An affordable price is probably the major benefit persuading people to buy drugs at www.americanbestpills.com. The cost of medications in Canadian drugstores is considerably lower than anywhere else simply because the medications here are oriented on international customers. In many cases, you will be able to cut your costs to a great extent and probably even save up a big fortune on your prescription drugs. What's more, pharmacies of Canada offer free-of-charge shipping, which is a convenient addition to all other benefits on offer. Cheap price is especially appealing to those users who are tight on a budget
Service Quality and Reputation Although some believe that buying online is buying a pig in the poke, it is not. Canadian online pharmacies are excellent sources of information and are open for discussions. There one can read tons of users' feedback, where they share their experience of using a particular pharmacy, say what they like or do not like about the drugs and/or service. Reputable online pharmacy canadianrxon.com take this feedback into consideration and rely on it as a kind of expert advice, which helps them constantly improve they service and ensure that their clients buy safe and effective drugs. Last, but not least is their striving to attract professional doctors. As a result, users can directly contact a qualified doctor and ask whatever questions they have about a particular drug. Most likely, a doctor will ask several questions about the condition, for which the drug is going to be used. Based on this information, he or she will advise to use or not to use this medication.

Facebook Announces Foreign Intrusion Again, 290,000 Accounts

The details: “About two weeks ago we identified the first of eight Pages and 17 profiles on Facebook, as well as seven Instagram accounts, that violate our ban on coordinated inauthentic behavior,” said Nathaniel Gleicher, the company’s head of cybersecurity policy, in blog post. Those pages and accounts have been removed.

  • “In total, more than 290,000 accounts followed at least one of these Pages, the earliest of which was created in March 2017,” Gleicher said. “The latest was created in May 2018.”
  • The New York Times was the first to report that the company had identified the operation.

What they’re saying: Gleicher said Facebook has not attributed the campaign to a specific actor like Russia’s Internet Research Agency, which was behind the 2016 campaign.

  • There are some similarities to what they say before and after the 2016 elections, and Facebook found evidence of some connections between recent accounts and IRA accounts that were disabled last year.
  • But there are also differences: “For example, while IP addresses are easy to spoof, the IRA accounts we disabled last year sometimes used Russian IP addresses. We haven’t seen those here,” Gleicher said.

Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg told reporters that the company is still investigating: “This is an early stage for us to be sharing this information because we don’t have perfect information.”

The content included several related to divisive political issues.

  • One post released by Facebook was posted by a page called “Resisters” and featured an image of President Trump with the text: “If Trump wants to beat Barack Obama’s Twitter record for most liked tweet he only needs to tweet 2 words ‘I resign.'”
  • The same page also created an event for a counter-protest to the upcoming ““Unite the Right” rally in Washington. “Inauthentic admins of the ‘Resisters’ Page connected with admins from five legitimate Pages to co-host the event,” said Gleicher.
  • Though the company released some sample posts from the pages, Facebook officials said on a call with reporters that it would not get into the broad details of the content — beyond what it had released publicly — but were working with researchers to evaluate it.

Facebook has detected attempts to interfere in midterm ...

*** Early patterns, language and tactics are once again pointing to Russia, however that is not confirmed.

CNet: Facebook has discovered a new campaign of “inauthentic behavior” that’s used dozens of Facebook pages and accounts, and $11,000 worth of ads, to promote political causes prior to the US midterm elections, the social network said Tuesday.

The world’s largest social network is already in the hot seat with lawmakers over its role in the 2016 US presidential election. Russian trolls affiliated with the Kremlin-linked Internet Research Agency used a combination of paid ads and organic posts to spread misinformation and sow discord among voters ahead of the election.

In the wake of the scandal, Facebook made several changes to its advertising operations. They include a stricter verification process for political ads, and labeling ads with who paid for them. On Tuesday, Facebook’s head of cybersecurity policy, Nathaniel Gleicher, wrote in a company blog post that his team couldn’t say for sure who was behind the new campaign.

“Some of the activity is consistent with what we saw from the IRA before and after the 2016 elections,” Gleicher said. “And we’ve found evidence of some connections between these accounts and IRA accounts we disabled last year.” But there are differences as well, Gleicher said.

