Category Archives: Department of Defense

Obama’s Motivation for the Iran Nuclear Deal

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Obama’s Motivation for the Iran Nuclear Deal

This may be somewhat conspiratorial, so critiques and commentary is invited. The common question has been for several months, why is Barack Obama so pro-Iran in order to get a final deal signed with regard to their nuclear weapons program.

No one seems to be able to suggest a viable reason, personally I went so far as to track down and interview Ambassador Mark Wallace, CEO of United Against Nuclear Iran.

 

Still without any meaningful answer as to why, it was prudent to search far and wide for clues and suddenly a real story began to develop on its own.

 

 

Plans for an Iran strike by Israel has been on the table and in 2011, Israel Defense Minister Ehud Barak declared the time would be delayed for a future time. In 2012, Israel was poised to attack Iran, and the Obama National Security Council ensured that operation was terminated.

 

In summary, the United States and Israel have cooperated for decades on defense, military aid, arms sales, joint exercises and intelligence. This stems from a 1981 Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) that established cooperation on national security of both countries. In 1983, both sides signed a Joint Political Military Group implementing the MOU and in 1984 those activities commenced. In 1987, the United States constructed facilities to stockpile advanced military gear and munitions. In 1996, Congress codified this standard that included defense contracts, weapons systems, interagency strategic cooperation, diplomatic and intelligence operations and ballistic missiles. Countless laws/acts have been passed and signed in the United States where the U.S. and Israel together preserve and enhance Israel’s Qualitative Military Edge.

 

Barack Obama is bound by agreement, law and treaty history yet he takes this history and text to the line where his policy does not support or stand with Israel in fully defending Israel in military hostilities or engagements as noted in the most recent conflicts in Gaza. Having a JPOA, a nuclear agreement has for the most part thrown sand in the gears keeping his own anti-Israel cultural and lifelong behavior intact, all at the expense of stability in the Middle East. Barack Obama’s background demonstrates he would rather have a failed nuclear agreement that satisfies his Muslim doctrine against Jews and Israel than to militarily stand with Israel even as new alliances and relationships have been established, isolating the United States. The same theory here is also applied to the balance of the Middle East with emphasis on Iraq and Syria.

Abbas Living in Luxury, the PLO pays well?

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Living Large

Abu Mazen’s (Mahmood Abbas) new palace

Life is so, so hard in the ‘occupied territories.’

From here (comments are mostly in Hebrew). According to the person who posted it, it’s Abu Mazen’s ‘guest palace.’

By the way, there are many luxurious homes in Judea and Samaria. Back in the old days, before the existence of the ‘Palestinian Authority’ necessitated bypass roads in order to prevent Jews from being murdered, we used to play a game when we road through the ‘Palestinian’

*** How did he get here?

Palestinian Authority Chairman Mahmoud Abbas resigned on Saturday as head of the Palestine Liberation Organization’s (PLO) Executive Committee in a bid to force new elections for the top body, says Wassel Abu Yousef. Yousef also goes on to report that more than half of the 18-member committee have also stepped down, according to Israel National News. However, the 80-year-old Abbas still retains his post as Palestinian president.  “The resignation of the president of the executive committee Mahmoud Abbas and more than half of its members have created a legal vacuum, and therefore the Palestine National Council (PNC) has been asked to meet in one month to elect a new executive committee,” Yousef said in a statement.

Yousef, a senior PLO committee member, added that the resignations will not take effect until the PNC meets. The PNC is the 740-member Palestinian Parliament. Members live in the Palestinian territories and have not met in 20-years.

Abbas took up the position of the Ramallah-based government in 2005, a year after he became the PLO’s chief. On several occasions, he has threatened to resign or dissolve the Palestinian Authority.

The PLO’s chief negotiator and well-known political figure Saeb Erekat will probably replace Abbas, according to Al Arabiya News, reporting on previous rumors of the Abbas resignation. Saeb Erekat is a close aide to Abbas and had replaced Abed Rabbo as secretary after Rabbo was ousted by Abbas for becoming an increasingly vocal critic of the leader.  Abbas has faced questions about his legitimacy to rule within the Palestinian territories, where he was elected to what was originally meant to be a four-year term in 2005, according to The New York Times. New presidential and legislative elections for the Palestinian Authority have been prevented by an internal rift between Abbas’s Fatah party and the rival Islamic group, Hamas, which won the last legislative elections in 2006 and seized control of Gaza the next year. Read more here.

