The corporations profiting from North Korean belligerence : FP Passport

• blog.foreignpolicy.com
• John Hudson
• April 12th, 2013
• view original

North Korean aggression is a drain on South Korea's economy, but it's a boon for the defense contractors looking to flood the peninsula with new weapons systems.

As Seoul awaits a possible North Korean missile launch this week, the country is watching its benchmark KOSPI become Asia's worst-performing index this year. At the same time, stocks for defense contractors with existing business ties with Seoul are surging.

These firms are currently vying to equip South Korea with a mix of radar systems, fighter jets, drones, and missile defense systems, and include everyone from Boeing to Lockheed Martin to Northrop Grumman to Raytheon to BAE Systems. While the South's major acquisition decisions are made with a long-term view, Pyongyang's apocalyptic rhetoric doesn't exactly hurt the efforts of silver-tongued weapons salesmen. We took a quick glance at the market valuation of the firms we're talking about on Thursday.

Not bad. And how about the stock peformance since Pyongyang's belligerence began in March?

Even better. The below graph features a blue line representing the above defense stocks and a red line representing the S&P 500. Despite the fact that the S&P is having a record-breaking month, it's no match for surging investor interest in defense stocks in the wake of Pyongyang threats:

So what do these companies have to gain? Here's a breakdown of the existing and future bids these firms are trying to lock down with South Korea:........

Wikileaks releases trove of secret US cables

Wikileaks releases trove of secret US cables - Americas - Al Jazeera English:

Whistleblowing website publishes 1.7 million US documents from 1973 to 1976, including many written by Henry Kissinger.

The files, which include communications from former US officials, are also available on US national archives databases [WikiLeaks]

Whistleblowing website WikiLeaks has published more than 1.7 million US diplomatic and intelligence documents from the 1970s, founder Julian Assange has revealed.  The release on Monday, also known as the "Public Library of US Diplomacy" or "Plus D", classified and declassified documents from US diplomatic history.  The new records, dating from 1973 to 1976, include many communications which were sent by or to former US secretary of state Henry Kissinger and have also been dubbed as "The Kissinger cables". "The Kissinger Cables are part of today's launch of the WikiLeaks Public Library of US Diplomacy (PlusD), which holds the world's largest searchable collection of United States confidential, or formerly confidential, diplomatic communications," the organisation said in a press release. "As of its launch on April 8, 2013, it holds 2 million records comprising approximately 1 billion words." The website also said that the searchable cables cover a variety of diplomatic communication include cables, intelligence reports and congressional correspondence. 'Geopolitical material' Assange, who has sought refuge at the Ecuadorian Embassy in London to avoid extradition for sex charges, said that the records highlighted the "vast range and scope" of US influence around the world. "The collection covers US involvements in, and diplomatic or intelligence reporting on, every country on Earth. It is the single most significant body of geopolitical material ever published," said Assange. However, the files have not been leaked to WikiLeaks, and are available to view in US national archives databases.  The diplomatic cables suggested that former Indian Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi may have been the "main negotiator" in a arms deal with a Swedish company in the 1970s.  Gandhi was not a political figure at the time, but was employed by Saab-Scandia because of his access to Indira Gandhi, his mother who was also prime minister at the time.  Assange founded the WikiLeaks website that enraged Washington by releasing  cables and war logs relating to the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan in one of the biggest security breach in US history.

State-Wrecked: The Corruption of Capitalism in America

Sundown in America - NYTimes.com:

Mark Pernice

By DAVID A. STOCKMAN

GREENWICH, Conn.

The Dow Jones and Standard & Poor’s 500 indexes reached record highs on Thursday, having completely erased the losses since the stock market’s last peak, in 2007. But instead of cheering, we should be very afraid.

Over the last 13 years, the stock market has twice crashed and touched off a recession: American households lost $5 trillion in the 2000 dot-com bust and more than $7 trillion in the 2007 housing crash. Sooner or later — within a few years, I predict — this latest Wall Street bubble, inflated by an egregious flood of phony money from the Federal Reserve rather than real economic gains, will explode, too.

