Category Archives: Failed foreign policy

UN Considering a Rewrite of Israel’s History

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UNITED NATIONS (AP) — Arab ambassadors met Monday to discuss Palestinian amendments to a U.N. resolution that would call for an end to Israel’s occupation within three years, a move vehemently opposed by Israel.

Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas said the revised resolution would be submitted Monday and voted on Tuesday.

Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Monday that if the Security Council doesn’t reject the resolution “we will.”

The Palestinian Authority is “seeking to impose on us a diktat that would undermine Israel’s security, put its future in peril,” Netanyahu said in a statement. “Israel will oppose conditions that endanger our future.”

Jordan’s U.N. Ambassador Dina Kawar, the Arab representative on the Security Council, told reporters as she headed into Monday’s closed-door meeting that Jordan would have liked more consultations among the 15 council members but respects “very much” that the Palestinian situation is difficult.

“We will be doing what the Palestinians want and in conformity with the Arab League,” she said.

The Security Council is almost certain to reject a resolution with a timetable to end Israel’s occupation. Even if the resolution musters the minimum nine required “yes” votes, the United States, Israel’s closest ally, will likely veto it. The U.S. insists there must be a negotiated solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Netanyahu said Israel expects “the international community — at least the responsible members of that community — to oppose vigorously this U.N. diktat, this U.N. Security Council resolution because what we need always is direct negotiations and not imposed conditions.”

Palestinian U.N. Ambassador Riyad Mansour has said the Palestinians can’t return “to the same cycle of failed negotiations,” which he says Israel uses to entrench its occupation. He has urged international support for the resolution setting a deadline for a complete Israeli withdrawal.

The Palestinians circulated a draft on Oct. 1 asking the council to set a deadline of November 2016 for an Israeli withdrawal from all Palestinian territory occupied since 1967. France had been working for a U.N. resolution aimed at restarting Israeli-Palestinian peace negotiations, setting a two-year deadline for success.

Palestinian official Saeb Erakat said Sunday that the amended resolution calls for ending the Israeli occupation within three years and establishing a Palestinian independent state within the 1967 borders with East Jerusalem as its capital. He said it also calls for solving the problem of Palestinian refugees in accordance with U.N. resolutions and the release of Palestinian prisoners in Israeli jails.

In December 2011, former House Speaker and presidential candidate, Newt Gingrich made the following observation regarding the Palestinians;

Remember there was no Palestine as a state. It was part of the Ottoman Empire. And I think that we’ve had an invented Palestinian people, who are in fact Arabs, and were historically part of the Arab community…

That comment set off a firestorm of debate and criticism but is in actuality, grounded in historical fact. As noted historian Benny Morris pointed out in his acclaimed book, 1948: The First Arab-Israeli War, at the turn of the 20th century, most Arabs residing in the Land of Israel or “Palestine” considered themselves to be subjects of the Ottoman Empire. There were some Palestinian Arabs with vague nationalistic tendencies but even this minority considered itself to be part of Greater Syria. There simply was no reference to an independent Palestine for a distinct group of people calling themselves “Palestinians.”

Morris also perceptively notes that the residents of Palestinian villages routinely failed to come to the assistance of nearby villages that were under attack by Jewish forces thus reinforcing the view that Arab villagers felt little loyalty to all but clan and village. The notion of a “Palestinian people” was an alien concept to the common Palestinian villager who was not bound by any sense of duty to assist a neighboring village.

Occasionally, Palestinians themselves will acknowledge this fact. In a revealing 1977 interview with the Dutch newspaper Trouw, PLO executive committee member Zahir Muhsein stated,

The Palestinian people does not exist. The creation of a Palestinian state is only a means for continuing our struggle against the state of Israel for our Arab unity. In reality today there is no difference between Jordanians, Palestinians, Syrians and Lebanese. Only for political and tactical reasons do we speak today about the existence of a Palestinian people, since Arab national interests demand that we posit the existence of a distinct ‘Palestinian people’ to oppose Zionism.

For tactical reasons, Jordan, which is a sovereign state with defined borders, cannot raise claims to Haifa and Jaffa. While as a Palestinian, I can undoubtedly demand Haifa, Jaffa, Beer-Sheva and Jerusalem. However, the moment we reclaim our right to all of Palestine, we will not wait even a minute to unite Palestine and Jordan.

It was a rare but astonishing moment of candor. A senior PLO member was openly acknowledging what few would readily admit. But his was not an isolated admission. In a March 2012 televised address, Hamas Minister of the Interior and of National Security Fathi Hammad essentially validated Gingrich’s assessment of the Palestinians. While pleading for Egyptian fuel, Hammad let loose with a series of embarrassing admissions that were certainly not intended for Western audiences.

