U.S. humanitarian aid going to the Islamic State

Robert Spencer / Jihad Watch

 

Does Obama not know this? Or does he just not care? Certainly the latter would be in line with his foreign policy, which has been consistent since the day he took office.

“U.S. Humanitarian Aid Going to ISIS,” by Jamie Dettmer, The Daily Beast, October 19, 2014:

GAZIANTEP, Turkey — While U.S. warplanes strike at the militants of the so-called Islamic State in both Syria and Iraq, truckloads of U.S. and Western aid has been flowing into territory controlled by the jihadists, assisting them to build their terror-inspiring “Caliphate.”

The aid—mainly food and medical equipment—is meant for Syrians displaced from their hometowns, and for hungry civilians. It is funded by the U.S. Agency for International Development, European donors, and the United Nations. Whether it continues is now the subject of anguished debate among officials in Washington and European. The fear is that stopping aid would hurt innocent civilians and would be used for propaganda purposes by the militants, who would likely blame the West for added hardship.

The Bible says if your enemy is hungry, feed him, and if he is thirsty, give him something to drink—doing so will “heap burning coals” of shame on his head. But there is no evidence that the militants of the Islamic State, widely known as ISIS or ISIL, feel any sense of disgrace or indignity (and certainly not gratitude) receiving charity from their foes.

Quite the reverse, the aid convoys have to pay off ISIS emirs (leaders) for the convoys to enter the eastern Syrian extremist strongholds of Raqqa and Deir ez-Zor, providing yet another income stream for ISIS militants, who are funding themselves from oil smuggling, extortion and the sale of whatever they can loot, including rare antiquities from museums and archaeological sites.

“The convoys have to be approved by ISIS and you have to pay them: the bribes are disguised and itemized as transportation costs,” says an aid coordinator who spoke to The Daily Beast on the condition he not be identified in this article. The kickbacks are either paid by foreign or local non-governmental organizations tasked with distributing the aid, or by the Turkish or Syrian transportation companies contracted to deliver it.

And there are fears the aid itself isn’t carefully monitored enough, with some sold off on the black market or used by ISIS to win hearts and minds by feeding its fighters and its subjects. At a minimum the aid means ISIS doesn’t have to divert cash from its war budget to help feed the local population or the displaced persons, allowing it to focus its resources exclusively on fighters and war making, say critics of the aid….

Op-ed: 
Aiding and Abetting...and A Virus Called Ebola
By: Diane Sori

Oh dear...Barack HUSSEIN Obama...the very man who recently said his job includes protecting Africa and Africans...has now decided...without Congressional approval I might add...to admit Ebola-infected persons who are NOT American citizens into our country for high tech medical care and treatment. And guess who gets to foot the bill for this...'We the People' and our taxpayer dollars do.

Guess what Obama...our taxpayer dollars are NOT supposed to be used to bring those with a deadly disease into this country...period.

Planning to initiate what he calls "special waivers" to bypass existing laws and regulations that strictly prohibit the admission of non-citizens with a communicable disease...any communicable disease...into our country...Obama is going against his very oath of office where he swore to protect the health, safety, and welfare of the American people.

And if that wasn't bad enough we now have yet another of Obama's infamous and totally useless czars lording over us. Ron Klain, an attorney, party loyalist, and political crony of his...is a man who is NEITHER an infectious disease specialist nor a public health specialist...yet he is the very one Obama just appointed as his administration’s "Ebola response coordinator"...just fancy words for czar. And there's even more ludicrousness to this appointment as in guess who Klain will report to...NONE other than the 'wicked witch' of the Sunday morning talk show circuit...former U.N. ambassador, current National Security Advisor, and the very one who said Army deserter and Taliban 'wanna be' Bowe Bergdahl served with honor and distinction....you got it...Susan 'The Video Caused Benghazi' Rice.

Reporting also to Lisa Monoco of Homeland Security on the way up the food chain to answering to Obama himself, Klain has NO credentials whatsoever to be a czar of anything...and please see my RIGHT SIDE PATRIOTS partner and friend Craig Andresen's article at  http://www.thenationalpatriot.com/2014/10/19/liberals-have-the-mad-cow-over-ebola/ to see just how unqualified he really is. And you just know the reason he was picked is NOT only because he thinks Obama walks on water but because he is a master of the cover-up as well...as are most lawyers who currently orbit or did orbit around Obama...as in Eric Holder and Hillary Clinton to name just two.

