had long been aware “The Interview” would be controversial and have attempted to make a number of changes to its content and release strategy as a result, according to emails leaked by the hackers.

In June, Sony Pictures President Doug Belgrad sent a message to Sony Entertainment’s Mr. Lynton, saying, “I understand this is a delicate issue and will do whatever I can to help address all of the issues and concerns.” He added that he was only aware of two other movies that depicted the killing of a living international leader: Charlie Chaplin’s “The Great Dictator,” which features a thinly veiled version of Adolf Hitler, and “Team America: World Police,” a 2004 musical comedy in which former North Korean leader Kim Jong Il is depicted as a puppet.

The next week, Mr. Belgrad got Mr. Lynton’s approval to spend $550,000 to digitally remove images of former North Korean leaders Kim Jong Il and Kim Il-sung from pins and murals in more than 500 shots.

By July 1, the studio’s Japanese parent became concerned. An executive at Sony Corp. who dealt with diversity and human rights wrote to Sony Corp. of America President Nicole Seligman, saying he was worried the movie could lead “to a great negative affect [sic] on the relationship between North Korea and Japan.”

To back up the studio’s case for the film, Mr. Lynton already had been in contact with a North Korean expert at think tank Rand Corp.

While Sony did go ahead with the film, executives decided to remove all references to the company from the film and not even host promotional materials on the SonyPictures.com website. The movie was instead branded only with the Sony label Columbia Pictures.

At the same time, Sony Pictures executives reached out to Comcast Corp. ’s Universal Pictures about handling distribution of the movie in all foreign countries save for Asia, where “The Interview” wasn’t ever planned to be released. Such a partnership would have cost Sony about $3.5 million, according to an email from a senior executive.

Sony was looking for a partner to help it back the movie in the case of potential political heat, said a person with knowledge of the talks. Universal passed, citing an already full release slate.

Later in the summer, the studio was in tense discussions with Mr. Rogen and his co-director Evan Goldberg over proposed changes to the scene in which Kim Jong Un is killed by a missile.

“As Amy can attest from Seth’s many emails to her, he’s pretty agitated,” Mr. Belgrad wrote in an email following an August report in the Hollywood Reporter that Sony was making changes to the movie. The comic actor was concerned that critics would focus on “whether or not the film was ‘censored’ rather than simply judging whether or not it’s funny.”

Executives all the way up to Mr. Hirai discussed minute details about the changes, such as how much fire would be in Mr. Kim’s hair, how many embers on his face, and the size of an explosion.

“There is no face melting” in the latest cut, Ms. Pascal assured Mr. Hirai in a September email. He urged her to push Messrs. Rogen and Goldberg to tone down the scene a bit further and remove it entirely from international versions.

It is unclear how many changes the directors ended up making to the final cut of the film that was to be released next week.

U.S. officials haven’t reached a final ruling on who was behind the breach. There are diplomatic concerns if North Korea was involved, U.S. officials and people involved in the investigation said. For instance, some officials worry publicly blaming North Korea for the attack could put Japan, a U.S. ally, in a bind. Tokyo, unlike America, has to deal with North Korea as a neighbor just across the Sea of Japan.

The FBI didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.

An accusation also creates distinct problems for Washington, these people said. If the U.S. blames North Korea for the attack, it then feels pressured to respond. And the proportional response in this case isn’t clear, as North Korea already is sanctioned and cut off from much of the world.

Nations have yet to agree on what types of cyberattacks are acceptable without escalating tensions. Some experts believe that in cases like the Sony attack, the U.S. needs at least to make a public condemnation.

“We can set the norms by coming out and saying this is just too much,” said Jay Healey, an expert on cybersecurity and diplomacy at the Atlantic Council near Washington.

After hackers entered Sony’s systems more than a month ago, they installed malicious code that would eventually wipe hard drives on many corporate computers. This wiped away many of the digital clues and has made the investigation by the FBI and FireEye Inc., a cybersecurity company, very difficult. As of Wednesday, investigators still can’t say they have removed and blocked the hackers from Sony’s systems, people familiar with the investigation said.

The situation also remains tenuous for Sony Pictures’ parent company in Tokyo. After investigators at FireEye determined North Korea was likely linked to the attack, it proposed a public report that would offer an update on the breach and implicate Pyongyang hackers. Sony’s Japan headquarters nixed the idea, people familiar with the probe said.

Though hardly any North Koreans have access to the Internet, mobile phones or other modern technology, the nation is believed to maintain a robust hacker corps, many of them stationed in China or elsewhere outside the isolated nation.

Kim Kwan-jin, then-defense minister in Seoul, said last year that North Korea runs a dedicated cyberwarfare military unit composed of 3,000 people.

Chang Yong-Seok, a senior researcher at the Institute for Peace and Unification Studies at Seoul National University, said a film like “The Interview” would likely have provided an incentive for North Korean officials to prove their loyalty to the dictator as the film insults the leader’s dignity.

“An extreme response is a way to secure one’s position and professional success,” Mr. Chang said.

