Monthly Archives: August 2017

Venezuela: Bribery, Corruption to Giving Away Their Children

Posted on by

As Venezuelans die on the streets, U.N. Human Rights Council remains mum

The Geneva-based UNHRC, whose job is to “uphold the highest standards” of human rights across the world, has not issued one single resolution about Venezuela, nor convened any urgent session to discuss the crisis there, nor called for any inquiry into the deaths of protesters by armed government-backed mobs. More here.
Corruption and Bribery
During the relevant time period, ODEBRECHT, together with its co-conspirators, paid approximately $788 million in bribes in association with more than 100 projects in twelve
countries, including Angola, Argentina, Brazil, Columbia, Dominican Republic, Ecuador, Guatemala, Mexico, Mozambique, Panama, Peru, and Venezuela. Read more here as a part of this case is defined by the U.S. Justice Department due to several associated persons were located in New York and Miami. 
It is a global cascade of corruption where none other than Nicolas Maduro of Venezuela is a player in the scandal.

For years, Latin America’s construction giant, Odebrecht, built some of the region’s most crucial infrastructure projects.

Now it is becoming well-known for another superlative: it is involved in one of the biggest corruption cases in history.

Last year, the Brazilian-based group signed what has been described as the world’s largest leniency deal with US and Swiss authorities, in which it confessed to corruption and paid $2.6bn (£2.1bn) in fines.

Seventy-seven company executives have agreed to plea bargains with Brazilian authorities, and their statements to investigators are being made public. More here from BBC.

***  

A day after President Nicolas Maduro said he would seek an international arrest warrant against her, Venezuela’s sacked chief prosecutor accused him of corruption, Business Insider reported on Wednesday.

Luisa Ortega Díaz Luisa Ortega 

(Photo: Cancillería del Ecuador, CC BY-SA 2.0)

“I want to denounce, in front of the world, a grave situation in Venezuela: that of excessive corruption,” Luisa Ortega said at a press conference in Brazil.

She claimed she had evidence that President Maduro and Socialist Party titans such as Diosdado Cabello and Jorge Rodriguez have ties to the Odebrecht scandal.Additional summary here.

If you wonder where much of the wealth of Venezuela has gone due to being one of the most richest nations due to oil reserves, look no further  than what the banks across the globe may know. Ortega Díaz also said authorities in Switzerland requested information regarding the accounts of several Venezuelan officials over alleged links to the bribes, including a list of all Venezuelans who received deposits from Odebrecht directly or indirectly.

The world is an ugly place where peril is a human condition in 2017. World leaders offer feeble attempts to regain some kind of balance, when it comes to Venezuela, a large country in the Western hemisphere, humanity fails humanity.

Much of the population in Venezuela has been suffering beyond the scope of what media reports. Here is a sad example:

Giving away their children…

Struggling to feed herself and her seven children, Venezuelan mother Zulay Pulgar asked a neighbor in October to take over care of her six-year-old daughter, a victim of a pummeling economic crisis.

The family lives on Pulgar’s father’s pension, worth $6 a month at the black market rate, in a country where prices for many basic goods are surpassing those in the United States.

“It’s better that she has another family than go into prostitution, drugs or die of hunger,” the 43-year-old unemployed mother said, sitting outside her dilapidated home with her five-year-old son, father and unemployed husband.

With average wages less than the equivalent of $50 a month at black market rates, three local councils and four national welfare groups all confirmed an increase in parents handing children over to the state, charities or friends and family.

The government does not release data on the number of parents giving away their children and welfare groups struggle to compile statistics given the ad hoc manner in which parents give away children and local councils collate figures.

Still, the trend highlights Venezuela’s fraying social fabric and the heavy toll that a deep recession and soaring inflation are taking on the country with the world’s largest oil reserves.

Showing photos of her family looking plumper just a year ago, Pulgar said just one chicken meal would now burn up half its monthly income. Breakfast is often just bread and coffee, with rice alone for both lunch and dinner.

Nancy Garcia, the 54-year-old neighbor who took in the girl, Pulgar’s second-youngest child, works in a grocery store and has five children of her own. She said she could not bear to see Pulgar’s child going without food.

“My husband, my children and I teach her to behave, how to study, to dress, to talk… She now calls me ’mom’ and my husband ’dad,’” said Garcia.

ABANDONED

In some cases, parents are simply abandoning their kids.

Last month, a baby boy was found inside a bag in a relatively wealthy area of Caracas and a malnourished one-year-old boy was found abandoned in a cardboard box in the eastern city of Ciudad Guayana, local media reported.

