Thursday, January 23, 2014
CONTACT ME AT: manessmorrison2@yahoo.com

News Clips For The Day


FBI questions Hoboken mayor's aides over alleged Sandy relief funds threat: sources -- NBC

By Michael Isikoff
NBC News National Investigative Correspondent

FBI agents have begun questioning witnesses in the investigation into whether New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie's aides threatened to cut off Hurricane Sandy relief money to Hoboken unless the city's mayor backed a billion-dollar development project, three sources with direct knowledge of the probe told NBC News on Wednesday.

Federal prosecutors and agents have also instructed key witnesses to preserve all documents and emails relating to the allegations by Hoboken Mayor Dawn Zimmer, these sources said.

After Zimmer gave her account of the alleged threat to federal prosecutors on Sunday, federal agents questioned Dan Bryan, Zimmer's chief of staff, and Juan Melli, her communications director, the sources said.

The two Zimmer aides are among at least five witnesses who Zimmer told the FBI could confirm that she had previously told them about the conversation she says she had with Lt. Gov. Kim Guadagno last May. Zimmer has alleged that during that conversation in a parking lot, the lieutenant  governor linked Sandy funding to backing of the development project.

David Mello, a member of the Hoboken City Council, told NBC News that Zimmer told him about the Guadagno conversation last summer, either in late July or early August as they were walking home after an event. "I distinctly remember [Zimmer] saying that the lieutenant governor said, 'If this came out, she would deny it,'" he said.

"I thought it was absurd and outrageous," said Mello, adding that he pressed Zimmer whether she would speak out publicly about what she said took place. "She told me, 'It was a done deal that [Christie] was going to be re-elected" and she did not want to jeopardize further funding for the city, he said.
Mello, a Zimmer ally who said he strongly opposed Christie's re-election, said he is arranging through the Hoboken city counsel to provide his account to the U.S. attorney's office.

Bryan and Melli declined further comment, citing a request from the office of U.S. Attorney Paul Fishman that city officials not discuss the probe publicly. "I can confirm that the mayor has said that the U.S. attorney's office is in Hoboken and talking to people," said Melli.

Guadagno in a statement to reporters Tuesday adamantly denied Zimmer's account of the May conversation, calling  it "false" and "offensive."  A Christie press spokesman has also strongly denied Zimmer's account and suggested that it contradicts earlier statements she has made that were supportive of the Republican governor.
"It's very clear partisan politics are at play here as Democratic mayors with a political axe to grind come out of the woodwork," spokesman Colin Reed said in an email last weekend. 

Meanwhile, Hoboken City Council approved the hiring of attorney Gerald Krovatin to represent Zimmer during the probe. The city will set aside up to $17,000 for legal fees. Krovatin usually charges $600 per hour but he offered to work for $350 per hour on this case.

The council backed the move by a 5-4 vote on Wednesday night.



I'm afraid Zimmer will be unable to prove her statements, since she didn't have a tape recorder on her and nothing in writing, at least so far. She could be in trouble for slander. I hope not. I do hope that if any other mayors were threatened, they will come forward with proof, so the Republicans can't say their reports are false. I'll be looking for more on this.




Left behind: Afghan translator dodges Taliban on long road to America -- NBC
By Bill Briggs, NBC News contributor

The Afghan interpreter hid for his life, hunted by the Taliban for helping the Marines. His punishment, he says, had already been savage – the murder of his father and the abduction of his toddler brother. He believes he was next on the hit list.
For three years, Mohammad, 24, evaded those he called “the bad guys.” He huddled with eight siblings and his mother at a secret location in Pakistan, yet worried the Taliban would track him there. He worked via email and cellphone with his former Marine captain – and some 70 other Americans – to achieve one goal: safe passage to the United States.

He filed forms with the U.S. government. He answered interview questions at an embassy. He endured background checks. And starting in 2009, he waited, snagged in a bureaucratic thicket, wondering when the bad guys would snatch him.

On Jan. 15, Mohammad finally held his ticket to salvation, a U.S. visa. The refugee expected to fly out in days. When he inspected the document, however, he saw three letters that he feared might hamper his escape: The embassy had listed his last name as “Mohammad” and then printed “FNU,” meaning first name unknown. 

