Congressman has Toolkit to Avoid Deportation

Posted on March 27, 2015March 27, 2015 by Denise Simon

Barack Obama by executive action designed a program titled ‘Childhood Arrivals and Deferred Action for Parental Accountability (DACA). This is NOT law, there is already immigration law that is by edict not being applied, so DACA is additional action forcing immigration enforcers to comply.

There are several in Congress that are ‘all-in’ when it comes to ignoring their oath of office and side with the non-compliance of immigration law.

This congressman deserves the buzzard blue ribbon of the week.

Rep. Gutierrez Creates Toolkit to Help Illegal Immigrants Avoid Deportation

Watch the video here where Congressman Gutierrez explains his mission.

Representative Luis Gutierrez (D., Ill.) has created a “family defender toolkit” to help the potential beneficiaries of President Obama’s executive amnesty avoid deportation while the program is on hold. In an infomercial-style video released earlier this week, Gutierrez explains his toolkit’s key feature: a card designed to help illegal immigrants escape deportation.

He instructs the potential beneficiaries of Obama’s Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) and Deferred Action for Parental Accountability (DAPA) programs to use the card to defend themselves against immigration enforcement officers, but to avoid showing it to local law enforcement if they’re detained for matters unrelated to immigration. “Only pull [the card] out when you’re detained by an immigration official; it explains in English and Spanish that you’re eligible for DACA and DAPA,” Gutierrez says in the video. “By using this card after you’ve been arrested or detained, you can explain that [according to] the policy in place today, you should be released because you’re not a priority for deportation.” Gutierrez, who was challenged by anti-amnesty activists at the University of Southern California last week, may have deliberately avoided publicizing the cards to avoid further political backlash.

His message appears to be directed only at those who stand to benefit from the president’s executive actions. “I hope that you never have to use this card, but if you do, don’t be scared, because you’re prepared,” Gutierrez concluded. “Soon enough the DACA and DAPA applications will be available.”

Gutierrez has even been so generous as to post the brochure toolkit online for download.

Gutierrez is at the core of a political action committee titled Immigration Reform Fund.

Total Receipts	$250,045
Total Spent	$25,815
Begin Cash on Hand	$59,755
End Cash on Hand	$283,985
Debts	$0
Date of last report	December 31, 2014

2014 PAC Contribution Data

Contributions from this PAC to federal candidates (list recipients) (100% to Democrats, 0% to Republicans)	$5,000
Contributions to this PAC from individual donors of $200 or more ( list donors)	$183,950

Official PAC Name:
IMMIGRATION REFORM FUND
Location: WASHINGTON, DC 20002
Industry: Leadership PACs; Democratic leadership PAC
Treasurer: FIGUEROA, OMAIRA
FEC Committee ID: C00530816

Then Gutierrez even hires an illegal for his own office in Illinois.

Washington, DC – Today, Rep. Luis V. Gutierrez (D-IL) announced the hiring of José M. Quintero as an employee in his District Office on North Avenue in Chicago. Quintero was the first young immigrant in Illinois to receive work authorization via Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA), the deportation-relief offered by President Obama to immigrants eligible for the DREAM Act. Quintero applied for DACA through the Congressman’s office on the first day applications were accepted (Aug. 15, 2012) and received work authorization and his official two-year reprieve from deportation in October.

The Congressman hired Quintero on a temporary basis in December and made him a full-time employee with benefits in January of this year. He will do casework in the Congressman’s Chicago office, specializing in helping DACA applicants assemble and fill-out the necessary forms and documents to apply. The Congressman said he plans to hire an additional DACA recipient for his office in Cicero in the coming weeks.

“I am challenging my colleagues to put their money where their mouths are and hire young people who have come forward, applied and received work authorization,” Rep. Gutierrez said. “It takes a lot of courage for undocumented immigrants to get their records together, pay their fees, and apply for this program and this is a very small way for a Member of Congress to lead by example and to say I want to help you fully participate in your community by working and contributing.”

