TBR News April 3, 2016
The Voice of the White House
Washington, D.C., April 3, 2016: “Although most countries believe they have communication systems that are inviolate, there are no such systems that cannot, or have not, been broken into. Even the American President’s most sacred system can be read with ease by Israel, Russia, Germany and Japan. The so-called ‘deep Internet’ allows those conversant with it to communicate with each other and to read any and all of other internet traffic they choose. While the authorities in many countries spy on their subjects, many of their subjects spy on them. Elaborate American plans to establish military bases in northern Canada were read by the Russians and the plans were thwarted by the Canadian change of government. Sunni Turkish plans to force Russian military actions against them (and instigate Nato intervention) by the shooting-down of a Russian military plane were thwarted by timely intercepts of believed top-level CIA communications by the Russians. And so it goes. Point and counterpoint. It really does not matter who is right but who wins in the end.”
Conversations with the Crow
On October 8th, 2000, Robert Trumbull Crowley, once a leader of the CIA’s Clandestine Operations Division, died in a Washington hospital of heart failure and the end effects of Alzheimer’s Disease. Before the late Assistant Director Crowley was cold, Joseph Trento, a writer of light-weight books on the CIA, descended on Crowley’s widow at her town house on Cathedral Hill Drive in Washington and hauled away over fifty boxes of Crowley’s CIA files.
Once Trento had his new find secure in his house in Front Royal , Virginia, he called a well-known Washington fix lawyer with the news of his success in securing what the CIA had always considered to be a potential major embarrassment. Three months before, July 20th of that year, retired Marine Corps colonel William R. Corson, and an associate of Crowley, died of emphysema and lung cancer at a hospital in Bethesda, Md. After Corson’s death, Trento and his Washington lawyer went to Corson’s bank, got into his safe deposit box and removed a manuscript entitled ‘Zipper.’ This manuscript, which dealt with Crowley’s involvement in the assassination of President John F. Kennedy, vanished into a CIA burn-bag and the matter was considered to be closed forever
After Crowley’s death and Trento’s raid on the Crowley files, huge gaps were subsequently discovered by horrified CIA officials and when Crowley’s friends mentioned Gregory Douglas, it was discovered that Crowley’s son had shipped two large boxes to Douglas. No one knew their contents but because Douglas was viewed as an uncontrollable loose cannon who had done considerable damage to the CIA’s reputation by his on-going publication of the history of Gestapo-Mueller, they bent every effort both to identify the missing files and make some effort to retrieve them before Douglas made any use of them.
Douglas had been in close contact with Crowley and had long phone conversations with him. He found this so interesting and informative that he taped and later transcribed them.
These conversations have been published in a book: ‘Conversations with the Crow” and this is an excerpt.
Conversation No. 25
Date: Monday, July 22, 1996
Commenced: 9:40 AM CST
Concluded: 10:10 AM CST
GD: Good morning, Robert. Been out and about today?
RTC: Gregory, I rarely get out and about these days. My hip problems you know. And there is nothing on television but trash and the continuing entertainment of the ignorant masses.
GD: Oh God, tell me about it. And the news is so controlled that the only way you can figure out what is happening is to read the foreign press. Not ours.
RTC: Well, if it doesn’t impact on Israel in a negative sense, we do get some news but God help the TV managers if anything negative in that area ever gets out. Israel and her boys inside the Beltway are sacred cows, believe me.
GD: I have no doubt of that, Robert. It’s interesting to consider than in the two thousand years since the mythic Jesus got nailed up, the poor Jews have been kicked out of every country they have colonized. No one wants them around after they get to know them. They were kicked out of England, France, Russia, Poland, Spain, and on and on. Why? Infectious bigotry? No, the locals get wind of what they are like and out they go. Get their hands on all the money and squeeze the public dry. None of them ever did manual labor in their lives but they live off the labor of everyone else. And then they get too greedy and too careless and out they go or, in some countries, into the bonfires.
RTC: The Germans?
GD: No, I had the Spanish in mind. Now I ask you, Robert, why would there be such universal hatred against Jews? There must be a reason. Jews have told me that it’s because they are so smart that people are jealous of them and perhaps this might have some validity but I personally think that it’s their utterly predatory nature. Jews are taught in their religion that non-Jews, and especially the hated Christians, are legitimate targets to attack. I mean, this sounds like some kind of redneck propaganda but an objective reading of history will more than bear me out. Besides, most of the really evil Jews are not Semitic Jews at all but actually Mongolian Turks. The Khazars. Before they were converted to Judaism by their Khan in 900 AD, they were a particularly vicious and depraved Caspian Sea army of marauding, raping and killing Turks, intermixed with Mongolian blood. The other Jews, the real ones, hate them with a passion.
RTC: And why so?
GD: Because they make them look bad. My God, they hate them. But these internecine fights are of no lasting consequence.
RTC: Jim loved the Jews and I warned him many times to be careful. But he never listened and got that Mossad right into our organization. What I’m truly afraid of is that these shits suck up all kinds of secret information and off it goes to Israel, mostly through their Embassy here. A real spy center.
GD: Well, under Roosevelt, who opened the gates for them, they stole everything and sent it to Stalin under the mistaken apprehension that he loved Jews. He did not, of course, but that’s another story. So, now they steal everything, like Pollard, and ship it off to Tel Aviv instead of Moscow.
RTC: Sometimes, I can sympathize with Hitler.
GD: Well, when it happens here, and it will soon enough, Hitler will be seen in a different light. But I must comment on something else. Johnson passed the Civil Rights laws and gave the blacks a good crack at a decent middle-class life. Of course he did it to get votes and not out of any decency, but they do have entrée now and many of them are coming up. Which, considering that we brought them all here as slaves, is not a bad nor improper concept. However, there are many people here who despise blacks and, in fact, hate them. We don’t hear from them because of the political correctness crap being shoved on kids in the schools but they are still there. I say this because I know some of them. Anyway, they are quiet now but if the time ever comes when the lower middle class loses its position, look for the racial issue to erupt here. Oh yes, civilization is only a very thin veneer on very cheap plywood, Robert. And the clever Jews have managed to promote the blacks not to help them but to use them as potential victims. If they get too gross, the Jews that is, and the economy takes a dump, then the public will want scapegoats and guess what? The Jews will point to the blacks and we can count on their papers, writers, think tanks and so on to play the race card in the domestic economic poker game. A nasty business but totally predictable.