Other facts on Abbas:

  • During the 1948 Palestinian war, his family fled to Syria
  • Abbas studied at the University of Damascus and later went to Moscow and studied at Patrice Lumumba University (KGB)
  • He has a son named after Yasser Arafat
  •  He was a member of the Fatah, which funded the attack of the 1972 Munich Massacre
  • The U.S. Congress knew about his corruption and skimming off big money

Like Father, Like Son

the other home

Son of Mahmoud Abbas caught up in corruption scandal

The son of Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas has been tied to a corruption scandal involving leaked documents that appear to show attempts by Palestinian officials to misuse public funds.

An invoice published by a protest group on the Internet apparently shows that Yasser Mahmoud Reda Abbas made a payment of $50,000 as part of his acquisition of apartments in a luxury complex in the West Bank city of Ramallah, the seat of the Palestinian government.

Earlier revelations from paperwork leaked online have triggered outrage, highlighting the corruption and mismanagement critics say remain rampant in the Palestinian government.
A senior Palestinian official, speaking on condition of anonymity as he wasn’t allowed to discuss the leak, confirmed the documents’ authenticity to The Associated Press. They have offered a rare glimpse into the wheeling and dealing of the Palestinian government, long bogged down by rivalries.
One document signed by Majdi al-Khaldi, a diplomatic adviser to Abbas who accompanies him on his trips to world capitals, asked Bahrain’s foreign minister for $4 million to fund the private neighborhood complex for Palestinian officials in Ramallah. He insisted the complex was “meant to resist the Israeli settlements,” even though there are no settlements where the complex was built.
The other document by Nazmi Muhanna, general director of the Palestinian Crossing and Borders Authority, requested the government pay for his daughter’s schooling as well as medical treatment for his family in Jordan for a total of $15,000, a hefty sum for many Palestinians. Muhanna defended his demand, saying it was permitted by the Palestinian government. The government later said it did not cover those expenses.
Outrage over the documents quickly spread on social media, where Palestinians challenged everything from their leadership’s finances to its political legitimacy in the face of repeatedly delayed elections, last held in 2005.
The furor over the documents comes as the Palestinian economy is stagnating and Palestinians grow increasingly displeased with government services. Palestinian Authority officials have defended their record on stamping out corruption, saying they’ve recovered millions of dollars in misspent funds.

 

Green, Green and Green Obama and Harry Reid

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If you think this whole ‘green thing’ is legit, you need to read on. It is a ploy to fill politicians pockets with money and power. Coming out of the White House, it affects all government agencies including the military, violators pay fines, adding to the Treasury revenue base.

Obama Pushes Billions in Green Executive Actions

TheBlaze: President Barack Obama’s package of executive actions includes $1 billion in new taxpayer subsidies to the green energy industry and homeowners, while also promoting existing $10 billion in loan programs.

“We are taking steps that allow more Americans to join this revolution with no money down,” Obama said at the National Clean Energy Summit in Las Vegas Monday. “You don’t have to share my passion for fighting climate change. A lot of Americans are going solar and becoming more energy efficient not because they’re tree huggers – although trees are important, I just want you to know – but because they are cost cutters. And I’m all for consumers saving money because that means they can spend it on other stuff. Solar isn’t just for the green crowd anymore. It’s for the green eyeshade crowd too.”

Under the initiative, the Obama administration will invite applications for more than $10 billion in existing loan projects available. The current loans are for the Distributed Energy Projects program and solicitations will open to more potential companies to vie for funding on alternative energy.

Further, the administration will make $1 billion in new loan guarantees for distribution of alternative energy such as solar and wind. These new loan guarantees will target industries such as rooftop solar, energy storage, smart grid technology, and methane capture for oil and gas wells, according to the White House.

The administration also announced $24 million for 11 projects to assist in developing solar technologies that double the amount of solar energy available. Three of the projects are in California, two are in Massachusetts, the others are in New York, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, Texas, and Washington state.