The people behind the new fake accounts are taking more steps to cover their tracks, and Facebook hasn’t found any activity coming from Russian IP addresses. What’s more, the ads were purchased in US and Canadian dollars.

Gleicher said there was a connection between the fake accounts and pages and planned protests in Washington next week.

Sen. Mark Warner, a Virginia Democrat who’s helped lead the Senate Intelligence Committee’s investigation into Russian efforts to influence the 2016 presidential election, said the news shows that social media remains a propaganda target for the Russians.

https://36th-parallel.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/09/Russian-Information-Influence-Campaign-e1506100835726.png photo

“Today’s disclosure is further evidence that the Kremlin continues to exploit platforms like Facebook to sow division and spread disinformation,” Warner said, “and I am glad that Facebook is taking some steps to pinpoint and address this activity. I also expect Facebook, along with other platform companies, will continue to identify Russian troll activity and to work with Congress on updating our laws to better protect our democracy in the future.”

Facebook said it’s working with law enforcement to investigate the campaign.

Iran’s Actions in the Middle East, Where’s the Money?

Obama admin secretly used the Federal Reserve Bank to move $8.6 million to Iran for nuclear-related material. Then they circled back and tried to use the Fed to move several billion dollars more for Iran. Note from State Dept meeting with Oman bank:

It is getting more nefarious since the Kerry/Obama team are gone and left lots of unfinished business behind, or just ignored it.

Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Corps are employing German companies to disguise their illicit funding of the war against the pro-US government in Yemen.

Time Magazine reported on Thursday: “For several years, Iran’s elite Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) had been using German front companies to buy advanced printing machinery, watermarked paper and specialty inks in violation of European export controls.”

According to interviews with US Treasury Department officials, Time added: “The IRGC had then printed counterfeit Yemeni banknotes potentially worth hundreds of millions of dollars and used the bogus rials to fund its proxy war against the beleaguered pro-US government in the capital of Sanaa. German companies were being used as a cover by the Iranians to finance the world’s worst humanitarian conflict.”

The report said that US officials, who uncovered the Iranian counterfeiting operation, met with their German counterparts at the Federal Ministry of Finance in Berlin last April.

The Jerusalem Post reviewed intelligence agency reports from German states covering Iran. The reports document Iran’s strategy of using front companies to engage in illicit procurement of nuclear and missile technology in Germany during 2017.

According to Time: “The evidence, uncovered by US illicit-finance investigators, was meant to sway the Germans, but not just in hopes of countering Iran’s moves on the southern tip of the Arabian Peninsula” but also “to convince Berlin that Tehran cannot be trusted and that the Germans should join the Trump Administration in imposing economy-crippling sanctions on Iran.”

US President Donald Trump issued an executive order in 2017 extending the designation of the IRGC as a terrorist organization. But Germany has declined to outlaw the IRGC as a terrorist entity. The mass circulation Bild reported on Thursday that Germany will permit former IRGC member Hadi Mofateh to run the Iranian regime-controlled Islamic Center of Hamburg.

Time wrote that weeks after the initial meeting in the German finance ministry, “American officials presented their hosts with one last set of documents: detailed blueprints on how the Trump Administration was preparing to unleash financial warfare on the Iranian economy.”

Germany is widely considered the least cooperative of the US’s European allies in confronting Iran’s bellicose activities, according to two sources familiar with US-German talks on the Iran nuclear deal. German exports to the Islamic Republic of Iran climbed to €3.5 billion in 2017, up from €2.6b. in 2016.

A German intelligence report from the city-state of Hamburg in July said Iran’s regime is continuing to seek weapons of mass destruction.

The Post reviewed the 211 page document that says: “some of the crisis countries… are still making an effort to obtain products for the manufacture of atomic, biological and chemical weapons of mass destruction (proliferation) and the corresponding missile carrier technology (rocket technology).”

The Hamburg report added: “The current main focus points of countries in the area of relevant proliferation activities are: Iran, Syria, Pakistan and North Korea.”

***

The Trump administration said in December that it believed 80 percent of the manpower supporting the Syrian regime was made up of “Iranian proxies,” including foreign Shiite fighters. Israel has accused Iran of sending as many as 80,000 fighters to Syria.