“José is outstanding and first volunteered to help at DACA workshops we held in Chicago, then we brought him into the office to help and now he is full-time, with health care benefits, and the works,” Gutierrez said. “He has a great story to tell that is typical of the DREAMers I have met in Chicago and around the country and he is very serious about public service and giving back to his church and his community. He is a fantastic ambassador for the DACA program, for DREAMers and for immigrant youth in general.”

Quintero was born in Celaya, Guanajuato, Mexico and came to Chicago with his parents at the age of six. He graduated from Benito Juarez Community Academy in Pilsen and received his Associates Degree from Harold Washington College in Chicago. He was the first DACA recipient to be identified in Illinois and one of the first in the nation. He has since been interviewed by numerous local reporters and also told his story on Univision’s national network morning news program “Despierta America” in November.

“Thanks to the help of Congressman Luis Gutierrez, I now have my work permit, two year protection from deportation, a Social Security number and state ID,” Quintero said. “I am learning so much in his office and have a chance to help other DREAMers apply for DACA. As immigration reform moves to the center of the national agenda this year, I will have a front row seat and I will be helping Congressman Gutierrez and my community every step of the way.”

Congressman Gutierrez said he has spoken with other Members of Congress about hiring DACA recipients and he thinks a few offices will soon be doing so. The Congressman is the Chair of the Immigration Task Force of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus and was instrumental in advocating for the adoption of the DACA policy by the White House and in advocating for immigration reform and the DREAM Act.

The Hillary-Ettes are Marking Your Words

Posted on March 27, 2015March 27, 2015 by Denise Simon

The Hillary team is out in full force putting out threats for words used by media and like men when writing stories about Hillary. Use of keywords forces a label to be attached to those speaking them or writing them. Hillary said she believes in new beginnings, those as a new grandmother, a new hairdo, a new email address and then a new relationship with the media.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cLbDkvHvWxU&feature=player_detailpage#t=3

So far, this newness is not working so well. Get out the thesaurus and make good use of it.

Media tweet responses can be read here.

The 13 words you can’t write about Hillary Clinton anymore

Hillary Clinton has been in the public eye for a very long time, which means much has been written about her — including quite a few adjectives. But some of these adjectives are now off-limits.

That’s according to the Clinton “Super Volunteers,” who have promised to track the media’s use of words they believe to be sexist code words. The New York Times’s Amy Chozick tweeted a missive she received from the group (which we would note is almost definitely not connected to official Team Clinton) on Wednesday:

So these words are now off the table: “polarizing,” “calculating,” “disingenuous,” “insincere,” “ambitious,” “inevitable,” “entitled,” “over-confident,” “secretive,” “will do anything to win,” “represents the past,” and “out of touch.”

The thinking here, of course, is that these kinds of words are attached to Clinton in a way that they wouldn’t be attached to male candidates — that people wouldn’t call Clinton “ambitious” if she weren’t a woman, that there is a double-standard for such traits.

But do the media actually use these words to describe Clinton? Well, yes, but only if you loosely define “the media” as “the conservative media” and “people who don’t like Hillary Clinton.”

In fact, if you Google “Hillary Clinton” and “calculating,” there are 140,000 results. The first slew of results come from conservative outlets like The Daily Caller, The Blaze, Breitbart, the Daily Telegraph and also the Republican “America Rising” super PAC. One result comes from the Los Angeles Times, but it’s a defense Bill Clinton lodged in 2007 against the attacks.

“Calculating” is almost completely something used to attack Clinton or describe the attacks on her. The same goes for “disingenuous,” “insincere,” “entitled,” “secretive,” “over-confident,” “represents the past” and “out of touch.” These are all loaded words and not terms used casually by mainstream media journalists like Chozick to describe a politician.

The same cannot be said for some other words. “Polarizing” is a word that has long followed Clinton, as has “ambitious,” and “inevitable.”

And some of these words should indeed be reined in — if not necessarily for the reason this group wants.

“Polarizing,” for example, is a word that now describes pretty much every well-known politician in the country, up to and including Barack Obama and George W. Bush. The politician who isn’t polarizing is the exception rather than the rule. And it usually means that the politician just isn’t well known enough to be polarizing. Yet.