Gil said that she had helped find places in orphanages for two newborns recently abandoned by their mothers in hospitals after birth. More here from Reuters.

BLM is Offered as a College Course on Several Campuses

Posted on by

In 2015, it began:

HuffPo: “If colleges cannot address current events in an intellectually rigorous manner then what are they good for?”

Mary K. Coffey, Dartmouth College’s Art History department chair, asks a valid question — and one that her school’s students, faculty and administration plan to answer.

Dartmouth is set to offer a course titled “10 Weeks, 10 Professors: #BlackLivesMatter,” centered around racial inequality and violence in America.

‘The Dartmouth’ student newspaper reports that professors across more than 10 academic disciplines, from the humanities to geography to mathematics, will come together for an interdisciplinary approach to modern and historic perspectives of America’s racial climate.

According to Dartmouth geography professor Abigail Neely, the course was originally born from a Dartmouth Center for the Advancement of Learning workshop that encouraged discussion of events that took place in Ferguson, Missouri following the fatal police shooting of Michael Brown.

“The course has the potential to be revolutionary insofar as the students who take it will come away with a wide ranging critical framework for thinking through not only what happened in Ferguson (and elsewhere), but also why we continue to see so much violence perpetrated against poor people of color,” Coffey told The Huffington Post. “Having the ability to address the why question will make these students capable of thinking about change, alternatives, or forms of activism that might have a revolutionary impact.”

The creative curricular development comes on the heels of recent on-campus student activism and Dartmouth community protest, and in cooperation with members of faculty and administration dedicated to addressing student concerns.

“It reflects faculty support for student activism over the past several years around issues of inclusion, social justice, and campus climate,” professor Coffey explains. “Those students took risks to raise these issues on campus. Their work has generated interest in these issues within the student body. And it has given faculty who are dedicated to these concerns a new sense of purpose and motivation.”

The course is scheduled to begin during the university’s upcoming spring term.

photo

Then there is the University of Miami Law School:

In Spring of 2017, the School of Law will be convening an interdisciplinary course called “Race, Class, and Power: University Course on Ferguson and the #BlackLivesMatter Movement.”

The course will engage the multiple lenses through which Ferguson, the Black Lives Matter movement, and racial justice in the United States might be explored, including: policing and criminal justice, comparative inquiry regarding race and identity, theories of social movements, education reform, healthcare and medicine, environmental justice, literature and artistic expression, law and legal reform, statistical data analysis, and much more.

SAN DIEGO (AP) — San Diego State University plans to offer a course called “Black Minds Matter: A Focus on Black Boys and Men in Education,” that was inspired in part by the Black Lives Matter movement.

The weekly course will be open to the public for enrollment in October and will feature various speakers who will talk about how black men are undervalued in the classroom.

SDSU professor J. Luke Wood, who helped create the online course, said it will connect themes from the Black Lives Matter movement to issues facing blacks in educational settings.

“The Black Lives Matter movement has shed light on two invariable facts. First, that black boys and men are criminalized in society and second that their lives are undervalued by those who are sworn to protect them,” Wood said in a video introducing the class.

The upcoming course has drawn criticism.

Craig DeLuz, a gun rights advocate with the Sacramento-based Firearms Policy Coalition, said a public university should not be offering a course that includes speakers from a movement whose members have been accused of inciting violence.

“The biggest concern is they are offering a course based on the Black Lives Matter movement which has promoted violence and segregation and has really little to do with education, let alone presenting a positive image of education,” DeLuz said.

DeLuz, a member of Robla Elementary School District board of trustees, is organizing a group that plans to ask SDSU to cancel the course. They have not contacted the university yet, he said.

SDSU said in a statement that the “Black Minds Matter” course “has a racial justice focus, directly aligned with the mission of the joint doctoral program in Education. This program focuses on social justice, democratic schooling, and equity, as well as the research of the faculty who teach in it.”

A number of US colleges, including New York University, University of Washington and the University of Miami, now offer courses that include discussion of the Black Lives Matter movement.

Hawaii, Missile Defense Test MRBM Success

Posted on by

Aegis BMD System Intercepts Target Missile

Aug. 30, 2017

The Missile Defense Agency and U.S. Navy sailors aboard the USS John Paul Jones (DDG 53) successfully conducted a complex missile defense flight test, resulting in the intercept of a medium-range ballistic missile (MRBM) target using Standard Missile-6 (SM-6) guided missiles during a test off the coast of Hawaii today.

Photo

John Paul Jones detected and tracked a target missile launched from the Pacific Missile Range Facility on Kauai, Hawaii with its onboard AN/SPY-1 radar, and onboard SM-6 missiles executed the intercept.

