ISIS reportedly selling Christian artifacts, turning churches into torture chambers

The Islamic State is turning Christian churches in Iraq and Syria into dungeons and torture chambers after stripping them of priceless artifacts to sell on the black market, according to reports.
Ancient relics and even entire murals are being torn from the houses of worship and smuggled out through the same routes previously established for moving oil and weapons in and out of the so-called caliphate, a vast region the jihadist army has claimed as sovereign under Sharia law.
"ISIS has a stated goal to wipe out Christianity,” Jay Sekulow, of the American Center for Law and Justice and the author of "Rise of ISIS: A Threat We Can't Ignore," told FoxNews.com. “This why they are crucifying Christians -- including children -- destroying churches and selling artifacts. The fact is, this group will stop at nothing to raise funds for its terrorist mission.”
It’s not clear what items have been stolen, but the terrorist group has sought to destroy religious groups that don't embrace its twisted and violent interpretation of Islam, and has already blown up several revered Christian sites and monuments.

“In short, ISIS is composed of religiously motivated psychopaths."- Jay Sekulow, American Center for Law and Justice

Last July, ISIS militants used sledgehammers to destroy the tomb of Jonah in Mosul. Around the same time, they were destroying Sunni shrines and mosques in the northern province of Ninevah, including the Shia Saad bin Aqeel Husseiniya shrine in the city of Tal Afar and the al-Qubba Husseiniya, as well as Christian churches in Syria. The group follows a strict interpretation of the Sunni faith which is against idolatry of anything other than God. ISIS has also threatened to destroy the holy sight of Mecca in Saudi Arabia.
Christianity, like Judaism and Islam, have powerful historical ties to the region, and some of its most treasured sites and relics are in Iraq and Syria, according to experts. Their destruction or dispersal is tragic, said Shaul Gabbay, senior scholar at the University of Denver’s Josef Korbel School of International Studies.
“The Middle East is where the three monotheistic religions begun and anything that can inform us about the history and chronology of the development of religion is of unparalleled significance to the core identity of anyone who is Christian,” Gabbay told FoxNews.com. “This is where Abraham, the forefather of the three monotheistic religions, came from, where Moses led the Hebrews to the Promised Land and where Jesus Christ was born, walked, died and was resurrected.
“Anything physical part that exists from the past including more modern artifacts is of extreme value to Christianity both at the informative and educational level as well as the spiritual/faith level,” he said.

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A woman prays inside a damaged church in Maaloula, a Christian town in Syria. (REUTERS/Omar Sanadiki)

Experts believe Islamic State's trafficking in religious artifacts is both to make money and to culturally cleanse the region. The Islamic militants have converted churches in Qaraqosh and other Iraqi cities into torture chambers, according to the Sunday Times. One priest from the region, who gave his name as Abu Aasi from Mosul, told the newspaper earlier this month that prisoners were being held in the Bahnam Wa Sara and Al Kiama churches.
“These two churches are being used as prisons and for torture,” he said while in hiding. “Most inside are Christians and they are being forced to convert to Islam. Isis has been breaking all the crosses and statues of Mary.”
Christianity is believed to be practiced by just three percent of the population of Iraq. They lived in relative religious freedom while under Saddam Hussein's rule, but have faced persecution from Islamic State in the last two years. In particular, the Yazidi, a Kurdish Christian people, have been hounded and murdered by the extremist group, leaving many of them becoming refugees trying to escape the region.
“We know that ISIS considers several groups -- including Christians -- as 'infidels without human rights,'" Sekulow said. "ISIS jihadists commit violence against fellow Muslims in violation of Islamic law. They routinely commit war crimes and engage in torture in violation of international law; and they also kill and threaten Christian, Jewish, and other religious communities.”
“In short, ISIS is composed of religiously motivated psychopaths," he said.

