Category Archives: History

Insanity at the UN, Votes to Legitimize Hamas

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Appears there are no more terrorists, while ISIS is a JV squad, Hamas is not a bench-warmer either. The United Nations, a twisted organization and our very own ambassador, Samantha Power appears to care less herself.

UN Committee on NGOs voted to grant the Palestinian Return Centre observer status

The London-based PRC is affiliated with Hamas and the Muslim Brotherhood and has played an important role in the campaign to delegitimize Israel.

Overview

1.   On June 1, 2015, the 19-member UN Committee on NGOs voted to give the London-based Palestinian Return Centre (PRC) non-governmental observer status. The vote still needs authorization from the United Nations Economic and Social Council  (ECOSOC), to which the Committee is subordinate. If authorization is given the PRC will have UN observer status which includes certain privileges, including access to UN facilities, the ability to participate in deliberations and UN committee and the use of the UN logo.

2.   The PRC said in an announcement that 12 countries had voted in favor (ten of which were China, Iran, South Africa, Turkey, Pakistan, Cuba, Azerbaijan, Venezuela, Mauritania and Kenya), three voted against (Israel, the United States and Uruguay), and three abstained (Russia, Nicaragua and Greece). According to the announcement, the vote was held after a process that lasted five years. The PRC rejects Israel’s accusations of terrorism, claiming it is an independent, non-political body (Palestine-info.info, June 2, 2015).

3.   The PRC is a center for Palestinian anti-Israeli propaganda, established in London in 1996. It is affiliated with Hamas and the Muslim Brotherhood, and some of its senior figures have been Hamas activists who sought refuge in Britain. It was founded on the premise of its rejection of the Oslo Accords and its determined, strong denial of the State of Israel’s right to exist. Its main concept is the “right” of the Palestinian refugees and their descendants to return to the homes they abandoned in 1948, as a tool to destroy Israel and sabotage any possible peace process. The PRC holds intensive anti-Israeli propaganda activities in Britain, Europe and other countries around the globe and plays an important role in networks participating in the international campaign to delegitimize Israel.

4.   Its clear affiliation with Hamas led to its being outlawed in Israel five years ago. On December 27, 2010, the Israel Security Agency said in a statement that on December 5, 2010 Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak had signed an order outlawing the PRC as an unlawful association because it was affiliated with the Hamas movement. The statement also noted that the PRC served as a coordinating organizational arm of the Hamas movement in Europe, and that its activists, who were senior Hamas figures, were working to promote the Hamas’ objectives in Europe and were in direct contact with Hamas senior figures, including movement heads in Damascus.[1]

Selections from the Overview of the ITIC Study of the PRC Issued on March 30, 2011[2]

1.   The PRC was established in London in 1996, based on rejection of the Oslo Accords and everything they symbolized. Its founder and head ideologue was apparently Salman Abu Sitta, whose family was originally from Beersheba and fled to the Gaza Strip. He was an independent member of the Palestinian National Council between 1974 and 1993. The PRC’s activity centers around disseminating and inculcating the message that all Palestinian refugees have the “right to return” to Israel (estimated by the PRC at five million).[3] Their return to Israel is represented as a “sacred” personal and collective “right,” allegedly anchored in international law, which no one can bargain with or cede.

2.   The demand for the return to Israel of millions of refugees is regarded by the PRC not only as a tested method to sabotage every peace process, but as an important component in a long-range strategy which will eventually lead to a change in the demography of the State of Israel as the Jewish national state and serve its overall goal of establishing an Islamic Palestinian state in all of “Palestine.” Focusing on the “right of return” is the common denominator of many organizations and individuals around the globe that reject a Zionist Israel, and it is used extensively in the propaganda serving the campaign to delegitimize Israel. Those who employ it ignore the fact that after the State of Israel was founded many Jews were either expelled or fled from the Arab countries.

