No Definition for Terror

I have no connections to anyone currently employed by the FBI but I do have several with former FBI’ers. Our formal and non-formal discussions are chilling when it comes to operations, assignments and investigations at the agency.

So FBI, here is a tip, this website http://islamophobia.org/ has listed names and organizations they deem as a threat to Islam. Is this some kind of hit list? What criteria creates such a list and is this approved by the FBI?

But take note FBI, those that are paying attention don’t feel safe in America. Your agency is doing little to sway our fears. Share that same sentiment with Jeh Johnson at DHS please.

It was a few years ago after doing some research and gathering evidence that I attempted to have a dialogue with the local FBI office, the agent on duty asked me if I was an Islamophobe and them hung up on me. It was clearly the time when the FBI was given an edict to be politically correct when it comes to investigations on Islam and all the manuals were stripped from the operating and training systems.

 

FBI Director Robert Mueller in 2012 capitulated with the American Muslim and Arab American lobby groups and announced that more than 700 documents and 300 presentations from training materials. Abed Ayoub was able to take a meeting with Mueller who represented groups including the Islamic Society of North America, Muslim Public Affairs Council, MPAC and CAIR. Included in the dialogue was also Thomas Perez of the DoJ’s Civil Rights Division. It all goes a step further as law enforcement agencies around the country are required to do Muslim outreach in a robust campaign of political correctness. No one in America is allowed to have independent thought regarding Islam, Muslims or terror as it is deemed offensive to Islam.

So in the meantime, America sadly has endured domestic terror attacks but government refuses to apply the term ‘terrorism’ instead using ‘work place violence’ as is noted in the Ft. Hood shooting by Major Nidal Hasan and beheading of Colleen Hufford in Moore, Oklahoma at the hands of Alton Nolen. The mosques are connected by a network of imams that are devoted followers of Anwar al Awlaki killed by an American drone in Yemen a few years ago. We cannot overlook the Tsarneav brothers the killers of the Boston bombing.

While we do have many that have left the shores of America to join Daesh we also witness the black flags and ISIS graffiti in many locations around the country. America also has agreements with many countries in a VISA waiver program, making it easier to made round trip journeys to rogue states like Turkey, Iraq, Syria, Sudan, Yemen and Afghanistan.

So terror is here America and yet what does the FBI have to say or do about it? Crickets…

So when it comes to defining terror, here is a formal summary of the term. We can only hope that the Department of Homeland Security, the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Department of Justice will take note and behave and investigate accordingly.

Terrorism Defies Definition

by Daniel Pipes and Teri Blumenfeld The Washington Times October 24, 2014

http://www.meforum.org/4877/terrorism-defies-definition

 

Defining terrorism has practical implications because formally certifying an act of violence as terrorist has important consequences in U.S. law.

Terrorism suspects can be held longer than criminal suspects after arrest without an indictment They can be interrogated without a lawyer present. They receive longer prison sentences. “Terrorist inmates” are subject to many extra restrictions known as Special Administrative Measures, or SAMs. The “Terrorism Risk Insurance Act of 2002” gives corporate victims of terrorism special breaks (it is currently up for renewal) and protects owners of buildings from certain lawsuits. When terrorism is invoked, families of victims, such as of the 2009 Ft. Hood attack, win extra benefits such as tax breaks, life insurance, and combat-related pay. They can even be handed a New York City skyscraper.

Despite the legal power of this term, however, terrorism remains undefined beyond a vague sense of “a non-state actor attacking civilian targets to spread fear for some putative political goal.” One study, Political Terrorism, lists 109 definitions. American security specialist David Tucker wryly remarks that “Above the gates of hell is the warning that all that who enter should abandon hope. Less dire but to the same effect is the warning given to those who try to define terrorism.” The Israeli counterterrorism specialist Boaz Ganor jokes that “The struggle to define terrorism is sometimes as hard as the struggle against terrorism itself.”

This lack of specificity wreaks chaos, especially among police, prosecutors, politicians, press, and professors.