Klain's responsibilities, according to the White House, are to "make sure that our efforts to protect the American people do NOT distract from the commitment Obama made to stopping Ebola in West Africa," but pray tell why should we be the ones that have to stop the virus in West Africa when to do this would mean a total clean-up of countries that wallow in filth and unsanitary conditions...the perfect medium for Ebola to thrive...countries with governments that do little to NOTHING to help their own people...and would cost countless millions if NOT billions of our taxpayer dollars to do so...to stop a virus that naturally waxes and wanes in its own due time as it has done many times before.

Simply, we should NOT.

And while it's one thing to send humanitarian and medical aid to the countries infected, it's quite another thing to put Africa's and Africans welfare ahead of the welfare of the American people...and this has NOTHING to do with race or color as the race-baiters like Eric Holder, Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton love to claim, especially when their own neighboring African countries have locked down their borders to their fellow Africans from these so-called 'hot zones.'

“We can’t just cut ourselves off from West Africa...trying to seal off an entire region of the world—if that were even possible, could actually make the situation worse,” Obama said in his weekly radio address.

Oh YES we can and NO it will NOT make the situation worse...period.

Locking down their borders...African countries wisely know this is the best way to contain the virus until it naturally burns itself out yet this is the very thing Obama refuses to do...refuses to do because it would mean temporarily stopping all flights in and out of West Africa. Claiming that stopping the flights would prevent CDC health officials from being able to track people with symptoms...claiming that the stopping of flights would only delay the inevitable spread of the virus in order to make 'We the People' feel a bit safer for a few weeks...claiming that stopping the flights would become a logistical nightmare and could slow efforts to get critical medical supplies into West Africa...and claiming a flight stoppage could destabilize the economies of the very countries at ground zero of the current outbreak...Obama just does NOT get that 'We the People' do NOT give a damn about his excuses as we are more concerned about keeping Ebola out of this country than we are about his bloviations as to why we should NOT and will do the obvious.

And let's NOT forget that in our case locking down the borders goes beyond just stopping flights in and out of West Africa as it also means the immediate lock down of our unsecured southern border for it's been reported that hundreds of ILLEGALS from 'hot zone' countries have come across said border in recent months.

Locking down our borders to flights as well as to 'foot traffic' is the logical step to take, but when we are up against a man who simply does NOT get the fact that we Americans rightfully want to protect both ourselves and our families from those who arrive in our country from these 'hot zones,' we are sadly coming up against a dangerous political whore of sorts...a political whore who does NOT in the least care about those in his charge for he has sold out to those who are the enemy of his charges. And that selling out is witnessed by the total absurdity of screening passengers via temperature checks and interviews that he knows will in NO way catch those currently asymptomatic NO matter how much he tries to claim it will.

Unfortunately, this president...this political whore...thinks it's best NOT to stop his brethren of sorts...diseased as they might be...from entering our country. Willingly choosing to put the lives of over three hundred plus million Americans in medical danger by letting them in...by looking away...Obama is knowingly and maliciously 'aiding and abetting' the spread of Ebola while NOT giving a damn once again about the health, safety, and welfare of the American people who are the ones in his charge...as in those in Africa are NOT.

And to that affect I wonder if criminal charges of sorts could be brought against Barack HUSSEIN Obama for his failure to put in place the very travel restrictions and border closings that have successfully worked to stop the spread of the virus to the countries that one would logically assume would see it spread into...and could that be why Obama appointed a lawyer as his Ebola czar for he knows this distinct possibility could become a here and now reality as more and more Americans become infected with Ebola through NO fault of their own...but through complete and total fault of the very man who was supposed to protect them from harm.

Can you say law suits times hundreds or possibly times thousands.

Something to think about the next time the media reports that someone else has now contracted Ebola...someone that perhaps might be a person you know or love...just saying.

A MUST read...