3.   Since its inception the PRC has been affiliated with Hamas and the Muslim Brotherhood in Britain (the center of the Muslim Brotherhood’s political, media and economic activities in Europe). The PRC is careful not to openly state its strong affiliation with Muslim Brotherhood-style extremist Islam, but ITIC information and large amounts of circumstantial evidence support its affiliation.

4.   For example, the PRC’s radical Islamic ideology and political agenda are identical with those of the Muslim Brotherhood; members of the PRC’s board of trustees and senior functionaries have had roles in various Muslim Brotherhood-affiliated institutions in Britain; the PRC participates in anti-Israeli activities also attended by prominent activists from the Muslim Brotherhood and other groups and organizations; Zaher al-Birawi, a senior PRC figure, is program director and chief presenter of London’s Muslim Brotherhood-affiliated Al-Hiwar TV channel; an Egyptian jurist named Subhi Saleh, a Muslim Brotherhood member of the Egyptian parliament till 2010, was at the same time an associate PRC member.

5.   Three members of the PRC’s board of trustees are Hamas activists who found refuge in Britain in the 1990s. They do not admit to affiliation with Hamas, in ITIC  assessment to avoid complications with British law. Prominent among them are Zaher al-Birawi, chairman of the PRC’s board of trustees; Majed al-Zeer, PRC general director; and Sheikh Majdi Akeel, a member of the PRC’s board of trustees.[4]

6.   These three Hamas activists are involved in extensive anti-Israeli activities aimed at providing Hamas with ideological, political and practical support. For example, Zaher al-Birawi was active in dispatching convoys to the Gaza Strip through George Galloway’s organization, Viva Palestina, with the political goal of strengthening the de facto Hamas administration. Majed al-Zeer participated in anti-Israeli events in Europe and in Damascus that included support of Hamas, its political agenda and its strategy of terrorism. Sheikh Majdi Akeel is an activist of Interpal, which sends money to Hamas, and accompanied one of the Viva Palestina aid convoys to Hamas in the Gaza Strip.[5] In addition to those three, according to ITIC information Arafat Madi Shukri, PRC executive director, is also a Hamas activist who lives in Britain and is the chairman of the ECESG (a European umbrella network which sends flotillas to the Gaza Strip).

7.   Additional conclusions about the PRC’s nature and modus operandi revealed in the study (March 2011):

1)  The PRC’s view of the so-called “right of return” of the Palestinian refugees is the following: The return of the Palestinians to Israel is a “right” and not a demand, according to PRC claims. Adherence to the “right of return” promotes the final goal of the restoration of all of the land of “Palestine,” from the Mediterranean Sea to the Jordan River, and the establishment of an Islamic Palestinian state to replace the State of Israel. The return of all the Palestinian refugees to Israel and to the places and houses in which they lived in 1947-8 is, according to PRC claims, “a basic personal and collective right” and a “sacred right” anchored (according to PRC claims) in international treaties[6]   and the holy books of the three monotheistic religions. Thus, according to the PRC, no one has the right to waive the “right of return” or to reach a compromise regarding the partial return of the Palestinians. In consequence, the PRC rejects outright any peace process, ties the hands of the Palestinian Authority, which negotiates with Israel for the Palestinians, and advocates Hamas’ strategy focusing on the “liberation of Palestine” through jihad and “resistance” [i.e., terrorism and violence] rather than political negotiations.