RTC: Yes, I’ve seen this coming and so have some of my friends. But there is nothing to do with it. I suppose it’s better to see the black district of New Orleans going up in flames rather than synagogues in Skokie.
GD: But the economy is pretty sound now, Robert, so that hypothesis is not valid. I am speaking theoretically here.
RTC: My God, Gregory, I do hope the FBI isn’t tapping your phone.
GD: Or yours, Robert. Don’t forget, they hate you.
RTC: Well, there is freedom of speech.
GD: Yes, there is, but don’t scream fire in a crowded theater, Robert.
RTC: (Laughter) No correct on that one.
GD: My late grandfather once told me that. Do you know what else he said? I think I might have told you this before because it’s so funny but he said that you should not tell bald-headed jokes to Custer’s widow.
RTC: You may have said that but these days, I wouldn’t bother to tell anyone that.
GD: Bad taste?
RTC: No, no one remembers Custer anymore.
GD: How soon they forget. They’ve forgotten Pollard but I will bet you that he will never get out of prison alive.
RTC: I wouldn’t take that bet. They are supposed to be our wonderful allies yet they encourage one of theirs to steal our most valuable secrets, all of which ended up in Russia, and then, after he got caught, toss him out of the safety of the Israeli Embassy here right into the waiting arms of the FBI and life in prison. On the other hand, they set up a trust fund for him and made him a honorary member of their Knesset. That sends someone a message, doesn’t it?
GD: Yes, it does. I’m not quite sure what message, but it does send a message.
RTC: Can you imagine the New York Times or the Post running one of your comments?
GD: That would be like someone in Dublin endorsing an Orange candidate for the Dial.
RTC: (Laughter)
(Concluded at 10:10 AM CST)
Trump predicts ‘very massive recession’ in U.S.
April 3, 1016
by Steve Holland
Reuters
Milwaukee-Republican presidential front-runner Donald Trump predicted that the United States is on course for a “very massive recession,” warning that a combination of high unemployment and an overvalued stock market had set the stage for another economic slump.
“I think we’re sitting on an economic bubble. A financial bubble,” the billionaire businessman said in an interview with The Washington Post published on Saturday.
Coming off a tough week on the campaign trail in which he made a series of missteps, Trump’s latest comments bring him back into the limelight ahead of Tuesday’s important primary in Wisconsin where he trails in the polls.
The former reality TV star said that the real U.S. jobless figure is much higher than five percent number released by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.
“We’re not at 5 percent unemployment,” Trump said.
“We’re at a number that’s probably into the twenties if you look at the real number,” he said, adding that the official jobless figure is “statistically devised to make politicians — and in particular presidents — look good.”
Trump said “it’s a terrible time right now” to invest in the stock market, offering a more bleak view of the U.S. economy than that held by many mainstream economists.
The interview was bylined by the Post’s Robert Costa and famed Watergate reporter Bob Woodward.
A real estate magnate, Trump has made appealing to blue-collar workers a hallmark of his bid for the Republican nomination for the Nov. 8 presidential election, often blaming unemployment on the outsourcing of U.S. jobs and facilities to countries such as China and Mexico.
Trump vowed in the interview to wipe out the more than $19 trillion national debt “over a period of eight years,” helped by a renegotiation of trade deals.
“I’m renegotiating all of our deals, the big trade deals that we’re doing so badly on,” he said.
NATO AGAIN
After making controversial statements about abortion last week, Trump has shown little sign of heeding calls from fellow Republicans to adopt a more presidential tone so as to avoid alienating voters in the November general election if he wins the nomination.
On Saturday, he questioned close U. S. ties to Saudi Arabia and again accused U.S. allies of not pulling their weight in the NATO military alliance.
Trump told a campaign rally in Racine, Wisconsin that partners in the North Atlantic Treaty Organization “are not paying their fair share” and called the 28-nation alliance “obsolete.”
“Either they pay up, including for past deficiencies, or they have to get out. And if it breaks up NATO, it breaks up NATO,” Trump said.
Tuesday’s Wisconsin nominating contest could be a turning point in the Republican race. Trump, 69, trails his leading rival, U.S. Senator Ted Cruz, 45, of Texas in the state.
A Cruz win would make it harder for Trump to reach the number of 1,237 delegates needed to secure the nomination before the Republican national convention in July. The winner will get to claim all of Wisconsin’s 42 delegates.
(Writing by Alana Wise; Editing by James Dalgleish; and Alistair Bell)
Donald Trump Threatens Neocon War Lobby: Five Principles To Develop A Foreign Policy For America
March 24, 2016
by Doug Bandow
Forbes
Donald Trump has become this season’s campaign phenomenon. He’s broken all the rules. Yet he has a good chance to become the Republican presidential nominee and maybe even president.
GOP elites are in a frenzy. The Neoconservatives and ultra-hawks who have dominated Republican foreign policy for more than a decade are considering political treason. For instance, dedicated interventionists Max Boot and William Kristol have proposed voting for Hillary Clinton or starting a third party if Trump wins the GOP nomination.Exactly what Trump as president would do is hard to predict. He can seamlessly contradict himself, denouncing the nuclear agreement with Iran while promising to implement it. He can make no sense, criticizing the disastrous interventions in Iraq and Libya while proposing to put up to 30,000 American troops into Iraq and Syria.
He can promise to make America great again while rejecting the principle forms of peaceful engagement, trade and immigration, which helped turn the U.S. into a global colossus. He can sacrifice his boldest stands for the worst kowtowing, promising neutrality between Israelis and Palestinians before groveling at the AIPAC conference, telling attendees that he, like every other presidential candidate, wholeheartedly embraces Israel’s extremist Likud-dominated government.
Still, Trump, to a degree previously matched only by such outlier presidential candidates as Ron Paul and Dennis Kucinich, is challenging Washington’s conventional wisdom that America must dominate the globe. The “usual suspects” who manage foreign policy in every administration, Republican and Democrat, believe that the U.S. must cow every adversary, fight every war, defend every ally, enforce every peace, settle every conflict, pay every bill, and otherwise ensure that the lion lies down with the lamb at the end of time, if not before.