'Thousands of cases languishing'
Some 100,000 Iraqis and Afghans are estimated to have worked for U.S. troops, contractors, journalists and diplomats during the wars, say advocacy groups like the List Project, which to date has helped bring about 1,500 of those Iraqis to America. Many were spotted and tagged as traitors by insurgents, al Qaeda, or the Taliban. While there is no formal tally, the List Project’s founder, Kirk Johnson, estimates “thousands” of those men and women were assassinated after the troops left.
“I know Iraq seems ancient. But these people are still marked, still known as those who collaborated with the United States. I don’t expect that stigma will wear off for quite some time,” said Johnson, who authored a memoir, “To Be a Friend is Fatal: the Fight to Save the Iraqis America Left Behind.”

A fellow advocacy group, the Iraqi Refugee Assistance Project (IRAP), keeps a roster of crimes against Iraqis and Afghans who once helped U.S. interests. Each account has been vetted, said Katie Reisner, IRAP’s national policy director.
That catalog includes an Iraqi woman who worked as a U.S. Army translator. After being conditionally approved for a visa in February 2012, she received death threats via phone and text. Two months later, a pair of men broke into her home and threatened to rape her, according to the IRAP. She escaped and went underground. Congress eventually questioned the State Department about her case, and she was granted a visa in June 2013.

There's more in the IRAP files, like the Afghan man once employed by the U.S. Army who applied for a U.S. visa in June 2012 yet still lives at a secret location in Kabul. Taliban fighters have told his father that if they find him, he will be executed. And there’s the Iraqi man whose company supplied U.S. troops. In March 2013, his home was firebombed, causing the man and his family to flee. Their visa applications are pending.

One of the most famous cases involves Marcus Luttrell, a former Navy SEAL whose final mission is told in the movie “Lone Survivor.” In 2005, an Afghan villager, Mohammad Gulab, discovered Luttrell, severely wounded in a firefight. Gulab sheltered Luttrell from the Taliban. But since then, Gulab has taken his wife and children into hiding to escape Taliban retribution. Luttrell has been trying for years to obtain a green card for Gulab so he and his family can resettle in America.

How large is the backlog of similarly endangered Iraqis and Afghans seeking U.S. visas?
In 2008, Congress authorized 25,000 special immigrant visas (SIVs) for Iraqis who’d helped U.S. interests. The SIV program was designed to give them a fast track to the United States. In 2009, Congress approved 8,750 SIVs for Afghans who’d performed the same work. Those numbers, Reisner said, reflect congressional assessments on how many people needed to urgently get out.

Based on the most recent State Department figures, 6,675 Iraqis have received SIVs while 1,678 Afghans got the special visas, Reisner said. That leaves 7,102 unfilled Afghan SIVs and 18,325 unfilled Iraqi SIVs – presumably, some 25,000 people.
That backlog, Reisner asserts, has two causes. First: concerns among officials at the State Department and the Department of Homeland Security that a terrorist could slip in via the program.

But the larger problem is an “uncoordinated” bureaucracy, Reisner said, that stretches from U.S. embassies in Iraq and Afghanistan back to the federal government, snagging thousands of people in “a process that is prohibitively complicated.”
The SIV programs will expire at the end of September, say White House officials who dispute the advocates’ assessments.

“While there are several thousand applicants currently at some stage of processing, there are not 25,000 backlogged cases,” Laura Lucas Magnuson, a spokeswoman for the White House, wrote via email. “For those cases that are in the pipeline, agencies involved have been working to speed up our processing to the greatest degree possible while ensuring U.S. national security is not compromised.

“The White House strongly supports the Iraqi/Afghan SIV programs, as we recognize that many who have been employed by or worked on behalf of the U.S. government in Iraq and Afghanistan, and their families, face serious, ongoing threats as a result of their U.S. government affiliation. We take these threats, and the safety of those who work with us, very seriously, and we are committed to providing this benefit to those eligible.”

But at the List Project, founder Johnson sees “no real urgency in Washington,” and “zero leadership on this at the White House..So there are thousands of cases languishing in a broken bureaucracy, and the White House's reaction is ‘yeah, but at least it's not 25,000!’ ” Johnson wrote in an email.

“The Iraqis and Afghans upon whom we depended are losing faith in the ‘process’ that people in the White House have been 'speeding up' for years now.”
In response to Johnson's remarks, White House spokeswoman Magnuson cited two laws signed by President Barack Obama during the past 30 days, each separately pushing out the SIV application deadlines to Sept. 30 for Iraqis and Afghans once employed by American forces — people who now live under threat, waiting for entry into the United States. 

"We have worked with Congress to obtain extensions to ensure that there is adequate time to complete processing of those within the system," Magnuson said, "and for additional potential beneficiaries to have the opportunity to apply to these very important programs."