2)  PRC support for terrorism and terrorist organizations: To avoid complications with the British authorities, the PRC is generally careful, especially when issuing statements in English, not to explicitly support terrorist activities and terrorist organizations such as Hamas and Hezbollah. In statements in Arabic however, aimed at Arab-Muslim target audiences, the PRC is less careful and often expresses solidarity with the Palestinian terrorist campaign (“the Al-Aqsa intifada”), Hamas’ path of jihad and the Hamas leadership. For example, at its annual European conferences, which the PRC has been organizing since 2003, Ismail Haniya, a senior Hamas figure, has delivered speeches three times. The conferences support the path of “resistance” and jihad (i.e., terrorism), and praise the shaheeds, the wounded and the imprisoned of the terrorist organizations. The PRC’s publications support jihad and the “resistance,” and glorify the terrorist shaheeds who died during Palestinian terrorist campaign, especially Hamas founder and leader Ahmed Yassin. In addition, the PRC organized a campaign to express solidarity with the Al-Aqsa intifada;[7]  Majid al-Ziyad, a senior PRC figure, participated in the conference in Damascus in November 2008, which supported the “culture of resistance” [i.e., the culture of terrorism]. Interviewed by Al-Jazeera TV on May 29, 2010, he stressed the need for “military resistance” [i.e., terrorism] inside “Palestine.” Dr. Daud Abdullah, another senior PRC figure, participated in the conference in Istanbul in 2009 and signed a declaration in support of the path of jihad (“the Istanbul Declaration”).[8]

3)  Overview of PRC activities:

A.     Since its establishment, the PRC has been prominent among the anti-Israeli organizations engaged in intensive propaganda activities aimed at inculcating the idea of the “right of return” and defaming Israel by representing it as an “apartheid state.” The PRC also seeks to turn Israel into a pariah state by accusing it of the “ethnic cleansing” of the “Palestinian” population, both in the past and present (the PRC even issued a book entitled The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine). The PRC’s vicious anti-Israeli propaganda campaign is waged in Britain, continental Europe and other countries around the globe.

B.     The PRC has three main target audiences in Britain: British politicians, especially in Parliament, where it is primarily in contact with members of the Labour Party; university students, among whom PRC activists participate in events related to the conflict and deliver anti-Israeli speeches; and the British public in general, especially the social and cultural elite. PRC activists attend Jerusalem Day and Nakba Day events, react publicly to developments in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and hold demonstrations and rallies in London and other cities in Britain. In addition, the PRC holds conferences, workshops and seminars. It produces movies, issues various publications and runs a Palestinian cultural center in London.

C.     Since 2003 [as of the 2011 study] the PRC has held an annual anti-Israeli European conference called “the Annual Palestinians in Europe Conference.” The conferences are attended by PRC activists, representatives of the Arab and Muslim communities in Europe, Hamas and Muslim Brotherhood activists and representatives of the European funds and foundations which finance Hamas. Their agenda and themes focus on inculcating the idea that the so-called “right of return” is “sacred,” and that no Palestinian can waive it. The conferences negate the right of the State of Israel to exist, strongly oppose the peace process and support the path of jihad and “resistance” (i.e., terrorism). Ismail Haniya, [at the time] head of the de facto Hamas administration in the Gaza Strip, delivered video-conferenced speeches at three of the conferences because he was banned from entering certain European countries (where Hamas is considered a terrorist organization).

D.     On the international scene the PRC participates in conferences dealing with the Palestinian-Israeli conflict and the issue of the refugees, including conferences organized by the United Nations. The PRC exploits the venues as convenient forums for defaming Israel as an “apartheid country” and a “racist country,” and for spreading propaganda for the “right of return.” Senior PRC activists and their activities were prominent at the UN’s Durban Conference in 2001, which served as a platform for attacks on Israel’s legitimacy and a hate campaign directed against it.

4)  Formulating media strategy to attack Israel’s legitimacy: At the third annual conference, held in Vienna in 2005, the PRC formulated a media strategy to inculcate the concept of the “right of return” and to undermine the legitimacy of the State of Israel in various broad target audiences in Europe. The following tactics were agreed upon by the conference workshops: stressing the “value of justice” (a term easily accepted by the European ear) as a tool for creating a sense of European solidarity with the Palestinian demand to return the refugees to Israel; using short, easy-to-remember slogans; using publications of New Historians; increasing the number of demonstrations; stressing the distinction between Judaism and the “Zionist Project,” etc. The decisions made at the conference were important and relevant because they are implemented to this day by the PRC and other anti-Israeli organizations participating in the global campaign to delegitimize Israel.

