Twisted: Arab Countries More Right than Kerry and Europe

Remember when the United States led the world for a better world and was successful?

As the Kurds were once on the side of the United States in Iraq and as up to 400 veterans went back to the fight in Iraq to stand with the Kurds, matters just got exponentially  worse due to Barack Obama betraying the Kurds.

Syria Kurds ask Russia for arms, coordination

YPG chief Sipan Hemo told Sputnik Türkiye that his fighting force wants Russian assistance.

YPG chief Sipan Hemo told Sputnik Türkiye—which is owned by Moscow—that his fighting force requested arms from Russia as well as general military coordination, according to a translation of the interview prepared by Turkey’s Anadolu news agency.

 

“He also called on Moscow to bomb Al-Nusra Front’s positions,” Anadolu added a day after Russia began its airstrikes in Syria on behalf of the Bashar al-Assad regime.

 

In turn, the report added that a foreign relations official for the Syrian Kurdish Democratic Union Party—which controls the YPG—said his party was “ready to cooperate with any actor fighting ISIS.”

 

“We are currently receiving support from the US and the [Iraqi Kurdish] Peshmerga,” Idris Naasan added.

 

Syrian Kurds have been rolling back ISIS across large swathes of territory in northern Syria with the assistance of US airstrikes, while also fighting Nusra in the Kurdish-populated Afrin region northwest of Aleppo.

 

The YPG commander’s comments come after a pro-Hezbollah Lebanese daily reported in late September that Russia had set up a coordination process with Kurdish forces and parties in northern Syria.

 

“A Russian military delegate paid a secret visit to a number of Kurdish military commanders in Hasakeh and inspected areas of confrontation between the YPG and the armed groups,” the Al-Akhbar article said.

 

Moscow announced Wednesday that it had begun its air strikes in Syria, insisting it hit “eight ISIS terror group targets,” while rebel groups, the US and France all said Russia had not bombed the extremist group.

 

On Wednesday morning, activists and rebels said that state-of-the-art Russian fighter jets had conducted bombing runs on Lataminah, a town northwest of Hama, as well as a region north of Homs, neither of which are ISIS strongholds.

 

Syrian state TV, for its part, reported that Russian jets hit ISIS targets near Homs’ Rastan and Talbisah—where ISIS does not have a presence—as well as areas near Hama’s Salamiyah, where the group does maintain frontlines with regime troops as well the Nusra Front.

UNITED NATIONS (AP) — Nine nations or five? In speeches at this year’s U.N. gathering of world leaders, major powers are increasing calls for multilateral negotiations to end the war in Syria. But Europe and the United States are split on who should be at the table.

The Europeans invoke the success of the Iran nuclear talks in arguing for a similar format — with key additions.

Iran negotiated with the United States, Russia, China, Britain, France and Germany to reach their July 14 agreement. French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius on Wednesday called for a similar arrangement “enlarged with regional partners.”

The Americans, in contrast, want a tighter group, without the Europeans.

Fabius did not elaborate on his vision. But two diplomats told The Associated Press that this time, instead of making demands on Iran, as was the case at the nuclear talks, the Europeans want Tehran to work with them, the Americans, Russians and Chinese on finding a peace formula. Saudi Arabia and Turkey also would be included.

The diplomats — one European the other from the Middle East — said that Britain, France and Germany all spoke up in favor of that format on the sidelines of the U.N summit earlier this week during the first meeting of Iran and the six world powers since the nuclear deal was struck.

But the Americans want any negotiations restricted to themselves, the Russians, Iran, Saudi Arabia and Turkey.

Washington accepted being one of six nations at the nuclear negotiations because they came late. After initially refusing to sit at the same table with Tehran the United States joined in 2006, three years after Britain France and Germany reached out to the Islamic Republic.

A U.S. official familiar with the issue said that in the case of Syria, U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry preferred to keep the focus on countries that are directly involved.

He and the diplomats demanded anonymity because they were not authorized to speak on the dispute.

Russia, in turn, appears to favor others being kept in the loop, even if they aren’t sitting at the negotiating table.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov told the Security Council on Thursday that Moscow wants “standing channels of communication to ensure a maximally effective fight.” He listed Iran, Russia, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, Egypt, Jordan, Qatar, the U.S. and China as nations with a role in Syria talks.

