Congress: Islamist Terror Threat Matrix

Posted on September 5, 2015September 5, 2015 by Denise Simon

The full House of Representatives 8 page report is here.

KEY TAKEAWAYS

• The jihadist threat in the U.S. homeland is high and has escalated dramatically this year. There have been more U.S.-based jihadist terror cases in 2015 than in any full year since 9/11. The number of U.S. terrorist cases involving homegrown violent jihadists has gone from 38 in July 2010 to 124 today—more than a three-fold increase in just five years.

• ISIS is fueling the Islamist terror wildfire across the globe at unprecedented speed. As of the end of August, the group has inspired or directed 57 terror attack plots against Western targets, including 15 in the United States. A recent train attack in France would have been a mass-casualty attack had it not been for an alert group of Americans. There have now been nearly twice as many ISIS-linked attack plots against the West this year (37) as there were in all of 2014 (20).

• Islamist terrorists are intent on killing American law enforcement and military personnel, in addition to innocent civilians. Radicals are increasingly targeting men and women in uniform here in the United States. In August, ISIS supporters released another “hit list” of American government personnel, including service members. Since early 2014, the majority of Islamist terror plots on U.S. soil have featured plans to kill police or U.S. service members.

• ISIS has largely maintained its terror safe havens in Syria and Iraq while expanding globally more than a year after the U.S. and its allies launched operations against it. Al Qaeda affiliates from Syria to Yemen have also carved out sanctuary and seized additional terrain. ISIS retained control over its major strongholds in Syria and Iraq while undertaking disruption attacks and offensives in key territory; ISIS-affiliated militants have simultaneously consolidated control in Libya. Foreign fighters continue to swell the ranks of Islamist extremist groups looking to recruit foot soldiers and activate followers to launch attacks in their home countries.

HOMEGROWN ISLAMIST EXTREMISM

The jihadist threat in the U.S. homeland is high and has escalated dramatically this year.

By the numbers

• Since September 11, 2001, there have been 124 U.S. terrorist cases involving homegrown violent jihadists. Over 80 percent of these cases—which include plotted attacks and attempts to join foreign terrorist organizations—have occurred or been disrupted since 2009.1

• Authorities have arrested or charged at least 52 individuals in the United States this year – 67 since 2014 – in ISIS-related cases. The cases involve individuals: plotting attacks; attempting to travel to join ISIS overseas; sending money, equipment and weapons to terrorists; falsifying statements to federal authorities; and failing to report a felony.2

• FBI Director James Comey has said authorities have hundreds of open investigations of potential ISIS-inspired extremists that cover all 56 of the bureau’s field offices in all 50 states. He stated there may be hundreds or thousands of Americans who are taking in recruitment propaganda over social media applications: “It’s like the devil sitting on their shoulders, saying ‘kill, kill, kill.”

Recent Developments

• August 24: Ahmed Mohammed El Gammal, 42, was arrested in Avondale, Arizona, for helping a 24-year-old New York City resident travel to Syria to receive military training from ISIS. El Gammal was an avid ISIS supporter online and engaged the recruit through social media before in-person meetings. El Gammal and the recruit communicated with an unnamed co-conspirator based in Turkey.

TERROR PLOTS AGAINST THE WEST

ISIS is fueling the Islamist terror wildfire across the globe at unprecedented speed.

By the numbers

• Since early 2014, there have been 57 planned or executed ISIS-linked terror plots against Western targets, including 15 inside in the United States.3

• There have been nearly twice as many ISIS-linked plots against Western targets in the first seven months of this year (37) than in all of 2014 (20).4

Recent Developments

• August 21: A 25-year-old Moroccan national, Ayoub El Khazzani, attacked passengers on a train in Thalys, France, before a group led by three Americans, including two service members on vacation, subdued him. Khazzani was armed with an arsenal of weapons and 270 rounds of ammunition. He watched a jihadist propaganda video before attempting to launch his attack. He had lived in and attended a radical mosque in Spain before relocating to France. He had also lived in Belgium and traveled from Germany to Turkey in early May before returning to Europe in June. This trip was reportedly part of a plot to fight with ISIS in Syria.