“Every Palestinian…throughout Palestine can prove his Arab roots, whether from Saudi Arabia or Yemen or anywhere.” He went on to say that “personally, half my family is Egyptian, we are all like that.” And further buries himself deeper by stating, “Brothers, half the Palestinians are Egyptian and the other half are Saudis…Who are the Palestinians?” he asks rhetorically. “We have families called al-Masri whose roots are Egyptian, Egyptian! We are Egyptian! We are Arab! We are Muslim!” He concludes his rant with the obligatory Muslim battle cry, “Allahuakbar!” Curiously absent from his long diatribe is any recognition of an independent Palestinian identity and that’s precisely because there simply isn’t any.

Lacking their own independent history, culture and identity, Palestinians have adopted a strategy of denying Jewish history. Arafat, for example, flat out denied the fact that great Jewish Temples, built first by king Solomon and then by Herod, once stood where the Al-Aqsa Mosque currently stands. So ridiculous were his comments that they earned a swift rebuke from President Clinton. Arafat’s successor, Mahmoud Abbas taking cue from his boss also adopted this odious position. It should therefore come as no surprise that Abbas is also a confirmed Holocaust denier, despite his transparent efforts to rehabilitate his image for his gullible Western audience.

Palestinian Arabs have also attempted to recruit Western “experts” and academics to their cause. In his insightful book The Fight for Jerusalem: Radical Islam, the West, and the Future of the Holy City, veteran Israeli diplomat Dore Gold chronicles the length to which Arab-Muslims and their Western lackeys will go to deny the Jewish nexus to the Land of Israel. They argued that much of ancient Jewish history was nothing but mythology including the Kingdoms of David and Solomon.

From the Arab perspective, the tactic was a sound one. Sever the ancient historical Jewish nexus with Israel and you severely undermine claims of indigenousness. But archeology does not lie and those very Western academics (at least the intellectually honest ones) were forced to retract their findings and conclusions after the dramatic 1993 discovery of a 9th century stele at Tel Dan in northern Israel that clearly referenced the “House of David.” Additional discoveries since then, including finds in Jerusalem, Tel Zayit and at the Fortress of Elah have further eroded claims by skeptics and naysayers.

Not content with denying Jewish history, Palestinian Arabs have actually attempted to co-opt it by absurdly claiming that Moses as well as King Saul were Palestinian Muslims who conquered and claimed “Palestine” for the benefit of Palestinians. These risible comments were spewed forth by “Dr.” Omar Ja’ara, a lecturer at Al-Najah University in Nablus and broadcast on Palestinian Authority TV. He notes further that the actions of Moses and Saul represented “the first Palestinian liberation through armed struggle to liberate Palestine… this is our logic and this is our culture.”

Incidentally, Al-Najah University boasts on its website that it is “the first Palestinian University to obtain the EFQM European Certificate of Excellence.” Something to bear in mind next time any parent contemplates sending their child off to Europe for higher education.

Of course it doesn’t matter that Saul lived approximately 1,700 years before Muhammad was zygote. Facts play absolutely no role in Palestinian academia. Empirical data and evidence is ignored. Precedence is given to upholding a false, pernicious and viscerally anti-Semitic narrative that either denies historical fact or co-opts it.

As PLO bigwig Zahir Muhsein candidly noted, the claim of a Palestinian identity is a myth whose aim is not designed to achieve liberation or advancement for any particular people but rather to subjugate and destroy another people. For those of you, who still remain unconvinced; consider the recent comments made by a prominent sheikh during a religious sermon at the Al-Aqsa Mosque. During his tirade, which included the usual dose of anti-Semitic vitriol, the sheikh never once uttered a desire or longing for Palestinian statehood. Instead he expresses the desire to join with ISIS in its quest for an Islamic caliphate and asks the large crowd of acolytes surrounding him to, “pledge allegiance to the Muslim Caliph,” and they in turn respond with chants of “amen!”

Few in the West have faced up to this malevolent reality. They continue to adhere to the harmful, dogmatic formula of a two-state solution. What they willfully fail to realize is that such a solution poses an existential threat to the Mideast’s only democracy and will most certainly have grave negative consequences for the region at large.

Ari Lieberman is an attorney and former prosecutor who has authored numerous articles and publications on matters concerning the Middle East and is considered an authority on geo-political and military developments affecting the region.

U.S. Flag Down in Kabul, Taliban’s Rises

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KABUL, Afghanistan — The war in Afghanistan, fought for 13 bloody years and still raging, came to a formal end Sunday with a quiet flag-lowering ceremony in Kabul.

The event marked the transition of the fighting from U.S.-led combat troops to the country’s own security forces.

In front of a small, hand-picked audience at the headquarters of the NATO mission, the green-and-white flag of the International Security Assistance Force was ceremonially rolled up and sheathed, and the flag of the new international mission called Resolute Support was hoisted.

U.S. Gen. John Campbell, commander of ISAF, commemorated the 3,500 international soldiers killed on Afghan battlefields and praised the country’s army for giving him confidence that they are able to take on the fight alone.