It is impossible to know the exact number of Afghan recruits in Syria, because many slip back and forth between Iran and Afghanistan, do not tell their families where they are, and hide their military service for fear of being sent to prison in Afghanistan for fighting on behalf of another country. Yet for some, especially those from the long-persecuted Hazara minority, it seems to be a secret badge of honor.

“Nobody forced us to go fight, but it gives you a kind of pride,” said Hussain, 26, a muscular Hazara man in Herat with scars on his face and hands from old shrapnel wounds. He has served in four deployments in Syria since 2014, earning upward of $600 a month, and returned again two months ago from the front. He said he originally decided to enlist while he was working as a carpenter in Iran and saw a video of Islamic State fighters chopping off victims’ heads. More details here.

Asia Pivot/Latin America Failure, China Owns L.A.

Remember when just a few weeks ago when President Trump announced a new ‘space command‘?

The House Armed Services Committee has a fiscal item in the 2018 NDAA for something called ‘Management and Organization of Space Programs’. The Air Force is not too happy. Redundancy maybe or no?

US Air Force Sees Multidomain Command and Control As Critical photo

Air Force Space Command, activated Sept. 1, 1982, is a major command with headquarters at Peterson Air Force Base, Colorado. AFSPC provides military focused space capabilities with a global perspective to the joint warfighting team.

Mission

AFSPC’s mission is to provide resilient, defendable and affordable space capabilities for the Air Force, Joint Force and the Nation.

Vision

Innovate, Accelerate, Domininate

Priorities

1. Build Combat Readiness

2. Innovate and Accelerate to Win

3. Develop Joint Warfighters

4. Organize for Sustained Success

 

People

More than 30,000 space professionals worldwide.

Organization

Fourteenth Air Force is located at Vandenberg AFB, California, and provides space capabilities for the joint fight through the operational missions of spacelift; position, navigation and timing; satellite communications; missile warning and space control.

The Space and Missile Systems Center at Los Angeles AFB, California, designs and acquires all Air Force and most Department of Defense space systems. It oversees launches, completes on-orbit checkouts and then turns systems over to user agencies. It supports the Program Executive Office for Space on the Global Positioning, Defense Satellite Communications and MILSTAR systems. SMC also supports the Evolved Expendable Launch Vehicle, Defense Meteorological Satellite and Defense Support programs and the Space-Based Infrared System.

AFSPC major installations include: Schriever, Peterson and Buckley Air Force bases in Colorado; Los Angeles and Vandenberg Air Force bases in California; and Patrick AFB in Florida. Major AFSPC units also reside on bases managed by other commands in New Mexico, Virginia and Georgia. AFSPC manages many smaller installations and geographically separated units in North Dakota, Alaska, Hawaii and across the globe.

 

Space Capabilities

Spacelift operations at the East and West Coast launch bases provide services, facilities and range safety control for the conduct of DOD, NASA and commercial launches. Through the command and control of all DOD satellites, satellite operators provide force-multiplying effects — continuous global coverage, low vulnerability and autonomous operations. Satellites provide essential in-theater secure communications, weather and navigational data for ground, air and fleet operations and threat warning.

Ground-based radar, Space-Based Infrared System and Defense Support Program satellites monitor ballistic missile launches around the world to guard against a surprise missile attack on North America. Space surveillance radars provide vital information on the location of satellites and space debris for the nation and the world. Maintaining space superiority is an emerging capability required to protect U.S. space assets.

Remember when VP Pence visited several countries in Latin America a few months ago?

Lots of back story items going on here. China landed in Latin America, the world knew it and did nothing. Obama? Yep…nothing and Trump is working to catch up and applying some counter-measures? This trade war thing is beginning to make some sense with China….

No Need for New ‘Imperial Powers’

Latin America experts in the Obama White House watched China’s rise in the region warily. But the administration raised little fuss publicly, sharing its concerns with leaders mostly in private.

Besides, former officials say, Washington did not have much of a counteroffer.

“I wished the whole time I was working in Latin America that any administration had as well thought-out, resourced and planned a policy as the pivot to Asia for Latin America,” said John Feeley, who recently resigned as the American ambassador to Panama after a nearly three-decade career. “Since the end of the 1980s, there really has never been a comprehensive hemispheric long-term strategy.”

