Kerry: The media 'would do us all a service' if they didn't cover terrorism 'quite as much'

"Remember this: No country is immune from terrorism," Kerry said, according to a State Department transcript. "It’s easy to terrorize. Government and law enforcement have to be correct 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year. But if you decide one day you’re going to be a terrorist and you’re willing to kill yourself, you can go out and kill some people. You can make some noise."

"Perhaps the media would do us all a service if they didn’t cover it quite as much," he continued. "People wouldn’t know what’s going on."

The audience then reportedly applauded the comment.

"The fact is we have to stand together, and the United States is standing with Bangladesh in this fight," he said.

"Kerry slams Trump's wall, tells grads to prepare for 'borderless world'"

Secretary of State John Kerry took a shot at Donald Trump during his Friday commencement speech at Northeastern University, by saying no wall is big enough to keep dangerous terrorists out of the United States.

"Many of you were in elementary school when you learned the toughest lesson of all on 9/11," he said. "There are no walls big enough to stop people from anywhere, tens of thousands of miles away, who are determined to take their own lives while they target others."

"So I think that everything that we've lived and learn tells us that we will never come out on top if we accept advice from sound-bite salesmen and carnival barkers who pretend the most powerful country on Earth can remain great by looking inward," Kerry added. "And hiding behind walls at a time that technology has made that impossible to do and unwise to even attempt."

Kerry didn't mention Trump by name, but Trump has repeatedly called for a wall on the southern U.S. border, and many Democrats, and some Republicans, have taken to calling him a carnival barker.

"What if “radicalization” doesn’t look anything like we think it does?"

Foreign Policy:  Among scholars, “radicalization” is commonly understood as a gradual process in which people adopt ever more extreme postures and beliefs. It is widely thought that this process begins with a dramatic event or personal crisis, paving the way for a “cognitive opening” — a receptivity to alternative views and perspectives — and a period of religious seeking, often mediated by an extremist mentor and a wider social network.

The assumption is that while not all radicals become terrorists, all terrorists are radicals.

The Abdeslam brothers, with their sudden escalation from dancing in nightclubs to killing in them over the course of a few months, seem to challenge this picture. They also raise a deeper and more troubling question for those seeking to understand the genesis of terrorist acts: What if they were not “radicalized” and underwent no dramatic metamorphosis at all? What if their violence had only the most tenuous connection to what they believed, whatever that was? What if the story of how they came to be involved in terrorism had no real coherent narrative arc? What if the script of terrorism doesn’t always feature the drama of radicalization?

This article reminded me of a New Yorker piece (which I posted but can't locate) by Malcolm Gladwell of Tipping Point fame called Thresholds of Violence, How school shootings catch on.  Excerpt...

In a famous essay published four decades ago, the Stanford sociologist Mark Granovetter set out to explain a paradox: “situations where outcomes do not seem intuitively consistent with the underlying individual preferences.” What explains a person or a group of people doing things that seem at odds with who they are or what they think is right?...

Most previous explanations had focussed on explaining how someone’s beliefs might be altered in the moment. An early theory was that a crowd cast a kind of intoxicating spell over its participants. Then the argument shifted to the idea that rioters might be rational actors: maybe at the moment a riot was beginning people changed their beliefs. They saw what was at stake and recalculated their estimations of the costs and benefits of taking part.

But Granovetter thought it was a mistake to focus on the decision-making processes of each rioter in isolation. In his view, a riot was not a collection of individuals, each of whom arrived independently at the decision to break windows. A riot was a social process, in which people did things in reaction to and in combination with those around them. Social processes are driven by our thresholds—which he defined as the number of people who need to be doing some activity before we agree to join them. In the elegant theoretical model Granovetter proposed, riots were started by people with a threshold of zero—instigators willing to throw a rock through a window at the slightest provocation. Then comes the person who will throw a rock if someone else goes first. He has a threshold of one. Next in is the person with the threshold of two. His qualms are overcome when he sees the instigator and the instigator’s accomplice. Next to him is someone with a threshold of three, who would never break windows and loot stores unless there were three people right in front of him who were already doing that—and so on up to the hundredth person, a righteous upstanding citizen who nonetheless could set his beliefs aside and grab a camera from the broken window of the electronics store if everyone around him was grabbing cameras from the electronics store.