“Resolute Support will serve as the bedrock of an enduring partnership” between NATO and Afghanistan, Campbell told an audience of Afghan and international military officers and officials, as well as diplomats and journalists.

“The road before us remains challenging, but we will triumph,” he added.

Beginning Jan. 1, the new mission will provide training and support for Afghanistan’s military, with the U.S. accounting for almost 11,000 of the 13,500 members of the residual force.

“Thanks to the extraordinary sacrifices of our men and women in uniform, our combat mission in Afghanistan is ending, and the longest war in American history is coming to a responsible conclusion,” President Obama said in a statement issued in Hawaii, where he is on vacation with his family.

Afghan President Ashraf Ghani, who took office in September, signed bilateral security agreements with Washington and NATO allowing the ongoing military presence.

ISAF was set up after the 2001 U.S.-led invasion as an umbrella for the coalition of around 50 nations that provided troops and took responsibility for security across the country. It ends with 2,224 American soldiers killed, according to an Associated Press tally.

Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid called Sunday’s event a “defeat ceremony” and said the insurgents’ fight would continue.

Taliban Claims America ‘Defeated’ in Afghanistan

Reuters is reporting that:

Taliban insurgents in Afghanistan on Monday declared the “defeat” of the U.S. and its allies in the 13-year-old war, a day after the coalition officially marked the end of its combat mission.

Meanwhile, as the AP reports:

Thousands of Afghans are pouring into makeshift camps in the capital where they face a harsh winter as the Taliban return to areas once cleared by foreign forces, who this week are marking the end of their combat mission.

And, as Heath Druzin of Stars and Stripes reports, some U.S. troops will remain in Afghanistan in what their commander describes as:

“… a non-combat mission in a combat environment.”

***

At the end of President Obama’s sixth year in office, the commander in chief who once vowed to end America’s longest period of war still maintains thousands of troops in Afghanistan and Iraq — conflicts that refuse to conform to neat White House timetables.

The end of this year marks an end to the official combat role for the U.S. in Afghanistan. As 2015 dawns, U.S. troops transition to a training and support role, even as the Taliban is increasing its attacks. And in Iraq, more U.S. troops will be on the way to a war that was supposed to be over, at least as far as the U.S. goes.

Read more here.

 

 

The Cyber Panic Begins: FBI, DHS and Defense

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Update:  On his last press conference of the year, Barack Obama said that Sony made a mistake by surrendering to the threats posed by the hacks and Barack said he wished that the leadership of Sony has spoken to him personally. Well the truth is, Sony DID call the White House and explained the matter in detail to Obama’s senior staff. Obama lied.

FBI Director James Comey gave an intense interview about cyber war and the risks to America. The single most important job of government is to keep the homeland safe and to ensure national defense and national security. You can bet that real events and the depth of the cyber damage to America is not being told. So how bad could it be? That answer is left up to us. Yet the FBI did publish a statement on the Sony investigation.

FBI Beefs Up Amid Explosion of Cybercrime

Cybercrime is one of the priorities for the FBI, which has 13,260 special agents across the country, according to the agency.

Comey said he sees a “tremendous amount of cyberespionage going on — the Chinese being prominent among them, looking to steal our intellectual property.”

“I see a whole lot of hacktivists, I see a whole lot of international criminal gangs, very sophisticated thieves,” he said. “I see people hurting kids, tons of pedophiles, an explosion of child pornography.”

Cybercrime is one of the priorities for the FBI, which has 13,260 special agents across the country, including on Oahu, Maui and Hawaii island, according to the agency. The FBI had an $8.3 billion budget in fiscal 2014.

Forget the Sony Hack, This Could Be the Biggest Cyber Attack of 2015

By Patrick Tucker

On Friday, the FBI officially named North Korea as the party responsible for a cyber attack and email theft against Sony Pictures. The Sony hack saw many studio executives’ sensitive and embarrassing emails leaked online. The hackers threatened to attack theaters on the opening day of the offending film, “The Interview,” and Sony pulled the plug on the movie, effectively censoring a major Hollywood studio.

The end of “The Interview” is not the end of the world. Technology journalists were quick to point out that, even though the cyber attack could be attributable to a nation state actor, it wasn’t particularly sophisticated. Ars Technica’s Sean Gallagher likened it to a “software pipe bomb.” The fallout, of course, was limited. And while President Barack Obama vowed to respond to the attack, he also said it was a mistake for Sony to back down.

“I think all of us have to anticipate occasionally there are going to be breaches like this. They’re going to be costly. They’re going to be serious. We take them with the utmost seriousness. But we can’t start changing our patterns of behavior any more than we stop going to a football game because there might be the possibility of a terrorist attack; any more than Boston didn’t run its marathon this year because of the possibility that somebody might try to cause harm. So, let’s not get into that — that way of doing business,” he said at a White House briefing on Friday.

