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SCOTUS on Obamacare, Facts

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WASHINGTON (AP) — The Supreme Court was sharply divided Wednesday in the latest challenge to President Barack Obama’s health overhaul, this time over the tax subsidies that make insurance affordable for millions of Americans.

The justices aggressively questioned lawyers on both sides of what Justice Elena Kagan called “this never-ending saga,” the latest politically charged fight over the Affordable Care Act.

Chief Justice John Roberts said almost nothing in nearly 90 minutes of back-and-forth, and Justice Anthony Kennedy’s questions did not make clear how he will come out. Roberts was the decisive vote to uphold the law in 2012.

Otherwise, the same liberal-conservative divide that characterized the earlier case was evident.

Opponents of the law say that only residents of states that set up their own insurance markets can get federal subsidies to help pay their premiums. The administration says the law provides for subsidies in all 50 states.

The liberal justices peppered lawyer Michael Carvin almost from the outset of his argument to limit the subsidies.

Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg said the law set up flexibility for states to either set up their own markets or rely on the federal healthcare.gov. Giving subsidies only to people in some states would be “disastrous,” Ginsburg said.

When Solicitor General Donald Verrilli Jr. stepped to the lectern, the liberal justices fell silent, and Justices Samuel Alito and Antonin Scalia took over.

“It may not be the statute Congress intended, but it may be the statute Congress wrote,” Scalia said of the provision in question. The case focuses on four words in the law, “established by the state.” The challengers say those words are clear and conclusive evidence that Congress wanted to limit subsidies to those consumers who get their insurance through a marketplace, or exchange, that was established by a state.

(AP) Members of the National Family Planning and Reproductive Health Association rally…
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Verrilli argued that the law can only be read more broadly and noted that millions of people would lose health insurance if the court rules against the administration.

Alito wondered if the justices could delay the effect of such a ruling to allow states and perhaps the federal government to act. Scalia said he believes Congress would act.

“This Congress, Your Honor?” Verrilli said to widespread laughter in a packed courtroom that included leading congressional Democrats and Republicans.

Kennedy voted to strike down the health law in 2012, but on Wednesday he asked questions of both sides that made it hard to tell where he might come out this time.

He suggested that challenger Carvin’s argument raised a “serious” constitutional problem affecting the relationship between states and the federal government. On the other hand, he seemed less than convinced by Verrilli’s reading of the law to allow the subsidies nationwide.

Millions of people could be affected by the court’s decision. The justices are trying to determine whether the law makes people in all 50 states eligible for federal tax subsidies to cut the cost of insurance premiums. Or, does it limit tax credits to people who live in states that created their own health insurance marketplaces?

A ruling that limits where subsidies are available would have dramatic consequences because roughly three dozen states opted against their own marketplace, or exchange, and instead rely on the U.S. Health and Human Services Department’s healthcare.gov. Independent studies estimate that 8 million people could lose insurance coverage.

Activists on both sides were in place outside the marble courthouse by 5:30 a.m. Wednesday. Some held placards showing how many people in each state would lose insurance if the court ruled that the law does not allow subsidies everywhere.

Opponents of the Affordable Care Act failed to kill the law in an epic, election-year Supreme Court case in 2012. Chief Justice Roberts joined with the court’s liberal justices and provided the crucial vote to uphold the law in the midst of Obama’s re-election campaign.

The new case, part of a long-running political and legal fight to get rid of the law also known as Obamacare, focuses on the four words “established by the state” in a law that runs more than 900 pages.

The administration counters that the law was written to dramatically reduce the ranks of uninsured, and that it would make no sense to condition subsidies on where people live. The phrase “established by the state,” is what the administration calls a “term of art” that takes in both state- and federally run exchanges. The administration also says the term cannot be read in isolation, and that other parts of the law show that subsidies should be widely available.

Each side in the case argues that the law unambiguously supports only its position. One other option for the court is to declare the law is ambiguous when it comes to subsidies and defer to the Internal Revenue Service’s regulations making tax credits available nationwide.

Partisan and ideological divisions remain stark for a law that passed Congress in 2010 with no Republican votes. Of the judges who have ruled on lawsuits over the subsidies, Democratic appointees have sided with the administration and Republican appointees have been with the challengers.

Roberts was the only justice to essentially cross party lines with his vote in 2012. His fellow conservatives on the court voted to strike down Obamacare in its entirety.

A decision in King v. Burwell, 14-114, is expected by late June.

To understand the case that House has against the Department of Health and Human Services on Obamacare (ACA), in part this is from the lead lawyer, Jonathan Turley representing the House of Representatives:

The case could again put Chief Justice Roberts in the position of saving or dooming the ACA with a court that has been deeply divided over the Act. Roberts appeared to have switched sides soon before the issuance in the individual mandate case — a decision that saved the ACA but also produced a rather convoluted opinion. Now the Administration seems to be trying to influence Roberts with dire predictions about what would occur if he or his colleagues vote against the President. Obviously, the ramifications of a legal interpretation should not influence the Court but clearly some believe it may factor into the analysis.

Sylvia Mathews Burwell, the Health and Human Services secretary, told lawmakers in a letter on Tuesday that millions of Americans would lose their health insurance if the court rules against President Barack Obama’s administration in the case, which is expected to be decided by June. The timing of the letter is rather obvious and the question is whether such heavy-handed moves could backfire. It seems pretty obvious who the letter is really directed toward and Roberts may feel like he is being played as a chump.

Ironically, there is no need for the letter. As I have noted in the past, King and Halbig represent serious threats to the ACA, even though there could be legislative remedies. The problem is that the President has burned every bridge with Congress in continuing to take unilateral actions in violation of the the Separation of Powers (at least in the view of some of us).