Granovetter was most taken by the situations in which people did things for social reasons that went against everything they believed as individuals. “Most did not think it ‘right’ to commit illegal acts or even particularly want to do so,” he wrote, about the findings of a study of delinquent boys. “But group interaction was such that none could admit this without loss of status; in our terms, their threshold for stealing cars is low because daring masculine acts bring status, and reluctance to join, once others have, carries the high cost of being labeled a sissy.” You can’t just look at an individual’s norms and motives. You need to look at the group.

Meanwhile... State seeks to pick up pace on bringing Syrian refugees to US

[T]he settlement has provoked a significant backlash, mostly from Republicans, who argue it puts the U.S. at risk from terrorism.

“It's clear that ISIS wants to, has planned on attempting to infiltrate refugee populations. This is a problem. If one person gets through who is planning a terrorist attack in our country, that's a problem,” House Speaker Paul Ryan, who recently returned from a trip to the region, said Thursday.

“The administration — whether it's Homeland Security or the FBI, cannot tell us that they can adequately screen people. There isn't really a Syria to talk to on that end of the equation to vet people, so it is a problem,” Ryan told reporters.

The State Department says it has fallen behind schedule in meting Obama’s goal partly due to a lack of personnel available to interview refugees.

"Obama Admin to Waive Counter-Terror Measures to Aid Iran"

Free Beacon:  Congress last year tightened restrictions on the Visa Waiver Program, which facilitates travel between the United States and 38 other partner countries, to ensure that individuals from Iran and other countries with a terrorist footprint do not enter the United States without first obtaining a visa.

Top Iranian officials objected to the new counter-terror measures, saying that they would harm Iranian business interests and could force the Islamic Republic to walk away from the recently implemented nuclear agreement.

Secretary of State John Kerry wrote to Iranian leaders in December to assure them the Obama administration would waive the regulations, a move that was enforced by DHS earlier this week.

“The administration has the authority to waive” the counter-terrorism measures and will ensure they do not “interfere with legitimate business interests of Iran,” Kerry wrote to Iranian Foreign Minister Javad Zarif.

Iran, according to the U.S. government, is the world's most active sponsor of state terrorism

"Kerry sent 'secret' email to Clinton from personal account"

The Hill: As a senator, Secretary of State John Kerry sent at least one email to Hillary Clinton from his personal account that has now been classified as secret, the State Department confirmed on Tuesday.

The largely redacted May 19, 2011, email from Kerry — then the chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee — “was sent from a non-official account,” State Department spokesman John Kirby said on Tuesday.

That account, Kirby added “is no longer active.”

The message referenced India, Afghanistan and Pakistan, and was classified for containing information about foreign governments and U.S. foreign relations.

“We all know this will be a troubled relationship because that is it’s [sic] nature,” he wrote in one unredacted section. “But there are real possibilities at this moment to put options to the test.”

Kerry’s email was classified at the “secret” level, which is a higher level than “confidential” but lower than “top secret”

A note at the bottom of the message indicates that it was sent from Kerry’s iPad.

"Obama’s Created ‘Incentive’ for Nations to Take Americans Hostage"

Rubio on Iran hostage/prisoner Swap

Added: Television personality Montel Williams... "sit down shut up Republicans"

Added: Iran got U.S. to cancel sanctions over illegal missile test by threatening to scuttle prisoner swap.

Kerry and Defense Sec Ashton Carter Called Iran?

Has Obama normalized relations with Iran on his own? What's going on?

"10 U.S. sailors detained by Iran freed"

CNN: The wait for the sailors' release Wednesday morning dragged on for hours, with Iranian officials interrogating the sailors about their motives and demanding a U.S. apology.

But an Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps spokesman told state-run media the boats strayed into Iranian waters by accident.

"The evidence suggests that they unintentionally entered the Iranian waters because of the failure of their navigational system," IRGC spokesman Ramazan Sharif said.

So on Wednesday afternoon, the sailors traveled on their two boats to a rendezvous point in the Persian Gulf, a U.S. official said. They were escorted by Iranian boats, which turned back when they reached the rendezvous point in international waters.