“We are working closely with the fleet to develop this important new capability, and this was a key milestone in giving our Aegis BMD ships an enhanced capability to defeat ballistic missiles in their terminal phase,” said MDA Director Lt. Gen. Sam Greaves. “We will continue developing ballistic missile defense technologies to stay ahead of the threat as it evolves.”

ddg 53 uss john paul jones rim-174 standard eram sm-6 missile     Photo

This test, designated Flight Test Standard Missile-27 Event 2 (FTM-27 E2), marks the second time that an SM-6 missile has successfully intercepted a medium-range ballistic missile target.

Aegis BMD is the naval component of the Ballistic Missile Defense System. MDA and the U.S. Navy cooperatively manage the Aegis BMD program. Additional information about all elements of the ballistic missile defense system can be found here.

*** Meanwhile in Nevada, testing of upgraded nuclear weapons components were performed.

WASHINGTON, D.C. – The Department of Energy’s National Nuclear Security Administration (DOE/NNSA) and U.S. Air Force completed two qualification flight tests of B61-12 gravity bombs August 8 at Tonopah Test Range in Nevada.

The non-nuclear test assemblies, which were dropped from an F-15E based at Nellis Air Force Base, evaluated the weapon’s non-nuclear functions and the aircraft’s capability to deliver the weapon.

These tests are part of a series over the next three years to qualify the B61-12 for service. The first qualification flight test occurred in March.

“The B61-12 life extension program is progressing on schedule to meet national security requirements,” said Phil Calbos, acting NNSA deputy administrator for Defense Programs. “These realistic flight qualification tests validate the design of the B61-12 when it comes to system performance.”

The flight test included hardware designed by Sandia and Los Alamos National Laboratories, manufactured by the Nuclear Security Enterprise plants, and mated to the tail-kit assembly section, designed by the Boeing Company under contract with the Air Force Nuclear Weapons Center.

The B61-12 consolidates and replaces four B61 bomb variants in the nation’s nuclear arsenal. The first production unit is scheduled to be completed by March 2020.

These activities are not exclusive to the nuclear threat posed by North Korea, but include other rogue nations such as Iran, Pakistan, Russia and those allied such that any weapons are transferred to another nation as in Syria or worse Venezuela.

The United States is not alone in these activities which does bring some comfort.

Theresa May refuses to rule out military action and cyber attacks over North Korea missile launches

Theresa May has refused to rule out using cyber warfare or even taking part in military action against North Korea if it does not stop firing missiles in “illegal” acts of provocation.

Mrs May arrived in Japan on Wednesday morning in the midst of an escalating crisis over Pyongyang’s latest missile launch, and will have lengthy discussions with Prime Minister Shinzo Abe about what can be done.

She arrived with a message for China’s President Xi Jinping, telling him in no uncertain terms that it is his responsibility to rein in Kim Jong-un.

She said China, which has the military might to remove Mr Kim from power if it chose to, must do “everything it can” to make North Korea desist from firing more missiles.

On Tuesday, Pyongyang launched a missile that flew over Japan before landing in the Pacific, triggering the national J-alert system which tells the Japanese population to take cover.

President Donald Trump has made it clear that all options remain on the table for dealing with North Korea, and during her overnight flight to Osaka Mrs May was asked four times by journalists if she would rule out joining military action against the Kim regime. Each time, she refused to address the question directly.

She also refused to rule out cyber warfare. Separately, a Whitehall source even raised the possibility that cyber warfare might already be in use, saying: “If we were doing that we certainly wouldn’t be telling you.”

Mrs May said: “The actions of North Korea are illegal, they are significant actions of provocation, it’s outrageous, that’s why we will be redoubling our efforts with our international partners to put pressure on North Korea to stop these illegal activities.

“China has a key role to play in this… I have said this to President Xi, I know others have as well, we think that China has that important role to play and we would encourage China to do everything it can to bring pressure to bear on North Korea to stop this.

“The UK is looking at the discussion around further sanctions and the sort of change that China can bring. We see China as being the key in this.”

During her three-day visit to Japan, Mrs May will become only the second foreign leader to attend a meeting of the country’s national security council, at which she will speak to Mr Abe and his advisers.

One of the key aims of the trip is to strengthen Britain’s cooperation with Japan over security and defence, and Mrs May will tomorrow board the aircraft carrier Izumo, the flagship of the Japanese Navy, where she will be briefed by Japanese and British military personnel.

She said: “It’s an important, long-standing relationship between the UK and Japan, they’re our closest partner in Asia and I’m looking forward to the opportunity to talk about a number of subjects – trade, of course, but also building on our defence and security co-operation.”