5)  Funding the PRC and its extensive activities: As opposed to other organizations participating in the global campaign to delegitimize Israel, the PRC maintains a vast physical presence. Establishing it, maintaining it and funding its extensive network demand, in ITIC assessment, extremely large financial resources. The PRC claims it is funded by donations from people who believe in its goals. However, in ITIC assessment, even if it cannot be proved, the PRC has other sources of funding at its disposal.

8.   Senior PRC figures, among them Hamas activists, hold positions in other groups and organizations which spread anti-Israeli propaganda, transfer funds to Hamas and dispatch flotillas and land convoys to the Gaza Strip. Some of the organizations are affiliated with the Muslim Brotherhood and one with the British far left. The PRC’s senior figures are deeply involved with both the ECESG and Viva Palestina, two organizations which make significant contributions to the flotilla and land convoy projects to the Gaza Strip. For example, Dr. Arafat Madi Shukri, the PRC’s executive director, is also chairman of the ECESG, a European umbrella network which sends flotillas to the Gaza Strip. Majed al-Zeer is also apparently involved in ECESG activity. Zaher al-Birawi, a Hamas activist, is chairman of the PRC board of trustees, the spokesman (and in ITIC assessment also a kind of liaison person with Hamas) of the convoys organized by Viva Palestina, (the organization of far left former British MP George Galloway.[9]) In addition, two senior PRC activists, Ghusan Faour and Hamas activist Sheikh Majdi Akeel, are key figures in Interpal, a British fund which is an important component in Hamas’ international fundraising efforts and was outlawed both in the United States and Israel.

Note: The above information and conclusions were relevant and updated in March 2011. Personnel or organizational changes may have been made in the, but in ITIC assessment the fundamental goals and character of the PRC have not basically changed.

Lone Wolves vs. QRF vs. Patriot Act

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In the news is the discussion of terminating parts of the Patriot Act and key uses the NSA was using. While having parts of the Patriot Act go dark is a good thing to protect our granted privacy rights, there is one section that will go dark and that is part in parcel the ‘lone-wolf’ section.

The condition or phenomenon known as lone wolf is a matter that needs some further attention as most recent attacks have been performed by units of lone wolves.  Such was the case of Major Nidal Hassan, the Ft. Hood shooter as the recent case in Garland, Texas. Others include the attacks in Paris and in Australia.
It is suggested that you take the time to watch this video and continue the debate.

 

As it relates to the Patriot Act and up for debate is shown below:

Lone Wolf.

A Summary by Mary DeRosa

Section 6001 of the Intelligence Reform and Terrorism Prevention Act of 2004, known as the “lone wolf” amendment, broadens FISA to allow surveillance of a new category of individuals. The provision amends FISA’s definition of “agent of a foreign power” to include any person, other than a U.S. person, who “engages in international terrorism or activities in preparation therefore.” Previously, that definition required a nexus to a foreign power or entity, such as a foreign government or an international terrorist organization. The expanded definition allows the government to use FISA for surveillance of a non-U.S. person who has no known ties to a group or entity. Congress passed this “lone wolf” provision because it was concerned that the previous FISA definitions did not cover unaffiliated individuals—or those for whom no affiliation can be established—who nonetheless engage or are preparing to engage in international terrorism.

The standards and procedures for FISA collection are different, more secretive, and in some cases less rigorous than those for law enforcement surveillance. But FISA is limited by its requirement that the target of surveillance be a foreign power or its agent. After this “lone wolf” provision, a target can be considered an “agent of a foreign power” without any evidence that they are acting with a group. But there must be probable cause that the target is engaging or preparing to engage in “international terrorism,” which FISA defines to be activities that involve violent, criminal acts intended to intimidate or coerce a population or a government and that occur totally outside of the United States or transcend national boundaries.

Section 6001(b) of the Intelligence Reform Act subjects the “lone wolf” amendment to the PATRIOT Act’s sunset provision. Therefore, unless reauthorized, the expanded authority will expire on December 31, 2005.