The sailors then boarded the guided missile cruiser USS Anzio, where they were undergoing medical checks Wednesday.

"There are no indications that the Sailors were harmed during their brief detention," the U.S. Navy said in a statement.

Link to story

The Navy said it will investigate how the sailors ended up in Iranian territory.

Secretary of State John Kerry expressed "gratitude to Iranian authorities for their cooperation ‎in swiftly resolving this matter," in a statement Wednesday.

"As a former Sailor myself, I know the importance of naval presence around the world and the critical work being done by our Navy in the Gulf region," he said

Taranto: "Kerry rationalizes the assassination of journalists"

Why the Bicyclists?

“There’s something different about what happened from Charlie Hebdo, and I think everybody would feel that. There was a sort of particularized focus and perhaps even a legitimacy in terms of—not a legitimacy, but a rationale that you could attach yourself to somehow and say, OK, they’re really angry because of this and that. This Friday was absolutely indiscriminate. It wasn’t to aggrieve one particular sense of wrong. It was to terrorize people.”

Those words were spoken yesterday by Secretary of State John Kerry. The reference to “legitimacy” calls to mind the remark that ended the political career of Todd Akin. But although Kerry’s statement was every bit as stupid as Akin’s, it was far more evil. Not only does he rationalize the mass murder of journalists; that rationalization is a fallback from his initial, impulsive though impolitic position that those murders had “legitimacy.”

The most charitable way to sum up Kerry’s view is that he believes discrimination is a mitigating factor when it comes to terrorist attacks—that murder isn’t as bad when the victim is someone who has publicly espoused views the killer finds abhorrent. The word for a murder carried out with this sort of extreme prejudice is assassination, and it is ordinarily considered even worse than murdering at random.

The attack on Charlie Hebdo, no less than the attacks last week, were intended “to terrorize people.” But the Charlie Hebdo attacks were also intended to terrorize people into silence. It was an attack on free speech as well as on freedom and Western civilization more generally. Kerry’s rationalizing of it is arguably the most un-American thing he has ever said in public—and that’s saying a lot, given that he made a name for himself slandering American military servicemen.

"UN to let Iran inspect alleged nuke work site"

"Iran will be allowed to use its own inspectors to investigate a site it has been accused of using to develop nuclear arms, operating under a secret agreement with the U.N. agency that normally carries out such work, according to a document seen by The Associated Press."

The newly disclosed side agreement, for an investigation of the Parchin nuclear site by the U.N.'s International Atomic Energy Agency, is linked to persistent allegations that Iran has worked on atomic weapons. That investigation is part of the overarching nuclear-limits deal.

Evidence of the inspections concession is sure to increase pressure from U.S. congressional opponents before a Senate vote of disapproval on the overall agreement in early September. If the resolution passes and President Barack Obama vetoes it, opponents would need a two-thirds majority to override it. Even Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, a Republican, has suggested opponents will likely lose a veto fight, though that was before Wednesday's disclosure.

McConnell was ready cave before he had all the information. And people wonder how is Trump doing so well.

"An American Flag in Cuba"

"As a crowd of a few hundred Cubans and Americans assembled inside the Embassy grounds, a larger crowd of Cubans, carefully organized and watched over by Cuban security forces, gathered outside as the official onlookers. They included a number of Cubans who, incongruously, waved miniature American flags as well as Cuban ones, while a series of gigantic Cuban flags hung from the façades of adjacent apartment buildings. The Cubans outside the American diplomatic legation periodically let out a cheer, especially when someone who appeared to be American approached."

"At a social gathering in Havana yesterday, a Cuban who has a close relative in one of the adjacent buildings told me that residents there had been visited by Cuban security officials, who informed them that they were expected to appear on the street today and to “be enthusiastic” in their slogans, cheers, and applause. Above all, they were expected to overwhelm and, if possible, drown out any anti-American or anti-imperialist shouts. The Cuban said that his relative had waggishly asked whether the anti-imperialist Cubans were now the “new enemy,” since, for many years, he had been expected to publicly condemn the Americans. In any event, all I heard outside the Embassy today were joyful noises, sincere or not."