And while we’re at it, go ahead and retire “inevitable,” too. We’ve been talking about it for a while, sure, but it’s probably been overdone (not too mention it aims to predict the future). Now it’s all about whether Clinton gets any capable primary opponents. Until then, call her a huge favorite and leave it at that.

As for “ambitious,” nobody runs for president without having an extraordinary amount of ambition. Not Ted Cruz, not Barack Obama, not Mitt Romney or Jeb Bush, and definitely not Bill Clinton — all of whom have had their unusual amount of ambition chewed over by the media.

Widespread Refugees from Middle East to Europe

Posted on March 27, 2015March 27, 2015 by Denise Simon

From hundreds of thousands to millions of refugees from one country to another speaks to failed policy, failed government and failed control. There is Cuba, Syria, Iraq, Yemen and Libya. An examination of Libya speaks to a global problem and the costs to Europe. Not only is Europe failing in a duty, but the United States and the United Nations fail equally. I had a little communications exchange with the journalist from the WSJ to gain more insight.

When there is mass evacuation, humanitarian conditions take a nose dive. Can there be integration? What about housing, education or healthcare?

Where does the money come from and what about the country of origin, does it get classified as a failed nation with no solution?

Immigrants attempting to cross the Mediterranean to seek asylum in Europe have disrupted shipping. Above, the Italian navy rescued shipwrecked immigrants off the coast of Africa in June.

Europe’s Cargo Ships Diverted to Sea Rescues

Commercial vessels on busy Mediterranean routes asked to assist with waves of migrants

By: Liam Moloney

ROME—In September, Italian authorities ordered oil tankers owned by Mediterranea di Navigazione SpA to help in five operations to rescue 600 boat people trying to cross from Libya to Italy in flimsy vessels.

The rescue operations cost the group €100,000 ($109,473) in extra costs, such as fuel and personnel. Now, managing director Paolo Cagnoni is considering changing his vessels’ routes to avoid the flow of migrant boats that is likely to surge this spring.

“We’ve been drawn into this human exile, but our crews aren’t equipped,” Mr. Cagnoni said. “It’s a disaster.”

The waves of African and Middle Eastern seaborne migrants attempting to reach Europe—218,000 tried to get to Greece and Italy last year—are causing a little-noticed but serious problem for the mercantile ships that ply the Mediterranean.

Last year, Italian authorities called on 700 mercantile vessels to help rescue about 40,000 migrants. One ship supplying the oil platforms off the Libyan coast participated in 62 operations. Many of the ships are Italian, but Greek vessels, as well as ships of other nationalities, are also involved in rescues of migrants trying to reach the Greek coast.

The busy maritime traffic around the world’s biggest seaborne migration route leaves private vessels on the front line of a major problem. Mercantile traffic in the Mediterranean accounts for about a fifth of the world’s total. And the area between North Africa and Italy—which has the highest flow of migrants—represents about a third of total Mediterranean traffic.

As a result, the rescue operations have placed a heavy burden on private vessels, which typically have crews of fewer than 20 and lack the training, medical support and life jackets to help several hundred migrants at a time. Crews often ransack their own food and clothing supplies to help the migrants once they get on board.

The ships—which must, according to maritime law, come to the aid of a boat in distress—have also been drawn into dangerous situations. In February, the Italian coast guard ordered one ship to act as a barrier to help pull scores of migrants from an inflatable dinghy in gale-force winds. Coast guard officials from the command center in Rome often have to guide crews on very large vessels to assist flimsy boats and dozens of migrants who often don’t know how to swim.

For instance, last year vessels owned by Denmark’s Maersk Line, which move huge cargoes of electronics, clothing and food and can be 1,312 feet long, rescued 1,100 refugees in four separate operations and played a supporting role in an additional six incidents. A couple of weeks ago, a Maersk ship helped rescue 150 migrants near the Libyan coast, it had to divert its course and sail some 150 miles to bring them to a Sicilian port.

“Container ships are big vessels that don’t maneuver easily” and are packed with containers, leaving limited space for migrants, says Steffen Conradsen, Maersk Line’s head of incident and crisis management. “We are not equipped for such operations.”

