Author Archives: Denise Simon

North Korea Iran Nuclear and Cyber-weapons

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North Korea allegedly helping Iran build nuclear weapon

The National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI), which exposed the existence of a key Iranian nuclear weapons facility in 2002 and significant, illicit Iranian nuclear weapons developments since then, said this was the third visit to Iran in 2015 by a North Korean delegation.

Also, citing confidential information from sources inside Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), the Ministry of Defense (MoD), research and aerospace agencies, NCRI said in a statement another group of North Korean nuclear weapons experts is slated to return to Iran in June.

*** During the P5+1 talks with Iran on their nuclear program the elephant in the room has been North Korea, a rogue state that has been in full collaboration with Iran. Meanwhile, North Korea has a cyber-army capable of the same kind of destruction as any nuclear weapon or ICBMs.

Missile Army

North Korean nuclear, missile experts visit Iran-dissidents

An exiled Iranian opposition group said on Thursday that a delegation of North Korean nuclear and missile experts visited a military site near Tehran in April amid talks between world powers and Iran over its nuclear program.

The dissident National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI) exposed Iran’s uranium enrichment plant at Natanz and a heavy water facility at Arak in 2002. Analysts say it has a mixed record and a clear political agenda.

Iran says allegations that is trying to develop a nuclear weapons capability are baseless and circulated by its enemies.

Iran and six world powers are trying to meet a self-imposed June 30 deadline to reach a comprehensive deal restricting its nuclear work. Issues remaining include monitoring measures to ensure it cannot pursue a clandestine nuclear weapons program.

Citing information from sources inside Iran, including within Iran’s Revolutionary Guards Corps, the Paris-based NCRI said a seven-person North Korean Defense Ministry team was in Iran during the last week of April. This was the third time in 2015 that North Koreans had been to Iran and a nine-person delegation was due to return in June, it said.

 

“The delegates included nuclear experts, nuclear warhead experts and experts in various elements of ballistic missiles including guidance systems,” the NCRI said.

The Iranian embassy in France dismissed the report.

“Such fabricated reports are being published as we get closer to final stages of the talks and also because there is a high chance of reaching a final deal,” Iran’s state website IRIB quoted an unnamed Paris-based Iranian diplomat as saying.

In Washington, the State Department said it was examining the claims but had been unable to confirm them.

“These allegations, we’re taking them seriously,” State Department spokesman Jeff Rathke told reporters. “We have not been able to verify them thus far.”

There have previously been unconfirmed reports of cooperation between the two countries on ballistic missiles, but nothing specific in the nuclear field.

The U.N. Panel of Experts which monitors compliance with sanctions on North Korea has reported in the past that Pyongyang and Tehran have regularly exchanged ballistic missile technology in violation of U.N. sanctions.

SECRECY

The NCRI said the North Korean delegation was taken secretly to the Imam Khomenei complex, a site east of Tehran controlled by the Defense Ministry. It gave detailed accounts of locations and who the officials met.

It said the delegation dealt with the Center for Research and Design of New Aerospace Technology, a unit of nuclear weaponization research, and a planning center called the Organization of Defensive Innovation and Research, which is under U.S. sanctions.

Reuters could not independently verify the allegations.

“Tehran has shown no interest in giving up its drive to nuclear weapons. The weaponization program is continuing and they have not slowed down the process,” NCRI spokesman Shahin Gobadi said.

U.N. watchdog the IAEA, which for years has investigated alleged nuclear arms research by Tehran, declined to comment. North Korean officials were not available for comment.

Several Western officials said they were not aware of a North Korean delegation traveling to Iran recently.

A Western diplomat said there had been proven military cooperation between Iran and North Korea in the past.

North Korean and Iranian officials meet in the course of general diplomacy. On April 23, Kim Yong Nam, North Korea’s ceremonial head of state and Iran’s president held a rare meeting on the sidelines of the Asian-African summit in Jakarta.

Cyber-Army

North Korean hackers ‘could kill’, warns key defector

North Korean hackers are capable of attacks that could destroy critical infrastructure and even kill people, a high-profile defector has warned.

Speaking exclusively to BBC Click, Prof Kim Heung-Kwang said the country had around 6,000 trained military hackers.

The warning follows last year’s Sony Pictures hack – an attack attributed to North Korea.

Korean technology expert Martyn Williams stressed the threat was only “theoretical”.

Prof Kim has called for international organisations to step in to prevent North Korea launching more severe attacks.

Military attack

For 20 years Prof Kim taught computer science at Hamheung Computer Technology University, before escaping the country in 2004.

While Prof Kim did not teach hacking techniques, his former students have gone on to form North Korea’s notorious hacking unit Bureau 121.

The bureau, which is widely believed to operate out of China, has been credited for numerous hacks.

Many of the attacks are said to have been aimed specifically at South Korean infrastructure, such as power plants and banks.

Speaking at a location just outside the South Korean capital, Prof Kim told the BBC he has regular contact with key figures within the country who have intimate knowledge of the military’s cyber operation.

“The size of the cyber-attack agency has increased significantly, and now has approximately 6,000 people,” he said.

He estimated that between 10% to 20% of the regime’s military budget is being spent on online operations.

“The reason North Korea has been harassing other countries is to demonstrate that North Korea has cyber war capacity,” he added.

“Their cyber-attacks could have similar impacts as military attacks, killing people and destroying cities.”

Stuxnet clone

Speaking more specifically, Prof Kim said North Korea was building its own malware based on Stuxnet – a hack attack, widely attributed to the US and Israel, which struck Iranian nuclear centrifuges before being discovered in 2010.

“[A Stuxnet-style attack] designed to destroy a city has been prepared by North Korea and is a feasible threat,” Prof Kim said.

Earlier this year, the South Korean government blamed North Korea for a hack on the country’s Hydro and Nuclear Power Plant.

“Although the nuclear plant was not compromised by the attack, if the computer system controlling the nuclear reactor was compromised, the consequences could be unimaginably severe and cause extensive casualties,” Prof Kim said.

Martyn Williams is a journalist who follows closely the development of technology in North Korea.

He told the BBC: “I think it’s important to underline that this is theoretical and possible from non-North Korean hackers too.

“It’s conceivable that hackers would try something and lives could be at risk.

He noted an attack in 2003 on South Korean broadcasters, which he said was “an attempt to throw the country into confusion”.

“If TV had gone off air and then ATMs stopped working, people might have panicked.”

Inside Bureau 121

When it comes to cyber-attacks, few groups are as notorious as North Korea’s Bureau 121, which has operated since the late nineties.

Most security researchers agree that the group operates out of China. Specifically, in the basement of a restaurant, rated highly on TripAdvisor for its tremendous Korean food.

Prof Kim gave several Bureau 121 members their first taste of computer science.

While he didn’t teach hacking techniques, Prof Kim gave the students knowledge of the ins-and-outs of computing, networks and data transfer.

The very best students were later plucked from his course by the military and given further, more specialist training in cyber security.

Prof Kim told the BBC he feels saddened that some of the great, “bright” minds he nurtured had their potential channelled “not into improving our internet culture, but to terrorise other people using the internet”.

But he conceded that his former students probably enjoyed their task, and took pride in “accomplishing Kim Jong-un’s orders as a cyber warrior”.

‘Off the internet’

Prof Kim has called on international organisations to take action over North Korea’s cyber-activity.

“We need to collect the evidence of North Korea’s cyber terrorism and report them to UN Human Rights Council and other UN agencies,” he told the BBC.

“If North Korea continues to cause damage in this way, an organisation such as Icann should ban North Korea.”

Icann – the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers – manages the distribution of domain name including .com and .net.

It could, theoretically, shut down the use of North Korea’s domain, .kp.

In a statement, Icann said its powers in this regard were limited.

“Icann does not have the power, nor remit, to ban countries from having a presence on or access to the Internet,” said Duncan Burns, its head of communications.

“Icann’s primary role is the coordination of the internet’s unique identifiers to ensure the stability, security and resiliency of the internet.

“We rely on law enforcement and governmental regulatory agencies to police reported illegal activity.”

Furthermore, disabling .kp would have minimal effect if, as is widely believed, much of North Korea’s hacking force conducts its operations outside of the country.

Other measures, such as sanctions imposed by the US in the wake of the Sony Pictures hack, might have a greater impact.

But Prof Kim added: “This issue can’t be solved by one or two countries.

“The international community needs to pay attention to North Korea’s attempts to destroy the internet.”

 

Lawyers ask Court to Drop Obamacare Case

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Very little is being reported on the legal case where the House of Representatives is suing over Obamacare. Administration lawyers are asking for the whole case to be dropped. If the case moves forward and a ruling is delivered on the side of the House, Office of Management and Budget and Health and Human Services has no plan B.

The basis of the case is money, where the administration ‘is paying health insurance companies over a decade to reimburse them for offering lowered rates for poor people. The House argues that Congress never specifically appropriated that money, and indeed denied an administration request for it, but that the administration is paying it anyway.

The House says this amounts to unconstitutionally co-opting Congress’ power of the purse. The administration insists it is relying on an existing pot of money that it is allowed to use.’

WASHINGTON (AP) — Obama administration attorneys urged a federal judge Thursday to throw out a politically charged lawsuit by House Republicans over the president’s health care law, but encountered plenty of skeptical questions.

“You don’t really believe that, do you?” U.S. District Judge Rosemary Collyer interrupted Justice Department attorney Joel McElvain to ask in the opening moments of his argument, as he tried to assert that the House hadn’t suffered a particular injury in the case and therefore lacks any basis for suing.

“I have a very hard time taking that statement seriously,” Collyer said. She ended the hearing without ruling, telling both parties: “I have lots of ideas. I just haven’t decided yet.”

At issue in the case is some $175 billion the administration is paying health insurance companies over a decade to reimburse them for offering lowered rates for poor people. The House argues that Congress never specifically appropriated that money, and indeed denied an administration request for it, but that the administration is paying it anyway.

The House says this amounts to unconstitutionally co-opting Congress’ power of the purse. The administration insists it is relying on an existing pot of money that it is allowed to use.

Thursday’s hearing focused on whether the House has legal standing to bring the suit at all. The administration says it doesn’t, arguing the House has not been injured and is just advancing abstract complaints about the implementation of the law. The administration argues the House has many other remedies available, such as passing a new law.

“The House cannot sue the executive branch over the implementation of existing federal law,” McElvain insisted, adding later: “Nothing limits the right to come back and enact new legislation.”

George Washington University law professor Jonathan Turley, arguing for the House, vehemently disagreed.

“We believe we have established what can only be viewed as a concrete injury,” Turley said in court. “I find it astonishing that this can be viewed as an abstraction.”

Frustrated House Republicans authorized the lawsuit over Democratic objections last summer, in the run-up to the congressional midterm elections. They had already voted dozens of times to repeal all or parts of the law known as Obamacare, but as long as President Barack Obama is in the White House they have no legislative solution.

Thursday’s hearing, the first in the case, comes as the Obama administration and lawmakers of both parties anxiously await a Supreme Court ruling on a different lawsuit that challenges other portions of the health law and threatens insurance subsidies for millions of Americans.

It’s not clear whether the House suit will make it that far. Previous attempts by members of Congress to sue past administrations have been tossed out, although the House health lawsuit is the first by the full House against a sitting president.

Collyer, a 2003 appointee of Republican President George W. Bush, gave the House side reason to be hopeful with her aggressive sparring with the Justice Department’s McElvain. She will rule at a later date.

The partisan political backdrop of the lawsuit resonated at various points in the courtroom, including when Collyer questioned whether impeachment could be an alternative remedy rather than suing. She then quickly added, addressing the spectator gallery filled with reporters: “I don’t mean to suggest… Don’t anyone write that down.”

In addition to the issue over appropriations the House lawsuit accused the administration of acting unconstitutionally in delaying deadlines in the law for employers to offer coverage. That appears to be a weaker claim and was not discussed in court Thursday.

WH Declares that Iraq/ISIS is Iraq’s Problem

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If you wonder why there is no strategy to defeat ISIS, it is because the White House, meaning Barack Obama and Susan Rice have formally declared that the civil war in Iraq and Syria belong to others to handle. The United States will not be responsible for securing Iraq, PERIOD.

This has been known for quite some time at the Pentagon and military leaders including the SecDefs, both Hagel and Carter have written and voiced their immediate requests for a strategy. There are liaisons between the Pentagon and Congress that provide information to key lawmakers, there is no doubt that the Pentagon is reaching out for some real help from Congress. When Senator Dick Durbin, who is anti-war requests a strategy and safe zones of the military and the White House, the case is proven, Congress is current on the bumbling by the White House with regard to ISIS.

Earlier this month, Durbin asked Joint Chiefs Chairman Gen. Martin Dempsey and Defense Secretary Ash Carter about the feasibility of establishing the zones when they testified before the Senate Appropriations Subcommittee on Defense. Durbin is the ranking member of the powerful subcommittee, which controls the Pentagon’s purse strings. 

    

“It’s practical militarily, but it would be a significant policy decision to do so,” Dempsey said.

Carter added, “We would need to fight to create such a space, and then fight to keep such a space.”  The Pentagon readily admits the Islamic State cannot be defeated without addressing the glaring Syria question, but it has adopted an “Iraq first” strategy toward the terrorist group, focusing U.S. airpower in a country where the government requested it. But after the fall of Ramadi last weekend, more lawmakers are renewing calls for deeper U.S. military involvement, including embedding American troops with Iraqi forces to call in airstrikes.

President Obama, after months of equivocation over how to respond to the takeover of parts of Iraq and Syria by radical militants, announced in September that the United States would “lead a broad coalition to roll back this terrorist threat,” the White House swung quickly into action, sending proposed legislation to train and equip Syrian rebels to Capitol Hill that same day.

 

Unfortunately, the White House failed to consult with the Pentagon—which would be doing most of the rolling back—on the timing or details of the announcement.
To be part of the U.S. coalition, members had to offer some assistance. That assistance could be any type of cooperation with such participation as MRE’s, a terrorism training class, publishing bulletins, fighter jets, approved air-space for refueling or just holding a conference call. Exactly, what kind of help is Estonia or Greece offering? Here is the document on the coalition members and requests for involvement.

While U.S. aircraft are flying a handful of sorties a day, 70% of the aircraft return to base without dropping ordnance because of lack of approval and no quality ground-controllers delivering coordinates. We are just wasting fuel and essentially practicing an air campaign.

Our military knows how to fight this fight as they have successfully performed the operations before. Today, on the ground in Iraq are Shiite militia, Iranian proxies coordinating ground operations for the sake of their future victory, Iraq will belong to Iran, as will Syria. In the case of Syria however, the forecast is it will be a split state between Iran and Russia. The same is likely for Libya.

Today, Bashir al Assad is running an aggressive campaign to defeat al Nusra and ISIS under the promise of future financial support from Iran. Assad’s success will be fleeting at best, even while Hezbollah is aiding in some measure to protect the regime. Once again, the U.S. air operations in Syria are in coordination with Assad, consider that both state’s aircraft have been in the air at the same time. That puts the U.S. siding with Hezbollah. Yes…real twisted conditions for sure.

WH Climate Change Mission and Terrorism

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Posted on the White House website is an 11 page summary of how climate change is the cause of comprehensive national security threats including terrorism.

With climate change, certain types of extreme weather events and their impacts, including extreme heat, heavy downpours, floods, and droughts, have become more frequent and/or intense. In addition, warming is causing sea level to rise and glaciers and Arctic sea ice to melt. These and other aspects of climate change are disrupting people’s lives and damaging certain sectors of the economy. The national security implications of climate change impacts are far-reaching, as they may exacerbate existing stressors, contributing to poverty, environmental degradation, and political instability, providing enabling environments for terrorist activity abroad. For example, the impacts of climate change on key economic sectors, such as agriculture and water, can have profound effects on food security, posing threats to overall stability.

The implications of climate change on national security are not all beyond U.S. borders – they pose risks here at home. According to the Third National Climate Assessment, sea level rise, coupled with storm surge, will continue to increase the risk of major coastal impacts on transportation infrastructure, including both temporary and permanent flooding of airports, ports and harbors, roads, rail lines, tunnels, and bridges. Extreme weather events are also affecting energy production and delivery facilities, causing supply disruptions of varying lengths and magnitudes and affecting other infrastructure that depends on energy supply. Increasing risk of flooding affects human safety and health, property, infrastructure, economies, and ecology in many basins across the United States.

These impacts increase the frequency, scale, and complexity of future defense missions, requiring higher costs of military base maintenance and impacting the effectiveness of troops and equipment in conflict. Assessments are currently underway by the Department of Defense (DOD) to determine the national resources necessary to respond to these growing threats to U.S. national security. Read the full report here.

The climate change activists are out in full measure, where even Catholic priests have embraced the climate change agenda facing off with Exxon Mobile. Cant make this up.

In part from The Hill:  Michael Crosby, who sponsored the resolution for a climate expert on behalf of a group of Milwaukee Catholic priests, said the oil and natural gas giant needs to better embrace renewable energy and to fight climate change. So who are these priests and why take on corporations?

*** (spelling errors and editing omissions are directly part of their website) ***

Catholic Religious Leaders Call for Action on Climate Change

[Denver, CO]   Leaders of US orders of Catholic priests, brothers, and sisters issued aresolution calling their members to work for action on climate change.The members of the Conference of Major Superiors of Men (CMSM) and the LeadershipConference of Women Religious (LCWR), who represent more than 86,000 of thecountry’s Catholic sisters, brothers, and religious priests, met jointly in assembly inDenver, Colorado from August 1‐4. During the meeting, the two conferences resolved to“seek concrete ways to curb environmental degradation, mitigate its impact on thepoorest and most vulnerable people, and restore right relationships among all God’screation; and to foster a consciousness of care for God’s creation among all ourmembers, colleagues, institutions and those whom we serve.”  The leaders noted that the increase in temperature on the earth will likely havewidespread consequences from mass extinctions to devastating impacts on the lives andlivelihoods of the poorest and most vulnerable human beings.

Here is a memo in part from their global association.

Religions and Climate Change
Fr. Sean McDonagh, SSC

I have been at many meetings of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) during the past decade. At almost all of these meetings religious groups have attempted to demonstrate that climate change has a serious ethical and religious dimension, mainly because it affects the poor and important ecosystems in a very negative way.

After visiting Nepal in May 2014, Ms Christiana Figueres the Secretary General of UNFCCC pointed out that, saving the Earth and its peoples from dangerous climate change is a moral and ethical issue, one that goes to the core of the world’s great faiths. She said that it was time for faith and religious institutions to find their voice and set their moral compass on one of the great humanitarian issues of our time.

At COP 20 in Lima, the Consejo Interreligiouso del Perú (the Council for Interreligious Dialogue) Religiones por la Paz (Religions for Peace) had a stand at the main venue and also sponsored a seminar at the NGO Centre at the Jockey Club of Peru. The title of the seminar was Climate Change and the Voice of the Faith Communities. The first speaker was Mons. Salvador Pineiro, the archbishop of Ayacucho and the President of the Episcopal Conference of Peru. He said that he was a city boy, born in Lima and had little understanding of rural life until he was appointed archbishop of Ayacucho. In conversation with a poor potato farmer he learned how climate changes was affecting the potato crop and making things more difficult for farmers during the past decade.

Raquel Cago, who is the executive director of the National Union of Evangelical Churches, said that the bible challenges Christians to take good care of God’s creation. Martin Kopp from the Federation of Lutheran Churches spoke very simply and succinctly about how the faith community should respond to climate change.
He made three suggestions:
The most important thing for Churches and Religions is to develop a credible theology of creation in each of their traditions:
His second recommendation was that the faith community must work together and lobby governments and industries to challenge them to take climate change seriously at local, national and global level. We need good laws and effective enforcement of these laws to protect the poor and the environment:
Finally, people need to do things however small to combat climate change. He gave an example of a choir in a Church in France. The members used to meet in the church for rehearsals even during the winter. This meant heating the large church, even through there were only a few people in the choir. Someone suggested they met in a smaller room and thus save energy and reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

 

 

Poll Tested Social Engineering, Religion and Policy

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Do you ever wonder where social issues, legislating behavior, growing policy on you personally really comes from? Any why now? Take note, those ‘Millennials’ are the target.

Enter Public Religion Research Institute who is in partnership with liberal think tanks, academia and the United Nations for world affair affects. No longer can you think independently as you are provided issues with liberal socialist bents and the matters are poll tested that require upgrades and new definitions to ensure cooperation and re-tooled attitudes. This is especially the condition as they relate to sex, gender and education. Those three items actually are as old as man so why do we need to be taught something new? Simple answer is money.

There is was a working draft of this platform created in 2009 by the United Nations Research Institute for Social Development.

Social Justice

America is becoming more religiously liberal with each generation, and religious conservatives, though more numerous now, will become dinosaurs. That’s the confident projection of a new poll from the liberal leaning Public Religion Research Institute. It’s predictably gotten good media play, as claims about irrelevance for religious conservatives often do. And it supplements other polls supposedly proving the rise of the religiously unaffiliated in America.

The Left, in its alternative cosmology, believes in its own nonreligious providential destiny. But history moves in more crooked, unpredictable paths. And religious traditionalists, most of them conservative, believe that history has a another ultimately inexorable direction, guided by The Lord of history. The Left’s own more secular faith is often buttressed by short term trends.

“Our new research shows a complex religious landscape, with religious conservatives holding an advantage over religious progressives in terms of size and homogeneity,” PPRI admitted when releasing its poll. “However, the percentage of religious conservatives shrinks in each successive generation, with religious progressives outnumbering religious conservatives in the Millennial generation.”

Nearly half of the older than age 66 crowd is religiously conservative, while less than 20 percent of the under 33 crowd is. Only 12 percent of oldsters are religiously liberal while almost a quarter of the young are. So — presto — the future belongs to the Religious Left. As the much vaunted Millennial Generation ages into leadership, the Religious Right’s doom supposedly will be sealed.

This determinism of course assumes that these Millennials will not change their views as they age. And it assumes subsequent generations will not react against previous generations, even though most generations, when young, assume they are wiser and therefore must be different from their immediate predecessors. In the future, a new crop of youngsters will look somewhat smugly on the by-then aging Millennials.

Transform America

Lisa Sharon Harper, director of mobilizing for Sojourners, a progressive Christian organization, says shifts are due to young people choosing to identify with Jesus and his teachings as opposed to a particular political party. Harper believes the GOP is being pulled to the far right by extremists on issues like abortion, thus forgetting and alienating those whom Jesus affirmed and advocated for: poor people, ethnic minorities, and women.

“I think the focus on the person of Jesus is birthing a younger generation inspired by [Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount],” she says. “Their political agenda is shaped by Jesus’ call to feed the hungry, make sure the thirsty have clean water, make sure all have access to healthcare, transform America into a welcoming place for immigrants, fix our inequitable penal system, and end abject poverty abroad and in the forgotten corners of our urban and rural communities.”

Lisa Sharon Harper, Sojourners’ senior director of mobilizing, was the founding executive director of New York Faith & Justice—an organization at the hub of a new ecumenical movement to end poverty in New York City. In that capacity, she helped establish Faith Leaders for Environmental Justice, a citywide collaborative effort of faith leaders committed to leveraging the power of their constituencies and their moral authority in partnership with communities bearing the weight of environmental injustice. She also organized faith leaders to speak out for immigration reform and organized the South Bronx Conversations for Change, a dialogue-to-change project between police and the community.

She has written extensively on tax reform, comprehensive immigration reform, health-care reform, poverty, racial justice, and transformational civic engagement for publications and blogs including The National Civic Review, God’s Politics blog, The Huffington Post, Urban Faith, Prism, and Slant33.

There is more including a magazine. Topics include ‘Divest from Nuclear Weapons, Testing Jesus, Divest from Fossil Fuels and the Christian Nation vs. Secular Country.