Kerry met Lavrov for a third time on the sidelines of the U.N. summit on Wednesday. On Thursday, he huddled with the foreign ministers of Britain, France, Germany, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Turkey, the United Arab Emirates and Qatar.

The two told reporters that they swapped ideas about potential options for moving ahead with a political transition in the country and would be examining them in the coming days.

Still, Russia’s launch of airstrikes on Syria on Wednesday appeared to leave serious discussions on who should participate in limbo, with Washington and its allies expressing concern that Moscow might have targeted forces opposed to President Bashar Assad instead of Islamic extremists.

Iran-Saudi rivalries further complicate matters, even if that issue is resolved. The diplomats said that Riyadh is reluctant to sit at any table on the same side as Tehran.

The Saudis want to topple Syrian President Bashar Assad, while the Iranians support him. Traditional rivalries have been compounded since last week, with Shiite Iran accusing Sunni Saudi Arabia of gross negligence in the mass deaths of pilgrims in a stampede near Mecca.

Obama did not Invite FBI Director to Seminar

Place this story and decision into the WTH file.

F.B.I. Chief Not Invited to Meeting on Countering Violent Extremism

NYT > WASHINGTON — The White House did not invite the most senior American official charged with preventing terrorist attacks — the F.B.I. director, James B. Comey — to the three-day conference this week on countering violent extremism in the United States and abroad because the administration did not want the event too focused on law enforcement issues, according to senior American officials.
But Mr. Comey’s Russian counterpart — Aleksandr V. Bortnikov, the director of the Russian Federal Security Service, the post-Soviet K.G.B. — was at the meeting, even though international human rights groups have repeatedly accused the Russian security service of unjustly detaining and spying on Russians and others.


The service also declined to provide American counterterrorism and intelligence officials with information before the 2013 Boston Marathon bombings that would probably have led to more scrutiny of one of the suspects.

Several other foreign law enforcement officials attended the conference, which was held in Washington. The meeting has been criticized as ineffectual and irrelevant, and not focused on immediate and tangible solutions to stop terrorists. And some Republicans said that President Obama’s speech to the assembled leaders on Wednesday did not lay out a strategy for defeating groups like the Islamic State.
The omission of Mr. Comey adds further uncertainty over who in the government is in charge of the anti-extremist effort. Just a few months ago, the F.B.I. put out a lengthy bulletin on its website about how it was leading “a new approach to countering violent extremism.” Many of the strategies listed by the F.B.I. appear similar to ones mentioned at the meeting.


An Obama administration official defended the decision not to invite Mr. Comey, saying that “while the F.B.I. works tirelessly to keep the country safe, this conference was not centered on federal law enforcement.”
The official said that the administration’s efforts to counter violent extremists “are premised on the notion that local officials and communities can be an effective bulwark against violent extremism, and most of the participants — spanning community leaders, local, law enforcement, private sector innovators, and others — reflected this bottom-up approach.” A spokesman for the F.B.I. declined to comment.
Mr. Comey’s boss, Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr., attended the conference, and several F.B.I. officials participated in its panels, the official said.
The administration did not specifically invite Mr. Bortnikov, the official said. Instead, it had sent a general invitation to the Russian government, which chose Mr. Bortnikov, along with others, to come to Washington.
The administration did not try to prevent Mr. Bortnikov, who rarely visits the United States, from attending, said the official, who did not want to be identified discussing internal White House deliberations. Mr. Bortnikov is on the European Union sanctions list in response to the crisis in Ukraine, but he is not subject to American sanctions.
The programs intended to prevent Americans from becoming extremists are led by the Department of Justice and the Department of Homeland Security.
The Obama administration said in a news release on Wednesday that the effort to counter violent extremism “encompasses the preventive aspects of counterterrorism as well as interventions to undermine the attraction of extremist movements and ideologies that seek to promote violence.”
Stopping terrorist attacks has been the F.B.I.’s highest priority since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. The bureau oversees joint terrorism task forces in every major American city that bring together federal, state and local authorities to investigate terrorism.

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This is not the first little confab concocted by Barack Obama. Back in February of 2015, Obama had the same session calling on 60 nations. Progress? Not so much.