But according to cyber-security professionals, the Sony hack may be a prelude to a cyber attack on United States infrastructure that could occur in 2015, as a result of a very different, self-inflicted document dump from the Department of Homeland Security in July.

Important training video.  

2015: The Year of Aurora?

Here’s the background: On July 3, DHS, which plays “key role” in responding to cyber-attacks on the nation, replied to a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request on a malware attack on Google called “Operation Aurora.”

Unfortunately, as Threatpost writer Dennis Fisher reports, DHS officials made a grave error in their response. DHS released more than 800 pages of documents related not to Operation Aurora but rather the Aurora Project, a 2007 research effort led by Idaho National Laboratory demonstrating how easy it was to hack elements in power and water systems.

Oops.

The Aurora Project exposed a vulnerability common to many electrical generators, water pumps and other pieces of infrastructure, wherein an attacker remotely opens and closes key circuit breakers, throwing the machine’s rotating parts out of synchronization causing parts of the system to break down.

In 2007, in an effort to caste light on the vulnerability that was common to many electrical components, researchers from Idaho National Lab staged an Aurora attack live on CNN. The video is below.

How widespread is the Aurora vulnerability? In this 2013 article for Power Magazine:

“The Aurora vulnerability affects much more than rotating equipment inside power plants. It affects nearly every electricity system worldwide and potentially any rotating equipment—whether it generates power or is essential to an industrial or commercial facility.”

The article was written by Michael Swearingen, then manager for regulatory policy for Tri-County Electric Cooperative (now retired), Steven Brunasso, a technology operations manager for a municipal electric utility, Booz Allen Hamilton critical infrastructure specialist Dennis Huber and Joe Weiss, a managing partner for Applied Control Solutions.

Weiss today is a Defense Department subcontractor working with the Navy’s Mission Assurance Division. His specific focus is fixing Aurora vulnerabilities. He calls DHS’s error “breathtaking.”

The vast majority of the 800 or so pages are of no consequence, says Weiss, but a small number contain information that could be extremely useful to someone looking to perpetrate an attack. “Three of their slides constitute a hit list of critical infrastructure. They tell you by name which [Pacific Gas and Electric] substations you could use to destroy parts of grid. They give the name of all the large pumping stations in California.”

The publicly available documents that DHS released do indeed contain the names and physical locations of specific Pacific Gas and Electric Substations that may be vulnerable to attack.

Defense One shared the documents with Jeffrey Carr, CEO of the cyber-security firm Taia Global and the author of Inside Cyber Warfare: Mapping the Cyber Underworld. “I’d agree…This release certainly didn’t help make our critical infrastructure any safer and for certain types of attackers, this information could save them some time in their pre-attack planning,” he said.

Perpetrating an Aurora attack is not easy, but it becomes much easier the more knowledge a would-be attacker has on the specific equipment they may want to target.

How easy is it to launch an Aurora attack?

In this 2011 paper for the Protective Relay Engineers’ 64th Annual Conference, Mark Zeller, a service provider with Schweitzer Engineering Laborites lays out—broadly—the information an attacker would have to have to execute a successful Aurora attack. “The perpetrator must have knowledge of the local power system, know and understand the power system interconnections, initiate the attack under vulnerable system load and impedance conditions and select a breaker capable of opening and closing quickly enough to operate within the vulnerability window.”

“Assuming the attack is initiated via remote electronic access, the perpetrator needs to understand and violate the electronic media, find a communications link that is not encrypted or is unknown to the operator, ensure no access alarm is sent to the operators, know all passwords, or enter a system that has no authentication.”

That sounds like a lot of hurdles to jump over. But utilities commonly rely on publicly available equipment and common communication protocols (DNP, Modbus, IEC 60870-5-103, IEC 61850, Telnet, QUIC4/QUIN, and Cooper 2179) to handle links between different parts their systems. It makes equipment easier to run, maintain, repair and replace. But in that convenience lies vulnerability.

In their Power Magazine article, the authors point out that “compromising any of these protocols would allow the malicious party to control these systems outside utility operations.”

Defense One reached out to DHS to ask them if they saw any risk in the accidental document dump. A DHS official wrote back with this response: “As part of a recent Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request related to Operation Aurora, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) National Programs and Protection Directorate provided several previously released documents to the requestor. It appears that those documents may not have been specifically what the requestor was seeking; however, the documents were thoroughly reviewed for sensitive or classified information prior to their release to ensure that critical infrastructure security would not be compromised.”

Weiss calls the response “nonsense.”

The risk posed by DHS accidental document release may be large, as Weiss argues, or nonexistent, as DHS would have you believe. But even if it’s the latter, Aurora vulnerabilities remain a key concern.

