Ayatollah Rebukes Kerry on Nuclear Talks

Posted on November 28, 2014November 28, 2014 by Denise Simon

The New York Times reported that Khamenei posted a statement on his personal website attacking America but approving of the decision to continue negotiations with world leaders on his country’s nuclear program.

“I do not disagree with the extension of the negotiations, as I have not disagreed with negotiations in the first place,” the ayatollah said in speech published on Khamenei.ir.

Western negotiators – the five permanent members of the United Nations Security Council and Germany (P5+1) – and Iran failed to meet the second deadline for a comprehensive nuclear agreement on Monday, announcing an extension of talks that started last year.

During that time, the parties have operated under an interim agreement that has limited Iran’s production of enriched uranium, imposed stricter international inspections of the current nuclear program and stopped the country from firing up unused centrifuges. In exchange, the United States and European Union have scaled back sanctions on Iran and released portions of frozen assets.

“America is a chameleon, and every day makes new statements,” he said in comments that were to be delivered to an audience of paramilitary Basij forces, according to his website, Khamenei.ir. “It also says different things in public and in private.”

Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, in his first response to the extension of talks over the country’s nuclear program, said world powers have failed to humiliate the Islamic Republic.

“The U.S. and all the European colonialist countries gathered together and tried everything to bring the Islamic Republic of Iran to its knees, but they couldn’t and they never will,” Khamenei said today, according to state-run media.

Diplomats from Iran and the so-called P5+1 group — the U.S., Germany, France, the U.K., Russia and China — gave themselves until March to come up with a political framework and July to spell out technical steps needed for a final accord.

Where does this leave John Kerry and his reputation in Washington for failing to get a deal?

But after having preached patience for a long time, Kerry, the designated defender of the talks, is coming under increasing pressure to deliver an agreement or give up.

Although he has never said a deal with Iran would be easy, Kerry has sometimes raised expectations—as he did in September of last year, when he told “60 Minutes” that a nuclear deal might be reached in less than three to six months.

That was fourteen months ago.

In comments from Vienna Monday, Kerry dangled new hope that a long-term nuclear agreement is close at hand. “[I]n these last days in Vienna, we have made real and substantial progress, and we have seen new ideas surface,” Kerry said, expressing hope that a broad framework could be completed in just four more months.

But administration allies are beginning to worry that Kerry is chasing an ever-moving rainbow’s end.

Shortly after the announcement of the deadline extension, GOP Senate foreign policy figures John McCain, Lindsey Graham and Kelly Ayotte in a joint statement said, “We believe this latest extension of talks should be coupled with increased sanctions and a requirement that any final deal between Iran and the United States be sent to Congress for approval.”

Interestingly, the presidential waiver authorities that are included in the relevant acts have been ratified by the Congress, yet now that Obama is likely to use them, fierce Congressional opposition has emerged.

Under the Joint Plan of Action agreed between Iran and the P5+1, the US should refrain from imposing new nuclear-related sanctions. In January, Obama explicitly threatened a veto on any new Iran sanction bill. Any new sanction bill would be considered as a violation of the JPOA on the part of the United States.

Fading List to Replace Hagel

Posted on November 28, 2014November 28, 2014 by Denise Simon

SecDef Chuck Hagel has an on camera reputation of being slow and lagging in control. But more that comes out since his termination that tells us otherwise. The position of Secretary of Defense is the least sought position in the Obama administration due in part to two wars, the Guantanamo detainee release program and most of all the shrinking budget for defense.

Politico explains why no one wants the job. Then there is the matter of releasing more detainees from Gitmo which is under the full authority of the Pentagon, and Hagel fought back hard under pressure from the White House to apply his signature for releases. More detainees are slated for release, trade or transfer.

Deputy Defense Secretary Work flew to Afghanistan to spend Thanksgiving with the troops and for meetings on the matter of recent Taliban attacks on ISAF. It was only yesterday that the Taliban attacked a NATO base. Matters in Afghanistan are sliding south and the Pentagon officials went to the White House demanding immediate action to prevent a rise in the Taliban and al Qaeda. Simply put a military leadership revolt occurred a few weeks ago such that Obama finally got the message and secretly approved an extended operation in Afghanistan including more aggressive operations.

Sequestration is the biggest threat to protecting national security at home and globally. If sequestration continues, Hagel said last week when he presented his “Strategic Choices and Management Review,” DOD might try to end civilian pensions for retired military troops who work for DOD, or cut unemployment payments.