Since the S.&P. 500 first reached its current level, in March 2000, the mad money printers at the Federal Reserve have expanded their balance sheet sixfold (to $3.2 trillion from $500 billion). Yet during that stretch, economic output has grown by an average of 1.7 percent a year (the slowest since the Civil War); real business investment has crawled forward at only 0.8 percent per year; and the payroll job count has crept up at a negligible 0.1 percent annually. Real median family income growth has dropped 8 percent, and the number of full-time middle class jobs, 6 percent. The real net worth of the “bottom” 90 percent has dropped by one-fourth. The number of food stamp and disability aid recipients has more than doubled, to 59 million, about one in five Americans.

So the Main Street economy is failing while Washington is piling a soaring debt burden on our descendants, unable to rein in either the warfare state or the welfare state or raise the taxes needed to pay the nation’s bills. By default, the Fed has resorted to a radical, uncharted spree of money printing. But the flood of liquidity, instead of spurring banks to lend and corporations to spend, has stayed trapped in the canyons of Wall Street, where it is inflating yet another unsustainable bubble.

When it bursts, there will be no new round of bailouts like the ones the banks got in 2008. Instead, America will descend into an era of zero-sum austerity and virulent political conflict, extinguishing even today’s feeble remnants of economic growth.......

Painful Payment for Afghan Debt: A Daughter, 6

Afghan Debt’s Painful Payment - A Daughter, 6 - NYTimes.com:

Bryan Denton for The New York Times

A camp in Kabul. Taj Mohammad borrowed money to pay for hospital treatment for his wife and medical care for some of his children. Speaking of the likely fate of his daughter Naghma, top right, he said, “She does not know what is going to happen.” More Photos »

KABUL, Afghanistan — As the shadows lengthened around her family’s hut here in one of Kabul’s sprawling refugee camps, a slight 6-year-old girl ran in to where her father huddled with a group of elders near a rusty wood stove. Her father, Taj Mohammad, looked away, his face glum.

Bryan Denton for The New York Times

If her father cannot repay $2,500, Naghma Mohammad, in red, with her schoolmates, will have to marry the lender’s son, 17. More Photos »

“She does not know what is going to happen,” he said softly.

If, as seems likely, Mr. Mohammad cannot repay his debt to a fellow camp resident a year from now, his daughter Naghma, a smiling, slender child with a tiny gold stud in her nose, will be forced to leave her family’s home forever to be married to the lender’s 17-year-old son.

The arrangement effectively values her life at $2,500. That is the amount Mr. Mohammad borrowed over the course of a year to pay for hospital treatment for his wife and medical care for some of his nine children — including Janan, 3, who later froze to death in bitter winter weather because the family could not afford enough firewood to stay warm.

“They said, ‘Pay back our money,’ and I didn’t have any money, so I had to give my girl,” Mr. Mohammad said. “I was thankful to them at the time, so it was my decision, but the elders also demanded that I do this.”

The story of how Mr. Mohammad, a refugee from the fighting in Helmand Province who in better days made a living as a singer and a musician, came to trade his daughter is in part a saga of terrible choices faced by some of the poorest Afghan families. But it is also a story of the way the war has eroded the social bonds and community safety nets that underpinned hundreds of thousands of rural Afghans’ lives.

Women and girls have been among the chief victims — not least because the Afghan government makes little attempt in the camps to enforce laws protecting women and children, said advocates for the camp residents.

Aid groups have been able to provide a few programs for women and children in the ever-growing camps, including schooling that for many girls here is a first. But those programs are being cut as international aid has dwindled here ahead of the Western military withdrawal. And the Afghan government has not offered much support, in part because most officials hope the refugees will leave Kabul and return home.

Most of the refugees in this camp are from rural southern Afghanistan, and they remain bound by the tribal codes and elder councils, known as jirgas, that resolved disputes in their home villages.

Few, however, still have the support of a broader network of kinsmen to fall back on in hard times as they would have at home. Out of context, the already rigid Pashtun codes have become something even harsher.

“This kind of thing never happened at home in Helmand,” said Mr. Mohammad’s mother as she sat in the back of the smoky room. Watching her granddaughter, as she laughed and smiled with her teacher, Najibullah, who also acts as a camp social worker and was visiting the family, she added, “I never remember a girl being given away to pay for a loan.”