While President Barack Obama was widely hailed in the region for restoring diplomatic relations with Cuba in late 2014, Washington’s agenda never ceased being dominated by two issues that have long generated resentment in Latin America: the war on drugs and illegal immigration.

***

Meanwhile, Patagonia has a Chinese military base, for 50 years, for free.

The 450-ton device, with its hulking dish embracing the open skies, is the centerpiece of a $50 million satellite and space mission control station built by the Chinese military.

The isolated base is one of the most striking symbols of Beijing’s long push to transform Latin America and shape its future for generations to come — often in ways that directly undermine the United States’ political, economic and strategic power in the region.

The antenna is the centerpiece of a $50 million station built by the Chinese military.CreditMauricio Lima for The New York Times

The station began operating in March, playing a pivotal role in China’s audacious expedition to the far side of the moon — an endeavor that Argentine officials say they are elated to support.

But the way the base was negotiated — in secret, at a time when Argentina desperately needed investment — and concerns that it could enhance China’s intelligence gathering capabilities in the hemisphere have set off a debate in Argentina about the risks and benefits of being pulled into China’s orbit.

“Beijing has transformed the dynamics of the region, from the agendas of its leaders and businessmen to the structure of its economies, the content of its politics and even its security dynamics,” said R. Evan Ellis, a professor of Latin American studies at the United States Army War College.

Just weeks after the space station began operating in Patagonia, the United States made an announcement that raised eyebrows here in Argentina.

The Pentagon is funding a $1.3 million emergency response center in Neuquén — the same province where the Chinese base is, and the first such American project in all of Argentina. Local officials and residents wondered whether the move was a tit-for-tat response to China’s new presence in this remote part of the country. Read the full article here from the NYT’s, great work.

United Front, China’s Weapon Against the West/Allies

“United Front Work is an important magic weapon for the victory of the party’s cause.”
                                     – Xi Jinping, October 2017

Related reading: A Weapon Without War: China’s United Front Strategy

A Weapon Without War: China’s United Front Strategy ... photo

Senators Cruz and Rubio have been sounding the alarms on the Confucius Institution that has found homes on U.S. college campuses. They have both done the same with regard to the Chinese Students Association.

Australia, Taiwan, Japan, Taiwan and New Zealand are sounding the same warnings.

Xi Jinping’s rule to date has been characterised by, among other things, a return to the basics of Party rule as established by Mao. These include a renewed emphasis on United Front 统战 work, which Mao called one of the ‘three secret weapons’ 三个大法宝 (along with the armed forces and Party-building) that helped the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) to power in 1949. (For an overview of the United Front, see the China Story Yearbook 2014: Shared Destiny, pp.128–132.) The year 2015 was the most important one since 1990 for the United Front, a collection of strategies overseen by the United Front Work Department (UFWD) 统战部 by which the Party seeks to strengthen its authority and legitimacy, especially among the more marginalised, independent, and minority sectors of the Chinese population.

Explain the primary role of the United Front Work in the Chinese Communist Party (CCP).

The United Front Work Department of the CCP is an integral part of the Party structure, down to sometimes the lowest levels and coordinated at the very top by a United Front Leading Small Group initiated by Xi Jinping. The Department works to reach out, represent, and guide key individuals and groups within both the PRC [People’s Republic of China] and greater China, including Chinese diasporas. The goals include to have all such groups accept CCP rule, endorse its legitimacy, and help achieve key Party aims. Because United Front Work has officially been extended to those who emigrated after 1979 as well as those Chinese studying abroad, some 50 million or more, United Front Work is now of direct relevance and sometimes concern to an increasing number of foreign governments, notably Australia, Zealand, Canada and the United States. United Front Work abroad is not limited to only these countries though.

Related reading: China Built an Army of Influence Agents in the U.S.

How does the United Front Work fashion China’s image and influence overseas?    

An important role of United Front Work since Xi Jinping became CCP general secretary in 2012 has been to help tell the CCP’s preferred “China story” by encouraging overseas Chinese of all sorts to become active promoters of the Party-state’s views in their own domiciles. This promotion includes using material from China in publications, forming associations to highlight positions on issues like Taiwan or more recently, the One Belt, One Road policy, meeting local politicians and winning them over, and using the status of voters in democracies to influence domestic policies in ways that promote CCP interests.