Marine Capt. Adrian Kinsella, 28, waited Monday with 25 friends at San Francisco International Airport. He had worked nearly four years to bring to America the interpreter he had once employed -- a young Afghan man who repeatedly alerted Kinsella whenever the Afghan villagers they encountered during patrols appeared to be lying or hiding lethal secrets.

Nicknamed “Yoda” by Kinsella’s platoon, the interpreter had twice ducked enemy gunfire with the Marines. They ultimately adopted him into the platoon “as one of our own,” said Kinsella, speaking as a private citizen. The Marines eventually went home. The interpreter stayed, weathering the murder of his father then the kidnapping of his 3-year-old brother – Taliban retaliation for his collaboration.
Now, the interpreter -– whose first name is Mohammad -- was inside the airport, clearing U.S. Customs. He was safe.

Kinsella instructed the greeting party to form two tight lines. Many had worked with Kinsella to secure Mohammad’s visa. 
As Mohammad emerged bone-tired from three days of air travel. Kinsella bear-hugged the man.
“Welcome home, brother,” the Marine said.
Mohammad's eyes were wide. Days earlier, before his journey, he’d had a vivid dream about waking up in America.

“I thought maybe I was dreaming again. But it was true,” Mohammad said later, describing his arrival. (He asked that his last name not be published to protect his family. They remain in hiding to avoid Taliban reprisals.)

“I cannot repay Adrian for everything he did for me. Without Adrian, I would not be here,” Mohammad said. “My dad got killed by those bad people, and since that day, we didn’t have a good day because every day I was worried about my family and about myself. I mean, the bad people (could have found) me easy.” Mohammad's father, a potter and tailor, was killed by the Taliban in 2009 after they discovered his son was working with U.S. forces. About a month after his father's murder, Mohammad began the paperwork to obtain a special visa to escape Afghanistan. 

Following the crimes against his family, Mohammad had packed his eight younger siblings, his mother and all of their possessions into a vehicle and fled to Pakistan. Once each week, Mohammad, 24, ventured to a market near their safe house to buy food, hoping nobody would recognize him and tip off the Taliban. He also waited for U.S. officials to approve his visa.

In 2010, Kinsella, home from Afghanistan, had received an email from Mohammad. The interpreter asked his old Marine friend if he could try to expedite his stalled case. While in Afghanistan, Kinsella had agreed to sponsor Mohammad's special visa application. But Kinsella dug again into the paperwork. After three years of bureaucratic delays, Kinsella wrote in September 2013 to two senators to request their assistance. Kinsella’s friends simultaneously wrote letters to their congressional representatives — 11 members in all agreed to help. The team to bring Mohammad to America grew to span 70 people across the country.

“He is the poster child for the SIV program,” said Kinsella, who also is a Tillman Military Scholar, studying law at the University of California, Berkeley.
“We’re taught as Marines: never leave a brother behind. As an American, it was embarrassing to tell him: ‘I will get you safe, I will get you here,’ and three years later, I was still fighting for that,” Kinsella said. “After we left the airport together, I kept looking at him in the car, part of me still not believing he’s here. It took so long. I was to the point where I thought it was never going to happen.
“Now, we have to take care of his family and get them here. They’re obviously in danger.”

Kinsella has invited Mohammad to live with him in Berkeley. The Marine recently spent time decorating what would become his friend’s bedroom, affixed an American flag to the wall. The flag – symbolizing the finish line – is threaded with irony, Kinsella acknowledged.

“Half of that is the BS of the embassies and half is the good side of America – all of the people who have been bending over to help bring him here,” Kinsella said. “That flag, you could say, is bittersweet.”



These are very large numbers of people who want and deserve asylum, so I suppose it's possible that there just aren't enough Americans employed to work on getting them into America. If Congress is holding them up, that is a shame. I don't think the likelihood of letting in a “bad apple” is that high, if we know what services they did for the US already. I also just don't think the individual enemies that might be let in can actually overthrow the US government, and if we are afraid of their committing terroristic acts we should just watch them after they get here to see what their associations are.

If they act suspiciously and we can prove it, we could simply deport them or put them on trial. To leave them in place in Iraq and Afghanistan under threat by the Taliban and al-Qaida is like the terrible day that Americans pulled out in disorder from South Vietnam and left behind many supporters. We need to be a country that will support those who have helped us.






Marvelous mosaics revealed inside 1,500-year-old church in Israel – NBC
Alan Boyle, Science Editor NBC News


Davida Eisenberg-Degen, an archaeologist with the Israel Antiquities Authority, shows Greek letters and a decorated "Christogram" that are part of a mosaic from a Byzantine-era church uncovered in Moshav Aluma, Israel. Stylized birds appear to be lifting the cross from the floor.