From the point of view of those who participated in the jirga, the resolution was a good one, said Tawous Khan, an elder who led it and is one of the two main camp representatives. “You see, Taj Mohammad had to give his daughter. There was no other way,” he said. “And, it solved the problem.”

Some Afghan women’s advocates who heard about the little girl’s plight from news media reports were outraged and said they had asked the Interior Ministry to intervene, since child marriage is a violation of Afghan law and it is also unlawful to sell a woman. But nothing happened, said Wazhma Frogh, the executive director of the Research Institute for Women, Peace and Security.

“There has to be some sort of intervention,” Ms. Frogh said, “otherwise others will think this behavior is all right and it will increase.”.......

Exclusive: Court Docs Reveal Blackwater’s Secret CIA Past

Exclusive: Erik Prince on Blackwater’s Secret CIA Past - The Daily Beast:

It was the U.S. military’s most notorious security contractor—but it may also have been a virtual extension of the CIA. Eli Lake reports.

Last month a three-year-long federal prosecution of Blackwater collapsed. The government’s 15-felony indictment—on such charges as conspiring to hide purchases of automatic rifles and other weapons from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives—could have led to years of jail time for Blackwater personnel. In the end, however, the government got only misdemeanor guilty pleas by two former executives, each of whom were sentenced to four months of house arrest, three years’ probation, and a fine of $5,000. Prosecutors dropped charges against three other executives named in the suit and abandoned the felony charges altogether.

via office of the King of Jordan

But the most noteworthy thing about the largely failed prosecution wasn’t the outcome. It was the tens of thousands of pages of documents—some declassified—that the litigation left in its wake. These documents illuminate Blackwater’s defense strategy—and it’s a fascinating one: to defeat the charges it was facing, Blackwater built a case not only that it worked with the CIA—which was already widely known—but that it was in many ways an extension of the agency itself.

Founded in 1997 by Erik Prince, heir to an auto-parts family fortune, Blackwater had proved especially useful to the CIA in the early 2000s. “You have to remember where the CIA was after 9/11,” says retired Congressman Pete Hoekstra, who served as the Republican chairman of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence from 2004 to 2006 and later as the ranking member of the committee. “They were gutted in the 1990s. They were sending raw recruits into Afghanistan and other dangerous places. They were looking for skills and capabilities, and they had to go to outside contractors like Blackwater to make sure they could accomplish their mission.”

But according to the documents Blackwater submitted in its defense—as well as an email exchange I had recently with Prince—the contractor’s relationship with the CIA was far deeper than most observers thought. “Blackwater’s work with the CIA began when we provided specialized instructors and facilities that the Agency lacked,” Prince told me recently, in response to written questions. “In the years that followed, the company became a virtual extension of the CIA because we were asked time and again to carry out dangerous missions, which the Agency either could not or would not do in-house.”

A prime example of the close relationship appears to have unfolded on March 19, 2005. On that day, Prince and senior CIA officers joined King Abdullah of Jordan and his brothers on a trip to Blackwater headquarters in Moyock, North Carolina, according to lawyers for the company and former Blackwater officials. After traveling by private jet from Washington to the compound, Abdullah (a former Jordanian special-forces officer) and Prince (a former Navy SEAL) participated in a simulated ambush, drove vehicles on a high-speed racetrack, and raided one of the compound’s “shoot houses,” a specially built facility used to train warriors in close-quarters combat with live ammo, Prince recalls.

At the end of the day, company executives presented the king with two gifts: a modified Bushmaster AR-15 rifle and a Remington shotgun, both engraved with the Blackwater logo. They also presented three Blackwater-engraved Glock pistols to Abdullah’s brothers. According to Prince, the CIA asked Blackwater to give the guns to Abdullah “when people at the agency had forgotten to get gifts for him.”

Three years later, the ATF raided the Moyock compound. In itself, this wasn’t unusual; the ATF had been conducting routine inspections of the place since 2005, when Blackwater informed the government that two of its employees had stolen guns and sold them on the black market. Typically, agents would show up in street clothes, recalled Prince. “They knew our people and our processes.”