Perry Pederson, who was the director of Control Systems Security Program at DHS in 2007 when the Aurora vulnerability was first exposed, said as much in a blog post in July after the vulnerability was discovered. He doesn’t lay blame at the feet of DHS. But his words echo those of Weiss in their urgency.

“Fast forward to 2014. What have we learned about the protection of critical cyber-physical assets? Based on various open source media reports in just the first half of 2014, we don’t seem to be learning how to defend at the same rate as others are learning to breach.”

Aurora vs. the Sony Hack

In many ways the Aurora vulnerability is a much harder problem to defend against than the Sony hack, simply because there is no obvious incentive for any utility operator to take any of the relatively simple costs necessary to defend against it. And they are simple. Weiss says that a commonly available device installed on vulnerable equipment could effectively solve the problem, making it impossible to make the moving parts spin out of synchronization. There are two devices on the market iGR-933 rotating equipment isolation device (REID) and an SEL 751A, that purport to shield equipment from “out-of-phase” states.

To his knowledge, Weiss says, Pacific Gas and Electric has not installed any of them anywhere, even though the Defense Department will actually give them away to utility companies that want them, simply because DOD has an interest in making sure that bases don’t have to rely on backup power and water in the event of a blackout. “DOD bought several of the iGR-933, they bought them to give them away to utilities with critical substations,” Weiss said. “Even though DOD was trying to give them away, they couldn’t give them to any of the utilities because any facility they put them in would become a ‘critical facility’ and the facility would be open to NERC–CIP audits.”

Aurora is not a zero-day vulnerability, an attack that exploits an entirely new vector giving the victim “zero days” to figure out a patch. The problem is that there is no way to know that they are being implemented until someone, North Korea or someone else, chooses to exploit them.

Can North Korea pull of an Aurora vulnerability? Weiss says yes. “North Korea and Iran and are capable of doing things like this.”

Would such an attack constitute an act of cyber war? The answer is maybe. Speaking to reporters at the Pentagon on Friday, Pentagon Press Secretary Rear Adm. John Kirby said “I’m also not able to lay out in any specificity for you what would be or wouldn’t be an act of war in the cyber domain. It’s not like there’s a demarcation line that exists in some sort of fixed space on what is or isn’t. The cyber domain remains challenging, it remains very fluid. Part of the reason why it’s such a challenging domain for us is because there aren’t internationally accepted norms and protocols. And that’s something that we here in the Defense Department have been arguing for.”

Peter Singer, in conversation with Jason Koebler at Motherboard, says that the bar for actual military engagement against North Korea is a lot higher than hacking a major Hollywood movie studio.

“We didn’t go to war with North Korea when they murdered American soldiers in the 1970s with axes. We didn’t go to war with North Korea when they fired missiles over our allies. We didn’t go to war with North Korea when one of their ships torpedoed an alliance partner and killed some of their sailors. You’re going to tell me we’re now going to go to war because a Sony exec described Angelina Jolie as a diva? It’s not happening.”

Obama said Friday that there would be some sort of response to the hack, but declined to say what. “We have been working up a range of options. They will be presented to me. I will make a decision on those based on what I believe is proportional and appropriate to the nature of this crime,” he said.

Would infrastructure vandalism causing blackouts and water shutdowns constitute an act of war? The question may be moot. Before the United States can consider what sort of response is appropriate to cyber attacks, it must first be able to attribute them.

The FBI was able to finger North Korea for the hack after looking at the malware in the same way a forensics team looks for signs of a perpetrator at the scene of the crime. “Technical analysis of the data deletion malware used in this attack revealed links to other malware that the FBI knows North Korean actors previously developed. For example, there were similarities in specific lines of code, encryption algorithms, data deletion methods, and compromised networks,” according to the FBI statement.

An Aurora vulnerability attack, conversely, leaves no fingerprints except perhaps a single IP address. Unlike the Sony hack, it doesn’t require specially written malware to be uploaded into a system, Malware that could indicate the identity of the attacker, or at least his or her affiliation. Exploiting an Aurora attack is simply a matter of gaining access, remotely, possibly because equipment is still running on factory-installed passwords, and then turning off and on a switch.

“You’re using the substations against whatever’s connected to them. Aurora uses the substations as the attack vector. This is the electric grid being the attack vector,” said Weiss, who calls it “a very, very insidious” attack.

The degree to which we are safe from that eventuality depends entirely on how well utility companies have put in place safeguards. We may know the answer to that question in 2015.

 

Obama and Castro, Let My People Go

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There is much more to the matter of normalizing relations between the United States and Cuba. At the core of the issue is Guantanamo. In order for Barack Obama to fulfill his first pledge to close Gitmo, several tracks have been in play. You can bet terminating the lease of Guantanamo is at hand.

