Putin’s Coalition Forces in Syria vs. Obama’s

Posted on October 14, 2015October 14, 2015 by Denise Simon

Iran: Iranian MPs arrive in Damascus before joint offensive ~ A delegation of Iranian lawmakers arrived in Damascus on Wednesday in the build-up to a joint operation against insurgents in northwest Syria, and said U.S.-led efforts to fight rebels had failed.The visit, led by the chairman of the Iranian parliament’s National Security and Foreign Policy Commission, Alaeddin Boroujerdi, came as Iranian troops prepared to bolster a Syrian army offensive that two senior officials told Reuters would target rebels in Aleppo.
The attack, which the officials said would be backed by Russian air strikes, underlined the growing involvement in the civil war of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s two main allies, which has alarmed a U.S.-led coalition opposed to the president that is bombing Islamic State militants.

“The international coalition led by America has failed in the fight against terrorism. The cooperation between Syria, Iraq, Iran and Russia has been positive and successful,” Boroujerdi was quoted as saying by Iran’s state broadcaster IRIB as he arrived at Damascus airport.

The delegation was due to meet Assad, said officials.

Iran has sent thousands of troops into Syria in recent days to bolster the planned ground offensive in Aleppo, the two officials told Reuters. More here.
China: China’s Syria Connection ~A 2011 report by the U.S. Congressional Research Service highlighted the role China has played in arming Assad’s military, providing $300 million worth of arms from 2007 to 2010.
For proof of continuing support, February 2013 saw the United States impose sanctions on China Precision Machinery Import and Export Corporation, a state-owned company, for allegedly conducting military transfers to Syria in violation of nonproliferation legislation.

China seems happy to let Russia and Iran take on the role as Assad’s main supporters. Even though China is less obvious than the other two nations, it is nonetheless far from neutral.

Despite Chinese rhetoric of supporting a political solution, its actions suggest otherwise.

China’s selective use of its “noninterference” policy has seen them (alongside Russia) veto three Western-backed Security Council resolutions seeking to bring Assad to the negotiating table. As a permanent member of the Security Council, any international solution would require Chinese acquiescence.

Furthermore, in an interview given to the Financial Times in June, Kadri Jamil, Syrian deputy prime minister for the economy, boasted that China has joined Iran and Russia in delivering $500 million a month in oil and credit to Syria. The majority of Syria’s oil is in the largely rebel-held north and northeast of the country, and the network of pipelines connecting the wells to the population centres are vulnerable to rebel attack. As a result, Syrian oil production has fallen by as much as 95 percent during the ongoing conflict, and the importance of Chinese aid should not be underestimated. Chinese financial and material support supplements Russian and Iranian aid and has allowed the Assad war machine to remain militarily effective. More here.
Cuba: Cuban Troops Join the Russian Offensive in Syria ~ Russian President Vladimir Putin has made waves of late with his military offensive in Syria, and now he has on-the-ground backing of the Cuban variety. One of the world’s leading centers for research on Cuba has released breaking details of the Castro regime’s presence in the war-torn Middle Eastern nation.+
The Institute for Cuban and Cuban-American Studies (ICCAS) at the University of Miami shared via email on October 13, 2015, that General Leopoldo Cintra Frías, head of the Cuban Armed Forces, had already landed in Syria. He is, they write, “leading a group of Cuban military personnel … in support of Syria’s dictator Assad” and, in Cold War fashion, the Russian contingent.+

The ICCAS researchers shared with the PanAm Post that the intelligence came directly from a spokesman of the US Defense Department, and is corroborated by an unnamed but friendly military in the Middle East. They report two Russian-made planes arriving in Syria carrying approximately 300 Cuban soldiers.+

They further detail that the Cuban soldiers will man Russian tanks that have been provided to Syrian head-of-state Bashar al-Assad. Their duty will be to fight Islamic State forces and others who threaten Assad’s grip on power. More here.

Back in 2014, Obama announced his member nation coalition to take on Islamic State and the Khorasan Group:

President Barack Obama on Tuesday morning called the U.S.-led attacks against terrorist targets in Syria a sign that Arab nations in the Middle East and Congress at home are committed to destroying the Islamic State, the terrorist group that occupies large swathes of land in Iraq and Syria.

Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Eremites, Jordan, Bahrain and Qatar all joined the U.S. in the attacks against the Islamic State that included a strike package of stealth fighters, bombers, drones and Tomahawk missiles, Obama said.

