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- Blows for Obama as key lawmakers come out against Iran deal
- Russia says no common approach yet with U.S. on fighting Islamic State
- Russia Is Main Suspect in Cyber Attack on Joint Staff's Emails, US Official Says
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Fri Aug 7, 2015 9:23am EDT
By Patricia Zengerle
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. President Barack Obama's hopes of preserving the nuclear deal between Iran and world powers were dealt a setback on Thursday when Chuck Schumer, one of the top Democrats in the U.S. Senate, said he would the oppose the agreement.
Schumer's opposition, announced in a lengthy statement, could pave the way for more of Obama's fellow Democrats to come out against the nuclear pact, announced on July 14, between the United States, five other world powers and Iran.
The New York senator is among the most influential Jewish lawmakers in the United States. He was the first Senate Democrat to announce his opposition to the agreement.
Another influential Jewish lawmaker, U.S. Representative Eliot Engel, the top Democrat on the House of Representatives Foreign Affairs Committee, also said on Thursday he would oppose the nuclear pact in a statement obtained by Reuters.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has been pushing lawmakers to oppose the nuclear agreement, which he considers a threat to his country's survival. Some pro-Israel groups have also been spending millions of dollars on an advertising campaign to push members of Congress to vote no.
Obama has been engaged in his own lobbying effort, including a combative speech on Wednesday in which he said abandoning the agreement would open up the prospect of war.
Speaking at a news conference on a visit to the Vietnamese capital, Hanoi, U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry, who negotiated the deal on the U.S. side, said he respected Schumer and Engel but added that "rejection is not a policy for the future."
"It does not offer any alterative and many people in arms control and others have actually pointed that out. While I completely respect everybody’s individual right to make a choice, I obviously disagree with the choice made," he said.
The U.S. Congress has until Sept. 17 to consider a resolution of disapproval of the Iran deal, which would eliminate Obama's ability to waive all sanctions on Iran imposed by the U.S. Congress, a key component of the agreement.
Lawmakers will begin debating whether to reject the deal when they return from their August recess on Sept. 8.
Schumer insisted he was not influenced by party or politics and had not been pressured.
"Advocates on both sides have strong cases for their point of view that cannot simply be dismissed. This has made evaluating the agreement a difficult and deliberate endeavor, and after deep study, careful thought and considerable soul-searching, I have decided I must oppose the agreement and will vote yes on a motion of disapproval," he said.
Obama has promised a veto if the resolution is passed by the House and Senate.
Republicans would need at least 13 Democrats in the Senate and 44 in the House to vote against Obama to muster the two-thirds majorities in both chambers needed to override a veto. So, while Thursday's announcements are a blow to the president, opponents of the deal still face an uphill battle to enact a disapproval resolution.
OTHER DEMOCRATS IN FAVOR
Several Democrats in the House and Senate have already come out in favor of the nuclear deal, including Nancy Pelosi, the House Democratic leader. Schumer's colleague from New York, U.S. Senator Kirsten Gillibrand, announced her support on Thursday and on Democratic Senator Tammy Baldwin on Friday released a statement saying she would back the agreement because it "will best serve America's national security interests."
A handful of House Democrats in addition to Engel have said they oppose the deal, including Representative Steve Israel, a member of the chamber's Democratic leadership.
Schumer said lawmakers would come to their own conclusions but that he would try to persuade other senators to vote against the Iran deal. Schumer is currently the No. 3 Democrat in the Senate and is in line to succeed Harry Reid as the party's leader in the chamber when Reid retires in early 2017.
A congressional aide said Engel would vote for a resolution of disapproval and also vote to override an Obama veto if the resolution passed Congress. However, Engel did not say he would lobby against the deal among other lawmakers.
Schumer's opposition was first reported by the Huffington Post. He said in his statement he opposed the nuclear deal because he believed Iran would not change and that the deal would let it eliminate sanctions while retaining "nuclear and non-nuclear power."
"Better to keep U.S. sanctions in place, strengthen them, enforce secondary sanctions on other nations, and pursue the hard-trodden path of diplomacy once more, difficult as it may be," Schumer said.
The White House had no immediate comment on Schumer's announcement, which was distributed by the Senate Republican leadership after it was released by his office.
The liberal group <a href="http://MoveOn.org" rel="nofollow">MoveOn.org</a> said its 8 million members would organize a "donor strike" to withhold campaign contributions from the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee as well as "any Democratic candidate who succeeds in undermining the president’s diplomacy with Iran."
(This version of the story corrects the date of deal announcement from July 1 to July 14 in paragraph two.)
(Additional reporting by Richard Cowan in Washington and David Brunnstrom in Hanoi; Editing by Ralph Boulton)
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By Reuters
Published: 08:17 EST, 7 August 2015 | Updated: 08:17 EST, 7 August 2015
By David Brunnstrom and Gabriela Baczynska
KUALA LUMPUR/MOSCOW, Aug 5 (Reuters) - Russia and the United States have been unable as yet to agree a common approach to fighting Islamic State insurgents, Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said on Wednesday after his second meeting with U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry in recent days.
But Lavrov said he and Kerry had agreed that Russian and U.S. officials would continue to work to find a common strategy for fighting the Islamist militant movement.
Russia has been trying to spur a rapprochement between the Syrian government and regional states including U.S. ally Saudi Arabia and Turkey to forge an alliance to fight Islamic State, which has taken large amounts of territory in Syria's civil war.
In urging wider cooperation to fight Islamic State, Russia says the jihadist movement's gains meant even those -- including Washington -- who oppose Moscow-backed Syrian President Bashar al-Assad should now join ranks with him against a common enemy.
"We all agree that Islamic State is the common threat, common evil. We agree that we need to join efforts to fight this phenomenon as soon and as effectively as possible," Lavrov said in comments carried by Russian state TV from Malaysia.
"For now we don't have a joint approach on how specifically we can do it given the stand-off between various players on the ground, including armed units of the Syrian opposition."
A senior U.S. State Department official said Lavrov and Kerry also discussed the Ukraine conflict and what steps needed to be taken to fully implement the Minsk Agreement calling for a ceasefire between Ukrainian forces and pro-Russian separatists.
Kerry and Lavrov were in Malaysia for meetings of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, and they held trilateral talks on the war in Syria with Saudi Foreign Minister Adel al-Jubeir in Qatar on Monday.
A Western diplomat in Moscow was sceptical that the Russian diplomatic initiative could bear fruit.
"This is another push in Russia's campaign to legitimise Assad in the eyes of the international community using the threat of the Islamic State," the diplomat said. "It would be a success for them to engage the Saudis with Damascus.
"But the Saudis won't be fooled into this and any real change of stance would be only made in sync with Washington where the presidential administration changes soon and Obama won't make such a major decision on his way out."
BUFFER ZONE
Kerry also met Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu in Kuala Lumpur on Wednesday afternoon and welcomed Turkey's recent decision to open its bases to U.S. air operations against Islamic State and its support for Syrian refugees.
The senior State Department official said Kerry also reiterated U.S. commitment to promoting conditions for a negotiated settlement to end the conflict in Syria.
At the beginning of their meeting, Cavusoglu was asked by a reporter when there would be an effective moderate Syrian opposition force in a buffer zone in northern Syria that Turkey and the United States aim to establish.
"Now we are training and equipping the moderate opposition together with the United States, and we will also start our fight against Daesh very effectively soon," he said, referring to Islamic State. "Then the ground will be safer for the moderate opposition that are fighting Daesh on the ground."
The State Department official said that at the Qatar meeting Kerry, Jubeir and Lavrov "acknowledged the need for a political solution to the conflict and the important role to be played by opposition groups in reaching that solution". (Editing by Robert Birsel)
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The U.S. believes Russia is the leading suspect behind a cyber attack that brought down portions of the Joint Staff’s unclassified email system for almost two weeks, according to a U.S. official.
The attack launched on the Joint Staff over the July 25th weekend "bears the hallmarks of a state actor," the official said Thursday. The official said Russia is suspected of being behind the attack, though that has not been definitively determined.
The U.S. intelligence community's worldwide threat assessment released in February listed Russia and China as "nation states with highly sophisticated cyber programs." Officials said the phishing attack was so sophisticated, only a nation-state could have been capable of launching it.
Defense officials said desktop access to the system was limited after the cyber intrusion was detected. The Joint Staff’s classified email system has not been affected.