In the end, this type of public campaign can irritate and alienate justices before an argument. Whether the President acted constitutionally (and I believe that he did not) should not be a question that turns on how you feel about health care or the ramification of enforcing what you believe is the constitutional mandate.

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Muslim Brotherhood Embedded in USA Culture

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Keep in mind that all Muslim Brotherhood front operations in America have ‘non-profit; status with the Internal Revenue Service.

The Betrayal Papers Part I – Under Obama: U.S. Captured by the Muslim Brotherhood, presented a picture of a conspiracy that is manipulating the American government. Part II – In Plain Sight: A National Security “Smoking Gun” named several people in the Obama administration who have documented associations to Muslim Brotherhood front groups and the State of Qatar. This article will explore the deliberate strategy of the Muslim Brotherhood and the Obama administration to cripple the middle class and to steer the American economy, as well as identify, to the extent possible, their role in many Obama scandals.

Primer 

What do Common Core, “comprehensive” immigration reform, and IRS targeting of conservative groups have in common? They are just a few examples of Muslim Brotherhood-connected policy initiatives that are affecting the lives of Americans every day. Under Obama, many new domestic policies, as well as many scandals, can be traced back to, in varying degrees, the Muslim Brotherhood.

To understand why America no longer feels like America – why it seems that the government has its favorites and while others are targeted and even persecuted – it is important to understand two strong influences on the Muslim Brotherhood. The first is historical: the Nazi Party of Hitler’s Germany. The second is more contemporary: the strategy developed by Al Qaeda’s strategic mastermind, Abu Musab al-Suri.

“The Vampire Economy” and Economic Repression

In 1939, German economist Guenter Reimann published a study of the German economy under Hitler. The Vampire Economy described a corrupt, backwards economy that was not based on any economic logic, much less profit seeking, but instead on the politics of the Fuehrer (i.e., Leader), Adolf Hitler.

Like Communism, Nazism was a form of socialism. (The term Nazi is a contraction of the German word Nationalsozialismus, or National Socialism.) Unlike Soviet Communism, which, at least theoretically, depended on shared ownership of capital to direct the economy, in Nazi Germany the shops, farms, and factories remained, nominally, in private hands. Yet the outcome was basically the same in both Soviet Russia and Nazi Germany: total control over the economy by the Leader and the Party.

In Germany, the pseudo-legal rationale used by the Nazis was regulation, which was subject to change on a whim. If you stepped outside the regulations, you were punished with fines, political persecution, imprisonment, and possibly shipped off to a concentration camp. Sound familiar?

Yet pervasive corruption in the Third Reich ensured the rules applied differently to those in favor, and to those who opposed the Nazis. Specifically, in such an economy, there are party members in good standing, and there were dissidents. Party members can break rules with impunity, while dissidents face public character assassinations and blacklisting.

This calls to mind Obamacare’s implementation. Certain companies, approximately 1,200 in fact, received waivers from the law. Other businesses were forced to provide health coverage for abortions against the will and conscience of the business owners (though the Supreme Court later overruled this regulation). A similar comparison can be made for the fines and prosecutions unequally levied on banks for violating a myriad of complex and overlapping regulations.

Abu Musab Al-Suri’s Plan to Cripple the American Economy

Although most Americans know the name Osama bin Laden, very few know the name Abu Musab al-Suri. While bin Laden provided the charisma and wealth to found Al Qaeda, al-Suri, one of his top lieutenants, provided valuable strategic advice to the fledgling jihadi network. A member of the Muslim Brotherhood from the time he was a student, al-Suri rose to become a member of the Brotherhood’s military command in 1982.

Al-Suri was a calculating thinker, who recognized that to bring down America (and the West in general) would require something different than mass murders. He urged the targeting of high value targets, such as infrastructure, which would force the United States to incur significant economic costs. As an example of this strategy in practice, Al-Suri was the architect of the 2004 Madrid train bombings. There is a good case to be made that the World Trade Center was long in Al Qaeda’s sights precisely because it was a bastion of capitalism, an important hub of New York City’s communications network, and the home of many prominent companies.

Of course, there’s little sense in physically targeting an economy which has already been knuckled-down under onerous, impossible to keep-up-with regulations issued by Obama’s bureaucracies. Various sectors of the American economy have already been effectively taken over by the Muslim Brotherhood Obama administration, including: healthcare, banking, energy, agriculture (think EPA and FDA), and transportation. Last week, the Obama administration, without the consent of Congress or the people, seized untold new powers to regulate the internet.

Meanwhile, as the government unapologetically intrudes into every aspect of life and business, a case could be made that the middle class is being systematically bankrupted. Financial columnist Charles Ortel has shown that the economy is fundamentally as weak as it has been in a generation. Following the collapse in 2008, the government pumped in trillions of dollars to supposedly stabilize and jumpstart the economy (recall the misnamed “Stimulus”). But as of January 2015, there were fewer core jobs in the private sector economy than ten years earlier. Compounding this economic morass is national debt: in roughly the same period (2005-2014), debt has increased $16.5 trillion, to $58 trillion. Finally, information from 2012 and 2013 (the most recent data available), shows pre-tax incomes decreasing for high, middle, and low income earning households.

Abu Musab al-Suri had a terrorist superstar with Osama bin Laden. However, when it comes to economically knee-capping the American economy, Barack Hussein Obama has proved far more effective than the cave rat, Sheikh bin Laden.

U.S. Chamber of Commerce in Doha, Qatar – Bipartisan Influence by Muslim Brotherhood

What would be powerful enough to exert this influence over the American economy? What entity could be that pervasive as to reach into big business across the nation?