“Violence carried out in connection with an internationally sanctioned terrorist group” such as Al-Qaeda, Hizbullah, or Hamas has become the working police definition of terrorism. This explains such peculiar statements after an attack as, “We have not found any links to terrorism,” which absurdly implies that “lone wolves” are never terrorists.

The whole world, except the U.S. Department of the Treasury, sees the Boston Marathon bombings as terrorism.

If they are not terrorists, the police must find other explanation to account for their acts of violence. Usually, they offer up some personal problem: insanity, family tensions, a work dispute, “teen immigrant angst,” a prescription drug, or even a turbulent airplane ride. Emphasizing personal demons over ideology, they focus on an perpetrator’s (usually irrelevant) private life, ignoring his far more significant political motives.

But then, inconsistently, they do not require some connection to an international group. When Oscar Ramiro Ortega-Hernandez shot eight rounds at the White House in November 2011, the U.S. attorney asserted that “Firing an assault rifle at the White House to make a political statement is terrorism, plain and simple” – no international terrorist group needed. Similarly, after Paul Anthony Ciancia went on a shooting spree at Los Angeles International Airport in November 2013, killing a TSA officer, the indictment accused him of “substantial planning and premeditation to cause the death of a person and to commit an act of terrorism.”

This terminological irregularity breeds utter confusion. The whole world calls the Boston Marathon bombings terrorism – except the Department of the Treasury, which, 1½ years on “has not determined that there has been an ‘act of terrorism’ under the Terrorism Risk Insurance Act.” The judge presiding over the terrorism trial in January 2014 of Jose Pimentel, accused of planning to set off pipe bombs in Manhattan, denied the prosecution’s request for an expert to justify a charge of terrorism. Government officials sometimes just throw up their hands: Asked in June 2013 if the U.S. government considers the Taliban a terrorist group, the State Department spokeswoman replied “Well, I’m not sure how they’re defined at this particular moment.”

The U.S. Department of State has yet to figure out whether the Taliban are or are not terrorists.

A May 2013 shooting in New Orleans, which injured 19, was even more muddled. An FBI spokeswoman called it not terrorism but “strictly an act of street violence.” The mayor disagreed; asked if he considered it terrorism, he said “I think so,” because families “are afraid of going outside.” Challenged to disentangle this contradiction, a supervisory special agent in the FBI’s New Orleans field made matters even more opaque: “You can say this is definitely urban terrorism; it’s urban terror. But from the FBI standpoint and for what we deal with on a national level, it’s not what we consider terrorism, per se.” Got that?

This lack of clarity presents a significant public policy challenge. Terrorism, with all its legal and financial implications, cannot remain a vague, subjective concept but requires a precise and accurate definition, consistently applied.

After releasing the Taliban 5, matters are worse when it comes to Afghanistan, Syria Yemen, Qatar and Iraq. We witnessed carefully the hostilities between Israel and Hamas and then we watched the demonstrations in America and Europe of those standing in solidarity with Hamas. So, hey, FBI, if you are going to do outreach, it should be to those in America that don’t trust you or the lack of security we feel. Your agenda is misplaced and sadly I would think any agents would be demanding a pro-active objective against jihad in America have long memories. This is shameful.

 

 

 

Islamic State: Tech Savvy, Tactical, Barbaric

We know that Islamic terror groups have been using chemical weapons to kill. We know they have been using prison tactics of the Holocaust to kill. We know they have been shooting with weapons to kill and we know they have been torturing and beheading without hesitation.

We need to know beyond the use of sophistication of global social media by al Nusra, al Qaeda and Daesh (ISIS), we must also come to understand the wide range of their knowledge and use of all internet applications against their enemies.

1. The terror networks know what countries pay ransom, how much they pay and who specifically to reach for negotiations.

2. The terror networks know how to match photos with dates and locations using Google features.

3. The terror networks know how to use LinkedIn, PowerPoint, Bots, thumb-drives.

4. The terror networks use an all cash financial system to avoid global banking tracing and tracking.

5. The terror networks know how to build address books, alter usernames and passwords on the fly and hide IP addresses.

6. The terror networks have members, fighters, technicians, tech geeks, bomb-makers, engineers, pilots, software programmers, tactical war-planners and smuggling access to anything.