The diverted ships lose as much as a week disembarking the migrants, cleaning the vessel and resupplying, at an extra cost of up to $500,000. Insurance covers only part of the extra costs, and appeals from owners for government compensation have had little impact.

Now, shipping groups fear the problem will explode this year. Last year, Italian Navy ships patrolled close to the Libyan coast to help migrant boats as part of an operation dubbed Mare Nostrum. But the Italian patrols were replaced a few months ago by EU patrols whose mandate is to venture no farther than 30 miles from the Italian coast.

Meanwhile, the number of boat people continues to soar, up 43% in the first two months of 2015 compared with a year earlier. The head of EU border control agency Frontex recently said that hundreds of thousands of people in Libya could be ready to make the passage.

The EU’s limited patrols and the expected surge in boat people when the weather improves in the spring mean that coast guard authorities are likely to call on mercantile vessels more often. Shipping owners’ appeals for countries to mount large-scale sea patrols to deal with the problem—akin to the international response to piracy around the Horn of Africa—have fallen on deaf ears.

“We have become part of a rent-a-vessel program because countries can’t get their act together,” says Luca Sisto, a senior official at the Italian shipping lobby Confitarma.

Mr. Sisto says that concern about the safety of their vessels and crew—particularly when oil and natural-gas tankers are involved—may push some captains to refuse calls for help.

Big players such as Maersk Line, the world’s biggest container operator and a unit of shipping and oil giant A.P. Moeller-Maersk A/S, can absorb the extra costs resulting from the rescue operations. But smaller ones more dependent on the central Mediterranean corridor grumble that the rescues could result in serious financial problems.

“The flow of refugees has reached a size where we can no longer cope,” says Thomas Rehder, president of the European Community Shipowners’ Associations. “This is the responsibility of governments, not merchant ships.”

Frontex Joint Operation Triton

Concerted efforts for managing migrator flows in the Central Mediterranean

What is Triton?

Triton is a Frontex coordinated joint operation, requested by the Italian authorities that will start its activity as from 1 November 2014 in the Central Mediterranean to support Italy.

How have the details of the operation been defined?

The details of Triton, including the operational area and the necessary assets, have been agreed between Frontex and Italy as the host state on the basis of the requests for assistance made by the Italian authorities. The final setting of the operation fully matches the requests made by the Italian authorities. Triton will rely on human and technical resources made available by the participating Member States.

How many Member States have made available technical and human resources and what?

Today 21 Member States have indicated their willingness to participate with human (65 guest officers in total) and technical resources (12 technical assets) at the start of the joint operation Triton; others might follow in the coming months. Technical equipment: 4 Fixed Wing Aircrafts, 1 Helicopter, 4 Open Shore vessels, 1 coastal Patrol Vessel, 2 Coastal patrol boats. Human Resources: 65 men/months in total.

What is Triton’s budget?

Its monthly budget is estimated at €2.9 million per month. In order to finance the launch and the first phase of the operation, funds have been reallocated from the Internal Security Fund and from within the Frontex budget. An increase of the Frontex 2015 budget has to be agreed by the European Parliament and the Council in order to finance the operation with the same intensity in the year 2015 and in the longer run.

Which rules will apply to the Frontex coordinated operation when it comes to migrants’ rights?

As for all Frontex operation, Triton will be operating in full respect of international and EU law, including respect of fundamental rights and of the principle of non-refoulement.

Will Triton also be participating in search and rescue activities?

The role of Frontex is key to support Member States towards effective border control in the Mediterranean region, and at the same time to provide assistance to persons or vessels in distress during these operations. Frontex is entrusted with assisting Member States in circumstances requiring increased technical assistance at the external borders, taking into account that some situations may involve humanitarian emergencies and rescue at sea. Although Frontex is neither a search and rescue body nor does it take up the functions of a Rescue Coordination Centre, it assists Member States to fulfil their obligation under international maritime law to render assistance to persons in distress.

Will Triton replace Mare Nostrum?

Joint operation Triton is intended to support the Italian efforts at their request, and does not replace or substitute Italian obligations in monitoring and surveying the Schengen external borders and in guaranteeing full respect of EU and international obligations1 in particular when it comes to search and rescue at sea. It implies that Italy will have to continue making continued substantial efforts using national means, fully coordinated with the Frontex operation, in order to manage the situation at the external borders.

