WH has Task Force Terror Report, No Strategy

Posted on September 30, 2015September 30, 2015 by Denise Simon

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

Posted on September 30, 2015September 30, 2015 by Denise Simon

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.

Democrats, the Planned Parenthood Lifeline, Hearing

Posted on September 29, 2015September 29, 2015 by Denise Simon

Listening to the hearing today with the CEO of Planned Parenthood is chilling. She is flanked by a set of lawyers and her responses are either non-responses, twisted replies or she does not have statistics or facts at hand.

A question was asked by a Democrat if abortion was legal, the response was ‘yes’. The follow up question was, ‘is an abortion a Constitutional right?’, the response by Richards was :YES! How can that be? Anyone?

Meanwhile, the Democrats on the House hearing panel continue to state the collection of videos are either fake or doctored. CEO, Cecile Richards of Planned Parenthood has too admitted she has not seen the videos but states she has read the transcripts. In order to protect or defend her organization, why no see the videos in their entirety?

Additionally, the videos have been sent to an independent organization to determine forensic alterations. The verdict is below.

Forensic Analysis: Planned Parenthood Videos Are ‘Authentic’

TheDailySignal:

A forensic analysis of undercover videos about Planned Parenthood’s abortion practices are “authentic and show no evidence of manipulation or editing,” according to a report released Tuesday by Alliance Defending Freedom.

The analysis was completed by Coalfire, a digital security and forensics firm that has worked on civil and criminal investigations. The firm had access to all audio and video investigative footage recorded by the Center for Medical Progress.

“The Coalfire forensic analysis removes any doubt that the full length undercover videos released by Center for Medical Progress are authentic and have not been manipulated,” said Casey Mattox, senior counsel at Alliance Defending Freedom. “Analysts scrutinized every second of video recorded during the investigation and released by CMP to date and found only bathroom breaks and other non-pertinent footage had been removed.”

According to the report, the videos only omit footage irrelevant to the allegations such as bathroom breaks.

“Planned Parenthood can no longer hide behind a smokescreen of false accusations,” Mattox said, “and should now answer for what appear to be the very real crimes revealed by the CMP investigation.”

“American taxpayer money should be redirected to fund local community health centers and not subsidize a scandal-ridden, billion-dollar abortion business,” Kerri Kupec, legal communications director for Alliance Defending Freedom said in a statement.

“Planned Parenthood is an organization that cares about one thing: making a profit at the expense of women’s health,” she added. “The investigative videos, whose authenticity was confirmed by the report, show that Planned Parenthood is an abortion-machine whose top executives and doctors haggle and joke about the harvesting and selling of baby body parts. Women deserve far better.”

Spokespersons for Planned Parenthood have denied illegal conduct. Last month, the organization commissioned their own analysis of the videos which claimed that the “edited” videos “have no evidentiary value in a legal context and cannot be relied upon for any official inquiries.”

The Daily Signal previously reported that the firm hired by Planned Parenthood, Fusion GPS, has ties to the Democratic Party, including an effort to expose a group of eight private citizens who donated to a super PAC supporting former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney’s 2012 presidential campaign.

Planned Parenthood Forensic Analysis Report

500,000 Migrants in Europe so Far in 2015

Posted on September 29, 2015September 29, 2015 by Denise Simon

So far this year:

Geneva (AFP) – More than half a million migrants have crossed the Mediterranean to Europe so far this year — 383,000 of them arriving in Greece, the United Nations said on Tuesday.

At the same time, some 2,980 people have perished or disappeared trying to make the perilous journey, the UN’s refugee agency (UNHCR) said.

The agency put the number of migrant arrivals by sea at nearly 515,000 since January 1, noting that 54 percent of that group were Syrian.

Syrian nationals made up 71 percent of arrivals in Greece, UNHCR further said.

The four-year civil war in Syria has forced about four million people to flee the country and internally displaced more than seven million others.

The European Union is facing rising pressure to form a unified strategy for handling the influx of migrants.

Many European leaders, including in Greece, have also increasingly called for renewed efforts to forge a peace deal in Syria, describing that as the only permanent solution to the migrant crisis.