Targeting the Loosely-Affiliated Terrorist
by Michael J. Woods

Critics of FISA’s new “lone wolf’ provision argue it is a dangerous expansion of authority, allowing the application of FISA to individuals lacking any connection to foreign powers. The language actually enacted, however, integrates a definition of “international terrorism’ that preserves a sufficiently strong foreign nexus requirement. Therefore, the statute’s parts, taken together and read in context, contain adequate safeguards to ensure that the lone wolf provision will be used against its intended targets—international terrorists.

Before the lone wolf provision, there were two principal paths to obtain FISA surveillance of an international terrorist: first, by demonstrating probable cause that the target acts in the U.S. as a “member’ of an international terrorist group (found in FISA section 101(b)(1)(A)); and second, by demonstrating probable cause that the target “knowingly engages in sabotage or international terrorism, or activities that are in preparation therefor, for or on behalf of a foreign power’ (section 101(b)(2)(C)). The first option is difficult to establish given the informality of terrorist organizations and is not available where the target is a U.S. person. The second is the stock from which the present “lone wolf’ provision is cut, and provides the conceptual foundation for the new provision.

The legislative history of those two original FISA provisions, found primarily in House Report 95-1283, Senate Report 95-701 and House Conference Report 95-1720, reveals that the drafters’ chief concern here was to avoid application of the FISA to purely domestic terrorists or political dissidents. Congress was reacting to the Supreme Court’s 1972 holding in United States v. United States District Court (found at 407 U.S. 297, and commonly called the “Keith case’) that “domestic security surveillance’ was subject to the warrant and reasonableness requirements of the Fourth Amendment. The group at issue in Keith was a radical organization (the White Panther Party) that had bombed a number of federal facilities to draw attention to the group’s domestic social/political agenda. (See The Court Legacy, Vol. XI, No. 4 (Nov. 2003).) The Court emphasized that its Keith holding addressed only “the domestic aspects of national security’ and did not reach “the activities of foreign powers or their agents.’ FISA was the legislative approach to the area beyond Keith: the field of foreign intelligence surveillance. In addressing terrorism as a national security threat, the FISA drafters needed to draw a line between the purely domestic variety covered by the Keith ruling, and the activities of international terrorist organizations (which could take place in the United States).

 

If Released Gitmo Detainees are no Risk, Then Why?

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Mohammed Zahir historyAs of May 31, 2015, 5:00 PM, EST Qatar and the United States have agreed to an extension of detention.

