Interview: Geert Wilders and the 'Islamicization' of Europe

breitbart

Transportation Secretary's Son Sentenced to 5 Years in Egypt

www.politico.com

Transportation Secretary Ray Lahood’s son, Sam Lahood, has been convicted and sent to prison in Egypt. The Muslim Brotherhood regime led by Mohammed Morsi has ruled that Lahood may spend up to five years in prison for receiving foreign funds, supposedly to foment unrest in Egypt. The non-profit group of which Lahood was a part was allegedly working on democracy training, a no-no in repressive Egypt.

Keep reading on breitbart >>

Report: Obama Admin's Loose Talk Exposed Dr. Afridi

breitbart

By Joel B. Pollak 

Loose talk by senior members of the Obama administration may have condemned Shakil Afridi, a Pakistani doctor who assisted America's hunt for Osama bin Laden, to 33-year term in prison on trumped-up charges.

tribune.com.pk

According to Fox News, an official 357-page report by the Pakistani government that examined the security failures that allowed the U.S. to evade that country's defenses in the raid on May 2, 2011 concluded that Dr. Afridi was implicated by a "statement by the U.S. Defense Secretary Leon Panetta, who was the CIA Director when May 2 happened, confirming the role of Dr. Afridi in making the U.S. assassination mission a success."

Panetta had been speaking to CBS News' 60 Minutes in January 2012. He said: "This was an individual who, in fact, helped provide intelligence that was very helpful with regards to this operation, and he was not in any way treasonous towards Pakistan." The Pakistani report has not yet been officially released to the public.

The Obama administration was criticized in 2011 after leaking key operational details of the bin Laden raid, particularly the identity of U.S. Navy SEAL Team 6, which carried out the operation. Several weeks later, several members of that team were targeted and killed by the Taliban. Family members have been harshly critical of the Obama administration, arguing that its "criminal" leaks put SEAL Team 6 at greater risk. 

In contrast to the Obama administration's pursuit of other national security leaks, and the media outlets to which the leaks were made, there has not been any apparent attempt to hold its own leakers accountable.

Meanwhil, Dr. Afridi remains in prison, awaiting the resumption of his appeals process in June, after an initial trial through a tribal court system put in place by the British colonial authorities a century ago, in which Dr. Afridi was denied access to a lawyer and could not see the evidence against him or testify in his own defense.

The Pakistani report recommends that Dr. Afridi be granted a retrial--something that his advocates in the U.S., notably Rep. Dana Rohrabacher (R-CA), have been urging with a view to winning his eventual release.

Feds Enlist National Council of La Raza for Executive Jobs Workshop

breitbart

By Warner Todd Huston 

The federal government's Office of Personnel Management (OPM) has partnered with the National Council of La Raza to encourage more Hispanics to apply for higher positions within the U.S. government. 

La Raza, whose name translates to "The Race," will sponsor a workshop to help members fill jobs in the Senior Executive Services (SES). These are special management positions with salaries often exceeding $200,000 in cash and benefits annually.

A public notice from OPM makes the partnership official:

The National Council of La Raza (NCLR) is hosting a series of leadership development workshops geared towards Federal employees on July 23, 2013, in New Orleans, LA. These workshops are a part of the 2013 NCLR Annual Conference from July 20-23, 2013. The workshop topics on July 23rd will include an overview of the Senior Executive Service (SES) and instruction on how to prepare and apply for a SES position.

OPM also notes that current federal employees can get paid to attend the workshop hosted by the Hispanic group.

The five (5) hours dedicated to the leadership development workshops on July 23rd qualify as training in compliance with 5 U.S.C. chapter 41 and are open to all Federal employees.

In 2012, President Obama appointed a former vice president of La Raza to head his domestic policy council. Last January, Obama picked Cecilia Muñoz as Director of the Domestic Policy Council, a panel described as one that "coordinates the domestic policy-making process in the White House."

Uzbek Immigrant Arrested For Teaching Bomb-Making To Terrorists

Venezuelan Bank Sanctioned as Iran Front

capitolhillcubans

And -- of course -- we all know who runs Venezuela.

From the Treasury Department:

The Treasury Department imposed sanctions against Iranian Venezuelan Bi-National Bank (IVBB).  IVBB was designated pursuant to E.O. 13382, which targets proliferators of weapons of mass destruction (WMD) and their supporters, for engaging in financial transactions on behalf of the previously sanctioned Export Development Bank of Iran (EDBI). 

EDBI was designated under E.O. 13382 on October 22, 2008, for providing financial services to Iran’s Ministry of Defense and Armed Forces Logistics (MODAFL).

IVBB has been processing funds transfers on behalf of EDBI since at least January 2012. EDBI has used IVBB to act as a proxy to fund export activities and to transfer millions of dollars worth of funds from China’s Bank of Kunlun to EDBI. Additionally, senior EDBI staff is entitled to authorize transaction instructions to Bank of Kunlun on behalf of IVBB.

Conservatives, Liberals and Government - Study

BrighterLife.ca

Fundamental to our understanding of democratic politics across the developed world is that conservative parties stand for relatively low levels of government spending, while those on the left of the political spectrum are prone to higher spending. A new study, released yesterday by the Montreal Economic Institute (MEI), blows a hole through that conventional wisdom.

“When you look at the behaviours of various parties over long periods of time in different governments, the pattern is that there is no pattern,” said MEI’s president and chief executive officer, Michel Kelly-Gagnon in an interview with me yesterday. “The parties that are supposed to be more in favour of big government end up spending less than we might expect. And the parties that are supposed to be fiscally conservative sometimes end up being spendthrifts.”