• August 13: ISIS’s “hacking division” released information regarding 1,400 American government personnel, including service members, and encouraged supporters to track down and attack them. The list included names, e-mail addresses, and phone numbers. ISIS operative and hacker Junaid Hussain had been central to similar plots targeting servicemembers; Hussain was eliminated in an August 24th drone strike in Syria.

FOREIGN FIGHTERS

Undeterred by airstrikes, foreign fighters continue to pour into the conflict zone in Syria and Iraq, bolstering ISIS and representing a potential threat to their home countries—including America—upon return.

By the numbers

• More than 25,000 fighters from 100 countries have traveled to Syria and Iraq to join extremists—the largest convergence of Islamist terrorists in world history. U.S. estimates reportedly put its current manpower at 20,000-30,000 members. “We’ve seen no meaningful degradation in their numbers” since last August, according to a defense official.

• Approximately 4,500 Western fighters have traveled to Syria and Iraq.5 Europol recently assessed that the high-end estimate of EU citizens who left to fight in Syria may have been as high as 5,000 at the beginning of this year.

• An estimated 550 Western women have traveled to the conflict zone.

Read the whole report here.

The Truth Hidden by the Left of Affects of Immigration on Wages

Posted on September 5, 2015September 5, 2015 by Denise Simon

The Brookings Institution is a liberal think tank that covers all policy, foreign and domestic. The officially describe themselves and non-partisan but that is hardly the case. The institution was founded in 1916 and is the president is Strobe Talbott, where he and President Bill Clinton were roommates at the University of Oxford, both there as Rhodes Scholars. In later years, Talbott helped the Clintons in their political campaigns. Now that the table is set:

NYT, Brookings Unwittingly Show How Immigration Affects Wages

DailyCaller: Wages for many American workers continue to decline, hitting workers the most in industries where demand for work is increasing, a new study found. One explanation via the Brookings Institution is that immigrants fill a disproportionate share of those jobs.

The New York Times covered the National Employment Law Project study:

“Despite steady gains in hiring, a falling unemployment rate and other signs of an improving economy, take-home pay for many American workers has effectively fallen since the economic recovery began in 2009 …

“The declines were greatest for the lowest-paid workers in sectors where hiring has been strong — home health care, food preparation and retailing — even though wages were already below average to begin with in those service industries.”

The study raises the question: Why would wages be falling the most in industries with greater demand for workers?

The Times notes that “macroeconomic forces like automation, demographics and globalization” are contributing to falling wages, and refers to ongoing slack in the labor market —the labor supply is still outstripping the (increasing) demand for work.

One explanation the Times doesn’t mention directly is that immigrants share a disproportionately high share of these jobs, and are to some extent crowding American workers out of these low-skilled, high in demand industries.

A 2012 Brookings Institution report found that many of the jobs in the occupations deemed fastest and largest growing by the Bureau of Labor Statistics are going to immigrants — in many of the same occupations the Times reports have seen the greatest decline in wages in recent years.

The NELP report lists restaurant cooks, food preparation workers, home and personal care aides and cleaning service jobs as those that have taken the biggest hit in wages. Real wages for restaurant cooks have declined 8.9 percent since 2009.

The Brookings report found immigrants (legal and illegal) are clustered in those same sectors — health care, food prep and service and the accommodations industry. In private households, immigrants were 49 percent of all workers, in the accommodation sector they were 31 percent, and in home and personal care they were more than 20 percent of all workers.

Among the 15 occupations expected to see the largest numerical growth in coming years, eight had high shares of foreign-born workers, and among the 15 fastest growing occupations, seven had high shares of foreign-born workers.

“If current trends continue, we would expect to see these occupations filled disproportionately by immigrants,” the Brookings report stated in 2012.

Here is a New York Times chart based on the NELP report that shows where wages declined the most, followed by a chart from the Brookings report that shows how immigrants share in the largest growing jobs. You can compare the overlap.

Screen Shot 2015-09-04 at 8.25.20 AM

In 1970, immigrants made up approximately 5 percent of the population and 5 percent of the civilian labor force, the Brookings report notes. In 2010 that number grew to 23.1 million immigrants in the labor force, making up 16.4 percent of the total.