Not Donald Trump. He recently shocked polite war-making society in the nation’s capital when he criticized NATO, essentially a welfare agency for Europeans determined to safeguard their generous social benefits. Before the Washington Post editorial board he made the obvious point that “NATO was set up at a different time.” Moreover, Ukraine “affects us far less than it affects other countries in NATO, and yet we’re doing all of the lifting.” Why, he wondered? It’s a good question.
His view that foreign policy should change along with the world scandalized Washington policymakers, who embody Public Choice economics, which teaches that government officials and agencies are self-interested and dedicated to self-preservation. In foreign policy that means what has ever been must ever be and everything is more important today than in the past, no matter how much circumstances have changed.
Trump expressed skepticism about American defense subsidies for other wealthy allies, such as South Korea and Saudi Arabia as well as military deployments in Asia. “We spent billions of dollars on Saudi Arabia and they have nothing but money,” he observed. Similarly, he contended, “South Korea is very rich, great industrial country, and yet we’re not reimbursed fairly for what we do.” He also criticized nation-building. “We have a country that’s in bad shape,” he reasonably allowed: “I just think we have to rebuild our country.”
Unlike presidents dating back at least to George H.W. Bush, Trump appears reluctant to go to war. He opposed sending tens of thousands of troops to fight the Islamic State: “I would put tremendous pressure on other countries that are over there to use their troops.” Equally sensibly, he warned against starting World War III over Crimea or useless rocks in East Asian seas. He made a point that should be obvious at a time of budget crisis: “We certainly can’t afford to do this anymore.”
That these views have been condemned as ignorant, outrageous, and beyond the pale demonstrates just how deranged and isolated Washington’s foreign policy establishment has become. Ideological self-fulfillment has replaced protection of the American people as the chief objective of U.S. foreign policy. Constant war over the last 15 years has resulted only in more death, conflict, instability, terrorism, and war. Every new intervention has created more problems than solutions. But the leaders of the Republican Party continue to demand more, more!
Trump’s foreign policy views are inconsistent and ill-formed, but they offer the basis for a more coherent strategic approach which emphasizes American security and allied self-sufficiency. Consider a few principles for a new foreign policy of strategic independence and military nonintervention.
First, Washington’s principal responsibility is to protect the U.S.—its citizens, territory, constitutional system, and prosperity. The federal government is to promote the common defense of America, not the world. There is no warrant for international crusades organized by ivory tower warriors who would treat U.S. military personnel as gambit pawns in a grand global chess game. The fortunes, futures, and lives of Americans should be risked only when their own political community has something substantial at stake.
Second, war is a last resort, not just another policy tool. The consequences often are deadly, grievous, and unpredictable. Blowback is real and threatens the innocent and the homeland. Washington also is responsible for harm caused others, such as the 200,000 or so Iraqi civilians who died in the sectarian war unleashed by the U.S. invasion.
Third, allies are a means, not an end. That is, Washington should not collect defense clients like Facebook friends, but form military relationships which augment American security. Yet such NATO candidates as Georgia and Ukraine are security black holes, threatening to trigger conflict with nuclear-armed Russia. However sympathetic Americans may be to Kiev’s claim to, say, Crimea, the Europeans have much more at stake in the controversy—and enjoy a GDP and population larger than the U.S. and far bigger than Russia.
Fourth, nation-building is a fool’s errand. Social engineering is hard enough in America. Attempting to transform other societies while transcending often massive gulfs in culture, history, tradition, religion, geography, ethnicity, and more is hubris defined. Sending American personnel to die planting faux democracy in, say, Central Asia is bloody elitism.
Fifth, foreign policy is ultimately about domestic policy. “War is the health of the state,” Randolph Bourne presciently declared a century ago. There is no bigger big government program war, no graver threat to civil liberties than perpetual conflict with the homeland the battlefield, no greater danger to daily life than blowback from military overreach.
War is sometimes, but rarely, an ugly necessity. What justifies war is protecting domestic life in all its often mundane and boring aspects—raising families, enjoying friends, going to parks, attending theaters, visiting museums, attending school, following hobbies, eating out, helping neighbors, attending church, and doing everything else that human beings naturally do. Living, working, and playing together. Cooperating to create a better society. These are the substance of life, how we gain meaning for our lives. Foreign policy should be used to protect rather than disrupt this process.
There is much about Donald Trump which deserves to be criticized. On foreign policy, however, his at times unsophisticated formulations reflect far greater common sense than possessed by his political opponents and establishment critics. He alone among the remaining contenders appears ready to put U.S. interests at the forefront. And that’s the only way to develop a foreign policy which serves the American people rather than Washington’s warrior wannabes.
FBI trick for breaking into iPhone likely to leak, limiting its use
April 2, 2016
by Joseph Menn
Rreuters
SAN FRANCISCO-The FBI’s method for breaking into a locked iPhone 5c is unlikely to stay secret for long, according to senior Apple Inc engineers and outside experts.
Once it is exposed, Apple should be able to plug the encryption hole, comforting iPhone users worried that losing physical possession of their devices will leave them vulnerable to hackers.
When Apple does fix the flaw, it is expected to announce it to customers and thereby extend the rare public battle over security holes, a debate that typically rages out of public view.
The Federal Bureau of Investigation last week dropped its courtroom quest to force Apple to hack into the iPhone of one of the San Bernardino shooters, saying an unidentified party provided a method for getting around the deceased killer’s unknown passcode.
If the government pursues a similar case seeking Apple’s help in New York, the court could make the FBI disclose its new trick.
But even if the government walks away from that battle, the growing number of state and local authorities seeking the FBI’s help with locked phones in criminal probes increases the likelihood that the FBI will have to provide it. When that happens, defense attorneys will cross-examine the experts involved.
Although each lawyer would mainly be interested in whether evidence-tampering may have occurred, the process would likely reveal enough about the method for Apple to block it in future versions of its phones, an Apple employee said.
“The FBI would need to resign itself to the fact that such an exploit would only be viable for a few months, if released to other departments,” said Jonathan Zdziarski, an independent forensics expert who has helped police get into many devices. “It would be a temporary Vegas jackpot that would quickly get squandered on the case backlog.”