In February 2010, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce established their first legal Chamber in Doha, Qatar. Qatar, the reader should be reminded, is a prolific financier of terror. Qatar is also home to the spiritual leader of the Muslim Brotherhood, Yusuf al-Qaradawi, now an Interpol fugitive. The Chamber represents American business and also has an explicitly political and diplomatic mission. In the words of the Chamber’s Executive Vice President and COO, David Chavern, AmCham Qatar is “another concrete example of positive U.S. Engagement with the Muslim world.”

Among the companies and organizations which are premier sponsors of AmCham Qatar are ExxonMobil, The Boeing Corporation, Carnegie Mellon Qatar, Northwestern University in Qatar, and Fluor. Moreover, the following companies have significant involvement with the State of Qatar: Lockheed Martin, Bloomberg, Bank of America, Miramax, among many more.

The U.S. Chamber of Commerce, with its close ties to Qatar, is by far the largest lobbying spender in Washington ($136.3 million in 2012). Business is a bipartisan pursuit, which means that money from Qatar – which is arguably today’s most prolific financial sponsor of Islamic terror – carries great weight in both Republican and Democrat circles.

Indeed, Republican Senator Lindsey Graham is on the record last year as saying, “I’m going to embrace being a Chamber of Commerce Republican.” He was part of a bipartisan Senate delegation to Qatar this January which also included Senators John McCain (R-AZ), Bob Corker (R-TN), John Barrasso (R-WY), Angus King (I-ME) and Tim Kaine (D-VA).

The Brotherhood’s Connections to Policies and Scandals of the Obama Administration

In June 2012, The Daily Caller reported that the CAIR, the Council on American Islamic Relations, had attended “hundreds” meetings with the Obama administration. CAIR, it will be recalled, is a Muslim Brotherhood front organization very closely tied to Hamas.

Why so many meetings? What incredible portfolio of business does CAIR have to discuss with an American administration? What follows is a snapshot of various policies and scandals that are linked, often directly, to Muslim Brotherhood individuals, organizations, and their goal of “civilization jihad.”

Militarization of the Department of Homeland Security: While running for President, Obama stated several times that America needed a civilian national security force that matched the might of the U.S. military. Candidate Obama stated in 2008, “We’ve got to have a civilian national security force that’s just as powerful, just as strong, just as well-funded.”

To many, this sounded like a call for a militarized federal police force. Given that DHS has been advised by such people as Mohammed Elibiary, Arif Alikhan, Eboo Patel, and Mohamed Magid, who each have documented ties with the Muslim Brotherhood, is it not possible that DHS has been weaponized as a force against the American people by the Islamists?

Domestic Spying and Wiretapping: While journalists at AP and Fox News have been subjects of wiretapping ordered by Eric Holder’s misnamed Department of Justice, the NSA’s dragnet on regular Americans has been revealed to be broader than virtually anyone suspected.

Curiously, the spreadsheets that were leaked detailing the email tracking of Muslim American leaders stop in 2008. CAIR Director Nihad Awad is listed as a target, as is Faisal Gill, a Republican operative who held a top-secret security clearance with the Department of Homeland Security. The spreadsheets were leaked in 2014 by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden.

Purge of Military Officers and Christianity: Over the past several years, the U.S. military has been purged of hundreds of high ranking officers. Many of these dedicated military officers were dismissed based on trivial offenses. Occurring simultaneously is a purge of Christianity, indeed even Bibles, from the U.S. military.

 

Anti-Police Protests: In conjunction with the militarization of DHS, state and local law enforcement have been targets of the Obama administration and Eric Holder’s Department of Justice. This anti-police agenda culminated last summer with riots in Ferguson, Missouri and violent protests New York City. Among the most prominent groups involved in these protests was ANSWER, a pro-Palestinian group that had on its original steering committee the Muslim Students Association.

Finally, the NYC cop killer Ismaaiyl Abdullah Brinsley stated on his own Facebook page that he was previously an employee of the (Muslim Brotherhood) Islamic Society of North America (ISNA). At the time of the killing, the president of ISNA was Mohamed Magid, an advisor to Obama, DHS, and the National Security Council.

Immigration and Amnesty: Revealed in a recent editorial, “Between 2010 and 2013, the Obama administration imported almost 300,000 new immigrants from Muslim nations — more immigrants than the U.S. let in from Central America and Mexico combined over that period.” Given the paucity of background and security checks, as well as the high incidence of terrorism from such countries, it is any surprise that the FBI now admits that ISIS is active in all 50 states?

The Muslim Public Affairs Council (MPAC), another Muslim Brotherhood front organization operating in the United States, conveniently issued a policy paper in September 2013 calling for “comprehensive immigration reform.”

Moreover, in January the Obama appointed Fatima Noor, a veiled Muslim woman, to the position of “Special Assistant in the Office of the Director for U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services in the Department of Homeland Security.” Other than her religion, her credentials are very thin.

It is hardly an exaggeration to state that the administration is taking gradual steps to eliminating the very concept of American citizenship. In fact, a recent White House conference call made it explicit that these new immigrants are not supposed to assimilate into American society, but instead establish their own ethnic communities within the United States. Does this remind anyone of Gaza, or the no-go zones in Europe?

Common Core: Even classroom education has not escaped the tentacles of the Muslim Brotherhood. The connection between Common Core and the international terror group is through, once again, Qatar. The Connect All Schools initiative is a program to promote “One World Education.” It is aligned to Common Core State Standards, and is funded by the Qatar Foundation International (QFI). The director of QFI’s Research Center for Islamic Legislation and Ethics is Tariq Ramadan, grandson of Muslim Brotherhood founder, Hassan al-Banna.

According to WND, in 2011 QFI “partnered with the Department of State and the U.S. Department of Education to facilitate matchmaking between classrooms in the U.S. and international schools through … the “Connect All Schools” project.” QFI explains on its own website that the initiative was founded in response to Obama’s infamous 2009 Cairo speech, during which Obama had the Muslim Brotherhood seated in the front row.