7. The terror networks are effective at kidnapping, theft, buying and selling, investments, pysops, torture and have a tremendous knowledge of history.

8. The terror networks are smarter than you and smarter than you give them credit for being. They are adaptive, flexible, mobile, crafty and patient.

When it comes to kidnapping, torture, prison, waterboarding and beheading, this is a must read.

 

 

The Horror Before the Beheadings

ISIS Hostages Endured Torture and Dashed Hopes, Freed Cellmates Say

The hostages were taken out of their cell one by one.

In a private room, their captors asked each of them three intimate questions, a standard technique used to obtain proof that a prisoner is still alive in a kidnapping negotiation.

James Foley returned to the cell he shared with nearly two dozen other Western hostages and collapsed in tears of joy. The questions his kidnappers had asked were so personal (“Who cried at your brother’s wedding?” “Who was the captain of your high school soccer team?”) that he knew they were finally in touch with his family.

It was December 2013, and more than a year had passed since Mr. Foley vanished on a road in northern Syria. Finally, his worried parents would know he was alive, he told his fellow captives. His government, he believed, would soon negotiate his release.

What appeared to be a turning point was in fact the start of a downward spiral for Mr. Foley, a 40-year-old journalist, that ended in August when he was forced to his knees somewhere in the bald hills of Syria and beheaded as a camera rolled.

His videotaped death was a very public end to a hidden ordeal.

The story of what happened in the Islamic State’s underground network of prisons in Syria is one of excruciating suffering. Mr. Foley and his fellow hostages were routinely beaten and subjected to waterboarding. For months, they were starved and threatened with execution by one group of fighters, only to be handed off to another group that brought them sweets and contemplated freeing them. The prisoners banded together, playing games to pass the endless hours, but as conditions grew more desperate, they turned on one another. Some, including Mr. Foley, sought comfort in the faith of their captors, embracing Islam and taking Muslim names.

Their captivity coincided with the rise of the group that came to be known as the Islamic State out of the chaos of the Syrian civil war. It did not exist on the day Mr. Foley was abducted, but it slowly grew to become the most powerful and feared rebel movement in the region. By the second year of Mr. Foley’s imprisonment, the group had amassed close to two dozen hostages and devised a strategy to trade them for cash.

It was at that point that the hostages’ journeys, which had been largely similar up to then, diverged based on actions taken thousands of miles away: in Washington and Paris, in Madrid, Rome and beyond. Mr. Foley was one of at least 23 Western hostages from 12 countries, a majority of them citizens of European nations whose governments have a history of paying ransoms.

Their struggle for survival, which is being told now for the first time, was pieced together through interviews with five former hostages, locals who witnessed their treatment, relatives and colleagues of the captives, and a tight circle of advisers who made trips to the region to try to win their release. Crucial details were confirmed by a former member of the Islamic State, also known as ISIS, who was initially stationed in the prison where Mr. Foley was held, and who provided previously unknown details of his captivity.

The ordeal has remained largely secret because the militants warned the hostages’ families not to go to the news media, threatening to kill their loved ones if they did. The New York Times is naming only those already identified publicly by the Islamic State, which began naming them in August.

Officials in the United States say they did everything in their power to save Mr. Foley and the others, including carrying out a failed rescue operation. They argue that the United States’ policy of not paying ransoms saves Americans’ lives in the long run by making them less attractive targets.

Inside their concrete box, the hostages did not know what their families or governments were doing on their behalf. They slowly pieced it together using the only information they had: their interactions with their guards and with one another. Mostly they suffered, waiting for any sign that they might escape with their lives.

The Grab

It was only a 40-minute drive to the Turkish border, but Mr. Foley decided to make one last stop.

In Binesh, Syria, two years ago, Mr. Foley and his traveling companion, the British photojournalist John Cantlie, pulled into an Internet cafe to file their work. The two were no strangers to the perils of reporting in Syria. Only a few months earlier, Mr. Cantlie had been kidnapped a few dozen miles from Binesh. He had tried to escape, barefoot and handcuffed, running for his life as bullets kicked up the dirt, only to be caught again. He was released a week later after moderate rebels intervened.