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$10 billion UN-linked climate change fund wants immunity from prosecution

The Green Climate Fund, (GCF) a United Nations-affiliated piggy-bank  intended to finance climate change projects around the world, is determined to win sweeping U.N.-style immunities from prosecutions for its global operations--even though  the U.S., its biggest contributor, opposes the idea, and the U.N. itself says its own diplomatic immunities can’t cover the outfit.
The immunities issue could well spark even deeper opposition from Republican lawmakers in next year’s Congress to the Obama Administration’s aggressive climate change policies--which include a recent $3 billion pledge to the Fund.  
“We would definitely be opposed to any extension of immunity to the Fund,” said a senior aide to Republican Senator James Inhofe of Oklahoma, who will chair the Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works starting in January.
“What do they need protection from?” he asked. “In essence, they are doing business development projects. If you look at the way millions of people do transactions across national borders, they do it without immunity and very successfully.”
Apparently undeterred, fund officials told Fox News that they are now trying to hammer out “bilateral agreement templates” that could be laboriously negotiated with each country where it operates—a total that could eventually reach the great majority of  the U.N.’s 193 members.
The Fund has already negotiated one agreement of immunity—with its new host country, South Korea, as a condition of moving its headquarters there last year.
CLICK HERE FOR THE SOUTH KOREA AGREEMENT
If the GCF succeeds in its broader negotiations, not only billions but eventually trillions of dollars in climate funding activities could fall outside the scope of criminal and civilian legal actions, as well as outside examination, as the Fund, which currently holds $10 billion in funding and pledges, expands its ambitions.
The shield would cover all documentation as well as the words and actions of officials and consultants involved in the activity documentation—even after they move on to other jobs. As a tasty side-benefit, the “privileges” attached to such “privileges and immunities,” as they are known in diplomatic parlance, mean that employees get their salaries tax-free.
Just why the GCF needs the sweeping protections is not exactly clear. In response to questions from Fox News, Michel Smitall, a Fund spokesman, provided mostly opaque answers.
“Privileges and immunities are intended to facilitate GCF activities in countries in which it operates and the GCF’s ability to use contributions by donor countries in an effective and efficient manner that serves the objectives agreed by its member countries,” he said.
Smitall added that it is “premature” to give out any information on the specific scope of  privileges and immunities, because these “would be negotiated bilaterally with countries in which the GCF operates.”
The immunities, however, “are expected to cover a range of issues,” he said,  “such as protecting GCF staff members acting in their official capacity and facilitating their official travel and protecting taxpayer dollars contributed by donor countries.”
The GCF, he added, “functions in a transparent manner, with strong oversight by its [24-member] Board. To the extent that there are civil or criminal actions against the GCF, we would work closely with the authorities of the relevant country.”
Smitall’s statements, of reassurance however, did not cover the prospect that in many developing countries, those same national authorities may well be direct or indirect partners in the activities the Fund is financing, or the fact that national authorities in many of the developing countries where the Fund hopes to operate are spectacularly corrupt.
The assurances apparently have also failed to win over Obama Administration officials (the U.S. is a GCF Board member). "The Green Climate Fund is an independent institution wiht an independent Board and Secretariat, which is by design separate from the United Nations," a U.S. Treasury official told Fox News.
Treasury officials did not answer, however,  other emailed Fox News questions about whether other countries supported the U.S. position, and about U.S. views on the GCF's new country-by-country approach.
The British government, which has recently given $1.2 billion to the GCF through its Department for International Development (DFID), is staying close-mouthed about the immunities issue.  “The GCF Board will be deliberating the issue of privileges and immunities in 2015 and UK will engage in those discussions,” a DFID spokeswoman told Fox News.
The GFC’s determined pursuit of immunity highlights the broad zone of legal ambiguity that is proliferating in the era of international action against climate change, led by organizations operating under the aegis of the United Nations without being explicitly part of it.
The GFC, for example, is a by-product of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, or UNFCCC, which is the legal home of the Kyoto Protocol and the forum for hammering out a successor treaty that is now expected to be unveiled at a climate summit in Paris late next year.
Despite its name, the UNFCCCC is also not an organ of the U.N. that automatically gets and passes on  the same kind of sweeping immunities as direct U.N. subsidiaries, or that are granted by international agreement to major development banks.  That position was underlined in an opinion from the U.N. Office of Legal Affairs in 2006.
The GCF, in turn,  is a child of the UNFCCC—via a 2011 decision of UNFCCC parties--with its standing just as fuzzy—a situation that it has been trying to change since at least 2012. 
The effort to get that status shifted into a higher gear in November 2013, when the Fund’s Board sought another legal opinion from the U.N.’s Office of Legal Affairs on  whether it could obtain a “link” between its own status and that of the U.N., along “hybrid” lines derived from U.N. subsidiary organs.
The answer came back to the GCF board at a meeting this May—No.
CLICK HERE FOR THE BOARD’S QUERY AND REPLY
The Board apparently did not want to accept that answer.  A single sentence in a Board report at an October, 20144 meeting in Barbados notes that “a mission to
New York in August also helped prepare the UN Climate Summit and explore how the Fund may acquire privileges and immunities,” presumably with the same people who already  had replied in the negative.
(Questioned by Fox News about the August mission, GCF spokesman Smitall replied more circumspectly that “GCF Secretariat staff, including its general counsel, met with U.N. staff to engage in technical discussions to better understand the scope of U.N. immunities and the possibilities of U.N. linkage, given that the GCF is not a U.N. body.”)
While the rewards of  immunities are still something that GCF does not wish to discuss in detail, the potential risks they pose—to other people—have been raised by  critics who looked at disasters where U.N. immunities played an important role—such as Haiti.
U.N. peacekeepers from Nepal are almost universally believed to have introduced cholera in October 2010  to the earthquake shattered nation that had not seen the disease in a century. About 700,000 cases and 8, 560 deaths have been reported since then.
After denying U.N. involvement in the epidemic for many months, U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon invoked U.N. diplomatic immunities in rejecting lawsuits brought against the world organization by relatives of the victims. Lawsuits in U.S. courts are still ongoing, but the State Department has supported the U.N.’s blanket immunity status.
“As we are seeing in the wake of the Haiti cholera epidemic, once we have agreed on privileges and immunities to any mission, they offer an extreme amount of protection to activities that could affect populations badly,” notes Brett Schaefer, an expert on the U.N. at the conservative Heritage Foundation in Washington. ‘’They should be awarded only in circumstances where they are truly necessary and critical to the mission or fulfillment of the mandate of the organization.”
“That is not the case,” he added, “with the GCF"—a position that the Fund is working as hard as it can to overcome.