Carter said changes in pensions, health care and other benefits would likely be grandfathered. Still, a $100 million dollar cut would do damage to DOD and its personnel that officials currently can’t calculate.

The Daesh containment strategy which is to manage the terror group to Iraq and Syria has already failed as Islamic State has moved into North Africa and Libya has fallen.

Little support and attention has been paid to NATO, Poland, Ukraine and the Baltic States except to throw money at building defenses. President Barack Obama, Secretary of State John Kerry and Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel pledged to defend the continent and announced $1 billion in additional military measures aimed at deterring Russia. They also pleaded with NATO members to use their bully pulpits to convince their governments to boost defense spending. U.S. leaders promised that America would fulfill its obligations to protect Europe and urged other NATO members to do to the same. Obama cited the U.S. Article 5 commitment to Poland – referring to the portion of the NATO charter which states that a threat against one nation is a threat against all. “As president, I’ve made sure that the United States is upholding that commitment.”

So who will approve staying on the list to replace SefDef Hagel? There are rumors that include Colin Powel and Tom Donilon, beyond that others are being considered. None of them frankly will have the military in their best interest and national security will likely continue to suffer.

Obama proposed his Pentagon budget for 2015 and it is less than 2014 while the global threat matrix increases. Another matter of great importance is keeping pace of the higher quality, readiness and assets of adversaries of the United States, those countries like China and Russia who are both jointly cooperating in military advancements.