The Prime Minister’s visit came as  the United Nations condemned North Korea’s “outrageous” firing of a ballistic missile over Japan on Tuesday, demanding Pyongyang halt its weapons programme but holding back on any threat of new sanctions on the isolated regime.

US Ambassador Nikki Haley said “something serious has to happen” but didn’t specify what.

British Ambassador Matthew Rycroft suggested members need to look at further strengthening of sanctions. Read more here to include graphics and video.

 

Location of N Korea Missile Launch over Japan, What we Know

Posted on by

Why no country shot it down?

In part: While the US and Japan have conducted ballistic missile defense exercises and both have Aegis-equipped ships capable of shooting down some ballistic missiles, it would be extremely difficult for the US or Japan to intercept a North Korean intermediate or intercontinental ballistic missile in flight over Japan toward a target such as Guam. The Aegis system is capable of intercepting shorter-range missiles in mid-course with the SM-3 missile, and it also provides “terminal phase” defense with the SM-2 missile closer to the ballistic missile’s target. But it’s uncertain whether either system would be successful against a “pop up” attack with an ICBM.

The SM-3 Block IIA has an operational range of about 1,350 miles. But range isn’t the issue as much as the speed required to intercept. If a North Korean missile were fired to an altitude of over 500 kilometers, success in a shoot-down would depend greatly on how quickly the missile was tracked and the timing of an interceptor launch. Based on the time/distance envelopes for SM-2 and SM-3 missile intercepts calculated from Joan Johnson-Freese (a professor at the Naval War College and a lecturer at Harvard University) and Ralph Savelsberg (an assistant professor at the Netherlands Defence Academy), an Aegis defender would only have a few minutes to get off a shot at an ICBM launch from North Korea. Aegis-equipped destroyers and cruisers would have to be dangerously close to the North Korean coast to get a chance to strike an ICBM in “boost” phase as it rose and could be vulnerable to North Korean submarines if an actual attack were planned. Read more here.

***

North Korea has taken steps in recent months to disguise their missile-related activities, including fueling rockets inside structures, outside of aerial view.

There are three basic ways the U.S. gathers most of its foreign intelligence: collecting information from human spies; intercepting electronic communications; and observing what’s happening on the ground, mainly with satellites.

The National Security Agency, which hacks computers and intercepts email, has had some success pulling bits and bytes out of North Korea, former officials say, but North Korea is much less forgiving than most of its targets. That’s because most of the country is not connected to the internet and few people have cellphones. To the extent that the regime communicates electronically, it has made increasing use of encryption, experts say.

“If you look at that satellite picture [of Asia] of the lights at night from the satellite, there is one dark area with no lights on, and that is North Korea,” Coats told Congress. “Their broadband is extremely limited. So using that as an access to collection — we get very limited results.” More here.

N. Korea must be met with stronger action: U.S. experts

WASHINGTON, Aug. 29 (Yonhap) — North Korea must be met with stronger action if it is to be stopped from triggering a catastrophe on the Korean Peninsula, U.S. experts said Tuesday.

The firing of an intermediate-range ballistic missile over Japan earlier in the day was a rare hostile act that increased the chances of a military confrontation in the volatile region.

The United States and South Korea must take decisive action to demonstrate that the regime in Pyongyang will not be allowed to get away with any more provocations, and China, they noted, will have to play a key role in that effort.

KCNA has released photos of the HS-12 launch that overflew Japan

“China has the power to increase the pressure on North Korea and must take steps towards doing so,” said Donald Manzullo, president of the Korea Economic Institute of America. “The longer China continues to refrain from using all of the leverage at its disposal to convince North Korea to return to talks, the more likely North Korea is to miscalculate.”

Beijing is Pyongyang’s only major ally and key benefactor. U.S. President Donald Trump and others have urged China to do more to rein in its wayward neighbor, but Beijing has refused to bear responsibility for the North Korean nuclear problem.

Bruce Bennett, a senior researcher at RAND Corp., said the latest launch could have resulted in part from a lack of action by the U.S. and South Korea against what was seen as a low-intensity provocation Saturday. North Korea launched three short-range ballistic missiles then.

“If the (U.S. and South Korea) fail to act seriously against (Tuesday’s) test, the North may feel that it can commit an even more serious provocation, while the exercises are ongoing, perhaps even another intercontinental ballistic missile test or a nuclear weapon test,” he said in an email.

Bennett was referring to the Ulchi Freedom Guardian military exercise currently under way between South Korea and the U.S. Analysts have said the back-to-back provocations were staged in response to the annual drills, which Pyongyang views as rehearsals for an invasion.