WASHINGTON — President Obama called on Americans and more than 60 nations on Wednesday to join the fight against violent extremism, saying they had to counter the ideology of the Islamic State and other groups making increasingly sophisticated appeals to young people around the world.
On the second day of a three-day meeting that comes after a wave of terrorist attacks in Paris, Sydney, Copenhagen and Ottawa, Mr. Obama said undercutting the Sunni militant group’s message and blunting its dark appeal was a “generational challenge” that would require cooperation from mainstream Muslims as well as governments, communities, religious leaders and educators. “We have to confront squarely and honestly the twisted ideologies that these terrorist groups use to incite people to violence,” Mr. Obama told an auditorium full of community activists, religious leaders and law enforcement officials — some of them skeptical about his message — gathered at the Eisenhower Executive Office Building next door to the White House. “We need to find new ways to amplify the voices of peace and tolerance and inclusion, and we especially need to do it online.”

More Hillary Emails are Here!

The FBI investigation has reportedly centered on 18 US Code 793, a section of the Espionage Act related to gathering and transmitting national-defense information, and is being led by an FBI “A-team” out of its Washington, D.C., headquarters.

“Nearly all [FBI] investigations are assigned to one of the bureau’s 56 field offices,” The New York Times reported last month.

“But given this inquiry’s importance, senior FBI officials have opted to keep it closely held in Washington in the agency’s counterintelligence section, which investigates how national security secrets are handled.”

Hillary fought with the White House switchboard on who she was and then she sent an email asking how to turn on the ‘ringer’ on her cell phone. Sheesh…

Some samples coming your way. Just reviewing some of these tells us that not only can she not be president but a special prosecutor is now called for.

Mediaite: When Hillary Clinton fielded questions about her private server use in the past, one of the recurring defenses she has used was that there was no evidence that her doing so caused any major security problems.

Within the 6,300 pages of emails that were released today, however, it was shown that hackers linked to Russia tried to pry their way in at least five times.

While it is unclear whether she opened them and exposed her account, Clinton received several infected emails disguised as speeding tickets back in 2011. The emails instructed recipients to print the attached tickets, which would have given a virus a way into her computer:

Embedded image permalink      Numerous concerns have been raised regarding whether Clinton’s private server has made sensitive information more vulnerable to hackers, which were made more worrisome by the recent cyber-attacks on the government from the Chinese and the Russians. Security researchers have analyzed the software, and said that infected computers would end up transmitting information from victims to at least three server computers overseas.

Ambassador ousted for private email use sent Clinton classified info

WashingtonExaminer: An ambassador who was ousted from his position in part for using private email sent top State Department officials classified information a year before his removal.

Scott Gration, the former U.S. ambassador to Kenya, sent Hillary Clinton’s staff an “update on trilateral talks” in Sept. 2011 that is mostly redacted and marked classified, emails released Wednesday by the State Department show.

Gration appeared to reference officials from the governments of Ethiopia, Sudan and South Sudan in the first part of his email. The lengthy memo was forwarded to Clinton by Jake Sullivan, her former director of policy planning.

Clinton responded that she was “willing to make the calls [Gration] requested.”

Gration was pushed from his post in 2012 after setting up an unsecured email system in the bathroom of his embassy office.

His address in the memo to Sullivan was redacted. But if, as the State Department’s inspector general found in Aug. 2012, Gration had sent the official record using his personal account, Clinton and the agency’s top brass would have been aware of his private email use a year before the scathing watchdog report that prompted his removal.

Despite the inspector general’s findings that Gration violated agency policy, Clinton has defended her own private email use by insisting it was technically allowed by the State Department.

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WH has Task Force Terror Report, No Strategy

Not since the Bush Administration and the 9/11 Commission Report has there been a task force or congressional study group that has investigated and evaluated a new domestic threat report. In March of 2015, a bi-partisan committee in Congress was established with 10 members to study domestic Islamic soldiers and sympathizers. The report is chilling and further it has declared the White House has no strategy, so the committee crafted 32 recommendations. The full report is here.

The report studied individual cases where they were provided access to files by the FBI as countless other cases are still under investigation. Minnesota, California, New York and New Jersey were the 4 top listed states that had the majority of travelers leaving the United States to join Islamic State or other in kind terror groups. Up to at least 250 are known at this time.

The United States has failed to stop the flow back and forth and further allied intelligence agencies and countries are not advanced enough or have authorization to fully cooperate with the United States.

WASHINGTON (AP) — The government has largely failed to stop more than 250 Americans who have traveled overseas since 2011 to join or try to join terrorist groups, including the Islamic State group, a new congressional study concluded on Tuesday. It did not provide details on the several dozen who have sneaked back into the United States without being arrested or monitored.