FORT BRAGG , NORTH CAROLINA

OBAMA STOPS SOLDIER FROM SPEAKING

Something you'll want to be aware of: Sent by Retired Vice Admiral Bob Scarborough, of Arlington, VA.

"I wanted to give all of you some disturbing information on our wonderful president. I work with the Catch-A-Dream Foundation, which provides hunting and fishing trips to children with life-threatening illnesses. This past weekend we had our annual banquet/fundraiser event in Starkville.

As a part of our program, we had scheduled Sgt. 1st Class Greg Stube to come; he's a highly decorated U.S. Army Green Beret and inspirational speaker who was severely injured while deployed overseas and didn't have much of a chance for survival. Greg is stationed at Ft. Bragg , NC and received permission from his commanding officer to come speak at our function.

Everything was on go until Obama made a policy that NO U.S. SERVICEMAN CAN SPEAK AT ANY FAITH-BASED PUBLIC EVENTS ANYMORE. Needless to say, Greg had to cancel his speaking event with us. I don't know if anyone else was aware of this new policy.

You're just starting to see the Obamanation. This is just how the Nazis did it in the 1930's -- slowly, one step at a time.

This should be forwarded to everyone regardless of party affiliation! We have lost 50% of our freedom of speech in the last 2 years. The news media is not allowed to print anything negative about this evil regime.

Robert D. Sinacola
COL (Ret), AVN, USAR

IRS Still Not Getting the Message

Bruce Bialosky / Townhall Columnist

You might think that with the scandal surrounding the IRS and the resulting budget cuts that have hampered their activities that the organization might become more aware of its procedures and adjust them to appear more customer friendly. If what happened this past week is any indication then they are still living somewhere in the ozone.

Most Americans think of April 15^th as the final day for filing their personal income tax return. That is so for most people, but a large part of the population files an extension that allows them to file their return by October 15^th as long as all their taxes are paid by that April 15^th date. Some people are waiting for documents from third parties, others want extra time to make a contribution to a pension and then there are those who are guilty of the sin of procrastination. I am sure you know the type – give them an extra day to do something and they will take it. With no further relief valves October 15^th can be quite manic for tax preparers.

That is why when we received this message from our tax software service we were quite taken aback; “The Internal Revenue Service’s electronic filing system will be shut down for maintenance from October 11-13 reopening sometime on October 14^th.” I contacted some colleagues who were just as stunned. They expressed they were mystified as to what the IRS was thinking shutting down this close to the end of tax season. One then informed me that not only is the IRS system for electronic filing (required for all tax preparers and the predominant means of filing all tax returns today) shut down, but their system for electronic payments would be inoperable also. Many taxpayers today either prefer electronic payments or may be required to do such.

I contacted the IRS Press Office to get some answers as to why they would choose such an inappropriate time to do maintenance on their system. I spoke to a staff person who asked me to email him. I sent him a series of questions. I am not quite sure why they wasted my time doing that because after waiting five hours I was not given an opportunity to speak to anyone or actually have my questions answered. What I received was a canned response; “This is an annual three-day maintenance window needed to ensure critical systems are ready for the upcoming 2015 filing season. As many know, the IRS has frequently used the Columbus Day holiday period to minimize impact on the tax community as much as possible. We regret any inconvenience this may cause.

A Thousand Times More Dangerous Than ISIS

Ken Blackwell / Townhall Columnist

 

Editor's Note: This column was coauthored by Bob Morrison. 

Several years ago, the Israeli satirical series, Latma, produced this funny sketch on the Iranian mullahs’ push for a nuclear bomb. “The bomb, the bomb, I’ll get the bomb. Listen to me, Honey, it ain’t gonna be too long” sings the frolicking mullah in the online version of this humorous look at a most serious subject.

The Israelis can joke about an Iranian nuclear bomb because they are on the front line. They know what it would mean. They don’t go on and on about “stability” in the Middle East the way our State Department types do. There hasn’t been stability in the Mideast in our lifetime and there is no likelihood of stability being achieved there in the future. All the Western journalists’ gushing about the “Arab Spring” has produced not one country with a semblance of stability, freedom, or genuine change.