Alternative energy is moving closer to a day when it doesn’t need subsidies, but the country can’t wait for that, said Energy Secretary Earnest Moniz in a conference call with reporters Monday.

“We support extending a variety of tax credits that is very important for clean energy and a clean energy infrastructure,” Moniz said. “Cost reductions have been incredible. Without subsidies, I would still see solar power growing, but we don’t have a lot of time to get it right. We need to address climate change early.”

Many of the loans are for companies seeking to access financing for green energy projects, some of the loans will also come through the Property-Assessed Clean Energy financing program, or PACE.

The Obama administration is also crating a Defense Department Privatized Housing Challenge, which allows companies to commit to provide solar power to housing on over 40 military bases across the United States, with the stated goal of saving military families money on energy bills and making military communities more energy secure. The DOD and White House Council on Environmental Quality convened companies that own privatized housing units for military to share best practices. Four companies are committed to provide solar power at more than 40 military bases. The companies are Balfour Beatty, Corvias, Lincoln Military Housing and United Communities.

***

Green Businesses, Political Powerbrokers Mingle at Reid Cleantech Summit

Eighth annual Clean Energy Summit in Las Vegas takes place as Nevada regulators hammer out crucial solar energy measure

LAS VEGAS—Green energy businesses gathered in Las Vegas on Monday for an annual conference hailing progress in the cleantech industry and encouraging further government incentives for the types of firms that paid thousands of dollars to sponsor the event.

For a minimum $4,000 payment, businesses and other groups got a spot in the exhibit hall of the eighth annual National Clean Energy Summit, cosponsored by Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid (D., Nev.) and the Center for American Progress.

“This prestigious event brings together the investors, industry executives, entrepreneurs, policymakers and advocates who are shaping the future of clean energy,” NCES’s website says.

The exhibitor fee gets businesses access to “senior industry executives, corporate sustainability teams, leaders from all levels of government, project developers, financiers, utilities, representatives from state and federal agencies and media from across the country,” in the words of a summit brochure.

The confluence of business and policy is characteristic of the event, which this year featured speeches and discussions from President Barack Obama, Energy Secretary Ernest Moniz, Hillary Clinton campaign chairman John Podesta, former Colorado Governor Bill Ritter, and CAP president Neera Tanden.

Reid himself is one of the event’s major draws. His office has bragged about its work in securing subsidies for donors to the Clean Energy Project, a group that serves as “the fiscal agent and the coordinating entity” of the summit, according to board member Sig Rogich.

The conference highlighted green-energy-friendly policies such as the Environmental Protection Agency’s new restrictions on coal-fired power plants, which are poised to remake the U.S. energy economy. Companies on the right side of that policy equation face a tremendous financial opportunity.

“It’s a big business opportunity,” in the words of Tom Steyer, whose group Advanced Energy Economy is a CEP donor. “It’s a chance to make a lot of money.”

Steyer also serves on the board of NCES sponsor the Center for American Progress, which has been accused of acting as a de facto lobbying arm of First Solar, another CEP donor whose chief executive spoke at Monday’s summit.

The timing of the event was auspicious. Taking place in Las Vegas while Nevada energy regulators hammer out crucial details of the state’s renewable energy incentive packages, attendees could witness and participate in discussions that might directly inform policymaking that would affect the bottom lines of the conference’s participants and financial supporters.

Just days before the event kicked off, utility NV Energy, a CEP donor and NCES exhibitor, announced that it had hit a statutory cap on incentives for its solar power customers. Its proposed rates in the absence of those incentives would seriously damage Nevada solar industry, its advocates say.

Those issues received significant play at the summit during an afternoon debate moderated by Rose McKinney-James, a former CEP board member and current Nevada lobbyist.

In the latter capacity, McKinney-James represents Valley Electric and Bombard Electric, both of which are also CEP donors and were featured in NCES’s exhibit hall. Both also have a stake in the outcome of the net metering debate.

When NV Energy reached its previous net metering cap in May, McKinney-James helped broker a deal between the utility and the Alliance for Solar Choice, a rooftop solar advocacy group.