But the 2008 visit, according to Prince, was different. “ATF agents had guns drawn and wore tactical jackets festooned with the initials ATF. It was a cartoonish show of force,” he said. (Earl Woodham, a spokesman for the Charlotte field division of the ATF, disputes this characterization. “This was the execution of a federal search warrant that requires they be identified with the federal agency,” he says. “They had their firearms covered to execute a federal search warrant. To characterize this as anything other than a low-key execution of a federal search warrant is inaccurate.”)

During the raid, the ATF seized 17 Romanian AK-47s and 17 Bushmaster AR-13 rifles the bureau claimed were purchased illegally through the sheriff’s office in Camden County, North Carolina. It also alleged that Blackwater illegally shortened the barrels of rifles and then exported them to other countries in violation of federal gun laws. Meanwhile, in the process of trying to account for Blackwater’s guns, the ATF discovered that the rifles and pistols presented in 2005 to King Abdullah and his brothers were registered to Blackwater employees. Prosecutors would subsequently allege that Gary Jackson—the former president of Blackwater and one of the two people who would eventually plead guilty to a misdemeanor—had instructed employees to falsely claim on ATF forms that the guns were their own personal property and not in the possession of Jordanian royalty.

In all of these instances—the purchase of the rifles through the Camden County sheriff, the shipment of the guns to other countries, and the gifts to Abdullah—Blackwater argued that it was acting on behalf of the U.S. government and the CIA. All of these arguments, obviously, were very much in Blackwater’s legal interest. That said, it provided the court with classified emails, memoranda, contracts, and photos. It also obtained sealed depositions from top CIA executives from the Directorate of Operations, testifying that Blackwater provided training and weapons for agency operations. (A CIA spokesman declined to comment for this story.)

One document submitted by the defense names Jose Rodriguez, the former CIA chief of the Directorate of Operations, and Buzzy Krongard, the agency’s former executive director, as among those CIA officers who had direct knowledge of Blackwater’s activities, in a section that is still partially redacted. This document is the closest Blackwater has come to acknowledging that Prince himself was a CIA asset, something first reported in 2010 by Vanity Fair. One of the names on the list of CIA officers with knowledge of Blackwater’s work in the document is “Erik P”—with the remaining letters whited out.

This document made Blackwater’s defense clear: “the CIA routinely used Blackwater in missions throughout the world,” it said. “These efforts were made under written and unwritten contracts and through informal requests. On many occasions the CIA paid Blackwater nothing for its assistance. Blackwater also employed CIA officers and agents, and provided cover to CIA agents and officers operating in covert and clandestine assignments. In many respects, Blackwater, or at least portions of Blackwater, was an extension of the CIA.”

When I asked Prince why Blackwater would often work for free, he responded, “I agreed to provide some services gratis because, in the wake of 9/11, I felt it my patriotic duty. I knew that I had the tools and resources to help my country.”

Moreover, according to still-sealed testimony described to The Daily Beast, the agency had its own secure telephone line and a facility for handling classified information within Blackwater’s North Carolina headquarters. CIA officers trained there and used an area—fully shielded from view inside the rest of the Blackwater compound by 20-foot berms—to coordinate operations.

Sara D. Davis/AP

In the wake of the major charges being dropped, the U.S. attorney who prosecuted the case against Blackwater, Thomas Walker, told me that it would be wrong to dismiss the prosecution as a waste of time. “The company looks completely different now than before the investigation,” he said. “For example, in 2009, Erik Prince was the sole owner. This company now has a governing board that is accountable.”

In 2010 Prince sold Blackwater, which is now known as Academi, for an estimated $200 million. Prince retains control of numerous companies affiliated with Academi, but he told me that he had “ceased providing any services” to the U.S. government.

Walker would not discuss Blackwater’s relationship with the CIA. But he did say the defense that the company was acting for the government did not excuse any violations of federal law. “Our evidence showed there was a mentality at the company that they considered themselves above the law,” Walker said. “That is a slippery slope. There came a time when there had to be accountability at Blackwater.”