"Fidel Castro to US: you owe us millions"

"Castro wrote: "Cuba is owed compensation equivalent to damages, which total many millions of dollars, as our country has stated with irrefutable arguments and data in all of its speeches at the United Nations.""

He did not go into detail on precisely how much money he reckons Washington owes Havana. The Americans are also claiming compensation for US-owned property, such as real estate, that was confiscated when Castro took power.

Castro made no mention either of Kerry's visit to reopen the embassy...

Over the years, Fidel Castro has been a frequent contributor of essays to the communist party newspaper Granma and other media. Thursday's was his first piece since May 8.

"Writing is a way to be useful, if you keep in mind that we poor humans must be more and better educated in the face of the incredible ignorance that surrounds us all, except for researchers who use science to seek a satisfactory answer," Castro wrote.

Castro must have heard about Iran Sanctions Relief.

Rick Wilson: If this doesn't terrify you, nothing will

"Congress Alarmed by Iran Pact's Secret Understandings"

The controversy began on Wednesday when Secretary of State John Kerry told House lawmakers behind closed doors that he neither possessed nor had read a copy of two secret side deals between the IAEA and Iran, according to Representative Mike Pompeo, a Republican member of the House Intelligence Committee who was inside the session. Congress hasn't seen those side agreements either.

“Kerry told me directly that he has not read the secret side deals,” Pompeo told us in an interview. “He told us the State Department does not have possession of these documents.”

A statement distributed by the State Department on Wednesday disputed the characterization that the agreements between Iran and the IAEA were "secret." Instead, it described them as "technical arrangements" and said U.S. experts were "comfortable with the contents," which the State Department would brief to Congress if asked.

"It is standard practice for the IAEA and member states to treat bilateral documents as 'safeguards confidential,' " the State Department statement said. "This is a principal the United States has championed throughout the IAEA’s existence to protect both proprietary and proliferation sensitive information. We must be able to ensure that information given to the IAEA does not leak out and become a how to guide for producing nuclear materials that can be used in nuclear weapons, and that countries know their patented or proprietary information won’t be stolen because they are released in IAEA documents."

But while these agreements may be standard operating procedure in the case of other IAEA nuclear inspections, with Iran it's potentially more serious...

For the Obama administration, not having copies of the side agreements between Iran and the IAEA is convenient. The law requires it to give Congress all the documents it possesses and only those documents. If the side agreements are outside the reach of Kerry, they are outside the reach of Congress and the American people.

Kerry's bait-and-switch

"Kerry Says ‘Nobody Has Ever Talked About Dismantling’ Iran’s Nuclear Program, But in 2013 Insisted Dismantlement Was The ‘Whole Point’ of Sanctions Regime"

 

Link to video

"Iran Backs Away From Key Detail in Nuclear Deal"

"Iranian officials on Sunday backed away from a critical element of a proposed nuclear agreement, saying they are no longer willing to ship their atomic fuel out of the country."

For months, Iran tentatively agreed that it would send a large portion of its stockpile of uranium to Russia, where it would not be accessible for use in any future weapons program. But on Sunday Iran’s deputy foreign minister made a surprise comment to Iranian reporters, ruling out an agreement that involved giving up a stockpile that Iran has spent years and billions of dollars to amass.

“The export of stocks of enriched uranium is not in our program, and we do not intend sending them abroad,” the official, Abbas Araqchi, told the Iranian media, according to Agence France-Presse. “There is no question of sending the stocks abroad.”

The Michelle and Kerry Show

“Before coming to the White House, I struggled, as a working parent with a traveling, busy husband, to figure out how to feed my kids healthy, and I didn’t get it right,” she explained, sharing a story about her children’s doctor who pulled her aside to talk about her family diet.

“I thought to myself, if a Princeton and Harvard-educated professional woman doesn’t know how to adequately feed her kids, then what are other parents going through who don’t have access to the information I have?” she recalled. (Breitbart)

 

***

 

What was the problem with Palin again?