To the extent that the policy goals of various conference sponsors were opposed on the net metering issue, Reid very clearly took a stand, criticizing NV Energy’s rate proposal.

“The world’s changed, and they should change with it,” he said at a press conference opening the event.

Reid expanded on that position in the summit’s opening remarks.

“I believe Nevada can meet this challenge and begin the process of transforming our grid to fully valuing clean energy technologies,” he said.

He offered Valley Electric as an alternative, the type of company cooperating with his policy preferences rather than impeding them.

In a sign that it was aware of the ongoing controversy—and where the event’s more powerful voices stood on the issue—NV Energy adorned its exhibitor booth with signs and literature extoling the company’s commitment to renewable energy in general, and rooftop solar in particular.

Another Day of Hillary Email Disarray

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No Mandated Audit

DHS has no record of State Dept. giving info for Clinton server audit, despite rules

FNC: The State Department does not appear to have submitted legally required information regarding Hillary Clinton’s secret computer server to the Department of Homeland Security during her term as secretary, FoxNews.com has learned.

All federal government agencies are mandated to submit a list of systems, vulnerabilities and configuration issues to DHS every 30 days. The department then performs a “cyberscope audit” to ensure security, a responsibility the agency has had since 2010.

FoxNews.com learned of the lapse as a result of a Freedom of Information Act request submitted June 11. It is not clear if State Department officials in charge of compliance with the DHS audits knew of their boss’s server, which has been shown to have included “top secret” information in emails.

Clinton headed the agency from 2009-2013. The DHS established the “Continuous Diagnostics and Mitigation” program in 2010, amid growing concerns government systems could be vulnerable to cyber attack. But Clinton’s computer server, through which she and key aides sent and received tens of thousands of emails, was apparently never audited, according to DHS, which conducted a comprehensive search of Office of Cyber Security and Communications records after FoxNews.com lodged its request.

“Unfortunately, we were unable to locate or identify any responsive records,” wrote Sandy Ford Page, chief of Freedom of Information Act operations for DHS.

The revelation means DHS never audited Clinton’s server, and the State Department allowed Clinton to operate outside the federal mandate aimed at hardening defenses in federal networks, one cyber expert told Fox News.

The State Department has not provided a substantive response to a similar FOIA submitted by FoxNews.com in early June.

The State Department did not comment on media requests about why it did not comply with the DHS security review requirement.

“There are reviews and investigations under way, including by the IG and Congress,” said State Department Spokesman Alec Gerlach. “It would not be appropriate to comment on these matters at this time.”

Denver-based Platte River Networks upgraded and maintained the server Clinton shares with her husband, former President Bill Clinton, after she left the State Department.

The company is not on the list of contractors approved by the Pentagon’s Defense Security Service, the only federal agency with the authority to review and approve private contractors. The department administers the National Industrial Security Program on behalf of the Pentagon and 30 other federal agencies, including the State Department. About 13,000 companies have received clearance.

“But Platte River is not one of them,” a spokesman for the DSS told Fox News. “As Platte River Networks is not a cleared facility under the National Industrial Security Program, DSS has no cognizance over the facility and cannot comment further.”

Clinton, the leading contender for the 2016 Democratic presidential nomination, and the State Department have been under fire in recent months after it was revealed Clinton had a “homebrew” server and private Blackberry system that could have left classified or sensitive government data open to hackers.

Clinton maintains her use of a private email server was allowed under government regulations and her system was secure.

But this followed the news Clinton wiped her server of some 31,000 private email messages, turning over just 30,000 hard copies of her emails to the State Department amid a congressional investigation into her actions during the Sept. 11, 2012 attack on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi, where four U.S. personnel including the U.S. ambassador to Libya were killed.

While Clinton has maintained that she neither sent nor received information marked classified on her private server or Blackberry, Reuters reported last week that dozens of emails that passed through Clinton’s server while she was secretary of state, under the U.S. government’s own regulations, were automatically considered classified.

That includes 30 email threads starting as early as 2009, which contained information on foreign governments, Reuters said.

The FBI has opened an investigation to determine whether or not Clinton’s private email server was secure and if classified material was improperly shared or stored on the Clintons’ private email account.