Sample detainee: Mohammed Zahir’s Guantanamo detainee assessment Mohammed_Zahir's_Guantanamo_detainee_assessment_pdf   Who is really deciding who does get released, to what transfer point, why and who approves? What are the conditions of release, is there money paid to the country of last destination? How long are they to stay in the last country of destination and under what conditions? If these people pose no threat, they why are the negotiations not for public release? If they pose no threat, then how come they are not released back to their home country? How come the Obama administration does not offer them refugee status in the United States? Here is a list of the detainees through 2006. Merely skim this list for names and country of origin. See a pattern? The Taliban 5 that were swapped for deserter Bowe Bergdahl are free from their Qatar Club Med fully vacation location, TODAY. What deal did the United States work with Qatar to monitor their future activities? Another secret. If this was such a great swap deal, then why did the White House not advise Congress 30 days prior to the swap, which is law? Do you believe this? (CNN)Senior administration officials said Friday that the U.S. is continuing to hold negotiations with the governments of Afghanistan and Qatar as a deadline to determine the fate of five Taliban figures released in a prisoner exchange with the U.S. looms. Qatar is willing to extend the agreement under exactly the same terms, but will not renegotiate the terms, the source said. The Americans are sending signals they want to add additional surveillance and more restrictions on their movement. “[Qatar] will keep them if both parties agree and if there are the same conditions of the old agreement,” the source said. “[Qatar is] not going to add other terms because [Qatar is] not going to make it more complicated for [themselves].” The source said that although U.S., Afghanistan and Qatar are the main parties, the Taliban do have a say and are welcome to stay in Qatar, noting the five have brought their families to Qatar and now total about 70 people among them. The source emphasized Qataris will not send them back to Afghanistan if the men don’t want to return to Afghan government control. One of the Taliban 5: Mullah-Norullah Nori, Reasons for Continued Detention: Detainee is an admitted senior member of the Taliban and led troops against US and Coalition forces. Detainee was directly subordinate to Taliban Supreme Leader Mullah Omar, commanded Taliban forces in northern Afghanistan, and in late 2001, he was in charge of Taliban troops positioned near Mazar-e-Sharif. Detainee is wanted by the UN for possible war crimes including the murder of thousands of Shiites. Detainee is also associated with members of al-Qaida, Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan (IMU), Libyan Islamic Fighting Group (LIFG) and the Hezb-E- Islami Gulbuddin (HIG). His full history is here, this explains just who the United States was taking off the battlefield under the Bush administration. To read about the hearing Congress had on this Taliban 5 swap for a deserter, that document is here. Further, here is Uruguay’s position of the 6 released detainees to took. There are growing concerns in some corners of the American government that six former Guantanamo Bay detainees freed by the Obama administration could pose a threat to the safety of U.S. personnel. Those detainees were sent to Uruguay in December. And in recent months, the U.S. Embassy in Montevideo has substantially expanded its defenses against a possible threat, according to three sources familiar with the matter. The embassy has increased the number of guards present, as well as the size of the embassy’s Marine Guard detachment, adding two more men to the handful who were there previously. The embassy has also taken steps to heighten security for employees. All local hires have been ordered to park two to three blocks from the building so that embassy guards can conduct surveillance more easily over American cars and passengers parked nearby. Some local staff have taken that order as disregard for the safety of foreign nationals working at the embassy. Read the full story here. Repeat, if these released detainees pose no threat, then why?

Poll Tested Social Engineering, Religion and Policy

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Do you ever wonder where social issues, legislating behavior, growing policy on you personally really comes from? Any why now? Take note, those ‘Millennials’ are the target.

Enter Public Religion Research Institute who is in partnership with liberal think tanks, academia and the United Nations for world affair affects. No longer can you think independently as you are provided issues with liberal socialist bents and the matters are poll tested that require upgrades and new definitions to ensure cooperation and re-tooled attitudes. This is especially the condition as they relate to sex, gender and education. Those three items actually are as old as man so why do we need to be taught something new? Simple answer is money.

There is was a working draft of this platform created in 2009 by the United Nations Research Institute for Social Development.

Social Justice

America is becoming more religiously liberal with each generation, and religious conservatives, though more numerous now, will become dinosaurs. That’s the confident projection of a new poll from the liberal leaning Public Religion Research Institute. It’s predictably gotten good media play, as claims about irrelevance for religious conservatives often do. And it supplements other polls supposedly proving the rise of the religiously unaffiliated in America.

The Left, in its alternative cosmology, believes in its own nonreligious providential destiny. But history moves in more crooked, unpredictable paths. And religious traditionalists, most of them conservative, believe that history has a another ultimately inexorable direction, guided by The Lord of history. The Left’s own more secular faith is often buttressed by short term trends.

“Our new research shows a complex religious landscape, with religious conservatives holding an advantage over religious progressives in terms of size and homogeneity,” PPRI admitted when releasing its poll. “However, the percentage of religious conservatives shrinks in each successive generation, with religious progressives outnumbering religious conservatives in the Millennial generation.”

Nearly half of the older than age 66 crowd is religiously conservative, while less than 20 percent of the under 33 crowd is. Only 12 percent of oldsters are religiously liberal while almost a quarter of the young are. So — presto — the future belongs to the Religious Left. As the much vaunted Millennial Generation ages into leadership, the Religious Right’s doom supposedly will be sealed.

