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A Palestinian immigrant convicted of hiding an Israeli terrorism conviction from U.S. authorities when she moved to the Chicago suburbs in the 1990s should be locked up for at least five years, federal prosecutors say. Anything less would be a “slap on the wrist” for Evergreen Park activist Rasmieh Odeh, and could encourage terrorists fighting with ISIS to come to the U.S., they argue. But lawyers for Odeh — who was convicted by an Israeli court of taking part in a Jerusalem supermarket bombing that killed two students in 1969 — say she was a freedom fighter, not a terrorist,...

In his much talked about article, “What ISIS Really Wants” in the March issue of The Atlantic, Graeme Wood punctures Western fantasies that the Islamic State is made of psychopathic discontents, or in President Obama’s estimation, al Qaeda’s “JV team.”   Instead, he discovers, they are a formidable force, drawn together by a coherent faith and ideology. Here are our take-aways from Wood’s 10,000 word article.   According to Wood: 1. ISIS and al-Qaeda are not one and the same. ISIS has eclipsed al-Qaeda and views its leaders as apostates. We have made a mistake in not realizing the difference...

Speaking to the House Foreign Affairs Committee on Wednesday, Secretary of State John Kerry reminded Congress that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was an advocate of the U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003.

Britons have anxiously followed for nearly a week the hunt for three missing teenage schoolgirls who aren’t “missing” at all. The trio appear to have evaded efforts to track them down as they journeyed to Syria to join Islamic State. Authorities say the three girls lied to their families about their plans for the day on Feb. 17 to buy time to fly from London’s Gatwick Airport to Istanbul. From there they are believed to have traveled into Syria. One of the three allegedly was in contact via social media with Aqsa Mahmood, a 20-year-old Scottish woman who also became...

Officials overseeing a federal program that offers an immigration short-cut to wealthy foreign investors have ignored pointed warnings from federal agents and approved visas for some immigrants suspected of having committed fraud, money laundering, and even one applicant with alleged ties to a child porn website, an ABC News investigation has found. The shortcomings prompted concerns within the Department of Homeland Security that the boutique immigration program would be exploited by terrorists, according to internal documents obtained by ABC News. “It is shocking,” said Sen. Charles Grassley, an Iowa Republican. “Particularly when you have F.B.I. and other law enforcement agencies...

Al-AOUR, Minya Egypt - The residents of al-­Aour, a dusty village in Minya governorate some 250km south of Cairo, are struggling to come to terms with their loss. Last week, 13 residents of the village, all of whom were Coptic Christians, were executed by Islamic State fighters in Libya. When news of the executions broke (IS released a graphic video of the killing on the Internet) women and children in homes across the village, which is home to 2,500 Christians, could be heard screaming. When I visited al-Aour last week, people were sad and dismayed at the killings. Others seemed...

Assyrians in northeastern Syria villages awoke Tuesday to ISIS militants at their doors, with the Islamist extremists abducting scores from the Christian group and forcing hundreds more to run for their lives, an advocate said. The ISIS fighters bust past a few men guarding the village of Tal Shamiram around 4 a.m. (9 p.m. ET Monday) and abducted children, women and the elderly, said Usama Edward, the founder of the Assyrian Human Rights Network. Talking to CNN from Stockholm, Sweden, Edward said that between 70 and 100 people total were kidnapped in that village and others in the same cluster...

The graffiti on a building in Belgium says it all: "Welcome to 'Belgistan." In fact, some are now calling it the Muslim capital of Europe.

If these cowards (ISIS or ISIL) were really as tough as they say they are -- Then why must they cover their faces. I mean, if the BS that they are peddling is in the name of Allah or Mohamad then why must they cover their faces unless they are ashamed or cowards. Allah knows who they are, right. So if what they are doing is "justified" why must they cover their faces, unless they are simply just a bunch of limp wristed pants wetting cowards. Are they afraid of someone or something...who, who are these cowards afraid of that...