Located in the Pentagon, the 2,500 military and civilian personnel on the Joint Staff provide support and planning for Army Gen. Martin Dempsey, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the president’s top military adviser.
Dempsey and the rest of the Joint Staff had access to their unclassified emails through workarounds and a mobile unclassified email system that was unaffected, said defense officials.
A senior Defense official said while more sophisticated attacks on the military’s computer networks have been blunted in the past, this cyber attack used an approach that had not been seen before. Pentagon spokesman Capt. Jeff Davis said Monday the U.S. military’s computer networks routinely come under cyber attack.
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Second, let’s push forward with all the soft power we can muster. The Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP), an agreement being negotiated between the United States and the EU, would be a boon to growth on both sides of the Atlantic but also a help strategically. One can certainly oversell TTIP’s importance on both fronts. But, that said, at a time when Russia is promoting its Eurasian Economic Union of authoritarian countries and is not shy about engaging in dubious deal-making within Europe, Washington and Brussels need to make it easier for the countries of the Atlantic community to deal commercially with each other and tighten business practices.
Soft power also includes information and media policy. We’ve now entered a seemingly endless debate over how to counter Kremlin-directed disinformation. Russian propaganda is proving successful in large part because we’ve left an open field. It’s time we turn the tables and see to it that Kremlin officials are spending more time fretting how Moscow ought to block our own public diplomacy and media campaign. There’s no need to answer Russian propaganda tit for tat. But we need to work closely with our European allies to tell the truth and, in turn, remind our own media that “balanced” reporting is not to be confused with “objective” reporting, especially when Moscow and its media surrogates are filling the Internet and airwaves with misleading stories and blatant lies.
Even more important, we need to use all the tools at our disposal to inform Russians about the roots and realities of Putin’s corrupt and kleptocratic rule. Putin has pumped up Russian nationalism to distract from a declining economy and the fact that he and his cronies are looting Russia, culturally, spiritually, and financially. If Putin is allowed to continue on his current path, Russians should know that their country will be left an empty shell, sullen, dysfunctional, and hungover for years to come. In short, we need to play the Russian nationalist card against Putin himself.
Third, we must have a strategy that includes hard power as a central element. It’s hard power that makes soft power useful and effective. Putin understands this. It’s why he’s winning in Ukraine and one reason his propaganda campaign appears to be effective so far. Putin needs to be seen at home and abroad as losing. It’s as simple as that, and it starts with Ukraine. Sanctions are an instrument of hard power that have shown they can bite. Sanctions alone, however, will not drive Russia out of eastern Ukraine. Only arms and training for Ukrainians can do that.
Others in the region want to defend themselves, too. Eastern European members of NATO—the Poles and the Balts foremost—welcome the administration’s recent decision to bolster their defenses with the rotation of troops and aircraft in the region and the stationing of modest amounts of equipment on their territory. But they fret privately that these measures are not nearly enough. We need urgent and careful preparation against sub-Article V threats coming from the cyber realm and the use of “little green men.” And the Article V commitment under NATO for collective defense needs more than rhetorical reassurance from alliance leaders; it also requires plans for putting in place substantial, well-armed, and well-trained forces for deterrence. All of which will require a decision by the allies to reverse the downward trend in defense spending and to do so faster than they have collectively pledged at recent NATO summits. Given the history of this issue, no one should expect a significant surge in allied military expenditures, but small steps ought to be possible.
Finally, we need a serious diplomatic effort to forge a common strategic vision with our partners in the EU. And the news on that front is not all bad: France has been relatively solid on Iran, trying to sober the Obama administration about Tehran’s capabilities and intentions. German chancellor Angela Merkel has led on sanctions against Russia over Ukraine in the face of German business interests. And the EU Commission has continued to push forward with policies designed to increase energy diversification to lessen the continent’s energy dependence on Russian supplies.
Still, American leadership matters. While the Iraq war did damage to our credibility, and our recent clumsiness over spying on allies hasn’t helped, the lack of leadership from President Obama has shocked even those European capitals that found his multilateral, postnational, dovish, and social democratic approach initially so appealing. Once again, Europe has been reminded of just how “indispensable,” to use the word of former secretary of state Madeleine Albright, the United States is in helping keep the world from changing in ways inimical to their interests.
None of this means the EU is waiting for the American sheriff to arrive and round up a posse. This is no longer the Europe of junior partnership we worked with during the Cold War. It will require a new way of talking, a new touch, and more listening on our part. Yet the crisis in Ukraine and the threat posed by ISIS to Europeans at home provide the occasion to begin to put transatlantic ties on a better footing. It’s doubtful our president will rise to the occasion. But those running to succeed him can make “getting Europe right” a policy priority for 2017.
Jeffrey Gedmin is a senior fellow at Georgetown University’s School of Foreign Service, senior adviser at Blue Star Strategies, and codirector of the Transatlantic Renewal Project. Gary Schmitt is resident scholar and co-director of the Marilyn Ware Center for Security Studies and director of the Program on American Citizenship at the American Enterprise Institute.
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In my current book, Takedown: From Communists to Progressives, How the Left Has Sabotaged Family and Marriage, I write of the phenomenon of Communist Party marriages. “Theirs was the first ‘party marriage’ that I observed,” wrote Whittaker Chambers in Witness, describing the decidedly non-sacramental marriage of two of his Communist Party comrades, before writing of his own “party marriages.”
From Marx and Engels, to Herbert Marcuse and Wilhelm Reich, to Betty Friedan and Kate Millett, to Bill Ayers and Bernardine Dohrn, our comrades on the far left have bequeathed a legacy of noxious ideas on marriage and family. Their political-cultural wreckage is being felt today more than ever. In many ways, it has come to full fruition only now in a culture that gleefully redefines marriage and gives us the likes of Barack Obama and Valerie Jarrett in the White House, a damaging political marriage if there ever was one. For seven years now at their home-base at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, Obama and Jarrett have been politically and ideologically inseparable. Their White House wedding has fundamentally transformed the country.
Sure, Barack’s matrimonial vow might be to Michelle, but his ideological soulmate has long been Valerie Jarrett. And both Barack and Valerie hail from a truly remarkable line of mentors and family members with deep fidelity to the American Communist Party.
Those political bloodlines are so stunning, so bizarre, especially when they intersect across the generations, that people often react dismissively when presented with the information. I’ve laid out the linkages probably more than anyone, mainly in a book on Obama’s mentor, Frank Marshall Davis, who was a hardcore member of Communist Party USA (card no. 47544) and in several major articles on Valerie Jarrett for The American Spectator, the first one running about 5,000 words and appearing in the July/August 2011 print edition.
Again, the common lines are just incredible—but they are real. And the connections get even more jaw-dropping when you toss in mentors for a third leg of the political trinity responsible for two presidential terms of Barack Obama, one David Axelrod. Axelrod was also influenced by comrades with fond commitments to Communist Party circles, and specifically in rotten, politically misbegotten Chicago. I’ve written of Axelrod’s background, too, for The American Spectator, including a cover piece in the March 2012 print edition.
So, why am I writing now? What’s the latest in this nightmarish political soap opera?
My latest offering here is prompted by the fine work of Judicial Watch, which has obtained by FOIA request the FBI files of three crucial figures who formed Valerie Jarrett, Obama’s most intimate adviser. The three are Jarrett’s father, James Bowman, her father-in-law, Vernon Jarrett, and her grandfather, Robert Rochon Taylor. Judicial Watch has posted these documents online, and I’ve suffered through them carefully with a mix of amazement, agony, and despair for what has happened in this country. They are at once disturbing and depressing, yet further confirmation that the most politically extreme individuals who once agitated and propagandized in our blessed country were able to place their political children as high as the White House in the 21st century. For the old comrades, it simply took time for the seeds to root and flourish—and only then with the harvest made possible by really oblivious American voters who don’t understand the ash-heap of ideological baggage they’ve permitted to be brought into the country’s first house.
I’ll first highlight what’s new in the Judicial Watch cache and then delve into some further connections and insights unique to my knowledge of these individuals and their associations.