“America is proud to stand shoulder-to-shoulder with these nations as part of our common security,” the President said in brief remarks from the South Lawn of the White House, just before departing for New York City. “The strength of the coalition makes clear that it is not America’s fight alone.”

In addition to hitting Islamic State targets, Obama said the coalition operation in Syria was meant to disrupt a plot “against the United States and our allies by seasoned al-Qaeda operatives [there] known as the Khorosan Group.”

Strong Cities Network or Global Police?

Posted on October 13, 2015October 13, 2015 by Denise Simon

What’s the Goal of DOJ’s Strong Cities Network?

by Johanna Markind
American Thinker
October 8, 2015

On September 29, 2015, with the endorsement of Attorney General Loretta Lynch, a group called the Strong Cities Network was launched at the United Nations.

According to its website, Strong Cities “aims to connect cities and other local authorities on an international basis, to enhance local level approaches to prevent violent extremism; including facilitating information sharing, mutual learning and creation of new and innovative local practices.”

Reportedly, the “network will conduct workshops and training, will offer online documents of best practices, and will offer grants for innovative initiatives. The US State Department will provide funds through 2016, at which time charities are expected to take over funding.” A summit is scheduled to take place next spring in Paris.

The group includes 23 cities, including four from the US: Minneapolis, New York, Denver, and Atlanta. Minneapolis is also one of three US cities – the other two being Boston and Los Angeles – the Obama Administration selected to participate in its Countering Violent Extremism pilot program.

The Strong Cities Program has been criticized by the New York Civil Liberties Union and by American Muslim activists fearful it will target Muslims. Similar criticisms have been leveled against the Department of Justice Countering Violent Extremism program, notably by the Islamist-posing-as-civil-rights group Council on American-Islamic Relations. New York groups like the NYCLU, Association of Muslim American Lawyers and the Justice League NYC expressed concern New York would eventually become active with the Justice Department’s “Countering Violent Extremism,” or CVE, programs, which they say “overwhelmingly” target Muslim communities.

Given this sort of challenge, and the Obama Administration‘s own predilections, it is unsurprising that the program avoids connecting its target to radical Islam. Its stated goals include addressing “violent extremism in all of its forms” without associating violent extremism “with any particular religion, nationality or ethnic group.” It emphasizes inclusiveness, collaboration, and non-discrimination “in compliance with international human rights standards.”

The Attorney General’s remarks likewise avoided referring to any specific religion. The closest she came was to refer vaguely to “groups like ISIL,” and ecumenically to “fanatics motivated by hatred against religious or ethnic factions,” and explained, “all are antithetical to the shared vision and common cause that joins us.”

Similarly, in his remarks at the International Institute for Justice and the Rule of Law’s “More Effective Responses to the Foreign Terrorist Fighter Threat” event the day before the Strong Cities launch, Assistant Attorney General John Carlin managed to avoid all references to Islam, and all reference to Muslims save to describe ISIL as “a group that beheads and kills Muslims and non-Muslims with the same impunity,” and to focus on the need to broadcast “the damage they [ISIL] are doing to Muslim communities.”

The refusal to identify radical Islam as the focus of the Strong Cities Network – indeed, Mayor DeBlasio‘s insistence that it would not focus on any one type of extremism and references to the shooting of African-American churchgoers in Charleston and the past attacks on Planned Parenthood clinics – has in turn stoked fears that it will target conservative groups and criticism of its close cooperation with the United Nations. (Regarding the latter, it is difficult to take seriously an organization that puts Saudi Arabia in charge of its Human Rights Commission; the UN’s High Commissioner for Human Rights, Saudi Prince Zeid Ra’ad Hussein, was scheduled to be present at the launch.)

Are Lynch’s remarks, and the Strong Cities Network’s self-description, necessary diplomatic niceties for a program designed to deal with violent Islamism? Or will the program blunt its utility by taking on too many tasks? For example, how many resources will it devote to combating right-wing extremism?

The refusal of the program, and of Lynch and Carlin, to speak plainly about violent Islamism and the need to defeat it, does not bode well for its chances of success at that task. To quote former US Defense Intelligence Agency Director Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn, “You can’t defeat an enemy that you don’t admit exists.”

*** Deeper layer peeled back:

From John Whitehead, founder of the Rutherford Institute
Now, with Strong Cities Network, U.S. cities will be cooperating and “sharing resources” with foreign governments around the world. Local police are already training with FBI, DHS and even the military. Obama’s new program lays the groundwork for them to train with foreign police units under the banner of the U.N.