In a memo to police obtained by Reuters on Friday, the FBI said it would share the tool “consistent with our legal and policy constraints.”
Even if the FBI hoards the information – despite a White House policy that tilts toward disclosure to manufacturers – if it is not revealed to Apple, there are other ways the method could come to light or be rendered ineffective over time, according to Zdziarski and senior Apple engineers who spoke on condition of anonymity.
The FBI may use the same method on phones in cases in which the suspects are still alive, presenting the same opportunity for defense lawyers to pry.
In addition, the contractor who sold the FBI the technique might sell it to another agency or country. The more widely it circulates, the more likely it will be leaked.
“Flaws of this nature have a pretty short life cycle,” one senior Apple engineer said. “Most of these things do come to light.”
The temporary nature of flaws is borne out in the pricing of tools for exploiting security holes in the government-dominated market for “zero-days,” called that because the companies whose products are targets have had zero days’ warning of the flaw.
Many of the attack programs that are sold to defense and intelligence contractors and then to government buyers are purchased over six months, with payments spaced apart in case the flaw is discovered or the hole is patched incidentally with an update from the manufacturer, market participants told Reuters.
Although Apple is concerned about consumer perception, employees said the company had made no major recent changes in policy. Instead, its engineers take pride in the fact that a program for breaking into an iPhone via the web was recently purchased by a defense contractor for $1 million, and that even that program is likely to be short-lived.
They said most iPhone users have more to fear from criminals than from countries, and few crooks can afford anything like what it costs to break into a fully up-to-date iPhone.
(Reporting by Joseph Menn; Editing by Dan Grebler)
U.S. ‘concerned’ about Israel destroying Palestinian homes: spokeswoman
April 1, 2016
by David Alexander
Reuters
The United States is “concerned” about Israel’s demolition of Arab buildings in East Jerusalem and the West Bank, a State Department spokeswoman said on Friday, adding that it raised questions about Israel’s commitment to a two-state political solution to the Palestinian conflict.
Israeli forces bulldozed a school in the Bedouin village of Khirbet Tana in the West Bank early in March, leaving 23 children with nowhere to study in the community overlooking the Jordan valley. The school had been built by the European Union in an effort to help the community of about 40 families.
After destroying the school, the Israeli forces returned two weeks later and demolished 17 homes, 21 pens for sheep, goats and chickens, and five outhouses, according to B’tselem, an Israeli nongovernmental organization.
“These actions are indicative of a damaging trend of demolitions, displacement and land confiscation,” spokeswoman Elizabeth Trudeau told a State Department briefing.
She said Washington was “concerned” and the demolitions, coupled with continuing Israeli construction and settlement activity “undermine the possibility of a two-state solution.””They also call into question the Israeli government’s commitment to that two-state solution,” Trudeau said.
The State Department previously made similar comments.
So far this year, Israeli forces have destroyed or dismantled around 400 homes and other structures across the West Bank, more than in the whole of 2015.
Israeli forces also confiscated 579 acres (234 hectares) of Palestinian land near the city of Jericho in the West Bank, a step the State Department also criticized.
(Reporting by David Alexander; editing by Grant McCool)
Russia claims Turkish NGOs are ‘main supplier’ of extremists in Syria
Russia has accused Turkey of using three humanitarian organizations to funnel weapons and supplies to IS and other jihadist groups in Syria. Moscow also called for Turkey to close the porous border to extremists.
April 1, 2016
DW
Russia’s UN Ambassador Vitaly Churkin on Friday sent a letter to the UN Security Council saying three Turkish humanitarian organizations were fronts for the country’s intelligence service to send weapons and supplies to extremists in Syria.
“The main supplier of weapons and military equipment to ISIL fighters is Turkey, which is doing so through non-governmental organizations,” Churkin said in a letter dated March 18, referring to the self-declared “Islamic State” (IS) group by another acronym, ISIL.
Churkin accused the Besar Foundation, the Iyilikder Foundation and the Foundation for Human Rights and Freedoms (IHH) of shipping “various supplies” on behalf of Turkey’s MIT intelligence agency.
Turkey accused of supporting extremists
It is not the first time Russia has accused Turkey of backing extremist groups in Syria, where Moscow is backing the regime against rebels and the IS group. Russia and the Syrian government consider all rebels fighting against the regime to be terrorists.
Turkey, Qatar and Saudi Arabia have been the main backers of rebels, several of them hard-line Islamist groups, seeking to overthrow Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.
Turkey denies supplying extremist groups, but has often been accused of having turned a blind eye, if not actively supporting fighters crossing the border, as well as providing supplies and weapons to various groups.
Some Turkish-backed groups such as the jihadist Ahrar al-Sham have ties to al-Qaeda’s Syrian affiliate, the al-Nusra Front.
As the conflict in Syria has progressed, fighters from some rebels groups have broken off to join with more radical jihadists, including al-Nusra and IS. Adding to the complexity, the Syrian Kurds have accused Turkey of backing extremist groups to thwart their efforts in self-governance and military advances.
Lavrov and Kerry talk
Separately on Friday, US Secretary of State John Kerry and Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov spoke on the phone about strengthening a ceasefire in Syria and expanding humanitarian operations.
The ceasefire, which does not include al-Nusra and IS, has largely held for several weeks as UN-backed peace negotiations between regime representatives and the opposition continue in Geneva. But the UN said this week that humanitarian supplies were only able to reach 30 percent of those in desperate need.
In the talks, Lavrov called on Turkey to seal the Turkish-Syrian border which he said was “actively used” to send Islamist fighters to Syria via Turkey.
Russia and Syria have voiced concerns that the lull in fighting could be used by rebel backers to bolster various rebel factions with weapons, supplies and fighters.
Russia’s renewed accusations come as two prominent Turkish journalists are on trial for treason over a 2015 story they published with pictures of trucks alleged to have belonged to Turkey’s MIT intelligence agency carrying weapons to Syria.
At the time, in January 2014, the trucks were stopped by gendarmerie. The government first said the shipments were a national secret, then said they were carrying food and medicine.
Obama ‘troubled’ by Turkish leader’s crackdowns
April 1, 2016
by Nahal Toosi
Politico
President Barack Obama says he’s troubled by the direction Turkey’s leader is taking his country, especially when it comes to freedom of the press. He also is warning Iran to avoid “provocative” actions such as ballistic missile tests if it wants to benefit from sanctions relief offered under the nuclear deal it reached with world powers last year.