MEI’s study examined government spending in Canada, Quebec and the U.S., dating back to the Pierre Trudeau, Robert Bourassa and Richard Nixon administrations respectively. “In all three cases,” reads the report, “it is actually left-wing governments that most reduced the relative size of government.”

MEI reports government size as the ratio of public spending to gross domestic product.

Under Liberal Prime Ministers Jean Chrétien and Paul Martin, that ratio fell by 32.5%. The current government, under the leadership of Conservative Prime Minister Stephen Harper, drove the ratio up after the financial crisis. It has since reduced the size of government to roughly where it was when the Conservatives took office in 2006.

In the U.S., Republican President George Bush grew the ratio more than any other, by 39%. Democratic President Bill Clinton shrank it by 14.3%.

Is this simply a matter of parties running for office from the left or right, as the cliché goes, and then governing from the centre? Partly, said Kelly-Gagnon. “Parties, when they form governments, regardless of their declared ideology, have to be responsive to the economic environment.”

Context matters, Kelly-Gagnon told me. Clinton’s numbers look great because he enjoyed strong gross domestic product growth during his presidency. Harper had a financial crisis to deal with, and he therefore had to implement a level of stimulus spending that ran contrary to his party’s small government plans.

The report draws two conclusions. First, our perceptions about left- and right-wing political ideology don’t reflect the realities of the last four decades. The data tell a far more nuanced story. Second, we’re far better positioned to debate the role (and size) of government in a non-partisan fashion than we might have expected. The fact that actual decision-making hasn’t been as tied down by ideology as we may have thought means we can be more pragmatic about, for example, the austerity-stimulus debate that continues to rage around the developed world.

It’s worth a try, anyway.

Benghazi Hearing Aims to Reveal High Level Decision-Makers

breitbart

By Kerry Picket 

Republicans on the House Oversight Committee say there will be “explosive” revelations that will come forth during the Committee’s hearing on Wednesday when three State Department witnesses reveal what they knew the night the U.S. consulate and CIA annex in Benghazi, Libya were attacked by terrorists. Committee members will be hearing the testimonies of State Department employees Greg Hicks, Mark Thompson, and Eric Nordstrom.

The Committee appears to be interested in finding out who ultimately made the decision to tell military assets not to send help to the Americans who were under assault in Benghazi on September 11, 2012. The attack took the lives of four Americans, including U.S. Ambassador Chris Stevens.

Congressman Trey Gowdy (R-SC), a member of the Oversight Committee, has said the whistleblower witnesses will discuss whether or not there could have been military assets deployed during the siege that could have saved the lives of former Navy SEALS Tyrone Woods and Glenn Doherty.  

Hicks told the Oversight Committee in April:

If we had got clearance from the Libyan military for an American plane to fly over Libyan airspace. The Libyans that I talked to and the Libyans and other Americans who were involved in the war have told me also that Libyan revolutionaries were very cognizant of the impact that American and NATO airpower had with respect to their victory. They are under no illusions that American and NATO airpower won that war for them.  And so, in my personal opinion, a fastmover flying over Benghazi at some point, you know, as soon as possible might very well have prevented some of the bad things that happened that night.

“[T]he administration says we couldn’t have gotten there in time which defies logic, because they had no idea had long the attack was going to last,” Gowdy told Fox News on Tuesday night. “Mr. Thompson is going to shed light on...the siege itself and whether or not our fellow Americans were crying for help and we could have helped them and for whatever reason chose not to,” he said.

Additionally, Gowdy says he will be questioning the witnesses about the administration’s explanation for falsely blaming an online video, made in part by California resident and Coptic Christian Mark Basseley Youssef, for instigating the attack on the consulate. U.N. Ambassador Susan Rice went onto five Sunday news shows following the attack and touted the administration’s position that the video was the reason for the attack on the consulate.

“You’re going to know that [Ambassador Susan Rice] was demonstrably false. You’re going to know that she was the only person who held onto that narrative even after everyone else went away from it,” Gowdy said, adding, “And importantly..what you're going to hear that this cover up, her choosing to rely on those false talking points about the video, impeded and obstructed our ability to get at what happened in Benghazi. The [FBI] was denied access to the crime scene as a direct result of her false narrative that it was a video.”

Hicks will tell the Committee, according to Gowdy, how the State Department attempted to protect high-level officials at the Department after the attack. Excerpts of Hicks’ interview with the Committee show Hicks thought the Department's Benghazi Accountability Review Board (ARB) report did not palace blame on anyone, telling the Committee:

I thought it was incomplete. I thought that it was--that the recommendations were unbalanced in favor of building higher walls, pouring more concrete, that it was insufficiently strong in recommending that the State Department personnel needed to have more and better training to be deployed to critical threat environments…
I mean, the ARB report itself doesn’t really ascribe blame to any individual at all. The public report anyway....It does let people off the hook. In our system, people who make decisions have been confirmed by the Senate to make decisions. The three people in the State Department who are on administrative leave pending disciplinary action are below Senate confirmation level.  Now, the DS assistant secretary resigned, and he is at Senate confirmation level. Yet the paper trail is pretty clear that decisions were being made above his level. Certainly the fact that Under Secretary Kennedy required a daily report of the personnel in country and who personally approved every official American who went to Tripoli or Benghazi, either on assignment or TDY, would suggest some responsibility about security levels within the country lies on his desk...

The witnesses will likely be asked to describe what their transition was like after the attack, particularly focusing in on any threats they may have received from the State Department if they broke their silence about what they knew.

BENGHAZI: Names of ‘whistleblower’ witnesses revealed

Fox News

Their identities have been a well-guarded secret, known only to their high-powered lawyers and a handful of House lawmakers and staff. But now Fox News has learned the names of the self-described Benghazi “whistleblowers” who are set to testify before a widely anticipated congressional hearing on Wednesday.