Egypt has settled down for the moment into a familiar pattern of military dictatorship.

Hosni Mubarak maintained his dictatorship for three decades the same way Tsar Nicholas II had maintained his autocratic rule in Russia. The Tsar embraced the democratic Western nations. He happily took billions in aid from the democracies. But at home, he unleashed his brutality.

Now, we hear the Obama administration is negotiating with the Iranians in an attempt to stop their nuclear weapons program. “We know each other well enough to make jokes.” says a State Department spokesman in this story in the Weekly Standard.

They joke about the “peace process” because it is a joke. Nothing is clearer than that the Obama administration has no serious commitment to stopping Iran from getting the bomb. Negotiators are supposedly trying to give Iran freedom to develop nuclear energy for peaceful purposes without allowing them to go ahead with construction of a nuclear weapon. The truth is that if Iran has nuclear power plants, it can readily produce nuclear weapons.

Left unasked are key questions. Why should the No. 1 state sponsor of terrorism in the world be allowed to develop any nuclear capacity? Even without an atomic bomb, the radioactive waste that is produced by every nuclear power plant could easily be used to create a so-called dirty bomb. That would be an explosive device that spreads deadly radioactivity in any Western capital city. Another key question is this: Why should one of the world’s leading oil producers be allowed the fiction that they need nuclear energy for peaceful purposes? Iran’s record since 1979 abundantly shows the ruling mullahs have no peaceful purposes.

Israel’s Ambassador to the United States, Ron Dermer, recently put the Mideast turmoil in perspective. “A nuclear Iran would be a thousand times more dangerous than ISIS,” the envoy told guests at his suburban Maryland home.

Sharia in NYC: City Council Members Demand our AFDI Ads Come Down, MTA Says No, “Our Hands are Tied”

Pamela Geller / Atlas Shrugs

Free speech — ain’t that a kick in the head, NYC City Council?

The fascists and totalitarians on the useless, bloated NYC Council have tried to impose their vicious agenda on freedom-loving New Yorkers by demanding that the NYC MTA take our ads down. Not concerned with the very real threat this city faces as the number one target of jihadists worldwide, they want instead to silence any criticism of our savage enemies who have vowed to attack New York.

If only the NYC Council was focused on keeping us safe instead of squandering millions of taxpayer dollars serving special interest supremacists and demagogues.

This is the poison fruit of a leftwing political machine that holds this great city hostage. Boss Tweed and Tammany Hall...

Read the whole entry »

     

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Former Iraqi pilots train Islamic State fighters to fly MiG jets

Robert Spencer / Jihad Watch

 

Coming soon: the Islamic State Air Force. The Iraqi pilots are motivated to do this by an ideological affinity with the Islamic State. “Former Iraqi pilots train Islamic State fighters to fly MiG jets,” Associated Press, October 17, 2014:

BEIRUT — The Islamic State group is test flying, with the help of former Iraqi air force pilots, several fighter jets captured earlier from air bases belonging to the Syrian military, a Syrian activist group said Friday.

The report by the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights in Britain could not be independently confirmed, and U.S. official said they had no reports of Islamic State militants flying jets in support of their forces on the ground.

The new development came as the Islamic State group in Iraq pressed its offensive on the strategic city of Ramadi, west of Baghdad.: Their advance on the Syrian city of Kobani, however, has stalled as the militants have been forced to retreat on several fronts, shifting the monthlong battle increasingly in favor of the Kurdish fighters defending the city, according to commanders and Kurdish and U.S. officials. Dozens of air strikes this week by the U.S.-led military coalition killed hundreds of Islamic State fighters, allowing Kurdish units to regain territory, said Gen. Lloyd Austin, head of the U.S. Central Command on Friday.

The Observatory said the planes, seen flying over the Jarrah air base in the countryside of Aleppo province in eastern Syria this week, are believed to be MiG-21 and MiG-23 jets. Rami Abdurrahman, director of the Observatory, said the planes have been flying at a low altitude, “apparently to avoid being detected by Syrian military radar in the area.”

He described the flights as a “moral victory” for the Islamic State group, saying “the jets could not fly much further without being knocked down by the (international) coalition.”…