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OBAMA’S LEGACY: The Terrorist Cancer Is… Growing

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Responding to criticism of President Obama’s handling of terrorism, White House press secretary Josh Earnest boasted Thursday of all the setbacks the Islamic State has experienced in recent months, noting that in Iraq “45 percent of the populated area that ISIL previously controlled has been retaken from them. In Syria, that figure is now 20 percent.”

That’s like a patient who ignored a cancer diagnosis bragging that he finally reduced the tumor in his lung — glossing over the fact that he let it spread and metastasize to his other organs. If he had attacked the Islamic State cancer early, Obama could have stopped it from spreading in the first place. But instead, he dismissed the terrorist group as the “JV team” that was “engaged in various local power struggles and disputes” and did not have “the capacity and reach of a bin Laden” and did not pose “a direct threat to us.” He did nothing, while the cancer grew in Syria and then spread in Iraq.

Now the cancer has spread and metastasized across the world.

According to a recent CNN analysis, since declaring its caliphate in 2014, the Islamic State has carried out 90 attacks in 21 countries outside of Iraq and Syria that have killed 1,390 people and injured more than 2,000 others. The Islamic State has a presence in more than a dozen countries and has declared “provinces” in Algeria, Libya, Egypt, Nigeria, Saudi Arabia, Yemen, Pakistan and Afghanistan. The Post reported in 2015 that “since the withdrawal of most US and international troops in December, the Islamic State has steadily made inroads in Afghanistan” where it has “poured pepper into the wounds of their enemies … seared their hands in vats of boiling oil … blindfolded, tortured and blown apart [villagers] with explosives buried underneath them.”

And while the Islamic State spreads and grows, al-Qaeda is making a comeback. Obama is touting the killing of Taliban leader Akhtar Mohammad Mansour as “an important milestone,” but the truth is that the Taliban has made major military gains in Afghanistan — and that has opened the door to al-Qaeda. The Post reported in October that “American airstrikes targeted what was ‘probably the largest’ al-Qaeda training camp found in the 14-year Afghan war.” Sounds good except for one small problem: There were no major al-Qaeda camps in Afghanistan when Obama took office. Now it is once again training terrorists in the land where it trained operatives for the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.

Al-Qaeda has also regained lost ground in Yemen, the country where it trained and deployed the underwear bomber who nearly blew up a plane bound for Detroit in 2009. And as a recent report from the Institute for the Study of War and the American Enterprise Institute’s Critical Threats Project notes, the “Syrian al Qaeda affiliate Jabhat al Nusra poses one of the most significant long-term threats of any Salafi-jihadi group” and “is much more dangerous to the US than the ISIS model in the long run.”

Overall, Gen. Jack Keane recently testified that al-Qaeda has “grown fourfold in the last five years.”

We’re lying to ourselves if we think that the violence we are witnessing is going to be confined to the Middle East … or South Asia … or North Africa … or Europe. It is only a matter of time before the Islamic State and al-Qaeda bring this violence here to our shores.

Indeed, in many ways we face a situation far more dangerous and complex than we did before Sept. 11, 2001. Before 9/11, we largely faced a danger from one terrorist network (al-Qaeda) with safe haven in one nation (Afghanistan). Today, we face danger from multiple terrorist networks with safe havens in a dozen or more countries.

Moreover, we face something we have never seen before: two terrorist networks — the Islamic State and al-Qaeda — competing with each other for the hearts of the jihadi faithful and the backing of jihadi financiers. The way to win that competition is to be the first to carry out a catastrophic attack here in the United States.

When it came to terrorist networks, the George W. Bush administration had a mantra: We’re going to fight them over there so that we do not have to face them here at home. Obama abandoned that mantra. And now the danger is getting closer to home with each passing day. (For more from the author of “OBAMA’S LEGACY: The Terrorist Cancer Is… Growing” please click HERE)

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MAKE SURE YOU’RE SITTING DOWN: Since Obama Took Office, U.S. Stopped Targeting Terror-Linked Charities

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Under the administration of President Barack Obama, the Treasury Department stopped blacklisting domestic charities that collect funds for terrorist organizations, Eli Lake of Bloomberg View reported on Thursday.

Lake explained that targeting charities that front for terrorist organizations was a “key tool” of the Bush administration’s war on terrorism after 9/11. During the Bush presidency, the Treasury targeted eight such charities located in the United States, including “al-Qaeda fronts such as the U.S. branch of the al-Haramain Foundation and the Benevolence International Foundation. In this period, the U.S. government also blacklisted groups that raised money for the Palestinian terror group Hamas, including the Holy Land Foundation, and for the Lebanese militia and political party Hezbollah, like the Good Will Charitable Organization.”

