Obama’s New Executive Action: Ban the Box

In part from Officer.com: The federal Bureau of Prisons plans to release 6,000 prisoners at the end of October, implementing a decision last year to slash the number of incarcerated drug offenders by nearly half.

Officials said the nationwide releases over four days starting Oct. 30 will be the largest in U.S. history.

Last year, in line with a concerted effort by the Obama administration to reduce the number of drug offenders in U.S. prisons, the U.S. Sentencing Commission voted to cut drug sentences by an average of two years, potentially affecting as many as 46,000 of 100,000 cases.

In the coming year, an additional 8,550 prisoners will be eligible for release, according to Sentencing Commission spokesman Matt Osterrieder, though he said that not all of them will be approved.

What are employers supposed to do to vet applicants especially in positions where a clean background is required, something like banking, retail or any position for that matter where integrity and morality is centric to employment? Well…there is always Facebook, where employers are presently using social media platforms to determine history, friends, associates and even political bias.

Further, presidential executive orders are designed for exclusive use of operating government, yet with Barack Obama and this mission of his, he is injecting his policies into private enterprise. There must be legal challenges to this new ‘protected class’ operation which is common in the Obama administration, as we clearly know foreign illegals are a proven protected class.

HuffPo:WASHINGTON — President Barack Obama on Monday will announce a series of measures designed to reduce obstacles facing former prisoners reintegrating into society, including an executive action directing federal employers to delay asking questions about a job applicant’s criminal history until later in the application process.

Many states, cities and private employers have already taken steps to “ban the box,” which refers to the checkbox on employment applications asking if the applicant has ever been convicted of a crime. However, some federal employers and contractors still ask the question. Obama’s executive action will apply to federal employers, but not to contractors.

Hillary joins Barack Obama on this same objective calling it ‘racial profiling’. This is all yet another misguided social engineering plan to reform the criminal justice system, where law enforcement, district attorneys and judges don’t seem to get any opportunity to voice their respective positions.

Obama to announce executive actions to help prisoners rejoin society

Plans for current and former inmates include education and housing efforts and a push to remove criminal-background questions from job applications

Barack Obama will announce a series of executive actions to help current and former prisoners re-enter society on Monday, as the president continues his campaign to wind down the war on drugs and reform a “broken” system.

Obama’s plans include millions of dollars in education grants for current prisoners, new policies to help former inmates find housing, a “clean slate clearing house” to help former prisoners clear their records where possible, and a call to Congress to “ban the box” – the space on a job application that asks about criminal backgrounds.

Obama is expected to unveil the plans at Rutgers University in Newark, New Jersey, the hometown of Democratic senator Cory Booker, one of the leaders of a bipartisan push for criminal justice reform.

The president has for months toured the nation in a loose campaign for reform, visiting police in Chicago, the NAACP in Philadelphia, and inmates in Oklahoma. On Saturday, he again raised the issue in his weekly address, saying: “We know that having millions of people in the criminal justice system, without any ability to find a job after release, is unsustainable.”

There are 2.2m people incarcerated in federal and state prisons around the US, roughly 20% of the world’s total number of imprisoned people. The number ballooned in the decades of the “war on drugs”, in particular due to “tough on crime” laws enacted during the 1990s.

Obama’s latest push for reform coincides with the early release of several thousand federal prisoners this past weekend. About 6,000 drug offenders were granted early releases thanks to policy changes by the US Sentencing Commission, which made the revisions retroactive last year. Judges then reviewed tens of thousands of applications, with the 6,000 federal prisoners the first to receive early release.

But despite the push for reducing mandatory minimum sentences – often seen as a major cause of mass incarceration over minor crimes – reform advocates around the country have called for more attention for former prisoners. About 650,000 inmates are released every year, and many return to an alien, hostile America facing bars to housing and employment and with little to their names. More here.

