Category Archives: Failed foreign policy

Democrats Against Geert Wilders Visit to USA

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Democrats Want to Ban Islamophobic Lawmaker From the U.S.

In a letter obtained by Foreign Policy, two Democratic members of Congress are urging the Obama administration to ban a Dutch lawmaker from entry into the United States due to his controversial views on Islam.

The Dutch lawmaker, Geert Wilders, is scheduled to speak at reception on Capitol Hill this month at the invitation of Tea Party firebrand Rep. Louie Gohmert (R-Texas). In recent years, Wilders has become internationally famous for his bombastic broadsides against Islam, which include calls to ban the Koran in the Netherlands and to arrange for the removal of Moroccan immigrants from his country. In 2010 and 2011, Wilders was formally charged with inciting hatred and discrimination and is currently facing charges for hate speech.

“We respectfully request that the U.S. government deny Mr. Wilders entry due to his participation in inciting anti-Muslim aggression and violence,” wrote Reps. Keith Ellison (D-Minn.) and André Carson (D-In.) in the April 23 letter. “Mr. Wilders’ policy agenda is centered on the principle that Christian culture is superior to other cultures.”

The letter, addressed to Secretary of State John Kerry and Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson, calls on the officials to deny Wilders entry under the authority of the International Religious Freedom Act, which empowers the State Department to ban the entry of a foreign leader responsible for severe violations of religious freedom.

The somewhat obscure 1998 law has only been used to deny the entry of a foreign official once when Narendra Modi, the current prime minister of India and former chief minister of Gujarat, was accused of failing to protect Muslims during communal rioting in 2002.

Wilders has called Islam the “ideology of a retarded culture” and his writings were favorably cited by Anders Breivik, the Norwegian white supremacist responsible for murdering 77 people in Oslo in 2012. He was most recently in the news for recording a 2-minute video titled “No Way,” in which he tells migrants not to come to the Netherlands

While foreign policy hands on Capitol Hill widely view Wilders as a loathsome and obscene bloviator, some aides questioned whether banning him from entering the country violated basic principles of free speech.

“It’s a pretty heavy handed use of that law,” said a congressional aide who oversees foreign relations issues. “And if you’re going to start banning people for saying offensive things against Islam, you’re going to have to deport half the Republican caucus.”

The letter anticipates such criticisms and attempts to justify banning Wilders on account of his alleged incitement to violence.

“In the U.S., freedom of speech is a bedrock principle that distinguishes free societies from ones living under oppressive regimes,” wrote Ellison and Carson. “Freedom of speech, however, is not absolute. It is limited by the legal and moral understanding that speech that causes the incitement of violence or prejudicial action against protected groups is wrong.”

Gohmert’s office did not respond to requests for comment.

The letter signed by Ellison and Carson is available here. Wilders’s latest video appears below:

 

Russian Terrorist in U.S. Court Today

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Russian arraigned in Virginia on new terrorism charges
By LARRY O’DELL – Associated Press – Tuesday, April 28, 2015

RICHMOND, Va. (AP) – A Russian man charged with leading a Taliban attack against U.S. forces in Afghanistan repeated his pleas of not guilty to terrorism-related charges Tuesday.

Irek Hamidullin was arraigned on a new 15-count indictment in U.S. District Court in Richmond. He previously pleaded not guilty to 12 charges. Three additional counts of trying to kill or injure an American were added in a new indictment last week.

Hamidullin is being held in federal custody until his five-day jury trial, which is set for July 27.

Handcuffed and wearing leg irons, Hamidullin listened to the proceedings Tuesday with the help of an Arabic translator and answered “not guilty” in English when asked for his plea.

Assistant U.S. Attorney Michael Gill said many of charges, including providing material support to terrorism and trying to destroy U.S. military aircraft, are punishable by up to life in prison. Attorney General Eric Holder chose not to seek the death penalty for a charge of using a weapon of mass destruction.

Hamidullin is the first military detainee from Afghanistan to be brought to the U.S. for trial. The Obama administration is trying to show that it can use the criminal court system to deal with terror suspects – a move criticized by some Republican lawmakers who believe such cases should be handled by military tribunals.

According to U.S. officials, Hamidullin is a Russian veteran of the Soviet war in Afghanistan who stayed in the country and joined the Taliban. He was captured in 2009 after an attack on Afghan border police and U.S. soldiers in Khowst province. He had been held at the U.S. Parwan detention facility at Bagram airfield before being brought to the U.S.