In contrast, the only charity to be designated under the Obama administration was the Tamil Foundation, which funded the Sri Lankan terrorist organization the Tamil Tigers. The group was blacklisted in February 2009, a month after Obama’s inauguration.

Lake presented some possible reasons for the drop in such designations, including that “terrorist groups have determined it’s too risky to set up a philanthropic front in the U.S. these days.” Juan Zarate, a deputy national security adviser for counter-terrorism during the Bush administration, told Lake that “enforcement efforts did have an effect on the ability of groups to openly organize and use non-governmental organizations as fundraising mechanisms for designated terrorist organizations.”

Zarate added that a number of terrorist groups have developed other funding mechanisms, so using a U.S. charity may not be as vital to their functioning as it once was.

Another possibility offered by Matthew Levitt, a former FBI counter-terrorism analyst and deputy assistant secretary of the Treasury, is that the designation of charities was of limited use, as the charity could contest the designation. “When an authority does find an entity worthy of this kind of attention, the first inclination is not to designate, which has limited consequences, but rather to investigate and prosecute,” said Levitt, who now heads the intelligence and counter-terrorism program at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy.

However Jonathan Schanzer, a former terrorism finance analyst at the Treasury and current vice president of research at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, raised concerns that the drop in designations may mean that charities that finance terrorist groups are escaping scrutiny. Schanzer observed that the Treasury now views itself as more of a “global intelligence shop,” and targets actors such as Iran and the Islamic State while leaving domestic charities to the FBI. But Schanzer expressed concern that “the FBI may be overwhelmed with direct threats to the homeland, thereby relegating domestic terrorism-finance cases to a third- or fourth-tier priority. Is anyone taking the threat of domestic terrorism finance as seriously as the Treasury did back in its heyday? I don’t know.”

Schanzer testified before Congress last month that seven key members of the Holy Land Foundation are now involved with American Muslims for Palestine, a group that is funding the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions campaign against Israel on U.S. campuses.

Lake concluded by observing that “raising money for anti-Israel activism is not the same as raising money for suicide bombers,” but now that Hamas has developed other sources of funding, that “remnants of [Hamas’s] former charity are free to raise funds for the war of ideas against the Jewish State at American colleges.” (For more from the author of “MAKE SURE YOU’RE SITTING DOWN: Since Obama Took Office, U.S. Stopped Targeting Terror-Linked Charities” please click HERE)

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Al-Qaida Group Eyed in Plane Explosion

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The Somalia-based al-Qaida affiliate Al Shabaab has been fingered by U.S. investigators as the likely culprit of a plane blast that sucked out a passenger and sent him hurtling to his death during a flight over eastern Africa.

Al Shabaab is a radical Muslim outfit that’s been waging war against the Western-backed Somalia government for some time. The group hasn’t claimed responsibility for the horrific explosion that sent a reportedly badly burned body to the ground over Somalia, as WND reported.

But U.S. investigators, speaking on condition of anonymity, said they’d detected traces of possible TNT explosive on the craft and that it was believed Al Shabaab set off a bomb, the Daily Mail reported.

The Daallo Airlines Flight D3159 was forced to make an emergency landing just five minutes after taking off, due to the blast. One witness, Hassan Mohamed Nur, said the cabin went black and smoke filled the air, and then a man was sucked through the gaping hole in the plane’s fuselage.

“I saw the passenger, a man in his early 60s, get sucked out of the plane,” he said to the Daily Mail. “There was a huge bang. A big hole appeared in the side of the jet and the man disappeared through it. One minute he was in his seat, the next he was gone. He’d been sucked out of the plane. People were screaming. We all thought we were going to die.” (Read more from “Al-Qaida Group Eyed in Plane Explosion” HERE)

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Watch: College Students Supposedly Taught What a Real Terrorist Is… This Is Ridiculous

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Photo Credit: National ReviewMost acts of terrorism in America are committed by white men who are “religiously motivated and politically conservative,” a psychology professor recently taught his students, adding that “9/11 is basically the only act of foreign-born terrorism that has ever happened in the United States.”

The “Introduction to Psychology” lesson was given by Dr. Ross Avilla, a lecturer at the University of California-Merced, who backed up his argument by telling his class about a white Christian man who shot up the Texas statehouse with an AK-47 – an incident which in fact never took place.

“Ninety percent [of U.S. terrorist attacks] are from these white Caucasian men,” Avilla told his class. “And by the way I am not saying white men are evil – but that is what we should be thinking about. Usually they are people who are religiously motivated and politically conservative.”