What is new is that these files show the highly disturbing level of communist work and associations by no less than three men very close to Valerie Jarrett. They show beyond any doubt that our current president—who I’ve here described as our first Red-Diaper Baby President—has been steered by a longtime leading adviser who, without question, has the classic rearing of a red-diaper baby. Beyond that, the FBI files on Jarrett’s father, James Bowman, are the single biggest revelation. I was plainly not aware of the reservoir of radical activity by Bowman. In my previous research, I could find nothing on Bowman, though I found quite a bit on Vernon Jarrett and a small amount on Robert Rochon Taylor. The Bowman material is shocking.
And finally, though I did not see the name of Frank Marshall Davis, Obama’s mentor, in these files, I’m now even further certain that Davis would have not only known these men but worked closely with each. They were all in Chicago at the exact same time and all operating in the exact same close-knit circles of the city’s Communist Party generally and of a much smaller group of African-American communists specifically. Even tinier still, they were Chicago-based African-American communist writers, journalists, Party activists, and agitators. There is simply no way—no way—that James Bowman, Vernon Jarrett, Robert Rochon Taylor, and Frank Marshall Davis did not know and work together. Unimaginable. And thus, here’s an equally intriguing thought: There is simply no way that our nation’s political-ideological first couple, Barack Obama and Valerie Jarrett, have not had fond conversations reminiscing about this common ancestry. Boy, to be a fly on the wall for one of those rosy reminiscences down the old Party lane….
That said, here is a person-by-person breakdown of what the Judicial Watch material has unearthed, courtesy of the now publicly viewable FBI files, sprinkled with my own observations:
First, James Bowman. Born in Washington, D.C., February 5, 1923, Bowman eventually resided in Chicago and Denver before moving to Iran in 1955, where Valerie was born. The FBI files state that he attended Howard University from 1939-46, earning a bachelor’s degree in biology followed by a medical degree. He would work for at least two different hospitals in Washington before moving to Chicago to work for Provident Hospital. It was in Chicago that—like Frank Marshall Davis, like Barack Obama—Bowman earned his radical sea-legs and began his political path. He lived in Chicago from roughly 1947-53, precisely when Frank Marshall Davis launched his Chicago Star Communist Party-line newspaper.
Valerie’s father had numerous communist ties. He was a member of a front-group that is new to me, the Association of Internes [sic] and Medical Students, which Congress described as “an organization which has long been a faithful follower of the Communist Party line.” He was very active on the student front, including with the communist group, American Youth for Democracy, one of Frank Marshall Davis’ favorite organizations. Among other groups listed in Bowman’s file that were likewise favorites of Davis were the International Labor Defense and the awful American Committee for Protection of Foreign Born (ACPFB).
A few words on ACPFB: This group had been so extreme that the Democratic Congress’s huge “Investigation of Un-American Propaganda Activities in the United States” (published in 1944) devoted a lengthy 15-page section just to ACPFB, atop innumerable added references elsewhere in the report. Key members included prominent African-American communists Langston Hughes andPaul Robeson, the gushing admirer of Joe Stalin, plus the usual assemblage of duped liberals/progressives, ranging from theologian Reinhold Niebuhr, to the great Orson Welles, to famed movie actor Edward G. Robinson.
As the Congressional report noted, ACPFB “was founded by the Communist Party in order to exploit racial divisions in the United States for its own revolutionary purposes.” Its modus operandi was to polarize Americans along racial lines in order to advance the Soviet agenda. Closely linked to International Labor Defense, the primary (concealed) intention of ACPFB was to protect foreign communists who came to America and agitated for the Soviet Comintern. The core objective was to prevent deportation of these foreign-born communists living in America. One such figure was German communist Gerhart Eisler, who became a major CPUSA cause, and whose name was omnipresent throughout Frank Marshall Davis’s Chicago Star.
Few communist fronts so directly served Soviet interests. Quite deservedly, ACPFB was designated as a subversive group by the office of President Truman’s attorney general, Tom Clark.
It is no surprise that ACPFB remained the one group that Frank Marshall Davis embraced through his final stages of life. They were two peas in a pod. No other front so perfectly identified with Davis’s interests and public work, especially his shameless race-based political agitation on behalf of Moscow.
And so, James Bowman, according to his FBI file, likewise was involved with this group in some capacity, the details of which are not clear.
More specifically, Bowman’s file also refers to his involvement with the Abraham Lincoln School in Chicago, where Frank Marshall Davis not only taught at the time but also met his future wife, Helen, who was also a Party member. And most alarming, Bowman’s file states that he was in communication with a paid Soviet agent named Alfred Stern, identified as “one of the principal subjects in the MOCASE,” which was a Soviet espionage ring in the late 1950s run by Jack and Myra Soble. After being pursued for espionage in the United States, Stern in 1957 fled to the USSR and later settled in Prague, finding safe haven behind the Iron Curtain. He would serve as an adviser to Fidel Castro while living in Cuba for a time. He died in Prague in June 1986.
Finally, James Bowman appears to have been under special surveillance by the federal government because of his negative involvement with the European Recovery Program—i.e., the Marshall Plan. Most of the documents in his file list precisely the ERP as the subject of interest. A number of the documents are printed not only on letterhead from FBI headquarters, but apparently come directly from J. Edgar Hoover himself, including, for instance, a February 28, 1955 Hoover-signed memo and a March 2, 1955 “AIRTEL” cable from Hoover that is copied to a list of over a dozen of the highest-level bureau officials, including Clyde Tolson. Though I cannot be certain, they seem to suggest Hoover’s possible personal knowledge of Bowman.
This ERP/Marshall Plan association is very intriguing, and troubling. One of the most insidious forms of Communist Party agitation in the 1940s and 1950s was to frame the Marshall Plan as a form of vile American imperialism. It was the Kremlin line, pushed by Stalin and Molotov and mimicked by Communist Party USA. One of the worst peddlers of this line was Frank Marshall Davis, who characterized the Marshall Plan in his columns as a “device” to maintain “white imperialism.” The plan, by Davis’s rendering, was a disgusting “oppression of non-white peoples everywhere,” a slavery purchased by Secretary of State Marshall’s “billions of U.S. dollars… to bolster the tottering empires of England, France, Belgium, Holland and the other western exploiters of teeming millions of humans.”
Again, this was insidious, a crass communist smear of a historic act of American generosity, but it was what American communists like Davis, being loyal Soviet patriots, were pushing. Was James Bowman doing the same thing? I cannot tell from what Judicial Watch has released in his FBI file, but I can say that Bowman’s work for or position on the Marshall Plan was the item of special concern to the FBI.
In sum, Valerie Jarrett’s father had quite a political history, one that raises numerous questions.
Alas, one of Bowman’s comrades in his FBI file described him as a “healthy liberal.” Yeah, right. Just like Valerie and Barack are a couple of moderates.
Second, Vernon Jarrett. Likewise portrayed by the left as a mere liberal/progressive, Vernon Jarrett was born in Knoxville, Tennessee, June 19, 1918. He, too, ended up in Chicago in the tumultuous 1940s.
Valerie’s later father-in-law is aptly described by Judicial Watch as having been a “big-time Chicago Communist.” How big? Vernon Jarrett, like Frank Marshall Davis, was actually placed on the federal government’s Security Index. This meant that he could have been immediately detained or arrested in the event of a national emergency, such as a war breaking out between the United States and USSR—out of fear he would fight for the wrong side. That is no small accomplishment. It took some pretty prodigious anti-American activity to end up on that list.
According to the FBI file, Vernon Jarrett was a member of the Communist Party from at least 1946 through 1948. His file is so filled with communist groups and activities that it makes your head hurt. One 20-page FBI report, dated November 20, 1950, contains (on page 15) a claim from one informant “of known reliability” that Jarrett was even part of a “1946 Fund Drive” for the Communist Party.
If that claim is accurate, then Valerie’s father-in-law was not only a member of the Communist Party but helped raise funds for it.
Vernon Jarrett wrote for the Chicago Defender, a left-wing newspaper, and was even fired from theDefender in 1948 because of his blatant communist activities. Frank Marshall Davis also wrote for theDefender at this time, one of many places where he interacted with Valerie Jarrett’s later father-in-law. Other such places were American Youth for Democracy, the International Workers Order, the Progressive Citizens of America (which was an excellent magnet for communists to dupe naïve Hollywood liberals), the Progressive Party, the Civil Rights Congress, and ACPFB. In most to all such cases, Jarrett would have worked with Frank Marshall Davis and also with James Bowman, Valerie’s father. They were all in the same organizations in the same city at the same time, all portraying themselves as merry “progressives” when, in truth, they were hardcore communists. One more group where Jarrett worked with at least Davis (I’ve seen no evidence of Bowman in this group, at least not yet) was the communist-controlled United Packinghouse Workers Union, where the two worked on the publicity committee together.