David Boies, the lawyer who represented Al Gore in Bush v. Gore, took up Gary Jackson’s case last fall. Boies told me he did so because he saw the prosecution as an abuse of power. “These people were functioning really as an arm of the CIA at a time when the CIA’s resources were strained,” he said. “I think that Erik Prince and Mr. Jackson and other people at Blackwater thought they were being patriots.”

Reflecting on the prosecution and the scrutiny of the company he founded, Prince said the charges against Blackwater executives left him “perplexed and angry.” “Blackwater carried out countless life-threatening missions for the CIA,” he said. “And, in return, the government chose to prosecute my people for doing exactly what was asked of them.”

CIA begins sizing up Islamic extremists in Syria for drone strikes

CIA begins sizing up Islamic extremists in Syria for drone strikes - latimes.com:

The strategy is part of the agency's secret contingency planning to protect the U.S. and its allies as the violence there grows. Some militants in Syria are seen as closely linked to Al Qaeda.

By Ken Dilanian and Brian Bennett, Los Angeles Times

March 15, 2013, 4:32 p.m.

 

WASHINGTON — The CIA has stepped up secret contingency planning to protect the United States and its allies as the turmoil expands in Syria, including collecting intelligence on Islamic extremists for the first time for possible lethal drone strikes, according to current and former U.S. officials.

President Obama has not authorized drone missile strikes in Syria, however, and none are under consideration.

The Counterterrorism Center, which runs the CIA’s covert drone killing program in Pakistan and Yemen, recently shifted several targeting officers to improve intelligence collection on militants in Syria who could pose a terrorist threat, the officials said.

The targeting officers have formed a unit with colleagues who were tracking Al Qaeda operatives and fighters in Iraq. U.S. officials believe that some of these operatives have moved to Syria and joined Islamic militias battling to overthrow President Bashar Assad.

The CIA effort, which involves assembling detailed dossiers on key militants, gives the White Houseboth lethal and nonlethal options if it concludes that Syria’s 2-year-old civil war — which has caused 70,000 deaths, according to United Nations estimates — is creating a haven for terrorists. The intelligence files also could be used to help opposition figures with moderate views prevail over extremists.

The targeting is part of an array of CIA and Pentagon responses and contingency plans as the Syrian bloodletting steadily worsens, threatening regional stability. Other proposals include plans to seize or destroy Syria’s chemical weapons stockpiles, which are closely monitored by U.S. intelligence, to prevent their misuse.

The targeting officers focusing on Syria are based at CIA headquarters in Langley, Va., officials said. The agency has not deployed many American operatives into the war zone, but it works closely with Saudi, Jordanian and other regional spy services active there. CIA officers meet with Syrian rebel leaders in Turkey and Jordan, current and former officials say.

The increased U.S. effort comes as radicalized Islamic fighters have won a growing share of rebel victories. The State Department says one of the strongest militias, Al Nusra Front, is a terrorist organization that is indistinguishable from the group Al Qaeda in Iraq.

Amnesty International reported Thursday that some Syrian opposition fighters routinely executed captives and suspected informants, although the group said Assad's security forces were even more brutal.

At least in public, the White House has limited the U.S. role in the war to sending food and medical supplies to rebels, as well as aid to nearby countries that have taken in nearly 1 million refugees. U.S. allies are providing weapons and ammunition to the rebels, but Obama so far has objected to proposals for more aggressive U.S. intervention.

The CIA and the White House declined requests for comment Friday on the targeting effort.

CIA targeting officers normally assemble bits of intelligence — including agent reports, cellphone intercepts, video footage, public records, tips from foreign spy services — to create folders known as "targeting packages," for a variety of reasons.

They can be used if policymakers determine further surveillance, arrest or other action is warranted. The CIA has created nonlethal targeting packages, for example, for drug cartel leaders in Mexico and nuclear scientists in Iran. The agency views skilled targeting officers as critical to almost any current intelligence operation.

Nada Bakos, a former CIA targeting officer who helped track down Abu Musab Zarqawi, the Al Qaeda in Iraq leader who was killed by U.S. forces in 2006, said the intense focus entailed "trying to figure out what they are doing and how to go about stopping it."

