Putin Financing Marine Le Pen’s Presidential Run

Posted on February 10, 2017February 10, 2017 by Denise Simon

Marine Le Pen’s links to Russia under US scrutiny

Ms Le Pen’s Front National party has made no secret of the fact that it has taken foreign loans to help bankroll its presidential campaigns because, it has argued, French banks refuse to stump up the funds.

But in light of allegations of Russian interference in the US election of Donald Trump, scrutiny has now turned to Ms Le Pen, who is polled to reach the final round of France’s presidential elections in May.

In an extract of a letter dated November 28 to James Clapper, who heads up 17 American intelligence organisations and agencies, he notes that the Front National “publicly acknowledged that it had received a $9.8 million loan from a Russian bank with links to the Kremlin, allegedly brokered by a sanctioned Russian Duma deputy, according to French press reporting.”

The bank in question was First Czech Russian Bank (FCRB) in Moscow. Mr Turner goes on: “In February 2016, the FN asked Russia for a $30 million load to fund the FN leader Marine Le Pen’s 2017 campaign. More here from the Telegraph.

FITSANAKIS: France’s primary intelligence agency warned the country’s government this week that Russia has launched a secret operation to try to influence the outcome of the upcoming French presidential election in favor of the far right. According to the Paris-based weekly newspaper Le Canard Enchaîné, France’s Directorate-General for External Security (DGSE) has notified the country’s leadership that a covert operation by the Kremlin is already underway, and is expected to intensify in the run-up to April’s election. The spy agency allegedly believes that Russian efforts aim to promote Marine Le Pen, leader of the ultra-right National Front. Le Pen wants to curb immigration to France and remove the country from the European Union.

In an article published on Wednesday, Le Canard Enchaîné said the DGSE’s warning has alarmed the Élysée Palace. The paper also said that French President François Hollande, who chairs the country’s defense council, has decided to devote the entire agenda of the council’s next meeting to the subject of Russia’s alleged interference in the election. Anonymous sources told the paper that, according to a classified DGSE report, Russian spy agencies are using automated systems designed to “fill the Internet with tens of millions” of articles, images and memes that support the National Front candidate. Additionally, several news media that are controlled by Moscow will try to discredit Le Pen’s rivals for the presidency. At the same time, websites such as WikiLeaks —which some American commentators accuse of working with Moscow— will publish leaked information designed to damage Le Pen’s competitors.

The Le Canard Enchaîné allegations sound very similar to accusations leveled against the Kremlin by American intelligence agencies and by members of the United States Democratic Party. However, these allegations have not been supported by concrete evidence, and Russia denies that it had any involvement in last November’s presidential election in the US, which was won by Donald Trump.

*** Meanwhile…. As top U.S. commanders are sounding the alarm of the forgotten war in Afghanistan due to the terror factions operating there including the even more deadly Taliban, Russia is legitimizing them to counter NATO. Are the Western leaders nurturing relationships with the Kremlin good with that as coalition countries have troops in Afghanistan?

Image result for russia taliban

In part from The Hill:

“The Russian involvement this year has become more difficult,” Gen. John Nicholson told the Senate Armed Services Committee. “First, they have begun to publicly legitimize the Taliban. This narrative that they promote is that the Taliban are fighting Islamic State and the Afghan government is not fighting Islamic State and that, therefore, there could be spillover of this group into the region. This is a false narrative.”

“I believe its intent is to undermine the United States and NATO,” he later added.

Nicholson was testifying about the current situation in Afghanistan, which he called a stalemate that he needs a few thousand more troops to break.

Among the challenges in the country are the actions of external actors such as Pakistan, Iran and Russia, Nicholson said.

He said Russia’s meddling in Afghanistan started in 2016 and continues to increase.

In addition to spreading a narrative that the Taliban is fighting the Afghan branch of the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS), Russia has also organized a series of meetings to discuss the future of Afghanistan without inviting the Afghan government, Nicholson said. More here.

Trump’s Guantanamo Detention Center Executive Order

Posted on February 9, 2017February 9, 2017 by Denise Simon

Image result for fleury merogis prison

Fleury-Merogis located in France is the largest prison in Europe. While French leadership say they don’t want a newer version of Guantanamo, perhaps they should just visit the facility in Cuba. This article regarding common criminals in France housed with terrorists is a summary with 2 opposing views given how the inmates there are managed. What is really at issue for sentencing of terrorists in Europe is the how short the time really is for those involved in terror and militant actions.

In the United States, we are soon to be facing another scary condition, the release of terrorists after serving their full sentence. Now what? Well, I had the pleasure of interview Patrick Dunleavey on this very topic. (Segment 3 and 4)

The draft executive order for Guantanamo is found here. It is not in final form, nor has it been signed.

NYT/WASHINGTON — The Trump White House is nearing completion of an order that would direct the Pentagon to bring future Islamic State detainees to the Guantánamo Bay prison, despite warnings from national security officials and legal scholars that doing so risks undermining the effort to combat the group, according to administration officials and a draft executive order obtained by The New York Times.

White House officials have detailed their thinking about a new detainee policy in an evolving series of drafts of an executive order being circulated among national security officials for comment. While previous versions have shown that the draft has undergone many changes — including dropping language about reviving C.I.A. prisons — the plan to add Islamic State detainees to the Guantánamo population has remained constant.

The latest version of the draft, which circulated this week, would direct Defense Secretary Jim Mattis to use Guantánamo to detain suspected members of “Al Qaeda, the Taliban, and associated forces, including individuals and networks associated with the Islamic State.”

The White House has kept similar language in the draft order despite warnings from career government national security officials that carrying out its plan would give federal judges an opportunity to reject the executive branch’s theory that the war against the Islamic State is legal, even though Congress never explicitly authorized it. The issue could arise when reviewing an inevitable habeas corpus lawsuit filed by an ISIS detainee.

The Obama administration first argued in late summer 2014 that the Islamic State was part of the existing armed conflict that Congress authorized in 2001 against Al Qaeda and the Taliban. But while the Islamic State got its start as Al Qaeda’s affiliate in Iraq more than a decade ago, that theory is disputed because the two groups later split and went to war with each other.

“It raises huge legal risks,” said Jack Goldsmith, a Harvard Law School professor and former senior Justice Department official in the Bush administration. “If a judge says the Sept. 11 authorization does not cover such a detention, it would not only make that detention unlawful, it would weaken the legal basis for the entire war against the Islamic State.”

Sean Spicer, the White House press secretary, did not respond to an email seeking comment on the issue.

The Times reported on Feb. 4 that the White House had limited the draft order so that it focused on carrying out President Trump’s vow to keep the Guantánamo prison open and use it for newly captured detainees. That draft of the order dropped the ideas of reopening C.I.A. prisons and permitting interrogators to use harsher techniques than those now allowed in the Army Field Manual.

That report was based on accounts by people familiar with a version that circulated last week. But a new draft order circulated this week, titled “Protecting America Through Lawful Detention of Terrorist and Other Designated Enemy Elements,” includes some revisions. The latest version, unlike the previous one, explicitly revokes President Barack Obama’s January 2009 executive order directing the government to close the prison by January 2010, a deadline it failed to meet.

The revised text also dropped references to revitalizing the use of the military commissions system at Guantánamo for prosecuting terrorism suspects, and instead focused exclusively on detention policy — like its directive to use the prison to detain captured Islamic State suspects without trial.

In the 2012 version of the annual National Defense Authorization Act, Congress bolstered the government’s power to imprison suspected members of Al Qaeda, the Taliban and associated forces by authorizing such detentions without reference to the Sept. 11 attacks. But while it has provided funds for military operations against the Islamic State, it has never explicitly authorized combat or detention operations against it.

In summer 2014, when the group swept out of Syria and began rapidly conquering swaths of Iraq, Mr. Obama launched a bombing campaign to curtail its advances. At the time, he put forth the theory that the group’s early ties to Al Qaeda were sufficient to bring it under the Sept. 11 war authorization without new action from Congress.

Nevertheless, in 2015, the Obama administration asked Congress to enact an authorization for use of military force against the Islamic State. Lawmakers disagreed about whether it should place limits on the use of ground forces or impose an expiration date, and Congress never acted on the proposal. Congress has continued to give no sign that it has the will or the consensus to explicitly authorize war on the Islamic State.

Last year, an army captain sued Mr. Obama, arguing that the war was illegal because Congress had not authorized it. A Federal District Court judge dismissed the lawsuit without ruling on the legal merits, saying the plaintiff lacked standing to bring the case.

But any Islamic State detainee at Guantánamo would have legal standing to get a court to rule on the question of whether the group is legitimately part of the war against Al Qaeda.

Ryan Goodman, a New York University law professor who worked at the Pentagon during the Obama administration, said there were other reasons bringing an Islamic State detainee to Guantánamo for indefinite detention, as opposed to prosecuting him in civilian court, might raise problems: Foreign allies, he said, might refuse to turn over prisoners or assist in detention operations if that was the administration’s goal.

But even if that turns out not to be the case, he said, the legal risks of bringing a suspected member of the Islamic State, sometimes referred to as ISIL, are “very serious.”

Red Cross Stops Operations, 1000’s More Troops Need, A’Stan

Posted on February 9, 2017February 9, 2017 by Denise Simon

Primer: Red Cross Suspends Operations In Afghanistan After Six Employees Killed

Afghanistan hosts the Red Cross’s fourth-largest humanitarian program in the world. (file photo)

The International Committee of the Red Cross suspended operations in Afghanistan after gunmen killed six employees helping to deliver emergency relief to a remote northern region hit by heavy snowstorms.

The governor of Jowzjan Province said the aid convoy was attacked by suspected Islamic State gunmen. The head of the Red Cross called the incident the “worst attack against us” in 20 years.

A search operation was under way to find two charity workers who were still missing late on February 8.

“Our operations are on hold, indeed, because we need to understand what exactly happened before we can hopefully resume our operations,” the charity’s director of operations, Dominik Stillhart, said. More here.

WASHINGTON, Feb. 9, 2017 — A few thousand more troops for the train, advise and assist mission in Afghanistan would help to break what is now a stalemate with the Taliban, the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant and other adversaries there, the commander of NATO’s Resolute Support mission and of U.S. forces in Afghanistan said here today.

Army Gen. John W. Nicholson Jr. testified this morning before the Senate Armed Services Committee on the situation in Afghanistan.

U.S. and NATO troops perform two complementary missions in Afghanistan, Nicholson said: the U.S. counterterrorism mission, called Operation Freedom’s Sentinel, and the NATO train, advise and assist mission, called Operation Resolute Support.

“I have adequate resourcing in my counterterrorism mission,” the general said. But the train, advise and assist mission has a shortfall of a few thousand troops, he added, noting that the extra troops could come from the United States and its allies, many of whom are fighting in Afghanistan.

Bolstering Offensive Capability

Nicholson said offensive capability will break the stalemate in Afghanistan, and the Afghan security forces’ key offensive capabilities are their special forces and air force.

“As a result of our training, equipping and partnering, the 17,000-strong Afghan special forces are the best in the region,” the general told the Senate panel. “They now operate independently on roughly 80 percent of their missions.”

The Afghan air force also is gaining capability, he added, noting that its first ground-attack aircraft entered the fight in April and the force is now integrating intelligence surveillance and reconnaissance assets into new targeting processes.

According to a Defense Department statement issued Dec. 19, the fiscal year 2017 budget amendment requests $264 million to procure 53 UH-60 Black Hawk helicopters and to begin to refurbish and modify some of them. The request also would fund more aircraft already in the Afghan inventory, including 30 more armed MD-530 helicopters for $227 million, six more A-29 fixed-wing close-attack aircraft for $174.5 million, and five AC-208 fixed-wing aircraft for $80 million.

The request includes $69 million to train aircrew and maintenance personnel, and DoD officials said it will seek funding for more UH-60s and AC-208s in future fiscal years.

“Congressional approval of funding for the Afghan air force is key to improving the offensive capability of the Afghan national defense and security forces, [and] there is an urgency to this request in order to get these aircraft and aircrews into the fight as soon as possible,” Nicholson said.

The investment in the Afghan air force will help them take over responsibility for their own close air support, “and even more important, will lead to an offensive capability that allows them to overmatch the Taliban or any other group on the battlefield, anywhere around the country,” the general said.

No Safe Haven

Nicholson said the main objective in Afghanistan is to keep the nation from being used as a safe haven from which terrorists could attack the United States and its allies.

“Of the 98 U.S.-designated terrorist groups globally, 20 operate in the Afghanistan-Pakistan region, along with three violent extremist organizations,” Nicholson told the senators.

This is the highest concentration of terrorist groups anywhere in the world, and it underscores the counterterrorism platform’s importance in the Central Asia-South Asia region, because it protects the American homeland, he added.

“We remain very focused on the defeat of al-Qaida and its associates, as well as the defeat of Islamic State Khorasan Province, which is the ISIL affiliate in Afghanistan,” he said.

Many nations are committed to Afghanistan’s success, Nicholson said.

At NATO’s July summit in Warsaw, Poland, the alliance reaffirmed its commitment to sustain the Afghan national defense and security forces through 2020. At an October conference in Brussels, 75 countries and organizations confirmed their intention to provide $15.2 billion to Afghanistan development needs. And India dedicated another $1 billion on top of the $2 billion it already had given to Afghan development needs.

“These expressions of international commitment reflect the importance the world places on stability in Afghanistan and confidence in the Afghan people and Afghan government,” Nicholson said, noting that the NATO mission has an exceptional partnership with Afghan President Ashraf Ghani, Chief Executive Abdullah Abdullah, and the security forces and people of Afghanistan.

No. 1 Goal

The general said the No. 1 goal of the Afghanistan fight is to protect the homeland from any attack emanating from the region.

An Afghan soldier searches people receiving supplies in Afghanistan’s Parwan province during a humanitarian aid mission, Jan. 28, 2017. Army photo by Sgt. 1st Class Eliodoro Molina

“We have achieved that in the last 15 years, [but] we need to stay on top of that, because of this confluence of 20 terrorist groups in the region,” he said. “I believe this is an enduring commitment to keep pressure on these groups and help the Afghans move toward a successful end state.”

Success in Afghanistan might be the maintenance of the enduring counterterrorism effort to keep pressure on terrorist groups, Nicholson said.

“It means that we would destroy the Islamic State and al-Qaida inside Afghanistan, something we’re actively pursuing every day. It means that we would help the Afghan security forces and government to extend their control to a larger and larger percentage of the population,” he said. It means the NATO mission would help Afghanistan become a more stable and prosperous entity in a critical part of the world, he added.

“I recognize the distance of Afghanistan and the length of this [war] has been challenging for the American people to support,” Nicholson said. “However, I personally believe that this effort we’re undertaking there is protecting the homeland and preventing these terrorists from bringing their fight to our doorstep.”

Trump Signs New Sanctions on Iran

Posted on February 3, 2017February 3, 2017 by Denise Simon

For more information on Iran sanctions, go here.

Image result for iran sanctions

U.S. Treasury Department Announces New Sanctions On Iran

NPR: The U.S. Treasury Department announced additional sanctions on Iran on Friday, less than a week after a ballistic missile test prompted the Trump administration to accuse Iran of violating an international a weapons agreement.

The newly announced sanctions target people and businesses the U.S. government says support Iran’s ballistic missile program and its Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps-Quds Force, according to a Treasury Department statement. They are in line with previous sanctions, implemented over what then-President Barack Obama called Iran’s “violations of human rights, for its support of terrorism and for its ballistic missile program.”

The acting director of the Treasury unit in charge of sanctions, John Smith, said the latest sanctions do not violate the international nuclear deal reached with Iran in 2015, which required Iran to scale back its nuclear program in exchange for the lifting of some economic sanctions.

A top Treasury Department official tells NPR’s Michele Kelemen that the actions are part of the U.S. efforts to counter Iranian “malign activity abroad.”

The public text of the sanctions lists 12 companies and 13 individuals, blocking assets and prohibiting U.S. citizens from dealing with them. Among the individuals, four are listed as Iranian citizens, two are Lebanese, one is Chinese, and one holds a passport from the island nation of St. Kitts and Nevis. It also announced changes to previous, unrelated sanctions on a 14th individual.

The businesses are based both inside and outside Iran.

According to the Treasury Department, the sanctions target:

“several networks and supporters of Iran’s ballistic missile procurement, including a critical Iranian procurement agent and eight individuals and entities in his Iran- and China-based network, an Iranian procurement company and its Gulf-based network, and five individuals and entities that are part of an Iran-based procurement network.”

Hours before the sanctions were announced, President Trump addressed Iran in a tweet, writing, “Iran is playing with fire — they don’t appreciate how ‘kind’ President Obama was to them. Not me!”

Iran’s foreign minister, Mohammad Javad Zarif, tweeted an hour later that “we will never use our weapons against anyone, except in self-defense.”

***

We will never use our weapons against anyone, except in self-defense. Let us see if any of those who complain can make the same statement.pic.twitter.com/xwGquvqLvb

Both U.S. and Iranian officials weighed in on whether Sunday’s missile test broke the terms of the nuclear deal.

Acting State Department spokesman Mark Toner told The Associated Press on Monday that the U.S. was looking into whether the test violated a 2015 side agreement to the nuclear accord, and that the U.S. would “hold Iran accountable” if it did.

Zarif said Tuesday, that “the missile issue is not part of the nuclear deal.”

National Security Adviser Mike Flynn said a day later that former President Barack Obama had gone too easy on Iran, but that “as of today, we are officially putting Iran on notice.”

Flynn also listed the administration’s grievances with Tehran, including its test of a ballistic missile and what he said were attacks by proxy forces in Yemen on U.S. and Middle Eastern ships, as we reported.

One of the incidents he appeared to be referring to occurred in October 2016, when U.S. Navy ships off Yemen’s southwestern coast came under missile attacks twice in four days.

According to the Pentagon, the missiles came from an area controlled by Houthi forces, who are fighting against the government of Yemen and who the U.S. government says are backed by the Iranian government, which is supplying weapons to the rebel group.

But it was unclear who ordered October’s missile launches, as NPR’s Philip Ewing reported. Houthi leaders denied the attacks, and Tehran has denied U.S. accusations that Iran is supporting Houthi forces. Nonetheless, the U.S. carried out airstrikes against what the Pentagon said were radar installations in Houthi-controlled areas.

In December, Congress extended U.S. sanctions against Iran originally imposed in 1996 until 2026.

Gibridnaya Voina vs. President Trump

Posted on February 2, 2017February 2, 2017 by Denise Simon

Russia looks for weakness, they have found it. The War College understands and warns that Russia is at war with the West, is the West paying attention? Some are, others not so much. The White House relented or was ‘all-in’ from the beginning.

War has changed in the 21st century and combat is not always kinetic. Russia’s battlefields are the internet, financial markets and television airwaves. The goal is not necessarily to take and hold territory but to expand Russia’s sphere of influence and achieve political goals.

This is hybrid warfare, or gibridnaya voina, the much hyped and discussed way of war. But, as intelligence expert Mark Galeotti tells us on this week’s War College, Moscow’s conception of hybrid war isn’t new – it’s a reaction to and an Eastern adaptation of American military strategy during the Cold War. The goal is simple – expand Russian soft power to make the world more agreeable to the Kremlin’s point of view.

US eases sanctions against Russian Federal Security Service

“All transactions and activities” with participation of the Russian Federal Security Service are now authorized.
***

So, it was the Kremlin’s political/diplomatic coup and it worked. Meanwhile, Trump authorized the U.S. Army to bolster Europe and NATO.

cyber_gl1 by zerohedge on Scribd