*** While we have not been paying much attention on November 4, 2014:

WASHINGTON—Irek Ilgiz Hamidullin made his first appearance today in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia on federal terrorism offenses arising from his alleged participation in an attack on U.S. troops and Afghan Border Police in the Khost Province of Afghanistan in November 2009.

Hamidullin was indicted by a federal grand jury on twelve counts, including conspiring to provide and providing material support to terrorists; conspiring and attempting to destroy an aircraft of the armed forces of the United States; conspiring and attempting to murder a national of the United States; and other offenses.

The charges carry a potential maximum penalty of life imprisonment.

Hamidullin, a Russian national approximately 55 years of age, was taken into custody in November 2009 and held by the Department of Defense in Afghanistan until being turned over to the FBI on Nov. 3 and brought to the United States to face charges.

The defendant was indicted on Oct. 8, 2014, and the charging document was unsealed today.

Arraignment is set for Friday at 10:00 a.m. in front of U.S. District Judge Henry E. Hudson at the federal courthouse in Richmond, Virginia.

An indictment is merely a formal allegation that a defendant has committed a violation of criminal laws and every defendant is presumed innocent until, and unless, proven guilty.

The case is being investigated by the FBI’s Washington Field Office with substantial assistance from various other government agencies. The case is being prosecuted by the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of Virginia and the Counterterrorism Section of the Justice Department’s National Security Division.

 

IRGCN Takes Control of Cargo Ship

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While all media is reporting on the mayhem in Baltimore, the P5+1 is still in talks with Iran on the nuclear program. Each time these talks re-commence, Iran has a side-line operation that otherwise would terminate the talks, but in Obama’s world with John Kerry in the lead….not so much.

Update with more details:

WASHINGTON — Iranian vessels fired upon a cargo ship flagged to the Marshall Islands Tuesday morning, forcing the ship to travel deeper into Iranian waters — and setting off another round of tensions between Iran and the US.

Col. Steven Warren, Pentagon spokesman, confirmed that Iranian patrol vessels intercepted the shipping vessel Maersk Tigris around 5 a.m. Washington time. At that time, the vessels ordered the ship to travel deeper into Iranian waters. It is not clear if the Maersk had inadvertently traveled into Iranian territory.

When the Maersk did not respond immediately, the Iranian vessels fired shots across the bow of the cargo ship, which then complied with the order. The Iranian forces then boarded the vessel.

Warren said the ship is now located in the “vicinity” of Larak Island, in the Strait of Hormuz. According to VesselFinder.com, the ship was traveling from Jeddah in Saudi Arabia to Jebel Ali in the UAE.

Although the Marshall Islands are a sovereign nation, the US has “full authority and responsibility for security and defense” of the islands, according to a State Department fact sheet. That puts a US response in play in what represents an escalation of the standoff between Iran and the US.

After receiving a distress signal from the cargo ship, Naval Forces Central Command dispatched the destroyer Farragut to proceed at best speed to the location of the Maersk and has sent a single maritime patrol and reconnaissance aircraft to observe the situation, Warren said. He did not clarify what that aircraft was, but the Navy counts both the P-3 and P-8 under that designation.

Warren said that it is “unlikely” Farragut would enter Iranian territory.

He added that there were no American citizens onboard the vessel, which has a crew of about 30.

Warren said that at first glance the situation “seems to be provocative” on the part of the Iranian ships, but noted that there are still gaps of information about the initial incident.

“It is inappropriate” on the part of the Iranian forces, he added.

The past week has seen a spike in tensions between the two countries after US Navy ships began shadowing a convoy of Iranian cargo ships that the Pentagon believed may be carrying weapons to aid militant forces in Yemen.

That situation dispersed last week when the Iranian convoy turned away from Yemen, but no doubt remains fresh in the minds of both nations.

Asked if the seizure of the Maersk was retaliation for last week’s standoff, Warren said there was “no way to know” at this time.

Craig Allen, a professor at the University of Washington with an expertise in maritime law, called Iran’s actions “highly unusual.”

“Iran often beats its chest about shutting down this strait as a countermeasure to Western aggression, but it’s all been talk up to this point,” Allen said. “Actually pulling a commercial vessel out and pulling it into an Iranian port, I’m shocked.”