For One Syrian Militant Group, “Pick-Up Lines” Have a Texas Twang

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For One Syrian Militant Group, “Pick-Up Lines” Have a Texas Twang

 

A pick-up truck that belonged to a Texas plumber a year ago wound up in jihadi hands. How did it get there? Here is what we know – and what the mainstream media and a handful of angry, completely confounded Americans do not know.  

By Tom Wyld

For the past week, #HiveInt, the league of strategists and intelligence analysts on Twitter, have been digging deeper into a report, first written by Caleb Weiss, on the appearance of a pick-up truck on the internet.

But this was no ordinary pick-up truck advertised on E-Bay.

The Ford F-250 photo was posted on the website of a self-identified Syria-based militant alliance, and the men onboard were members of a largely Chechen anti-Assad militant group.

And mounted on the truck bed: a Russian-made heavy machine gun.

The truck’s logo captured everyone’s attention – including press here and abroad. The logo was not that of the Chechen fighters’ Jaish al-Muhajireen wal-Ansar (“Army of Emigrants and Supporters”). It was not the sign of the alliance to which this particular Jaish or Army belongs, namely Jabhat Ansar al-Din (“Partisans of the Religion Front”).

The logo was that of Mark-1 Plumbing of Texas City, Texas – complete with the small business’ phone number.

According to the militant posting, the photo was taken in Aleppo, Syria’s largest city ravaged by violence, jihadi infighting and the war against dictator Bashar Al-Assad. Aleppo is also 20 miles west of Al-Safirah, site of Assad’s largest chemical weapons compound. A writer with the blog Line of Steel and a contributor to the warrior-favorite Long War Journal, Caleb Weiss was first to break the story. Bravo Zulu to this young political science student who studies security policy and militant trends. (Unmarked photo from a militant site.)  

I telephoned the Texas firm. Many rings, no answer, no voice mail. Caleb Weiss was more fortunate. He reached a “very nice woman” who was “happy” to answer his questions about the pick-up. When he said he had called about a photo, the woman knew which one. After all, she had received many phone inquiries about it before Caleb’s call.

Not surprisingly, those calls included “about six” that were “threatening” and voiced by people the employee “couldn’t understand.” The woman said the firm had notified the authorities about the photo and the threats. Read Caleb’s post for details here.  Keep in mind his was the first report on the incident posted on Monday, 15 December. Since then, the story has garnered major media attention, has undergone many twists and turns and prompted outraged, threatening phone calls – and the employee understood all to0 well those additional angry calls.

The Fabled Truck – Sold, But By Whom? 

By Tuesday, CBS News reported that the firm had brought an attorney aboard. Presumably this was the small business’ “representative” who told CBS the pick-up was sold in October 2013 to Auto Nation. An Auto Nation representative refused to provide the network the vehicle’s sales history over the phone and hung up.

 

Also on Tuesday, ABC News reported the truck was driven to Auto Nation and traded “last fall.” The truck was then sent to auction and subsequently sold to a “Southwest Houston” company. It may have been sold many times since. A source describes the area in SW Houston as a “heavy immigrant and auto trading” hub – a motor-mecca, if you will.

Today (Wednesday, 17 December), the Galveston County Daily News wrote that the truck was sold to Auto Nation “three years ago,” attributing the statement to Mark-1 owner Mark Oberholtzer. The businessman said he usually takes his firm’s decals off the truck when they are sold, but reckoned Auto Nation would do that for him.

Among the decals on the F-250 in question? A state inspection sticker that expired September 2013. But state inspections must be conducted annually in Texas, casting doubt on the claim by the Galveston County Daily News that the truck was sold “three years ago.”

Also in support of a transaction occurring last year, USA Today reported today that Mr. Oberholtzer drove the truck to Auto Nation and traded it in November 2013. 

In short, give or take a month or two, Mark-1’s pick-up truck was sold legitimately about a year ago to a dealer and, from there, to an auctioneer.

So How Did a Texas Truck Get to a Battlefield in Syria? 

Aboard ship, obviously. But how did the truck get aboard ship? That is the trickier question.

“Technicals” – intelligence parlance for pick-up trucks modified for combat use – are the vehicles-of-choice for militants worldwide. Conflicts and hot zones are expanding, not contracting, and that creates a burgeoning demand and, therefore, a black market, for plain vanilla pick-ups, even from the U.S. Only upon arrival in an area controlled by jihadis are the pick-ups converted to “technicals.”

From the dealership to an auction in Southwest Houston, the truck was likely loaded into a container that was ultimately lifted aboard a container ship (a.k.a. “box ship” among mariners) moored pier-side at the Port of Galveston or Port of Houston. The Port of Galveston accommodates about 1,000 ships and handles 10 million short tons of cargo annually. Much of that cargo is inside containers. The sort of boxes motorists see aboard trains and trucks on the highway, these containers are measured in “Twenty-Foot Equivalent units” or TEUs.

The world’s largest box ship, EMMA MAERSK, can carry more than 18,000 TEUs. If every container aboard EMMA MAERSK held cars or trucks, that would equate to 36,000 vehicles. (Promotional photo from The Maersk Group.) 