When I read old copies of the Chicago Star a few years back for my book on Frank Marshall Davis, I do not recall coming across the name of Vernon Jarrett, who the FBI file describes as a frequent “free lance writer for Negro publications,” especially in Chicago’s left-wing ones. I would bet my house, however, that Jarrett wrote for Davis’s newspaper under an alias, which was common for communists. (To cite just one instance, the famed author Arthur Miller, a communist, wrote for communist publications under at least two pseudonyms.)
Tellingly, one of Jarrett’s close political pals, Metz Lochard, was among the investors in the so-called “Progressive Publishing Company” that in September 1948 bought the Chicago Star from Frank Marshall Davis, clearing the way for Davis to immediately move to Honolulu, where he would continue his Party work there and eventually embrace a young man named Barack Hussein Obama.
It was glorious Chicago, where the American Communist Party was born in September 1919, that was the political fairyland that made these arrangements possible.
Bringing this back to Valerie Jarrett and her immediate kin, there were so many connections between her later father-in-law, Vernon Jarrett, and her father, James Bowman, that I’m prompted to wonder if the two comrades introduced their son and daughter, respectively. Was Valerie’s marriage to William Robert Jarrett, Vernon Jarrett’s son, a Party marriage of some sort? I concede my ignorance of how Valerie and her husband met (they divorced after only a few years), but I can say that their parents surely knew one another in Chicago’s Communist Party extended family.
In fact, the circle of commie match-makers was wider still: Vernon’s wife, Fern Jarrett, according to informants quoted in the FBI file, was also a Communist Party member.
Finally, Robert Rochon Taylor. The maternal grandfather of Valerie Jarrett was the first African-American head of the Chicago Housing Authority. His wife, Dorothy, born in Berkeley, California, was active in Planned Parenthood, the organization founded by racial-eugenicist Margaret Sanger, who,as I’ve written about here before, spoke to the KKK in 1926 and had hideous racial views and programs.
In my past research, it was not clear to me if Robert Taylor was a communist or a liberal/progressive duped and exploited by communists. I did not have enough information. The information secured by Judicial Watch, however, shows Taylor to be another serious communist.
A March 18, 1955 AIRTEL cable, included among the declassified FBI documents, connects Robert Rochon Taylor (as well as James Bowman, his son-in-law) to Alfred Stern, the Soviet agent accused of espionage who fled to the Communist Bloc. The cable states that Taylor “had been in contact with Stern on a number of occasions.” Another document, an FBI memo dated April 22, 1955, states that Taylor “had numerous contacts with Alfred K. Stern.” More than that, a March 31, 1955 AIRTEL cable describes Taylor as a “former business partner of Alfred K. Stern.”
The files also reveal Taylor’s connections to the likes of William Patterson, the prominent African-American communist—who was a mentor to Frank Marshall Davis, Obama’s mentor—and to the Abraham Lincoln School.
I had already suspected Taylor’s link to Patterson, before reading the Judicial Watch material. A few years ago I found the name “Robert R. Taylor” of Chicago in Congress’s 1944 report “Investigation of Un-American Propaganda Activities in the United States.” On pages 609 and 2,100 of the voluminous report, Taylor was flagged for his participation in the “Arrangements Committee” that organized the July 1939 Chicago Conference on Race Relations. Congress investigated this conference because of the presence of nationally known communist figures, including William Patterson, who was also on the Arrangements Committee.
Taylor’s FBI file confirms and amplifies such relationships. It lists him as no less than a member of the advisory board of the Chicago Civil Liberties Committee, a front-group which Frank Marshall Davis frequently worked for, and, interestingly, as a “member of the Sponsoring Committee for a reception of Howard Fast” that was held in Chicago in November 1944. The Fast item is a definite red flag—figurative and literal. Howard Fast was the illustrious Stalin Prize winning “journalist” who was the most common op-ed contributor to Frank Marshall Davis’s Chicago Star.
Overall, the Judicial Watch collection has less on Taylor than it does on James Bowman and Vernon Jarrett, but what it does contain is eye-opening.
So, to sum up, what should we make of all of this? Historically, it is quite valuable. But how politically relevant is it today?
I’ll conclude with my usual caveat essential for liberal readers and their flare for knee-jerk reactions: No, none of this—obviously—means that Barack Obama and Valerie Jarrett are closet card-carrying members of the Communist Party, even as their political ancestors literally were.
Yet, we can say this: These two political soulmates are farther to the left than any ideological couple ever to run the White House, making Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt look like right-wingers by comparison. Why is that? Do we care to ask, to try to ascertain? The answer isn’t rocket science.
If you want to understand how Barack and Valerie got so far to the left, or, better, started so far to the left, then you need to look—as any historian would—to their biographical-political ancestry, and especially to some common roots in Chicago, original home of the American Communist Party and the political home of men like Frank Marshall Davis, James Bowman, Vernon Jarrett, and Robert Rochon Taylor. To ignore these radical backgrounds in the intellectual development of Barack Obama and Valerie Jarrett would be downright stupid, and would constitute the kind of willful blindness that liberals eagerly impose upon themselves when they dare not want to expose the nasty skeletons in the “progressive” closet.
In short, if you want to understand just how and why our political first couple’s politics are so skewed left, and where Barack Obama and Valerie Jarrett fully came from, you need to stop and gaze at this ideological car-wreck along their road to the White House. Their work at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue is the consummation of lifetimes of political-ideological experience. The influence of these figures in their early lives can indeed be overstated, but they should not be understated. It would be ludicrous to ignore these disturbing backgrounds as if they were completely inconsequential.
All of this matters. Liberals, in their hearts, know that it does. If, say, a George W. Bush and Karl Rove had had political ancestors with this kind of baggage tilted to the extreme right, every liberal in America would know about it and would have used it to torpedo Bush’s election to the White House.
And yet, the saddest thing of all is that the vast majority of Americans generally, let alone liberals, could not give a damn about this. Their eyes are willfully covered as they pull the lever. And as they remain blind, the fundamental transformation of America continues.
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A jury will hear closing arguments in the trial of a Russian military veteran charged with leading a Taliban attack on U.S. forces in Afghanistan.
 TIME |
Republican debate: Second-tier candidates battle for break-out moments
Washington Post Seven low-polling Republican candidates all needed to create a breakout moment in Thursday night's early, undercard Republican debate. After 80 minutes, it wasn't clear if any of them had. The best performance of the early debate came from former tech ... Carly Fiorina: First Phone Calls to Iran/Israel If ElectedWall Street Journal Second-Tier Republicans Can't Break Through During 'Happy Hour Debate'TIME Second-tier candidates try to punch above their weight in Republican ...Los Angeles Times Newsweek -Politico -Boston.com all 59 news articles » |
Russia is suspected of launching a cyber-attack against a Pentagon email network
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(KABUL, Afghanistan) — Authorities in Afghanistan say a suicide car bomb has exploded in the capital Kabul, killing four people and wounding 85 others.
Deputy Interior Minister for Security Affairs Mohammad Ayuob Salangi said the bomb exploded near a government compound.
Dr. Fida Mohammad in the emergency unit of Ibnisina Hospital said early Friday that the injured include 15 children and 20 women. He said most of the injuries were caused by flying glass.
Tribal Officials Gratified FBI Monitoring Shooting Case
ABC News Riverton Police Chief Mike Broadhead said his agency has turned over investigative files on the detox center shooting to the FBI and will continue to update the federal agency on progress of the case against Clyde. His agency had little information ... and more » |
Tyler Drumheller, CIA officer who exposed US reliance on discredited Iraq ...
Washington Post Tyler S. Drumheller, a high-level CIA officer who publicly battled agency leaders over one of the most outlandish claims in the U.S. case for war with Iraq, died Aug. 2 at a hospital in Fairfax County. He was 63. The cause was complications from ... |
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The FBI has issued an alert about Middle Eastern men approaching the family members of individuals serving in the U.S. military at their homes.
“On numerous occasions,” the FBI confirms, “family members of military personnel were confronted by Middle-Eastern males in front of their homes. The males have attempted to obtain personal information about the military ...