Participation of the Qatar Foundation International puts in proper context the ever more prevalent cases of Sharia (i.e. Islamic law) incursions into American schools, such as: girls forced to cover up like devout Muslims on school sponsored trips to mosques; Islamic vocabulary lessons in high school; the teaching of Islamic culture; teaching the five pillars of Islam and “A call to jihad;” and Qatar investing $5 million to teach Arabic in schools.

Finally, any treatment of Common Core would not be complete without mentioning the involvement of another one of Obama’s mentors, domestic terrorist Bill Ayers. Ayers received $49.2 million from Vartan Gregorian, a board member of Qatar Foundation who is also part of Obama’s White House Fellowships Commission. Gregorian is an integral part of Connect All Schools.

IRS Targeting of Conservative and Pro-Israel Groups: The targeting of Obama’s political enemies is reminiscent of the politicized bureaucracies of all tyrannies, from Nazism to Communism and everything in between. Among the persecuted by apparatchik Lois Lerner were: hundreds of conservative groups, Constitutional groups, groups that criticized Obama, 5 pro-Israel groups, and an 83 year old Nazi concentration camp survivor.

As usual, the pattern of targeting conservatives, Israel, and Jews in general is the trend of the Obama administration … and the Muslim Brotherhood. The IRS targeting nearly mirrors DHS’s profiling of “right wing sovereign citizens and extremist groups” as the primary terrorist threat facing the country, which was CAIR approved.

In addition to suppressing political enemies, the IRS has actually enabled the Muslim Brotherhood through Obama’s half-brother, Malik.
In 2011, the IRS granted a 501(c)(3) statuses to two groups connected to Barack Obama’s half-brother, Malik Obama: the Barack H. Obama Foundation (BHOF), and Mama Sarah Obama Foundation (MSOF).

This would not be of particular concern, but for the fact that Malik Obama has documented associations with the Muslim Brotherhood, wanted terrorists, and terrorist organizations. These include Sudan’s Muslim Brotherhood leader Omar al-Bashir, the organizers of the infamous 2010 Gaza Flotilla, and Hamas. In fact, contravening all standard practices, the IRS granted the tax exempt status to BHOF retroactively, after it was learned that Malik was falsely and criminally representing his organization as a charity (which, at the time, it was not). A full report on these activities was produced by the Shoebat Foundation, and can be read here.

The George Soros Connection

In more than one of these instances, the fingerprints of billionaire investor (and breaker of nations and currencies) George Soros can be found. Soros operates a vast network of various “leftist” front organizations. In reality, these organizations are anything but liberal. They regularly attack capitalism, Israel, and fund the subversion of American society. It is not the intention here to dissect Soros’s network and political machinations, but to place him in context in the above scandals.

Combating “Islamophobia”: Soros has “donated” $10,117,186 to the Center for American Progress since 2000. One of the major initiatives of CAP is to combat “sharia hysteria” by the “religious right.”

Ferguson unrest: Soros’s Open Society Institute donated $33 million in one year to various activist groups in Ferguson who were active in the protests and subsequent destruction.

Immigration: Prominent Muslim American immigration lawyer Rabia Chaudry is employed by another Soros-controlled group, the New America Foundation. Previously Chaudry was Media Relations Director of CAIR-CT.

Common Core: A project of the Soros-funded Center for American Progress (CAP), Common Core was conceived under the direction of John Podesta, while he was President of CAP. Podesta is currently Counselor to Obama, and also a Visiting Professor at Georgetown University Law Center. (Note: Georgetown has a campus of their School of Foreign Service in Doha, Qatar. All campus costs are fully covered by a grant of the Qatar Foundation, which also funds aspects of Common Core.)

Net Neutrality Regulation: According to Washington Examiner, Soros funded “net neutrality” groups to the tune of $196 million. Net neutrality was adopted last week by a committee vote of the FCC, and is widely expected to be used to regulate content on the internet and television.

Conclusion

Tyranny, whatever name it’s given, has one recipe. It starts with a base of fear, it’s spiced with terror, and served with sides of persecution and intimidation. The poorer and more desperate the people become, the more readily they’ll meld into the pottage of political domination by their government.

Taken alone, none of these events would be of much concern in a country of 300+ million people. Even the general feeling of depression and oppression by government could be overlooked as a result of global economic conditions, many which are out of the control of even the President of the United States.

But viewed together through the lens of the Muslim Brotherhood’s plan to dominate America and bring her down from within, dismissing them as coincidence would be to ignore a carefully constructed plan. Whether attacks on cops, downright crazy immigration policies, the persecution of American citizens by the IRS, or the takeover of school curricula, there is a rhythm to all of these scandals that jives seamlessly with the song of the Muslim Brotherhood.

Evidence above suggests a bipartisan infection, a betrayal of the American people by the crony establishment in both parties. What will it take before the pundits, politicians, and regular Americans start to demand answers and accountability from the people in their own government who are each day plotting their demise, and will only be content when the American people are destitute and servile?

*This is Part 3 in a 5 Part Series. Click to read Part 1, Part 2, Part 3.

 

 

al Qaeda Founder Changes Sides

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The spy who came in from al-Qaeda

Aimen Dean

Aimen Dean is a founder member of al-Qaeda, who changed tack in 1998 and became a spy for Britain’s security and intelligence services, MI5 and MI6. Interviewed by Peter Marshall, he describes his years working in Afghanistan and London as one of the West’s most valuable assets in the fight against militant Islam.