Frightening and incredible news out of Israel this morning: Jerusalem mayor Nir Barkat and his bodyguards reportedly subdued a knife-wielding Palestinian attacker after he stabbed an elderly Jewish man. Barkat recalled the event: “I was traveling in a car next to the IDF Square (Safra Sqaure) when my team suddenly say a terrorist with a knife right next to us. I immediately jumped out of the car together with my team, (my bodyguard) pulled out his gun and together we held the terrorist until security forces arrived, we also attempted to treat the victim.” Watch the security video here, which...

Below, we demonstrate that the U.S. keeps “losing” war after war. There are 3 potential reasons this might be happening: •Is this chaos an intentional way to implement regime change and grab resources? •Or is this a sign of the decline of the American empire … and we just can’t win a war anymore? •Or do those in charge just not really give a damn about winning … and are they just focusing on one short-term goal after another?

Hear why Zo is so upset about Michael Moore's recent comments about "American Sniper" and the U.S. military.

A terror group linked to al Qaeda released an online video Saturday in which the group appears to call for attacks on Western malls. Islamic terrorist group al-Shabaab specifically named the Mall of America in Minnesota, the West Edmonton Mall in Alberta, Canada, and London's Oxford Street. Federal law enforcement officials told CBS News that they are investigating the video. In 2013, the Somali-based group claimed responsibility for an attack on an upscale shopping mall in Kenya. More than 60 people were killed in the four-day siege when attackers stormed the Westgate Mall in Nairobi.

One of the most famous speeches in American history is the one given by President Franklin Delano Roosevelt the day after Pearl Harbor was attacked, in which he said: “ Yesterday, December 7, 1941, a date which will live in infamy – The United States of America was suddenly and deliberately attacked by the naval and air forces of the Empire of Japan. The United States was at peace with that nation, and at the solicitation of Japan, was still in conversation with its government and its Emperor. Imagine if Obama gave that speech that rallied a nation into World...

ihad Enclaves: With names like Islamberg and Mahmoudberg, some 22 of what the FBI calls "enclaves" have been established across the U.S. by a group linked to a Pakistani militant group called Jamaat ul-Fuqra. The specter of 21 Christians being murdered "on the shores of Tripoli" in Libya where U.S. Marines first encountered Muslim forces — the Barbary pirates — and threats by the Islamic State against Rome show how President Obama's "JV team" has metastasized as a global threat. And, yes, it can happen here. The Islamic State is encouraging attacks on infidels in the West like the one...

(CNSNews.com) – Declaring that “you cannot defeat what you don’t understand,” Secretary of State John Kerry on Thursday suggested some reasons why tens of thousands of young people are flocking to join terrorist groups in the Middle East. Among some of the likely motivations he listed were deprivation, a desire to avenge the death of a loved one, a response to “acts of discrimination or repression,” the desire to belong to a group, and “rebellion against anonymity.” Absent from the list was any belief – misguided or otherwise – that joining a terrorist group was an Islamic duty or demonstration...

While Obama desperately tries to stick to his now crushed "Nobel peace prize winner" image, by not succumbing to an all-out land war in the one nation where his progressive "pacifism" brought him fame (and according to some, the presidency), namely Iraq, the rest of militant, "interventionist" US foreign policy is rapidly starting to resemble that waged by the most brutally rabid, neo-con Republican leader. Case in point an absolute stunner reported minutes ago by the WSJ, according to which the White House has decided to provide pickup trucks equipped with mounted machine guns and radios for calling in U.S....

Washington (AFP) - US President Barack Obama on Thursday called on Middle Eastern leaders to stand up to "violent extremism" and stop proxy wars that fuel the rise of terror groups. "The notion that the West is at war with Islam is an ugly lie," he told the final day of a conference on combatting extremism. "And all of us, regardless of our faith, have a responsibility to reject it." Obama challenged Middle Eastern powers to stop actions that he claimed have stoked the rise of Islamic State, Al-Qaeda and others. Fighting between Sunnis and Shia "will only end when...