Allen explained that the Strait of Hormuz operates under the law of transit passage as laid out by a 1982 UN convention on the law of the sea. Although neither the US nor Iran signed that convention, the nations have treated the rules of navigation transit as legally binding.

The rules of transit passage guarantees any vessel the right to use the strait with only “very limited” restrictions, Allen said. Those restrictions include if the ship is not proceeding without delay through the strait or is excessively polluting.

Those rules seem to be broad enough that Iran could claim a violation — it would be easy to claim the shipping vessel was moving too slowly through its waters or dumped trash overboard — yet Allen said such actions are extremely rare.

While acknowledging Iran could have been responding to the US actions last week, Allen brought up a slightly different possibility, one that could set the naval status quo of the region on its side.

“Obviously, the Iranians and Saudis aren’t getting along right now,” Allen said, before noting that the ship came from a Saudi port. “Maybe Iran believes the rules are shifting to the law of naval warfare with Saudi Arabia… The fact it’s coming out of Saudi Arabia, I have to think the Iranians somehow are connecting this to the Saudi action on behalf of the government.”

It was just a handful of days ago, that the Pentagon re-positioned naval assets in the region to ensure the free access to shipping lanes as told to us by State Department spokesperson, Marie Harf. That does not appear to be working well.


As reported by NAVCENT, which is Naval Central Command officials:

BREAKING: Iran Seizes Marshall Island Ship; U.S. Destroyer En Route

This is a breaking news story and will be updated as the situation develops.

Iranian navy vessels shot at a Marshall Island-flagged cargo ship in the Strait of Hormuz and directed it further into Iranian territorial waters, the Pentagon confirmed. U.S. Naval Forces Central Command (NAVCENT) has sent aircraft to observe and directed USS Farragut (DDG-99) to proceed to the area.

After the cargo ship was surrounded by Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps Navy (IRGCN) patrol craft, “the master was contacted and directed to proceed further into Iranian territorial waters,” according to a statement from Pentagon spokesman Steve Warren.
“He declined and one of the IRGCN craft fired shots across the bridge of the Maersk Tigris. The master complied with the Iranian demand and proceeded into Iranian waters in the vicinity of Larak Island.”

Warren said that NAVCENT is in touch with the shipping company and continues to monitor the situation. The shipping company told NAVCENT there are no Americans onboard, he added.

According to Vessel Finder, the container ship made its last port stop in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, after several stops earlier in the month throughout Turkey, and was headed to Jebel Ali, United Arab Emirates. The ship was expected to reach its destination at 21:30 UTC/Zulu time. Instead, the ship was last reported at 14:20 Zulu off the coast of Bandar Abbas, Iran, near the narrowest part of the Strait of Hormuz. Warren said the IRGCN vessels surrounded the cargo ship at 0905 Zulu.

The following is the complete statement from the Pentagon:

“At approximately 0905 Zulu, April 28, M/V Maersk Tigris, a Marshall Islands-flagged cargo vessel, was approached by several Iranian IRGCN patrol vessels while in Iranian territorial waters transiting inbound in the Strait of Hormuz. The master was contacted and directed to proceed further into Iranian territorial waters. He declined and one of the IRGCN craft fired shots across the bridge of the Maersk Tigris. The master complied with the Iranian demand and proceeded into Iranian waters in the vicinity of Larak Island. NAVCENT directed a DDG (USS Farragut) to proceed at best speed to the nearest location of Maersk Tigris, and directed aircraft to observe the interaction between the Maersk vessel and the IRGCN craft. NAVCENT is communicating with representatives of the shipping company and we continue to monitor the situation. According to information received from the vessel’s operators, there are no Americans aboard.”

Clinton Foundation Tight Ties that Bond

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In 2008, Hillary Clinton promised Barack Obama, the president-elect, there would be no mystery about who was giving money to her family’s globe-circling charities. She made a pledge to publish all the donors on an annual basis to ease concerns that as secretary of state she could be vulnerable to accusations of foreign influence.

Then…

The Clinton Foundation failed to submit a $500,000 donation from the Algerian government to the State Department for approval under an ethics agreement put in place as Hillary Clinton was being confirmed as secretary of state, a foundation spokesman acknowledged Wednesday.