After Greece, Italy has received the most migrants in Europe since January 1, with 129,000 arrivals by sea.

BBC:

One way to measure where migrants have ended up is through asylum applications. Although not all of those arriving claim asylum, over half a million have done so, according to the EU statistics agency, Eurostat.

Germany continues to be the most popular destination for migrants arriving in Europe. It has received the highest number of new asylum applications, with almost 222,000 by the end of August.

Hungary has moved into second place, as more migrants have tried to make the journey overland through Greece and the Western Balkans. It had 96,350 applications by the end of July.

Although Germany has had the most asylum applications in 2015, the surge of people arriving in Hungary meant it had the highest in proportion to its population.

Almost 665 refugees per 100,000 of Hungary’s local population claimed asylum in the first half of 2015. The figure for Germany was 190 and for the UK it was 23 applications for every 100,000 residents.

Asylum applications per 100,000 local population

Where do the migrants come from?

The conflict in Syria continues to be by far the biggest driver of the migration. But the ongoing violence in Afghanistan, abuses in Eritrea, as well as poverty in Kosovo are also leading people to look for new lives elsewhere.

Resettlement plan

Tensions in the EU have been rising because of the disproportionate burden faced by some countries, particularly Greece, Italy and Hungary where migrants have been arriving by boat and overland.

At an emergency meeting in Brussels, EU ministers voted by a majority to relocate 120,000 refugees EU-wide, but for now the plan will only apply to 66,000 who are in Italy and Greece.

The other 54,000 were to be moved from Hungary, but now this number will be held “in reserve”, until the governments decide where they should go.

chart showing number of migrants EU countries will accept

The UK has opted out of any plans for a quota system and, according to Home Office figures, has accepted 216 Syrian refugees under the Vulnerable Persons Relocation scheme since it began in January 2014. Prime Minister David Cameron has said the UK will accept up to 20,000 refugees from Syria over the next five years.

Granting asylum

Although huge numbers have been applying for asylum, the number of people being given asylum is far lower.

In 2014, EU countries offered asylum to 184,665 refugees. In the same year, more than 570,000 migrants applied for asylum – although applying for asylum can be a lengthy procedure so many of those given refugee status may have applied in previous years.

Chart showing approved asylum applications

There were more than 25,000 asylum applications in the UK in the 12 months up to June 2015. Most applications are typically rejected and in 2014, more than 60% of initial decisions on asylum applications were refusals.

In the same period, 6,788 asylum seekers and their dependents were removed or departed voluntarily from the UK.

How do migrants get to Europe?

The International Organization for Migration (IOM) estimates that more than 350,000 migrants were detected at the EU’s borders between January and August 2015, compared with 280,000 detections for the whole of 2014. The figures do not include those who got in undetected.

The EU’s external border force, Frontex, monitors the different routes migrants use and numbers arriving at Europe’s borders.

A map showing movements of migrants in Europe — Image caption The eastern Mediterranean route has overtaken the central route as the most commonly used this year – with Syrians forming by far the largest migrant group

Most of those heading for Greece take the relatively short voyage from Turkey to the islands of Kos, Chios, Lesvos and Samos – often in flimsy rubber dinghies or small wooden boats.

How many migrant die?

The voyage from Libya to Italy is longer and more hazardous. According to the IOM, more than 2,500 migrants are reported to have died trying to make the crossing this year – altogether, 2,643 people have died in the Mediterranean in 2015.

Chart and map showing numbers who have died in the Mediterranean this year

The summer months are usually when most fatalities occur as it is the busiest time for migrants attempting to reach Europe.

But so far this year the deadliest month for migrants was April, which saw a boat carrying about 800 migrants capsize in the sea off Libya. Overcrowding is thought to have been one of the reasons for the disaster.

Migrant deaths in Mediterranean by month

Impact of the Syrian crisis

Asylum applications from Syrians in Europe have surged in 2015, fuelled by the country’s vicious civil war which began more than four years ago and shows no sign of ending.

The vast majority of refugees have fled to neighbouring countries such as Turkey, Lebanon and Jordan, and the number of Syrians there far outweighs those who have made the difficult journey to Europe.