Identifying possible threats in Syria would be "a logical step if the policy community sends a signal that, 'Hey, you guys might want to think about how you would respond to a possible request for plans about how you would thin the herd of the future insurgency,'" said a former CIA officer with experience in the Middle East.

U.S. lethal action in Syria is not unprecedented. In October 2008, the CIA and U.S. special operations forces conducted a helicopter assault across the Iraqi border into eastern Syria. The raid killed Abu Ghadiya, a logistics commander for Al Qaeda who allegedly smuggled weapons, money and foreign fighters from Syria into Iraq during the insurgency there.

No evidence suggests the CIA or Pentagon has launched airstrikes against Al Qaeda militants in Iraq since U.S. troops withdrew in December 2011. But some extremists have joined militias in Syria and aspire to attack U.S. facilities or allies, officials said.

In October, Jordanian authorities announced the arrest of 11 people with connections to Al Qaeda in Iraq on suspicion of plotting a major terrorist attack. They said the group's targets included the U.S. Embassy in the Jordanian capital, Amman.

Some former CIA officials expressed skepticism about any idea of using armed drones in Syria. There is no evidence, they said, that Syrian militants pose a threat to the U.S. homeland.

"If we do this, why don't we start droning people in Hezbollah?" asked a former CIA officer who worked in Iraq, referring to the Lebanon-based militant group that Washington considers a terrorist organization. "It opens the door for a lot of other things."

The United States, and President Obama, arm terrorists

The United States, and President Obama, arm terrorists | Washington Times Communities:

WASHINGTON, March 12, 2013 — A massive 3,000 ton weapons airlift from Croatia to Syrian rebels, reported two weeks ago by the New York Times then further detailed by a Croat newspaper and the London Telegraph on Friday, appears to breach the U.S. National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), theoretically subjecting high level U.S. officials and allies to arrest. 

The weapons, destined for groups attempting to overthrow President Bashar al-Assad, have a high possibility of ending up in the hands of al-Qaeda affiliates.

On February 25, the New York Times revealed that “Saudi Arabia has financed a large purchase of infantry weapons from Croatia and quietly funneled them to antigovernment fighters in Syria,” adding that U.S., European, Jordanian and CIA officials all declined comment. 

On March 8, The London Telegraph, citing a newspaper article published in Croatia, said the operation required 75 cargo flights to deliver the weapons, beginning in November. Most of the cargo flights landed in Jordan before the arms were moved over the border into Syria, according to reports.

“The first cargo planes involved with the shipment were from Turkey, but most have been from Jordanian International Air Cargo, whose Russian-made Ilyushin jets have been seen regularly at Zaghreb airport in recent months” reported the Telegraph, citing the Croat newspaper.

The Telegraph says Saudi Arabia financed the shipments “at the bidding of the United States,” which assisted in supplying the weapons. The paper says the shipments “transited Turkey and Jordan on their way to Syria.”

According to the press reports, some of the weapons shipped to Syria date back to the 1990 Yugoslav wars. However, infantry rifles as well as systems such as the M79 Osa anti-tank rocket launcher remain effective on the battlefield today.

The shipments reportedly went to the Free Syrian Army (FSA), which is the group of rebels fighting inside Syria to overthrow Assad. The FSA was formed in July 2011 primarily by former Syrian soldiers, has a loose organizational structure and little command and control, according to numerous sources. 

Moreover, several groups fighting with the FSA are affiliated with al-Qaeda. The Al-Nusra front, an Islamist militant faction made up primarily of Sunni jihadists, was recently designated a terrorist organization by the United States. Ahrar al-Sham is another jihadist group fighting with the FSA, considered more moderate than Al-Nusra, but still seeking an Islamic state in Syria. 

U.S. officials admit Islamists fighting with Syrian rebels complicate the situation, and numerous outlets say there is growing dissent between Islamist and secular fighters in Syria. Additionally, in early March, Islamist rebels in Syria who boasted of their al-Qaeda ties posted a YouTube video showing their recent capture of SCUD missiles

Even more troubling, U.S. Ambassador to Syria Robert Ford has stated that al-Nusra Front terrorists fighting against Assad in Syria are essentially one and the same as the al-Qa’ida in Iraq (AQI) terrorists that killed large numbers of U.S. military personnel.