A federal court hearing last week only added to the intrigue. The State Department asserted in a court filing that it did not give personal electronic devices to Clinton and may have destroyed the smartphones of her top aides, Huma Abedin and Cheryl Mills.

“If the State Department was not providing secure email devices to Mrs. Clinton, who was? Best Buy? Target? Mrs. Clinton clearly did whatever she wanted, without regard to national security or federal records keeping laws,” said Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton, who took the State Department to court over its lack of disclosure on the email and server issues.

Huma Lawyers up to Fight Back

Lawyer for Huma Abedin, a Hillary Clinton Aide, Strikes Back at Accuser

A lawyer for Huma Abedin, a top adviser to Hillary Rodham Clinton, has accused Charles E. Grassley, chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, of damaging Ms. Abedin’s reputation through “unfounded allegations” about her time at the State Department.

The lawyer, Miguel Rodriguez, sent a letter to the State Department on Friday responding forcefully to two sets of questions posed by Mr. Grassley, Republican of Iowa: whether Ms. Abedin, while a department official, had been overpaid during her maternity leave and a vacation, and whether she had demonstrated a conflict of interest by aiding one of her part-time employers through her work at the State Department.

Ms. Abedin was granted permission by the State Department to work as a “special government employee” while also performing work for certain outside clients. Mr. Grassley has focused recently on her consulting work in 2012 for the firm Teneo, which was founded by Douglas J. Band, a longtime adviser to former President Bill Clinton.

Mr. Grassley has suggested that emails existed showing that Mr. Band had asked Ms. Abedin to press Mrs. Clinton to seek a White House appointment for Judith Rodin, the head of the Rockefeller Foundation, a Teneo client. Ms. Rodin is a longtime friend of the Clintons.

But Mr. Rodriguez, in his letter on Friday, cited a Washington Post article pointing out that Ms. Rodin, a longtime friend of Mr. Clinton’s, received that White House appointment in 2010, before the Rockefeller Foundation had retained Teneo “and before Teneo hired Abedin.”

Mr. Grassley has also recently disclosed that the State Department’s inspector general had found that Ms. Abedin received nearly $10,000 in excess pay during her maternity leave. But Mr. Rodriguez wrote that Ms. Abedin was contesting that finding because she “extensively worked” during those periods, as the inspector general’s “report itself found.”

“Chairman Grassley also has asked about Ms. Abedin’s 2011 trip to France and Italy,” the letter said. “That trip was intended to be a vacation, and Ms. Abedin personally paid for it.” But, he added, Ms. Abedin — who is married to former Representative Anthony D. Weiner, who resigned from Congress in June 2011 — worked during that trip as well.

Mr. Rodriguez, in his letter, alluded to a recent report that Mr. Grassley had received information from a confidential source about an internal investigation into Ms. Abedin that was completed in May by the State Department inspector general.

“We are deeply concerned that Chairman Grassley’s letter has unfairly tarnished Ms. Abedin’s reputation by making unsubstantiated allegations that appear to flow from misinformation that Chairman Grassley has been provided by an unnamed — and apparently unreliable — source,” Mr. Rodriguez wrote. Those allegations, he wrote, included the “suggestion that Ms. Abedin has violated any criminal statute.”

He also noted Mr. Grassley’s assertion that there were about 7,300 emails mentioning both Ms. Abedin and Mr. Band, but he said that this was because the two remained on many of the same mass email distribution lists thanks to their longstanding ties to the Clintons.

“These are but two examples of the unfortunate and unfounded allegations that have been made about Ms. Abedin,” Mr. Rodriguez wrote. “No staffer — indeed, nobody at all — should be subject to such unfounded attacks based on ill-informed leaks, much less someone who has made countless personal sacrifices in distinguished service to the country she loves.”

Mr. Grassley, who also serves on the Senate Finance Committee, has been aggressive in questioning Ms. Abedin’s status as a special government employee since it was revealed in 2013.

A former investigator on the Finance Committee who worked with Mr. Grassley there and was at one point expected to work for him on the Judiciary Committee, Emilia DiSanto, is now a deputy inspector general at the State Department.