Several 'high-value' ISIS leaders killed in Iraq, Pentagon officials say

U.S. airstrikes have killed several top Islamic State leaders in Iraq in recent weeks, limiting the terrorist army's ability to fight Iraqi and Kurdish forces, Pentagon officials said. 
Three top Islamic State leaders were killed in recent weeks, including multiple senior and mid-level leaders, said Pentagon Press Secretary Rear Adm. John Kirby. One of the leaders killed was Haji Mutazz, a deputy to Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the leader of the terror group, officials said.
"We believe that the loss of these key leaders degrades ISIL's ability to command and control current operations against Iraqi Security Forces (ISF), including Kurdish and other local forces in Iraq," Kirby said. "While we do not discuss the intelligence and targeting details of our operations, it is important to note that leadership, command and control nodes, facilities, and equipment are always part of our targeting calculus."
Earlier, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Martin Dempsey told The Wall Street Journal those killed included key players in the jihadist army that has carved out a vast swath of territory in Iraq and Syria.
“It is disruptive to their planning and command and control,” Dempsey told the Journal. “These are high-value targets, senior leadership.”
U.S. strikes also killed Abd al Basit, the head of Islamic State’s military operations in Iraq, between Dec. 3 and Dec. 9.  Officials told the Journal that a November strike killed midlevel commander Radwin Talib, ISIS' wali, or governor, in Mosul, Iraq.