Bosnia

Dean was brought up in Saudi Arabia, where opposition to the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan in the 1980s made military jihad a noble concept. He was a teenager when Yugoslavia splintered, and Bosnian Muslims found themselves in mortal danger from Serb nationalists. He and a friend, Khalid al-Hajj – later to become the leader of al-Qaeda in Saudi Arabia – set off to become mujahideen.

I would say it was the most eye-opening experience I ever had. I was a bookish nerd from Saudi Arabia just weeks ago and then suddenly I find myself prancing up on the mountains of Bosnia holding an AK-47 feeling a sense of immense empowerment – and the feeling that I was participating in writing history rather than just watching history on the side.

And also at the same time, being in the military training camps, receiving knowledge that I never thought in a thousand years I would be receiving about warfare and war tactics and military manoeuvres, and to be receiving it alongside people from many different nationalities, with the one common factor among them that they were all Muslims. And they were all there in order to participate in the jihad in defence of the Bosnian population, was in itself also an overwhelming experience.

Q: You weren’t afraid?

A: Between you and me, I think at the beginning I was afraid of the unknown rather than afraid of the fact that I’m going into, embarking on a journey that might end up with all of us being killed actually.

Q: You didn’t fear death?

A: I would be lying if I say no I didn’t fear death but I started to come to peace with the idea that yes, I am entering Bosnia. Most likely I will never come out of it.

Q: Did you want martyrdom, did you want to die?

A: Yes.

Jihad school

By the end of the Bosnian conflict I started to notice something else within my comrades. Those who survived started to adopt a rather more anti-Western, anti-globalisation feeling that the global community were conspiring against the Muslims in Bosnia because they were turning the tide of the war in their favour – so they wanted to end the war there and then before they score any more victories.

At least that’s the perception. And with that perception, I think they started to feel that the West is fighting Islam as a religion… and that led to further radicalisation that made it easy for them to make the transformation from being mujahideen into being jihad operatives.

Bosnia was a school in which many talented leaders of al-Qaeda were born. Khalid Sheikh Mohamed [accused of being the architect of the 9/11 attacks] was one of those people who were in Bosnia.

The impression I had at that time, was that he was there in Bosnia in order to spot talent, let’s put it this way, in order to you know scout for talents who will be useful for the later struggle.

I remember that one of the things he said, and it was in a wedding where we were seated next to each other basically, and one of the things he said, he said, “Well, the Bosnian war seems to be ending here, that you know the end is in sight but what will happen after the war? The question is are we going to roam the globe from one hopeless battle to another trying to save a Muslim population until someone else, and then someone else come and reap the reward?”

In other words, there will be a government that is secular and doesn’t rule by the rules of Sharia. He says that this cycle need to end and that we have to think about another front where we can serve Islam and basically resurrect the spirit of jihad within the Muslim world. I think that little speech was the first indication that things are moving from jihad being an instrument to defend Muslim populations on the frontiers to an instrument to bring down regimes and to fight a terror war… against the US interests in the region.

Q: To become terrorists rather than soldiers?

A: Absolutely.

Joining al-Qaeda

I was invited to Kandahar to give the allegiance basically and as with everyone who give allegiance Osama bin Laden will give you know a one-to-one meeting basically with those who are joining and then he welcomed me into the fold. He basically said that there will be many, many years of difficulties and hardship, and that the cause of jihad is not going to start with him or end with him.

Q: You swore an oath?

A: Yes.

Q: What was the oath?

A: “I give you an allegiance to fight alongside you in good times and in bad times and to fight the jihad against the enemies of god and to obey my commanders.”

Q: What were you doing when you were swearing the oath? Do you stand, do you kneel?

A: You sit next to him on the floor basically and you know you have your hand on a copy of the Koran and you say it. Almost knees touching each other basically.

Q: And this is a moving moment presumably?

A: Yes, although like you know I have to say looking back at it basically, I felt you know the same dread of the unknown that I felt before I went to Bosnia.

Q: You knew it was a big leap you were taking?

A: Yes.

Afghanistan

At home in Saudi Arabia Aimen Dean had been a Muslim theological prodigy. In Afghanistan it was his responsibility to train al-Qaeda recruits – many from Yemen – in the basics of Islamic theology and history and the essentials of religious practice. This opened his eyes to the jihadists’ different motivations.

There is no single process of radicalisation. Some people, it took them years to be convinced of coming to the jihad and some people it took them minutes. Some people were studying in religious seminaries – they’re a minority by the way – and then decided to come and some people basically just came straight out of a night club you know while he was consuming alcohol basically to come and seek redemption there in the jihadist world.

So you know you see immediately that you know there isn’t one single classical journey there, that there are so many journeys.

Q: But they all want martyrdom?

A: They all want martyrdom and redemption and to various degrees. Some people will come to you and say you know I’m really tired, I want to be martyred as soon as possible. And some people will come to you and say I want to be martyred but not before I give the enemies of god hell on this earth. I want to live for as long as possible to give them as much hell as possible and then taken out by them.

Q: So some, some are basically suicidal to begin with, and others just have blood lust?

A: Yes.

Doubts

Dean was at a training camp in Afghanistan when the bombings of the US embassies in Nairobi and Dar es Salaam took place in 1998. He was concerned to learn that as well as the 12 American casualties, 240 or more local people died, and 5,000 were wounded.

I think that is when the horror of it started to sink in. And this is when I realised that if this is the opening salvo of this war, where is the next target? Argentina, South Africa, Mozambique? Are we going to fight Americans in Africa in order to expel them from the Middle East, from the Arabian peninsula? It just didn’t make sense.

And as a theologian, that’s when I started to have doubts about the legality of the whole thing. So I started to ask questions. I went, I remember, to Abdullah al Mohaja, who was the de facto mufti of al- Qaeda… I said, “It’s not that I have doubts or anything but can you please enlighten me about the religious justifications for attacking an embassy belonging to the enemy, yes, but at the same time the fact that it’s surrounded by potentially huge collateral damage?”