Background on Frontex assistance to Italy

Weeks after the tragic drowning of over 300 persons around the Island of Lampedusa in October 2013, Italy launched a major search and rescue operation called ‘Mare Nostrum’ operated by the Italian Navy.

The Mare Nostrum operation is on-going close to the Libyan coast with Italian naval assets. The EU has supported the operation financially with €1.8 million from the emergency actions under the External Borders Fund.

Frontex has also provided assistance to Italy through the two coordinated joint operations Hermes and Aeneas. Both these operations will be replaced by Triton.

The joint operation Hermes coordinated by Frontex has, in one form or the other and with few interruptions, been going on for several years. Italy has acted as the sole host state.

This joint operation has been on-going close to the Italian coast to control the EU external borders in line with the mandate of the Frontex Agency with a yearly budget for 2014 of around €5 million. In accordance with the host state’s request, sea borne assets in the joint operation come from Italy (Coast Guard and/or Guardia di Finanza); other Member States have contributed with one surveillance aircraft and guest officers on land to help with screening/debriefing.

Frontex also coordinated joint operation Aeneas with Italy as host state. This operation mainly focussed on migratory flows from Egypt and Turkey (via Greece) to Italy.

Among others, the obligations stemming from the Schengen Borders Code and the Charter of Fundamental Rights, as well as the International convention for the safety of life at sea (SOLAS), the International convention on maritime search and rescue (SAR) as well as resolutions from the International maritime organisation (IMO).

Global Roadway with Fraud in Trade Agreements

Posted on March 26, 2015March 26, 2015 by Denise Simon

Being a fully connected world has major implications for fraud, terror and collusion. It is already a major security threat to not control borders and vet travelers. When it comes to foreign transportation, control and inspections receive little control as well.

Plans for superhighway linking Britain and America

The Russian proposal would allow Britons to travel overland from Britain to the United States

Plans for an ambitious 12,400-mile superhighway linking the Atlantic and the Pacific are reportedly being considered by Russian authorities.

The Trans-Eurasian Belt Development would see the construction of a vast motorway across Russia. It would connect with existing networks in Europe, making road trips to eastern Russia a far easier proposition. While roads do currently run across most of Russia, the quality tends to deteriorate the further you travel from Moscow.

The proposal, outlined in the Siberian Times, would see the road follow a similar route to the Trans-Siberian railway, through cities including Yekaterinburg, Irkutsk and Vladivostok. A new high-speed train line would also be constructed, along with pipelines for gas and oil. The rail network may also be extended to the Chukotka region of Russia and across the Bering Strait to Alaska – making overland trips from Britain to the US – via the Channel Tunnel – a possibility.

^{Much of eastern Russia’s road network is of poor quality (Photo: AP/Fotolia)}

The idea, which developers hope will help boost tourism and make Russia a global transportation hub, was presented at a meeting of the Russian Academy of Science. But he added: “It will solve many problems in the development of the vast region. It is connected with social programs, and new fields, new energy resources, and so on.

“The idea is that basing on the new technology of high-speed rail transport we can build a new railway near the Trans-Siberian Railway, with the opportunity to go to Chukotka and Bering Strait and then to the American continent.”

^{The Trans-Siberian (Photo: Alamy)}

The Trans-Siberian Railway links Moscow and Vladivostok, covers 9,258km (6,152 miles) and takes seven days to complete.

According to Anthony Lambert, Telegraph Travel’s rail expert: “The principal attraction of the journey is, of course, the Russian landscape – the vast panoramas and sense of immensity so vividly captured by such artists as Isaac Levitan and Ivan Shishkin. The taiga is mesmerising.

“Looking out at the panorama of larch, silver fir, pine and birch induces the kind of reverie that is one of the pleasures of train travel, a random stream of thoughts and images that drifts on like the forest. In clearings, villages that could have come from a Levitan or Shishkin painting break the spell and make one wonder what life must be like in such a remote land.”

Beyond questionable financiers of a global highway, the elites and government investments with carve-outs lead to other implications and policy decisions.