al Aqsa Mosque, Core of Hostilities

Posted on November 26, 2014November 26, 2014 by Denise Simon

The Al Aqsa Libel: A Brief History

Posted By Kenneth Levin On November 26, 2014

Repeated claims in recent weeks by Palestinian Authority president Mahmoud Abbas that Israel was attacking or otherwise threatening the Al Aqsa mosque on the Temple Mount, and Abbas’s calls for Palestinians and other Muslims to take action to defend Al Aqsa and “purify” the Temple Mount, have been a key factor in the latest spate of deadly Arab assaults on Israelis. Other PA officials have echoed and elaborated on Abbas’s message, with some calling explicitly for murdering Jews in response to supposed provocations against Al Aqsa. Palestinian Authority media have conveyed the same message, punctuated by cartoons depicting Jews attacking Al Aqsa and Palestinians defending it. A number of those involved in the assaults against Jews in Jerusalem and elsewhere have asserted that they were acting in response to the calls of their leaders to protect Al-Aqsa. The false claims of Jewish threats against or damage to Al Aqsa have a long pedigree. They have been made by Abbas many times in the past and were a staple of Yasser Arafat’s screeds against Israel and against Jews more generally. Arafat labeled the terror war he launched in 2000 the “Al Aqsa Intifada.” He did so to cast the onslaught not as an aggressive campaign of mass murder of Israelis but as a struggle in defense of the Islamic holy site and to render the war not simply one of Palestinian pursuit of Israel’s destruction but as an Islamic fight against hostile, Al Aqsa-defiling non-believers. But such anti-Jewish libels have a still older history, pre-dating Arafat, pre-dating Israel’s gaining control over the Old City of Jerusalem in 1967, even pre-dating Israel’s creation. In 1929, during the British Mandate, the rabidly anti-Jewish, British appointed Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, Haj Amin el-Husseini, claimed that Jews were threatening Al-Aqsa and sought to end Jewish prayer at the Western Wall (a Temple Mount retaining wall, which had become a place of Jewish prayer in the context of Jews being barred from ascending to the Temple Mount itself – the site of the First and Second Temples – for much of the preceding 2,000 years). According to the Mufti, the Western Wall was an Islamic holy place and Jewish prayer there was both an affront to Islam and a step towards Jewish attacks against Al-Aqsa. The Mufti is also reported to have distributed doctored photographs showing a damaged Al-Aqsa, with claims that the Jews were responsible. The Mufti’s incitement was accompanied by calls for the murder of Jews as revenge. Ensuing attacks by Arab mobs in Jerusalem and elsewhere in Mandate territory resulted in the death of 133 Jews and major injury to over 200 others. The most severely affected community was that of Hebron, where 64 Jews were slaughtered and another 85 injured. British authorities did virtually nothing to stop the attacks. They did evacuate the surviving Jews from Hebron. They also exonerated the Mufti from any responsibility for the murders and took almost no steps against those who actually carried out the carnage. (Only in 1937,when The Mufti began to instigate attacks against British forces, did the authorities seek to arrest him. El-Husseini, however, escaped and fled the Mandate, eventually making his way to Berlin, where he spent much of World War II as Hitler’s guest. Among his activities while in Europe were recruiting Balkan Muslims and Muslims in Nazi-occupied Soviet territory to Nazi SS units and broadcasting in Arabic to the Middle East and north Africa calling on Arabs to support the Nazis and to destroy the Jews in their midst.) Abbas has praised the Mufti as an inspiring hero of the Palestinian cause worthy of emulation. In reality, far from threatening Al Aqsa, Israel has repeatedly bowed to Arab claims of exclusive rights on the Temple Mount. In the wake of Israel’s gaining control of the Old City and the Temple Mount in 1967, the Israelis, with then defense minister Moshe Dayan delineating the policy, granted the Muslim religious authority, the Waqf, control over the Temple Mount. Jews would be allowed access to the Mount but forbidden to pray there. Christians and other non-Muslims would also be allowed access. The Israel Antiquities Authority was to oversee any construction or other physical changes on the Mount that would have an impact on this most sensitive of archaeological sites. The prohibition of Jewish prayer on the Mount has been strictly enforced by Israeli governments. While there is increasing support among Israelis for a small area of the Mount – far from Al Aqsa and the Dome of the Rock – to be set aside for Jewish prayer, no such arrangement has won government backing. Furthermore, Jewish and other non-Muslim visitors to the Temple Mount have commonly been harassed by Waqf guards and other Muslims, and Israeli officials have responded typically not by countering such harassment but by restricting non-Muslim access. Also, particularly between 1999 and 2001, the Waqf, in the context of establishing and expanding additional places of Muslim worship on the Mount and seeking to destroy evidence of historic Jewish (and Christian) connection to the Mount, brought heavy earth-moving equipment onto the Mount and dug up and hauled away thousands of tons of material. This material contained the remains of structures and other relics from pre-Muslim epochs, most notably from the First and Second Temple periods. In the context of any archaeological excavation of such a sensitive and historically rich site, the work would have been approached with archaeologists’ hand trowels and brushes. Yet the Israeli government – led for most of this period by Ehud Barak – did nothing to block this desecration of the Temple Mount, and the Israel Antiquities Authority likewise did nothing. A broad coalition of Israelis, drawn from across the nation’s political and religious spectra and including such luminaries as Amos Oz and A.B. Yehoshua, formed “The Council for the Prevention of Destruction of Antiquities on the Temple Mount” and urged the Barak government to stop the desecration, but to little avail. So the Al Aqsa libel stands truth on its head: Muslim supremacism on the Temple Mount has not only been maintained since Israel gained control of the Old City, but has been expanded through aggressive Muslim actions and general Israeli acquiescence. Bur the anti-Jewish libel lives on, because it, and the violence it generates, serve its purveyors. Abbas uses it to build up his own anti-Israel and anti-Jewish bonafides against the popularity of Hamas among Palestinians. He also employs it to draw wider Arab attention away from the bloody chaos enveloping much of the Arab world, chaos that has led some Arab leaders to at least temporarily relate to Israel as an ally confronting shared threats. Abbas seeks to resurrect the focusing of Arab enmity on Israel. Abbas is also using the Al Aqsa libel and the accompanying bloodletting to advance his pursuit of UN and European “recognition” and international pressure on Israel for unilateral concessions, particularly withdrawal to the indefensible pre-1967 armistice lines. Abbas, like Arafat before him, seeks to achieve Israeli withdrawal while avoiding any bilateral agreement with Israel that would entail formal acceptance of Israel’s legitimacy within any borders. The Grand Mufti’s Al Aqsa libel and his incitement to the murder of Jews ultimately served him well. An investigating commission sent from London found the Arabs fully responsible for the bloodshed but then recommended steps be taken against the Jews so as to assuage Arab hostility, steps that violated Britain’s obligations to the Jewish community under the terms of its League of Nations mandate. European and some American media coverage of the recent violence, and the reactions of United Nations officials, various European governments and, with rare exception, the Obama administration, downplay or ignore entirely Abbas’s cynical use of the libel and incitement of murderous violence. Some distort the realities surrounding the violence into an indictment of Israel. And so again the libel and its murderous fallout redound to the perpetrator’s gain. If you need more:

This past week Israel’s south remained quiet, with two exceptions. In Judea, Samaria and Jerusalem the violence continues, partially to show solidarity with Al-Aqsa mosque. Rocks and stones are thrown, as are Molotov cocktails, and there have been stabbing and vehicular attacks. Hamas continues its anti-Israeli incitement campaign, while senior PA and Fatah figures claim Israel is responsible for the rioting and violence.
In recent weeks the Israel Security Agency exposed a Hamas terrorist squad whose members had served prison sentences in Israeli in the past. They planned to assassinate Israeli Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman and had already begun gathering operational intelligence and preparing weapons.