They were uploading their images when a man walked in.

“He had a big beard,” said Mustafa Ali, their Syrian translator, who was with them and recounted their final hours together. “He didn’t smile or say anything. And he looked at us with evil eyes.”

The man “went to the computer and sat for one minute only, and then left directly,” Mr. Ali said. “He wasn’t Syrian. He looked like he was from the Gulf.”

Mr. Foley, an American freelance journalist filing for GlobalPost and Agence France-Presse, and Mr. Cantlie, a photographer for British newspapers, continued transmitting their footage, according to Mr. Ali, whose account was confirmed by emails the journalists sent from the cafe to a colleague waiting for them in Turkey.

More than an hour later, they flagged a taxi for the 25-mile drive to Turkey. They never reached the border.

The gunmen who sped up behind their taxi did not call themselves the Islamic State because the group did not yet exist on Nov. 22, 2012, the day the two men were grabbed.

But the danger of Islamic extremism was already palpable in Syria’s rebel-held territories, and some news organizations were starting to pull back. Among the red flags was the growing number of foreign fighters flooding into Syria, dreaming of establishing a “caliphate.” These jihadists, many of them veterans of Al Qaeda’s branch in Iraq, looked and behaved differently from the moderate rebels. They wore their beards long. And they spoke with foreign accents, coming from the Persian Gulf, North Africa, Europe and beyond.

A van sped up on the left side of the taxi and cut it off. Masked fighters jumped out. They screamed in foreign-accented Arabic, telling the journalists to lie on the pavement. They handcuffed them and threw them into the van.

They left Mr. Ali on the side of the road. “If you follow us, we’ll kill you,” they told him.

Over the next 14 months, at least 23 foreigners, most of them freelance journalists and aid workers, would fall into a similar trap. The attackers identified the locals whom journalists hired to help them, like Mr. Ali and Yosef Abobaker, a Syrian translator. It was Mr. Abobaker who drove Steven J. Sotloff, an American freelance journalist, into Syria on Aug. 4, 2013.

“We were driving for only 20 minutes when I saw three cars stopped on the road ahead,” he said. “They must have had a spy on the border that saw my car and told them I was coming.”

The kidnappings, which were carried out by different groups of fighters jousting for influence and territory in Syria, became more frequent. In June 2013, four French journalists were abducted. In September, the militants grabbed three Spanish journalists.

Checkpoints became human nets, and last October, insurgents waited at one for Peter Kassig, 25, an emergency medical technician from Indianapolis who was delivering medical supplies. In December, Alan Henning, a British taxi driver, disappeared at another. Mr. Henning had cashed in his savings to buy a used ambulance, hoping to join an aid caravan to Syria. He was kidnapped 30 minutes after crossing into the country.

The last to vanish were five aid workers from Doctors Without Borders, who were plucked in January from the field hospital in rural Syria where they had been working.

The Interrogation

At gunpoint, Mr. Sotloff and Mr. Abobaker were driven to a textile factory in a village outside Aleppo, Syria, where they were placed in separate cells. Mr. Abobaker, who was freed two weeks later, heard their captors take Mr. Sotloff into an adjoining room.

Then he heard the Arabic-speaking interrogator say in English: “Password.”

It was a process to be repeated with several other hostages. The kidnappers seized their laptops, cellphones and cameras and demanded the passwords to their accounts. They scanned their Facebook timelines, their Skype chats, their image archives and their emails, looking for evidence of collusion with Western spy agencies and militaries.

“They took me to a building that was specifically for the interrogation,” said Marcin Suder, a 37-year-old Polish photojournalist kidnapped in July 2013 in Saraqib, Syria, where the jihadists were known to be operating. He was passed among several groups before managing to escape four months later.

“They checked my camera,” Mr. Suder said. “They checked my tablet. Then they undressed me completely. I was naked. They looked to see if there was a GPS chip under my skin or in my clothes. Then they started beating me. They Googled ‘Marcin Suder and C.I.A.,’ ‘Marcin Suder and K.G.B.’ They accused me of being a spy.”