WASHINGTON (AP) — In the fight against violent extremism, President Barack Obama argues the U.S. has one thing going for it that Europe doesn't: a long tradition of warmly embracing its immigrants, including Muslims. With the Islamic State group spreading and terrorists gaining strength in the Mideast and Africa, Obama has sought to use this week's White House summit on violent extremism to urge the world to broaden its response far beyond military interventions. U.S. airstrikes have managed to blunt some of the militants' gains in Iraq and Syria, but they don't address the extreme ideologies that underpin deadly groups...

Fun stuff via BuzzFeed, portending an exciting “whose close relative is more of a devastating electoral liability?” primary for the GOP if the two men left standing are Jeb Bush and Rand Paul. I don’t understand this even within the parameters of the Ron Paul worldview. I thought hardcore isolationists — sorry, “non-interventionists” — believe that the war machine will always find a new pretext to keep rolling even if the current one goes bust. Obama, for instance, did eventually get Bin Laden, along with many other Al Qaeda capos … and yet at this very moment there’s an AUMF...

On Monday's Morning Joe on MSNBC, Joe Scarborough suggested that having a literal interpretation of the Bible could lead Christians to violence in a similar manner as radical Islam. Oddly enough, Scarborough hoped to avoid being "torn to shreds online" by equating the two, but made the comparison anyway. The morning's panel centered on the violence of ISIS and its undeniable ties to the tenets of Islam, but Scarborough felt compelled to find a link between Islam and Christianity. He said: “A very crude way to put it is, this would be the ultra fundamentalist Christians who believe every single...

Right now, the Administration has a budding PR problem with their Middle East policy, so it makes sense that the man himself would take to the media to attempt to explain what they’re thinking with this strategy. What doesn’t make sense is that the finished product would clash so fundamentally with what the American people actually need to hear. From Obama's op-ed.. "More broadly, groups like al Qaeda and ISIL exploit the anger that festers when people feel that injustice and corruption leave them with no chance of improving their lives. The world has to offer today’s youth something better....

Hundreds of militants have been killed during the struggle to recapture the Nigerian garrison town of Monguno, according to officials. "Over 300 terrorists were killed while a few were also captured," said defence spokesman Major-General Chris Olukolade. The claims follow similar statements from Niger, Chad and Cameroon - who are also involved in fighting the terror group - but they have not been independently confirmed. The army has often claimed success against the group which has then been contradicted by witness reports. Civilian vigilantes in the town confirmed it had been retaken and said there had been heavy casualties, but...

Poor Marie Harf. The State Department’s deputy spokesman is being mercilessly mocked for an interview she gave to MSNBC’s Chris Matthews in which she said, of the conflict with the Islamic State: “We cannot win this war by killing them. We cannot kill our way out of this war. We need in the medium to longer term to go after the root causes that leads people to join these groups, whether it’s a lack of opportunity for jobs, whether—”

A German rapper-turned ISIS extremist who starred in the group's grisly beheading videos was being spied on for the FBI by a woman he thought was his wife. Denis Cuspert, 39, who now calls himself Abu Talha al-Amani, embraced radical Islam and travelled to Syria to fight with militants before becoming the group's main propagandist. The spy transmitted critical information about the rapper and his ISIS colleagues before escaping to Turkey - where she was arrested and then turned over to the US, according to the German newspaper Bild. The paper said German and American intelligence sources confirmed the existence...

Thirty-five Egyptian workers were rounded up by terrorists after the Egyptian airstrikes. The Libya Herald reported: There are reports that at least 35 Egyptians have been kidnapped in what appears to be a round-up at various locations in areas controlled by Ansar Al-Sharia and IS. The Libya Herald has been told that starting this morning, in the wake of the attack on Derna by warplanes from Egypt, Egyptian nationals, many of them it seems farm workers, have been picked up by gunmen. The first reports were that seven men had been seized, but by mid-afternoon, it was being said that...