A 1,500-year-old mosaic floor with colorful images of animals, botanical and geometrical designs has been brought to light during the excavation of a Byzantine-era Christian church in southern Israel.

"The church probably served as a center of Christian worship for the neighboring communities," the Israel Antiquities Authority said in a news release about the find, issued Wednesday. The floor and other remains of the basilica were found over the past three months during preparations for the construction of a new neighborhood at Moshav Aluma, the agency said.

The church was part of a major Byzantine settlement located next to the main road running between Ashkelon on Israel's Mediterranean coast and Jerusalem to the east. Previous excavations along the road had found traces of other communities from the same period, but no churches.

The mosaic that was in the church's main hall features 40 decorative medallions. Some of the medallions depict animals including a zebra, a leopard, a turtle, a wild boar and various types of birds. Three medallions contain Greek inscriptions that commemorate two church leaders named Demetrios and Herakles.

Archaeologist Daniel Varga said another mosaic features "a 12-row dedicatory inscription in Greek containing the names Mary and Jesus, and the name of the person who funded the mosaic's construction." Inside a pottery workshop, archaeologists found jars, cooking pots, bowls and oil lamps.

The site will be open to the public on Thursday and Friday, and eventually the mosaic will be conserved and moved into a museum for public display, the Israel Antiquities Authority said.



This would be a beautiful thing to find. I'm sure the archaeologists are delighted. The art of that time period was awe-inspiring. I wonder if that church was still in use, or in ruins – probably in ruins since there was a modern construction planned there. In the US archaeologists are often called in by law when some new development of a site is planned so that any historical information can be preserved. It would be great to work as an archaeologist, I think – very exciting.





Advisory panel says NSA surveillance program should be ended --NBC
By Tom Curry, NBC News national affairs writer

An outside advisory panel Thursday will say that the bulk data collection program run by the National Security Agency is illegal and should be halted.
A summary of a report to be issued Thursday by the bipartisan five-member board said:
Section 215 the Patriot Act “does not provide an adequate legal basis” to support the NSA’s collection of records of telephone calls.

The NSA program violates a federal law called the Electronic Communications Privacy Act which prohibits telephone companies from giving customer records to the government except in response to a specific search warrant.

The data collection done under the program “has shown minimal value in safeguarding the nation from terrorism.” The board members said that based on the classified briefings and documents they received, “we have not identified a single instance involving a threat to the United States in which the program made a concrete difference in the outcome of a counterterrorism investigation.”

The board was created by Congress in 2007 to recommend policies to balance protecting the country from terrorism with ensuring privacy and civil liberties.



I wonder what President Obama and others who have been supporting the NSA will say to this. Of course, it is just a committee's recommendations and not an amendment to the law. If I find articles about it I will clip them. The statement below is from Wikipedia.


Electronic Communications Privacy Act
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Electronic Communications Privacy Act of 1986 (ECPA, codified at 18 U.S.C. §§ 2510–2522) was enacted by the United States Congress to extend government restrictions on wire taps from telephone calls to include transmissions of electronic data by computer. Specifically, ECPA was an amendment to Title III of the Omnibus Crime Control and Safe Streets Act of 1968 (the Wiretap Statute), which was primarily designed to prevent unauthorized government access to private electronic communications.

The ECPA also added new provisions prohibiting access to stored electronic communications, i.e., the Stored Communications Act,18 U.S.C. §§ 2701-12. The ECPA also included so-called pen/trap provisions that permit the tracing of telephone communications. §§ 3121-27. The ECPA has been amended by the Communications Assistance to Law Enforcement Act (CALEA) (1994), the USA PATRIOT Act (2001), the USA PATRIOT reauthorization acts (2006), and the FISA Amendments Act (2008).

Title I of the ECPA protects wire, oral, and electronic communications while in transit. It sets down requirements for search warrants that are more stringent than in other settings.

Title II of the ECPA, the Stored Communications Act (SCA), protects communications held in electronic storage, most notably messages stored on computers. Its protections are weaker than those of Title I, however, and do not impose heightened standards for warrants. Title III prohibits the use of pen register and/or trap and trace devices to record dialing, routing, addressing, and signalling information used in the process of transmitting wire or electronic communications without a court order.





Indian village 'court' orders gang rape of woman as punishment for boyfriend
By Alexander Smith, NBC News contributor

Village elders in India ordered the gang rape of a 20-year-old woman after they found out she was in a relationship with a man from a different community, police said Thursday.

Police in a rural part of West Bengal arrested 13 people in connection with the alleged offense that left the woman in critical condition in the hospital, police told the BBC.