And he said to me, “Well look, there is a fatwa issued in the 13th Century AD throughout the Muslim world, which legitimises attacking an enemy even if it means there are civilian deaths because the enemy is using them as a human shield.” And he said, “This fatwa is comprehensive, it gives us justification and there is no doubt about the legality of what we have done.”

So I decided to go and look for myself, and this is when I received a big shock. The fatwas were issued in response to questions sent by Muslim cities in Central Asia, Tashkent, Samarkand, Bukhara, asking this particular question: “Look, the Mongols are invading. Every time they sack a city, they take a segment of the population from that city, a thousand or two or three, and make them push the siege towers towards the walls of the next city. So do we shoot at our fellow Muslims, who are against their wills pushing the siege towers into the walls of our city, or not?”

And then the fatwa came: “Yes, this is a case where the Mongols are using civilian Muslims as human shields in order to achieve a military aim and if you don’t shoot at them, you will end up being killed yourself if the attacks succeed.”

Now when I learned of this, I was thinking: “OK, how do I reconcile this fatwa which applies to a life-and-death situation, regarding a vicious enemy using people as human shields to sack another place and to kill every man, woman and child in that city, with what happened really in Nairobi and Tanzania?” There is no resemblance here.

Q: And this fatwa based on siege towers from 800 years ago, that’s what’s used to justify all acts of jihadi terrorism?

A: That would result in civilian casualties, yes.

Q: So it’s important?

A: It is important but you know I’m not going to say it has shaky foundations. It has no foundations at all. It’s basically castle of sand in the air.

Q: It’s nonsense?

A: Absolutely, and two months down the line I decided that it’s no longer for me and that I wanted to leave.

Becoming a spy

Still barely out of his teens, and deeply troubled, Dean says he went to the Gulf for medical treatment, having privately decided not to return. Instead, he found himself in the hands of MI6. In 11 days, he says, he was turned. After four years and two months as a jihadi, he landed in London on 16 December 1998, and the debriefing began.

I think seven months of debriefings, that was more or less helping them put together a better picture of these organisations and the groups and who are the influential people within them.

Q: Because you knew Osama Bin Laden, Khalid Sheikh Mohamed, Abu Zubeida. You knew everybody.

A: Yes… Seven months into the debriefings, that’s when the suggestion [came]: “What about you going back to Afghanistan and doing some more work for us?” And my answer was unequivocally, “Yes.” I didn’t have any qualm with that at all.

Q: What did you do?

A: Passing back information, that’s what my primary objective was, to collect as much information as possible – and that wasn’t an easy task because you have to rely entirely on your memory. You can’t write anything. Everything has to be stored in the mind, nowhere else… Whatever moral misgivings I had, I have my ex-comrades to thank for driving those moral misgivings away because the more I see what they were planning – for example, I was there basically when al-Qaeda was constructing their first workable chemical device and talking about this with such glee and such deep psychopathic satisfaction… – that is when you say to yourself, “Why do I have any moral misgivings about spying on you guys?” Whatever they are doing is justifying whatever you are doing.

Q: You had to play along with them obviously?

A: Of course. I was still preaching, I was still stating how committed I am to the cause.

Q: That must be tricky, though, because in some ways because you’re there preaching, you’re again giving theological justification for some of the bad things that you know that they’re up to.

A: Yes, but at the end of the day if you want to catch rats, you have to go into the sewage system basically and get dirty yourself.

Q: So you were in Afghanistan and you were coming back and forth to the UK as well.

A: Yes.

Q: But al- Qaeda thought they were sending you back to the UK presumably?

A: Yes. I think that’s the beauty of it.

Q: So they think you’re working for them?

A: Yes.

Q: When you’re actually working for the West?

A: Absolutely.

Spying in London

While in the UK Dean would be watching and gathering information on people like Babar Ahmed, a British man who admitted providing material support to terrorists, and Abu Hamza, convicted in the US earlier this year of supporting terrorism, and Abu Qatada, who was cleared of terrorism charges by a court in Jordan last autumn after a long legal battle to extradite him from the UK. Dean kept an eye on them and others while preaching in mosques and Islamic societies.

Q: The difficulty is though that if you’re there under cover, welcomed there as an al-Qaeda man, you have to keep up this pretence by talking to people at the mosque, you have to encourage them to join the jihad?

A: Yes… although there are limits. I was aware of my boundaries basically about how much you can incite. You use guarded words about general rather than specific incitement. But then the most difficult part actually was after 7/7, 2005. That’s when the laws and regulations regarding incitement like you know were really tightened.

Q: So you couldn’t say what, and you could say what?

A: You can’t specifically urge someone to go. You can’t specifically call for an attack. You can’t glorify violence committed against civilians. You know you have to be careful there. You can sit down there basically and blast the West for what they do. You can sit down there and talk about martyrdom in general without you know touching directly on what’s happening right now. So you have to be clever about how you phrase your words.

Q: Do you ever feel guilty about having encouraged somebody to go to jihad?

A: Yes.

Q: Are there many occasions that this might have happened?

A: There were some occasions where that happened.

Q: What’s the nature of the guilt, because of what they might have been involved in or because of how they ended up?

A: I’m glad that no one was killed. However, one particular person ended up in prison for a long time.

Q: And you were instrumental in getting him out there?

A: I was a contributing factor but I wasn’t the only one.

Saving lives

Dean says he foiled attacks involving suicide bombings and the use of poisons against civilians. He was also able to hand plans to British intelligence of a device that was intended to be used for a chemical attack on the New York subway. In the event, Osama Bin Laden’s deputy, Ayman al-Zawahiri, called off the attack.