Iran ‘Richer’ Today Due to John Kerry

Posted on November 24, 2014November 24, 2014 by Denise Simon

The legacy of the Obama administration will not be Obamacare, it will not be amnesty, it will be eliminating America’s enemies and Iran has become the closest ally to the U.S. State Department under the edict of the White House with John Kerry leading the charge.

Obama wrote a letter to the Mullahs back in 2008 as he became the presidential nominee. The letters to the Ayatollahs continued and open talks have continued such that John Kerry led the charge to move the needle to stop the Iranian nuclear weapons program. The expiration date for the agreement was today and they failed. The talks have now officially been extended another 7 months.

Iran is a state sponsor of terror and has been an avowed enemy of the United States going back to the late 70’s but John Kerry has dismissed all the history. A deal with Iran or no deal with Iran on their nuclear weapons program is bad news either way….the point is the program needs to be destroyed, there is and never was a peaceful nuclear program.

Each day that passes, Iran’s centrifuges continue to spin putting a nuclear warhead only months away. Iran does have everything to hide and to lie about such that Iran refuses the International Atomic Energy Agency access for inspections which has been agreed to and performed in the past and often.

There is a nuclear arms race in the Middle East and not only is Israel in jeopardy with its virtual existence but Saudi Arabia is also.

The story gets worse however as additional sanctions against Iran have been lifted. Some early sanctions were lifted just to get Iran to the negotiation table, and indeed since many months have passed with no resolution, additional sanctions were lifted by John Kerry to keep Iran at the table for the next 7 months.

Iran’s economy has been slipping from stability for a very long time due to effective sanctions, but their economy has received huge positive money shots due to lifted sanctions but now it gets better for them as additional sanctions will provide Iran with an economic income of seized monies up to $700 million a month. Iran has been rewarded for bad behavior and for stonewalling talks, hence John Kerry is either being a naïve dupe or a willing participant in allowing Iran’s to thrive.

Now the question is what will occur during the 7 months of extended talks? Could Saudi Arabia get involved to stop the enrichment? Will Israel be drafting war plans? Will John Kerry continue on a fool’s errand during the next 7 months to keep the talks viable and will they ultimately fail then?

Congress has been purposely left out of the loop of the talks yet they are in fact aware of some conditions. This is a time they will use once the 114th Congress is seated in January to stop the madness, pass additional irrevocable sanctions and the division in Congress and the State Department will continue.

All sides have been working from a thin ‘framework‘ such that Iran had little to do for compliance and now Iran is asking for a secondary framework to be developed.

It is going to be difficult in coming months due to continued military sequestration, the expanding footprint in Afghanistan, the expanding footprint in Iraq, a new Congress and then immigration. 2015 will not start off well.

Question is who is gonna notice and be proactive?

Prisons, Cells for Terrorism

Posted on November 21, 2014November 21, 2014 by Denise Simon

On March 10, 2003, Senator Charles Schumer wrote a letter to the OIG requesting that we examine the BOP’s process for selecting Muslim chaplains based on concerns that the BOP relies solely on two Islamic groups to endorse its Muslim chaplains, the Islamic Society of North America (ISNA) and the Graduate School of Islamic and Social Sciences (GSISS). Schumer noted that the ISNA and the GSISS allegedly are connected to terrorism and promote Wahhabism, which some consider an exclusionary and extreme form of Islam. In addition to Senator Schumer, Senators Jon Kyl and Dianne Feinstein expressed similar concerns and asked the OIG to examine these issues as they relate to the BOP.

OIG interviewed the BOP’s ten Muslim chaplains, the BOP detailee to the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s (FBI) National Joint Terrorism Task Force (NJTTF), and officials at BOP Headquarters who are responsible for religious services providers, including the Chief of the Chaplaincy Services Branch and the Senior Deputy Assistant Director (SDAD) of the Correctional Programs Division. We also interviewed FBI counterterrorism officials and representatives of the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom at the U.S. Department of State (Commission). Read more here.

Years later, prisons are in fact terror cells and no solution is in sight.

U.S. Prisons Churning Out Thousands Of Radicalized Inmates

Joy Brighton published a profound piece.