Appearing before the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee will be three career State Department officials: Gregory N. Hicks, the deputy chief of mission at the U.S. Embassy in Libya at the time of the Benghazi terrorist attacks; Mark I. Thompson, a former Marine and now the deputy coordinator for Operations in the agency’s Counterterrorism Bureau; and Eric Nordstrom, a diplomatic security officer who was the regional security officer in Libya, the top security officer in the country in the months leading up to the attacks.

U.S. Ambassador Christopher Stevens and three other Americans were killed in the Sept. 11, 2012, attacks on the U.S. outpost in Benghazi, Libya.

Hicks was at the time of the highest-ranking American diplomat in the country.

Nordstrom previously testified before the oversight committee, which is chaired by Rep. Darrell Issa, R-Calif., in October 2012. Of the three witnesses, he is the only one who does not consider himself a whistleblower. At last fall's hearing, however, Nordstrom made headlines by detailing for lawmakers the series of requests that he, Ambassador Stevens, and others had made for enhanced security at the U.S. consulate in Benghazi in the period preceding the attacks, requests mostly rejected by State Department superiors.

"For me the Taliban is on the inside of the [State Department] building," Nordstrom testified, angry over inadequate staffing at a time when the threat environment in Benghazi was deteriorating, 

The other two witnesses have not been heard from publicly before.

Hicks is a veteran Foreign Service officer whose overseas postings have also included Afghanistan, Syria, and Yemen.

Rep. Jason Chaffetz, a Utah Republican and committee member, said Hicks was in Tripoli at 9:40 p.m. local time when he received one of Stevens’ earliest phone calls amid the crisis.

“We’re under attack! We’re under attack!” the ambassador reportedly shouted into his cell phone at Hicks.

Chaffetz, who subsequently debriefed Hicks, also said the deputy “immediately called into Washington to trigger all the mechanisms” for an inter-agency response.

“The real-life trauma that [Hicks] went through,” Chaffetz recalled to Fox News’ Greta Van Susteren, “I mean, I really felt it in his voice. It was hard to listen to. He’s gone through a lot, but he did a great job.”

 According to the State Department website, Thompson “advises senior leadership on operational counterterrorism matters, and ensures that the United States can rapidly respond to global terrorism crises.”

Five years before the Benghazi attacks, he lectured at a symposium hosted by the University of Central Florida and titled “The Global Terrorism Challenge: Answers to Key Questions.”

Joe diGenova, a former U.S. attorney, and wife Victoria Toensing, a former chief counsel to the Senate Intelligence Committee -- Republicans -- disclosed this week that in their private practice in the nation’s capital, they now represent pro bono two career State Department employees who regard themselves as “whistleblowers” and would be testifying before Issa’s committee at its next Benghazi hearing, on May 8. 

The lawyers said their clients believe their accounts of Benghazi were spurned by the Accountability Review board (ARB), the official investigative body convened by then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton to review the terrorist attacks, and that the two employees have faced threats and intimidation from as-yet-unnamed superiors.

 “I'm not talking generally, I'm talking specifically about Benghazi -- that people have been threatened,” Toensing told Fox News on Wednesday. “And not just the State Department; people have been threatened at the CIA….It's frightening….They're taking career people and making them well aware that their careers will be over.”

DiGenova told Fox News on Thursday, by way of describing his and Toensing’s respective clients: “There were people who were material witnesses, who wanted to talk to [the ARB], and they were not allowed to talk to them.

“The people that we are representing are career civil servants...people who have served the country overseas…in dangerous positions all over the world, have risked their lives and only want to tell the truth.”

Read more: http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2013/05/04/benghazi-names-whistleblower-witnesses-revealed/#ixzz2SLMK0Ct5

Boston Plot/ Saudi Arabia-USA: Yet another communication that never arrived

canadafreepress/ By Judi McLeod 

We’ll never know for sure whether Saudi Arabia really did warn the USA in writing about the terrorist attack intentions of one Tamerlan Tsarnaev, but we do know that President Barack Obama slept through the slaughter in Benghazi.

“A senior Saudi government official told Daily Mail that the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia sent a written warning to the U.S. Department of Homeland Security in 2012.  According to the source, the letter was pertaining to Tsarnaev and potential terror threats.” (Daily Mail, May 1, 2013).

Is this a Saudi Arabia/USA “You-cover-my-back-and-I’ll-cover-yours” game?

Saudi Foreign Minister Prince Saud bin al-Faisal attended an unscheduled White House meeting with President Barack Hussein Obama on April 17, 2013.  Odd that nothing was mentioned about the written warning from the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia on that day.

During the time period of 2012 when a Saudi Arabia official says the letter was sent, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security was busy nailing returning war vets, “bible thumping” Christian and Tea Party patriots as the real potential terrorists.  Don’t Saudi Arabians surf the Internet?

“In addition to sending the warning to America, the Saudi government also denied an entry visa to Tsarnaev in Dec. 2011 when he purportedly sought to take the Islamic pilgrimage to Mecca, the source claimed. 

Well bully for the Saudi government.  Can they now promise in writing that they will stop their massive funding of terrorism conducted in all countries of the world due to Wahhabism (ultra conservative branch of Sunni Islam)?

“The source went on to say that, although the letter, which purportedly came from the Saudi Minister of Interior, did not name Boston specifically, it did cite Tsarnaev and it was “very specific”.  The Saudi official also told the outlet that the notice warned the U.S. government that “something was going to happen in a major U.S. city”.

That’s exactly what countless Americans have been saying ever since Obama got himself elected, knowing at heart that Obama is much more like the Saudis than he is like them.

The U.S. government, incidentally is denying that such a communication was ever received.