“With the Strong Cities program we see the goal is to have global police, so it’s going to be very hard to rein in global cops,” Whitehead said. “Cops who were trained locally are going by the wayside, dealing solely with local cops is going to be a thing of the past. It’s sort of in your face, it’s saying the U.N. is going to be a global police force, working in this country one way or the other. New York City, L.A., Chicago are going to lead the way. Americans better get ready for this because what it means is, our Constitution is being replaced, and the constitutional protections we have eventually will be gone.”

Among the first steps taken will involve merging some of the law-enforcement capacities within regions, with U.S. cops cooperating more closely with those of Mexico and Canada, Whitehead said. Click here for Whitehead’s summary and warning from 2010.

Rashid Khalidi, Palestinians and Death

Posted on October 13, 2015October 13, 2015 by Denise Simon

Shocking moment Palestinian drives his car into crowd of Israelis at bus stop and then hacks one of them to death before he is shot by police

As Palestinians Stab Jews, Obama Friend Khalidi Says US Should Stop Supporting Israel

BenShapiro: Rashid Khalidi, President Obama’s favorite Palestinian terrorist apologist, has a piece defending the latest spate of Palestinian terrorism in The New Yorker today.

Khalidi made his name as an advisor to Yassar Arafat’s terrorist Palestine Liberation Organization. He then got a job as a professor at the University of Chicago before moving onto Columbia University, where he took over as chair of the Middle East Studies program, named in honor of terror apologist Edward Said. Khalidi has been a longtime Obama friend and ally; Obama infamously attended a 2003 dinner in honor of Khalidi, tape of which was obtained by the Los Angeles Times. The Times then suppressed the tape.

In today’s New Yorker, Khalidi argues that the Oslo Accords should never have taken place – that somehow, Israel handing over guns and land to Palestinian terrorists, as well as paying all their water and power bills, has been a boon for Israel. Khalidi called Palestinian Authority dictator Mahmoud Abbas’ declaration of an end to Oslo at the United Nations “long overdue” and said that Oslo had resulted in “the current upsurge in violence against Palestinians and settlers in the occupied territories.”

Actually, Jews are being stabbed to death in Jerusalem, the Jewish capital of the State of Israel. And Oslo’s main result was the legitimization of an international terrorist group on the world stage. But Khalidi explains that Oslo was never designed as part of a peace process; instead, it was all a sophisticated Jewish ruse to keep those innocent Palestinians under their thumb. In fact, says Khalidi, “The only part of Oslo that was faithfully implemented, in fact, is the protection that the P.A. provides to Israel by policing its own people.”

If by “policing its own people,” Khalidi means using the guns Israel gave the PA to pursue terrorist activities against Jews, that’s exactly correct. But Khalidi says that now that Abbas has disowned Oslo, it’s time for the United States to embrace a “new paradigm.” That paradigm would follow the lead of “young people, people of color and progressives,” who “oppose unconditional US support for Israel.” Khalidi enthusiastically embraces the possibility of sanctions on Israel, and cheers new polls showing that Democrats only favor Israel over Palestinians by ten points.

Khalidi concludes:

It is time for American politicians and policymakers to stop hiding behind the fictions of Oslo. If they really wish to avoid more of the same, they must abandon bankrupt strategies and meaningless platitudes and act vigorously to end a system of military occupation and colonization that would crumble without their support.

The Khalidi family used to babysit the Obama children. They are ideologically and philosophically aligned. Obama said at the 2003 bash for Khalidi – a bash at which a Palestinian likened Zionists to Osama Bin Laden – that Khalidi’s conversations provided “consistent reminders to me of my own blind spots and my own biases….It’s for that reason that I’m hoping that, for many years to come, we continue that conversation — a conversation that is necessary not just around Mona and Rashid’s dinner table, [but around] this entire world.”

Khalidi told The Los Angeles Times that Obama took a pro-Israel position in 2008 in order to win the election.

The mask is off now, however. President Obama’s ideological allies, from Jeremiah Wright to Khalidi, have spent this week attempting to rip down Israeli self-defense even as Palestinians stab Jewish children in the streets of Israel’s capital. And Obama’s administration says and does nothing. Why would they? They’re on Rashid Khalidi’s side.

EPA Hires Thunderclap….Huh?

Posted on October 13, 2015October 13, 2015 by Denise Simon

Armed EPA Agents? The Truth Is Way Out There

The EPA’s armed war on alien polluters.