Mr. Suder — who was never told the name of the group holding him, and who never met the other hostages because he escaped before they were transferred to the same location — remarked on the typically English vocabulary his interrogators had used.

During one session, they kept telling him he had been “naughty” — a word that hostages who were held with Mr. Foley also recalled their guards’ using during the most brutal torture.

It was in the course of these interrogations that the jihadists found images of American military personnel on Mr. Foley’s laptop, taken during his assignments in Afghanistan and Iraq.

“In the archive of photographs he had personally taken, there were images glorifying the American crusaders,” they wrote in an article published after Mr. Foley’s death. “Alas for James, this archive was with him at the time of his arrest.”

A British hostage, David Cawthorne Haines, was forced to acknowledge his military background: It was listed on his LinkedIn profile.

The militants also discovered that Mr. Kassig, the aid worker from Indiana, was a former Army Ranger and a veteran of the Iraq war. Both facts are easy to find online, because CNN featured Mr. Kassig’s humanitarian work prominently before his capture.

The punishment for any perceived offense was torture.

“You could see the scars on his ankles,” Jejoen Bontinck, 19, of Belgium, a teenage convert to Islam who spent three weeks in the summer of 2013 in the same cell as Mr. Foley, said of him. “He told me how they had chained his feet to a bar and then hung the bar so that he was upside down from the ceiling. Then they left him there.”

Mr. Bontinck, who was released late last year, spoke about his experiences for the first time for this article in his hometown, Antwerp, where he is one of 46 Belgian youths on trial on charges of belonging to a terrorist organization.

At first, the abuse did not appear to have a larger purpose. Nor did the jihadists seem to have a plan for their growing number of hostages.

Mr. Bontinck said Mr. Foley and Mr. Cantlie had first been held by the Nusra Front, a Qaeda affiliate. Their guards, an English-speaking trio whom they nicknamed “the Beatles,” seemed to take pleasure in brutalizing them.

Later, they were handed over to a group called the Mujahedeen Shura Council, led by French speakers.

Mr. Foley and Mr. Cantlie were moved at least three times before being transferred to a prison underneath the Children’s Hospital of Aleppo.

It was in this building that Mr. Bontinck, then only 18, met Mr. Foley. At first, Mr. Bontinck was a fighter, one of thousands of young Europeans drawn to the promise of jihad. He later ran afoul of the group when he received a text message from his worried father back in Belgium and his commander accused him of being a spy.

The militants dragged him into a basement room with pale brown walls. Inside were two very thin, bearded foreigners: Mr. Foley and Mr. Cantlie.

For the next three weeks, when the call to prayer sounded, all three stood.

Mr. Foley converted to Islam soon after his capture and adopted the name Abu Hamza, Mr. Bontinck said. (His conversion was confirmed by three other recently released hostages, as well as by his former employer.)

“I recited the Quran with him,” Mr. Bontinck said. “Most people would say, ‘Let’s convert so that we can get better treatment.’ But in his case, I think it was sincere.”

Former hostages said that a majority of the Western prisoners had converted during their difficult captivity. Among them was Mr. Kassig, who adopted the name Abdul-Rahman, according to his family, who learned of his conversion in a letter smuggled out of the prison.

Only a handful of the hostages stayed true to their own faiths, including Mr. Sotloff, then 30, a practicing Jew. On Yom Kippur, he told his guards he was not feeling well and refused his food so he could secretly observe the traditional fast, a witness said.

Those recently released said that most of the foreigners had converted under duress, but that Mr. Foley had been captivated by Islam. When the guards brought an English version of the Quran, those who were just pretending to be Muslims paged through it, one former hostage said. Mr. Foley spent hours engrossed in the text.

His first set of guards, from the Nusra Front, viewed his professed Islamic faith with suspicion. But the second group holding him seemed moved by it. For an extended period, the abuse stopped. Unlike the Syrian prisoners, who were chained to radiators, Mr. Foley and Mr. Cantlie were able to move freely inside their cell.

Mr. Bontinck had a chance to ask the prison’s emir, a Dutch citizen, whether the militants had asked for a ransom for the foreigners. He said they had not.