Map: Syrian asylum claims in Europe and registered refugees in the Middle East

Migrants redistributed within Germany

Germany is currently the preferred destination for tens of thousands of migrants in central Europe. More than 800,000 people are expected to claim asylum there this year, four times the figure for 2014.

Germany has a quota system which redistributes asylum seekers around its federal states based on their tax income and existing population density.

Map: Distribution of asylum seekers across German states

A note on terminology: The BBC uses the term migrant to refer to all people on the move who have yet to complete the legal process of claiming asylum. This group includes people fleeing war-torn countries such as Syria, who are likely to be granted refugee status, as well as people who are seeking jobs and better lives, who governments are likely to rule are economic migrants.

Union Corruption Runs Far and Wide

Posted on September 29, 2015September 29, 2015 by Denise Simon

For a listing of union members corruption, investigations and indictments, go here.

For a chilling read of an 84 page report on union corruption and how cases play into the RICO Act, go here. There is a long history of criminal activity and it is an enterprise that still occurs and grows.

Report: Government Unions Take from the Poor to Give to the Rich

White-collar professionals dominate public sector union ranks

FreeBeacon: The government employees who now make up a majority of the nation’s union members are a far cry from the blue-collar archetype of old, according to a new report.

The Competitive Enterprise Institute will release a report on Tuesday morning documenting the changing nature of unionism in America, as white-collar professionals in the public sector overtake the private sector working class as the face of unionism.

“Public sector unions may claim they stand up for the little guy, but generally they aren’t representing blue collar workers against a better-educated, white-collar management,” said Carrie Sheffield, a scholar at the institute, in a release. “Government unions represent skilled, white-collar workers who enjoy big benefits and job security, courtesy of the taxpayer.”

Government workers are more likely to work behind a desk and enjoy civil service protections than the manufacturing workers who stood at the forefront of the labor movement at the start of the 20th century, according to the report. A majority of them have college educations.

“A larger share of public sector than private sector workers are employed in “management, professional, and related occupations.” In 2013, 56.2 percent of public sector workers and 37.8 percent of private sector workers were employed in these occupations,” the report says. “As the percentage of public sector union members increased between 1971 and 2004, the fraction of union members in the top third of the nation’s income distribution increased by 24 percent, while the proportion of unionists in the bottom third of the distribution declined by 45 percent. This is because better-educated and more affluent workers are more likely to belong to public rather than private sector unions.”

Sheffield said that these paychecks and costs have grown rapidly—retired New York City cops, the report notes, now outnumber active duty ones—in recent years and have the effect of pitting taxpayers, including the working class, against well-paid civil servants.

Pension debt and other unfunded compensation for government workers have led to several major municipal bankruptcies. Detroit, for example, declared bankruptcy when it was unable to meet nearly $20 billion in debt, about half of which was attributed to worker retirement benefits.

“Unfortunately for taxpayers, government unions donate huge amounts to elected officials who then vote on those expanding benefit packages—much to the detriment of cities like Detroit and Stockton, California, and states like Illinois and New Jersey that are on the brink of fiscal insolvency,” Sheffield said in a release.

The shift has created incentives to grow government and spur political involvement from public servants. The current system allows government unions to pump millions of dollars to candidates, who become the agents that the unions negotiate with at the bargaining table.

Sheffield recounts how early private sector union boosters were skeptical of government unions. President Franklin Delano Roosevelt, a champion of organized labor, once said that “Collective bargaining, as usually understood, cannot be transplanted into the public service.”

The institute says that lawmakers should enact reforms akin to that of Gov. Scott Walker in Wisconsin to return to the balance outlined by Roosevelt. Walker was able to become the first sitting governor to survive a recall vote by highlighting the high costs associated with union-negotiated benefits and its effect on his state’s working class. Sheffield said that lawmakers should do the same.

“Government unions are a powerful interest group that is uniquely privileged in being funded by taxpayers. Their members generally have higher levels of education than the average private sector worker, and enjoy greater compensation and job security. David taking on Goliath they are certainly not,” the report says.