The Saudis would know that the U.S. government does not hear communication from places such as Benghazi where the death of four Americans including Ambassador Chris Stevens commemorated the 11th anniversary of 9/11.

We don’t know which month the Saudis sent their warning letter about Tamerlan Tsarnaev in 2012.

But we do know what Obama was doing during the entire year of 2012:  campaigning, vacationing, playing golf, continuing his obsessed Fundamental Transformation of America (read Take Down).  And, oh yes, throwing in with Russia,  making his open mic promise that “after my election I have more flexibility” to Dmitry Medvedev, president of the other country that supposedly tried to red flag the U.S. about the Tsarnaev brothers.

Saudi Arabia must—just like Obama—think Americans are stupid.

Immigration Bill Gives Amnestied Residents 'Immediate' Access to Welfare

breitbart

By Matthew Boyle 

The immigration bill introduced to the Senate a week and a half ago would, if passed, allow illegal immigrants to access state and local welfare benefits immediately, Breitbart News has learned. The financial impact of allowing potentially millions of immigrants onto state and local public assistance could overwhelm these programs' budgets.

Senate Budget Committee ranking member Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-AL) uncovered this loophole in the bill and many others, and he will circulate a memo detailing the gaps in the bill on Tuesday. Breitbart News exclusively obtained a copy of the memo before its public release.

“The Gang of Eight made a promise that illegal immigrants will not be able to access public benefits,” Sessions said in a statement to Breitbart News. “We already know that, once granted green cards and ultimately citizenship, illegal immigrants will be able to access all public benefit programs at a great cost to taxpayers. We have, however, identified a number of loopholes that would allow illegal immigrants to draw public benefits even sooner than advertised.”

If the bill were signed into law, America’s 11 million illegal immigrants would be legalized within six months, when Department of Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano submits her border security plan to Congress. Illegal immigrants would immediately be eligible for Registered Provisional Immigrant (RPI) status, making them legal to live and work in the country.

As Sessions’ staff points out in the memo, “state laws frequently extend benefits to anyone ‘lawfully present’ in the U.S.” The Sessions team points to a Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) brief that details how the only requirement many state and local governments have with regard to immigrant access to public benefits is that they are “lawfully present.” The term “lawfully present” is a legal definition.

According to page 91 of the bill, all illegal immigrants granted legalized RPI status would legally be considered “lawfully present.” That section reads as follows:

‘‘(4) TREATMENT OF REGISTERED PROVISIONAL IMMIGRANTS.—A noncitizen granted registered provisional immigrant status under this section shall be considered lawfully present in the United States for all purposes while such noncitizen remains in such status, except that the noncitizen—
‘‘(A) is not entitled to the premium assistance tax credit authorized under section 36B of            the Internal Revenue Code of 1986;
‘‘(B) shall be subject to the rules applicable to individuals not lawfully present that are set forth in subsection (e) of such section; and         
‘‘(C) shall be subject to the rules applicable to individuals not lawfully present that are set forth in section 1402(e) of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (42 U.S.C. 18071).”

In evaluating whether an illegal immigrant qualifies for RPI status, Sessions’ staff points out, the legislation “explicitly forbids” the Department of Homeland Security from using current law, which blocks entry to those who could become "public charges," i.e. dependent on government welfare programs.  

“Therefore, when those here illegally who are unable to support themselves are legalized, much of the immediate fiscal burden will fall on state and local governments,” Sessions’ staff wrote in the memo.

In addition to that loophole, Sessions and his staff found several more loopholes that allow current illegal immigrants access to public benefits even on the federal level before the promised wait time of 13 years from the bill’s passage.

In the memo, Sessions’ staff notes that current illegal immigrants who are “granted RPI status will immediately become eligible for federal benefits through citizen and permanent resident dependents, with no requirement that they support their household as a condition of receiving or maintaining legal status.” That means any current illegal immigrant who subsequently has dependent children, who are, by right of birth, U.S. citizens would qualify for federal welfare benefits through them.

CIA 'Ghost Cash' Effect: Is US main source of Afghan corruption?

RussiaToday

Col. Allen West on Ronald Reagan and American Entrepreneurship

Pajamasmedia

IS THE "SAUDI STUDENT" REALLY HAMZA BIN LADEN (SON OF OSAMA BIN LADEN)?

Infidel Bloggers Alliance
SPECIAL THANKS TO WILL AT THE OTHER NEWS - A TIRELESS WARRIOR OF TRUTH

The Saudi Student, Abdul Rahman Ali al-Harbi, questioned and eventually set for deportation by our government, really Hamza Bin Laden?

Is he the son of Osama Bin Laden?

Is our government participating in a coverup of Saudi complicity in the Boston Marathon bombing?

Is our government trying to hide the fact that the attack was international Jihad, organized by Al Qaeda?

Saudi Student Abdul Rahman Ali al-Harbi

Hamza Bin Laden - son of Osama Bin Laden

Our friend Nico comments:

Here's a copy of Hamza bin Laden smiling to see whether they're the same person or not. 

Its plausible. They kind of have the same nose but the terrorist bin Laden looks like me when I was little too :/. 

My problem with this theory is the protection that the Kingdom provided through official channels to Al Harbi. The Sauds and the terrorist side of bin Ladens are, officially, arch enemies. Osama bin Laden tried to overthrow the Saud family and as a result lost his Saudi citizenship. 

So my question would be, if the kid is one and the same, then why was he offered high level, official Saudi protection?

On the other hand, Saudi Arabia took in Bin Laden's wives. 

Poverty in America: Millions of families too broke for bank accounts

inplainsight

Travis Dove / for NBC News

Kim James outside the Dove House, a half-way house in Durham, NC that helped her recover from poverty and addiction. James has since been able to start banking again through the Self Help Credit Union.

Sabino Fuentes-Sanchez hid $25,000 all around his house because he didn't trust banks. Lasonia Christon receives her Walmart salary on a pre-paid debit card. Kim James was homeless for most of the past decade in part because she had no place to save money.

There are plenty of reasons people still live all-cash lives, but the sheer number who do it might surprise you. At a time when the majority of Americans use online banking, and some even deposit checks using their cellphone cameras, roughly eight percent of America's 115 million households don’t have a checking or savings account, according to census data compiled by the FDIC.
The numbers are far higher among minorities: More than 20 percent of African-Americans and Hispanics are essentially left out of the American banking system.
Frozen in the cash-only past, they face myriad “kick-them-while-they-are-down” situations where getting money costs money. Banks typically charge $6 to cash checks. Want to secure an apartment? Fee-based money orders are the only option. Without credit cards, they must turn to triple-digit interest rate payday loans for emergencies.
Who are the unbanked? Many are poor – 56 percent earn less than $15,000 annually.  Some are homeless or undocumented workers, fearful of any system that might create a paper trail. But the majority of the unbanked have held checking accounts in the past, according to the FDIC, meaning their reasoning lies elsewhere. Ask them why they don't have a bank account, and one quarter will say they don't see the value in it. With savings account interest rates stuck at almost zero, that's hardly irrational.
Lasonia Christon of Jackson, Miss., tries to avoid getting paid in checks, but when her state tax refund for $231 arrived recently, she had to pay $7 to cash it at a nearby convenience store.
Christon works at Walmart. Her paychecks are deposited onto a prepaid debit card -- an improvement over old-fashioned paper paychecks, which led to high check-cashing fees. It’s hardly a good substitute for direct deposit, however. One cash withdrawal per period is free, but others cost $2. She can avoid the fee by shopping at Walmart and getting cash back at checkout.

She is among the 60 percent of unbanked American who previously had a checking account. Christon used to share one with her sister, but It cost her dearly.

"There was an overdraft here and an overdraft there, and it just didn't work out," she said.

Travis Dove / for NBC News

Kim James at the Dove House, a half-way house in Durham, NC that helped her get back on her feet after struggles with poverty and addiction.

Fuentes-Sanchez made a fairly good living working for a tree removal company in Lumber Bridge, N.C., for about 10 years. But he was skeptical of banks, and when he tried to open an account, he was surprised by the cost.

"Instead of making money, I would have to pay fees," he said, through a translator. "(So) we used to keep money in the house. We were always trying to look for ways to hide the money in the house and keep it safe."

At one time, Fuentes-Sanchez had $25,000 stashed in different places throughout the house – his Latino community had been plagued by house burglaries because neighbors did the same. When his wife got cancer, her treatments devoured all their savings.

Down to their last $500, and before she passed away, she convinced him to open a bank account at Latino Community Credit Union, which was opened in part to help stem the burglary problem.

“She managed the money," and was disciplined enough to avoid spending it, said Fuentes-Sanchez, 37, who now raises five children alone. "(I) sometimes see something and I am tempted to buy it ... Now the money is in the bank.”

Saving -- putting money out of temptation's reach -- is the core concept of consumer banking. But the importance of participating in the financial system has stretched far beyond the quaint notion of interest, said Jennifer Tescher, CEO of the Center for Financial

Services Innovation, who is generally regarded as the person responsible for popularizing the term unbanked.

"A bank account in a way has become like a passport or a driver's license," said Tesch. "It's a kind of access device."

James, 55, has been in and out of homelessness for several years.  She now lives at a half-way house called Dove House in Durham, N.C., and figured she could never move into her own apartment unless she could stash away the money needed for a security deposit. Without a savings account, that was a challenge.

"Cash in hand is cash spent, my mother always said," she said.

Two years ago, she met Duke University student Janet Xiao, who was part of a group named the Community Empowerment Fund, which visited Dove House offering life skills training, including a class on personal finance where she nudged women to open a bank account.  James was reluctant.

"It's really demoralizing to open up an account and have it sitting in there with no money in it," Xiao said. “I think most folks want to take one step at a time, and get a job first. Also, there is this fear of being charged fees you don't understand.”

When James got a part-time job in January, she finally took up Xiao’s offer of help.  The two set up an account with the Self-Help Credit Union on Xiao’s laptop right at the Dove House kitchen table.

"She even put the first $5 in there for me," James said. After depositing her first paycheck in person at Self-Help, Xiao said, James did a little dance. 

“Now whenever I get even $10 or $20, I go to the bank and deposit it,” James said. Within a few months, she put together enough to pay her security deposit and first’s month’s rent. As soon as she saves enough for a bed, she’ll move in.

Travis Dove / for NBC News

James has been able to start banking again through the Self Help Credit Union, and has saved enough to pay a security deposit and the first month's rent for her own apartment..

'Saving for the future'
Self-Help is part of a growing set of financial companies called Community Development Financial Institutions (CDFIs). Supported by the U.S. Treasury Department, their mission is to help the unbanked get into the financial system.

”You make sure people are getting products and services they need,” said Mark Pinsky ,CEO of the Opportunity Finance Network, which helps fund CDFIs. “Banks may be the best place, they may not, but we don't want to just leave them vulnerable to the predators out there.”

Christon has recently been persuaded to open an account in a different way. Her 3-year-old twins’ day-care facility was recently visited by representatives of the Mississippi College Savings Account program, who helped her open a small account for the children. She then realized she needed her own savings account.

"I want to be a good role model for them, so they can learn about savings," she said.  "I know I need to be better and show them about saving for the future."

Bob Sullivan writes The Red Tape Chronicles blog on NBCNews.com. Follow him on Twitter or Facebook.

NBCLatino's Sandra Lilley contributed to this story.

US teen accused of seeking to join al Qaeda-linked Syrian group

usnews

By Alex Dobuzinskis, Reuters

An 18-year-old Chicago-area man accused of planning to join an al Qaeda-linked group fighting in Syria has been arrested by the FBI, the agency said on Saturday.

Abdella Ahmad Tounisi of Aurora, Illinois, was taken into custody late on Friday as he prepared to board a plane at Chicago's O'Hare International Airport bound for Turkey, the FBI said in a statement.

It added that Tounisi was a friend of

Adel Daoud, framed by the FBI/
www.sott.net

Adel Daoud, an American accused of trying to stage a bombing outside a downtown Chicago bar last year. The agency said Tounisi had not been involved in that plot.

Tounisi appeared before a U.S. magistrate on Saturday on one count of attempting to provide material support to a foreign terrorist organization. He was ordered held until his next court appearance on Tuesday, the FBI said.

A criminal complaint accused Tounisi of making online contact in March with a person he thought was a recruiter for Jabhat al-Nusrah, the militant Islamist Syrian group that the U.S. government calls a foreign terrorist organization operating as a wing of al Qaeda in Iraq.

The supposed recruiter was an FBI employee working undercover, the agency said.

Tounisi said in emails to the FBI employee that he planned to get to Syria via Turkey and was willing to die in the Syrian struggle, the complaint said.

Syria is in the grips of a civil war that began in 2011 as a revolt against President Bashar Assad and has killed more than 70,000 people.

On April 10, Tounisi bought an airline ticket for a flight from Chicago to Istanbul. On Thursday, the undercover FBI employee gave him a bus ticket for travel from Istanbul to Gaziantep, Turkey, near the border with Syria, the complaint said.

Tounisi's attorney, Michael Madden, of the federal public defender program could not be reached for comment.

Tounisi faces a maximum of 15 years in prison if convicted.

The 2012 arrest of Daoud, 19, also involved his alleged communication with an undercover member of the FBI. The fake bomb that Daoud tried to detonate outside a Chicago bar was provided to him by an undercover FBI agent, authorities said.

Daoud was indicted on two counts of attempting to use a weapon of mass destruction and maliciously attempting to use an explosive to destroy a building. He pleaded not guilty in October in federal court.

Boston bombers radicalized on U.S. soil?

CBS News

LONDON A federal law enforcement source tells CBS News investigators are working to determine whether the suspects in the Boston Marathon bombings, brothers Tamerlan, 19, and Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, 26, have links to other terrorist cells, foreign or domestic.

Officials are trying to determine whether the brothers, who lived for at least a short period near Russia's restive Chechnya region, were acting independently or directed by a broader conspiracy. The source told CBS News producer Pat Milton that investigators and the intelligence community are pressing to determine if the two men were directed by a central player or someone overseas.

According to a former teacher at a school in the Russian region of Dagestan, the brothers were two of four siblings who came to the area with their parents as refugees from Kazakhstan in 2001. They lived only about one year in Dagestan, a region next door to Chechnya. Both regions have a long history of Islamic extremism and a number of well-established terrorist groups.

Ethnic Chechens live across the region, and it is still believed that the Tsarnaevs belong to that ethnic group.

Dzhokhar, born in 1994 as a war began between Chechen separatists and the Russian government, had most recently viewed videos on YouTube depicting atrocities from the front lines of Syria's civil war and of Chechen separatist propaganda.

There has been no indication that the Tsarnaev brothers are linked, however, to Chechen terror groups operating in the region now. The former head of the school who spoke to the Reuters news agency in Dagestan said the family left for the U.S. in 2002.

Chechnya's leader, Ramzan Kadyrov, dismissed any links between the brothers and Chechnya.

"Any attempt to draw a connection between Chechnya and Tsarnaevs -- if they are guilty -- is futile. They were raised in the United States, and their attitudes and beliefs were formed there," he said in a statement Friday.

Even America's top diplomat, Secretary of State John Kerry, cautioned against drawing links to the troubled region, saying Friday that, "it would be inappropriate," to talk about any Chechnya connection to the bombing suspects.

Neil Doyle, a British author and expert in online extremism and radicalization, told CBSNews.com on Friday that the young man's recent viewing "would suggest perhaps a large degree of self radicalization, but we can't rule out the possibility that there may have been someone local to them, an imam or someone, who influenced the process."

Charles King, a professor at Georgetown University and an expert in the Caucus region, where Chechnya is located, says links to Chechen radicals in the U.S. are also unlikely, as there are simply too few of them.

He describes the ethnic Chechen community in the U.S. as "very, very small," and scattered across the country. "I really think the American angle on this story is much more powerful than the Chechen one," adds King. "It's a story of how young people get radicalized."

As Doyle points out, there is no shortage of jihadist propaganda available on the Internet, courtesy of al Qaeda and its various branches and like-minded organizations.

The bombs used in the Boston attack were made using pressure cookers -- not a new practice, by any means, but one which was laid out in a detailed how-to manual published online by al Qaeda's Yemen branch in the last two years.

Chechnya and Dagestan, predominantly Muslim regions of Russia, have seen decades of war and internal violence as separatists vie for independence from Moscow and for internal power.

The most prominent Islamic terror group in Chechnya is called the Islamic Emirates of the Caucuses, led by Doku Umarov.

While the group is not believed to have direct, operational cooperation with al Qaeda's central leadership, it shares the same jihadist ideology. In 2011, the United Nations Security Council added Umarov to a list of people officially linked to al Qaeda.

Umarov's group was behind the March 2010 Moscow metro bombing carried out by two female suicide bombers which left 40 people dead. It was also blamed for a 2011 attack on the Domodedovo airport, near Moscow, which took 36 lives.

More recently, Chechen jihadists have joined various rebel militias fighting against President Bashar Assad in Syria's two-year civil war.

Thus far, there have been no terrorist attacks on the U.S. or other Western nations planned or carried out by Chechen groups -- their focus has been exclusively on Russia.

U.S. ‘deporting Saudi person of interest’

wnd
Joe Kovacs

Obama has unscheduled meeting with foreign minister.

An expert on terrorism says the Saudi national who was the original “person of interest” in connection with Monday’s Boston Marathon bombing is going to be deported from the U.S. next week.

The foreign student from Revere, Mass., is identified as 20-year-old Abdul Rahman Ali Alharbi.

“I just learned from my own sources that he is now going to be deported on national security grounds next Tuesday, which is very unusual,” Steve Emerson of the Investigative Project on Terrorism told Sean Hannity of Fox News Wednesday night.

The Reuters news agency reported President Barack Obama met with Saudi Foreign Minister Prince Saud al-Faisal on Wednesday, noting “the meeting was not on Obama’s public schedule.”

After that meeting was mentioned, Emerson told Hannity, “That’s very interesting because this is the way things are done with Saudi Arabia. You don’t arrest their citizens. You deport them, because they don’t want them to be embarrassed and that’s the way we appease them.”

Saudi national Abdul Rahman Ali Alharbi, the original "person of interest"
questioned in the Boston Marathon bombings.

Meanwhile, Tuesday morning, a meeting Secretary of State John Kerry held with the Saudi foreign minister was abruptly closed to press coverage.

“The State Department initially provided no reason for the change, which was announced just 15 minutes before the scheduled 10 a.m. session,” reported Politico.

But later in the day, department spokesman Patrick Ventrell said the preclusion of news media from the meeting was due to Kerry’s busy schedule.

“This was just a scheduling change on our part,” Ventrell said.

Journalists found the claim hard to believe, as they had been told the meeting would include a so-called “camera spray” at the beginning of the session.

“Are you really trying to say that this [meeting was moved from a] camera/photo op to being closed, for scheduling reasons? Is that seriously your answer: that because the secretary was tired after 10 days on the road and is going to the Hill tomorrow?” Matt Lee of the Associated Press asked.

“What I’m saying is he has a very tight schedule here in the building and elsewhere,” Ventrell said, noting the fact Kerry met with Al-Faisal amidst that busy schedule reflects the importance of the U.S. Saudi-relationship.

“So does it save time somehow, canceling the photo op? It doesn’t wash,” Lee replied. “I find it hard to believe that you expect us to believe that that’s the real reason for this.”

Keep reading on wnd >>

15 killed, 160 wounded in ’devastating’ Texas fertilizer plant blast

usnews

Slideshow: Fertilizer plant explosion in Texas

Rod Aydelotte / AP

The huge blast rocked a small Texas town causing an unknown number
of deaths and destroying nearby homes.

Launch slideshow

By M. Alex Johnson, Becky Bratu and John Newland, NBC News

At least five to 15 people were killed and more than 160 wounded when a large fertilizer plant exploded, rocking the small Texas town of West late Wednesday and destroying dozens of homes and businesses, police said. 

Firefighters, including local volunteers, were battling a blaze at the plant at the time of the blast, which caused a ground tremor equivalent to a magnitude-2.1 earthquake, the USGS said, and sent up a plume of toxic smoke.

There was no indication of criminal activity, Waco, Texas, police Sgt. William Patrick Swanton said early Thursday, although the area was being treated as a crime scene as a precautionary measure.

Amateur video demonstrates sheer size and power of explosion that rocked a fertilizer plant in west Texas.

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"It was a huge explosion," he said. "It reached blocks, if not miles, in its devastating effect. ... My guess is going to be that ... we will see the casualty rate rise and the injury rate rise." The blast decimated a five- to-six block radius around the plant, damaging about 50 to 75 homes in the area, a nursing home, and a middle school.

Between three and five firefighters were still missing, he told reporters gathered in the town south of Dallas.

"We know fire was there, we know law enforcement was there assisting with traffic, and I believe there were EMS ...," Swanton said.

Resident Sammy Chavez was injured in the blast but ran to the West Rest Haven nursing home, which was being evacuated before the explosion, to help, he told KXAS.

“I just saw the explosion and then after that I took off running and then I saw the West home, and people you know were buried under the West home, the West home was gone,” Chavez said. “It was gone. The school’s gone. The apartments are gone. It’s horrible.”

Resident Derrick Hurtt was recording the fire from his truck with daughter Khloey Hurtt when he caught the earth-shaking explosion on his camera.

“I’m pretty sure it lifted the truck off the ground. It just blew me over on top of her,” Hurtt said on TODAY. “It all happened so quick that things kind of went black for a moment.”

An explosion at a fertilizer plant in West, Texas Wednesday night leaves hundreds injured as emergency officials respond to the situation.

“It was a pretty horrific scene, some of the injuries we saw,” he said.

Mayor Tommy Muska, who is a firefighter in addition to being mayor, was on his way toward the inferno at the time of the blast but was still a few blocks away.

"It blew my hat off, and then I heard it. I felt it before I heard it," Muska said. "It was a very powerful explosion."

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There are only about 2,700 residents in West, which lies about 20 miles north of Waco.

"It's a lot of devastation. I've never seen anything like this," McLennan County Sheriff Parnell McNamara told Reuters. "It looks like a war zone with all the debris."

Baptist Medical Center in Waco said 66 patients have been treated at its trauma center. Those with lesser injuries had been discharged, while others had gone into surgery. The hospital said 38 patients were considered "seriously injured" and nine burn victims had been rushed to a Dallas burn center.