This determinism of course assumes that these Millennials will not change their views as they age. And it assumes subsequent generations will not react against previous generations, even though most generations, when young, assume they are wiser and therefore must be different from their immediate predecessors. In the future, a new crop of youngsters will look somewhat smugly on the by-then aging Millennials.

Transform America

Lisa Sharon Harper, director of mobilizing for Sojourners, a progressive Christian organization, says shifts are due to young people choosing to identify with Jesus and his teachings as opposed to a particular political party. Harper believes the GOP is being pulled to the far right by extremists on issues like abortion, thus forgetting and alienating those whom Jesus affirmed and advocated for: poor people, ethnic minorities, and women.

“I think the focus on the person of Jesus is birthing a younger generation inspired by [Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount],” she says. “Their political agenda is shaped by Jesus’ call to feed the hungry, make sure the thirsty have clean water, make sure all have access to healthcare, transform America into a welcoming place for immigrants, fix our inequitable penal system, and end abject poverty abroad and in the forgotten corners of our urban and rural communities.”

Lisa Sharon Harper, Sojourners’ senior director of mobilizing, was the founding executive director of New York Faith & Justice—an organization at the hub of a new ecumenical movement to end poverty in New York City. In that capacity, she helped establish Faith Leaders for Environmental Justice, a citywide collaborative effort of faith leaders committed to leveraging the power of their constituencies and their moral authority in partnership with communities bearing the weight of environmental injustice. She also organized faith leaders to speak out for immigration reform and organized the South Bronx Conversations for Change, a dialogue-to-change project between police and the community.

She has written extensively on tax reform, comprehensive immigration reform, health-care reform, poverty, racial justice, and transformational civic engagement for publications and blogs including The National Civic Review, God’s Politics blog, The Huffington Post, Urban Faith, Prism, and Slant33.

There is more including a magazine. Topics include ‘Divest from Nuclear Weapons, Testing Jesus, Divest from Fossil Fuels and the Christian Nation vs. Secular Country.

 

No Longer Nuclear Zero

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The nuclear weapons chatter is rising by the day. The Saudis paid for much of Pakistan’s nuclear weapons program that included an agreement to access to weapons at a future date. The ongoing talks the P5+1 with Iran has Saudi Arabia dusting off their immediate options. The White House and John Kerry are seeing a final date slippage with regard to the June 30 deadline, but to what end?

There has been recent inquiries into Israel’s nuclear program exposing their weapons systems, something that has never been previously discussed.

Vladimir Putin has recently increased his own nuclear points and expansion of flights by his nuclear bombers that include the Ukraine, Poland and northern Europe. This has NATO expressing distress and a counter-measures strategy.

Yet Russia has had some chilling nuclear weapons program history putting the world that includes jihadi network into the equation.

Breakdown in U.S.-Russia relations raises risk of nuclear-armed jihadists

In the last several years, a number of troubling events have revealed weaknesses in Russian nuclear security. A Russian general in command of nuclear weapon storage sites was fired due to massive corruption. A colonel in the Russian Ministry of Interior in charge of nuclear security inspections was arrested for soliciting bribes to overlook security violations. One American researcher visiting a nuclear facility was told it would take merely $100 to bribe his way in.

Graft in Russia is rife, and corruption plus available uranium is a troubling combination. This vulnerability is heightened by the fact that at many nuclear sites the accounting systems to track uranium and plutonium could not sufficiently identify thefts of newly manufactured or older stored fissile materials. More broadly, Russia does not possess a master baseline inventory of all nuclear materials produced in the former Soviet Union — and where all of it is today.

At a 2010 summit of world leaders, President Barack Obama described nuclear terrorism as “the single biggest threat to U.S. security.” He’s right — but as the crisis in Ukraine festers, recent U.S. actions have unraveled decades of successful cooperation with Russia to reduce the risk.

While some argue that the United States needs to “punish” Russia due to Moscow’s contribution to the crisis in Ukraine, this is akin to cutting off our nose to spite our face. Given the threat from “loose nukes” to our national security, the United States should take steps to jump-start U.S.-Russian nuclear security cooperation.