Sen. Chuck Grassley minced no words in declaring that the federal government's chief law enforcement agency must follow the law like everybody else. “The FBI is not above the law,” the Iowa Republican said during a ...
Wall Street Journal |
Feds to Oversee Nation's Largest, Scandal-Ridden Jail System
Governing Last June, federal officials stated their intent to seek the agreement in a strongly worded reportthat described a spike in jail suicides, many of which they termed "preventable." Sheriff Jim McDonnell, who took office in December and previously ... After years of scandal, LA jails get federal oversight, sweeping reformsLos Angeles Times L.A. County jail reforms coming to protect inmates from excessive force, suicideMyNewsLA.com L.A. County Sheriff's Department agrees to sweeping reforms in jailsLA Daily News FOX 11 Los Angeles all 80 news articles » |
As much as Hillary Clinton and her presidential campaign try to spin the just-announced FBI probe into the former secretary of state's email practices as not that big a deal and just a fact-finding exercise, the true nature of the ...
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Tallahassee.com |
Hiaasen: We simply sit and wait for the next massacre
Tallahassee.com “We're all sick this happened,” FBI director James B. Comey said. Sick is the word for it. Thousands of ineligible applicants for gun ownership have bought weapons over the counter, thanks to that loophole. Big surprise — some of those weapons were ... and more » |
PennLive.com |
Chairman of judiciary committee says Kane should step down
PennLive.com Chairman of judiciary committee says Kane should step down. Ron Marsico. House Judiciary Committee Chairman Ron Marsico has called on embattled Attorney General Kathleen Kane to resign. (Mark Pynes, PennLive.com/file). Print Email · Teresa Bonner ... and more » |
RT |
'Jade Helm' plot uncovered in North Carolina, FBI says
RT Federal officials say three men arrested in North Carolina were stockpiling weapons for a murderous plot against US soldiers. According to the FBI, the trio believed a Special Forces exercise dubbed Jade Helm 15 was a pretext for imposing martial law. Gaston County man said he wanted to shoot up FBI, agent saysCharlotte Observer all 14 news articles » |
Russian hackers apparently carried out a cyber attack against the unclassified email system of the Joint Chiefs of Staff in late July, according to news report Thursday citing unnamed officials.
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An explosion probably triggered by a suicide bomber ripped through a mosque used by Saudi police killing at least 13 people in the southern city of Abha, the interior ministry said.
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US Media: Russian Hackers Hit Pentagon Email Systemby webdesk@voanews.com (VOA News)
U.S. media are reporting that hackers based in Russia penetrated the email network of the Pentagon's Joint Chiefs of Staff, leading to a two-week shutdown of the system. Media outlets quoted Pentagon officials who confirmed the cyberattack. NBC, which first reported the story, said it was not clear if the attack was sanctioned by Russia's government or was the work of individuals. The attack occurred around July 25 and affected about 4,000 military and civilian...
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Funeral service for slain Memphis police officer attended by thousands
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BRASILIA (Reuters) - Allies of Brazil's President Dilma Rousseff have turned to her opponents to talk about filling what they see as a damaging leadership vacuum after losing confidence in her ability to pull the country out of an economic tailspin, party insiders said on Thursday.
1945 | Witnessing the A-Bomb, but Forbidden to Fileby By DAVID W. DUNLAP
David W. Dunlap tells the story of The Times’s coverage of the development and dropping of the atomic bomb, 70 years ago.
Russia has bulldozed a pile of Western-produced cheese and tonnes of other foodstuffs imported in violation of sanctions - sparking an outcry in the country.
Opening night: With first debate, Republicans' bid to reclaim White House begins in earnest
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The top 10 Republican candidates, including Donald Trump, are gearing up for their first debate of the US 2016 election.
Last week (July 30), at a press conference in the newly furnished National Defense Center, on the Frunsinskaya embankment in downtown Moscow, Deputy Defense Minister Anatoly Antonov (60) presented the defense ministry’s latest major PR project: the opening of the First Army Games International, which are planned to last until mid-August. The Army Games were conceived as a type of international military Olympics, at which tank and air crews, paratroopers, seamen, and other soldiers compete in various exercises and show off in a public spectacle. These military games were, reportedly, personally “invented” by Russia’s minister of defense, Army-General Sergei Shoigu. In August 2013, Russia held its first “tank biathlon,” and later these types of competitions spread to other branches of the military (Rbcdaily.ru, August 14, 2013). According to Antonov, “The [August 2015 Army Games] demonstrate the futility of attempting to isolate Russia—some 17 nations will be competing is some 14 different events” (TASS, July 30).
Only the Chinese military brought to Russia its own military hardware, including ZTZ-96A (Type 96А) tanks and WZ501 (Type 86) armored vehicles, while all the other teams from developing countries and former Soviet republics are using Russian T-72 tanks and equipment. The deployment of modern Chinese armor in exercises near Moscow and in other events of the Army Games may provide the Russian military with an important opportunity to assess the technical and tactical capabilities of the People’s Liberation Army (PLA), while also giving the PLA a chance to directly compare its weapons and the training of its men with its Russian counterparts (Interfax, July 29).
Speaking at the press conference at the start of the Army Games, Antonov announced that some 34 participants were invited, including major Western militaries, “but NATO [the North Atlantic Treaty Organization] did not come to visit.” According to Antonov, this is regrettable: “It would be great to have an American general with us and Western crews participating in the games.” Antonov expressed hope that someday, militaries from Western Europe and the United States will come to openly compete, adding, “We are ready to go to their national testing grounds to compete.” Antonov announced he is planning to meet the US ambassador to Moscow, John Tefft, to ask, why the US team is ignoring the Army Games. Antonov pressed on: “Maybe it is time we, the military, help the politicians move on, end the confrontation and stop viewing each other through the crosshairs of our tanks. Enough sulking, let us move on and work together. There is no alternative to international cooperation” (TASS, July 30).
Antonov is a top career diplomat; in 2011, he was attached to the Ministry of Defense as a deputy defense minister overseeing international relations. Last February, Antonov was added to the list of Russians sanctioned by the West for their role in the Ukrainian crisis. Antonov told Russian TV these sanctions “are very stupid […] one day they [the European Union] will decide to restore relations, but with whom will they begin talks, while I am in the sanctions list?” (RIA Novosti, March 19).
This week, on August 5, there was an official ceremony in Moscow, at the German ambassador’s residence, for the departing German military attaché, Brigadier General Reiner Schwalb, the longest-serving military attaché accredited in Moscow. The longest serving foreign military attaché is officially recognized by the Russian authorities as the Dean, or Doyen, of the Diplomatic Military Attaché Corps. The Doyen of the military attaché Corps, as well as the longest serving ambassador—or Doyen—of the entire Diplomatic Corps, play an important functional as well as ceremonial role in Moscow diplomatic life, serving as representatives of all the accredited diplomats, organizing joint events and serving as intermediaries in time of diplomatic crisis. The event on August 5, was also a meeting of the Moscow association of military attachés (MAMA) to honor Schwalb and other departing military attachés from different nations and to welcome new arrivals. Antonov did not send anyone to be present—indeed, there was no Russian official representation at all at the departure ceremony of the Doyen of the Diplomatic Military Attaché Corps in Moscow. A Russian official told Jamestown, on the condition of anonymity, that this was an unprecedented breach of protocol, unparalleled even during the Cold War.
As a career diplomat, Antonov surely understands how essential it is to always keep lines of communication open at all different levels, including military-to-military (mil-to-mil). Antonov’s presentation at the Army Games press conference might appear to be an attempt to overcome the present mil-to-mil tensions between East and West. But in reality, it was just another PR pitch. De facto East-West diplomatic relations have been downgraded; though no one has yet been officially sent home or recalled, the lines of communications have been closing—especially the mil-to-mil contacts. Russian officials are boycotting the Americans and now, apparently, the Germans, too.