AmericanSpectator: Fox Mulder and Dana Scully, the FBI agents on Fox’s The X-Files, have been known to draw weapons on aliens, poltergeists, and phantoms. But they have an excuse — they’re fictional characters in a network TV drama, coming back on-the-air soon after a long hiatus. Not so the Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPAs) own, real-life agents. They are packing pistols and even heavier firepower to catch the nation’s contributors to global warming and other, mythical phenomena. Truth is stranger than science fiction in today’s Washington, D.C., and the truth is way out there.

According to a report released last week by a watchdog group called Open the Books, the EPA has spent millions of dollars recently on guns, ammo, body armor, camouflage equipment, and even night-vision goggles to arm its agents in the war on polluters.

The Illinois-based investigative group examined thousands of checks totaling more than $93 billion from 2000 to 2014 by the EPA, and its auditors indicate that about $75 million is authorized each year for “criminal enforcement” of America’s clean air and water laws. This includes cash for a cadre of 200 “special agents” that engage in SWAT-style ops.

“We were shocked ourselves to find these kinds of pervasive expenditures at an agency that is supposed to be involved in clean air and clean water,” said Open the Books’ founder, Adam Andrzejewski, a former candidate for governor of Illinois. “Some of these weapons are for full-scale military operations.”

Some of these military operations have been reported in the media. Two years ago, the EPA was involved in an armed raid at a small town in Alaska where miners were accused of polluting local waters, as Fox News reported that EPA “armed agents in full body armor participated.”

The EPA’s own website describes the activities and mission of the criminal enforcement division as “investigating cases, collecting evidence, conducting forensic analyses and providing legal guidance to assist in the prosecution of criminal conduct that threatens people’s health and the environment.”

Don’t blame President Obama for this alone. The EPA was first given police powers in 1988 during the Reagan era. These days, EPA also conducts joint projects with the Department of Homeland Security as it engages in what a media report calls “environmental crime-fighting.”

“For more than 30 years,” according to the EPA website, “there has been broad, bipartisan agreement about the importance of an armed, fully-equipped team of EPA agents working with state and federal partners to uphold the law and protect Americans.”

But that’s not all that the Open the Books investigators found. Backing up these armed environmental crusaders are scores of highly paid lawyers and other professionals.

The report showed that seven of 10 EPA workers earn more than $100,000 a year, and EPA’s $8 billion budget also finances the salaries of 1,000 attorneys, making the agency one of the biggest law firms in the U.S.

The EPA is hardly going solo in this armed adventure against America, however. The agency has collaborated with the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, and a recent report by the U.S. Department of Justice indicates that more than 40 federal agencies, with 100,000 officers, carry guns and make arrests.

How far will EPA agents go to enforce the law as they interpret it? The Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals on Friday issued a temporary stay on the Environmental Protection Agency’s new Clean Water Rule that regulates “waters of the U.S.” The court decided the EPA’’s Rule that originally became effective on August 28, 2015 requires “further judicial analysis.” The new Clean Water Rule defined navigable waters to include tributaries and wetlands, and even puddles caused by rainstorms. The rule defines which waterways would be protected by the Clean Water Act of 1972. A total of 18 states are challenging the new rule. Perhaps the new water rules will be enforced at gunpoint by armed agents if President Obama and EPA Administrator Gina McCarthy decide that “environmental justice” requires it.

*** Gina likes Thunderclap, so she hired them for crowd-sourcing positive responses.

Join a Thunderclap for Clean Water

EPA is planning to use a new social media application called Thunderclap to provide a way for people to show their support for clean water and the agency’s proposal to protect it. Here’s how it works: you agree to let Thunderclap post a one-time message on your social networks (Facebook, Twitter or Tumblr) on Monday, September 29 at 2:00 pm EDT. The message will be posted on everyone’s walls and feeds at the same time.
Here’s the message: “Clean water is important to me. I want EPA to protect it for my health, my family, and my community. www.epa.gov/USwaters”

Read about the Thunderclap.

EPA Publishes Final 2012 and Preliminary 2014 Effluent Guidelines Program Plans

Under Clean Water Act section 304(m), EPA develops biennial plans for issuing new regulations or revising existing regulations to control industrial wastewater discharges. While EPA’s final 2012 plan and preliminary 2014 plan do not propose any new effluent guidelines for industry, EPA is announcing initiation of detailed studies of the petroleum refining industry and centralized waste treatment facilities, and continuation of its preliminary review of the metal finishing industry. EPA will accept public comments on the preliminary 2014 plan through November 17, 2014. Learn more.