“The findings are concerning; we are losing in this struggle to keep Americans from the battlefield,” House Homeland Security Committee Chairman Michael McCaul said Tuesday after his committee released the 65-page report.

The report said the Obama administration lacked a strategy to prevent such travel abroad, identify all who try to return to commit terror attacks, or cope with new recruitment practices and technology that allow extremists to communicate securely.

“Of the hundreds of Americans who have sought to travel to the conflict zone in Syria and Iraq, authorities have only interdicted a fraction of them,” the report said. “Several dozen have also managed to make it back into America.” It noted that several people were identified and arrested this year trying to return to the United States.

In other cases, authorities are monitoring people who have returned form the region, said McCaul, R-Texas.

Rep. John Katko, R-N.Y., who helped author the report, said radicalization of Americans over the Internet “poses probably the biggest problem” for U.S. law enforcement and others trying to detect and combat efforts by international terrorist organization to recruit U.S. citizens to join the fight overseas.

The report said of particular concern were western Europeans who travel to Iraq or Syria and would be permitted to fly to the U.S. without applying for a visa.

“American returnees are not the only threat to the United States,” it said.

Katko said the committee will work to draft several pieces of legislation based on the report’s 32 recommendations.

After the release of the committee report, the State Department announced that 10 people and five groups were declared Specially Designated Global Terrorists. People in the U.S. are generally prohibited from doing business with those given that designation.

POTUS Granted Refugee Status to Terror Connectors

Courtesy of Judicial Watch:

During Fiscal Year 2014, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) applied 1,519 exemptions to individual applicants under the Secretary of Homeland Security’s exercises of discretionary authority.1 Of those 1,519 exemptions:

 

 806 were processed for refugee applicants,

 19 were processed for asylum applicants,

 614 were processed for applicants for lawful permanent resident status,

 29 were processed for beneficiaries of petitions for derivative refugee or asylum status,

 34 were processed for applicants for Temporary Protected Status,

 9 were processed for applicants for Nicaraguan Adjustment and Central American Relief Act (NACARA); and

 7 were processed for applicants for relief before the U.S. Department of Justice Executive Office for Immigration Review (EOIR).

Regarding the reasons for the 1,519 exemptions:

 627 were processed for an applicant’s provision of material support, while under duress, to an undesignated terrorist organization as defined at INA section 212(a)(3)(B)(vi)(III), 8 U.S.C. § 1182(a)(3)(B)(vi)(III) (Tier III terrorist organization), under the Secretary of Homeland Security’s February 26, 2007 exercise of authority relating to Tier III organizations,

 189 were processed for an applicant’s provision of material support, while under duress, to a designated terrorist organization as defined under INA section 212(a)(3)(B)(vi)(I)-(II), 8 U.S.C. § 1182(a)(3)(B)(vi)(I)-(II) (Tier I or II terrorist organization), under the Secretary’s April 27, 2007 exercise of authority relating to Tier I and Tier II organizations,

 9 were processed for an applicant’s receipt of military-type training, while under duress, from a terrorist organization, under the Secretary’s January 7, 2011 exercise of authority relating to Tier I, Tier II and Tier III organizations,

 28 were processed for an applicant’s provision of voluntary medical care to members of a terrorist organization in the course of their professional responsibilities without assisting in the violent activities of an organization or individual, under the Secretary’s October 13, 2011 exercise of authority relating to Tier I, Tier II and Tier III organizations,

37 were processed for certain qualified aliens with existing immigration benefits under the Limited General Exemption2 who: provided material support to, solicited funds for, solicited individuals for membership in or received military-type training from certain qualified Tier III terrorist organizations, under the Secretary’s August 10, 2012 exercise of authority relating to certain Tier III organizations;3 and

 628 were processed for applicants who had certain activities or affiliations with specific groups which the Secretary of Homeland Security, in consultation with the Secretary of State and the Attorney General, has approved for consideration of an exemption.4

Exemptions allow certain refugees and other aliens the opportunity to receive a benefit or protection following the successful completion of a thorough vetting process. USCIS procedures require that all applicants’ names and fingerprints be checked against a broad array of records of individuals known to be security threats, including the terrorist watch list, and those of law enforcement concern. In addition to rigorous background vetting, including checks coordinated across several government agencies, the Secretary of Homeland Security’s discretionary authority is only applied on a case-by-case basis after careful review of all factors and all security checks have cleared.

Read the full DHS report here.