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Home Front: Politix
Muslim Americans Just Redrew the Electoral Map—and No One’s Talking About It
2025-05-26
Muslim Americans, African-American men, Latino citizens, union members, unions (!!), Native Americans — all the traditionally locked-in Democratic voters except college-educated women are now either divided or breaking for President Trump. It’s been fascinating to watch.
[Townhall] In one of the most politically significant—but underreported—developments of the 2024 election cycle, a new survey reveals that Moslem Americans are no longer a reliable voting bloc for the Democratic Party. This shift reflects not only political disillusionment but a deeper cultural and ideological rift that is quietly reshaping the American electoral map.

According to a nationally representative poll conducted by J.L. Partners in collaboration with the Moslem American Leadership Alliance (MALA), the Moslem-American vote is now evenly split: 34 percent of respondents identify as Democrats
...every time you hear the phrase white people, white supremacy, white anything but paint, you're listening to a Democrat. Ask him/her/it to reimagine something for you; they do that a lot, though not well. They can hear a dog whistle a mile or two away. They invented the spoils system and Tammany Hall, and inspired the addition of the word (Thomas) Nasty to the English language. They want to stop continental drift and repeal the law of unintended side effects...
, 34 percent as independents, and 33 percent as Republicans. Just four years ago, President Joe The Big Guy Biden
...46th president of the U.S. Sleazy Dem machine politician, paterfamilias of the Biden Crime Family...
 secured 69 percent of this demographic. In 2024, Kamala Harris
former senatrix from California, 2020 Dem presidential hopeful and ultimately Joe Biden's intended successor
, then the Democratic nominee, garnered only 20.3 percent of the Moslem vote—while Green Party candidate Jill Stein captured a stunning 53 percent.

This political earthquake signals more than dissatisfaction with a particular candidate or administration. It reflects a growing realization among Moslem Americans that the Democratic Party has drifted away from the traditional, family-centered values that define their communities.

The numbers speak volumes. While 52 percent of Moslem Americans still view the Democratic Party favorably, a sizable segment supports policies typically associated with the Republican platform. The MALA poll found that 43 percent back the deportation of illegal immigrants colonists, 44 percent support increased domestic oil drilling, and 62 percent favor eliminating taxes on tipped income. These are not fringe positions—they are mainstream conservative policies gaining ground with Moslem voters.

Cultural concerns are just as pivotal. Many Moslem Americans have voiced unease with the Democratic Party’s promotion of gender ideology and LGBTQ+ content in schools, especially where it intersects with young children. These concerns are not rooted in intolerance—they stem from a clash between progressive dogma and deeply held religious and moral values.

Moslem communities in the U.S. prioritize modesty, family cohesion, spiritual tradition, and the protection of children. These values increasingly conflict with the Democratic Party’s progressive agenda on sexuality, gender identity, and parental rights in education.

Layered on top of this cultural divergence is a deepening sense of betrayal—particularly on foreign policy. From Israel and Gazoo
...Hellhole adjunct to Israel and Egypt's Sinai Peninsula, inhabited by Gazooks. The place was acquired in the wake of the 1967 War and then presented to Paleostinian control in 2006 by Ariel Sharon, who had entered his dotage. It is currently ruled with a rusty iron fist by Hamas with about the living conditions you'd expect. It periodically attacks the Hated Zionist Entity whenever Iran needs a ruckus created or the hard boyz get bored, getting thumped by the IDF in return. The ruling turbans then wave the bloody shirt and holler loudly about oppression and disproportionate response...
 to Russia, Ukraine and Afghanistan, the Democratic Party’s foreign interventions have deeply affected Moslem-majority regions and undermined the moral credibility of U.S. leadership in the eyes of many Moslem voters.

Matt Duss, executive vice president at the Center for International Policy and former foreign policy advisor to Senator Bernie Sanders

...The only first openly Socialist member of the U.S. Senate. Sanders was Representative-for-Life from Vermont until moving to the Senate for the rest of his life in 2006, assuming the seat vacated by Jim Jeffords. He ran for the 2016 nomination for president, to be cheated out of it by Hillary Clinton, then went back to being an Independent socialist, waiting for 2020 to roll around...
, argued in a January 2025 Guardian article that Democrats have become the party of militarism, ceding the anti-war mantle to Republicans. He warned that the party’s embrace of hawkish foreign policy has alienated voters who oppose U.S. interventionism—particularly in the Middle East.

This assessment tracks closely with electoral trends from 2024. In Michigan—home to one of the largest Moslem populations in the U.S.—exit polls showed that 59 percent of Moslem voters backed Jill Stein, while just 14 percent supported Kamala Harris. Duss’s critique underscores the electoral cost of a Democratic foreign policy increasingly at odds with its base.

Importantly, this realignment is not about blind allegiance to the GOP. It represents a pragmatic reassessment of leadership—especially regarding war, peace, and international justice.

Though Donald Trump
...The tack in the backside of the Democratic Party...
 remains a divisive
...politicians call things divisive when when the other side sez something they don't like. Their own statements are never divisive, they're principled...
 figure, a plurality of Moslem voters (52 percent) now believe he is better suited than Joe Biden to broker peace in the Middle East. On the Israel-Gaza conflict, 29 percent of Moslem respondents expressed support for Hamas
..a regional Iranian catspaw,...
 (granted, this is a troubling find), just 14 percent backed Israel, and 44 percent supported neither side—indicating a nuanced, issue-by-issue approach rather than rigid ideological alignment. It also reflects deep fatigue with the endless wars associated with Democratic leadership.

This is not a story of mass conversion to conservatism—it is a recalibration based on policy, values, and a demand for representation. Moslem Americans are asserting their political independence. No longer content to be treated as a monolithic voting bloc, they are making it clear: their loyalty depends on substance, not slogans.
Related:
Muslim Americans 05/16/2025 Denver air traffic controllers temporarily lose radio communications with aircraft
Muslim Americans 05/14/2025 Buttigieg says 'right now I'm not running for anything' during Iowa stop
Muslim Americans 04/13/2025 Revealed: Retired police officer claims he was threatened with arrest amid abuse gangs investigation

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Home Front: Politix
Ben Freeman: Foreign Money Flowing into Washington Keeps U.S. in Prolonged Wars
2019-01-22
[Breitbart] Foreign money flowing into Washington is keeping the United States in prolonged wars, and most Americans are not even aware of it, according to Dr. Ben Freeman, director of the Foreign Influence Transparency Initiative at the Center for International Policy.
'War is our business, and business is good.'
"Right now, U.S. foreign policy is for sale ‐ not to the lowest bidder, but to the highest bidder. War is a business. And our wars are not our own. They never have been," he said Wednesday at an event in Washington, DC, sponsored by the Committee for a Responsible Foreign Policy.

Freeman and his team researched for six months Saudi Arabia’s 2017 lobbying activities in Washington, DC, including meetings, emails, contacts with journalists, and political campaign contributions, and the potential effect those activities had on foreign policy.

They found that Saudi Arabia had hired more than two dozen firms in that year with more than a hundred agents working on their behalf. In 2017, those agents had more than 2,500 contacts during this time, the majority of them with members of the Senate, news media, and the House‐in that order.

Freeman said many of the contacts were related to arms sales, foreign military sales, and some of the votes that were held to stymie those arms sales. He said sometimes the lobbying is done by former members of Congress who earn hundreds of thousands of dollars to lobby former colleagues.

"Every time there is a vote on arms sales or anything related to Yemen, this lobby goes bananas," he said. "And we can see the activity on the days that there are these votes. In some cases, they visit almost every single office on the day of those votes."

Freeman said they also found more than $2.2 million in 2017 campaign contributions to both Democrats and Republicans. The list was a "who’s who" in the Democrat and Republican Party, he said.

The top Saudi campaign contributions were to then-presidential candidate Hillary Clinton, totaling $94,496 because some donations in late 2016 were included, he said. He said Trump got "a little over $10,000" from Saudi Arabia.

And they found 12 instances where contact with a lobbyist pushing for or against a vote and a campaign contribution happened on the same day.

"In other words, a lobbying firm walks into a member of Congress’s office and says, ’I need you to vote a certain way on this upcoming vote on an arms sale,’ and then later that day ... they say, ’Oh, by the way, here’s a $2,000 check to your campaign. Good luck on re-election, buddy,'" Freeman said.

He said the number of contacts expands exponentially if the time window is expanded, for example, to two weeks before a vote.

Breitbart credits The Committee for Responsible Foreign Policy (CRFP) for this post. This link contains numerous interesting articles.
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India-Pakistan
US conference calls for independent Baluchistan
2009-11-26
[Al Arabiya Latest] As the Pakistani government hastily presented a Baluchistan package in parliament in its last ditch effort to appease the estranged people of the insurgency-hit province, a group of Baluchi officials held a conference in Washington, where they demanded an end to occupation by Pakistan and Iran.

The conference, organized by the American Friends of Baluchistan, who called for the establishment of an independent Baluchistan state protected by the United Nations for an interim period, was attended by several prominent Baluch leaders from Pakistan and Iran as well as activists for the cause of Kashmiris and Sindhis.

A resolution adopted by the conference charged that both Pakistan and Iran were committing systematic genocide of Baluch people and appealed to the world community to force Pakistan and Iran to announce a timetable for withdrawing their.

The resolution claimed that thousands of Baluchi men, women and children had been murdered, while thousands of others were abducted and put in jails, where they disappeared without a trace. The group demanded those responsible to be tried at the International Criminal Court (ICC).

Other people in attendance at the conference were Selig Harrison, the Asia Director at the Center for International Policy, former US government officials, second secretary of Norwegian embassy in Washington and former leader of Mukti Bahini, the guerilla movement that fought a war of independence for Bangladesh, former East Pakistan.

Founder of American Friends of Baluchistan, Ahmar Masti Khan, expressed his joy over the fact that the conference proved far more successful than he expected.

Herbiyar Marri, a Baluch separatist leader, also addressed the conference through video link.

Other prominent speakers at the conference included former president of Baluch Students Federation, Aziz Baluch, the supplier of stinger missiles to Afghan Mujahedin on CIA's insistence, Andrew Iva and the former president of World Sindhi Congress, Sagheer Sheikh.

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Caribbean-Latin America
Honduras Officials Meet for Second Day of Peace Talks
2009-07-11
July 10 (Bloomberg) -- Honduran officials representing deposed President Manuel Zelaya and interim leader Roberto Micheletti met for a second day in Costa Rica today, after the two leaders avoided a face-to-face discussion yesterday. The delegations are talking with Costa Rican President Oscar Arias at his residence in the capital, San Jose, to try to resolve the nearly two-week stalemate and prevent more violence in the country. Arias called for patience and perseverance, even as Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez said talks were "dead."

"The two sides are very far apart and these things take time," Arias said yesterday. "I've always said that dialogue can produce miracles, but not immediately unfortunately."

A settlement may take time as both sides accuse the other of violating the Honduran constitution. Zelaya, 56, was put on a plane at gunpoint by the Honduran military on June 28 and sent to Costa Rica after ignoring court orders to reinstate the military chief. The general had refused to help organize a poll seeking changes to the constitution.
The Bloomberg reporter ignores that the poll was illegal, that the Honduran Supreme Court had told Zelaya not to do it, that the military refused to help him do it, and that Zelaya had had the ballots printed in Venezuela.
The delegation representing Micheletti plans to leave the country at 5 p.m. New York time today and neither side has shown much flexibility, Rodrigo Arias, minister to the president's office, told reporters.

Chavez today became the first president in the hemisphere to openly criticize the talks and said U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton shouldn't have supported them. "It was a grave error," Chavez told reporters in Caracas. "It's turned into a very dangerous trap for democracy that sets a very grave precedent."
Like how you could be ousted and have trouble talking your way back in ...
Arias will continue with talks and take any criticism from Chavez as a "compliment," said Robert White, a former U.S. Ambassador to El Salvador who now heads the Center for International Policy in Washington. Other than Chavez, most Latin American leaders realize that Zelaya is a "bull in the China shop" and may be difficult to support, White said in a telephone interview.
That's the interesting thing, isn't it: most people in Latin America, and especially most of the citizens of Honduras, understand Zelaya. His supporters support him precisely because he's in the Chavez mold, and his opponents oppose him for the same reason. There's no real disagreement on what he is. It's only Bambi and the rest of the gringo world that don't seem to get it.
Zelaya and Micheletti, both dressed in dark suits with red ties, met separately with Arias yesterday on the condition that they wouldn't have to meet face-to-face, Costa Rican Information Minister Mayi Antillon told reporters.

"We've begun talks and the only thing remaining is a personal meeting between the two, but it's not yet the moment," Antillon said.

Micheletti, who left Honduras for the first time since being sworn in as interim president, said he was "totally satisfied" with the talks and returned home yesterday.
Since nothing happened, and every day nothing happens Micheletti and his country enjoy the benefits of possession.
Zelaya arrived in the Dominican Republic this morning to meet with that country's President Leonel Fernandez.

It appears that the two leaders have left behind teams to negotiate without having created a "good" framework for a solution, Jose Miguel Insulza, the Secretary General of the Organization of American States, said today on Chile's Radio Cooperativa.
Because there is no 'good' framework. Zelaya wants back in, the Hondurans want to keep him out.
"It's one of those things where the protagonists come, talk and go and leave behind their negotiating teams, who it turns out aren't really negotiating," he said. "I don't expect to see white smoke."

Solutions to the stalemate including a government of national unity and amnesties need to be negotiated with the return of Zelaya to Honduras, Insulza said.

The leaders remained entrenched in their positions. Zelaya said he must be reinstated as president and Micheletti said his government would hold previously scheduled presidential elections on Nov. 29, backing away from his comment last week that he would be willing to hold early elections.
My guess is that Micheletti ran that up the pole, and since no one saluted he ran it back down. I don't see him offering that again.
In their absence, Honduran officials including Zelaya's foreign minister Patricia Rodas, ex-foreign ministers Milton Jimenez and Carlos Lopez and the former president of the Supreme Court Vilma Cecilia Morales will look to reach an accord.

While the interim government in Honduras has institutional support from the Supreme Court and Congress, it is facing international pressure after the Organization of American States voted to remove Honduras as a member and the U.S. cut military aid to the Central American nation.

"It's difficult to talk about a successful negotiation that doesn't involve the restitution of Zelaya as president," Arias said. "The dialogue has to continue and eventually it will have to be them two that reach a deal."
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China-Japan-Koreas
N. Korea would attack Japan in event of war: U.S. scholar
2009-06-19
[Kyodo: Korea] North Korea would attack Japan if another war with the reclusive country erupted as a result of efforts to implement recently strengthened U.N. sanctions against Pyongyang over its second nuclear test, a U.S. scholar said Wednesday. Selig Harrison, Asia Program director at the Washington-based Center for International Policy, who visited North Korea in January, sounded the warning during a House Foreign Affairs Committee subcommittee hearing on North Korea policy.
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China-Japan-Koreas
State Department Says Nuclear-Free Korea Remains US Goal
2009-02-18
The State Department said Tuesday the complete dismantling of North Korea's nuclear program remains the goal of the Chinese-led six-party negotiations with Pyongyang. The comment followed an assertion by a leading U.S. academic that North Korea appears determined to retain a small arsenal of nuclear weapons.

The State Department says while the Obama administration is reviewing all aspects of U.S. policy toward North Korea, it has not changed the ultimate objective of achieving a nuclear free Korean Peninsula.

The comments here came in response to a published assertion by U.S. Asia scholar Selig Harrison that North Korea appears adamant in holding on to the small arsenal of nuclear weapons it is understood to have produced in recent years, and is unlikely to be willing to negotiate anything other than a cap on its weapons holdings.

Harrison, a former Washington Post Asia correspondent and now a scholar with the Washington-based Center for International Policy, said in a Washington Post column Tuesday that he visited North Korea last month and found a hardening of policy there - apparently related to the reported illness of the country's leader, Kim Jong Il.
And to the fact that they're barking mad ...
Harrison said he was told by North Korean officials the communist state was ready to rule out building additional weapons, but that relinquishing already-weaponized nuclear material would depend on how Pyongyang's relationship with Washington evolved - a seeming roll-back from its 2005 agreement-in-principle to disarm in return for various benefits.
Because they think they can bamboozle Bambi ...
At a news briefing, State Department Deputy Spokesman Gordon Duguid said the desired "end state" of the six-party negotiations continues to be a nuclear-free Korea. "Any move to change the six-party process, or not to live up to the commitments to the six-party talks, of course would be of concern," he said. "However, the North Koreans have agreed, have made commitments to the international community and particularly to the members of the six-party talks, to carry our certain functions, certain activities that will provide the actions-for-action moves that we will take. So they should focus on those commitments that they have made rather than statements that are not particularly helpful."

The nuclear talks have been a key issue in Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's visit to Japan, which ends Wednesday. She has said in Tokyo the United States expects North Korea to fulfill its obligations, and that reported plans by Pyongyang to test a long-range missile would be "very unhelpful."

Asia scholar Harrison said in his commentary Tuesday that the hard-line stance he encountered in Pyongyang suggests the United States might have to accept the idea of a nuclear North Korea and formulate policy accordingly.

A senior official here said while Harrison is a private citizen, North Korea has played him for a fool used him as a symp stooge conduit for relaying official views before and that he expects him to be in touch with State Department officials on his latest trip.
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China-Japan-Koreas
N. Korea officials willing to normalize ties with U.S.: U.S. scholar
2009-02-06
North Korean officials have expressed their willingness to normalize relations between their country and the United States, a U.S. scholar who last month met them in North Korea said Wednesday. Selig Harrison, Asia Program director at the Washington-based Center for International Policy, made the revelation in a speech about his visit to the reclusive nation.
"Abby Somebody!"
"Abby Who?"
"Abby... Normal!"
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China-Japan-Koreas
Norks have Enough Plutonium for 6 Nuclear Bombs, NYT Says
2009-01-18
Jan. 18 (Bloomberg) — North Korea has assembled enough ``weaponized'' plutonium to construct between four and six nuclear bombs, the New York Times reported, citing American scholar Selig Harrison. Harrison, after a meeting with North Korean officials in the capital Pyongyang, said the definition of ``weaponized'' was unclear although it implied construction of nuclear arms, the newspaper said, citing comments made by Harrison at a news conference.

Harrison is the director of the Asia program at the Center for International Policy and has traveled to North Korea several times to meet senior officials, the report said.

North Korea's foreign ministry yesterday said it would retain its nuclear capability as long as it's threatened by the U.S.
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Caribbean-Latin America
Colombia Fires 27 From Army Over Killings
2008-10-31
The Colombian government on Wednesday fired 27 army officers and soldiers, including three generals, amid allegations that poor young men had been lured to the country's turbulent outback from slums in the capital and killed there by troops.

The purge, announced by President Alvaro Uribe at a news conference, is considered unprecedented for Colombia's large, U.S.-backed army, which has long resisted reforms. The dismissals came as Uribe faces criticism abroad for his administration's human rights record while he attempts to lobby a Democratic-controlled Congress in Washington to support a free trade deal.

The president's office issued a statement that outlined serious command-and-control problems in the army an d said soldiers might have collaborated with criminal bands to inflate the number of combat deaths, traditionally used by the military as a measure of success.

"In some instances, there has been negligence in the army, and that has permitted some people to involve themselves in crimes, which in some regions end in the killings of innocents to show success against the criminals," Uribe said.

The head of the armed forces, Gen. Freddy Padilla, read the names of the officers and soldiers removed from service, including four colonels and seven lieutenant colonels. The generals were Paulino Coronado, who oversaw the region where the young men from Bogota were killed, and two division commanders, José Joaquin Cortés and Roberto Pico Hernandez.

The last time the government purged so many officers at once was during the administration of President Andrés Pastrana.

"It's certainly the biggest one-day purge," said Adam Isacson, a senior military analyst at the Center for International Policy in Washington. "Uribe has fired generals before, not always for human rights violations. But these are the biggest human rights-related firings in about 10 years."
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Caribbean-Latin America
El Jefe once saved Reagan...also a Truther
2007-09-12
Appears there's lots of Loose Change jangling around in Fidel's head?
(AP) Fidel Castro says that Cuba once saved the life of U.S. President Ronald Reagan by giving American officials information about an assassination plot. The essay published Wednesday in the Communist Party daily Granma appeared to be Castro's first public description of the matter. It seemed to be aimed at showing that Cuba had cooperated with the United States in the past.
So secret, nobody knows about it...
Castro wrote that a Cuban security official stationed at the United Nations told U.S. mission security chief Robert C. Muller about an extreme right-wing group that was planning to assassinate Reagan during a planned trip to North Carolina in 1984. "The information was complete: the names of those implicated in the plan; day, time and hour where the assassination could occur; the type of weapon the terrorists had and where they kept their arms; and along with all that, the meeting place of those elements planning the action as well as a brief summary of what had occurred in said meeting," Castro wrote.
The Colenel, in the library, with the candlestick...
Castro wrote that Cuban authorities learned later that the FBI had arrested several people in North Carolina and he said that several days after that, Muller expressed America's thanks to the Cuban official over lunch in a U.N. dining room.
Yeah, "Assassination Plot Against Reagan Foiled With Cuban Help". That would never make the papers...
The Cuban leader also wrote that when Reagan survived an assassination attempt in 1981, Havana formally condemned the act during a meeting with the head of the U.S. Interests Section in Cuba, Wayne Smith.
Were they sorry Jodie's boyfriend missed?
The press office of the U.S. State Department's Western Hemisphere Affairs in Washington did not immediately respond to a telephone call requesting comment.
Ummmmmmmm...ummmmmmmmm...we'll get back to you.
Smith confirmed the 1981 meeting in Havana, though he said he had not heard about the 1984 plot. "But just because I never heard about it doesn't mean it didn't happen," said Smith, who left Havana in 1982 and is now at the Center for International Policy think tank in Washington. "It isn't the kind of thing that the U.S. would want widely known."
...like those fake moon landings.
Castro also accused the U.S. government of misleading the public about the Sept. 11 attacks in New York and Washington six years ago. "It is now known there was deliberate disinformation" about the attacks, the Cuban leader wrote. "We were tricked like everybody else on the planet."
Kinda like when I told everybody I wasn't a commie way back when...
More:
In an essay read by a Cuban television presenter on Tuesday night, Castro said the Pentagon was hit by a rocket, not a plane, because no traces were found of its passengers.
Whaddya think, Fidel? Aliens? Or will that be the shocking conclusion to "Lost"?
"Studying the impact of planes, similar to those that hit the Twin Towers, that had accidentally fallen on densely populated cities, one concludes that it was not a plane that crashed into the Pentagon," Castro said. "Only a projectile could have caused the geometrically round hole that allegedly was made by the plane," he said.
That's true. After years of extensive study of Road Runner cartoons, I see that whenever Wyle E. Coyote runs through a wall, he leaves a perfect silhouette of...Wyle E. Coyote! Every time!
Castro said the truth behind the September 11 attacks with hijacked planes that killed nearly 3,000 people will probably never be known. Castro's 4,256-word essay made no mention of Osama bin Laden and his militant Islamist al Qaeda network behind the attacks on New York's World Trade Center and Washington.
Oh. Yeah. That guy...
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China-Japan-Koreas
N.Korea to Remove Fuel Rods at Yongbyon
2006-09-23
Entire story based on the word of a single 'expert', so beware.
BEIJING, (AP) - North Korea is planning to remove fuel rods at a nuclear reactor within the next three months in what would be a significant boost to its nuclear weapons capability, an American expert said Saturday. Selig Harrison, director of the Asia program at the Washington-based Center for International Policy, said North Korea's vice foreign minister told him in Pyongyang this week the secretive communist regime would unload the rods at the Yongbyon reactor "beginning this fall, and no later than the end of the year."

The North Korean official would neither confirm nor deny the country was planning to conduct its first known nuclear test, Harrison said. Last month, foreign intelligence reports said unusual activity at a possible testing site had been detected, sparking fears of an imminent test.