"The relationship was going on for almost five years," Birbhum police chief C. Sudhakar said. "When the man visited the woman's home on Monday with the proposal of marriage, villagers spotted him and organized a kangaroo court.
"During the 'proceedings,' the couple were made to sit with hands tied."

Sudhakar told the BBC that the elders took action because the woman was from their tribal community and her boyfriend was from a non-tribal community nearby.
So-called "kangaroo courts," made up of village elders, do not have an official capacity but are not uncommon especially in India's more rural areas.

The woman said she was assaulted by the men on the night of Jan. 20 in the district of Birbhum.

Sudhakar told the BBC that the lead elder, who is among those arrested, had initially ordered the woman's family to pay 25,000 rupees ($400).
But they were too poor to pay the fine so the elder told the alleged gang rapists "go enjoy the girl and have fun," according to a complaint filed by the family.
According to a report by Reuters the men have appeared in court and are now remanded in jail. 

The issue of sexual violence against women in India became a national and international issue last year after a 23-year-old student was killed in a brutal gang rape in Delhi in 2012.

The case shocked the world and led to nationwide protests and a toughening of the laws covering sex crimes.



I hope that toughening the laws will make a real difference in these cases. Remote places everywhere tend to have their own “law,” and may often follow what is basically mob violence. If this tribal leader is punished severely, maybe it will help. Still, it takes a certain amount of consent by the tribal members in the village for this kind of thing to be carried out. Otherwise, some of the people would have stood up for her and spoken out against the elder, I think. When a society doesn't value its women, the “concensus” will not be just in protecting them. I'm not sure, sometimes, how far Homo Sapiens has progressed from our most primitive times.





White House takes up fight against campus sexual assault – NBC
By Carrie Dann, NBC News

The White House is taking new actions to combat sexual assault  - particularly on college campuses.

President Barack Obama announced a new task force Wednesday intended to help educational institutions prevent and respond to sexual violence as well as beef up the ability of federal agencies to hold schools accountable if they aren't addressing problems.

Calling all sexual assaults “an affront on our basic decency and humanity,” Obama said the victimization of college students is also an "affront to everything they've worked so hard to achieve." 

"Our schools need to be places where our young people feel secure and confident as they prepare to go as far as their God-given talents can carry them," he said.

Obama met with dozens of administration officials Wednesday to discuss ways to stem sexual violence nationwide – including prosecution reforms, increased resources for victims and an effort to “change the culture” around assaults.

"I want every young man in America to feel some strong peer pressure in terms of how they are supposed to behave and treat women,” Obama said.
Obama also reiterated that he expects "significant progress" in the Pentagon's initiative to stem sexual assaults in the military. 

A new report published Wednesday by the White House Council on Women and Girls states that one in five women are sexually assaulted while in college. But only about 12 percent of victims report the assault, and perpetrators are often repeat offenders.
“Because campus sexual assault is the subject of intersecting federal laws, policies, and grant programs, it is a key area for improved interagency collaboration,” the report says.

The report also addresses the prevalence of rape and sexual assault throughout the country. Nearly 22 million women and 1.6 million men have been raped in their lifetimes, with minorities and young people particularly at risk 
Other statistics cited in the report include:
Nearly half of female victims were raped before the age of 18, and over 25 percent of male victims were raped before age 10.
Most rapes are perpetrated by acquaintances and current or former partners. Only about 14 percent of women and 15 percent of men report being raped by someone they don’t know.

Multiracial women are at the greatest risk of rape. About one-third of multiracial women have been raped, as have 27 percent of American Indian and Alaskan Native women. Nineteen percent of white women have been raped, compared to 15 percent of Hispanic women and 22 percent of African American women.

“In order to put an end to this violence, we as a nation must see it for what it is: a crime. Not a misunderstanding, not a private matter, not anyone’s right or any woman’s fault. And bystanders must be taught and emboldened to step in to stop it,” the report reads. “We can only stem the tide of violence if we all do our part.” 



“In order to put an end to this violence, we as a nation must see it for what it is: a crime. Not a misunderstanding, not a private matter, not anyone’s right or any woman’s fault.” That is a very beautiful and clear statement about what rape really is. The report also mentions the number of young men and boys who are raped. Rape scars every victim emotionally, and may leave a reservoir of anger in their hearts, which too often will be turned inward against themselves. If they turn it outward and become violent offenders themselves, that is no better. Rape needs to be reported, the rapist brought to justice and the victims allowed to receive mental health treatment so they can to come to terms with it. I'm glad to see the White House stepping into the matter.