When the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991, American policymakers suddenly faced a frightening new threat: Poverty and chaos caused a complete breakdown in security throughout the former Soviet nuclear complex. Insiders at top-secret Russian nuclear weapons plants tried to steal and sell nuclear materials on the black market. Unpaid guards at nuclear sites left their posts to search for food. A senior White House science adviser even discovered more than 150 pounds of highly enriched uranium — enough for several nuclear bombs — sitting unguarded in lockers in the middle of Moscow.

In response to this threat, the United States spent billions of dollars under the Cooperative Threat Reduction (CTR) program to help Russia secure its nuclear materials and facilities. From the deactivation of almost 8,000 Russian nuclear warheads to the building of a massive storage facility for 27 tons of fissile materials, CTR was arguably the most successful American foreign aid program in history.

Following the conclusion of the CTR program in 2013, the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) and Russia’s state-owned nuclear company Rosatom signed a comprehensive nuclear cooperation agreement. This agreement, which was designed to build trust between the two countries, called for projects ranging from the development of advanced nuclear security and safety technologies, to visits by each side’s scientists to the other’s most sensitive nuclear labs and facilities.

Less than seven months after the agreement was signed, however, the DOE dealt a devastating blow to Russian-American nuclear security cooperation, banning Russian nuclear scientists from visiting the United States while also banning DOE nuclear scientists from visiting Russia.

The current defense budget, passed seven months after the DOE’s action, also bars all funding for nuclear nonproliferation activities and assistance in Russia.

Its pride wounded, Russia retaliated, first announcing it would boycott the 2016 nuclear security summit in Chicago and then informing U.S. officials it would no longer accept American aid to help secure Russia’s weapons-grade uranium and plutonium — a significant blow to U.S. national security.

Nuclear security in Russia is undoubtedly better than it was in the 1990s. Guards at nuclear sites are paid on time. Perimeter fences surrounding these sites no longer have holes. Fissile materials are no longer stored in lockers. That’s the good news.

The bad news is that while physical security at nuclear sites is greatly improved, real problems still remain. Russia continues to have the world’s largest nuclear stockpile and there are more than 200 buildings and bunkers where highly enriched uranium or separated plutonium is stored. Sophisticated criminals could still exploit the remaining weaknesses in Russian nuclear security.

We know that Osama bin Laden considered a nuclear attack targeting American civilians to be a legitimate action, and last year Islamic State stole 88 pounds of non-enriched uranium compounds from a university in Mosul. With nearly 2,000 Russian citizens fighting with Middle East extremist groups, if fissile material does end up in the hands of militants, it is quite possible it will have originated from Russia.

The DOE should work with Rosatom to restart the September 2013 agreement and implement the reciprocal nuclear site visits, scientist-to-scientist cooperation and joint-research the agreement envisions. The personal relationships developed over decades of cooperation between Russian and American scientists are too important to jeopardize — we are only shooting ourselves in the foot by cutting these off.

The United States should also understand that the narrative from the 1990s whereby the United States is a donor and Russia is an aid recipient is no longer acceptable in Moscow. Going forward, nuclear cooperation must be reframed as a partnership of equals, with both sides contributing to the conversation about how and why to strengthen security. Republicans and Democrats should put aside partisan differences and fully fund U.S.-Russian nuclear security cooperation — whatever that ultimately involves. The Obama administration is proposing to spend $348 billion upgrading the U.S. nuclear arsenal over the next ten years. It’s worth spending a tiny fraction of that money to prevent loose nukes.

All of these steps require that the United States end the linkage between nuclear security cooperation with Russia and the crisis in Ukraine. While the current political environment makes this difficult, not doing so is foolhardy.

*** Yet there is nuclear weapons and testing history that is important to understand and an example is the Marshall Islands and the Nuclear Proliferation Treaty. Fascinating read is here. A declassified video is below: