Germany: Migrant Rape Crisis Calls for Military

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German finance minister calls for option to deploy troops in wake of Cologne attacks

In light of the New Year attacks in Cologne, German Finance Minister Wolfgang Schäuble has demanded the option of deploying Bundeswehr troops at home. He also reiterated his support for Chancellor Angela Merkel.

In an interview with Saturday’s edition of the “Süddeutsche Zeitung,” Schäuble said Berlin must ask itself why “under clear legal rules in support of the police, practically every other country in Europe can turn to its armed forces,” except for Germany.

“A legal basis for domestic military missions must be created,” Schäuble told the paper, adding that Germans expect the state to ensure security.

“For this you need more police and enhanced legal foundations for the police and intelligence services,” he said.

“The situation may arise, however, where both federal and state police forces are exhausted,” he added. “Every other country in the world would deploy soldiers in an emergency.”

Any deployment of the Bundeswehr within Germany is subject to extremely strict constitutional limitations, with its role described in the German Basic Law as absolutely defensive.

Refugee debate

The finance minister’s comments came amid ongoing uproar in Germany over reports of scores of sexual assaults in Cologne at the city’s New Year’s Eve celebrations.

Witnesses at the city’s main train station and iconic cathedral described women being groped, as well as subjected to lewd insults and robbery. In one instance, a rape was reported. Most of the culprits were said to have been of a North African or Middle Eastern appearance.

Support for Merkel

The reports have also renewed criticism of Chancellor Angela Merkel’s open-door policy on refugees and migrants, with some 1.1 million new asylum seekers registered in the last year alone. Following criticism from within Merkel’s own Christian Democrats (CDU), Schäuble renewed his support for the chancellor.

“I support with conviction what the chancellor has said: We must solve the problem at the external borders,” Schäuble told the “Süddeutsche.”

Like Merkel, Schäuble called for a solution to the refugee crisis by means of better controls and cooperation with neighboring countries, adding that action in Europe was “still too slow.”

‘No one satisfied’

The finance minister also warned his fellow CDU party members against criticizing Merkel’s refugee policy.

“Of course, no one is satisfied with the situation,” Schäuble said, admitting that there had been “very intensive discussions” within the CDU and its Bavarian sister party, the Christian Social Union. The people want us “to solve the problems the best we can,” he said.

Schäuble’s comments published Saturday were far from comparable to those heard at the end of last year when he called for a strict limit on the number of family reunifications among refugees and compared Germany’s unprecedented influx of asylum seekers to an “avalanche.”

What you Don’t Know About Iowa

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When candidates hit all the counties in Iowa, they actually have a bigger challenge than just winning votes. They need to teach and reteach political attitudes. At least that goes for some candidates.

Majority of Iowa Caucus Dems Call Themselves Politically Correct Socialists

FrontPage: Meet the new Democratic Party. It’s like the Communist Party, but it hasn’t picked out its own snappy uniforms yet.

If Bernie Sanders wins Iowa, it will be in no small part because Iowa Democrats describe themselves as Socialists more than supporters of free enterprise and human freedom.

More than half—58 percent—of those backing Sanders say that word “socialist” resonates with them, compared to about a third for Clinton supporters. Sanders represents Vermont as an independent senator caucusing with Democrats, and he describes himself as a democratic socialist.

“I never really thought of it as socialism before, but I’ve educated myself on the issue and I guess if I’m a socialist, I’m a socialist,” said Sarah Kane, 38, nurse practitioner and Sanders supporter from Waterloo, Iowa. “I believe in those things.”

As Reagan said, “Freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction.” We’re seeing a reminder of that here and now.

 

There isn’t great polling on how many Americans overall consider themselves socialists, but a Gallup poll in June showed that just 47 percent of Americans would even be willing to vote for a socialist candidate. Among Democrats, that number was 59 percent.

More recently, a November New York Times/CBS News poll showed 56 percent of Democratic primary voters nationally said they had a positive view of socialism.

Another tidbit from the poll that the media didn’t seek to bring forward is that while 43 percent of Iowa Caucus Dems call themselves Socialists, 53 percent describe themselves as “Politically Correct”.

This isn’t a political disagreement. It’s a primal conflict between freedom and slavery. It’s a civil war between Socialists who want to enslave Americans and those who want to set them free.

******

The Socialist Party in Iowa is not new. There was even a lawsuit when it came to voting ballots.

The Des Moines Register publishes the socialists battle cry, meaning that Bernie Sanders is predicted to win over Hillary? Frankly, they are both quite the same, except that Bernie actually admits it.

 

3 Americans Kidnapped from Brothel in Baghdad

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Three Americans reported missing from a Baghdad neighborhood were kidnapped by militiamen from an apartment in the capital on Saturday, a senior police official and resident of the building said.

A statement from Baghdad Operations Command on Monday confirmed that “three people with American citizenship” were kidnapped in the capital.

A Baghdad police colonel, speaking on condition of anonymity because he is not authorized to speak to the media, said that the Americans are employed as contractors at the Baghdad International Airport. He did not say which company employed the individuals.

Another police official in Baghdad, a major general also speaking on condition of anonymity, gave the names of the abducted individuals as Amro Mohamed, Wael al-Mahdawi, and Rusul Farad, a woman. The U.S. Embassy in Baghdad did not respond to a request to verify the names. Two senior security officials said that the missing Americans are of Iraqi origin.

The three Americans appear to have been seized by Shiite militiamen in the Dora neighborhood in southern Baghdad, the police colonel said. The area from which they were taken is controlled by Shiite militias, including the Iran-backed Asai’b Ahl al-Haq, or League of the Righteous, he said.

The colonel said that the group had been invited to the home of their Iraqi interpreter.

Missing Americans in Iraq reportedly kidnapped from ‘brothel’ apartment

FNC: A group of Americans who disappeared in Baghdad over the weekend were kidnapped from their interpreter’s apartment, according to multiple Iraqi sources.

The apartment is well-known in southern Baghdad as a brothel and is subject to frequent raids by Shiite militias, including the Iran-backed Asa’ib ah al-Haqq, a police official and a building resident told The Washington Post.

“We are in very direct contact with the Iraqi authorities… there is a very full effort going to find them as soon as possible,” Secretary of State John Kerry told Fox News Monday.

An Iraqi intelligence official told the Associated Press that the Americans were invited into the apartment in the neighborhood of Dora. After they were abducted, they were taken to Sadr City, at which point the official said, “all communications and contact stopped.”

A spokesman for Baghdad’s Joint Operations Command told The Washington Post that the three citizens were Iraqis who had acquired U.S. citizenship. A Baghdad police official said they worked as contractors at Baghdad International Airport, but did not say which country employed them.

The U.S. Embassy in Baghdad confirmed Sunday that “several” Americans had vanished, while the State Department said it was working with the Iraqi government to locate them.

The Arab news channel Al-Arabiya first reported that three Americans had been kidnapped by militas. However, U.S. officials have not confirmed either the number of missing Americans or that they were kidnapped.

“The safety and security of American citizens overseas is our highest priority” State Department spokesman John Kirby told Fox News Sunday.‎ We are working with the full cooperation of the Iraqi authorities to locate and recover the individuals. Due to privacy considerations, I have nothing further.”

There were no immediate claims of responsibility. Kidnappings in Iraq have been carried out by ISIS, Shiite militias and criminal gangs often demanding ransom payments or seeking to resolve workplace disputes.

Following the ISIS takeover of Iraq’s second largest city Mosul and large swaths of territory in the country’s north and west, Iraq has witnessed a deterioration in security as government forces were sent to front lines and Shiite militias were empowered to aid in the fight following the collapse of the Iraqi military.

Last month a Qatari hunting party was kidnapped in Iraq’s south by unidentified gunmen and their whereabouts are still unknown. In September 18 Turkish workers were kidnapped from their construction site in Baghdad’s Sadr city by masked men in military uniforms. Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi blamed organized crime for the kidnapping. The workers were released later that month.

The most recent incident comes after a week that has seen a deterioration of security in and around the Iraqi capital after months of relative calm.

ISIS claimed a number of attacks in Baghdad and Diyala province last week that killed more than 50 people, including a high profile attack on a mall in the Iraqi capital.

***

Details on this Shiite militia:

Asaib Ahl al-Haq Asaib Ahl al-Haq (AAH) emerged between 2006 and 2008 as part of an effort by the IRGC Qods Force to create a popular organization similar to Lebanese Hizb Allah that would be easier to shape than Moqtada al-Sadr’s uncontrollable Jaysh al-Mahdi (JAM) movement. AAH was built around one of al-Sadr’s key rivals, a protégé of al-Sadr’s father called Qais al-Khazali who had consistently opposed al-Sadr’s cease-fire agreements with the U.S. and Iraqi militaries. After AAH undertook the kidnap and murder of five U.S. soldiers on January 20, 2007, al-Khazali was captured by coalition forces alongside his brother Laith Khazali and Lebanese Hizb Allah operative Ali Musa Daqduq in Basra on March 20, 2007. In time, al-Khazali was transferred to Iraqi custody and then released in exchange for kidnapped Briton Peter Moore on January 5, 2010. Although far less senior in the IRGC Qods Force hierarchy than al-Muhandis and 20 years his junior, Qais al-Khazali could become a significant political force in mainstream politics and is being courted by both al-Maliki and al-Sadr precisely because he has the capability to draw away a portion of Moqtada’s supporters if he so chooses.