Leaked Pacific trade pact draft shows investment carve-outs sought

(Reuters) – Australia’s medicine subsidies, Canadian films and culture, and capital controls in Chile would be carved out from investment protection rules being negotiated in a Pacific trade pact, according to a draft text released by Wikileaks on Wednesday.

An investment chapter, dated Jan. 20, from the 12-nation Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) deal was released amid controversy over rules allowing companies to sue foreign governments, which critics say should be dropped from the pact.

The 55-page draft says countries cannot treat investors from a partner country differently from local investors, lays out compensation to be paid if property is expropriated or nationalized and sets out how to resolve disputes.

Consumer group Public Citizen said the definition of investment was too broad, covering even “failed attempts” to invest such as channeling resources to set up a business. But Center for Strategic and International Studies senior adviser Scott Miller said most treaties defined investment broadly and the draft was close to a publicly available U.S. model text.

Lise Johnson, head of investment law at the Columbia Center on Sustainable Investment, said governments’ rights to regulate for environmental and public interest purposes seemed “very weak.” But Miller said they were not a big carve-out.

A footnote says that investor-state dispute settlement (ISDS) rules do not apply to Australia, although it notes: “deletion of footnote is subject to certain conditions.”

The exemptions sought would protect countries from being sued by foreign corporations that complain they do not get the same treatment as domestic firms because of government actions, such as sovereign debt defaults or government procurement.

Mexico, Canada, New Zealand and Australia want a free pass for foreign investments requiring special approval, often for sensitive local sectors such as banking or communications.

Australia wants to exclude medical programs and Canada to exempt cultural sectors, including films, music and books.

An annex states that Chile’s central bank can impose capital controls and maintains restrictions on foreign investors transferring sale proceeds offshore.

Chile and other emerging markets have seen large inflows of foreign investment, which can push up currencies and destabilize the local economy.

Critics argue the rules give companies too much power to sue governments. But business groups say they are necessary to stop unscrupulous governments from discriminating against foreigners.

TPP countries hope to wrap up negotiations on the deal by midyear.

A U.S. Trade Representative spokesman said investment agreements sought to protect Americans doing business abroad and ensure the ability to regulate in the public interest at home.

WH Standing with Iran, Without Pre-Condition

Posted on March 26, 2015March 26, 2015 by Denise Simon

Inside the talks with Iran on the nuclear program is the matter of the IAEA. The White House and John Kerry both have publically telegraphed that they rely on the good work and viable inspections by the IAEA. Even if there is a quality inspection and a violation has been determined, then what? No one has answered that.

One of the biggest stumbling blocks to a nuclear agreement with Iran has been Tehran’s refusal to answer questions by the IAEA about past nuclear activities that appear to be related to nuclear weapons development.

Iran struck an agreement with the IAEA in November 2013 to answer these questions as part of a 12-step process. This agreement has been described by U.S. officials as an important factor in reaching a final nuclear deal with Iran since it reassure the world that Iran’s nuclear program is peaceful and that it halted any weapons-related research and development.

Although Obama officials regularly claim Iran has fully cooperated with the IAEA during the nuclear talks, Iran has only addressed one of the 12 areas identified by the IAEA.

According to a shocking Wall Street Journal article published on March 26, Western states hope to get beyond this problem by proposing to weaken the 12-step agreement by asking Iran to grant the IAEA access to a few nuclear sites now and answer questions about nuclear weapons-related work sometime in the future.

According to the Journal article:

“Under the new plan, Tehran wouldn’t be expected to immediately clarify all the outstanding questions raised by the IAEA in a 2011 report on Iran’s alleged secretive work. A full reckoning of Iran’s past activities would be demanded in later years as part of a nuclear deal that is expected to last at least 15 years.”

The Journal also noted that France is leading the way in pushing Iran to answer questions about its past nuclear weapons work because it believes concessions on this issue “could set a bad precedent that weakens international efforts to prevent nuclear proliferation.”

Instead of a 10-year duration for a nuclear agreement with Iran, France is pushing for a agreement to last 15 years with an additional 10 years of intensive IAEA monitoring.