North Korea may also believe it has China’s backing because Beijing recently proposed the allies cancel their drills in exchange for a halt to North Korea’s missile and nuclear testing, he noted.

Robert Manning, a senior fellow at the Atlantic Council, said the U.N. Security Council is likely to adopt tougher sanctions against Pyongyang.

“There may be other steps Trump is considering to take unilaterally, whether cyber or kinetic. The key question is: How far is China prepared to go?” he said in a separate email. “But even if effective, sanctions will take time to have an impact — nine to 12 to 15 months. The danger is that this cycle of tensions rises to the point where the U.S. seeks more immediate results. That could be catastrophic.”

Media preview

The North Korean single stage Hwasong-12 is a liquid fueled IRBM of estimated 4500 km range.

The Hwasong-2 appears to be a stretched improved version of the Hwasong-10 IRBM and appears to be single staged.

The missile was first shown in the 2017 military parade and has conducted its first successful flight after three failures in May 2017 from a site near Kuosong, likely Panghyon Air Base, on a lofted short range trajectory of 787 km range and 2111 km apogee height, which hints to a maximum range of about 4500 km.

For more information regarding the DPRK airfields and what is underground at those airfields across the country, go here.

Harvey’s Hell, Taking a Toll on Life

Posted on by

Houston Police officer drowns in Harvey floodwaters

A Houston police officer drowned in his patrol car in Harvey floodwaters, according to three department officials.

The officer, an HPD veteran who has been with the department for more than 30 years, was in his patrol car driving to work downtown Sunday morning when he got trapped in high water at I-45 and the Hardy Toll Road.

Search and rescue crews are currently recovering his body. The department has not yet formally notified the officer’s family.

“He was trying different routes, and took a wrong turn,” one high-ranking official said, asking not to be identified.

After getting trapped in high water, the officer tried to get out but was unable to.

The officer’s death is the 15th fatality in Texas claimed by Hurricane Harvey or the rains it spawned after making landfall, as the storm has pushed the city’s first response abilities to their limit and as Houston police officers and fire fighters and other first responders have rescued thousands of Houstonians over the past four days.

***

Harvey May Be Among the World’s
Costliest Recent Catastrophes

With Hurricane Harvey continuing to wreak havoc in Texas, its full economic impact is still unclear. Current estimates range from $30 billion to $100 billion, either of which would make the hurricane among the world’s most costly catastrophes since at least 1970. And this is happening in what was considered a few short weeks ago as a fairly tame weather year. According to Swiss Re, total economic losses from disasters were $44 billion in the first half of 2017, down 62 percent from the first half in 2016. The biggest losses were from thunderstorms, and more than half of the $44 billion was insured. Although forecasters are reluctant to estimate how much of Harvey’s damage insurers might pay, Chuck Watson, a disaster modeler with Enki Research, puts the figure at about 27 percent, far less than the 47 percent paid out for Hurricane Katrina. Go here for the financial charts.

***

Eyes on Louisiana

Louisiana begins evacuations for Harvey on 12th anniversary of Hurricane Katrina

The catastrophic flooding from Hurricane Harvey is not limited to Texas, it’s also affecting parts of Louisiana where preparations are underway to evacuate some areas.

As the heavy band of rain stretches over southwest Louisiana, residents in the Lake Charles region are once again bracing for impact like they did for Hurricane Katrina 12 years ago.

On Monday night, water rose to chest-high in some areas, flooding homes and forcing hundreds of evacuations in one neighborhood according to Lake Charles Fire Department Division Chief Lennie LaFleur.

Among the nearly 500 rescued, one family displaced by the rising water said they were forced to move quickly in the middle of the night to flee their flooded home.

When the water rose to four feet high, a single father’s four children began to blow up inflatable boats using their own breath to help their dad and grandma. The father pulled his family atop the inflatables for nearly half a mile from their home to an evacuation center.

Local authorities are concerned that the flood water surrounding the shelter could continue to rise as the rain picks back up later Tuesday evening.

As storm forecasts show further movement into the state, Louisiana’s governor is warning that “the worst is likely to come for us here.”

Louisiana governor on Harvey: ‘The worst is likely to come for us here’

Harvey “does remain a named tropical storm and it’s going to drop an awful lot of rain,” Louisiana Governor John Bel Edwards said at a news conference Monday. “We do have a long way to go with this particular storm.”

Flash flood warnings and watches are in effect as the outer bands that have done the most damage in Houston are expected to move further inland into Louisiana by Wednesday, ABC News meteorologists said. Officials are monitoring storm surge and high tides, which could increase flooding.