The U.S. Refugee Immigration Costs Back to 1997

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DEPARTMENT OF HEALTH AND HUMAN SERVICES ADMINISTRATION FOR CHILDREN AND FAMILIES REFUGEE AND ENTRANT ASSISTANCE report is full of the budget numbers. You have no concept of what bad law and policy has cost the American taxpayers. Imagine these decades of dollars as well as grants, USAID, the Merida Initiative, State Department programs, military assistance and the Millennium Challenge dollars added in, we effectively own these countries.

 

Unaccompanied Alien Children: An Overview

Summary

In FY2014, the number of unaccompanied alien children (UAC, unaccompanied children) that were apprehended at the Southwest border while attempting to enter the United States without authorization increased sharply, straining the system put in place over the past decade to handle such cases. Prior to FY2014, UAC apprehensions were steadily increasing. For example, in FY2011, the Border Patrol apprehended 16,067 unaccompanied children at the Southwest border whereas in FY2014 more than 68,500 unaccompanied children were apprehended. In the first 8 months of FY2015, UAC apprehensions numbered 22,869, down 49% from the same period in FY2014.

UAC are defined in statute as children who lack lawful immigration status in the United States, who are under the age of 18, and who either are without a parent or legal guardian in the United States or without a parent or legal guardian in the United States who is available to provide care and physical custody. Two statutes and a legal settlement directly affect U.S. policy for the treatment and administrative processing of UAC: the Trafficking Victims Protection Reauthorization Act of 2008 (P.L. 110-457); the Homeland Security Act of 2002 (P.L. 107-296); and the Flores Settlement Agreement of 1997.

Several agencies in the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and the Department of Health and Human Services’ (HHS’s) Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR) share responsibility for the processing, treatment, and placement of UAC. DHS Customs and Border Protection (CBP) apprehends and detains unaccompanied children arrested at the border while Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) handles custody transfer and repatriation responsibilities. ICE also apprehends UAC in the interior of the country and represents the government in removal proceedings. HHS coordinates and implements the care and placement of unaccompanied children in appropriate custody.

Foreign nationals from El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, and Mexico accounted for almost all UAC cases in recent years, especially in FY2014. In FY2009, when the number of UAC apprehended at the Southwest border was 19,688, foreign nationals from Mexico accounted for 82% of all UAC apprehensions at the Southwest border and the three Central American countries accounted for 17% of these apprehensions. In FY2014, the proportions had almost reversed, with Mexican UAC comprising only 23% of UAC apprehensions and unaccompanied children from the three Central American countries comprising 77%.

To address the crisis, the Administration developed a working group to coordinate the efforts of federal agencies involved. It also opened additional shelters and holding facilities to accommodate the large number of UAC apprehended at the border. In June 2014, the Administration announced plans to provide funding to the affected Central American countries for a variety of programs and security-related initiatives; and in July, the Administration requested $3.7 billion in supplemental appropriations for FY2014 to address the crisis. Congress debated the supplemental appropriations but did not pass such legislation.

For FY2015, Congress appropriated nearly $1.6 billion for the Refugee and Entrant Assistance Programs in ORR, the majority of which is directed toward the UAC program (P.L. 113-235). For DHS agencies, Congress appropriated $3.4 billion for detection, enforcement, and removal operations, including for the transport of unaccompanied children for CBP. The Department of Homeland Security Appropriations Act, FY2015 (P.L. 114-4) also permits the Secretary of Homeland Security to reprogram funds within CBP and ICE and transfer such funds into the two agencies’ “Salaries and Expenses” accounts for the care and transportation of unaccompanied children. P.L. 114-4 also allows for several DHS grants awarded to states along the Southwest border to be used by recipients for costs or reimbursement of costs related to providing humanitarian relief to unaccompanied children.

Congressional activity on two pieces of legislation in the 114th Congress (H.R. 1153 and H.R. 1149) would make changes to current UAC policy, including amending the definition of UAC, altering current law on the treatment of unaccompanied children from contiguous countries, and amending several asylum provisions that would alter how unaccompanied children who assert an asylum claim are processed, among other things. Several other bills have been introduced without seeing legislative activity (H.R. 191/S. 129, H.R. 1700, H.R. 2491, and S. 44). The full report is here.