The psychology scholar couched his statements in a lesson on heuristics, defined “as a mental shortcut that allows people to solve problems and make judgments quickly.” He essentially argued many Americans wrongly believe Muslims make up the vast majority of U.S. terrorists because they have not thought long and hard on the matter.

A portion of the lecture was recorded by two students in the class who provided it to The College Fix. The lesson took place in mid-October, just a few weeks before UC Merced student Faisal Mohammad stabbed four people on the Northern California campus. (Read more from “College Students Supposedly Taught What a Real Terrorist Is… This Is Ridiculous” HERE)

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Turkey Promises to ‘Never Step Back’ From Terror Fight After Blast

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A day after a suicide bomber killed at least 10 people in a brazen attack, few ventured into Instanbul’s central tourist district.

Street vendors and shopkeepers opened for the day, but had little business.

A makeshift memorial formed at the site of the attack. People laid red roses in the shadow of the city’s world-famous Blue Mosque.

The people of Istanbul began to regroup as Turkey’s prime minister promised the nation’s resolve to fight terror remains unchanged.

“We will continue our fight against terrorism with the same resolve, and will never take a step back,’ Turkish Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu said, according to Turkey’s semi-official Anadolu news agency. (Read more from “Turkey Promises to ‘Never Step Back’ From Terror Fight After Blast” HERE)

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Alleged Terror Group Plotting Attacks to Harm Police Officers in Philadelphia

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Police in Philadelphia are investigating a tip that a man charged in the ambush shooting of a patrolman is connected to a radical group that may continue to pose a threat to officers.

The police department said Sunday evening that someone approached an officer on the street and alleged that the man who attacked Officer Jesse Hartnett “had an affiliation to a group with radical beliefs” . . .

Harnett was last reported in stable condition at the hospital after a man charged his car as he patrolled his usual west Philadelphia beat shortly before midnight Thursday, firing at least 13 shots, hitting the officer three times. Hartnett got out of his car, chased the man and returned fire, wounding him in the buttocks before he was captured by other officers about a block away. (Read more from “Alleged Terror Group Plotting Attacks to Harm Police Officers in Philadelphia” HERE)

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Disclosure: Another 41 Foreign-Born Individuals Snagged on Terror Charges

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Following the discovery of a terrorist cell in Texas allegedly operated by an Iraqi who entered the United States as a refugee, the Washington Free Beacon has learned of an additional 41 individuals who have been implicated in terrorist plots in the United States since 2014, bringing the total number of terrorists discovered since that time to 113, according to information provided by Congressional sources.

Since August, however, the Obama administration has stonewalled Congressional efforts to obtain more detailed immigration histories of these individuals, prompting frustration on Capitol Hill and accusation that the administration is covering up these histories to avoid exposing flaws in the U.S. screening process.

The disclosure of these additional 41 individuals linked to terror operations—many already identified as immigrants, others’ immigration histories shrouded in secrecy—has stoked further concerns about flaws in the U.S. screening process and is likely to prompt further congressional inquiry into Obama administration efforts to withhold details about these suspects, sources said.

As the number of legal immigrants connected to terrorism continues to grow, the Obama administration has sought to quash congressional inquiries and rally its allies behind an effort to fund efforts to boost the number of immigrants and refugees from the Middle East.

Many of these immigrants have been caught by authorities planning terrorist attacks on American soil, while others were found to be involved in efforts to provide funding and material to ISIS, according to an internal list of migrant terrorists codified by congressional sources and viewed by the Free Beacon. (Read more from “Disclosure: Another 41 Foreign-Born Individuals Snagged on Terror Charges” HERE)

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Men With ‘Ties To Terrorist Groups’ Just Apprehended By US – But It’s Where They Were Found…

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By Maegan Vasquez. A letter from a San Diego congressman to the Department of Homeland Security says that several dozen Pakistani and Afghan men have come into the United States through a Tijuana since September, and two of those men have ties to terrorist activity, the San Diego Reader first reported.

In a letter from Congressman Duncan Hunter (R-CA) to Defense Secretary Jeh Johnson, the two men in their 20’s were among those found during a recent increase of “military age” men “carrying U.S. cash” apprehended on the Tijuana-San Diego border. The letter says one individual had “associations with a known or suspected terrorist,” while the other was flagged for “derogatory information.”

The Reader reports:

“Until November, they would enter in groups and seek a federal agent to surrender to, according to union officials. It is believed that they did this because illegal entrants who are not Mexican citizens and who are deemed to not pose a significant threat are generally given a date to appear at immigration court and then released on their own recognizance.”