Then…

Clinton: “[Obama’s] Transition Team Began Working With The Foundation To Try To Craft An Agreement That Would Avoid The Appearance Of A Conflict But Would Also Ensure That The Foundation Can Continue Its Work.” JOHN KERRY: “And this is going to take a very significant hands-on effort, as I think you know. We’ve been, obviously, reading about or hearing about the potential of special envoys, as series of them. Do you want to address that at all today?” HILLARY CLINTON: “Well, no final decisions have been made. That is a tool that I think you will see more use of. I believe that special envoys, particularly, vis a vis military commands, have a lot to recommend in order to make sure that we’ve got the civilian presence well represented. …. because all of the independent professionals who do this for our government said there was no conflict. So it’s a kind of a catch-as-catch-can problem. I mean, when it was all submitted to the Office of Government Ethics, they said there was no inherent conflict. My husband doesn’t take a salary. He has no financial interests in any of this. I don’t take a salary. I have no financial interests. So out of that abundance of caution and a desire to avoid even the appearance, the president-elect’s transition team began working with the foundation to try to craft an agreement that would avoid the appearance of a conflict but would also ensure that the foundation can continue its work.”

There is SO much more. So, taking a look at 2009 Foundation donors…

2009 donors to Clinton foundation

The Associated Press

The 2009 donors to the William J. Clinton Foundation who have given at least

$1,000 to the former president’s charity since its founding include:

MORE THAN $25 MILLION:

Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation

Frank Giustra, Chief Executive Officer, The Radcliffe Foundation

UNITAID (most passed through the foundation for commodity purchases)

$10 MILLION TO $25 MILLION:

AUSAID

COPRESIDA (all passed through the foundation for commodity purchases)

Government of Norway

Hunter Foundation

ELMA Foundation

$5,000,001 TO $10 MILLION:

S.D. Abraham

Clinton Giustra Sustainable Growth Initiative – Canada

Elton John AIDS Foundation

Nationale Postcode Loterij

Wasserman Foundation

For the full 2009 donor list go here. Then there is Ooredoo. What is that?

Ooredoo (formerly Qtel Group) is a brand name of a telecommunications provider. Ooredoo has grown rapidly through acquisitions in Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, Tunisia, Maldives, Algeria, Palestinian territories, Myanmar, Oman and Bosnia and Herzegovina (merger of HT eronet and BH Telecom).

The company has developed to become a provider of mobile services, wireless services, wireline services, and content services, with varying market share in the domestic and international telecommunication markets and in the business (corporations and individuals) and residential markets. *** The al Thani dynasty is deeply connected to the White House as one must recall that the Taliban 5 released from Gitmo in exchange for Bowe Bergdahl live in Doha, Qatar under house arrest until….until June 1, 2015.

The company is partly state-owned, which has sometimes led to political interventions.  The company’s Qatar branch’s monopoly was lifted when Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa Al Thani, Qatar’s emir, issued a law restructuring the ICT sector’s administration and lifting Qtel’s monopoly in 2006. Its competitors include Vodafone, Saudi Telecom Company, and Zain. *** Ooredoo, the GSMA, and their partners announced a number of major new initiatives for the GSMA Connected Women Programme at the Clinton Global Initiative (CGI) Annual Meeting in New York recently.
The Connected Women Programme will undertake studies that will offer critical insights into the socio-economic benefits of greater inclusion of women in the telecommunications sector. The findings will be used by partners – including Ooredoo – to develop initiatives and services for female consumers and employees.
Ooredoo will draw on the data to provide tailored services for women in Myanmar, aiming to connect millions of women to mobile and internet services– many of whom have never had access to the Internet before.
In addition, Ooredoo’s Indosat will draw on the data to launch new services designed for women in Indonesia. Indosat will launch a new start-up called Wobe, targeting lower to middle income Indonesian women with voice, data and internet services.
Chelsea Clinton, Vice Chair, Clinton Foundation, said: “‘Ensuring that women can fully participate in this growing mobile economy by joining the mobile workforce and lending their creative talent to what these devices can do is important, but also essential is increasing connectivity for women so that they can experience the economic benefits and growth that can make measureable differences in their lives and for all of us.”
H.E. Sheikh Abdullah Bin Mohammed Bin Saud Al Thani, Chairman, Ooredoo Group, said: “Ooredoo companies have already taken the lead in providing award-winning services for women in markets ranging from Iraq to Indonesia. By deploying the findings of the Connected Women Programme, we will be able to further refine and develop these initiatives in support of expanding the female digital economy in all our markets.”