They would have used chemical weapons if it wasn’t for al-Zawahiri saying, “No, don’t use it.”

Because it was a cell that was seeking permission from al-Zawahiri saying, “We are in possession of this weapon, we know how to use it now, we know how to deliver it and we have a target for you. It’s the New York subway because we believe that the subway system with all the ventilation mechanism there will be a perfect vehicle for delivering the gas and dispersing it across a wide network.”

And so that’s where Zawahiri said, “No, don’t do it because the retaliation could get out of control.”

Q: He didn’t stop it because he thought it was the wrong thing to do, to put gas on the subway?

A: He stopped it because he was afraid of the ramifications.

Q: So you got these important plans. Can you tell me where you got those plans from?

A: Well, I wouldn’t say even if I was allowed to!

Q: The fact you got those plans though suggests you had a high degree of clearance in al-Qaeda, trust.

A: I think I was privy to these plans because I have a certain talent, and I [pretended I] wanted to use that talent for enabling these attacks. That’s why.

Q: That’s what al-Qaeda thought?

A: Yeah.

Q: What was your certain talent?

A: I wouldn’t say!

Valued first by al-Qaeda and then British security and intelligence, Aimen Dean’s life under cover came to an abrupt end when the cover was blown. An American writer disclosed his identity with details that could only be sourced to Dean. That was eight years ago.

Not Just Hillary Who Ignored .Gov Emails

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Heck America….ask every employee if they use or have used outside secret emails to do the business of government. It seems it began with Lisa Jackson at the EPA. What about secret emails to other secret email accounts? There is no .gov record and there is law on this. So back to lil miss Hillary…

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Maybe Hillary’s covert and cover-up agenda started back at TravelGate.

The computer server that transmitted and received Hillary Rodham Clinton’s emails – on a private account she used exclusively for official business when she was secretary of state – traced back to an Internet service registered to her family’s home in Chappaqua, New York, according to Internet records reviewed by The Associated Press.

Clinton has not described her motivation for using a private email account – [email protected], which traced back to her own private email server registered under an apparent pseudonym – for official State Department business.

Operating her own server would have afforded Clinton additional legal opportunities to block government or private subpoenas in criminal, administrative or civil cases because her lawyers could object in court before being forced to turn over any emails. And since the Secret Service was guarding Clinton’s home, an email server there would have been well protected from theft or a physical hacking. Read more here and then lets track down Sidney Blumenthal and see what he has to say.

Source: Top Clinton Aides Used Secret Email Accounts at State Dept.

by J.K. Trotter

Hillary Clinton is defending her use of a private email address, hosted at ClintonEmail.com, to conduct official State Department business by claiming that her emails were captured by official @state.gov accounts that other agency employees were instructed to use to contact her. But according to a knowledgeable source, at least two other top Clinton aides also used private email accounts to conduct government business—placing their official communications outside the scope of federal record-keeping regulations. “Her top staffers used those Clinton email addresses” at the agency, said the source, who has worked with Clinton in the past. The source named two staffers in particular, Philippe Reines and Huma Abedin, who are said to have used private email addresses in the course of their agency duties. Reines served as deputy assistant secretary of state, and Abedin as Clinton’s deputy chief of staff. Both rank among Clinton’s most loyal confidantes, in and out of the State Department.

We were able to independently verify that Abedin used a ClintonEmail.com address at some point in time. There are several email addresses associated with Abedin’s name in records maintained by Lexis-Nexis; one of them is [email protected]. An email sent to that address today went through without bouncing.

In an email to Gawker, Clinton spokesman Nick Merrill denied that Reines was ever given, or ever used, a ClintonEmail.com address. “He has never had one, not for communicating with anyone about anything,” he wrote.Merrill did not respond, however, to questions about whether Reines used a private account at a different provider, such as Yahoo! or Gmail, to conduct official agency business. He also refused to address multiple questions regarding how Abedin used her ClintonEmail.com address.

The use of private email addresses may explain the State Department’s puzzling response to several FOIA requests filed by Gawker in the past two years. One of our requests, in September 2012, sought correspondence between Reines and a variety of reporters, including former BuzzFeed reporter Michael Hastings, who engaged in a profanity-flecked exchange with Reines in 2012. That request was confoundingly denied on the grounds that the State Department had no record of Reines—whose job it was to communicate with reporters—emailing Hastings or any other journalists (Gawker is currently appealing the rejection). Another request in June 2011 sought Abedin’s email correspondence; the State Department rejected that one as well, although we could not immediately locate the denial letter to determine on what grounds.

“It pokes a big hole in her explanation,” the source added, referring to spokesman Nick Merrill’s statement to Business Insider. “Like Secretaries of State before her,” Merrill told the site, she used her own email account when engaging with any Department officials. For government business, she emailed them on their Department accounts, with every expectation they would be retained.”

Jeremy Bird in Violation of the Logan Act?

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Attorney General Yehuda Weinstein rejected Wednesday a Likud party petition to disqualify the left-wing V15 group, which was accused by the ruling party of violating election law through its alleged ties with the Zionist Union list. In a press conference last week, Likud lawmakers claimed that the group was being financed illegally, and called for an investigation into alleged dealings with the Zionist Union, which merges the Labor and Hatnua parties, and is headed by Isaac Herzog and Tzipi Livni.

Are there any Federal funds being used for Jeremy Bird of V15 being used to oust Netanyahu as the Prime Minister of Israel? Is Jeremy Bird being empowered by the White House as it agent working against our Middle East ally, Israel?