What the West really needs to take on the Islamic State is ... a jobs program. That's what a top State Department spokeswoman suggested when asked in a TV interview Monday night about what the U.S.-led coalition is doing to stop the slaughter of civilians by Islamic State militants across the region. "We're killing a lot of them, and we're going to keep killing more of them. ... But we cannot win this war by killing them," department spokeswoman Marie Harf said on MSNBC's "Hardball." "We need ... to go after the root causes that leads people to join these...

State Department Spokesperson Marie Harf told Chris Matthews tonight that we cannot win this war with ISIS by killing them. She said we have to get to the root cause of why people are attracted to Jihad — you know like poverty, jobs, etc…

State Department Spokesperson Marie Harf told Chris Matthews tonight that we cannot win this war with ISIS by killing them. She said we have to get to the root cause of why people are attracted to Jihad — you know like poverty, jobs, etc… “We’re killing a lot of them and we’re going to keep killing more of them. So are the Egyptians, so are the Jordanians. They’re in this fight with us. But we cannot win this war by killing them. We cannot kill our way out of this war. We need in the medium to longer term to...

RANCHO MIRAGE, California (AP) — A White House summit this week on countering violent extremism will not focus exclusively on threats from the Islamic State group, senior administration officials said Monday. While the militant group, which has killed several Americans and others it had been holding hostage, poses a near-term threat to the United States, one of three officials previewing the summit for reporters on Monday said violent extremists "come in all shapes and sizes." The three-day conference will highlight both domestic and international efforts to prevent extremists and their supporters from radicalizing, recruiting and inspiring others, particularly disaffected young...

The 21 men beheaded on a Mediterranean beach in a video released by Islamist savages Sunday were killed because of their Coptic Christian faith, by men who proclaimed the reason for the murders before the whole world. And the White House won’t say the word. Christian beheading victims are marched to the beach in Libya to be murdered by Islamist militants on Sunday. (Daily Mail photo) “The United States condemns the despicable and cowardly murder of 21 Egyptian citizens in Libya by ISIL-affiliated terrorists,” a statement issued by the White House said.“ISIL’s barbarity knows no bounds.  It is unconstrained by...

Recently we reported on retired Lt. Gen. and former DIA Chief Mike Flynn’s devastating criticism of the terms of President Obama’s Authorization for Use of Military Force (AUMF) against ISIS. Another prominent retired member of America’s armed forces who has emerged as an outspoken opponent of the Obama administration’s foreign policy is four-star admiral James “Ace” Lyons. During the Center for Security Policy’s recent Defeat Jihad Summit, the naval officer of 36 years, who served most recently as the Commander of the U.S. Pacific Fleet, made some simply astounding comments about Islam and President Obama’s foreign policy strategy:

On February 18, President Obama will host a “Summit on Countering Violent Extremism” which, the White House promises, will “highlight domestic and international efforts to prevent violent extremists and their supporters from radicalizing, recruiting, or inspiring individuals or groups in the United States and abroad to commit acts of violence.” A coordinated strategy has never been more imperative. Since the Arab Spring turned hot, “violent extremism” has only grown more severe, with the Islamic State now controlling an area larger than Great Britain; Boko Haram on the rampage in Nigeria; Yemen, Libya, the Sinai, and large parts of Afghanistan and...

Anbar Province Could ‘Collapse Within Hours,’ Says Iraqi Tribal Leader ‘We’re Losing Ground, Not Gaining’ By Kellan Howell - February 14, 2015 An Iraqi tribal leader said Saturday that Islamic State militants are quickly gaining ground in Anabar province and predicted Iraqi army forced could “collapse within hours” if tribal forces withdraw. Sheikh Naim al-Gaoud, a Sunni Muslim leader of the Albu Nimr tribe, called for more U.S. intervention in the region, including ground troops and arming tribes directly, CNNreported Saturday.