In a news conference at the end of the Nuclear Security Summit on Friday, Obama was asked whether he thought Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan was an authoritarian. The question came after Erdogan’s bodyguards scuffled with reporters and protesters outside a D.C. think tank Thursday and amid a crackdown on journalists in Turkey.
Obama didn’t answer the question directly, and he stressed how critical Turkey, a NATO member that borders Syria, is as an ally. But he also said he’d told Erdogan that “there are some trends within Turkey that I’ve been troubled with.”
“I’ve said to President Erdogan to remind him that he came into office with a promise of democracy, and Turkey has historically been a country in which deep Islamic faith has lived side by side with modernity and an increasing openness,” Obama said. “And that’s the legacy that he should pursue rather than a strategy that involves repression of information and shutting down democratic debate.”
The comments, however cautious, were nonetheless striking because U.S. officials generally try to avoid offending Turkey, whose help is considered crucial in battling the Islamic State, the terrorist network that has grabbed parts of Syria and Iraq. That Obama went as far as he did indicates the serious concern within his administration about Erdogan’s autocratic tendencies.
Numerous journalists have been arrested in Turkey in recent months, while the government also took over the popular daily Zaman. Erdogan insists the arrested journalists are linked to Kurdish and other terrorist groups, and that that is why they are being prosecuted. Some of the reporters are accused of supporting the Gulen movement, which Erdogan casts as an opposition effort that has infiltrated the government.
“I think that the approach they’ve been taking toward the press is one that could lead Turkey down a path that would be very troubling,” Obama said, while also noting his concerns about freedom of speech and religion in the Muslim country, where hundreds of people have been charged with the crime of “insulting” the president.
Obama also urged Iran not to violate the spirit of the nuclear deal, even if it is technically abiding by it. The comments were aimed at Iran’s testing of ballistic missiles. Obama’s aides say such tests don’t officially violate the nuclear deal struck last July, but that they may run afoul of U.N. resolutions.
Opponents of the nuclear deal, which gave Iran sanctions relief in exchange for curbs on its nuclear program, say that the ballistic missile tests prove that the Islamic Republic cannot be trusted. Concern also is rising in recent days within Iran that it is not getting sanctions relief fast enough, as foreign businesses hesitate to do business there. Many of those businesses, especially those based in Europe, fear that investing in Iran is too risky because the U.S. still has numerous sanctions on the country. Obama on Friday tried to tie the sanctions relief issue with the ballistic missile dispute in chiding Iran.
“Iran so far has followed the letter of the [nuclear] agreement. But the spirit of the agreement involves Iran also sending signals to the world community and business that it is not going to be engaging in a range of provocative actions that may scare business off,” Obama said. “When they launch ballistic missiles, with slogans calling for the destruction of Israel, that makes businesses nervous.”
Survey: Support for Chancellor Merkel and CDU drops
Only about 33 percent of respondents in recent opinion polls would choose Germany’s ruling CDU and CSU, its Bavarian sibling faction. The surveys also found increased support for the anti-immigrant AfD party.
April 3, 2016
DW
An opinion poll by Insa that attempted to predict the percentage of votes a party would receive “if elections were to happen next Sunday,” showed Chancellor Angela Merkel’s Christian Democratic Union (CDU) and its Bavarian partner, the Christian Social Union (CSU), with only 33 percent support, down one percentage point from the previous survey.
Two other opinion polls, by Emnid and electoral research group Forschungsgruppe Wahlen, showed the CDU-CSU alliance with 35 percent support, also down by one point from polls earlier in March.
Despite the small dip in support for the chancellor, the poll by Forschungsgruppe Wahlen found that 53 percent of respondents support Merkel’s refugee policy. Forty-two percent expressed dissatisfaction with the refugee situation in Germany, down from 50 percent in a similar poll conducted in February this year.
The Forschungsgruppe poll found that 55 percent of respondents believed that the country could manage the challenges posed by the arrival of large numbers of people – the first time a majority had expressed such optimism since December, when 51 percent said Germany was up for the task. In January, 57 percent of respondents said the country could not handle it However, 42 percent of Germans remain skeptical of the idea that Germany is up for such a challenge.
Support for AfD
All three opinion polls found a rise in support for the anti-immigrant Alternative for Germany (AfD). An average of 13 percent of respondents said they supported the party. However, 72 percent of the participants said they felt that AfD was shifting further to the right.
Interestingly, only 55 percent of AfD supporters consider themselves right-wing, according to the surveys. Forty-four percent call themselves centrist, and 2 percent say they are left-wing, according to Forschungsgruppe’s survey results.
Support for other parties in Germany remains unchanged, according to the polls. Merkel’s coalition partners, the Social Democrats , had 22 percent support. The opposition Greens had support from 13 percent of respondents. The liberal Free Democrats were at 6 percent. And the Left party polled an average of 8 percent in all three surveys.
E.U. Suspects Russian Agenda in Migrants’ Shifting Arctic Route
April 2, 2016
by Andrew Higgins
New York Times
KANDALAKSHA, Russia — So many decrepit Soviet-era cars carried migrants into Europe from this frozen Russian town in recent months that border officials in Finland, who confiscate the rust-bucket vehicles as soon as they cross the frontier, watched in dismay as their parking lot turned into a scrapyard.
To clear up the mess and provide some space for freshly confiscated cars, the Finnish customs service set up a separate dumping ground.
Then last month, as suddenly and as mysteriously as it had started, the parade of migrants in rusty old cars came to an abrupt halt, or at least a pause.
“We don’t know what is going on,” said Matti Daavittila, the head of the ice-entombed Finnish border post near Salla. “They suddenly stopped coming. That is all we know.”
Compared with the hundreds of thousands of people fleeing war or hardship who made the trek to Europe last year through Turkey to Greece, the flow of refugees and migrants on the Arctic route through Russia — first into Norway and later into Finland — is tiny.
But the stop-go traffic has added a hefty dose of geopolitical anxiety, not to mention intrigue, to a crisis that is tearing the European Union apart. It has sent alarm bells ringing in Helsinki, Finland’s capital far to the south, and in Brussels, where European Union leaders, at recent crisis meetings on migration, discussed the strange and ever-shifting Arctic route through Russia.