“The Assad regime’s brutality has created an environment inside Syria that al-Qa’ida in Iraq is working hard to exploit. In an effort to establish a long-term presence in Syria, AQI is trying to rebrand itself under the guise of a group called al-Nusrah Front,”  Ambassador Ford is quoted as saying.

Under NDAA of 2012 Section 1021, which President Obama signed on December 31, 2012, the President’s authority under the Authorization for Use of Military Force Against Terrorists (AUMF) includes the power to arrest and indefinitely detain any U.S. citizen or non-citizen “who was part of or substantially supported al-Qaeda, the Taliban, or associated forces that are engaged in hostilities against the United States or its coalition partners.”

The controversial indefinite detention provisions of the 2012 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) allow for the military arrest and indefinite detention of anyone, anywhere on the planet, who provides support to al-Qaeda or “associated forces”.

Department of Defense General Counsel Jeh Johnson last February clarified the Obama Administration’s interpretation of the NDAA “associated force” clause of the arrest and detention provisions:

• “An ‘associated force,’ as we interpret the phrase, has two characteristics to it: (1) an organized, armed group that has entered the fight alongside al Qaeda, and (2) is a co-belligerent with al Qaeda in hostilities against the United States or its coalition partners. In other words, the group must not only be aligned with al Qaeda. It must have also entered the fight against the United States or its coalition partners. Thus, an “associated force” is not any terrorist group in the world that merely embraces the al Qaeda ideology.” – Jeh Johnson, Department of Defense General Counsel, February 22, 2012

Now that the weapons airlifted into Syria are on the ground, what happens to them is largely out of the hands of those who shipped them into the country.

While unlikely that President Obama would order the arrest of himself or members of his own cabinet, the wording of the NDAA suggests Obama may be breaking the law with the shipment. The close association between the FSA and al-Qaeda affiliates means that the United States, and President Obama, are effectively arming terrorists. 

Following the Operation Fast and Furious scandal, the Obama Administration worked hard to protect the names of high level officials, possibly including Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, who were behind the scheme which armed Mexican drug cartels and left hundreds of Mexicans as well as several Americans dead.

Now, it appears the U.S. is at least complicit in arming al Qaeda. 

Arming Mexican drug cartels can theoretically (not always practically) get someone arrested, but does not subject them to NDAA indefinite military detention. Sending weapons that logically will end up in the hands of terrorists who killed U.S. troops in Iraq is a bold gamble by the Saudis, and their collaborators in the Obama administration and elsewhere.

Read more: http://communities.washingtontimes.com/neighborhood/freedom-press-not-free/2013/mar/12/united-states-and-president-obama-complicit-arming/#ixzz2Ne1LhwkJ 
Follow us: @wtcommunities on Twitter

Afghan graffiti artist makes her mark in India

BBC News - Afghan graffiti artist makes her mark in India:

Malina Suliman's drawing of the burka wearing skeleton is a self portrait

A budding young Afghan graffiti artist has found refuge in the western Indian city of Mumbai after she received threats from the Taliban for drawings she did in her home town of Kandahar. The BBC Hindi's Zubair Ahmed reports.

Malina Suliman's "crime" was to paint the walls of Kandahar with the graffiti of a skeleton wearing a burka and the depiction of an ordinary Afghan entangled between an American tie knotted to a turban worn by the Taliban.

She defied the Taliban for as long as she could.

But when the threats became frequent and after her father's leg was broken in an attack, she had to flee her home town a couple of months ago and take refuge in Mumbai.

'Un-Islamic art'

Ms Suliman, the youngest of eight siblings, recalls the beginning of her trauma last year.

"I would paint graffiti on the rocks and walls and they would throw stones at me and condemn me. I would move to another area but they would follow me there and pelt me with stones."

Her sculptures outraged conservative Muslims and the Taliban.

They declared that her work amounted to idol worshipping and therefore was anti-Islamic and warned her to stop immediately........