The promotion of Confucius Institutes to win greater influence over what and how Chinese is taught has been yet another success story, particularly in the developing world where this initiative allows Party-state views much more leeway.

Encouraging all of sorts of influential foreigners to visit China under supervision has also been a very successful tactic. Such visitors are treated lavishly and often come to modify their positions or end up airing official Chinese positions despite themselves. Even retired politicians are seen as valuable because of their institutional knowledge and the assumption, usually valid, that they can still wield significant influence in their party or more broadly.

Explain the function of CCP propaganda machinery in Chinese foreign policy.  

The current CCP propaganda push abroad can be summed up as helping ‘make the international environment safe for achieving the Party-state’s goals’ and shifting the terms of discussion of China to ones that the CCP prefers. Even forcing or achieving small shifts in language can be very significant.

The recent attacks on Marriott Hotels and foreign airlines for using terms such as Taiwan and thus treating Taiwan as an independent country have been rewarded with immediate backtracking by the companies concerned. The result of these efforts is to help isolate and delegitimize Taiwan’s status in the eyes of foreign publics. Note that these effects are the opposite of how the CCP uses United Front Work and propaganda in regards to itself, but isolation and delegitimization or at least neutralization of real and perceived enemies are important goals of both. The success of these efforts would be to reduce the costs of other actions intended to bring Taiwan under PRC sovereignty, such as boycotts, blockades, or even invasion.

The CCP would emphasize any such actions as merely “internal” affairs. This “legitimacy” would be repeated by innumerable Chinese diaspora groups around the world, not least by the Associations for the Peaceful Reunification of China – run out of Beijing but now spread worldwide. Even the translation from Chinese of tongyi or “unification” as “reunification” is an effective almost subliminal technique of reframing the issue in the CCP’s favor. Another salient example of the success of these techniques is how foreign news organizations and broadcasters now often feel the need to add a rider to any discussions of Taiwan, adding, “which China regards as a renegade province.” It might be true at one level, but is deeply wrong and misleading at another.

Why are Chinese influence efforts increasingly under government scrutiny in Australia?

The CCP’s United Front Work and stepped up propaganda activities in Australia have been only belatedly recognized as potentially dangerous at a number of levels. These include the emergence of a new group of wealthy Chinese who, having made their fortunes in China, were seeking political access and influence in Australia. The major problem has been with the sometimes very strong United Front links of such people and hence the motives of their actions were called into question. The influence of some of these people on Chinese media in Australia, now almost overwhelmingly pro-Beijing, was another worry as it left only a few independent voices speaking directly to Chinese communities in Chinese and promoting values not in line with Beijing’s.

Another concern has been around fears of stepped up activities and surveillance of Chinese students on Australian campuses. This followed the formalization of PRC students abroad as a specific united front work target in 2015 and a number of well publicized incidents where Chinese students had confronted lecturers about, for example, treating Taiwan as a country.

While much of this work with students and post graduates is likely aimed at surveillance to ascertain whether students are being attracted to Western ideals and values, Christianity, or Falun Gong, the potential clearly exists to push universities or teachers to tone down or omit courses which teach things the CCP regards as dangerous or subversive. Similarly, there are recurrent concerns that the Confucius Institutes on university campuses may pose dangers to academic freedom and promote pro-Beijing lines.

Perhaps the latest and largely unspoken concern relates to a growing realization that the dramatic increases in Chinese emigration to places like Australia and New Zealand etc., particularly since the 2000s, have given rise to large groups of citizens with voting power and sometimes able to sway even general elections, who often remain largely under the sway of the PRC Party-state via its propaganda and United Front Work. Having left China as beneficiaries of the reform period, these groups have no reason to oppose it and many good reasons to support it even if they had no vote there. This is very different, for example, from those who migrated or fled in the wake of the brutal suppression of the student movement of 1989. Moreover, these new migrants are often highly educated and economically successful, unlike many of the generations of Chinese before them, and hence much more able and likely to demand commensurate influence more or less immediately. There is no need for a transitional generation to build up such social, political, and economic capital. This unforeseen consequence of business and student migration is only now becoming obvious to local politicians but how to respond is unclear.