The intrigue flows from a growing suspicion in the West that Russia is stoking and exploiting Europe’s migrant crisis to extract concessions, or perhaps crack the European unity over economic sanctions imposed against Moscow for its actions in Ukraine. Only one of the European Union’s 28 member states needs to break ranks for a regime of credit and other restrictions to collapse.
“Unfortunately, this looks like a political demonstration by Russia,” said Ilkka Kanerva, Finland’s former foreign minister and now the chairman of its parliamentary Defense Committee. “They are very skillful at sending signals. They want to show that Finland should be very careful when it makes its own decisions on things like military exercises, our partnership with NATO and European Union sanctions” against Russia.
Unlike the flow of refugees and migrants into Greece by boat, in which the tempo is largely set by the weather in the Aegean Sea, the flow through Russia is almost entirely dependent on whether Russia’s Federal Security Service, the successor agency to the K.G.B., opens or closes roads in a heavily militarized border region crammed with bases.
In the first two months of this year, nearly 800 asylum seekers crossed from Russia into Finland near Salla, a crossing point west of Kandalaksha in the Finnish region of Lapland, compared with none in same period last year.
Sayid Mussa Khan, a 31-year-old Afghan who had worked for an American security company in Kabul, made it to Finland on Feb. 28, just a day before the traffic suddenly halted after a statement by President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia to security service chiefs that Russia should “tighten monitoring of refugee flows.”
Along with his family and around a dozen other asylum seekers, Mr. Khan set out at dawn from Kandalaksha in a convoy of old cars and, accompanied by Russian guides, breezed through three checkpoints to reach the Finnish border.
Mr. Khan, who sat with his wife and baby son in the back seat of a wheezing Lada, said he had never even heard of Finland when he left Kabul in 2014 and, after two years in Russia and Belarus, still was not really sure where it was he was going.
But he knew he wanted to get his family to Europe, and had been assured that he would get there once he had paid $6,000 to a facilitator in Moscow, who immediately arranged for the family to be issued with a deportation order by the Russian authorities.
“He asked me where I wanted to go and said: ‘No problem. We will get you to Finland. Everybody is going there now,’ ” said Mr. Khan, who is now in Finland waiting for the authorities to review his asylum application.
Jorma Vuorio, the director general of Finland’s Migration Department, said he had been surprised by the “completely new phenomenon” of asylum seekers arriving from Russia. But he added that there “was no proof, just speculation,” of involvement by the Russian state.
The traffic into Europe through the Arctic, which has involved relatively few Syrians, began late last summer, with more than 5,000 migrants on bicycles suddenly pouring across Russia’s previously tightly controlled northern border into Norway. But that cycle-borne flow ended abruptly on Nov. 30, after the Russian authorities reintroduced tight controls just as Norwegian officials arrived in Moscow for talks on how to stem the flow.
The migrants’ route then shifted southward to Russia’s border with Finland, as Russian guards on roads to two Finnish border crossings stopped blocking travelers without visas.
Finland swiftly banned cycle traffic across its 830-mile border with Russia, allowing only people in cars to cross. This killed a booming market for old bicycles in Russia’s far north but created a new market for cheap and decrepit Russian cars with just enough life left in them to limp across the border to Finland.
Mr. Vuorio said his Russian counterpart had informed him that Russia had more than 11 million foreigners living in its territory, a vast pool of potential migrants to Europe, but added that he doubted Moscow would allow a chaotic flood through sensitive border regions. Criminal gangs, not officials, he added, seem to be largely responsible for managing the scale and direction of migration to Europe through Russia.
He said the last halt in the traffic was not the result of any deal struck by Finnish and Russian officials, who have been engaged in weeks of intensive, high-level discussions. “Our only deal is that we have good relations,” he said, bewildered by the stop-go flow.
But that, said the Defense Committee chairman, Mr. Kanerva, is precisely Russia’s aim — to keep Finland off balance and thus wary of making any move toward NATO or making other decisions that would anger Moscow. Noting that Russia had shown itself adept in Ukraine at so-called hybrid warfare, the use of nonmilitary tools to pursue its goals, he said migrants “are part of a broader strategy.”
“They want to make us nervous and pay attention to their interests,” he added.
Like the conflict in Syria, Europe’s migrant crisis has given Moscow an opportunity to assert itself as an indispensable power that Europe cannot afford to ignore, much less antagonize. When Finland’s president visited Moscow last month, Mr. Putin scolded him over the damage to both Russia and Finland caused by sanctions. The two leaders agreed to bar all but their own citizens and citizens of Belarus at two Arctic border crossings for six months.
While Russian officials have strenuously denied steering migrants toward Europe, the Kremlin has taken thinly disguised delight in Europe’s troubles, particularly those of Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany, who has dominated European policy toward Russia on sanctions and other matters. State-controlled Russian television has served up a daily diet of migrant-related horror stories, including a false report that migrants had raped a 13-year-old Russian-German girl in Berlin.
Mr. Putin, meanwhile, recently hosted visits to Moscow by two of Ms. Merkel’s most vocal critics, President Viktor Orban of Hungary and Premier Horst Seehofer of the German state of Bavaria.
Russia’s military actions in Syria, where the bombing of rebel targets often prompts the flight of civilians nearby, has further added to suspicions, especially in the United States, that Moscow wants to stoke Europe’s migration crisis for political ends.
Speaking to the Senate Armed Services Committee recently in Washington, NATO’s American commander, Gen. Philip M. Breedlove, accused Russia of “deliberately weaponizing migration in an attempt to overwhelm European structures and break European resolve.”
A spokesman for Russia’s Defense Ministry, Maj. Gen. Igor Konashenkov, dismissed General Breedlove’s allegations as absurd, noting that Europe’s refugee crisis began long before Moscow started its military action in Syria on Sept. 30.
The one group that needs no convincing about Russia’s manipulation of the migrant issue is the migrants themselves.
In interviews in Kandalaksha, stranded migrants from West and Central Africa said they had each paid thousands of dollars to “guides” who promised to get them to Finland and who worked closely with Russian officials. The system was highly organized, the migrants said, with no more than 30 people allowed to make the journey to Finland each day. Who went when, and in which vehicle, was established in advance, they said, with the guides and officials drawing up detailed lists with names, departure dates and cars.