Let ’em Fight, Fight to Win, 50 SpecOps to Syria

The White House says there is no military solution to Syria and this deployment is not a game changer, rather the White House was a diplomatic solution, allegedly a new election for Syria. Assad’s job is safe for at least 6 months, perhaps longer.

The dangers are significant when it Syria, there are an alleged 5000 Iranian forces, Hezbollah, Cuba, Russia, pro-Assad forces and al Qaeda factions. If the rules of engagement and supportive military assets are allowed, this is a moment the United States can prevail. Yet under Mr. Obama in collusion with Iran and Russia the expectations for winning and success are slim.

Putin’s military minister is already verbally outflanking the White House:

MOSCOW (AP) — A senior Russian government official says some in the U.S. may have a delusion of winning a war with Russia with new conventional weapons without resorting to nuclear arms.

Dmitry Rogozin, a deputy prime minister in charge of military industries, said in remarks carried Friday by Russian news agencies that “for the first time ever, the American strategists have developed an illusion … that they may defeat a nuclear power in a non-nuclear war.” He added that “it’s nonsense, and it will never happen.”

Rogozin, who spoke after the Security Council’s meeting chaired by President Vladimir Putin, was commenting on prospective U.S. weapons under the so-called Prompt Global Strike program, which would be capable of striking targets anywhere in the world in as little as an hour with deadly precision.

U.S. to Send Special Forces to Syria

Syrian government forces walk in the eastern outskirts of the northern Syrian city of Aleppo.

By Adam Entous, Gordon Lubold and Carol E. Lee

 

WASHINGTON—The White House has approved the deployment of small teams of U.S. Special Forces to locations in northeastern Syria, expanding America’s direct role on the ground in support of U.S.-backed Syrian rebel forces as they prepare for a new military campaign against Islamic State militants in their stronghold in Raqqa, officials said.

The new deployment would amount to the first sustained U.S. ground presence in Syria. A senior Obama administration official said the U.S. role in Syria would, nonetheless, remain narrow. “We don’t have any intention to pursue long-term, large-scale ground combat operations like those we’ve seen in the past in Iraq and Afghanistan,” the official said.

Eleven million people displaced, four million refugees, and a quarter of a million dead—all in the last four years. What’s happened to Syria’s people? WSJ’s Niki Blasina takes a look at the world’s largest humanitarian crisis since World War II.

Up to 50 U.S. commandos will be involved in the new mission under President Barack Obama’s authorization, officials said, marking the start of a sharp escalation in the level of U.S. involvement in the fight against Islamic State.

The new campaign is expected to kick off with an operation in northern Syria as early as next week. Initially, two small teams will evaluate the security situation on the ground and link up with local Syrian forces there, officials said.

The American commandos will operate under what the Pentagon calls an “advise-and-assist” mission. But military officials said they couldn’t rule out the possibility that the forces would be pulled into occasional firefights with Islamic State given their proximity to the confrontation line. The officials cited as an example last week’s raid in Iraq in which a U.S. commando was killed.

Since the start of the civil war in Syria in 2011, Mr. Obama has sought to keep U.S. ground forces out of the country, although the Pentagon has conducted a limited number of raids there using special-operations forces since mid-2014.

The change in the U.S. approach comes as the White House struggles to demonstrate progress in the fight against Islamic State and begins talks with Russia and Iran over the future of Syrian leader Bashar al-Assad. Moscow and Tehran, allies of Mr. Assad, have stepped up their support for the regime in recent weeks.

Officials said the special-operations forces will help coordinate local Syrian forces fighting Islamic State, as well as help ensure they receive U.S. air support during ground operations.

To support local forces with their ground campaign, Mr. Obama has authorized the deployment of A-10 ground-attack planes as well as F-15 fighters to the Incirlik air base in southern Turkey, a senior administration official said.

The decision, made in a meeting between Mr. Obama and his top advisors Thursday, followed weeks of debate over ways to increase pressure on Islamic State.

In addition to authorizing the special-forces deployment, Mr. Obama also has authorized U.S. officials to discuss with the Iraqi government the establishment of a special-operations task force there. Officials said Mr. Obama has also agreed to furnish targeting information to Jordan to help its attack aircraft pinpoint Islamic State positions, officials said.

The White House, however, has yet to approve other proposals that would expand the U.S. role in the conflict, including a military proposal to deploy a small squadron of Apache attack helicopters to Iraq.

For months, members of the U.S. Army’s elite Delta Force have been in contact with Syrian Kurdish and Sunni Arab commanders who have been jointly fighting Islamic State militants in a swath of territory in northeastern Syria east of the Euphrates River.

In early October, the Pentagon abandoned plans to build an army from the ground up to fight Islamic State in favor of providing ammunition and other equipment directly to the Syrian Arab commanders with whom the U.S. commandos have been in contact.

The Pentagon recently used aircraft to drop ammunition and other supplies to those commanders, part of what the Pentagon calls the Syrian Arab Coalition, which fights alongside Syrian Kurdish groups.

The growing partnership between U.S. Special Forces and Kurdish groups in northeastern Syria has angered North Atlantic Treaty Organization ally Turkey, which has accused the Pentagon of sending arms to the Kurds rather than the Syrian Arab Coalition. Ankara sees Kurdish territorial gains in Syria as a threat to the Turkish state. Pentagon officials say they delivered the arms to the Syrian Arab Coalition as intended.

U.S. officials said the deployment of the American commandos will help in laying the ground for a U.S.-backed campaign to encircle Raqqa, the Islamic State stronghold, and cut the city off from Mosul, the group’s stronghold in neighboring Iraq. U.S. officials said both the Syrian Arab Coalition and the Kurds will take part in that campaign, assisted by U.S. air support.

Officials said the new campaign doesn’t call in the near term for U.S. allies on the ground to try to retake Raqqa from Islamic State. Rather, the aim of the planned campaign will be to “squeeze” Islamic State within Raqqa by closing off the group’s supply lines.

Mr. Obama’s decision to expand the role of U.S. special-operations forces on the ground inside Syria followed a rare joint mission last week by U.S. special forces and Kurdish fighters to free prisoners of Islamic State in Iraq. The commandos intervened unexpectedly when the Kurdish forces they were assisting were pinned down by Islamic State fighters. One of the U.S. commandos was killed in the firefight, the first U.S. combat fatality in Iraq since 2011.

In May, Delta Force commandos carried out a raid in Syria in which they killed an Islamic State finance chief and captured his wife.

The first known U.S. raid in Syria during the civil war took place in July 2014, when Delta Force commandos attempted to rescue several Americans held by Islamic State militants at an oil facility near Raqqa. The U.S. force swarmed the oil facility but the militants had already moved the hostages.

Putin’s Most Terrifying Army

This hacking wing of the Kremlin is not lost on our Congressional members, they clearly are aware of the names and events.

Organized crime is now a major element of Russia statecraft
BusinessInsider: In the past couple years, Russian hackers have launched attacks on a French television network, a German steelmaker, the Polish stock market, the White House, the US House of Representatives, the US State Department, and The New York Times.

And according to press reports citing Western intelligence officials, the perpetrators weren’t rogue cyber-pranksters. They were working for the Kremlin.

Cybercrime, it appears, has become a tool of Russian statecraft. And not just cybercrime.

Vladimir Putin’s regime has become increasingly adept at deploying a whole range of practices that are more common among crime syndicates than permanent members of the UN Security Council.

In some cases, as with the hacking, this involves the Kremlin subcontracting organized crime groups to do things the Russian state cannot do itself with plausible deniability. And in others, it involves the state itself engaging in kidnapping, extortion, blackmail, bribery, and fraud to advance its agenda.

Spanish prosecutor Jose Grinda has noted that the activities of Russian criminal networks are virtually indistinguishable from those of the government.