About that Time Obama Gave an AQ Affiliate Grant Money

There has been lots of chatter about removing the security clearance access of John Brennan and a few others. No one has asked about Hillary’s or…..Obama’s. There has been lots of chatter of impeachment, traitor and treason….but when it comes to aiding and supporting the enemy….check this out.

Grant money is a gift….by the way.

Islamic Relief Agency Admits Illegal Funds Transfer to ...

Islamic Relief Agency Admits Illegal Funds Transfer to ... story and photo, more detail here.

The Middle East Forum has discovered that the Obama administration approved a grant of $200,000 of taxpayer money to an al-Qaeda affiliate in Sudan — a decade after the U.S. Treasury designated it as a terrorist-financing organization. More stunningly, government officials specifically authorized the release of at least $115,000 of this grant even after learning that it was a designated terror organization.

The story began in October 2004, when the U.S. Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) designated the Khartoum-based Islamic Relief Agency (ISRA), also known as the Islamic African Relief Agency (IARA), as a terror-financing organization. It did so because of ISRA’s links to Osama bin Laden and his organization Maktab al-Khidamat (MK), the precursor of al-Qaeda.

According to the U.S. Treasury, in 1997 ISRA established formal cooperation with MK. By 2000, ISRA had raised $5 million for bin Laden’s group. The Treasury Department notes that ISRA officials even sought to help “relocate [bin Laden] to secure safe harbor for him.” It further reports that ISRA raised funds in 2003 in Western Europe specifically earmarked for Hamas suicide bombings.

The 2004 designation included all of ISRA’s branches, including a U.S. office called the Islamic American Relief Agency (IARA-USA). Eventually it became known that this American branch had illegally transferred over $1.2 million to Iraqi insurgents and other terror groups, including, reportedly, the Afghan terrorist Gulbuddin Hekmatyar. In 2010, the executive director of IARA-USA and a board member pled guilty to money-laundering, theft of public funds, conspiracy, and several other charges.

ISRA’s influence also spread to Washington. Former U.S. congressman Mark Siljander (R., Mich.) pled guilty in 2010 to obstruction of justice and acting as an unregistered foreign agent after prosecutors found that IARA-USA had paid him $75,000 — using misappropriated USAID grant money — to lobby the government, in an attempt to remove the charity from the government’s terror list.

Despite this well-documented history, the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) in July 2014 awarded $723,405 to World Vision Inc., an international evangelical charity, to “improve water, sanitation and hygiene and to increase food security in Sudan’s Blue Nile state.” Of these funds, $200,000 was to be directed to a sub-grantee: ISRA.

Responding to a Middle East Forum (MEF) inquiry, a USAID official explains that World Vision had alerted it in November 2014 to the likelihood of ISRA being on the terror list. USAID instructed World Vision to “suspend all activities with ISRA” and informed the State Department, OFAC, and USAID’s Office of the Inspector General. USAID and World Vision then waited for OFAC to confirm whether ISRA was designated or not.

USAID emails obtained by the Middle East Forum reveal that in January 2015, World Vision was growing unhappy while waiting for OFAC’s assessment. Mark Smith, World Vision’s senior director of humanitarian and emergency affairs, wrote to USAID, stating that the Islamic Relief Agency “had performed excellent work” for World Vision in the past, and that “putting contractual relationships in limbo for such a long period is putting a significant strain” on World Vision’s relationship with the Sudanese regime. Smith also revealed that World Vision had submitted a notice to OFAC indicating its “intention to restart work with [ISRA] and to transact with [ISRA]” if OFAC did not respond within a week.

World Vision’s statement stunned USAID officials, who complained that World Vision’s behavior “doesn’t make sense.” USAID official Daniel Holmberg emailed a colleague: “If they actually said that they wanted to resume work with ISRA, while knowing that it was 99% likely that ISRA was on the list then I am concerned about our partnership with them, and whether it should continue.”

On January 23, OFAC confirmed that ISRA was a sanctioned entity and denied World Vision “a license to engage in transactions with [ISRA].” Mark Smith and World Vision’s country program director in Sudan expressed their disappointment, stating that they were in discussions with ISRA as well as the Sudanese regime’s Humanitarian Aid Commission, which regulates the activities of international charities in Sudan.