“They are all in the same clique: the officials, the hotel people, the drivers. This is their business,” said Honoré Basubte, a young migrant from West Africa who had come to Russia as a student. Like many of the other migrants who traveled to Kandalaksha, he said he had been issued a Russian deportation order before setting out and been told to leave quickly for Europe.
“Now they say we can’t go because the border is closed,” he said. “This is all an ugly game.”
FBI Honeypot Ensnares Michigan Man
March 30,2016
by Trevor Aaronson
The Intercept
Khalil Abu Rayyan was a lonely young man in Detroit, eager to find a wife. Jannah Bride claimed she was a 19-year-old Sunni Muslim whose husband was killed in an airstrike in Syria. The two struck up a romantic connection through online communications.
Now, Rayyan, a 21-year-old Michigan man, is accused by federal prosecutors of supporting the Islamic State.
Documents released Tuesday show, however, that Rayyan was motivated not by religious radicalism but by the desire to impress Bride, who said she wanted to be a martyr.
Jannah Bride, not a real name, was in fact an FBI informant hired to communicate with Rayyan, who first came to the FBI’s attention when he retweeted a video from the Islamic State of people being thrown from buildings. He wrote later on Twitter: “Thanks, brother, that made my day.”
Rayyan, who had previously been arrested for having marijuana, is now charged with unlawful possession of a firearm and making a false statement to acquire a firearm.
Although Rayyan is not charged with terrorism, the FBI and federal prosecutors have treated his case as a national security concern, making numerous references in court filings and at a detention hearing to statements Rayyan made about the Islamic State and his supposed aspirations for violence.
Rayyan has pleaded not guilty to the federal gun charges, and his lawyers have asked the court to force the government to turn over all remaining communications between Rayyan and the FBI informant.
According to transcripts of conversations between Rayyan and the informant — which were made public for the first time this week — Rayyan had fallen in love with Bride and had even proposed marriage.
The transcripts show that the FBI informant initiated conversations about violence on several occasions, and when she did, Rayyan would tell her that he didn’t want to hurt anyone. In an online conversation on December 26, 2015, the informant asked Rayyan, using the Arabic word meaning this earthly life, “What do you want from this Dunya?”
“Honestly to get married,” he responded. “I think if I get married I will be happy. I’m just lonely sometimes. I want to start a family.”
In a conversation a month later, the informant told Rayyan that if the Islamic State “asks for my life I would give it up in a heartbeat.”
Rayyan replied, “Your [sic] young and confused,” adding, “I don’t think you know what you want.”
In another exchange, Rayyan told the informant, “I want us to be together.”
“I have other plans,” she replied.
He cautioned, “Don’t do anything that will hurt you, yourself or other people.”
Eventually, Rayyan found a way to capture the woman’s interest, describing his plans for an attack:
I tried to shoot up a church one day. I don’t know the name of it, but it’s close to my job. It’s one of the biggest ones in Detroit. Ya, I had it planned out. I bought a bunch of bullets. I practiced a lot with it. I practiced reloading and unloading. But my dad searched my car one day and he found everything. He found the gun and the bullets and a mask I was going to wear.
The story appears to be fantasy, however.
After his arrest, FBI agents searched his home and car and did not find an AK-47 or bullets. The only weapon he had was a six-shot .22 caliber handgun, which he had acquired for self-defense while delivering pizzas in Detroit, according to his lawyer. The only mask found was one Rayyan’s father kept at his pizza shop for years to entertain kids on Halloween.
“Maybe there was no AK-47, but there was an expression of an intent,” Assistant U.S. Attorney Ronald Waterstreet said in a February 16 detention hearing.
A psychologist hired by the defense, Lyle D. Danuloff, assessed Rayyan’s level of dangerousness as “very low,” according to a report filed Tuesday.
“Behavior with FBI undercover agent the result of deep longings for female attention in a very shy and awkward young man,” Danuloff wrote in a report for the court. “His verbalization was the result of an effort to keep the attention with hopes of a future. They were not the result of radicalization or representative of terrorist intentions.”
The FBI uses more than 15,000 informants widely in counterterrorism investigations. Recent FBI investigations have focused on alleged Islamic State sympathizers, many with highly questionable outcomes.
On December 31, 2015, with the help of an undercover informant, the FBI arrested a mentally ill homeless man and charged him with plotting to attack a New Year Eve’s celebration in upstate New York. His only weapons were knives and a machete, which he bought at Wal-Mart for $40 using money provided by the FBI through an informant.
Female informants in national security investigations are rare. But this isn’t the first time the FBI has been accused of creating a honeypot under the guise of national security.
In California, alleged eco-terrorist Eric McDavid was released last year after his lawyers discovered the government withheld documents, including love letters, which showed the FBI had manipulated him through an informant known as “Anna.”
German intelligence spied on Israel, US State Dept among other allies – report
April 3, 2016
RT
New snooping targets by the German Federal Intelligence Service (BND) have been revealed by Der Spiegel – this time it’s the US State Department and Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu’s office in the crosshairs.
The list of the German foreign intelligence agency’s targets published by the German magazine on Sunday also lists the UK’s Ministry of Defence, NASA and the US Air Force.
German espionage programs reportedly targeted some departments of Austria and Belgium’s interior ministries, as well as at least two subdivisions of the European Aeronautic Defense and Space Company (EADS) and Eurocopter.
OPEC, the International Monetary Fund and the UN International Drug Control Program were also among the BND’s targets.
However, the report provides no details on the nature of the surveillance, its aims and objectives or the exact times it took place, saying only that it occurred in “recent years.”
Der Spiegel first reported that BND “systematically spied” on many of its allies in October 2015. At that time, the target list of the German intelligence service included the Polish, Austrian, Danish and Croatian interior ministries. The US diplomatic missions at the EU and UN, the US Treasury Department and Department of the Interior in Washington and even the US State Department’s hotline for travel warnings were also targeted.
Earlier in 2015, Der Spiegel further revealed that BND spied on European politicians and companies for the NSA “against German and EU interests.” However, in October 2015, German intelligence was exposed for actively spying on its allies on its own initiative.