The clear intent of this provision [Logan Act] is to prohibit unauthorized persons from intervening in disputes between the United States and foreign governments

WASHINGTON — Jeremy Bird, the architect of the grass-roots and online organizing efforts that powered President Obama’s presidential campaigns from Chicago, is advising a similar operation in Tel Aviv. But this time it is focused on ousting Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel.

His consulting work for the group V15 — an independent Israeli organization that does not support specific candidates but is campaigning to replace Israel’s current government — has added yet another political layer to the diplomatic mess surrounding Mr. Netanyahu’s decision to address a joint meeting of Congress next week on Iran.

The White House has argued that Mr. Netanyahu’s plan to deliver the speech on March 3, two weeks before the Israeli elections, is harming the United States-Israel relationship by injecting partisanship. Republicans contend it is Mr. Obama who is playing politics and cite the work of Mr. Bird as proof that the president is quietly rooting for the defeat of his Israeli counterpart.

A founder of V15, the organization behind that effort. Jim Hollander/European Pressphoto Agency

American strategists have for decades signed on to work in Israeli political campaigns, with Democrats usually aligned with the Labor Party and Republicans often backing Mr. Netanyahu’s Likud party. There is no evidence to suggest that Mr. Obama or any of his senior aides had anything to do with the move by his former top campaign official, who has never worked at the White House, to join the effort to defeat Mr. Netanyahu.

But Mr. Bird’s involvement in the elections is drawing attention when tensions between the two countries are so acute that what is usually considered standard practice for American political consultants in Israel is now seen as a provocation.

“It’s clearly a data point that people are looking to that indicates how the relationship has deteriorated,” said Matthew Brooks, the executive director of the Republican Jewish Coalition. He added that Mr. Bird reflects “the hypocrisy of this White House, which wants to stand on the notion that they’re not playing politics when in fact their fingerprints are all over this.”

The White House has repeatedly said its highest priority is keeping partisanship out of the relationship between the United States and Israel, citing that principle as Mr. Obama’s rationale for refusing to meet with Mr. Netanyahu during his visit.

Asked about the suggestion that Mr. Obama was tacitly backing an effort to oust Mr. Netanyahu, Josh Earnest, the White House press secretary, said, “The long tradition of bipartisan support for the U.S.-Israel relationship has served both our countries well for generations, and President Obama will continue to go to great lengths to shield our alliance from the smallness of party politics.”

Mr. Bird, who was Mr. Obama’s national field director in 2012 and is a founding partner of the political consulting firm 270 Strategies, declined to be interviewed. But he said through a spokeswoman that V15 and its partners had asked him and his firm “to share best practices in organizing so they can maximize their impact both online and on the ground.”

“We’re witnessing something special happening in Israel right now: There’s a groundswell of organic energy as more than 10,000 supporters are coming together to have a voice in their country,” Mr. Bird said through the spokeswoman. V15’s “efforts are already paying off as they have reached out to more than 200,000 targeted voters, both in person and on the phone, about the need for change in Israel.”

Administration allies scoff at the accusation that Mr. Bird’s involvement is inappropriate, saying it is particularly galling given Mr. Netanyahu’s move to work with the House speaker, John A. Boehner, an Ohio Republican, to arrange a speech without telling the White House. Many Democrats see the speech as a move that would undercut Mr. Obama’s efforts to forge a nuclear deal with Iran.

“It is eye-rolling for Netanyahu to complain about former Obama aides working against him when he cooked up a speech to Congress with Boehner and didn’t tell the White House,” said Tommy Vietor, a former National Security Council aide to Mr. Obama. “He has removed his ability to complain about playing politics by openly meddling in U.S. politics. The notion that Jeremy and the 270 team were sent there with the blessing of President Obama is just silly.”

Mr. Bird’s work in Israel started in November 2013, when he began consulting with OneVoice, an organization pressing to resolve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. He signed on with V15 in December 2014, after Mr. Netanyahu called the March 2015 elections. Last month, the Israel arm of OneVoice became a partner with V15 to mobilize voters.

The effort has angered Mr. Netanyahu and his allies in Israel, who unsuccessfully sought a court injunction against V15, arguing it was violating Israeli election law by accepting foreign donations. Likud withdrew the request last week, citing difficulty in proving the charge.

Republicans in Congress have criticized Mr. Bird’s involvement and the work of OneVoice, which has received grants from the State Department. In a letter to the department last month that prominently mentioned Mr. Bird and his ties to Mr. Obama, Senator Ted Cruz of Texas and Representative Lee Zeldin of New York, both Republicans, said they were concerned that American taxpayer money was being used to influence the Israeli elections and unseat Mr. Netanyahu.

“It is deeply troubling that President Obama’s national field director is helping run the campaign to defeat the democratically elected leader of one of our closest friends and allies, the nation of Israel,” Mr. Cruz said in an interview on Friday.

In a response to the lawmakers, Julia Frifield, the State Department’s assistant secretary for legislative affairs, said in a statement that OneVoice’s Israel branch received a $233,500 grant in September 2013 to support peace negotiations by Mr. Netanyahu’s government. The grant was paid in installments, with the final one paid in August 2014, before elections were called.

“There is absolutely no basis to claims that the Department of State has funded efforts to influence the current Israeli election campaign,” Ms. Frifield wrote.

Mr. Bird is the latest in a long line of Americans who have worked on foreign political campaigns, particularly in Israel. In December, Mr. Netanyahu hired John McLaughlin, a Republican pollster; Likud has brought on Vincent Harris, a campaign aide to Senator Rand Paul, Republican of Kentucky. Former aides to Mr. Obama have also worked for the prime minister, including Bill Knapp and Josh Isay.

Former campaign strategists to Bill Clinton, including his pollster Stanley B. Greenberg and strategist James Carville, went to Israel in 1999 to help Ehud Barak defeat Mr. Netanyahu.