Assessment: Jihadi Sympathizers Love East Coast Seaports 

Assessment number one: Alarmingly, citing Mr. Oberholtzer, USA Today reported that recent threats are being conveyed from people across the USA. “We have a secretary here,” he said. “She’s scared to death. We have families. We don’t want no problems.” Presumably, some of those American callers are making the outrageous leap that, by selling the truck last year, he was aiding jihadis.

Here’s an assessment from a former Navy commander in his sixth year of intelligence and counterterrorism analysis – namely, me: Neither Mr. Oberholtzer, his firm nor his employees have anything whatsoever to do with Islamic militants, and Americans have no right or foundation to assert same, much less place angry, threatening phone calls. Basing those angry calls on reports by mainstream media (which those same callers uniformly mistrust) only serves to double their shameful behavior. Knock it off.

Assessment number two: The Ports of Galveston and Houston are not alone. I assess that used car dealers in close proximity to east coast seaports are shipping pick-up trucks to all sorts of legitimate buyers overseas. Some find their way to recipients in, say, Turkey and the Middle East. Most are legit. Some are not.

Shipping is a simple affair. The shipper completes a manifest or cargo declaration (“1 pick-up truck, brand ABC, worth X dollars”), signs the form, seals and locks the container, and off it goes. On arrival, only the recipient listed on the manifest may open the container, and the truck rolls to its final destination.

What about inspecting all containers? Impossible, impractical and wholly disruptive of an extremely time-sensitive business. And also fruitless. The top 25 U.S. ports that accommodate container ships handle 11 million TEUs annually.

What if authorities opened the container that held the Texas truck? What would they find? Why, they’d find a truck – the very one lawfully owned and accurately listed on the manifest. To get a handle on this, law enforcement and port security must look ashore – upstream from the seaport, not along the waterfront.

In closing, I have only one source for the following piece of evidence, but that source has proven impeccable.

In the case of the truck that took to sea from a Galveston or Houston seaport, the shipper was not a plumber in Texas.

He is a Syrian.

[SIDEBAR IS BELOW—–]

Are the New F-250 Owners Al Qaeda?  

Not according to research by Aymenn Jawad Al-Tamimi, an Oxford graduate and analyst with the Middle East Forum, a think-tank devoted to promoting American interests in the region. That said, Chechen jihadis in Syria vs. Al Qaeda may be a difference without a distinction.

The new truck owners’ group, Jaish al-Muhajireen wal-Ansar (JMWA) belongs to an alliance of three other groups formed in July 2013. The alliance is called Jabhat Ansar al-Din (JAD). The pick-up photo was found on the JAD website.

In November 2013, JMWA transformed when its previous leader and a cadre of his followers joined Ad-Dawlah Al-Islamiyya (“The Islamic State” or IS, now mislabeled by the White House, the Pentagon and mainstream media as “ISIS” or “ISIL”). Made up largely of Chechen jihadis, JMWA can best be viewed as the Syria-based wing of the Caucasus Emirate, designated a foreign terrorist organization by the U.S. and many other nations.

Fighters in Syria from the largely Chechen Jaish al-Muhajireen wal-Ansar (JMWA). (Photo from a jihadi site, courtesy of Caleb Weiss) 

JAD and its 4 member-groups advocate Shari’a Law and the formation of a caliphate and oppose the U.S.-led coalition operating above, if not in, Syria and Iraq. The alliance opposes the U.S. and the West for all the usual reasons that prompt militants to kill Westerners: from Afghanistan and Gitmo to the fuel rod of Islamist rage: “the Jews’ occupation of Al-Aqsa” mosque in Jerusalem. So, JAD hardly consists of the “moderate Syrian rebels” Congress has just voted to arm.

So JAD is akin to IS and the Al-Qaeda-linked Jabhat al-Nusra (“Victory Front” or JAN). JAD, however, will not join JAN and wants nothing at all to do with IS. Their fighters don’t even refer to IS by name. Reasons: fierce competition among the groups, persistent enmity between leaders and perhaps a non-aggression pact, however tacit. Said one JAD spokesman to analyst Aymenn Al-Tamimi: “We don’t fight [IS], and they don’t fight us. Anyone who says [JAD] is affiliated with [IS] is lying.”

Thus, the new owners of a Texas plumber’s old pick-up truck hate us for the same reasons IS and JAN hate us. All are driving hard toward the same destination. Each just prefers to travel alone and via a different route.

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A former Navy Commander, Tom Wyld served nearly 5 years as director of intelligence for a private security firm specializing in training and operational support of U.S. Navy SEALs. He continues to provide intelligence, investigative and counterterrorism support to former SEALs. Prior assignments include Communications Coordinator, Swift Boat Veterans & POWs for Truth; lobbyist for State Motorcyclists’ Rights Organizations (e.g., ABATEs); and Chief of Staff and PR Director for the Institute for Legislative Action, the lobbying and political arm of the NRA.