“He explained there was a Plan A and a Plan B,” Mr. Bontinck said. The journalists would be put under house arrest, or they would be conscripted into a jihadist training camp. Both possibilities suggested that the group was planning to release them.

One day, their guards brought them a gift of chocolates.

When Mr. Bontinck was released, he jotted down the phone number of Mr. Foley’s parents and promised to call them. They made plans to meet again.

He left thinking that the journalists, like him, would soon be freed.

A Terrorist State

The Syrian civil war, previously dominated by secular rebels and a handful of rival jihadist groups, was shifting decisively, and the new extremist group had taken a dominant position. Sometime last year, the battalion in the Aleppo hospital pledged allegiance to what was then called the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria.

Other factions of fighters joined forces with the group, whose tactics were so extreme that even Al Qaeda expelled it from its terror network. Its ambitions went far beyond toppling Bashar al-Assad, Syria’s president.

Late last year, the jihadists began pooling their prisoners, bringing them to the same location underneath the hospital. By January, there were at least 19 men in one 20-square-meter cell (about 215 square feet) and four women in an adjoining one. All but one of them were European or North American. The relative freedom that Mr. Foley and Mr. Cantlie had enjoyed came to an abrupt end. Each prisoner was now handcuffed to another.

More worrying was the fact that their French-speaking guards were replaced by English-speaking ones. Mr. Foley recognized them with dread.

Continue Reading here.

Illegals, Education and the Poorer Taxpayer

It should be noted that DACA is NOT law, it began with a memo from Baraq Obama to DHS and later to HHS. DACA is for children, in the government definition it includes anyone up to age….31.

In-State Tuition Rates and Financial Aid for DACA Grantees

Talking Points

Background

On June 15, 2012, Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security (“DHS”) Janet Napolitano issued a memorandum announcing the DHS’s new policy to grant deferred action status to certain classes of childhood arrival illegal aliens.1 On the same day, Director John Morton of ICE issued a memorandum directing all ICE employees to apply the Secretary’s policy. 2 The Morton Memo also detailed the criteria necessary for an illegal alien to qualify for the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (“DACA”) program under this policy, which include:

• The illegal alien came to the United States under the age of sixteen;

• The illegal alien is not above the age of thirty;

• The illegal alien has continuously resided in the United States for at least five years preceding the date of the June 15, 2012 Morton memo and is present in the United States on the date of the June 15, 2012 Morton memo;

• The illegal alien is currently in school, has graduated from high school, has obtained a general education development certificate, or is an honorably discharged veteran of the Coast Guard or Armed Forces of the United States;

• The illegal alien has not been convicted of a felony, a significant misdemeanor offense, or multiple misdemeanor offenses; and

• The illegal alien does not otherwise pose a threat to national security or public safety.3

Deferred action on this basis is granted for two years and may be renewed indefinitely or terminated by DHS at any time at the agency’s discretion.

 

 

The definition of citizen has been redefined by the Federal government.

The sovereign borders have been redefined by the Federal government.

The quality of healthcare access has been redefined by the Federal government.

The security of our homeland has been redefined by the Federal government.

The quality of public education has been redefined by the Federal government.

The value of domestic tranquility has been redefined by the Federal government.

The tax-code has been redefined by the Federal government.

The oath of duty to laws has been redefined by the Federal government.

FACT SHEET: Educational Services for Immigrant Children and Those Recently Arrived to the United States

Schools in the United States have always welcomed new immigrant children to their classrooms – according to the most recent data, there were more than 840,000 immigrant students in the United States, and more than 4.6 million English learners. We have begun to receive inquiries regarding educational services for a specific group of immigrant children who have been in the news – children from Central America who have recently crossed the U.S. – Mexico border. This fact sheet provides information to help education leaders better understand the responsibilities of States and local educational agencies (LEAs) in connection with such students, and the existing resources available to help educate all immigrant students – including children who recently arrived in the United States.

____________________________________________________________________________________

 

BACKGROUND

All children in the United States are entitled to equal access to a public elementary and secondary education, regardless of their or their parents’ actual or perceived national origin, citizenship, or immigration status. This includes recently arrived unaccompanied children, who are in immigration proceedings while residing in local communities with a parent, family member, or other appropriate adult sponsor.