Section 319 Success Story: Ionine Creek, Oklahoma

Ionine Creek in Grady County runs through an area of high cattle, wheat, and hog production. An assessment of the creek’s fish community in 2004 revealed a poor biological condition, prompting Oklahoma to add the creek to the state’s Clean Water Act section 303(d) list of impaired waters for biological impairment. Implementation of best management practices to reduce runoff from grazing land and cropland and to improve wildlife habitat decreased sediment and nutrient contributions to the creek and provided better in-stream habitat. As a result, Oklahoma removed Ionine Creek from Oklahoma’s list for fishes bioassessment. Ionine Creek now fully attains its fish and wildlife propagation designated use. The complete success story can be found here.

Trey Gowdy Gets Final Word on Benghazi Politics

Posted on October 12, 2015October 12, 2015 by Denise Simon

A big hat-tip to The Right Scoop for capturing this.

A former Benghazi staffer and Air Force intelligence officer has come out claiming that the Benghazi Committee had become partisan as they wanted to go after Hillary to bring her poll numbers down. As you see in this short clip, Gowdy responds to this staffer’s claims, calling it a damn lie in an interview with NBC News last night:

Below is Trey Gowdy’s full and strong statement dismantling this staffer’s claims. I’ve highlighted a couple of interesting parts:

One month ago, this staffer had a chance to bare his soul, and raise his claim this Committee was focused on Secretary Clinton in a legal document, not an interview, and he did not do it. Nor did he mention Secretary Clinton at any time during his counseling for deficient performance, when he was terminated, or via his first lawyer who withdrew from representing him. In fact, throughout the pendency of an ongoing legal mediation, which is set to conclude October 13, this staffer has not mentioned Secretary Clinton. But as this process prepares to wrap, he has demanded money from the Committee, the Committee has refused to pay him, and he has now run to the press with his new salacious allegations about Secretary Clinton.

To wit, until his Friday conversations with media, this staffer has never mentioned Secretary Clinton as a cause of his termination, and he did not cite Clinton’s name in a legally mandated mediation. He also has not produced documentary proof that in the time before his termination he was directed to focus on Clinton. The record makes it clear not only did he mishandle classified information, he himself was focused on Clinton improperly and was instructed to stop, and that issues with his conduct were noted on the record as far back as April.

Because I do not know him, and cannot recall ever speaking to him, I can say for certain he was never instructed by me to focus on Clinton, nor would he be a credible person to speak on my behalf. I am equally confident his supervisor, General Chipman, did not direct him to focus on Clinton.

In fact, when this staffer requested interns do a project that focused on Clinton and the National Security Council, he was informed by the Committee’s deputy staff director his project was ‘not approved.’ This individual was hired as a former intelligence staffer to focus on intelligence, not the politics of White House talking points.

On September 11th, in his mediation filing, this staffer specifically claimed his reserve status as a basis for his termination. I would note first this staffer’s reserve duty was approved both times it was requested.

In all of the interviews conducted since news broke of Secretary Clinton’s email arrangement, exactly half of one interview focused on Clinton’s unusual email arrangement. The Benghazi Committee has now interviewed 44 new witnesses, including 7 eyewitnesses to the attacks never before interviewed, and recovered more than 50,000 pages of new documents. Approximately 5 percent of those are Secretary Clinton’s self-selected email records. I cannot say it any plainer than stating the facts, the Benghazi Committee is not focused on Secretary Clinton, and to the extent we have given any attention to Clinton, it is because she was Secretary of State at all relevant times covered by this Committee’s jurisdiction.

“Had CNN contacted the Committee regarding its interview with this staffer before it rushed to air his sensationalistic and fabulist claims, it could have fully questioned him about his unsubstantiated claims. But that is the difference between journalism as practiced by CNN, and the fact-centric investigation being conducted by this Committee.

This Committee always has been, and will be, focused on the four brave Americans we lost in Benghazi and providing the final, definitive accounting of the Benghazi terrorist attacks for the American people.

Sounds like this staffer himself wanted to target Clinton at a time and was told no by the committee. As Lanchan Markley points out, this claim and the full statement by Gowdy should be easy to verify.

As the NRO points out, CNN claims it did contact Gowdy to have him on but he declined:

“We categorically deny Benghazi Committee Chairman Trey Gowdy’s statement about CNN,” a network spokesperson said. “We reached out to the committee for a response prior to publishing or broadcasting, which the committee provided. That response was included in our reporting. In addition, Chairman Gowdy was invited to discuss this on CNN and declined. Chairman Gowdy is wrong.”

Perhaps I’m parsing, but it sounded like Gowdy was referring to be contacted before the interview, so that CNN could question the staffer about his ‘unsubstantiated claims’. But I could be reaching with that.