Risk Management

"If there’s no two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict soon, Israel risks becoming “an apartheid state,”

Secretary of State John Kerry told a room of influential world leaders in a closed-door meeting Friday."  Senior American officials have rarely, if ever, used the term “apartheid” in reference to Israel, and President Obama has previously rejected the idea that the word should apply to the Jewish state... (read more)

Then Monday, yesterday, Kerry backtracked... 

On Monday, Secretary of State John Kerry issued an apology after it was revealed by The Daily Beast that he said Israel was at risk of becoming an “apartheid state.” In a statement, Kerry said “I do not believe, nor have I ever stated, publicly or privately, that Israel is an apartheid state or that it intends to become one. Anyone who knows anything about me knows that without a shred of doubt.” He also said “apartheid” was a poor choice of terms. In his statement, he said “if I could rewind the tape, I would have chosen a different word.”

Usually, what people say at first is what they really mean to say.  Kerry backtracked because there was a bad reaction to it.   Kerry potentially risked campaign donors for democrats if he had stood by his statement that Israel risked becoming an apartheid state.

Kerry should resign for using anti semitic canards. #JEWS: leave the democratic party, the EU, and the UN.
— Roseanne Barr (@therealroseanne) April 28, 2014

ht Michael Haz

Kerry: "There Will Be a Very Serious Series of Steps on Monday.”

Secretary of State John F. Kerry is in the final stage of training for the Hustle Up The Hancock April 13 in Chicago.  Mondays are especially heavy training days in his routine.  He's serious about this.

Oh.  Wait.  I need to read the complete article.  Here it is.

Well, this makes more sense.  He's not running stairs; he's talking about what will happen if Russia grabs up Ukraine because of a phony referendum to be held in Crimea this Sunday.  Crimeans will vote whether they want to (a) become part of beloved mother Russia, or (b) be invaded, crushed and destroyed before becoming part of beloved mother Russia.

The U.S. and Europe on Monday would then unite to impose sanctions on Russia, Kerry told a Senate Appropriations subcommittee Thursday during a hearing on the State Department's budget.

Kerry responded carefully, saying “we have contingencies – we are talking through various options that may or may not be available.”

“Our hope is not to create hysteria or excessive concern about that at this point in time,” he said. “Our hope is to avoid that, but there's no telling that we can.”

If I was Vladimir Putin, I'd be quaking in my сапоги.  Kerry has contingencies, and also various options that may or may not be available.

U.S. authorities are closely monitoring the number of Russian troops in Crimea, as well as their movements, he said, noting that Moscow is allowed to have a total of 25,000 troops in Crimea.

Allowed by whom?  By the US?  Seriously?  And what will the US do if Putin deploys, say, 30,000 troops to Crimea?  Demonstrate the same courage and leadership as the Obama administration regarding the "red line" and the civil war in Syria, probably.

Vladimir Putin understands that "there will be a very serious series of steps on Monday" is as much a threat  to him as this

Good luck, Crimeans.

"A War the Pentagon Doesn't Want"

http://www.c-spanvideo.org/clip/4464115

The tapes tell the tale. Go back and look at images of our nation’s most senior soldier, Gen. Martin Dempsey, and his body language during Tuesday’s Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearings on Syria. It’s pretty obvious that Dempsey, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, doesn’t want this war. As Secretary of State John Kerry’s thundering voice and arm-waving redounded in rage against Bashar al-Assad’s atrocities, Dempsey was largely (and respectfully) silent.

Dempsey’s unspoken words reflect the opinions of most serving military leaders. By no means do I profess to speak on behalf of all of our men and women in uniform. But I can justifiably share the sentiments of those inside the Pentagon and elsewhere who write the plans and develop strategies for fighting our wars.

WaPo

In the 56-second clip below the image, you will see SecState Kerry ask General Dempsey, head of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, if he would like to add anything to what he just said. Dempsey politely declines, which causes the senator sitting to Rand Paul's left to burst out laughing. 

From the clip, you can navigate to the entire hearing. From the hearing, you can select 'Timeline,' and then select for Dempsey in the drop down menu, and his responses will be highlighted in the mini-transcripts. You must click on the texts to make the video play. He uses very guarded language that denote, in my opinion, a reluctance to grant his imprimatur to the intervention.