During al-Khazali’s absence in prison, AAH played a delicate game, balancing the need to negotiate for the release of detainees against the desire of many AAH members to continue attacking U.S. forces. Like its predecessor, Jaysh al-Mahdi, AAH is becoming a catch-all for a wide range of militants who seek to engage in violence for a host of ideological, sectarian or purely commercial motives.[16] Notorious Special Group commanders such as Sadrist breakaway Abu Mustapha al-Sheibani (whose real name is Hamid Thajeel al-Sheibani) and infamous Shi`a warlord Abu Deraa (whose real name is Ismail al-Lami) are reported to be returning from Iran to join AAH.

Obama Lifting 14 Red Notices, Part of Iran Deal, Good for Assad

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Prisoner Swap May Help Iran Arm Assad

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Bloomberg: In exchange for the release of four American prisoners, the Barack Obama administration agreed to free seven Iranians in U.S. custody and stop trying to arrest 14 others, two of whom the U.S. government had accused of  funneling weapons to the Bashar al-Assad regime and Hezbollah in Syria.

For years, Iran’s privately-owned Mahan Air has been using its planes to bring soldiers and arms directly to the Syrian military and the Lebanese terrorist group Hezbollah by flying them from Tehran to Damascus, according to the U.S. Treasury Department. In 2013, Treasury sanctioned Mahan’s managing director, Hamid Arabnejad, for overseeing the company’s efforts to evade U.S. and international sanctions and aiding the Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps’ elite Quds Force.

“Arabnejad has a close working relationship with IRGC-QF personnel and coordinates Mahan Air’s support and services to the paramilitary group,” the Treasury Department said. “He has also been instrumental in facilitating the shipment of illicit cargo to Syria on Mahan Air aircraft.”

According to the Iranian state media organization FARS, Arabnejad is one of the 14 Iranians who no longer will have Interpol red notices out on them, which are meant to ensure their arrest and extradition to the U.S. on charges that will now also be dropped. The executive order he is sanctioned under is for support for terrorism. In 2011, the U.S. sanctioned the entire airline for ferrying personnel and arms for the Revolutionary Guards Corps and Hezbollah, which it officially considers a terrorist organization. The White House declined my request for comment on whether Arabnejad was among the de-listed Iranians, but did not dispute the 14 names on the FARS list.

Mahan Air is “yet another facet of the IRGC’s extensive infiltration of Iran’s commercial sector to facilitate its support for terrorism,” the Treasury’s under secretary for terrorism and financial intelligence, David Cohen, told Bloomberg News at the time.

A 2012 press release from the Treasury says, “Iran used Iran Air and Mahan Air flights between Tehran and Damascus to send military and crowd control equipment to the Syrian regime.” Hezbollah and the Assad government coordinate with Mahan Air during their attacks on Syrian civilians and opposition groups, the Treasury Department said.

According to the Iranian news service, another Iranian who will no longer have to look over his shoulder when traveling around the world is Gholamreza Mahmoudi, also a top official at Manar Air. When Treasury sanctioned Mahmoudi in 2012, it said he worked closely with Arabnejad to evade sanctions and purchase new aircraft.

Last May, as the Iranian nuclear deal was being finalized, Mahan Air was able to purchase nine used Airbus commercial airliners, taking advantage of a relaxation of sanctions that came with an interim agreement Iran struck with Western powers. Experts say that the new lifting of the Interpol “red notices” — essentially arrest warrants — on Arabnejad and Mahmoudi further reduces pressure on Mahan Air and, by extension, on the Assad regime and Hezbollah, even though their U.S. Treasury Department sanctions remain in place.

“The one big impediment for them to run their business abroad was the red notice, not the U.S. sanctions,” said Emanuele Ottolenghi, a senior fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, a Washington think tank that has advocated tough sanctions on Iran. “Clearly it was not impossible for them to travel. The fact they are no longer on the red notice means that as long as they don’t try to come to the U.S., they will probably live their professional lives unencumbered.”

The lifting of the red notices also has a symbolic effect, he said, by telling countries and companies around the world that it’s OK to look the other way as Mahan Air helps the Assad regime and Hezbollah.

“These guys have been working day in and day out flying arms to Assad regime,” said Ottolenghi. “This is another signal that there will be no consequences for this airline and the crimes they are responsible for.”

A U.S. official told me Saturday that the U.S.  removed any Interpol red notices and dismissed any charges against 14 Iranians for whom it was assessed that extradition requests were unlikely to be successful.

President Obama spoke about the Iran prisoner swap Sunday and said none of the 7 released Iranians were charged with terrorism or any violent offenses. “They are civilians,” he said. But Obama didn’t mention the 14 who no longer have international arrest warrants, including the Mahan Air executives.

“We remain steadfast in opposing Iran’s destabilizing behavior elsewhere, including its threats against Israel and our gulf partners, and its support for violent proxies in places like Syria and Yemen,” Obama said.

The administration has repeatedly said that the Iran nuclear deal and the prisoner swap were separate events, pursued through parallel tracks of diplomacy. But there’s concern on Capitol Hill that the effort to stop the Revolutionary Guards Corps’ violent activities is suffering in the wake of the nuclear agreement.

“This flawed deal is only entrenching Iran’s military and security forces that run the country.  Now more than ever, we need a policy of backbone, not backing down,” House Foreign Affairs Committee chairman Ed Royce said Saturday.

On the other hand, Treasury did go forward Sunday with sanctions on Iran’s ballistic missile program that had been delayed because of the prisoner negotiations.

The return of the American prisoners, including Washington Post reporter Jason Rezaian, is of course good news, and the Obama administration believes the costs of the trade were worth the benefits. But some of those costs could be felt by the Syrian people, who had no say in the trade, got nothing from it and are still begging for more international support to stop Assad’s slaughter of civilians.

*** Going back to 2007, there were clandestine flights from Caracas, Damascus and Tehran.

NYT’s CARACAS, Venezuela, March 2 — Iran is already Venezuela’s closest ally outside Latin America, with ventures to produce oil and build cars and tractors together. Now, travelers between the countries can also take a weekly flight between Caracas and Tehran.

The flight, which was inaugurated here on Friday and includes a stop in Damascus, Syria, is operated in a code-share agreement by the Venezuelan state-controlled airline Conviasa and Iran’s national carrier, Iran Air.

Officials at Conviasa said that the company would use a Boeing 747 on the route and that soon it would also make available a European-made Airbus 340.

Under President Hugo Chávez, Venezuela has tightened relations with Iran and expressed explicit support for its uranium enrichment program.

Mr. Chávez has also reached out to Syria, making plans to build a $1.5 billion oil refining complex there. He sees relations with Iran and Syria, both under United States sanctions, as a centerpiece of a foreign policy aimed at countering American influence around the world.

In 2010:

Mahan Air made its first flight to Kuala Lumpur International Airport (KLIA) today (January 28).

Iran’s second largest airline is offering twice weekly flights from Shiraz to Kuala Lumpur, using an Airbus A310-300, which has a seating capacity of 196.

*** Let us not forget that in circa 2000: In the hotel room of Yazid Sufaat, a former Malaysian Army captain and businessman, in a hotel in Kuala Lumpur. The meeting lasted from 5 January 2000 to 8 January 2000. The summit’s purpose was allegedly to plan future attacks, which apparently included the October 2000 bombing of the USS Cole and the 11 September 2001 attack plot. The attendance consisted of Arab veterans of the Soviet war in Afghanistan, including Hambali, Ramzi bin al-Shibh, Nawaf al-Hazmi, Khalid al-Mihdhar, and Tawfiq bin Attash.

And in March of 2015:

KUALA LUMPUR – Malaysian police have foiled an attempt by a terror cell of the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS) to attack the Saudi Arabia and Qatar embassies in Kuala Lumpur with the arrest of two Iraqi nationals.

Sources said the two men were detained by intelligence officials at a shopping mall last Thursday.

“They were planning to attack the embassies on March 31 at the behest of IS,” a source told The Star last Saturday, using another name of ISIS.

Soviet Loyalists, Patriotic Hackers

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IN 2014: Russian Hackers Amass Over a Billion Internet Passwords

NYT: A Russian crime ring has amassed the largest known collection of stolen Internet credentials, including 1.2 billion user name and password combinations and more than 500 million email addresses, security researchers say.

The records, discovered by Hold Security, a firm in Milwaukee, include confidential material gathered from 420,000 websites, including household names, and small Internet sites. Hold Security has a history of uncovering significant hacks, including the theft last year of tens of millions of records from Adobe Systems.

“Hackers did not just target U.S. companies, they targeted any website they could get, ranging from Fortune 500 companies to very small websites,” said Alex Holden, the founder and chief information security officer of Hold Security. “And most of these sites are still vulnerable.” Full story here.

In 2015: Russian Hackers Read Obama’s Unclassified Emails, Officials Say

‘Patriotic hackers’ attacking on behalf of Mother Russia

FNC: A proxy war is underway in cyberspace, according to I.T. security analysts, and it is pitting numerous foreign institutions against Russian-speaking cyber militias beholden to President Vladimir Putin.

As has been evidenced by a steady wave of sophisticated cyberattacks targeting nation states and private sector organizations whose policies run counter to that of Moscow, Fox News is told groups of patriotic Eastern European hackers are using cyberattacks as a means to achieve Russia’s geopolitical goals.

Intelligence sources with knowledge of these cyberattacks tell Fox News the cyber militias are acting on behalf of the Putin regime. Furthermore, Fox is told security analysts have found evidence that Russian government-linked individuals have distributed cyberattack tools to these groups via underground web forums.

Over the last two years, analysts have researched web-based attacks leveraged against NATO, France’s TV5Monde, segments of the Polish financial sector, and the Dutch Safety Board – which concluded that doomed Malaysia Airlines flight 17 was actually brought down by a Russian-made missile. Researchers found evidence that each of those cyberattacks was carried out by different Russian-speaking cyber militias.

“We see this confluence of motive, where what looks like some recycled criminal malware has been upgraded in a sophisticated way,” said Keith Smith, vice president of threat intelligence for Colorado-based cybersecurity firm root9B. “A lot of people suspect that that’s Russia’s attempt to force us as analysts to ascribe to a criminal organization what is in fact the actions of a nation state – Russia.”

The United States is in these hackers’ crosshairs as well. As economic sanctions were leveled against Russia after its incursion into Crimea and Eastern Ukraine, the cyber militias began widespread attacks aimed at U.S. government officials and segments of the financial and defense sectors. The hack attacks were in furtherance of a campaign dubbed “Operation Pawn Storm” by cybersecurity firm Trend Micro.

The Office of the Director of National Intelligence declined to comment on this activity, but in congressional testimony last year, DNI James Clapper publicly acknowledged the pervasiveness of Russian cyber activity aimed at the United States.

“The Silicon Valley of talent that exists in the world on a cyberattack and cybercrime perspective exists in Eastern Europe,” according to Trend Micro chief cybersecurity officer Tom Kellermann. “Most of those actors – who are the best hackers in the world, period – are beholden and pay homage to the legacy and the power of the former Russian and Soviet regime. They do so by acting out patriotically.”

Perhaps the most dramatic show of patriotic Russian cyber aggression came on December 23 when some 800,000 Ukrainians were left in the dark following a widespread power outage.

Soon after the incident, researchers at U.S. cyber intelligence firm iSight Partners found evidence that the blackout was the result of a cyber intrusion by one such patriotic hacking militia. The culprit, as determined by iSight’s analysis, was likely a Russian-speaking group dubbed “Sandworm Team,” whose name comes from its references to the science fiction series “Dune.”

ISight drew its conclusion after a piece of malicious computer code was found on the Ukrainian Power Authority’s system. That destructive malware, known as BlackEnergy3, is unique to that particular hacking group, according to iSight.

Sandworm has been implicated by the company for having carried out numerous cyberattacks with Russian interests in mind; most notably, attacks carried out against the Ukrainian government and NATO in 2014. And according to iSight officials, the group is one of many.

“We are actively monitoring seven different cyber espionage groups right now that we believe are of Russian origin,” said Steve Ward, iSight Partners senior director.

Researchers have found that the attackers utilized wiper malware to disable Ukrainian Power Authority computer systems, which is similar in nature to the destructive malware used in the 2014 cyberattack on Sony Pictures. But what makes the December hack on the Ukrainian grid a watershed moment, according to researchers, is the combination of the destructive component and the actual target of the attack.

According to Trend Micro’s Tom Kellermann, the December 23 incident is the first instance in which a specifically directed cyberattack was used to take down the energy sector in a given nation state.

And while experts argue that achieving a similar result against the U.S. power grid would be a far more complex task, nonetheless, this recent cyber-induced blackout has added fuel to already loud concerns over hackers’ mounting abilities to cause physical harm and destruction.

“You’re seeing this cyber manifestation of attacks that can change, alter and diminish your physical reality,” said Kellermann. “What you have in cyberspace right now is a free fire zone.”