Houston is no stranger to burning mosques. In fact, there have been numerous mosques deliberately set ablaze in parts of Texas and other states over the past several years. One can only wonder when conservatives or “right-wingers” will be blamed for this latest tragedy without the slightest “smidgen” of proof? What is interesting is that it is clear that at least some people do not accept the official explanation for the recent tragic murders of three Muslims by one Craig Stephens Hicks over what is said to have been an ongoing parking dispute. The guy is obviously a loon who...

There has been much discussion after Obama's contrived comparison of the Crusades and Christianity to Islam and ISIS at the National Prayer Breakfast last week. And then yesterday we have Obama asking for "war powers" to go after ISIS. It just occurred to me, that Obama ironically prophesied his next foreign policy disaster. Obama is launching the 21st century's "Obama Crusades." May God have mercy on America and our military forces.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. Marines handed over their remaining weapons to Yemenis at the airport in the capital, Sanaa, on Wednesday before boarding commercial aircraft to leave the country following the closure of the U.S. embassy, the Pentagon said. The Pentagon said the Marines destroyed heavy weapons in their embassy arsenal, including machine guns, before leaving for the airport but remained armed with smaller weapons until the end to ensure a safe exit from the country. "The movement from the embassy to the aircraft required armed Marines," Army Colonel Steve Warren, a Pentagon spokesman, said at a briefing. The U.S....

President Obama is going before Congress to request authorization for the limited use of military force in a battle of up to three years against the Islamic State. On the surface, this looks like a welcome recognition of Congress’s ultimate authority in matters of war and peace. But unless the resolution put forward by the White House is amended, it will have the opposite effect. Congressional support will amount to the ringing endorsement of unlimited presidential war making. Whatever else they decide, the House and Senate should revise the White House initiative to guarantee that it won’t have this tragic...

In a joint press conference with German Chancellor Angela Merkel Monday, President Obama said he believed a deal with Iran on nuclear weapons was possible because Supreme Leader Khamenei said it would be “contrary to their faith to obtain a nuclear weapon.”

U.S. officials consider removing Castro regime from terror listU.S. officials are considering removing Cuba from a list of state sponsors of terrorism, even as Cuban allies continue to launch military attacks and trade for weapons. As part of President Barack Obama’s announcement in December that he would normalize relations with Cuba, Obama instructed Secretary of State John Kerry to review Cuba’s terror designation and issue a report in six months. While reports indicate that the administration is leaning toward removing Cuba from the terror list, such an action would conflict with the Cuban regime’s support for Colombian militants, Iran, and...

Political Correctness: The Army has announced that as a result of Congress' making victims of attacks by foreign terrorist acts eligible, the Fort Hood victims will get Purple Hearts, and civilians will get Defense of Freedom medals. That language broadened the definition of an attack on eligible victims to include an assault by "a foreign terrorist organization." The definition includes attacks by a perpetrator or perpetrators in contact with a foreign terrorist organization or "inspired or motivated by a foreign terrorist organization" prior to the attack. The Nov. 5, 2009, attack on Fort Hood by Maj. Nidal Hasan, in which...

President Barack Obama has called the terror attack on Jews in a kosher supermarket in Paris last month an act of random violence, rather than a terror attack or an antisemitic attack. Obama’s remark appears in an interview with Matt Yglesias of Vox.com. The president calls the attackers “violent, vicious zealots who behead people or randomly shoot a bunch of folks in a deli in Paris.” He elides past the religion of the attackers or the victims in an attack that claimed four innocent lives. Obama was responding to a sympathetic question by Yglesias about whether “the media sometimes overstates...