 

 

Brennan and his Kill Drone Operation

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Catch him if you can, as speeches to one audience are very different from those to another audience. CIA Chief, John Brennan is the designer of the Obama drone program and ‘that’ kill list.

In part: No one else was double-checking the administration’s work, and making sure that what Brennan called the “surgical” approach was only killing bad guys and not simply peasants with guns, civilians whose deaths might prolong the conflict. It was a secret program with an ad hoc structure and no real oversight or outside checks — only John Brennan. The courts weren’t interested even when Americans started showing up on the kill lists, and Congress was lost in a confused thicket of jurisdictional limitations surrounding covert action in the military and CIA. As one congressional staffer told me last year, “No one has a 360-degree view of this.” That left only public opinion, and the White House had a strategy for that. *** Almost a year later, in May 2012, the New York Times revealed that the U.S. had developed a new way of counting casualties. Instead of two categories, the U.S. had only one: militant. The U.S. assumed that every adult male who was killed — whether their names were known or not — was guilty. There were no innocent among the dead. The whole thing was an accounting trick.

But, Obama declared he has a pen and a phone. He can change anything, and does. Meanwhile, the family of Dr. Weinstein, the USAID worker killed in the drone strike, did pay a ransom to get him released. So that pesky and common question remains often, what did the White House know and when did it know it?

President Obama secretly granted the Central Intelligence Agency more flexibility to conduct drone strikes targeting terror suspects in Pakistan than anywhere else in the world after approving more restrictive rules in 2013, according to a published report.

The Wall Street Journal, citing current and former U.S. officials, reported that Obama approved a waiver exempting the CIA from proving that militants targeted in Pakistan posed an imminent threat to the U.S. According to the paper, under that standard, the agency might have been prevented from carrying out a Jan. 15 strike that killed an American and an Italian who were held hostage by Al Qaeda-linked militants.

The deaths of Dr. Warren Weinstein and Giovanni Lo Porto have renewed debate in Washington over what, if any, new limits should be put on the drone program. After announcing the deaths of Weinstein and Lo Porto on Thursday, Obama said that he had ordered a “full review,” but said the strike that killed the hostages was “fully consistent with the guidelines under which we conduct counterterrorism efforts in the region.”

The CIA conducts drone strikes in Pakistan as well as in Yemen, where it works alongside the military. The Pentagon has also conducted drone strikes in Somalia.

Drone strikes carried out by the CIA fall into two categories. Specific terror leaders are targeted due to their presence on a so-called “kill list.” Strikes that target anyone on a “kill list” must be approved personally by Obama. The second type of operation is a so-called “signature strike”, which does not need the president’s approval and can be carried out against any suspected group of militants. It was the latter type of operation that resulted in the hostages’ deaths on Jan. 15.

The Journal reports that while Obama issued a directive in 2013 aimed at eventually eliminated “signature strikes” in an effort to cut down on civilian deaths, officials say many of the changes specified in the directive either haven’t been implemented or have been works in progress.

The paper also reports that the CIA’s Pakistan drone strike program was initially exempted from the “imminent threat” requirement until the end of U.S. and NATO combat operations in Afghanistan. Officials told the Journal that waiver was extended when Obama decided to keep U.S. troops in Afghanistan beyond the original withdrawal date of December 2014, though it is not clear exactly when this happened.

If the “imminent threat” requirement had been extended to Pakistan, the Journal reports, the CIA would have had to carry out more surveillance of the suspected militants, possibly preventing the fatal Jan. 15 mission from being launched.

In addition to Weinstein and Lo Porto, the drone strike also killed two Americans who had leadership roles with Al Qaeda. U.S. officials told the Associated Press late last week that the compound was targeted because intelligence showed it was frequented by Al Qaeda leaders.

Late Sunday, the Wall Street Journal reported that heat sensors and other surveillance tolls indicated that there were only four people at the compound, not the six who were ultimately killed. Analysts tell the paper that they now believe Weinstein and Lo Porto were kept underground, either in a basement or a tunnel, which would have prevented them from being detected by heat sensors.