After former NSA employee Edward Snowden first disclosed mass surveillance by US intelligence to the global public in 2013, an investigation into spying activities was launched.
At that time, Germany expressed its outrage over the NSA activities after reports revealed the US targeted its allies, including Berlin. However, it was soon shown that the NSA provided German intelligence with spying software and target lists in exchange for data sharing and help in conducting global surveillance.
The head of the BND, Gerhard Schindler, ordered to stop spying on “friendly” EU and NATO partners after the 2013 surveillance scandal, but some controversial targets apparently continued to be snooped on, according to Der Spiegel.
Radical Islam and its friends
by Harry von Johnston, PhD
Jihad
The usual translation of jihad as ‘holy war’ is misleading; ‘exertion ‘or ‘struggle’ is more accurate: “A general injunction to strive in the way of God” (Albert Hourani: A History of the Arab Peoples, Faber and Faber, 1992)
As a movement for the establishment of Muslim governance, Islamic radicalism was born in the 1920s with the creation of an organization of Egyptian origin known as the Muslim Brotherhood. From the outset, Islamic radicalism opposed not only colonialism, but also Western modernism and non-Islamic Arab governments. The radicalization process intensified with the formation of the State of Israel and the movement itself gradually internationalized, facilitated by the emergence of the Islamic Republic of Iran, the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, and the Gulf War, to the point of reaching its current dynamism.
Individually considered, the aggregations of greater relevance today are Hizballah or Party of God, Shia, Egyptian, and pro-Iranian, operational since the 1980s; Hamas or Islamic Resistance Movement and Palestine Islamic Jihad, both Sunni, operating in Israel, Gaza, and the West Bank since the late 1980s the former and since the late 1970s the latter; the Armed Islamic Group (GIA), Sunni and Algerian, in existence since the early 1990s, and it spin-off, Salafi Group for Call and Combat; al-Jihad or Holy War and al-Gama’a al-Islamiyya or Islamic Group, both Sunni and Egyptian, formed in the late 1970s; the Abu Sayyaf Group, Sunni and southern Filipino, a spin-off of the Moro Islamic Liberation Front since 1991; Harakat ul-Mujahidin or Movement of Islamic Fighters, Jaish-e-Mohammed or Army of Mohamed, and Lashkar-e-Tayyba or Army of the Righteous, all three Sunni, Pakistani and active primarily in the Kashmir area claimed by both Pakistan and India; and the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan, a coalition of Islamic militants from Uzbekistan and other Central Asian states.
Besides aiming at the creation of an Islamic theocratic government in their own country or even in their geopolitical area, all of the above-listed aggregations share one or more of the following characteristics: a dual structure, overt, on the one hand, for political action, religious ministry, proselytizing, fundraising, and social assistance, and covert, on the other hand, for terrorist initiatives; hatred for Israel; the presence of representative organs abroad; terrorist action beyond their own national boundaries; and holy war without quarter against the infidel at the universal level. Some of these groups have enjoyed or still enjoy to this day forms of support from sponsor states governed by either theocratic or secular regimes. Iran has been supporting Hizballah, Hamas, and Palestine Islamic Jihad and is accused by Egypt of supporting also Holy War and the Islamic Group.
At one time, Libya has paid ransom to the Abu Sayyaf Group, thus encouraging it to commit further abductions of Western citizens. Sudan granted asylum to Holy War, the Islamic Group, Hamas, and Palestine Islamic Jihad, which exploited it as an operational base. Moreover, Algeria charged Sudan with supporting the GIA. Syria assistied, on its own territory, Hamas and Palestine Islamic Jihad and allowed them, as well as Hizballah, to use the Bekaa Valley in Lebanese territory.
The Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan availed itself of the Iranian radio system to broadcast propaganda.
India accuses Pakistan of assisting Islamic terrorist organizations that operate in Kashmir.
Other forms of assistance, primarily financial, issue from private benefactors aware or unaware of supporting domestic and international terrorism, given the dual structure utilized by several of these groups, which, thanks precisely to their dual structure, respond to a socio-economic void unfilled by government or society in many Third World countries. This aspect increases popular following and the relative danger posed by Islamic radicalism.
Saudi Arabia, a strong Sunni Muslim state, has been the main supporter of IS and this organization, focused on gaining Saudi control over the entire Muslim world, was trained by the US CIA and armed with US-made weapons.
The most radical Islamic activists, in order to wage holy war against the infidel, have given birth to an international network, not to be confused with the mild concept of ummah that unites the Muslim faithful in the conviction of belonging all to one nation, that is, the nation of Islam. The internationalization of Islamic radicalism drew its origins from the Afghani resistance, founded and supplied with weapons by the CIA and used against the Soviet Union, followed by a further resistance conceived as a struggle against the American and Western occupation of the holiest places of Islam and against ‘Western polluting of the Islamic world’, nefariously allowed by local regimes viewed as corrupt.
In this context, a series of well-known events has taken place: the constitution in the late 1980s of al-Qaida, or The Base, as an umbrella for coordinating, training and supporting various subordinate, semi-autonomous, and autonomous organizations dedicated to holy war at the global level; the training in Afghanistan of approximately 11,000 militants by courtesy of the CIA, who subsequently either fought in Bosnia, Kosovo, Chechnya, and Dagestan or returned to their respective countries to conduct an internal struggle or took up residence in the West to set up operational and logistical cells; the issuance of numerous anti-Western fatwas or religious decrees, among which stands out the one of February 1998 undersigned by representatives of al-Qaida, Holy War (Egypt), Islamic Group (Egypt), Jamat-ul-Ulema (Pakistan), and Jihad Movement (Bangladesh), in which all Muslims are called upon to kill Americans and their allies, civilians as well as military, wherever possible; the creation of the World Islamic Front for Jihad against Jews and Crusaders; the fine tuning, until the recent Western military intervention in Afghanistan, of a triad consisting of Osama bin Laden, al-Qaida, and the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan; and about twenty anti-Western terrorist attacks that included the Saudi-supplied fanatics who were recruited by American interests and were responsible for the destruction of the World Trade Center in New York and part of the Pentagon.
If it were not for Russian intervention in the US-instigated civil war in Syria, Saudi-controlled IS would have established physical and religious control over the Sunni Arab states.