Fox News Poll: Two-thirds say the government is broken

Uncle Sam’s performance doesn’t stink as much this year, according to the latest Fox News poll.
While most American voters say the federal government is “broken” -- they’re more charitable this year than last.
Click here for the poll results.
About two-thirds -- 65 percent -- still say it’s broken, but that’s down from a high of 71 percent in December 2013.  Some 58 percent of voters felt that way in December 2010, the first time the question was asked. 
The new poll, released Thursday, shows 29 percent say the government is working “just okay.”  Only five percent of voters describe it as working “pretty well.” 
The improved ratings come from across the political spectrum, as the number saying Washington is busted is down among Democrats (-6 points), Republicans (-7) and independents (-8). 
Still, over half of Democrats feel the government’s broken (53 percent), as do most independents (70 percent) and Republicans (74 percent).
And 82 percent of those who consider themselves part of the Tea Party movement feel that way. 
Most groups share the view that the government is broken.  Majorities of men (64 percent) and women (66 percent) say so, as do voters under age 35 (56 percent) and ages 65 and over (62 percent). 
Sixty percent of those in households with annual income under $50,000 think the government is broken.  That increases to 73 percent among the $100,000 and over income group. 
The Fox News poll is based on landline and cell phone interviews with 1,043 randomly chosen registered voters nationwide and was conducted under the joint direction of Anderson Robbins Research (D) and Shaw & Company Research (R) from December 7-9, 2014. The full poll has a margin of sampling error of plus or minus three percentage points.

Panel finds Secret Service leadership lacking

WASHINGTON –  An independent panel appointed to investigate the Secret Service after a series of security breaches around the White House released a report Thursday that said the agency tasked with protecting the president of the United States is “starved for leadership.”
An external review of the agency also said the next director in charge should be an outside hire and not picked from the insular agency. It also recommended a higher fence around the White House.
Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson had appointed a panel to review presidential security and the Secret Service after a man jumped the White House fence, made it past guards.
Johnson called the Secret Service report “astute, thorough and fair” and said he’s work to make sure the changes recommended were implemented. He said while the agency offers the “best protection service in the world,” it was in need of some change.
Many of the proposed changes have been recommended before, including some that date to the Warren Commission Report, which detailed the government investigation into the assassination of President John F. Kennedy. Johnson said Thursday the recommendations can't fall by the wayside this time.
The panelists were former Obama administration Associate Attorney General Tom Perrelli; former Deputy Attorney General Mark Filip, who served during Bush's term; Danielle Gray, a former assistant to the president for President Barack Obama; and Joe Hagin, deputy chief of staff for operations during the Bush administration.
This was the second critical report of the agency and its operations in as many months following the Sept. 19 incident, in which a Texas Army veteran armed with a small knife was able to climb over a White House fence and run deep into the executive mansion before being subdued. In November, an internal review concluded that training, poor staffing and a series of missteps contributed to the breach.
Among the mistakes made were that officers had believed that thick shrubbery would stop the intruder from making into the building.
Julia Pierson was forced to resign as director a day after testifying about the White House breach. Retired Secret Service Agent Joseph Clancy has been acting director since shortly after Pierson's ouster.
The independent panel also concluded that training and lack of staffing was also a serious problem for presidential security. The panel recommended hiring at least 85 agents and 200 uniformed officers. They also recommended that uniformed officers should spend at least 10 percent of their time training. Current staffing levels only allowed for about 25 minutes of training in 2013, the panel said.
The panel also suggested replacing the 7 1/2-foot fence around the 18-acre White House complex, although they declined "to say precisely what the optimal new fence should look like."
The panel made more than recommendations, though many of those directly related to security were deemed classified and not included in the summary.

Evidence in Sony hack attack suggests possible involvement by Iran, China or Russia, intel source says