Does anyone really believe Iran will answer for past nuclear weapons work after a final nuclear agreement is in place when it refused to do so during the nuclear talks? And why won’t the news media focus on how the socialist government of French President Francois Hollande has become the hold-out to the Obama administration’s nuclear sell-out to Iran’s mullahs?

This nuclear deal with Iran is looking worse and worse.

How much of an open freeway is the Obama administration really giving to Iran versus Israel? Simply put, Israel is the enemy du jour and when breaching a 50 year relationship is proof, but declassifying documents on Israel’s nuclear program rather cross the Rubicon.

In Shocking Breach, U.S. Declassifies Document Revealing Some of Israel’s Nuclear Capabilities

On February 12, the Pentagon quietly declassified a top-secret 386-page Department of Defense document from 1987 detailing Israel’s nuclear program – the first time Israel’s alleged nuclear program has ever been officially and publically referenced by the U.S. authorities.

In the declassified document, the Pentagon reveals supposed details about Israel’s deterrence capabilities, but it kept sections on France, Germany, and Italy classified. Those sections are blacked out in the document.

The two main exceptions in the international media that wrote about the declassification at the time were the state-funded Iranian regime station Press TV and the state-funded Russian station RT.

Both these media were rumored to have been tipped off about this obscure report at the time by persons in Washington. (Both the RT and PressTV stories falsely claim that the U.S. gave Israel help in building a hydrogen bomb. This is incorrect.)

Israel has never admitted to having nuclear weapons. To do so might spark a regional nuclear arms race, and eventual nuclear confrontation.

The declassification is a serious breach of decades’ old understandings concerning this issue between Israel and its north American and certain European allies.

The Pentagon’s February declassification coincided with intense pressure on the Netanyahu government by the Obama administration, trying to force the Israeli prime minister to cancel a planned speech to Congress questioning the wisdom of a highly risky nuclear deal with the Iranian regime.

However, in the past 24 hours several media in the U.S. and elsewhere have now chosen to report on the February declassification by the Pentagon. This coincides with stepped up efforts this week by the Obama administration to weaken Israel’s deterrent capabilities, including leaking to the Wall Street Journal incorrect allegations that Israel directly spies on the U.S.

An informed person connected to the government in Jerusalem, tells me:

“Over the years there have been backhanded references and comments made by individuals with some familiarity with this issue. But there has never before been any official description of the quality and capacity of installations. This kind of declassified document constitutes a whole different level of acknowledgement. It is part of a pattern of carefully controlled leaking of information which is very hard to attribute to a specific government agency or individual. Nevertheless it is clear what is happening.

“The failure to maintain the degree of mature and cooperative discretion that officials from several governments have exercised up to now, marks a serious change in the code of conduct. It is not wise to draw attention to this issue because it would tend to destabilize the international order and encourage others to pursue nuclear capabilities.”

The Pentagon declassification is not the first time the Obama administration has seemingly tried to curtail or control Israeli efforts to stop the Iranian nuclear program.

In May 2011, the State Department revealed that the Israeli business tycoon brothers Sami and Yuli Ofer, were sending their cargo ships to Iran, as reported, for example, here in the Financial Times.

The Sunday Times of London, again on the basis of tip-offs, reported on June 5, 2011 that cargo ships owned by a subsidiary of the Ofer Brothers Group were being used to shuttle Israeli agents and reconnaissance equipment into Iran.

According to the report, at least eight ships belonging to companies owned by the Ofer group docked in Iranian ports to load and offload cargo in the years prior to 2011, as Israel made substantive efforts (aided by some European countries) to slow down and hamper Iran’s nuclear weapons program.

Sami Ofer died on June 2, 2011, three days before that report was published.

The full story of the Obama administration’s effort to undermine, and effectively attempt to take control of, Israel’s deterrent capabilities in various spheres is yet to be written. There have been several other aspects to these efforts.

Many might say that the Israeli government has had little choice but to turn for assistance to Congress and to persons in the U.S. defense and intelligence communities, who share Jerusalem’s intense concerns about the nature of the anticipated deal with the Iranian regime Obama seems determined to sign.