Under the law, the U. S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) is required to care for unaccompanied children apprehended while crossing the border. While in care at a HHS shelter, such children are not enrolled in local schools but do receive educational services and other care from providers who run HHS shelters.

Recently arrived unaccompanied children are later released from federal custody to an appropriate sponsor – usually a parent, relative, or family friend – who can safely and appropriately care for them while their immigration cases proceed. While residing with a sponsor, these children have a right under federal law to enroll in public elementary and secondary schools in their local communities and to benefit from educational services, as do all children in the U.S.

EXISTING RESOURCES

Existing resources that may be helpful to communities enrolling immigrant children, including newly arrived immigrant children, include:

Services for Educationally Disadvantaged Children (Title I): Title I, Part A of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA) provides funds to raise the achievement of children who attend high-poverty schools. To the extent that newly arrived immigrant children attend Title I schools, they may be eligible to receive Title I, Part A services. Additional information about Title I, Part A programs is available here.

Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA): IDEA funds may be used by LEAs to evaluate children of any background who are suspected of having a disability under IDEA. Once a child is found to

be a child with a disability under IDEA, the funds may be used to provide special education and related services to the child consistent with the child’s individualized education program and subject to IDEA’s notice and consent provisions. Additional information about IDEA is available here.

English Language Acquisition Programs: States are required to set aside up to 15 percent of their Title III funds under the ESEA for subgrants to LEAs that have experienced a significant increase in immigrant students. Such funds can be used for a broad range of activities including improving instruction, providing tutoring and intensified instruction, and conducting community participation programs. Such funds may be used to serve newly arrived immigrant children regardless of whether such children are English Learners. Additional information about Title III is available here and here.

McKinney-Vento Act: The McKinney-Vento Homeless Assistance Act delineates educational rights and support for children and youth experiencing homelessness, including guaranteeing immediate access to a free, appropriate public education. Federal law identifies a number of living arrangements such as sharing the housing of others, in which inhabitants would qualify for purposes of the Act. Under McKinney-Vento, school districts must appoint a local liaison to ensure, among other things, that (1) children and youth eligible under McKinney Vento are identified; (2) that they immediately enroll in, and have a full and equal opportunity to succeed in, the schools of the district; and (3) they receive educational services for which they are eligible, and referrals to health care services, dental services, mental health services, and other appropriate services.

Unaccompanied children who are in HHS shelters would not be eligible for McKinney-Vento services, but children who are released to live with a sponsor may be eligible on a case-by-case basis under the law’s broad definition, which includes youth who are living with family members in “doubled-up” housing, i.e., sharing the housing of other persons due to economic hardship or a similar reason. School districts should refer children they believe may qualify to the district’s local liaison for further consideration and a determination of McKinney-Vento eligibility. More information about McKinney-Vento eligibility is available here and more information about the rights and services available under the McKinney-Vento Act is available here.

Migrant Education Programs (MEP): MEP funds are awarded to States under the authority of Title I, Part C of the ESEA. The MEP provides educational and supportive services to children who are migratory agricultural workers or fishers or who move with a parent or guardian who is a migratory agricultural worker or fisher. Newly arrived immigrant children may qualify as eligible migratory children on a case-by-case basis— provided they meet the program requirements and fit the program-specific definition of migratory child. Additional information about migrant education programs is available here.

National Clearinghouse for English Language Acquisition: This Clearinghouse provides non-monetary assistance in research-based strategies and approaches such as academic language development, and can also share data and models for the creation of Newcomer Centers to serve recently arrived immigrant students and English language learners. Additional information about the Clearinghouse is available here.

FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS

Q1. Do States and school districts have an obligation to educate children who arrived to the United States?

A1. Yes. Under Federal law, States and local educational agencies are obligated to provide all children – regardless of immigration status – with equal access to public education at the elementary and secondary level. This includes children such as unaccompanied children who may be involved in immigration proceedings. The U.S. Departments of Education and Justice published a joint guidance letter on this topic that is available here and a fact sheet that is available here.

Q2. Where are unaccompanied children housed while in temporary custody?