Back in 2006, then FBI director Robert Mueller prophetically described the radical Islamist conversion machine operating throughout U.S. prisons, to a Senate committee. He said that prisons were a “fertile ground” for Islamic extremists, and that they targeted inmates for introduction to the militant Wahhabi and Salafist strains of Islam.

The recent so-called “lone wolf” terrorist attacks in Oklahoma City, New York, and just over our northern border in the Canadian capital of Ottawa, may be the product of such radicalization.

In April 2010, Larry James murdered his mother, pregnant wife, 7-month-old son, 3-year-old niece and 16-year-old niece for refusing to convert to Islam. James converted in 2007, while in a U.S. prison.

Then two months ago Colleen Hufford, a 54-year-old grandmother and factory worker in Oklahoma, was beheaded with a produce knife by Alton Nolen who likely converted to Islam in a U.S. prison. Nolen is being charged with workplace violence.

Last month NYPD officer Kenneth Healey, 25, was axed to death with a hatchet to the side of the head. He was not attacked by a “lone wolf,” but by ex-con Zale Thompson. New York City Police Commissioner William Bratton has called it a terrorist attack, and the NYPD might want to look at Thompson’s record in California where he did two brief terms in California prisons.

The statistics are staggering, and woefully out of date. One out of three African-American inmates in U.S. prisons convert to Islam while incarcerated.

This statistic is no longer limited to African-Americans in prison. The Huffington Post reported an estimated 35,000 – 40,000 inmates convert to Islam each year, and that 15 percent of the total U.S. prison population or 350,000 inmates are Muslim.

This is more than 18 times the national representation of Muslims in America, reported to be 0.8 percent. Prisons are churning out converts to Islam who are taught they are righteously entitled to control the religion, speech, and dress of family, co-workers and strangers.

The key to conversion success is clear. Our government has been contracting and paying Muslim Brotherhood front groups, such as GSISS (The Graduate School of Islamic and Social Sciences) and ISNA (Islamic Society of North America) to screen and assign Muslim prison chaplains for at least 8 years.

While Egypt and Saudi Arabia have banned the Muslim Brotherhood, classifying it as a terror group, the White House, U.S. prisons, and the Departments of Justice and Homeland Security continue to work with Muslim Brotherhood groups.

For example, Paul Pitts served 14 years in prison for murder, where he converted to Islam and became Imam Abdu-Shahid. He was paroled in 2001 and hired as a prison chaplain in 2007 with an annual salary of $49,471. In Feb 2010, he was caught trying to bring scissors and razor blades into the Manhattan Detention Complex.

A New York City corrections department source told the New York Post: “It’s a disgrace that taxpayers are funding Muslim chaplains who not only have criminal records, but also are promoting violence.”

Abdu-Shahid’s boss – head chaplain Umar Abdul-Jalil – was hired at an annual salary of $76, 602 even though he served 14 years for dealing drugs. In 2006, he was suspended for two weeks without pay after declaring that “the greatest terrorists in the world occupy the White House.” He continues to oversee 40 prison chaplains.

According to the Wall Street Journal, Wallace Gene Marks converted under Imam Umar while in prison for weapon possession. He was hired as a one of the first paid Muslim chaplains in 1975 and has hired nearly 45 chaplains. Imam Umar says that prison “is the perfect recruitment and training grounds for radicalism and the Islamic religion” and that 9/11 hijackers should be honored as martyrs. “Funded by the Saudi government he traveled often to Saudi Arabia and brought that country’s harsh form of Islam to New York’s expanding ranks of Muslim prisoners.”

Just after 9/11, Aminah Akbar, a veteran female Muslim chaplain, told a crowd of 100 inmates at the Albion Correctional Facility for women that Osama bin Laden “is a soldier of Allah,” and added, “I am not an American, and I just live here.”

A New York City Corrections source told the New York Post: ”It’s a disgrace that taxpayers are funding Muslim chaplains who not only have criminal records, but also are promoting violence. “Ignoring these red flags under the aegis of political correctness is literally killing us.”

We must demand that the religion of Islam be separated from the totalitarian politics of Sharia-ism. Sharia-ism, like Soviet Communism and Nazism is bent on global control by silencing criticism and working within an unsuspecting political system to eventually overthrow it. Our taxpayer funded prisons have been co-opted by the leaders of Sharia-ism in America, the Muslim Brotherhood. More silence will likely mean the death of more innocent Americans.

Joy Brighton is author of Sharia-ism is Here: The Battle to Control Women and Everyone Else.