“As the economy sputters along with some signs of improvement, people often point to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics’s list of fastest-growing occupations as the bright spots in the labor market,” Bloomberg Business reported in a 2012 story about the Brookings report.

“These occupations—in nursing, home health care, and food service—are low-skilled, low-pay jobs, but at least they are market segments that present opportunity. Much of that opportunity, it turns out, is being seized by immigrants.”

Since 1970, the foreign-born population has increased by more than 325 percent, while wages and share of income fell.

The U.S. foreign-born population — legal and illegal immigrants — is at an all-time high of 42.1 million, recent Census Bureau data shows. And by 2023 the foreign-born population will exceed 51 million — the largest share of total population ever recorded in American history.

Nearly one in five U.S. residents will be an immigrant by 2060, largely because of legal immigration, not illegal immigration, a previous Center for Immigration Studies analysis of the Census data found. And immigrants will account for 82 percent of population growth in the U.S. from 2010 through 2060.

If federal law is not changed, the U.S. is on track to issue 10 million green cards over the next decade — a massive new permanent resident bloc larger than the combined populations of Iowa, New Hampshire and South Carolina.

(Photo: Screenshot/ Center for Immigration Studies)

Hillary’s Server-Gate: Email Hell

Posted on September 4, 2015September 4, 2015 by Denise Simon

How many servers? How many techs? How many vendors? An epic national security compromise that appears to have no end. But the Hillary hired techs appear to have attempted to use Dark Web tactics and features.

There is a good bet that the FBI by this time has already cracked the erased hard-drive and discovered the contents on the pesky Hillary server and the data, documents and users are being fully investigated. This is investigation is not merely performed by an FBI field office but more it has been assigned to the entire FBI bureau where results and truth are under demand of the intelligence community.

An obscure Bill Clinton domain is noted here.

In part from the Examiner:Hillary Clinton tapped into the vast network of donors cultivated by her family’s foundation to fund one of her first major initiatives as secretary of state: constructing the U.S. pavilion at the 2010 World’s Fair in Shanghai.
Emails included in the 7,000 pages of records published by the State Department Monday suggest Clinton’s close relationships with corporate executives helped bring in the $61 million needed to build the pavilion.

Kris Balderston, State’s special representative for global partnerships, led a frantic push to find the sponsors necessary for the expo before it opened in May 2010, relying on many of the same donors that support the Clinton Foundation to pay for the sprawling U.S. exhibit.

Thirty-nine of the 70 corporate donors to the pavilion were also donors to the Clinton Foundation — a significant portion given that some of the sponsors were Chinese companies.
Beyond Platte River, there were other vendors used by the Clinton Operation where an encryption company was hired and that platform was feeble at best. The server was done a minimum of 3 times.
EXCLUSIVE: Hillary Paid to Hide Identity of the People Running Her Email Server by Breitbart: Her attempt to hide details about her server has allowed another faceless company access to her classified email information, while doing little to nothing to secure that information from hackers.Clinton’s private email domain clintonemail.com was initially purchased by Clinton aide Eric Hoteham, who listed the Clintons’ Chappaqua, New York home as the contact address for his purchase. But the domain is actually registered to an Internet company designed to hide the true identity of the people running it.
Clintonemail.com is currently registered to a company called Perfect Privacy, LLC.

The company has a listed address of 12808 Gran Bay Parkway West in Jacksonville, Florida. But don’t try to get someone from “Perfect Privacy” on the phone. The company merely serves to mask its clients’ personal information by providing its own meaningless contact information on official databases.

“Did you know that every time you register a domain name, the law requires that your personal information is added to the public “WHOIS” database, where it becomes instantly available to anyone, anywhere, anytime?,” according to the Perfect Privacy website. “Perfect Privacy eliminates these risks by ensuring that your personal information stays private. By signing up for Perfect Privacy when you register your domain, our information is published in the WHOIS database, instead of yours.”

“We won’t reveal your identity unless required by law or if you breach our Perfect Privacy Service Agreement,” the company explains.