WASHINGTON –  The U.S. investigation into the recent hacking attack at Sony Pictures Entertainment has turned up evidence that does not point to North Korea as the "sole entity" in the case, but rather, raises the possibility that Iran, China or Russia may have been involved, an intelligence source told Fox News on Thursday.
Earlier Thursday, Fox News confirmed that the FBI is pointing a digital finger at North Korea for the attack.
The source pointed to the sophistication of malware “modules or packets” that destroyed the Sony systems -- on a level that has not been seen from North Korea in the past -- but has been seen from Iran, China and Russia.
There is no evidence of a forced entry into the Sony systems, pointing to an insider threat or stolen credentials. And the first emails sent to Sony, described as blackmail or extortion, included demands unrelated to the movie.
The malware had two destructive threads, the source said: it overwrites data and it interrupts execution processes, such as a computer's start-up functions. After the initial attack, the FBI warned the industry that the malware can be so destructive that the data is not recoverable or it is too costly a process to retrieve. The intelligence source added that the forensic evidence suggests that the final stage of the attack was launched outside North Korea's borders -- creating some plausible deniability.
“Given the destructive efforts or effects of this attack, we're treating this as a national security matter, and as such, members of the president's national security team have been in regular meetings regarding this attack,” State Department Spokeswoman Jen Psaki said.
Also, Fox News has learned that U.S. security firms were first notified Monday by the U.S. government that they planned to publicly blame North Korea, which is inconsistent with past practice, as the U.S. government often has chosen to work behind the scenes in similar instances.
The White House declined earlier Thursday to directly blame North Korea for the attack, though Press Secretary Josh Earnest referred to the incident as a "serious national security matter."
The case is "being treated as seriously as you'd expect," Earnest told reporters at an afternoon briefing. He added that the White House would allow the investigation to move forward before speculating about a response.
"There is evidence to indicate that we have seen destructive activity with malicious intent that was initiated by a sophisticated actor," Earnest said. "And it is being treated by those investigative agencies both at the FBI and the Department of Justice as seriously as you would expect."
The North Korean link came shortly after Sony canceled plans for its Dec. 25 release of “The Interview,” a comedy about the fictional assassination of North Korean leader Kim Jong-un.  Getting Sony to pull the release of the movie had been one of the hackers’ public demands.
Officials, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the attack originated outside North Korea, but believe the individuals behind it were acting on orders from the North Korean government.
While the U.S. government is unlikely to issue formal charges against North Korea or its leadership, a formal announcement of North Korea’s involvement is likely to come Thursday.
The Sony hack attack is “deeply worrying” to the intelligence community because it is believed to be the first time destructive malware has targeted a U.S. firm, according to the Fox News source, who added that the cyber assault is seen as “retribution” for “The Interview.”
Fox News is told that the malware used in the Sony hack attack has two destructive threads: it overwrites data and it interrupts execution processes, such as a computer's start-up functions. The FBI warns that the malware can be so destructive that the data is not recoverable or it is too costly a process to retrieve.
It is not clear how long the malware needs to be in the system before it brings on an almost complete paralysis. In the case of Sony, support functions -- including emails --were knocked off-line, seen as a distraction while the more destructive attack was launching.
This week North Korea’s state-run media KCNA endorsed the Sony hacking, saying it was done by “sympathizers.” Andrei Lankov, an expert on North Korea who writes a column for The Korea Times, says this is as close to an endorsement as possible.
Another expert noted “ambiguity of attribution and guerilla-warfare approach” are the tactics of North Korea. The expert concluded it will be seen that America is vulnerable to blackmail and North Korea will try it again.
Fox News has also been told, however, there was “zero” chance there would have been any actual attacks on theaters.”
"Sony was stupid to make a movie about killing Kim Jung-un," Lankov said, "but it was even more stupid to cave in to pressure."
A Steve Carell "paranoid" thriller "that was to be set in North Korea" also has been scrapped, sources say. The project from director Gore Verbinski and writer Steve Conrad wasn't yet titled, though industry outlets said the working title was "Pyongyang," which is the North Korean capital.
"Sad day for creative expression," Carell tweeted Wednesday evening, adding "#fear eats the soul" as a hashtag.
In an interview with ABC News aired Wednesday, President Obama encouraged Americans to go to the movies.
The Sony hacking saga took a sinister turn on Tuesday when hackers sent a message threatening to target theaters showing “The Interview” in a 9/11-type attack.
Sony then told theaters they will not be penalized should they choose not to show it.
A representative for the FBI Los Angeles Field Office told FOX411 that the bureau is “aware of the recent threats and continues to work collaboratively with our partners to investigate.”
Security experts told Fox that in the wake of the Sydney siege and the release of the CIA enhanced interrogation report last week, it was crucial the threat be taken seriously by authorities.
“This threatening statement obviously has some foundation and may be linked to current global hostilities toward the West and predominantly the U.S.,” said Lee Oughton, global security and risk management expert. “We are still unaware how deep the hackers were able to penetrate into the Sony systems. Only time will tell how much information they were able to ascertain and what price Sony will pay in the international market.”
Actors James Franco and Seth Rogen already canceled all media appearances promoting their film.

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