(Read more from “Men With ‘Ties to Terrorist Groups’ Just Apprehended By US – But It’s Where They Were Found…” HERE)

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‘Military Age Men’ at San Diego’s Southern Border

By Marty Graham. Among the several dozen Pakistani and Afghan men who have entered the U.S. illegally, coming into San Diego from Tijuana, two were found to have ties to terrorist groups, according to a letter sent by U.S. Rep. Duncan Hunter to the Department of Homeland Security.

Muhammad Azeem and Muktar Ahmad, both in their 20s, surrendered to U.S. Border Patrol agents in September, according to Immigration and Customs Enforcement. One was listed on the Terrorist Screening Database for “associations with a known or suspected terrorist. The other was a positive match for derogatory information in an alternative database,” according to Hunter’s letter.

Azeem and Ahmad are among dozens of men — described by Border Patrol agents as “military age and carrying U.S. cash” who began entering the U.S. through a Tijuana-based human-smuggling pipeline in September. (Read more from “‘Military Age Men”‘ at San Diego’s Southern Border” HERE)

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Is This US State the next Terrorist Target?

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By Daily Headlines. We’ve been reporting to you about the growing number of Missouri towns, experiencing a run on massive cell phone buys by middle eastern men with accents at several Walmart stores. Well this next item gone missing at should have everyone scared stiff.

The Kansas City and Independence, Missouri areas have been the sites for propane tank thefts, by the dozens, from area CVS and BP gas stations.

From FOX4KC:

Several Missouri law enforcement agencies have notified the FBI about a large amount of cell phone purchases from area Walmarts.

Now, another incident has some people wondering if we are in danger of a terrorist attack in our area. A large number of propane tanks have been reported stolen from several locations is Independence and Lee`s Summit.

At the end of November, a BP gas station in Lee`s Summit reported 18-20 propane tanks stolen from the outside cages. That same night the CVS on Southwest 3rd Street reported the exact same crime.

(Read more from “Is This US State the next Terrorist Target?” HERE)

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Spain Arrests Terrorism Suspect in Plot Against Swedish Artist

By Raphael Minder. Spain on Friday announced the arrest of a suspect wanted by the United States in connection with terrorism activities, including a failed attempt to kill a Swedish cartoonist who had depicted the Prophet Muhammad with a dog’s body.

Spanish officials said the suspect, Ali Charaf Damache, was arrested in Barcelona, where he had been moving between hostels. The United States has been seeking the extradition of Mr. Damache, who is also accused of planning to set up terrorist training camps and kill several other Westerners.

Mr. Damache is a dual Algerian and Irish citizen who was arrested in Ireland in 2010, where he faced American extradition proceedings. But he was released this year after an Irish judge rejected the extradition request.

Jordi Jané, an official from the Catalan regional government in Barcelona, said during a news conference on Friday that Mr. Damache was the subject of an international arrest warrant, and that he had been detained on Thursday in Barcelona and then transferred overnight to Madrid. On Friday, Mr. Damache appeared before a judge in Spain’s national court, who ordered his provisional arrest. The American authorities now have 40 days to present Spain with another extradition request. (Read more from “Spain Arrests Terrorism Suspect in Plot Against Swedish Artist” HERE)

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Muslim Leader from CAIR Tells CNN America Bears Some Blame for Terror Attacks

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America bears some of the blame for the bloody wave of Islamic extremism that has brought terrorism to San Bernardino, Paris and locations around the world, according to a spokesman for the Council on American-Islamic Relations.

In a Friday CNN interview, Hussam Ayloush, of the group’s Los Angeles chapter, said American foreign policy has helped fuel the rage that drives Muslim radicals to kill in the name of their faith.

“Let’s not forget that some of our own foreign policy, as Americans, as the west, have fueled that extremism,” Ayloush told “New Day” host Chris Cuomo during a discussion about Wednesday’s terrorist attack in San Bernardino, Calif., where a Muslim married couple killed 14 and wounded 21 at a holiday party for the county health department that employed the husband, Syed Rizwan Farook . . .

The discussion focused on Farook and Pakistani wife Tashfeen Malik’s indoctrination to Islamic jihadism and a purported backlash against American Muslims in the aftermath of the latest terrorist attack on U.S. soil. Farook, an American-born citizen, and Malik were killed in a shootout with police hours after the attack at the party, held in a conference room at a social services facility. On Friday, Fox News reported that Malik had pledged her allegiance to ISIS. (Read more from “Muslim Leader from CAIR Tells CNN America Bears Some Blame for Terror Attacks” HERE)

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