Perfect Privacy, LLC is owned by Network Solutions, which in turn is owned by Web.com. Network Solutions advertises Perfect Privacy as a way to “Keep Your Contact Information Hidden With Private Registration.”

The Jacksonville address listed for Perfect Privacy, LLC is actually just the headquarters for Web.com. It is an unassuming gray building just off Interstate 95.

Breitbart News called a number listed for Network Solutions and, after some on-hold elevator music, an operator confirmed that clintonemail.com is one of the domains that it manages. The company has access to information in the account. But the company does not provide any kind of security for the domain, and instead encourages its clients to buy a standard Norton AntiVirus package like the kind available at retail stores.

“No, we don’t do that,” a Network Solutions operator told Breitbart News when asked if it provides security for its clients. But, the operator, noted, “Our server automatically checks for known SPAM.”

Network Solutions, the operator explained, can identify major hacks and can access and change information related to the email account in the event of a hack. The company declined to provide more information without speaking to the domain’s administrator.

As Breitbart News revealed, Hillary’s email account clintonemail.com was operating with the same IP addresses as presidentclinton.com, an email account managed by the private Clinton Foundation and used by top Clinton Foundation staffers. The IP addresses were based in New York City, meaning that they were sharing the same email network at the same physical location, likely at one of the Clintons’ Midtown Manhtattan offices. Additionally, Chelsea Clinton’s work email account chelseaoffice.com was sharing the same email server.

wjcoffice.com, an email account used by Bill Clinton staffers, including his former communications director Jay Carson, also shared the same IP address as clintonemail.com.

Breitbart News has also discovered that clintonemail.com and presidentclinton.com were using the same IP port: port 443.

That Hillary Clinton shared a server with the Clinton Foundation and the offices of her husband and daughter raises further concerns about the illegality of her private email use, since other Clinton-World employees not affiliated with the State Department certainly had physical access to her server and the classified information on it.

Hillary’s private server also used the McAfee-owned MXLogic spam-filtering software, which is susceptible to a security breach and which made the information on her server accessible to McAfee employees during the numerous intervals in which her emails were passed through the MXLogic system.

The server was prone to crashes.

Hillary Clinton’s private email server went down in February 2010, and the State Department IT team didn’t even know that she was using a private email address, indicating that Clinton Foundation staff was working on her server as opposed to the agency’s IT professionals.

After the State Department Help Desk sent Clinton’s private email address a routine warning notifying her that her messages were being flagged with fatal errors, Hillary’s top aide Huma Abedin sent the Secretary an email explaining to her what was going on.

“Ur email must be back up!!,” Abedin wrote. “What happened is judith sent you an email. It bounced back. She called the email help desk at state (I guess assuming u had state email) and told them that. They had no idea it was YOU, just some random address so they emailed. Sorry about that. But regardless, means ur email must be back! R u getting other messages?”

Hillary’s server went down again during Superstorm Sandy in 2012.

The Shameful Truth at the Veterans Admin Continues

Posted on September 3, 2015September 3, 2015 by Denise Simon

The shame of the Veterans Administration continues. Maybe it is time to launch a criminal prosecutor or at least task the FBI to investigate the Veterans Administration. At least, falsifying government documents is a felony.

Watchdog: 900,000 vets may have pending health care requests

WASHINGTON (AP) — Nearly 900,000 military veterans have officially pending applications for health care from the Department of Veterans Affairs, the department’s inspector general said Wednesday, but “serious” problems with enrollment data make it impossible to determine how many veterans were actively seeking VA health care.

About one-third of the 867,000 veterans with pending applications are likely deceased, the report says, adding that “data limitations” prevent investigators from determining how many now-deceased veterans applied for health care benefits or when. The applications go back nearly two decades, and officials said some applicants may have died years ago.

More than half the applications listed as pending as of last year do not have application dates, and investigators “could not reliably determine how many records were associated with actual applications for enrollment” in VA health care, the report said.

The report also says VA workers incorrectly marked thousands of unprocessed health-care applications as completed and may have deleted 10,000 or more electronic “transactions” over the past five years.