Despite OFAC’s ruling, in February, World Vision wrote to OFAC and Obama-administration official Jeremy Konyndyk (who then served as director of USAID’s Office of U.S. Foreign Disaster Assistance) to apply to OFAC for a new license from USAID to pay ISRA “monies owed for work performed.” According to Larry Meserve, USAID’s mission director for Sudan, World Vision argued that if they did not pay ISRA, “their whole program will be jeopardized.”

While World Vision waited for a decision, on February 22, a pro-regime Sudanese newspaper, Intibaha, reported that the Sudanese political leaders had requested that World Vision be expelled from Sudan’s Blue Nile state. USAID disaster operations specialist Joseph Wilkes and World Vision’s Mark Smith speculated that this was “punishment” for the cancellation of the grant with ISRA, which a USAID official noted is “well connected with the [Sudanese] government.”

Then, incredibly, on May 7, 2015 — after “close collaboration and consultations with the Department of State” — OFAC issued a license to a World Vision affiliate, World Vision International, authorizing “a one-time transfer of approximately $125,000 to ISRA,” of which “$115,000 was for services performed under the sub-award with USAID” and $10,000 was “for an unrelated funding arrangement between Irish Aid and World Vision.”

An unnamed World Vision official described the decision as a “great relief as ISRA had become restive and had threatened legal action, which would have damaged our reputation and standing in Sudan.” Senior USAID official Charles Wanjue wrote to colleagues: “Good news and a great relief, really!” In August 2015, USAID official Daniel Holmberg even told a State Department official that he had been approached by the executive director of ISRA, and requested guidance on helping ISRA remove itself from the U.S. government’s terror list.

Obama-administration officials knowingly approved the transfer of taxpayer dollars to an al-Qaeda affiliate, and not an obscure one but an enormous international network that was often in the headlines.

How was this prominent terror funder initially approved to receive American taxpayer funds ten years after it had been placed on the “Specially Designated Nationals and Blocked Persons” terror list?

Existing measures to prevent the payment of government monies to designated terrorist organizations include: first, a requirement that all grantees and sub-grantees of U.S.-government grants register for a Data Universal Numbering System (DUNS) number; and second, a requirement that all government vendors register with the government’s System for Award Management (SAM) database. A designated organization should not be able to acquire a DUNS number, and any designation is explicitly recorded in the SAM database with a note that the designated organization is excluded from government grants.

However, ISRA was in fact assigned a DUNS number — as recorded at the government’s USAspending.gov website — which matched no organization in the government’s SAM database. The only listings for “Islamic Relief Agency” or “ISRA” in the SAM database are the designated Sudanese al-Qaeda affiliate and its branches.

Whoever approved this grant to ISRA either failed to check the government’s database of designated groups or did so and then chose to disregard it. Both explanations are alarming. And neither answer explains how ISRA acquired a DUNS number.

Most important: Now we know that the government deliberately chose to transfer at least $115,000 to ISRA after confirming that it was on the terror-designation list. In other words, an al-Qaeda front received taxpayers’ money with the apparent complicity of public officials.

It is no secret that the Obama administration sought to downplay the threat of Islamism, and even to coopt some Islamist movements to promote its agenda. In its foreign policy, the administration expressed support for Mohamed Morsi’s Muslim Brotherhood government in Egypt, while domestically, the White House invited Islamists to design the government’s Countering Violent Extremism program. It is difficult to argue that these efforts were the product of anything but great naïveté and political dogma. Is it possible that this combination extended to deliberately funding an al-Qaeda affiliate?

Congress must investigate this question and, more broadly, where USAID is sending taxpayers’ money, for ISRA might not be the only example. The House’s Foreign Affairs, Oversight, and Financial Services Committees, along with the Senate Finance Committee, must examine how a designated group came to qualify for government monies, why OFAC and the State Department authorized the transfer of funds after learning of ISRA’s terror ties, and which bureaucrat or political appointee was responsible for this mess.

Asked to comment, current State Department spokesperson Heather Nauert told National Review: “As this occurred under the prior Administration, the current Secretary of the State, Secretary of Treasury, and USAID Administrator had no involvement in decisions surrounding this award or subsequent license.”

The American people need to know how their dollars funded an al-Qaeda affiliate. They need to know how deep this problem runs.

*** Millions upon millions come to mind shrink-wrapped on pallets on un-marked airplanes to Tehran comes to mind actually.