The ceasefire in the eastern Ukrainian region of Donbas, between Ukrainian and pro-Russian forces, has unraveled: Though the front line is more or less motionless, shelling and fighting is constant, while talks to find a political solution are deadlocked, with both sides blaming each other (Vzglyad, August 6). The Moscow ruling elite seems to be bracing itself for a showdown with the West. A summer camp school has been organized by the Kremlin in the Vladimir oblast, northeast of Moscow (the opening was visited by President Vladimir Putin), to indoctrinate thousands of young scientists, IT workers, political activists, journalists and teachers. Lecturing to more than a thousand mostly provincial young journalists at the camp school, state TV Rossya-1 channel’s main evening news anchor, Ernestas Mackevičius (46), declared that before the new cold war began, he followed international journalistic standards, but not anymore: “Recall the journalism of 1942 [during the war with the Nazis]—no one provided differing points of view or gave the other side a chance to speak.” According to Mackevičius, Russian journalists must be “mobilized to fight in the information war—let us first win, and then we may begin to criticize the authorities for wrongdoing” (Kommersant, August 5).
In the 1990s, Mackevičius, born in Lithuania, was a reporter for the independent NTV channel, which indeed strived to promote quality news reporting. Some eight years ago, in the 2000s, Mackevičius, already working at Rossya-1, told Jamestown he was sickened by the on-air falsehoods, but had a family to support. Today, the time of doubt is over: fabricating vicious propaganda is being bluntly acknowledged as a patriotic virtue.
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Events at the end of 2014 appeared to indicate that the end of the Caucasus Emirate (CE) was near. That was when the leaders of the CE regional branches in Dagestan, Chechnya and Ingushetia switched sides by taking an oath of allegiance to Islamic State (IS) leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi (seeEDM, June 18). The position of the Kabardino-Balkarian jamaat on the issue remains unclear. It was assumed that the remaining supporters of the CE would resist the change, especially after Sheikh Abu Usman Gimrinsky (Magomed Suleimanov) became the CE’s new leader. Gimrinsky strongly opposed recognizing Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi as the caliph of all Muslims (Kavpolit.com, June 4), regarding the “caliph” as a rogue and the henchman of the enemies of Islam. Given the attitude of the CE leader toward those of his former associates who pledged allegiance to al-Baghdadi—as people who were deceived by the Islamic State—it is hard to expect a compromise between the CE and the IS in the North Caucasus.
Despite the departure of some of its best trained top- and mid-level commanders, such as Abu Muhammad Kadarsky (Rustam Asilderov) and Khamzat Chechensky (Aslan Byutukaev), among many others, the CE is attempting to remain afloat by setting up parallel structures of the underground Islamist resistance in Dagestan. As is well known, al-Baghdadi’s press secretary declared the Caucasus to be a province of the IS (Lenta.ru, June 24). Thus, it seems that, by claiming the North Caucasus, the IS must also deal with the Islamic rebels in that region who oppose them, meaning the IS “caliph” is dealing with another territory like Syria. The IS in the North Caucasus is supposed to fight not only the “enemies of Islam,” such as Russia, but also those disgruntled militants who do not recognize Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi as their caliph.
As part of the reorganization of the CE, the leader of the organization in Dagestan, Said Abu Muhammad Arakansky has appointed Abu Abdulla Kasumkentsky as the amir of Dagestan’s Southern Sector. Little is known about Kasumkentsky, apart from the fact that he originates from Kasumkent, a village known for supplying CE rebels in past years. The village is also known for its Salafi mosque, which challenges the Sufi orders in southern Dagestan.
Even more interesting was the earlier appointment by Dagestan’s rebel amir, Said Abu Muhammad Arakansky, of Abu Duzhdanu al-Gimri as amir of Dagestan’s Mountainous Sector, which includes the territory that was under control of the current CE amir, Abu Usman Gimrinsky (Kavkazcenter.com, July 29). Abu Duzhdanu al-Gimri is known as one of the few militants who fought in Syria and returned to Dagestan. According to news sources close to the CE, al-Gimri received instruction in Sharia and Arabic from authoritative sources in Syria beginning in 2003, graduating from the al-Tahzib Wa Ta’alim institute of sharia, in Damascus, and then returned home. When the conflict between Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and the opposition started, he went to Syria again, this time to fight. Al-Gimri was most likely part of the group of emigrants from the North Caucasus under the command of Umar Shishani. Al-Gimri also was a member of Islamic State for some time, and is well-versed in religion and has experience fighting in Syria. He is thus practically an ideal candidate to become a future leader of the CE. Knowing the politics of the IS from within, al-Gimri is likely to counter their onslaught, especially that led by IS North Caucasus amir Abu Muhammad Kadarsky.
The CE’s leader, Amir Abu Usman Gimrinsky, appears to have established his own network of amirs in parts of Dagestan: Abu Abdulla is the amir of southern Dagestan, Abu Duzhdanu al-Gimri the amir of the Mountainous Sector, and Umar Balakhansky is the amir of the Central Sector. Several less well-known militants have also received appointments. The CE is setting up parallel structures only among its Dagestani rebels; no similar processes are observed now among the Chechens, the Ingush or the Kabardinians. The jamaats of the Chechens, the Ingush and Kabardino-Balkarians are hardly comparable to the Dagestani jamaats, which probably outnumber all other North Caucasian jamaats put together.
Amir Salahudin Shishani, who led the CE’s unit in Syria for two years, pledged allegiance to new CE amir Abu Usman Gimrinsky despite the conflict Salahudin Shishani had with his group (Warsonline.info, July 13). Thereby, Salahudin Shishani confirmed that his unit was structurally a part of the North Caucasian resistance movement. Having set up a new group from scratch, amir Salahudin has continued to be allied with the Jabhat al-Nusra organization in Syria and is actively seeking alliances with other Chechen commanders, first of all with amir Muslim Shishani (Muslim Margoshvili) and amir Abdulkhakim (Rustam Ashiev).
The regrouping of the armed Islamist resistance in the North Caucasus has not ended yet. This is equally true about both the groups that joined the IS and those that remained in the ranks of the CE. Both groups have the same objective: to wait and draw plans for the future. Both groups in the North Caucasus will have to show what they can do and take actions that will make those in the Middle East take them more seriously.
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Leading members of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee threatened on Thursday to subpoena all documents related to the State Department’s production of its annual human trafficking report amid accusations that the agency inflated assessments for several strategically important countries.
Sen. Bob Corker (R., Tenn.), chairman of the committee, said at a hearing that the body will seek all information about the alleged politicization of the 2015 Trafficking in Persons (TIP) Report, including department emails, letters, and memos.
“If that is not forthcoming immediately, my sense is the committee would take the very unusual step of subpoenaing that information,” he said.
Reuters reported this week that senior political leaders at the State Department overruled the agency’s trafficking experts on the rankings of 14 countries’ efforts to combat the modern slave trade, an unprecedented number in the TIP report’s 15-year history. U.S. officials have sought to increase engagement with several of the countries that received more flattering scores than analysts recommended, including China, Cuba, and Malaysia—all nations that have been accused of sponsoring or failing to crackdown on forced labor and prostitution.
Sen. Robert Menendez (D., N.J.), a former chairman of the committee, raised the prospect of an investigation by the State Department’s inspector general into the creation of this year’s TIP report.
“If there was an inspector general investigation, or some other investigation, would your answers hold up in emails, memos, letters and all other communications?” he asked before posing further questions to Sarah Sewall, the department’s under secretary of state for civilian security, democracy, and human rights.
Menendez expressed particular concerns about the rating for Malaysia, which was upgraded from the worst ranking, Tier 3, to Tier 2 in this year’s report. He noted that the Malaysian government only recently strengthened its anti-trafficking laws in June, well after the conclusion of the department’s reporting period at the end of March.
While the TIP report mentioned that Malaysian authorities were implementing measures to curtail the sale of humans, it did not address the discovery in May of dozens of migrant graves near the country’s border with Thailand—likely holding trafficking victims from Bangladesh and Myanmar.
“You won’t reflect those things that are negative after the reporting period,” Menendez said.
Sewall said that “there are a variety of ways Malaysia has been responsive over the reporting period.”
“[Secretary of State John Kerry] signed off on the tier ranking of Malaysia because of his belief that Malaysia has taken the steps to change,” she said.
The TIP report also noted that Malaysian authorities convicted just four traffickers on forced labor or passport retention charges last year, compared to nine convictions in 2013.
Critics of this year’s report allege that the State Department upgraded Malaysia’s score due to political concerns related to the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), a landmark free trade agreement that the Obama administration is currently negotiating with several Asian countries. President Obama signed a bill into law in June that permits a “fast-track” process or simple up-or-down vote on the TPP in Congress, but the legislation also included an amendment—authored by Menendez—that prohibited considerations of Tier 3 countries in a trade deal.