“It’s not so much a mafia state as a nationalized mafia,” Russian organized crime expert Mark Galeotti, a professor at New York University and co-host of the Power Vertical Podcast, said in a recent lecture at the Hudson Institute.

Hackers, Gangsters, And Goblins
According to a report by the FBI and US intelligence agencies, Russia is home to the most skilled community of cybercriminals on the globe, and the Kremlin has close ties to them.

“They have let loose the hounds,” Tom Kellermann, chief security officer at Trend Micro, a Tokyo-based security firm, told Bloomberg News.

Citing unidentified officials, Bloomberg reported that Russian hackers had stepped up surveillance of essential infrastructure, including power grids and energy-supply networks, in the United States, Europe, and Canada.

Dmitri Alperovitch, co-founder of the security firm CrowdStrike, noted recently that the Russian security services have been actively recruiting an army of hackers.

“When someone is identified as being technically proficient in the Russian underground,” a pending criminal case against them “suddenly disappears and those people are never heard from again,” Alperovitch said in an interview with The Hill, adding that the hacker in question is then working for the Russian security services.

“We know that’s going on,” Alperovitch added.

And as a result, criminal hackers “that used to hunt banks eight hours a day are now operating two hours a day turning their guns on NATO and government targets,” Kellermann of Trend Micro told The Hill, adding that these groups are “willingly operating as cyber-militias.”

The hacking is just one example of how the Kremlin effectively uses organized crime as a geopolitical weapon.

Moscow relied heavily on local organized crime structures in its support for separatist movements in Transdniester, Abkhazia, South Ossetia, and Donbas.

In the conflict in eastern Ukraine, organized crime groups served as agents for the Kremlin, fomenting pro-Russia unrest and funneling arms to rebel groups.

In annexed Crimea, the Kremlin installed a reputed gangster known as “The Goblin” as the peninsula’s chief executive.

And of course there is the case of Eston Kohver, the Estonian law enforcement officer who was investigating a smuggling ring run jointly by Russian organized crime groups and the Russian Federal Security Service.

Kohver was kidnapped in Estonia September 2014, brought across the Russian border at gunpoint, and convicted of espionage. He was released in a prisoner exchange last month.

The Geopolitics Of Extortion
But Putin’s mafia statecraft doesn’t just involve using and colluding with organized crime groups.

It often acts like an organized crime group itself.
In some cases this involves using graft as a means of control. This is a tactic Moscow has deployed throughout the former Soviet space, involving elites in corrupt schemes — everything from shady energy deals or money-laundering operations — to secure a “captured constituency.”

This is a tactic Russia attempted to use in Georgia following the 2003 Rose Revolution and in Ukraine after the 2004 Orange Revolution, where “corruption and shadow networks were mobilized to undermine the new leadership’s reform agenda,” according to James Greene in a 2012 report for Chatham House.

This was particularly successful in Ukraine, where opaque gas deals were used “to suborn Ukraine’s post-Orange Revolution new leadership,” Greene wrote.

And Putin is clearly hoping to repeat this success in eastern Ukraine today — especially after elections are held in the rebel areas of Donbas.

“His bet in the eastern Ukraine local election, if it ever takes place, won’t be on the rebel field commanders but on local oligarchs who ran the region before the 2014 ‘revolution of dignity.’ Through them, he will hope to exert both economic and political influence on Kiev.” political commentator Leonid Bershidsky wrote in Bloomberg View.

In addition to graft, Moscow has also effectively utilized blackmail — making the international community a series of offers it can’t refuse.

It’s a neat trick. First you create instability, as in Ukraine, or exasperate existing instability, as in Syria.Then offer your services to establish order.

You essentially create demand — and then meet it. You get to act like a rogue and be treated like a statesman.

It’s how protection rackets operate. And it has become one of the pillars of Putin’s foreign policy.
“It’s the geopolitics of extortion, but it’s probably working,” Galeotti told Voice of America in a recent interview.