A2. The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) operates about 150 shelters throughout the nation for unaccompanied children that care for the children until they are released to sponsors, on average within 35 days. A majority of these shelters care for fewer than 50 children. Shelters are operated by non-profit organizations, generally as group homes. HHS pays for and provides all services for the children while they are in care at a shelter. This includes providing food, clothing, education, medical screening, and any needed medical care to the children. The children at these shelters do not attend local public schools, do not integrate into the local community, and remain under staff supervision at all times. Additional information about HHS custody is available here.

Q3. Are children provided with basic education services while in temporary custody at HHS shelters?

A3. Yes. The children are provided with basic education services and activities by HHS grantees. Thus, these children do not enroll in local schools while living in HHS shelters.

Q4. Are children who arrived as unaccompanied children ever enrolled in local schools?

A4. While students are in HHS custody at HHS shelters, they will not be enrolled in the local school systems. When students are released to an appropriate sponsor, typically a parent, relative or family member, or other adult sponsor, while awaiting immigration proceedings, they have a right – just like other children living in their community – to enroll in local schools regardless of their or their parents’ actual or perceived immigration or citizenship status. State laws also require children to attend school up to a certain age. A small number of children in HHS custody are placed in long-term foster care instead of being released to a sponsor. These children do enroll in public school in the community where their foster care is located. Children in all other care settings receive education at an HHS facility.

Q5. Are immunization records available for children who arrived as unaccompanied children to the United States?

A5. While at HHS shelters, the children receive vaccinations. When a child is released from HHS custody to a sponsor, the sponsor is given a copy of the child’s medical and immunization records compiled during their time in custody. If a sponsor does not have a copy of the child’s medical or immunization records, the sponsor can request a new copy from HHS via e-mail at [email protected].

Q6. Are children who arrived as unaccompanied children eligible for Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals?

A6. Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, or “DACA,” does not apply to children who arrive now or in the future in the United States. To be considered for DACA, individuals must have continually resided in the U.S. since June 2007.

Q7. Do districts have the ability to use Federal education funds to address the needs of unaccompanied children who enroll in the district?

A7. States and LEAs have the ability to use various Federal education funds for this purpose. For example, to the extent that such children attend Title I schools, they may be eligible to receive Title I, Part A services. In addition, as discussed above, States can reserve up to 15% of their Title III formula grants for immigrant subgrants, and if a State has previously reserved a lesser amount, it could increase that amount for next year’s subgrants.

Q8. Is there a place to ask additional questions about immigrant children who enroll in the district?

A8. For help with additional questions regarding resources for unaccompanied children, please call the U.S. Department of Education at 1-800-USA-LEARN or visit answers.ed.gov.

 

War, the Contradictions and the Propaganda

There is supposed to be a war between the Sunni and the Shiites, that is the plan. There is supposed to be a war between the Islamists and the Jews, that is the plan. There is supposed to be a war between Socialists and the Capitalists, that is the plan.

There is money in all of these forced wars and it is a lucrative cottage industry just like that of the war on stopping climate change.

But back to the matter of Israel, Hamas and Gaza. There are many players in this conflict including Qatar, Egypt, Lebanon, Syria, Iran, the United States and with the hostilities comes billions, even trillions. Everyone has a hand out including journalists, humanitarian organizations and government factions. It is the money and propaganda successfully encourages the signing of checks and pledges.

We have been told in recent weeks about the tunnels in Gaza but not all of the facts regarding the tunnels. These tunnels are essentially toll roads underground that are by themselves huge payday makers requiring toll fees to be paid to smuggle everything from food, weapons, narcotics and medicine. Israel knows these tunnels well and is not sharing all their knowledge with good reason. Never give up your sources, methods or operational plans.

 

There will be no peace at the other end of the destruction of Hamas and the tunnels but eliminating rockets, some smuggling and terror leaders will give way to future conditions of which is still unknown given all the Middle East players.

A secret tunnel and terror headquarters is well known but by whom is the question and who is keeping the secret and why remains to be answered.

 

Top Secret Hamas Command Bunker in Gaza Revealed

And why reporters won’t talk about it

The World is not Messy it is Evil

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]