Jeb: Iran's Leaders Are Taking Note of Obama's Cuba Concessions

capitolhillcubans

Governor Bush's Statement on the Removal of Cuba From U.S. State Sponsors of Terrorism List

Right to Rise PAC Honorary Chairman Governor Jeb Bush issued the following statement today in response to Secretary of State John Kerry signing an order removing Cuba from the list of state sponsors of terrorism:

“Neither continued repression at home nor Cuba’s destabilizing activities abroad appear sufficient to stop President Obama from making further concessions to the Communist regime in Havana. Today’s news is further evidence that President Obama seems more interested in capitulating to our adversaries than in confronting them. Iran’s leaders are surely taking note.

The removal of Cuba from the State Sponsors of Terrorism List and the unilateral concessions to Havana, before it changes its authoritarian ways and stops denying the Cuban people their basic human rights, is a mistake. I call on Congress to keep pressure on Cuba and hold the Administration accountable.”

I bet she regrets asking her question

Ozzie Saffa

Report: ISIS Leader Baghdadi ‘Seriously Wounded’ in Air Strike

Breitbart

by Jordan Schachtel

www.washingtonpost.com

Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the leader of the Islamic State (ISIS) caliphatist group that has usurped territory in much of the Middle East, was seriously wounded in an air strike in western Iraq, the Guardian reports.

A local source told the Guardian that Baghdadi was critically injured in a March strike, but his injuries are no longer life threatening, and the self-declared Caliph of the Islamic State is on a slow road to recovery. However, the ISIS leader has not been able to command his jihadi group’s day-to-day operations, and he has temporarily shifted those responsibilities to other individuals in the Islamic State’s Shura Council, the source claimed.

When it appeared as if Baghdadi may succumb to his wounds, the ISIS inner circle met to discuss a successor for the jihadi group, the report adds.

Baghdadi’s three-car convoy was attacked on March 18 near the Syrian border, an unnamed western diplomat and Iraqi advisor confirmed with the Guardian. Iraqi advisor Hisham al-Hashimi told the publication, “Yes, he was wounded in al-Baaj near the village of Umm al-Rous on 18 March with a group that was with him.” The advisor explained that Baghdadi chose al-Baaj “because he knew from the war that the Americans did not have much cover there.” He added, “From 2003 (the US military) barely had a presence there. It was one part of Iraq that they hadn’t mapped out.”

Just four days earlier, a U.S. air strike blew up one of the cars in Baghdadi’s two-car escort outside of Mosul, resulting in the death of his confidant, Auf Abdul Rahman al-Efery, who was believed to be in the other vehicle.

Baghdadi, who has been described by jihadists as the successor to Osama bin Laden, was born in 1971 in Samarra, Iraq. He was reportedly captured in 2004 during the most recent Iraq war and spent close to a year at U.S. military prison Camp Bucca in the south of Iraq.

University Officials in Florida authorize Pro-ISIS Club: JUST CHANGE THE NAME

veritasvisuals

Following a similar shocking video at Cornell University released by James O'Keefe last week, Barry University officials in Florida also sanction a pro-ISIS club with the stated goal of sending material support to ISIS. The only suggestion by Barry officials was to change the name of the club "because technically our country is at war with ISIS." 

US General to Senate: Terror Groups Benefiting from Latin American Drug Trade

emora1983

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President Obama defines ISIS

Spy Working In/With Canada Embassy Arrested Over Three London Girls Who Went To Syria

torontosun

ANKARA — An alleged spy detained in Turkey for helping three British girls cross into Syria is a Syrian national working for a country in the U.S.-led coalition against Islamic State, the Turkish foreign minister said on Friday.

He has been named by one Turkish newspaper as Mohammad Al Rashid.

Several Turkish media, citing government sources, have said the detained spy was on contract for Canada but working for the Israeli spy agency, the Mossad.

Tahera Mufti, spokeswoman for CSIS, did not respond to a written request for comment and the federal government refused to comment, claiming it was a matter "of national security."

Islamic State seized swathes of land last June, cementing their rule with a militant interpretation of Islamic law, and is drawing sympathizers from many countries to support their fight.

The U.S.-led coalition, that includes Canada, is using mostly air power in an attempt to push the Sunni militant group back.

"The person who helped the three British girls into Syria is a Syrian national working for another country within the coalition. The situation is so complicated," foreign minister Mevlut Cavusoglu told reporters in Ankara.

The three girls, two aged 15 and one 16, flew to Istanbul from London on Feb. 17 and then onwards to Syria, where more than 200,000 have been killed in a civil war. Their families have appealed to them to return.

- with QMI Agency files
----------------
Mary Greeley

 

Pakistani man allegedly plotted Toronto attacks

Toronto Sun

SHAWN JEFFORDS and ANDREW MCINTOSHI, QMI Agency

A Pakistani man arrested Monday on allegations he plotted to blow up several Toronto buildings including the U.S. Consulate was interviewed several times by officials from Canada Border Services Agency and the Canadian Security Intelligence Service, QMI Agency has learned.

The authorities interest in Jhanzab Malik, 34, grew substantially after he returned to Toronto’s Pearson International Airport in April 2013.

Malik came to Canada on a student visa in 2004 and became a permanent resident five years later after a marriage that has now ended.

The authorities gathered evidence that links Malik directly to violent extremism, its promotion and further evidence emerged that he was planning a violent terrorist attack on the U.S. Consulate building in Toronto.

According to a statement issued by the Immigration and Refugee Board Wednesday afternoon, Malik was allegedly a self-proclaimed supporter of the Islamic State and al Qaida. He allegedly planned to attack the U.S. consulate in Toronto and other targets in the city's financial district, an immigration review body heard on Wednesday.

He allegedly planned to carry out the attack using remote controlled bombs.

The Canada Border Services Agency (CBSA) is seeking his continued detention until he can be deported. The IRB ordered Malik's continued detention at a hearing Wednesday because he is considered a security and flight risk.

The CBSA said Malik told an undercover police officer he had attended weapons, combat and landmine training in Libya, and sought to build an explosive device for use in Toronto, the reports said.

He also claimed to have been a personal friend of Anwar al-Awlaki, a U.S.-born spokesman for al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula, who was killed in a CIA drone strike in 2011.

The accusations have not been proven. A CBSA investigation into the matter is still on-going.

Court records confirm Malik has faced assault and fraud charges in the past.

Those charges have been dealt with, according to a court clerk at Old City Hall, but the outcome was not immediately known.

Malik has no criminal matters currently before the courts.

The Canadian government is seeking to deport Malik as a security threat and the hearing at the Immigration and Refugee Board on Wednesday was held to determine whether he should be detained during the deportation process, which can take months.

Another Pakistani man suspected of militant links, Muhammad Aqeeq Ansari, is being held awaiting possible deportation.

Malik is expected to appear before the IRB next on March 16.

-- With files from Chris Doucette, Reuters​

Entrevista con Sebastián Marroquín el hijo de Pablo Escobar

AmericaTeVeCanal41

Why ISIS Murdered Kenji Goto

The New Yorker
By George Packer

www.cogninotech.com

Why did ISIS execute a second Japanese hostage? Before the beheading of the journalist Kenji Goto, Japan didn’t think that it was even in a fight with the Islamic State. All Japan had done was contribute a couple of hundred million dollars in humanitarian aid to countries fighting ISIS. Then the man who has come to be known as Jihadi John, the executioner with the London accent seen in several of the group’s videos, threatened death to every Japanese person on the planet as he prepared to slaughter Goto. As a result, a political scientist at the University of Tokyo told the Times, “The cruelty of the Islamic State has made Japan see a harsh new reality. … We now realize we face the same dangers as other countries do.” People in Japan are now calling Kenji Goto’s murder their 9/11.

Why did ISIS allow its negotiations with Jordan to collapse? Jordan’s 9/11 occurred on November 9, 2005, when Iraqi suicide bombers blew up fifty-seven people in three Amman hotels, including twenty-seven members of a wedding party. One of the wedding-bombing team was a newly married woman named Sajida al-Rishawi, whose vest failed to detonate, and who is currently held in a Jordanian prison under a death sentence. The failure of the talks—a potential deal might have involved trading Goto and/or the Jordanian Air Force pilot Moaz al-Kasasbeh, an ISIS captive, for Rishawi—has apparently turned public opinion in Jordan, which is fertile ground for infiltration by the Islamic State, against ISIS. For its trouble the Islamic State got no cash and no Sajida al-Rishawi, only worldwide revulsion. (Update: The barbaric burning alive of Lieutenant al-Kasasbeh by ISIS makes no tactical sense. Nor does the release, Tuesday, of a video of his death. It will only enrage Jordanians. The Islamic State did it, the organization stated, to gladden the hearts of “believers”—as a morale booster.)

Meanwhile, the group is running out of high-profile hostages whom it can use to threaten, extort, and terrify the world. (The hundreds of Syrian journalists and activists who disappeared in ISIS territory, the hundreds or thousands of Yazidi women taken into sexual slavery, the tens or hundreds of thousands of ordinary Syrians and Iraqis living against their will under the Islamic State’s control—none of them, unfortunately, have much influence over international opinion.) So what’s the strategy behind the beheadings, other than to lengthen the list of countries that now talk about “their” 9/11? Why would ISIS want to make more enemies than it already has?

Why, for that matter, would ISIS send thousands of its men to besiege Kobani, a strategically unimportant Kurdish town on the Turkish-Syrian border where more than a thousand ISIS fighters, including many foreigners, perished after months of street fighting and American air raids? The Kurds, having secured a bitter victory, regard the destroyed city, with justified pride, as their Stalingrad. (Based on the pictures, the comparison does not seem like a stretch.) The world owes the people of Kobani a debt, and in the coming years the battle might be seen as a crucial milestone on the road to Kurdish nationhood. But why would ISIS throw away a large fraction of its fighting force there?

Is the larger aim to control all the lands in the Tigris and Euphrates river basin? If so, why do Islamic State spokesmen have a habit of declaring war against millions of citizens of various far-flung countries—Japan, France—on YouTube and Twitter?

It’s natural to ask these questions. We want to understand the Islamic State’s thinking, to anticipate its next moves, to assess its relative strength. But ISIS keeps on defying ordinary questions. The Islamic State doesn’t behave according to recognizable cost-benefit analyses. It doesn’t cut its losses or scale down its ambitions. The very name of the self-proclaimed caliphate strikes most people, not least other Muslims, as ridiculous, if not delusional. But it’s the vaulting ambition of an actual Islamic State that inspires ISIS recruits. The group uses surprise and shock to achieve goals that are more readily grasped by the apocalyptic imagination than by military or political theory. The capture of Mosul last June shocked the Iraqi and U.S. governments; for a while, ISIS seemed to believe that it could even take Baghdad. The genocidal attack on the Yazidis of Sinjar, in August, shocked the conscience. The videotaped beheadings that began at the same time shocked the West. Last week’s decapitation shocked Japan. Sooner or later, it seems, everyone will have a turn. And yet, if the group thinks that it will intimidate countries into keeping out of or leaving the anti-ISIS coalition, its tactics have so far been a failure.

In the end, it isn’t very useful to hold ISIS to the expectations and standards of other violent groups. Even Al Qaeda admonished Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the founder of the Islamic State’s predecessor organization, Al Qaeda in Iraq, for his nasty habit of beheading hostages on camera. Why not a bullet to the back of the head, Ayman al-Zawahiri helpfully suggested from his hideout in the mountains along the Afghan-Pakistani border? But Zarqawi knew what he was doing, and he kept on, though he’s been vastly outperformed by his successors in ISIS. The point isn’t to use the right level of violence to achieve limited goals. The violence is the point, and the worse the better. The Islamic State doesn’t leave thousands of corpses in its wake as a means to an end. Slaughter is its goal—slaughter in the name of higher purification. Mass executions are proof of the Islamic State’s profound commitment to its vision.

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The reason the Obama admin will not define the Islamic Jihad

6 Times The Obama Administration Said Its Job Was to Promote Islam

Breitbart

by Ben Shapiro

On Thursday, White House press secretary Josh Earnest announced that the Obama administration would prioritize fighting Islamophobia in the aftermath of the terrorist attack on Charlie Hebdo in France. Never mind that most Westerners aren’t Islamophobic, but rather GettingShotInTheFaceForExpressingMyOpinion-Phobic.

The real problem, according to the Obama administration, is lack of leadership in defending Islam:

There are some individuals that are using a peaceful religion and grossly distorting it, and trying to use its tenets to inspire people around the globe to carry out acts of violence. And we have enjoyed significant success in enlisting leaders in the Muslim community, like I said, both in the United States and around the world to condemn that kind of messaging, to condemn those efforts to radicalize individuals, and to be clear about what the tenets of Islam actually are.  And we’re going to redouble those efforts in the days and weeks ahead.

This, of course, is not the first time the Obama administration has discovered a duty to illuminate the inherent beauty and wonder of Islam. Over and over again, the Obama administration, in high culturally imperialist dudgeon, has attempted to explain to the world the true meaning of Islam.

Here are five other examples:

President Obama, 2009: Immediately upon taking office, Obama did an interview with Al-Arabiya in which he explained that his job as president encompassed apologizing to the Muslim world for evil America, and explaining to Americans that Muslims are the cream of the religious crop:

My job is to communicate to the American people that the Muslim world is filled with extraordinary people who simply want to live their lives and see their children live better lives. My job to the Muslim world is to communicate that the Americans are not your enemy.

If you forgot the provision of Article II of the Constitution that gives the president the authority to do outreach on behalf of Islam in the United States, that’s because it doesn’t exist. But don’t worry: Obama’s on the job.

President Obama, 2009: In speaking about Islam at Cairo University on June 4, 2009 – a speech to which the Obama administration invited the then-banned Muslim Brotherhood – Obama stated:

So I have known Islam on three continents before coming to the region where it was first revealed.  That experience guides my conviction that partnership between America and Islam must be based on what Islam is, not what it isn’t.  And I consider it part of my responsibility as President of the United States to fight against negative stereotypes of Islam wherever they appear.

If you forgot the provision of Article II of the Constitution that places responsibility for fighting negative stereotypes of Islam in the hands of the executive branch, that’s because it doesn’t exist. But don’t worry: Obama’s on the job.

NASA Administrator Charles Bolden, 2010: Speaking with Al-Jazeera, the head of NASA explained that the mission of the space agency would now include outreach to Muslims:

When I became the NASA Administrator, [President Obama] charged me with three things. One, he wanted me to help re-inspire children to want to get into science and math; he wanted me to expand our international relationships; and third, and perhaps foremost, he wanted me to find a way to reach out to the Muslim world and engage much more with dominantly Muslim nations to help them feel good about their historic contribution to science, math and engineering.

If you forgot the provision of the National Aeronautics and Space Act that grants authority to NASA to make Muslims feel good about medieval contributions to astronomy, that’s because it doesn’t exist. But don’t worry: Obama’s on the job.

President Obama, 2012: In the aftermath of the murder of four Americans in Benghazi, Libya, President Obama took to the podium of the United Nations to condemn a YouTube filmmaker in the United States exercising freedom of speech:

[A] crude and disgusting video sparked outrage throughout the Muslim world.  Now, I have made it clear that the United States government had nothing to do with this video, and I believe its message must be rejected by all who respect our common humanity.
It is an insult not only to Muslims, but to America as well — for as the city outside these walls makes clear, we are a country that has welcomed people of every race and every faith.  We are home to Muslims who worship across our country.  We not only respect the freedom of religion, we have laws that protect individuals from being harmed because of how they look or what they believe.  We understand why people take offense to this video because millions of our citizens are among them….The future must not belong to those who slander the prophet of Islam.

If you forgot the provision of the First Amendment to the Constitution that gives the president of the United States the authority to officially criticize exercise of First Amendment rights under color of authority, that’s because it doesn’t exist. But don’t worry: Obama’s on the job.

Secretary of State John Kerry, 2014: Last year, as ISIS released video after video of the beheadings of Westerners, Secretary of State Kerry explained that his mission was to promote true Islam – which makes perfect sense, given his status as imam of Martha’s Vineyard:

[Our effort] has to start major efforts to delegitimize ISIS’s claim to some religious foundation for what it’s doing and begin to put real Islam out there and draw lines throughout the region.

If you forgot the provision of Article II that lends authority to the State Department to “begin to put real Islam out there,” presumably in violation of the separation of church and state, that’s because it doesn’t exist. But don’t worry: Obama’s on the job.

Even as the Obama administration pretends to push “true Islam,” the Obama administration completely ignored the words of Egyptian leader General Abdel Fatah al-Sisi, who just days ago called for a “religious revolution” in the Muslim world. Al-Sisi explained:

I say and repeat, again, that we are in need of a religious revolution. You imams are responsible before Allah. The entire world is waiting on you. The entire world is waiting for your word … because the Islamic world is being torn, it is being destroyed, it is being lost. And it is being lost by our own hands….It’s inconceivable that the thinking that we hold most sacred should cause the entire Islamic world to be a source of anxiety, danger, killing and destruction for the rest of the world. Impossible that this thinking — and I am not saying the religion — I am saying this thinking. This is antagonizing the entire world. It’s antagonizing the entire world! Does this mean that 1.6 billion people (Muslims) should want to kill the rest of the world’s inhabitants — that is 7 billion — so that they themselves may live? Impossible!

Al-Sisi seems significantly more qualified to lead an educational effort about Islam than Barack Obama. But for the Obama administration to recognize the truth of al-Sisi’s statement would suggest that their own ignorance about Islam has prevented them from effecting change for the past six years. And that is an admission that President Obama and his lackeys refuse to make, given their deeply held belief that Islam isn’t the problem in any way.

False rumor: Paris Attack Suspect Killed and Two in Custody, U.S. Officials Say

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The Death of Money: Project Prophecy 2.0

Money Morning

Pope Francis: 'Door Is Always Open' to Dialogue with ISIS

breitbart

By Thomas D. Williams, Ph.D. 

Asked whether dialogue with the Islamic State is possible, Pope Francis said it wouldn’t be easy, but that he would never rule it out. Pope Francis tackled this and other issues in his Q&A session with journalists on the plane returning to Rome from Strasbourg on Tuesday.

“I never consider something a lost cause, never,” Francis said. “Maybe we can’t have a dialogue, but never close the door. It is difficult, you might say ‘almost impossible,’ but the door is always open.”

The door may be open from the Pope’s side, but everything suggests that things look quite different from the side of ISIS.

On the cover of its October issue, the Islamic State’s online magazine Dabiq placed a doctored photo showing Saint Peter’s Square with its central obelisk flying a black flag, with the title: "The Failed Crusade."

The issue describes Islam’s “final crusade” with the bulk of jihad directed against “the cross-worshipping Romans.” This will be the case, it reads, “until their cross is broken by the Masih Isa.” It goes on to narrate a prophecy in which Islam crushes Christianity. Rome, it reads, “refers to the Christians of Europe and their colonies.” All events, the prophecy ends, “lead up to the final, greatest, and bloodiest battle between the Muslims and the Romans.” This battle “ends the era of the Roman Christians, as the Muslims will then advance upon Constantinople and thereafter Rome, to conquer the two cities and raise the flag of the Caliphate over them.”

Recent reports, in fact, suggest that threats to the Pope’s life are very real. Some have noted, for instance, that the Pope’s decision to live in the Santa Marta residence, while highly symbolic, is also risky. It is a hotel, after all, and receives everything from the outside: pasta, bread, meat, and other foodstuffs. Moreover, it is separated from Italy only by an old brick wall.

The Pope, however, bristles at the idea of greater security. In his visit to an outlying Roman parish of Tor Sapienza in December of 2013, the Pope said from the pulpit: “If anything about this visit has bothered you, like excessive security, know that I am not okay with that. I agree with you.”

Earlier this month, the Buenos Aires daily La Nación reported that Father Juan Carlos Molina, an Argentinian priest, had a recent personal conversation with Pope Francis, in which Molina said to the Pope, “Be careful, they could kill you.” Francis replied, “Look, it’s the best thing that could happen. To you, too.”

According to Father Molina, these were not words of resignation, but the Pope understands that “martyrdom” is part of his job description.

Who are the most wanted extremists in Canada?

CBC News

The government rarely offers details about Canadian extremists it believes pose a threat, but with the help of terrorism experts and using open sources of information, CBC News has pieced together a list of 18 Canadians accused of dangerous terrorist connections.

The same information is not publicly available from the RCMP or the Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS), raising questions about why Canadian law enforcement agencies aren’t more transparent about who is a threat to Canada and why.

"This is exactly how they operate," says Mubin Shaikh, an undercover operative for CSIS in the Toronto 18 terror case. "This is their style. You really have to squeeze it out of them to get any information."

See the list of Canadians with alleged terrorist links >>

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Saudi prince paid for 9/11 hijackers’ flight lessons

Mary Greeley

Ottawa Police Reach out to Islamist Groups After Terrorist Attack

The Investigative Project on Terrorism (IPT) 

Just after last week's terrorist attacks in Ottawa, the city's police chief Charles Bordeleau reached out to various Muslim leaders and organizations with questionable ties to radical organizations including the Muslim Brotherhood and Hamas, according to a report produced by the Canadian website Point De Bascule.

Sikhander Hashmi, the imam at the Kanata Muslim Association (KMA), acknowledged that Bordeleau contacted him to reassure the Muslim community in case of "backlash" from the terrorist attack. This perceived "backlash" remains to be seen. More significantly, the Ottawa Police Service overlooks connections between Hahsmi's organization and the Muslim Brotherhood infrastructure in Ottawa. That includes money it transferred to the Hamas-linked IRFAN-Canada in 2010, according to the Canada Revenue Agency (CRA).

IRFAN-Canada lost its charity status in 2011 following a CRA audit that exposed the organization as an "integral part" in Hamas' international fundraising infrastructure. The donations in question were sent between 2005 and 2009. Canadian authoritiesdesignated IRFAN-Canada as a terrorist organization earlier this year after determining the charity served as a front for Hamas, transferring close to $15 million to the terrorist organization.

The KMA also transferred money to the Islamic Circle of North America (ICNA), an organization linked to the Pakistani Jammat-e-Islami.

Moreover, Chief Bordeleau previously met with other controversial Muslim leaders in Ottawa. In January 2013, he met with Jalil Marhnouj, vice president of the Assunnah Muslims Association and other leaders affiliated with the Muslim Brotherhood network in Canada. The Assunnah Muslims Association transferred $29,880 to IRFAN.

Despite the Canadian government's acknowledged link between the National Council of Canadian Muslims (NCCM) and Hamas, the Ottawa Police Service maintains an extensive relationship with the controversial group. The NCCM, formerly known as CAIR-CAN, has trained Ottawa Police officers since February 2002, according to a Senate Committee testimony provided by a former Ottawa police chief. The NCCM is a recognized affiliate of CAIR, which has been identified by the FBI as part of a Hamas-support network in the United States.

Click here for the full Point De Bascule.

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Charlie Rangel [a Castro friend]: ISIS Is ‘Not a Threat to Our National Security’

Loyalty

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