The lease was a two part lease, here and here, signed in 1903 whereby the United States would monitor ship traffic in and out of the regional waters of the Panama Canal. It is a rather simple lease and can be terminated. The lawyers, the interagency types have examined reasons to void the lease given several subsequent activities that occurred at Gitmo most recently being a detention center for enemy combatants. Lawyers have summarized this is a breach of the spirit of the lease which was part of the Cuban-America Treaty.

Barack Obama has not dismissed a visit to Havanna nor has he dismissed inviting a Castro to America. What is worse, Obama hinted at placing a diplomatic post, an embassy in Havanna, when we should have one in Jerusalem. Moving forward, there is the matter of human rights violations in Cuba and they are many.

As a result of the stunning announcement by Barack Obama this week to normalize relations and to swap prisoners, another major issue is at hand, JoAnne Chesimard. There are hundreds of prisoners and political activists from America who sought refuge in Cuba yet JoAnne will set the standard.

As U.S.-Cuba tension thaws, the fate of a fugitive is in question

Assata Shakur, formerly JoAnne Chesimard and the step-aunt of deceased rapper Tupac Shakur, was convicted of killing a New Jersey State trooper on May 2, 1973. Now 67, Shakur escaped from a New Jersey prison in made-for-the-movies fashion in 1979 and found her way to Cuba, where she was eventually granted asylum under Fidel Castro in 1984.

News that the two countries have agreed to restore relations after 50 years have many U.S. officials hoping Shakur will be extradited back to the U.S. to carry out the remainder of her life sentence. After all, Cuba on Wednesday released American contractor Alan Gross, who had been imprisoned in Cuba for five years. Officials there have also agreed to free an intelligence agent who spied for the U.S. and was held on the island for almost two decades. And the U.S., in turn, freed three Cuban intelligence agents convicted of espionage and being held in the U.S.

If Cuba really wants to warm relations, the thinking goes, they should extradite Shakur, a member of the Black Panthers and Black Liberation Army, who last year was named a Most Wanted Terrorist by the FBI — the first woman ever to make the list.

Acting New Jersey Attorney General John Hoffman told msnbc in a statement that with America’s decision to ease relations with Cuba, “We remain ever hopeful in our resolve to bring Joanne Chesimard to justice. We will be working closely with federal authorities as we explore ways to apprehend her and return her to her rightful place in a New Jersey prison.” And New Jersey State Police Superintendent Rick Fuentes said he views “any changes in relations with Cuba as an opportunity to bring her back to the United States.”

Shakur’s conviction has been questioned, with several activists and lawyers dismissing the validity of the verdict, arguing that race may have unfairly been a factor. The National Lawyers Guild, which represented Shakur, is urging American authorities to respect her political asylum status in Cuba.

“The National Lawyers Guild calls on New Jersey law enforcement to respect the political asylum status of Assata Shakur in accordance with international law, especially in light of yesterday’s announcement of plans for renewed US-Cuba relations. Under the pretense of ‘counter-terrorism,’ the US has for the last 40 years persecuted Ms. Shakur for her political views and activism, while she inspired generations in the fight for racial justice,” NLG President Azadeh Shahshahani told msnbc.

What we do know is Shakur — who was in a car with two other activists, Zayd Shakur (unrelated to Assata) and Sundiata Acoli — was arrested during a routine traffic stop on the New Jersey Turnpike. The stop resulted in a gunfight, and Zayd Shakur and police officer Werner Foerster were both killed. Another police officer and Assata Shakur were both wounded.

Shakur, who was born in Jamaica, Queens, was convicted of first degree murder in 1977 along with seven other felonies in connection to the shootout. Two years later, she managed to escape the Clinton Correctional Facility for Women in New Jersey when three members of the Black Liberation Army drew their guns during a visit, took two guards as hostages and seized control of a prison van. Shakur surfaced in Cuba about five years later.

While much isn’t known about Shakur’s life in Cuba, she has continued to speak out on global injustice, including in her 1987 autobiography. She also wrote an open letter to Pope John Paul II during his trip to Cuba in 1998, which said “I am not the first, nor the last person to be victimized by the New Jersey system of ‘justice.’ The New Jersey State Police are infamous for their racism and brutality.” She  gave an interview, in which she claimed her innocence, to NBC reporter Ralph Penza that same year.

The White House referred requests for comment on the matter back National Security Council. Bernadette Meehan, a spokesperson for the National Security Council, told msnbc, “We will continue to press for the return of U.S. fugitives in Cuba to pursue justice for the victims of their crimes in our engagement with the Cuban government.” There are approximately 80 fugitives in Cuba who are wanted by the U.S.

Meehan’s statement came after several New Jersey lawmakers and officials called for Shakur’s return and as bounty for her capture stands at $2 million. Republican Rep. Rodney Frelinghuysen said in a statement that the White House and State Department needs to work “much harder to bring this murderer ‘home’ to New Jersey where she can face justice and serve out her sentence.”

Critics argue medical evidence showed Shakur was shot with her hands in the air and that she would have been unable to fire a weapon. And according to the NLG, the proceedings were filled with constitutional violations: All 15 jurors were white and five of them had personal connections to state troopers. The group also insists that a state Assembly member spoke to jury members at the hotel where they were sequestered and encouraged them to convict Shakur.

Whether or not Cuba decides to extradite Shakur, of course, remains to be seen. The country has had an extradition treaty with the U.S. since 1904, but it hasn’t really been enforced during the Castro reign. There’s also a clause in the treaty that says a fugitive criminal shall not be surrendered if the “offense in respect of which his surrender is demanded be of a political character,” which could apply to the Shakur case, said Douglas McNabb, an international criminal defense lawyer who specializes in extradition.

But “any state can do anything they want, even if there is an extradition treaty,” said McNabb. “From a policy standpoint, Cuba is going to have to make a decision.”

Stephen Vladeck, an expert on national security law at American University College of Law, echoed that sentiment, saying “So much of extradition law Is just politics. The real question is whether the Cuban government decides it’s in its interest to cooperate with New Jersey through the Justice Department.”

The chance that Shakur would actually be extradited doesn’t look good, said Vladeck, noting “it sends a terrible message to anyone that would seek asylum in Cuba.”

But Bob Anello, a New York lawyer who deal with extradition cases, said “it certainly will be easier than when we weren’t talking to Cuba,  although it may not be the first order of priority.” He predicted, “You will see both countries trying to do things to foster better relations.”

 

 

 

U.S. Schools Courtesy of Gulen

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Anyone remember the Barack Obama famous Cairo speech? In April of 2009, Barack delivered a long message siding with Islam and opening the door for radicals to launch their agendas and local schools in America were included.

But setting the table for what is below is this: He is in the United States.

Turkey issues arrest warrant for cleric Gulen – state media

(Frank J.Gaffney Jr. The Wash.Times:11 Dec.2012)

It is a commonplace saying, but one that most of us ignore: If something sounds too good to be true, it probably is. This applies in spades to a proposal under active consideration by the school board in Virginia’s Loudoun County. It would use taxpayer funds to create a charter school to equip the children of that Washington exurb with enhanced skills in science, technology, engineering and mathematics disciplines. Ostensibly, they will thus be equipped to compete successfully in the fields expected to be at the cutting edge of tomorrow’s workplace.

What makes this initiative, dubbed the Loudoun Math and IT Academy, too good to be true? Let’s start with what is acknowledged about the proposed school.

The academy’s board is made up of a group of male Turkish expatriates. One of them, Fatih Kandil, was formerly the principal of the Chesapeake Science Point Public Charter School in Anne Arundel County, Md. Another is Ali Bicak, the board president of the Chesapeake Lighthouse Foundation, which owns Chesapeake Science Point and two other charter schools in Maryland. The Loudoun Math and IT Academy applicants expressly claim that Chesapeake Science Point will be the model for their school.

The taxpayers of Loudoun County and the school board elected to represent them should want no part of a school that seeks to emulate Chesapeake Science Point, let alone be run by the same people responsible for that publicly funded charter school. For one thing, Chesapeake Science Point has not proved to be the resounding academic success the applicants claim. It does not appear anywhere in the acclaimed U.S. News & World Report lists of high-performing schools in Maryland, let alone nationwide — even in the subsets of mathematics or charter schools.

What is more, according to public documents chronicling Anne Arundel County Public Schools’ dismal experience with Chesapeake Science Point, there is significant evidence of chronic violations of federal, state and local policies and regulations throughout its six years of operations, with little or inconsistent improvement, reflecting deficiencies in fiscal responsibility and organizational viability.

Why, one might ask, would applicants for a new charter school cite so deeply problematic an example as their proposed institution? This brings us to aspects of this proposal that are not acknowledged.

Chesapeake Science Point is just one of five controversial schools with which Mr. Kandil has been associated. He was previously the director at the Horizon Science Academy in Dayton, Ohio; the principal at the Wisconsin Career Academy in Milwaukee and at the Baltimore Information Technology Academy in Maryland; and one of the applicants in a failed bid to establish the First State Math and Science Academy in Delaware.

These schools have something in common besides their ties to the peripatetic Fatih Kandil. They have all been “inspired” by and in other ways are associated with Fethullah Gulen, a Turkish supremacist and imam with a cultlike following of up to 6 million Muslims in Turkey and elsewhere around the world. More to the point, Imam Gulen is the reclusive and highly autocratic leader of a global media, business, “interfaith dialogue” and education empire said to be worth many billions that is run from a compound in the Poconos.

This empire — including its roughly 135 charter schools in this country and another 1,000 abroad — and its adherents have come to be known as the Gulen Movement. Those associated with it, in this country at least, are assiduously secretive about their connections to Imam Gulen and his enterprise. For example, the Loudoun Math and IT Academy applicants, their spokeswoman and other apologists have repeatedly misled the Loudoun school board, claiming that these Turkish gentlemen and their proposed school have nothing to do with Imam Gulen.

There are several possible reasons for such professions. For one, the Gulen schools are reported to be under investigation by the FBI. A growing number of them — including Chesapeake Science Point — have also come under critical scrutiny from school boards and staff around the country. In some cases, they have actually lost their charters for, among other reasons, chronic financial and other mismanagement and outsourcing U.S. teachers’ jobs to Turks.

The decisive reason for the Gulenist lack of transparency, however, may be due to their movement’s goals and modus operandi. These appear aligned with those of another secretive international organization that also adheres to the Islamic doctrine known as Shariah and seeks to impose it worldwide — the Muslim Brotherhood. Both seek to accomplish this objective by stealth in what the Brotherhood calls “civilization jihad” and Imam Gulen’s movement describes as “jihad of the word.”

This practice enabled the Gulenists to help transform Turkey from a reliable, secular Muslim NATO ally to an Islamist state deeply hostile to the United States — one aligned with other Islamic supremacists, from Iran to the Muslim Brotherhood to Hamas to al Qaeda. Fethullah Gulen’s followers clearly don’t want us aware of the obvious dangers posed by their penetration of our educational system and influence over our kids.

The good news is that members of the Loudoun County school board have a code of conduct that reads in part: “I have a moral and civic obligation to the nation which can remain strong and free only so long as public schools in the United States of America are kept free and strong.” If the board members adhere to this duty, they will reject a seductive Loudoun Math and IT Academy proposal that is way too “good” to be true.

So what has happened since the launch of these schools around the country?

FBI raids Concept Schools in Illinois, 2 other states

The FBI and two other federal agencies conducted raids in Illinois and two other states at charter schools run by Des Plaines-based Concept Schools, FBI officials said Tuesday.

Search warrants were executed at 19 Concept schools in connection with an “ongoing white-collar crime matter,” said Vicki Anderson, a special agent in the Cleveland FBI office that’s leading the probe.

The U.S. Department of Education and the Federal Communications Commission also were involved in the June 4 raids, but officials said the warrants remain under seal, and they wouldn’t give any details about the investigation. 

The raids targeted Concept schools in Illinois — where Concept has three schools in Chicago and one in Peoria — as well as in Indiana and Ohio.

FBI RAIDS TURKISH GULEN CHARTER SCHOOL IN LA

Dec 14, 2013 by

fbi_raid“Finally FBI Raids Turkish Gulen Charter School in Louisiana”

by Donna Garner 12.13.13   

12.12.13 — To view the FBI raid of the Gulen charter school in East Baton Rouge, please go to the following link on WBRZ.com. The Gulen charter schools are tied to Fethullah Gulen who is an Islamist imam.  Kenilworth Science and Technology School is connected to the Pelican Foundation, Cosmos Foundation in Texas, Atlas Texas Construction and Trading (a Houston-based contractor), Harmony Charters in Texas, and to other Gulen/Turkish entities around the United States and Turkey:  http://www.wbrz.com/videos/fbi-raid-another-scandal-for-charter-school-company/   

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12.11.13 — To read the full story about the FBI raid on the Gulen charter school, please read further: “FBI Raid Another Scandal for Gulen Charter School Company”

http://www.wbrz.com/news/fbi-raid-another-scandal-for-charter-school-company/   

EXCERPTS FROM THIS ARTICLE:

BATON ROUGE- Wednesday evening’s FBI raid on a charter school in East Baton Rouge is the latest item in a list of scandals involving the organization that holds the charter for the Kenilworth Science and Technology School.

Pelican Educational Foundation runs the school [and also Abramson] and has ties to a family from Turkey. The organization lost its school in New Orleans amid allegations of sexual misconduct among students that prompted a state investigation on campuses in the Crescent City and in Baton Rouge. It has also faced lawsuits and allegations from teachers about bad learning environments.

“It was an atmosphere where there was a double standard,” one former teacher told WBRZ News 2 in an investigation into the school in EBR. Former teachers were not happy with how things were handled when they spoke with a station reporter two years ago.

No one was ever charged in the sex allegations a school spokesperson pointed out Wednesday as federal investigators moved through the campus collecting items, putting them in boxes and then loading them into a van.

…The school receives about $5,000,000 in local, state, and federal tax money. In 2012, the Pelican group was accused of improperly handling money by the Legislative Auditor. A report found about $8600 was improperly used to buy gifts for students who scored high on LEAP tests.

…About the same time as allegations and lawsuits began dealing with Pelican charter schools, a BESE member took an improper trip on behalf of another Turkish organization. Linda Johnson, who is no longer on BESE, was fined for breaking the law by the ethics board. She got an all expenses paid trip to Turkey.

Kenilworth Science and Technology School will be open Thursday.