Providence Hospital in Waco said it had received 65 patients, many with abrasions and broken bones and some in respiratory distress, apparently because of chemical or smoke inhalation.

It is the “most devastating thing that’s happened to this community,” West Mayor Tommy Muska said at a news conference. "We need your prayers."

Mariah Garcia/photo via NBCDFW.com

Smoke rises from the scene of a fertilizer plant explosion near Waco, Texas, on Wednesday, April 17.

"There’s a lot of people that are hurt. And there’s a lot of people that I’m sure are not going to be here tomorrow. ... It is a cut across our hearts."

With the cause of the fire and subsequent explosion unknown, the area was being treated as a crime scene, with the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives leading the investigation, Swanton said.

He added, however, that "nothing at this point indicates that we have had criminal activity."

Initial fears about dangerous fumes from the fire had been allayed by about 6 a.m. ET., with Swanton saying "air quality at this point is not an issue."

Texas Gov. Rick Perry said in a statement that state resources were being made available to local authorities.

"Our thoughts and prayers are with the people of West, and the first responders on the scene," he said.

A White House official said the Obama administration was aware of the situation and monitoring local and state response through the Federal Emergency Management Agency.

NBC News’ Matthew DeLuca and Reuters contributed to this story.

U.S. was warned of terror attacks

Mustafa Badr Al Din

wnd
Reza Kahlili

Although it is not known yet who is responsible for Monday’s heinous bombings at the Boston Marathon that killed three and injured more than 100 people, a source within Iranian intelligence services told WND the Islamic regime was behind them and to look for trails through Sri Lanka and Bangladesh.

The source said the bombs were planted near the end of the race so that the horrific images of the blasts would be captured by all the media there and be replayed over and over throughout the world.

A senior commander of the Islamic regime had warned less than two months ago that terrorism was coming to America.

“If the people of America and Europe do not confront the aggressive policies of their governments, they cannot then remain far from the possible future events (terror attacks),” the regime’s armed forces deputy chief of staff, Brig. Gen. Masoud Jazayeri, said in a Feb. 23 interview with Fars News Agency, a media outlet run by the Revolutionary Guards. “Al-Qaida groups and other services which operate for the interests of America (in Syria) will soon change the region of their operations and thereafter create new problems for America and Europe.”

Jazayeri, objecting to U.S. involvement in the Syrian civil war, warned that explosions similar to those in Syria would take place in other countries.

With information from a source in the supreme leader’s office, WND reported exclusively on Dec. 11, 2012, that a team of Quds Force terrorist leaders had infiltrated the United States to attack from within in 2013. The source said the team is to create instability in America through terrorism should the U.S. fail to accept the regime’s illicit nuclear program or increase sanctions, confront Iran militarily or intervene in the Syrian civil war.

In a WND exclusive report on Feb. 28, the source said that a six-member team, including an explosives specialist, was to join 10 Quds Force commanders who already have a cell of 50 terrorists in the U.S. The source added that Iran is working with al-Qaida factions because al-Qaida attacks would not leave behind a link to Tehran.

The source for today’s information blamed the Islamic regime for the Boston attack and pointed to the collaboration of the regime’s Quds Forces with Hezbollah and elements of al-Qaida with links to individuals in Sri Lanka and Bangladesh. He said that under Quds Force guidance, Hezbollah recruited Sunni terrorists allied with al-Qaida factions in Sri Lanka and Bangladesh, who then entered the U.S. for terrorist activities.

The information has been shared with U.S. officials.

But until the FBI and other U.S. agencies complete their investigations, all information regarding the bombings must be considered with great caution and any conclusions would be premature.

If the source is correct, however, then three individuals will likely have had a hand in planning and preparing for the attack:

• Mustafa Badr Al Din, the brother-in-law and cousin of the dead terrorist Imad Mugniyah, who now serves as Mugnyiah’s replacement as the military leader of Hezbollah and who also serves as the deputy of Qasem Soliemani, the head of the Islamic regime’s Quds Forces.
• Mohammad Ali Hamadei, on the FBI’s most-wanted list, a Hezbollah operator responsible for operation and infiltration of forces into America who was based in New Mexico with a Latin American passport and who was also seen last year in England.
• Talal Hamieh, the head of Hezbollah’s External Security Organization responsible for operations outside of Lebanon. He has been in Mexico collaborating with drug cartels to raise funds for Hezbollah cells and facilitates the transfer of arms and terrorists into the U.S.

Both Badr Al Din and Hamieh were designated for sanctions by the U.S. Treasury Department last year for their involvement in terrorist activities throughout the world.

In the aftermath of the Boston bombings, Fars News Agency put out a piece headlined, “Obama in deep trouble if Boston bombing was by Salafis (ultraconservative Sunni Muslims).”

Fars said one reason that Obama has not linked the Boston bombing to al-Qaida is that his administration wants to show it has defeated al-Qaida and any mention of the terrorist group would undermine his position.

It ominously mentioned that America is now allied with the Salafis and al-Qaida in confronting Syria’s Bashar Assad and that if it’s proven that the same elements were responsible for the bombings in Boston, then Obama would be severely criticized by the American public.

Fars, as with the earlier warning by Jazayeri, denounced Obama’s decision to help the opposition in Syria and hinted that the Boston attack is related to al-Qaida and the hardcore Sunnis. It concluded that Obama would likely not name them as the guilty party to save face.

Although the Islamic regime has long warned that America will not be safe from its reach and that it must not only accept Iran’s nuclear program but also end its support for the opposition in Syria, there is no proven link yet between Boston and Tehran.

In an interview with WND today, former FBI Associate Deputy Director Oliver “Buck” Revell, who was head of the FBI’s intelligence and counter terrorism programs, explained how the Boston investigation will proceed: