The VonFrederick

Tempus  

February 2006 Volume 3 Issue 2

  Feature Article:

  Intentional or Unintentional Collaboration with the Enemy?

By George A. Torres, MBA, Law Enforcement Specialist

According to Webster’s dictionary treason is defined in part as the act, or attempted act, of working for the enemies of the state …betrayal of trust, disloyalty to a cause. If that does not describe today’s liberals, it is hard to imagine what does. Liberals consistently demonstrate the most despicable behavior one could envision. Liberal media and politicians mislead by omission and their lying seems pathological. They are so consumed with regaining power they are willing to sacrifice our nation’s security and ally with the enemy to achieve their goal. Think not? Analyze some recent events.

Media hype about President Bush conducting domestic spying is a disgraceful example of liberal misinformation. Liberals denounce Bush’s strategy to protect America and some call for his impeachment. As usual Liberals are so misguided or ignorant of fact that they demonstrate to all but themselves just what fools they really are. They failed to mention that Presidents Carter, Reagan and Clinton also authorized warrantless searches. Liberals erroneously accuse Bush of spying on innocent Americans. They omit the “spying” involved monitoring international phone calls of people about whom we already have some intelligence, or that Bush authorized the NSA to conduct warrantless surveillance on Al-Qaeda operatives and individuals who were affiliated with, or supported Al-Qaeda

Another fact liberals omitted is that President Bush’s use of warrantless surveillance are authorized by Article II, Sec. 2 of the U.S. Constitution and 50 USC, Chapter 36, Sec.1801-1806. In Sec. 1801 the definition of a foreign power includes a group or individual engaged in international terrorism or activities in preparation therefore; an agent of a foreign power includes any person who knowingly engages in clandestine intelligence gathering activities for or on behalf of a foreign power; and foreign intelligence information includes information that relates to the ability of the U.S. to protect against actual or potential attack or other grave hostile acts of a foreign power or an agent of a foreign power. Sec.1802 states that notwithstanding any other law, the President, through the Attorney General (AG), may authorize electronic surveillance without a court order to acquire foreign intelligence information. The section does require the AG to report the surveillance to the court or House and Senate Intelligence Committees.

Liberals omitted the fact that President Carter authorized warrantless surveillance when he signed Executive Order 12139; May 23, 1979, 44 F.R. 30311, which stated in part; By the authority vested in me as President, by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act of 1978, in order to provide the authorization of electronic surveillance for foreign intelligence purposes, it is hereby ordered as follows: the Attorney General is authorized to approve electronic surveillance to acquire foreign intelligence information without a court order.

 Liberals failed to mention Bill Clinton authorized “physical” warrantless searches pursuant to FISA. On July 14, 1994, Deputy Attorney General Jamie Gorelick, of 9/11 Commission fame, testified before the Senate Intelligence Committee, “that the president has inherent authority to order physical searches, including break-ins at the homes of US citizens for foreign intelligence purposes without any warrant or permission from any outside body.”

 Liberals failed to mention that on Sept. 14, 2001, Congress unanimously voted for a resolution that declared “the president has authority under the Constitution to take action to deter and prevent acts of international terrorism,” and authorized “all necessary and appropriate force” against those involved in 9/11 or threatening future attacks.  This constitutes a declaration of war against terrorist organizations and further supports the use of FISA.

 One of the most unconscionable lies perpetrated by liberals was lying about President Bush’s compliance with FISA and briefing Congress regarding the use of the warrantless surveillance. On several occasions President Bush briefed the Republican and Democrat leaders on the FISA program. Bush met with Chair and Vice Chair of the Senate and House Intelligence Committees and Majority and Minority leaders of both the Senate and House. Yet, on Fox Sunday News, 12/25/05, Chris Wallace asked Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid, D-NV, if President Bush briefed him about the surveillance. The despicable Reid refused to answer the question by rambling that Bush cannot “pass the buck”. Then he tried to deflect the topic with Democratic talking points about the Republican culture of corruption. Total absurdity by the lofty and morally superior Democratic senator who funded millions of dollars in government contracts to his family’s construction businesses in Las Vegas, NV.

 These are not minor innocent omissions but intentional attempts to sabotage President Bush and the war effort to defeat terrorism in order to further political goals. Think about it. During a time of war, or the threat of war, our government needs concentrated decisiveness with a capacity for swift action that Congress can rarely accomplish, even with out obstruction by liberal politicians. It is deplorable and even treasonous that during a time of war the media hypes the erroneous domestic spying story, gloats about the defeat of the Patriot Act and minimizes favorable events like the historical Iraqi elections. These actions only embolden our enemy by detracting from our victories. Maybe President Lincoln had it right when he said that Congressmen who willfully take actions during wartime that danger the morale and undermine the military are saboteurs and should be arrested, exiled or hanged. One has to wonder if Liberals are more allied with Al-Qaeda than President Bush and the United States.

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Maybe we are the bunch of morons that politicians and media manipulate at will. One can argue that the current administration used the misinformation as a premise for war and that getting information (or misinformation) is one thing, and acting upon it another. Right, but many elected officials from all parties sat on the same intelligence committees and were sold the same pieces of Intel the administration and all the Rumsfelds of the world were presented with. Many Democrats also supported the war based on the evidences they got and that makes it possible to argue that the current administration waged the war based on the same pieces of info and on the bi-partisan support they got.

As a Frenchman, I would just add that maybe, just maybe, an excess of arrogance and self importance prevented the Bush administration from trying to figure out why the intelligence they got was not sufficient to convince the French, the Germans, the Russians and the UN.

As a former Intel. officer, I can also venture to say that maybe two mandates under Clinton, that shrunk the military to ten divisions and inserted political correctness in the intelligence business (no deals with bad guys, not becoming bad guys), and an extra heavy reliance on electronic intelligence added to the immense ego of the US intel community brought us the bombed Chinese Embassy in Serbia, the Khobar towers in Saudi Arabia, our destroyed Embassies in Africa (Kenya and Tanzania), the Cole, the WTC…

Maybe an eventual deep investigation would be for the best....if we, the "we are the people" crowd, finally understand that there is no possible dirty business without eventually getting down and dirty too.  There is a name for the wasteful arrogant careless world minority we represent: victims!  The Occident is so fat, decadent, comfy and entitled that it cannot even grasp the hatred and envy it generates throughout the world.  Our enemies made it clear and who cares if they actually "hijacked a religion"?  All our values put together cannot stop them because dying for a belief will provide them Heaven; the ultimate reward.

What are our values beside entitlement and compromise? Are they worth dying for, for the vast majority among us? Just a few of us are still standing in harm's way for what they perceive as our real values (country, family, democracy) but when they die, they are buried on page 17 of the newspapers, far away from Janet Jackson's sagging boob or her brother's deviancy!

Time to wake up and smell the coffee....because time is on their side and they are not tied to the next elections or political short term agenda. They have a proverb that sums it all: "sit on the river bank and you will see the corpse of your enemy float by!"

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The terrorist attacks on U.S. soil spurred an unprecedented interest in the financing of terror. After the  established Middle Eastern hawala network. U.S. authorities say al Qaeda continues to use such money-transfer services to fund the insurgency in Iraq – “ a significant means that terrorists use to move money” said a senior intelligence analyst at the Defense Intelligence Agency. While much of that support comes from bulk cash smuggling from Syria, wealthy extremists, and charities in Europe, the United States and the Middle East continue to contribute to the terrorists’ cause.

  This system date back hundreds of years to South Asia, where traders and merchants on the Indian subcontinent devised the system to avoid being robbed as they traveled. Silk Road merchants used a similar model developed in the Arab world. The word hawala is Arabic and can mean “trust” or “exchange”. In South Asia, the system is known by the Hindi word hundi; South America has the black market peso exchange or casa de cambio (stash house). These channels have thrived throughout the developing world.

Shadowy remittance systems followed immigrants into North America and Europe and it was quite clear that hawala had a large role in money laundering and the financing of terrorists. The 19 hijackers in the World Trade Center attack spent $400,000 to $500,000 to plan and carry out the attack, including $300,000 deposited in U.S bank accounts. The world’s largest bank, Citi-group, has been repeatedly entangled in money-laundering scandals. For law enforcement, this highlights one of the most difficult and frustrating aspects of battling international terrorism: following the flow of money that supports it. Funds used to underwrite terror frequently start off “clean” and become “dirty” much later. The sheer size of the global financial industry has confounded prosecutor’s attempts at untangling the illegal use of money transfers from the innocent one sending money home for their relatives’ living expenses. Tracing any of the money to an individual in a remote corner of the world is all but impossible, and just as authorities clamp down on one sort of mechanism, terrorists figure out a new scheme.  

 This is how it works. Operators, known as hawaladars, pool remittance cash with funds from their other businesses and deposit them into traditional bank accounts or dollar-denominated accounts in Dubai or other financial centers. The hawaladar works with a colleague-often a friend or a family member-in the destination country who delivers an equal amount of cash, less a small fee, usually within 24 hours.  Because of this close relationship, the two parties may settle up weeks later, frequently with traditional wire transfers or complex invoicing and trade schemes in electronics, weapons, farm equipment, commodities and gems. The process leaves room for more chicanery, including smuggling and tax evasion. With no paper trail, investigators are at a loss.

 In the U.S., there are at least 20,000 informal remittance businesses working out of 24- hour convenience stores, restaurants, and small shops.  Muddying the investigator’s trail, these outfits work from within tight-knit ethnic communities, rebuff outsiders, and speak languages unfamiliar to Western ears, like Urdu, Arabic and Hindi. The system is marked by trust and informality, and operators are as sketchy with their records as any bookie--they have nothing but a scribble of first names or code words and a few details of the transaction.  Where the funds end up-and what they are used for-is often a mystery to everyone but the recipients. Do you know where your money is going?

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Human Trafficking

By Dr. Melissa Karina Luke, Vice President & Group Director, The Von Frederick Group

Human trafficking is one of the ugliest and most preventable man-made disasters in our world today. Many of the cases world-wide involve the massive sexual brutalization upon millions of the most marginalized groups in society- children, woman, refugees, ethnic minorities, and the poor in the most horrific encounters imaginable. The appalling epidemic of human trafficking unfortunately only flourishes in areas that it is tolerated by the local law enforcement. The multi-billion dollar industry of forced abduction, rape, and false imprisonment can only thrive if the perpetrators hold out the victims of these crimes to the general public so that customers can locate the people and “services”.

This is a simple historical marketing strategy: If the customers don’t know the service exists, sales will probably be limited or non-existent. Brothel keepers and pimps cannot hide their victims, and to make a great return on their investment, they must keep their service open to the public for continuous long periods of time.

How do we keep a public open door policy on an illegal (almost world-wide) felony act? This is generally facilitated by bringing the government or local law enforcement into the business by sharing profits of the corrupt business for the exchange of protection against local governing laws. “Sex trafficking requires the commission of multiple felonies in a way that is held out openly to the public”. Understanding the process can aid in the prevention of the act: Sexual slavery can be shut down IF the political will and operational resources care to do so at any given time.        

  The Trafficking Victims Protection Act of 2000 (TVPA) was created to influence the political will of countries with severe trafficking problems to cease or  undertake severe consequences from the United States as far as economic relationships, including the possibility of sanctions, if the country in question does not take significant efforts in thwarting the activity. Unfortunately, the United States is trying to combat a hefty amount of commercial sex trade on their own, so the Act could appear meaningless to other nations and government authorities: Can the policy have its intended effect when our own governments may be accountable for the misconduct themselves? The U.S. government estimates that 50,000 women and children alone are trafficked each year into the United States from origins such as Latin America, the former Soviet Union, and Southeast Asia. In November of 1991, the Oceanside CA police shut sown a prostitution ring which catered to 300 migrant farm workers; many of the women were abducted and repeatedly raped. The women were trafficked from Mexico to the U.S. and were placed in makeshift shacks furnished only with one dirty mattress. Instead of making arrests, local officials demolished the shacks and cleaned up the heaps of condoms and beer cans.

  Sixty-four percent of U.S. women were held in isolation and under guard in brothels or compounds in sexual abduction scenarios versus 35 percent internationally in a 2001 study conducted through a team of researchers supported by a grant through the National Institute of Justice (Grant #98-WT-VX-0032)

The TVPA Act of 2000 was written with fantastic intentions for mankind at a world-wide level, but perhaps we should clean-up our own back-yard before implementing policy for others.

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• That the ancient city of Carthage is near Tunis and the third largest Roman amphitheater is in El Djem, Tunisia

• That the fictional planet of “Tatooine” in the Star Wars movies was filmed in various parts of Tunisia and the planet’s name is even derived from the area of Tunisia called “Tatahouine”

• That many of the centuries-old troglodyte dwellings in Tunisia have been turned into modern hotels

• That even though Islam is the state religion and 98% of the population of Tunisia is Muslim, Islamic fundamentalists have been unsuccessful in becoming a strong political force there

• That Tunisia was a French colony from 1881 to 1956  

The Tunisian flag is red with a white circle in the center. Centered on the circle are a red five-pointed star and a red crescent, traditional symbols of Islam.  

ROBERT GODDARD

  Dr. Robert H. Goddard

1882 - 1945

Raised in Boston, Goddard graduated with a Ph.D. in physics from Clark University in Worcester, Mass. He was dubbed the ‘father of modern rocketry’ due to his experiments and successes with both liquid and solid fuel propelled rockets. He started the space age by launching a 10-foot long liquid fueled rocket named “Nell” 41 feet into the air on March 26, 1926- the first liquid fueled rocket ever to take flight. NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Maryland was named in his honor.  

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The VonFrederick Group

Phone: (877) 207-1300
Fax:     (916) 488-7531
Email:

Dr. Lionel C.M. VonFrederick Rawlins
Lionel@VonFrederick.com

Dr. Melissa Kimberly Luke
Melissa@VonFrederick.com

George A. Torres, MBA
George@VonFrederick.com

Eric Chevreuil
Eric@VonFrederick.com

Pat McLane
Pat@VonFrederick.com

Albert Globus, MD
Al@VonFrederick.com

General Clifford L. Stanely, Ph.D.
Cliff@VonFrederick.com

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