There are individuals living in the United States today who have contact with the Islamic State (ISIS or ISIL) and other terrorist groups who have "a desire to conduct an attack" on U.S. soil, Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson said Sunday on CNN's "State of the Union." Johnson would not say how many such individuals the government is aware of, but did say the number is dwarfed by the number of people in Europe intent on carrying out out acts of terror there. And the ability to recruit and communicate through social media has only strengthened the ability to inspire...

Spending Pentagon spent $504,816 on Viagra last year By Elizabeth Harrington Published February 09, 2015 Washington Free Beacon The Department of Defense (DoD) spent more than a half a million dollars on the male enhancement drug Viagra last year, according to government contracts. The Pentagon issued 60 contracts worth$504,816 for the drug in 2014. All 60 contracts were awarded to Cardinal Health Inc., a pharmaceutical distribution company based in Dublin, Ohio. Last year DoD also ordered $3,505 worth of Levitra, and $14,540 of Cialis, other popular erectile dysfunction drugs. The contracts were filed under "Troop Support."

BRUSSELS, Belgium Sept. 30 A former pro soccer player who joined the al-Qaida terrorist network was convicted and sentenced to prison Tuesday for plotting to bomb a NATO base believed to contain nuclear weapons. Nizar Trabelsi of Tunisia, who once played professional soccer in Germany, received the maximum sentence of 10 years in prison from a court that also convicted 17 other men and acquitted five others in the largest terrorism trial in Belgium's history. Trabelsi admitted planning to drive a car bomb into the canteen of the Kleine Brogel air base, a Belgian military post used by NATO where...

Iraq uncovers al-Qaeda 'chemical weapons plot' The authorities in Iraq say they have uncovered an al-Qaeda plot to use chemical weapons, as well as to smuggle them to Europe and North America. Defence ministry spokesman Mohammed al-Askari said five men had been arrested after military intelligence monitored their activities for three months. Three workshops for manufacturing the chemical agents, including sarin and mustard gas, were uncovered, he added. Remote-controlled toy planes were also seized at the workshops. Mr Askari said they were to have been used to release the chemical agents over the target from a "safe" distance of 1.5km...

Bobby Jindal on Friday released a statement responding to the president’s remarks on Thursday at the National Prayer Breakfast in which he cautioned Americans from getting on a “high horse” when taking a stance against radical Islam because people have committed “terrible deeds” in the name of Christianity, too. “It was nice of the President to give us a history lesson at the Prayer breakfast,” Jindal said. “Today, however, the issue right in front of his nose, in the here and now, is the terrorism of Radical Islam, the assassination of journalists, the beheading and burning alive of captives. We will...

Army Secretary John McHugh said Friday that he has approved awarding the Purple Heart and its civilian counterpart to those wounded during a mass shooting at Fort Hood, Texas, in 2009, following years of pressure from families and a change in rules approved by Congress. The Nov. 5, 2009, shooting killed 13 people and wounded more than 30. It was carried out by Maj. Nidal Hasan, an Army psychiatrist, who was convicted in August 2013 of 13 counts of murder and 32 counts of attempted murder. Hasan said he acted because of what he alleged was U.S. aggression against Muslims...

Where is the collective outrage about all those, including Americans, burned alive by terrorists? Is it because they were Jews? Christians? Islamic State, which burned the Jordanian pilot alive, now symbolizes the most absolute horror, and is exorcised as “barbaric” and not "true" Islam. A Muslim killed by Muslims, the perfect victim, which fills the Western world's appeasing and empty conscience.

A still-classified section of the investigation by congressional intelligence committees into the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks has taken on an almost mythic quality over the past 13 years — 28 pages that examine crucial support given the hijackers and that by all accounts implicate prominent Saudis in financing terrorism. Now new claims by Zacarias Moussaoui, a convicted former member of Al Qaeda, that he had high-level contact with officials of the Saudi government in the prelude to Sept. 11 have brought renewed attention to the inquiry’s withheld findings, which lawmakers and relatives of those killed in the attacks have tried...