The State Department has denied the accusations of politicization and says its officials “engage in iterative, fact based deliberations on the annual trafficking in persons report.”
Menendez also highlighted the case of Cuba, which was also elevated to Tier 2. He said there had been “no progress” on ending forced labor, including coerced foreign medical missions for Cuban doctors. He noted reports of “the Cuban government keeping over 70 percent of the wages provided to them by the World Health Organization.”
“The 2015 TIP report also states that Cuba is a source country for adults and children, some as young as four years old, subjected to sex trafficking,” he said.
Sewall defended the administration’s pursuit of closer relations with Cuba, noting that it resulted in the government providing more information about the trafficking situation in the country. She also said that Cuba had made progress on convicting sex traffickers and assisting victims.
Corker was visibly frustrated with the answers provided by the State Department.
“This is possibly the most heartless, lacking of substance, presentation I have ever seen about a serious topic,” he said. “I don’t see how anybody could believe that there was integrity in this process.”
He added that the 2015 report would encourage countries to intensify their lobbying efforts for higher trafficking grades in the future, in exchange for meeting other U.S. objectives.
Menendez said he “took to heart” Kerry’s recent comments that, “we all need to be true to the principle that although money may be used for many things, we must never allow a price tag to be placed on the heart and soul and the mind of a living person.”
“I don’t know that we didn’t pervert that lofty goal by a report that, clearly seems to me, has been politicized in a way that is not justifiable,” Menendez said.
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Ukraine’s government has failed to properly adapt to the reality of Russia’s energy blockade. Just like at this time last year, Ukraine’s power plants are currently short of coal, ahead of the heating season, which begins in October, and no natural gas is being imported from Russia. Ukraine’s coal industry has been ruined by the war with Russia-backed militants, which continues in the main coal-mining region of Donbas, while the government is short of funds to import enough coal from abroad to compensate for the losses. The situation is similar as far as gas is concerned—Crimea’s annexation by Russia, combined with the war in Donbas, have spooked investors in the gas industry, while Ukraine is short of funds to store enough gas ahead of winter. Energy Minister Volodymyr Demchyshyn is likely to become the scapegoat as a major government reshuffle looms for next fall.
Ukraine’s coal production more than halved in the first half of 2015, according to the Ukrainian Statistics Committee (Ukrstat.gov.ua, accessed on August 5). Coal stocks at thermal power plants shrank to 1.32 million tons by early August, compared to more than 3 million tons a year ago (Forbes.ua, August 5; Ukrenergo.energy.gov.ua, August 3). Blackouts across the country, experienced by Ukraine last December, will repeat next winter if Ukraine fails to import enough coal on time, Demchyshyn has warned (Ostro.org, August 3).
The situation is exacerbated by Ukraine’s obligation to the International Monetary Fund, which is bailing out Ukraine, to abolish subsidies to the chronically loss-making state-owned mines. Demchyshyn suggested that the government should resume subsidizing coal mines in 2016, arguing that otherwise Ukraine would continue to lack coal. The state-owned mines are expected to produce 40 percent less coal in 2015 than the government hoped early in the year, because nothing is being invested in development or equipment, said Demchyshyn (Unian.net, July 30).
Speaking at the government’s ad hoc energy crisis committee, on August 3, Demchyshyn said 500,000 tons of coal should be urgently imported from the United States, South Africa and Russia by the middle of October. Ukraine has been importing coal since last year, but apparently not enough to replenish coal stocks, as the government lacks the funds due to the economic crisis. The government has urgently requested the state-owned bank Oshchadbank to lend some $90 million for coal imports (Gordonua.com, August 3). In the meantime, Ukraine continues to rely on coal deliveries from the rebel-held areas in Donbas, despite the government-imposed economic blockade of these territories. This is inevitable: only 35 out of Ukraine’s 95 coal mines are located in government-held areas, and these are not the best mines.
Ukraine’s thermal power plants use both coal and natural gas. For industry, gas is more important, and it is likely to consume more gas toward the end of 2015 as the economy is bottoming out (UNIAN, April 27). However, Ukraine stopped importing natural gas from Russia on July 1, because no agreement on gas prices in the third quarter was reached. Ukraine also did not import gas from Russia in July–October 2014. Commenting on the results of the June 30 trilateral Ukraine–Russia–European Union gas talks, the European Commission’s Vice President for the Energy Union, Maros Sefcovic, said the parties were far apart (Eubulletin.com, July 2).
Kyiv, which expected a price of around $200 per 1,000 cubic meters of gas, given the falling oil prices, rejected the Russian price offer of $247. But Ukraine has to pump more gas into its underground storage facilities to have enough next winter, both for its own needs and to ensure uninterrupted Gazprom deliveries to the EU via Ukrainian pipelines. Demchyshyn said after the talks that Ukraine could do without Russian gas in preparing for the winter. He estimated that even by buying gas from the EU only, Ukraine would have more gas underground than it had at the start of the 2014–2015 heating season (Segodnya.ua, July 2). However, Ukraine does not have enough money to buy gas from the EU, either. The government hopes to borrow some $1 billion for this purpose. Speaking after a recent visit to the US, Demchyshyn said $600 million was expected from the World Bank Group (Rbc.ua, July 16). However, only the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development has thus far agreed to lend Ukraine $300 million for gas imports (UNIAN, July 14).
Meanwhile, storm clouds are gathering over Minister Demchyshyn, an appointee of President Petro Poroshenko in the government chaired by Poroshenko’s political rival, Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk. Speaking at a round table to discuss energy problems in Kyiv, on August 4, Yatsenyuk’s deputy Valery Voshchevsky said Demchyshyn could be replaced next fall (Censor.net.ua, August 4). Yatsenyuk has been at odds with Demchyshyn ever since his appointment as energy minister last December. He threatened to fire Demchyshyn for poor performance already several weeks into the job (Segodnya.ua, December 30). It has been rumored that Demchyshyn favors Russian energy businessman Konstantin Grigorishin, who is influential in the Ukrainian energy sector, which is out of tune with the de-oligarchization campaign proclaimed by Poroshenko (Hromadske.tv, April 15). It is difficult to see, however, how the dismissal of a minister can help the government resolve the multiple problems it is currently facing in the energy field.
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· · ·
The academic journal Perspectives on Terrorism has released its latest issue, which focuses on the rise of ISIS. With features from a host of jihadist and terrorism experts, including Lawfare contributor Aaron Zelin and Brookings fellows Charles Lister and J.M. Berger, the issue's fourteen articles promise to be excellent reading for those interested in the ongoing "intellectual catch-up effort" toward understanding the Islamic State, particularly its structure, religious ideology, and strategic and political goals. The full issue can be found here.
Below is an introduction to the issue from its editors, Thomas Hegghammer and James Forest.
This special double issue is devoted entirely to the so-called Islamic State (IS), presenting 14 research articles on various aspects of the organization, in addition to an extensive, specially compiled bibliography on IS. The articles are products of a conference on IS held in Oslo on 11-12 June 2015. The conference was organized by the Norwegian Defence Research Establishment (FFI) and funded by the Norwegian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and it brought together leading specialists on IS, jihadism, and civil war along with senior policymakers and government analysts from several countries.The motivation for the conference – and for this special issue – was that our understanding of IS is lagging behind the group’s battlefield advances. After a wave of studies on al-Qaida in Iraq in the mid-2000s, the academic community largely dropped the ball on the group’s later incarnations ISI and ISIS until it burst onto the global stage last summer with the capture of Mosul. The past year has seen a substantial intellectual catch-up effort, not unlike that mounted for al-Qaida in the early 2000s, but we still have a long way to go.The articles cover a broad range of topics and questions pertaining to IS as an organization. All of the articles were completed in July 2015 and are therefore unusually up-to-date as far as academic publishing goes.The issue opens with two articles (by Charles Lister and Thomas Hegghammer/Petter Nesser) that address two of the most pressing questions today, namely, how is the military campaign against IS going, and how much of a terrorist threat to the West does IS pose?The following three papers place IS in a historical and comparative perspective. Brynjar Lia looks at IS as the latest in a decades-long series of jihadi state-building efforts, Stathis Kalyvas asks what the comparative study of rebel groups of can tell us about IS, while Truls Tønnessen examines the relationship between IS and its historical predecessors.We then move on to ideology and propaganda with J.M. Berger’s article on social media and millenarian beliefs, Iain Edgar’s study of the night dreams of IS fighters, Aaron Zelin’s analysis of one week of IS propaganda, and Joas Wagemaker’s study of the concept of bay’a (allegiance) in IS’s ideology.The next three articles are concerned with how IS operates. Scott Gates and Sukanya Podder ask how IS deals with the organizational challenges that come with having many foreign fighters, Aymenn al-Tamimi presents a detailed analysis of the IS administration and bureaucracy, and Kirk Sowell takes a detailed look at IS’s military and political operations in Ramadi and Fallujah.The last two articles speak to the question of whether containment is a viable alternative strategy against IS. Jamie Hansen-Lewis and Jacob Shapiro evaluates the long-term sustainability of the IS economy, while Clint Watts evaluates and pros and cons of a strict containment approach.The final item in this issue is a comprehensive bibliography of IS compiled by Judith Tinnes. We are confident that these contributions will be of interest and use to scholars and policymakers seeking to understand the Islamic State.