The Yongbyon reactor has been at the center of U.S. concerns about North Korea's nuclear weapons program. The reactor's spent fuel rods can be mined for plutonium, which can then be used to construct nuclear bombs. Removing the fuel rods is "a significant new development because it underlines that North Korea is enhancing its weapons capability," Harrison said. "Every time they unload it, they are getting a new increment of plutonium to be reprocessed and they are adding to the number of weapons that they could make," he said.

North Korea last removed fuel rods at the facility in June 2005 and was not due to do so again until June 2007, Harrison told reporters in Beijing shortly after arriving from a four-day stay in North Korea. "They are speeding it up because they want to use Yongbyon as leverage to get bilateral negotiations with the United States," he said.
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Home Front: Politix
The New McCarthyism
2006-04-24
"It isn't just the CIA that has problems with former politicals getting knee-deep into this Administration's policy and leaking materials," says a current Bush Administration aide. "We're talking about a situation that we haven't been able to deal with in a manner in which we'd want. But this Mary McCarthy case may help us."

The aide is referring to the firing last week of a CIA employee working in the agency's Office of Inspector General. One of McCarthy's jobs was investigating allegations of torture by CIA employees or contractors at Iraqi prisons. The CIA fired McCarthy on evidence that she was one of the sources for Washington Post reporter Dana Priest's report on so-called "Black Site" prisons in Europe and elsewhere that housed captured al Qaeda, Taliban, and some senior Iraqi military and intelligence individuals.

Unresolved is whether McCarthy also leaked material to the left-wing organization, Human Rights Watch, which clearly was also a key source to Priest. (Note this quote in Priest's now-Pulitzer Prize winning story: "'I remember asking: What are we going to do with these people?' said a senior CIA officer. 'I kept saying, where's the help? We've got to bring in some help. We can't be jailers -- our job is to find Osama.'" Was this McCarthy?)

McCarthy's background is just becoming increasingly fleshed out, including her ties to former National Security Advisor Sandy "Sox" Berger and the Clinton White House. McCarthy was appointed Special Assistant to the President and Senior Director for Intelligence Programs by Berger in 1998. She replaced Rand Beers. According to former Kerry campaign staffers, Beers, who served as a senior adviser to Kerry's campaign, spoke of having continued access to CIA and national security data from former colleagues still in government.

"He said he still had friends willing to help the Kerry campaign from inside," says a former staffer. "We always assumed that guys like Beers and Berger were in touch with these people. I'm not talking about having secure material leaked to us, but our national security folks always seemed to be in the know." The former staffer said he never recalled mention of any names.

But all of this is now past tense, and the White House, as well as senior staff at the Departments of Justice, State, and Defense, are attempting to identify possible leakers among their own career staffs with access to information that might be helpful to Democrats or the press.

Of greatest concern is the Department of Justice, the nexus of many terrorism and national security cases that would involve the White House, Defense and State Departments, as well as briefings on Capitol Hill to congressional leadership. "We know we have people leaking materials. It's been an ongoing problem, but until someone has taken the first step, and the McCarthy case would appear to be the first step, it's hard to move against career staff," says a current Defense Department staffer. "We have an IG looking at all kinds of things right now. Perhaps we'll get some movement."
There are other interesting links as well :

Pulitzer Prize winning Dana Priest is married to William Goodfellow. William Goodfellow is the Executive Director of the the Center for International Policy (CIP). Here is what Discover The Networks has to say about the Center For International Policy:

America’s Red Army

One of the most sophisticated of Fenton’s anti-war projects is the co-mingling of Win Without War and the Center for International Policy (CIP). Before 9/11, CIP, a Fenton Communications client, mainly acted as Fidel Castro’s greatest “think tank” ally. Much of its million-dollar budget was spent lobbying to end economic sanctions and travel restrictions against Cuba.

Now, it has another mission. Fenton has established a “war room” with CIP called The Iraq Policy Information Program (IPIP). Its main job is getting the anti-Bush foreign policy message out to the media and providing guests for talk shows. A featured speaker of the IPIP is former ambassador Joe Wilson, one of the Bush administration’s most vocal enemies.

Like Moveon.org and Win Without War, the contact for the Iraq Policy Information Program is Fenton Communications. Win Without War also collects tax-deductible donations through CIP.


Much more at Sweetness & Light
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