Linda Halliday, the VA’s acting inspector general, said the agency’s Health Eligibility Center “has not effectively managed its business processes to ensure the consistent creation and maintenance of essential data” and recommended a multi-year plan to improve accuracy and usefulness of agency records.

Halliday’s report came in response to a whistleblower who said more than 200,000 veterans with pending applications for VA health care were likely deceased.

The inspector general’s report substantiated that claim and others, but said there was no way to tell for sure when or why the person died. Similarly, deficiencies in the VA’s information security — including a lack of audit trails and system backups — limited investigators’ ability to review some issues fully and rule out data manipulation, Halliday said.

The VA has said it has no way to purge the list of dead applicants, and said many of those listed in the report are likely to have used another type of insurance before they died.

VA spokeswoman Walinda West said Wednesday the agency has publicly acknowledged that its enrollment process is confusing and that the enrollment system, data integrity and quality “are in need of significant improvement.”

Sens. Johnny Isakson, R-Ga., and Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn., chairman and senior Democrat of the Senate Veterans Affairs Committee, said in a joint statement that the inspector general’s report pointed to “both a significant failure” by leaders at the Health Eligibility Center and “deficient oversight by the VA central office” in Washington.

The lawmakers urged VA to implement the report’s recommendations quickly to improve record keeping at the VA and “ensure that this level of blatant mismanagement does not happen again.”

As of June 30, VA has contacted 302,045 veterans by mail, asking them to submit required documents to establish eligibility, West said. To date, VA has received 36,749 responses and enrolled 34,517 veterans, she said.

“As we continue our work to contact veterans, our focus remains on improving the enrollment system to better serve veterans,” West said.

The Health Eligibility Center has removed a “purge-and-delete functionality” from a computer system used to track agency workloads, West said. VA will provide six months of data to demonstrate that any changed or deleted data on VA workloads has undergone appropriate management review, with approvals and audit trails visible, she said.

IG report: 300,000 vets died while waiting for health care at VA

WASHINGTON – More than 300,000 American military veterans likely died while waiting for health care — and nearly twice as many are still waiting — according to a new Department of Veterans Affairs inspector general report.

The IG report says “serious” problems with enrollment data are making it impossible to determine exactly how many veterans are actively seeking health care from the VA, and how many were. For example, “data limitations” prevent investigators from determining how many now-deceased veterans applied for health care benefits or when.

But the findings would appear to confirm reports that first surfaced last year that many veterans died while awaiting care, as their applications got stuck in a system that the VA has struggled to overhaul. Some applications, the IG report says, go back nearly two decades.

The report addresses serious issues with the record-keeping itself.

Halliday’s report came in response to a whistleblower who said more than 200,000 veterans with pending applications for VA health care were likely deceased.

The VA has said it has no way to purge the list of dead applicants, and said many of those listed in the report are likely to have used another type of insurance before they died.

The lawmakers urged VA to implement the report’s recommendations quickly to improve record keeping at the VA and “ensure that this level of blatant mismanagement does not happen again.”

“As we continue our work to contact veterans, our focus remains on improving the enrollment system to better serve veterans,” West said.

Democrats Met with Adversary Ambassadors, Yes Vote on Iran

Posted on September 3, 2015September 3, 2015 by Denise Simon

Lobby versus Lobby, Country vs. Country, Money and Influence are all the high standard in Washington DC. This is ‘ZACTLY‘ how it all works in and around the Hill.

Meanwhile, who influenced Barack Obama to rename a mountain or to demand the Washington Redskins NFL football team to seek a new name?

Democrats Admit to Being Lobbied by Russia, China and Europe Before Backing Iran Nuclear Deal

(CNSNews.com) – More than a dozen of the 34 Democratic senators who have declared their support for the Iran nuclear agreement cited arguments by America’s five negotiating partners that there would be no better deal forthcoming if the U.S. rejects this one.

On Wednesday, the number of senators to have publicly stated support for the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) climbed to 34 – all Democrats – thereby giving President Obama the backing he needs to sustain his veto of a Republican-led resolution disapproving it, which is expected to pass by mid-September.

As previously undecided senators one by one came out in support of the agreement over the past month, references in their statements to the views of the other P5+1 governments involved in the negotiations – Russia, China, Britain, France and Germany – were strikingly common.

Many of them attended a briefing by ambassadors from those countries in early August.

When she announced her support for the deal on August 6, Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-N.Y.) said, “In a meeting earlier this week, when I questioned the ambassadors of our P5+1 allies, it also became clear that if we reject this deal, going back to the negotiation table is not an option.”

Four days later Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.) said she had asked the ambassadors of the five other countries involved in the talks “detailed questions about what their countries and others would do if Congress does not approve the agreement.”

“[N]ot one of them believed that abandoning this deal would result in a better deal,” she said. Instead, “international consensus” would splinter, sanctions would unravel and Iran’s nuclear program would be left unconstrained.

On Aug. 13, Sen. Al Franken (D-Minn.) also referred to the ambassadors’ briefing.

“[S]ome say that, should the Senate reject this agreement, we would be in position to negotiate a ‘better’ one,” he wrote. “But I’ve spoken to representatives of the five nations that helped broker the deal, and they agree that this simply wouldn’t be the case.

Instead, these diplomats have told me that we would not be able to come back to the bargaining table at all, and that the sanctions regime would likely erode or even fall apart…”

“[A]t a recent meeting of leaders from our partner nations, I specifically asked the ambassadors to the U.S. from China, the United Kingdom, and Russia whether their countries would come back to negotiate again should the U.S. walk away from the deal,” Sen. Mazie Hirono (D-Hawaii) said on Aug. 17.

“They unanimously said, ‘No,’ that there was already a deal – the one before Congress.”

“I have no reason to disbelieve all five governments [Russia, China, Britain, France, Germany] speaking together,” said Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.) on Aug. 18. “I have heard their warnings that if we walk away from this agreement before even giving it a try, the prospect of further multilateral negotiations yielding any better result is ‘far-fetched.’”

“This agreement is not perfect, but I have personally spoken to leaders representing the P5+1 countries and the European Union who have said quite clearly that if the United States rejects this agreement, they will not join in new negotiations for a better deal,” Sen. Debbie Stabenow (D-Mich.) said on Aug 24.

“There are those who say that we should go back to the negotiating table and try to get a better deal,” Sen. Patty Murray (D-Wash.) said on Aug. 25. “I respect that view, but I have heard directly from top ambassadors representing our P5+1 partners as well as members of the administration that starting over is not an option.”

“Earlier this month, several of my colleagues and I met with representatives of our five negotiating partners,” Sen. Thomas Carper (D-Dela.) said on Aug. 28.

“They told us bluntly that if Congress kills this deal, the broad coalition of countries imposing sanctions on Iran would collapse,” he said. “If Congress rejects this deal now, a better one will not take its place, they declared.”

Menendez challenges ‘take it or leave it’ argument

Other JCPOA supporters who mentioned having taken into account the views of the other P5+1 ambassadors included Sens. Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio), Claire McCaskill (D-Mo.), Joe Donnelly (D-Ind.), Jeff Merkley (D-Ore.), Chris Coons (D-Dela.) and Robert Casey (D-Pa.).

One of just two Democratic senators to have come out in opposition to the JCPOA, Sen. Bob Menendez (D-N.J.), challenged the notion that the other P5+1 countries would simply walk away from sanctions if the U.S. rejected the JCPOA and pushed for a better deal.

In his speech announcing his intention to vote to disapprove the deal, Menendez said the attraction of doing business with the United States would far outweigh the lure of Iran’s much smaller economy.

“Despite what some of our P5+1 ambassadors have said in trying to rally support for the agreement, and echoing the administration’s admonition, that it is a take it or leave it proposition, our P5+1 partners will still be worried about Iran’s nuclear weapon desires and the capability to achieve it,” he said.

“They, and the businesses from their countries, and elsewhere, will truly care more about their ability to do business in a U.S. economy of $17 trillion than an Iranian economy of $415 billion,” Menendez said.

He was alluding to U.S. secondary sanctions, which would close the U.S. marketplace to companies and banks that do business with Iran.