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IS affiliate claims responsibility for Saudi police bombingby ABDULLAH AL-SHIHRI and AYA BATRAWY
RIYADH, Saudi Arabia (AP) - An allegedly new Islamic State affiliate in Saudi Arabia claimed responsibility for a suicide bombing at a mosque inside a police compound in the country's southwest on Thursday that killed at least 15 people, most of them members and recruits of the kingdom's special forces.
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Following warnings from top military officials about the growing threat of cyberattacks on Defense Department networks, it was revealed Thursday that Pentagon was forced to take its Joint Staff unclassified email system offline last month after it was accessed by alleged Russian hackers.
The system has been shut down since ...
The Federal Bureau of Investigation is turning toward counseling as an alternative approach to jail to deal with would-be Islamic State recruits in the United States.
The Wall Street Journal reported:
Federal and local officials working on counterterrorism say the logistical challenges posed by Islamic State’s propaganda—its slick online messages are readily available to anyone—make it difficult to address the problem solely through traditional investigations. Proponents of the intervention model say it provides a possible “off ramp” from radicalization and addresses a hard truth: The FBI cannot effectively investigate all of the thousands of Americans who are believed to be interested in Islamic State.
The counseling alternative is particularly geared toward possible teenage Islamic State (IS, also known as ISIL or ISIS) recruits, who are difficult to prosecute under the federal criminal justice system.
“Nobody wants to see a 15-year-old kid go to jail if they don’t have to,” insisted one official behind the effort, claiming that the FBI will continue to investigate a possible suspect even after recommending he or she undergo counseling. If the individual is ultimately deemed dangerous, he said, officials would choose to arrest the subject.
Nevertheless, former FBI counterterrorism agent Peter Ahearn expressed alarm at the idea.
“I get the principle, but there are a lot of potential problems with this, and I think it’s a wrong move,” Ahearn said. “I’m not saying it shouldn’t be done but it shouldn’t be done by the FBI. That’s not the mission.”
Officials foresee 10 percent or less of the individuals undergoing investigation in cases of possible terrorism receiving recommendations for counseling. But the number could reach into the hundreds, as the FBI currently has thousands of cases involving possible terror suspects.
A spokesperson for the Department of Homeland Security, which is partnering with the FBI on efforts to fight violent extremism, said, “DHS believes successful interventions will be ones conducted with the appropriate participation of community leaders, educators, mental health professionals, religious leaders, parents, peers and law enforcement, depending on the specific circumstances.”
This isn’t the first instance of leaders suggesting alternatives to jail for suspected would-be Islamic State recruits.
Last month, Muslim leaders in Minnesota–a hot recruitment spot for terrorists–argued that the best way to discourage Somali-Americans caught trying to join the IS from embracing radical Islam is to allow them to remain in their communities while awaiting trial.
Rep. Keith Ellison (D., Minn.), himself a Muslim, spoke in favor of such a design, saying, “If you integrate them back into their family relationships and you have responsible faith leaders, then that’s going to be the check on them that they need.”
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At least 17 people have been killed after a military helicopter crashed in Afghanistan's southern Zabul Province, police sources say.
Saudi warplanes have carried out attacks against civilian targets in the northwestern Yemeni province of Sa'ada.
The Russian Navy expects to receive the first Kamov Ka-52K (Katran) ship-borne helicopters in 2017-2018, a high-placed source in the Navy's Main Headquarters told TASS on Thursday.
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A new Islamic State affiliate claimed responsibility Thursday for killing 15 people in a suicide bombing at a Saudi mosque used by security forces.
A US Defense Department think tank has estimated that modernization of the existing US nuclear arsenal is likely to cost Washington nearly $1 trillion over the next 30 years, which is way more than what the Pentagon can currently afford.
A briefing by the United Nations' nuclear watchdog left U.S. senators 'less assured' than before about the Iran nuclear deal, Senate Foreign Relations Committee chairman Bob Corker said August 5.
EU's failure to provide legal options for desperate migrants is feeding organised crime in Italy, warns anti-mafia mayor of Palermo
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NBCNews.com |
Russia 'strongly suspected' of new Pentagon cyberattack
Fox News Russia is “strongly suspected” of being behind a sophisticated cyberattack against the Pentagon's Joint Staff email system, Defense Department officials told Fox News on Thursday. “The incident bore the hallmark of a state actor,” a Pentagon ... Russia believed to be behind Pentagon's Joint Staff email breachCBS News Russia reportedly hacked Pentagon computersQuartz Russian Cyber Attack Targets Pentagon Email Systems: OfficialsNBCNews.com U.S. News & World Report -The Week Magazine -Sputnik International all 51 news articles » |
French customs agents make record hashish seizure on Caribbean island of Martinique
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Homeland official asks information security crowd to start building trust with the government
World
Russian President Vladimir Putin meets with members of the Russian team taking part in the 16th FINA World Championships in Kazan, Russia, July 24. Mikhail Klimentyev/RIA Novosti/Kremlin
Vladimir Putin’s favorability rating in Russia stands at an impressive 88 percent. Unfortunately for the Russian president, this adoration ends at the country’s borders.
That’s according to a new study by the Washington, D.C.-based Pew Research Center, which found that Putin and Russia as a whole are not viewed very favorably across the world. In 39 countries across five continents—excluding Russia—only 30 percent of people polled had a favorable opinion of Russia, while 51 percent held an “unfavorable” view of the country. Putin’s image suffered a worse fate: Just 24 percent of those surveyed have confidence in the Russian leader to make the right decision in world affairs.
Pew polled 45,435 people in 40 countries, including Russia, between March 25 and May 27, asking them questions about how much confidence they had in Putin and Obama to do “the right thing” in world affairs.
U.S. President Barack Obama is viewed in a more positive light in all regions polled. Africa has the most confidence in President Obama, according to Pew, with 77 percent of people saying they trust him to do the right thing in world affairs. At 32 percent, Africa also has the most confidence in Putin’s ability on the world stage.
In Jordan and Poland, 80 percent of people viewed Russia unfavorably, the largest percentage in the poll. “Public opinion in Jordan may be influenced by Moscow’s current support for the regime of President Bashar al-Assad in Syria, Jordan’s neighbor and the source of hundreds of thousands of refugees in Jordan,” the study says. More than four years after the start of the Syrian civil war,650,000 Syrian refugees now call Jordan home.
Japan, Israel, Germany and France also have strong anti-Russian feelings, as does Ukraine, where 72 percent view Russia unfavorably, according to the study.
Putin’s approval rating hit 86 percent in Russia, according to a poll by a Russian research organization, although author Ben Judah told CNN that the number was more a result of fear of dissent than actual approval. In March 2015, one year after Russia’s annexation of Crimea from Ukraine, celebrations were held across Russia to mark the event. Putin told crowds gathered in Moscow’s Red Square that Russia and its people “demonstrated an amazing focus and amazing patriotism by helping the people of Crimea and Sevastopol to return to their home shores.”
Nearly 70 percent of people in the U.S. view Russia unfavorably, although Americans aged 50 and older were more likely than to have a negative view of the country than those aged between 18 and 29. Americans’ view of Putin has dropped over the past 12 years, from 41 percent favorability in 2003 to 21 percent in 2015. Russians have returned the favor, with confidence in Obama at “Bush-era lows,” according to Pew. Only 11 percent of Russians have confidence in Obama today and 8 percent had confidence in President George W. Bush in 2003.
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