“He’s identifying a whole series of potential trouble spots around the world, places that matter to the West, and is essentially indicating that he can either be a good partner, if they’re willing to make a deal with him, or he can stir up more trouble.”

Cold War Part 2, Gathering Conditions

At the center of the conditions we have Iran, Russia, China and for extra measure, more aggressive terror factions and cells.

We had Afghanistan won until Barack Obama declared a termination to hostilities and combat roles. Now, conditions include:

Islamic State militants who say they are based in Afghanistan have in recent days promoted their alleged successes in the country. And on Wednesday they issued a call for Muslims to “take up arms” against Jews and Christians and “fight them in whatever way we can.”

The message in the Pashto language was the third time in less than a week that IS has highlighted its activities in Afghanistan on its website. In recent days, U.S. and Afghan officials have warned of an increased IS presence in Afghanistan and of its threat to Central Asia.

FNC: Russia has helped Iran deliver weapons into Syria twice a day over the past 10 days, western intelligence sources tell Fox News. Those sources say Russian cargo planes transported the weapons. The planes were spotted earlier this month on the tarmac at the Russian air base in Latakia, Syria’s primary port city. The flights are not registered, and are in breach of two United Nations Security Council resolutions which impose an arms embargo on Iran.

Fox News is told the increased Russian transport of Iranian weapons is being coordinated by Qassem Soulimeini, the head of the Iranian Al-Quds force, as well as President Vladimir Putin and Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu. An Iranian civilian airline, Mahan Air, is flying military personnel into Syria several times each day from Tehran to Latakia.

Tehran’s support has been crucial to Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s survival. Besides significant financial aid to Assad, Iran has acknowledged that its Revolutionary Guard officers are on the ground in Syria in an advisory role. There have been multiple Iranian officers and soldiers killed in fighting in Syria, though Tehran denies the presence of actual combat troops in the country.

In part: The United States has upgraded the security at its two largest overseas nuclear weapons bases, Incirlik Air Base in Turkey and Aviano Air Base in Italy. Incirlik is undergoing a particularly extensive upgrade, a move connected to its vulnerable location close to the Syrian border.

Recent satellite images from Incirlik and Aviano show double-fence security perimeters—a sealed-off area where intruders can be shot—being built around the nuclear weapons storage areas. At Incirlik the garage holding the trucks that service the warheads is also being improved, along with the trucks themselves. Incirlik’s newly upgraded area contains 21 vaults, each holding two to three warheads, and will be equipped with lighting, cameras, and intrusion-detection devices. In addition to soldiers already guarding the enclosure, manned vehicles will also patrol space between the two fences around the clock.

Combined, the Incirlik measures amount to a major security upgrade. “They didn’t use to have the special double-fence security perimeter with sensors and the patrol road around the nuclear weapons vaults,” explained Hans Kristensen, a nuclear expert at the Federation of American Scientists, who first reported the Incirlik and Aviano activity on his blog. “When the vaults were constructed in the nineties, they were considered so secure that the special security perimeter that had previously been used for nuclear weapons storage areas was no longer considered necessary.” He added that it’s unclear whether the upgrade is a direct result of volatility in the region or related to changed Pentagon security requirements.

More Cold War Part 2 Indicators:

Just as Russia has increased its military activism in the Middle East, the Kremlin is turning down the temperature in eastern Ukraine in recent weeks, as the September 1 cease-fire is largely holding and larger caliber weaponry is being pulled back. The October 2 Paris meeting of the leaders of France, Germany, Ukraine, and Russia—the so-called Normandy Format—yielded a modest but positive result in postponing unsanctioned elections in the separatist areas. Yet the ultimate goal of returning Ukraine’s sovereignty over its eastern border still seems distant. Russia’s shadow therefore continues to loom over NATO’s eastern flank.

Against this geopolitical backdrop, 28 NATO defense ministers agreed on a plan to expand the NATO Response Force (NRF) to 40,000 troops, more than double its current size. This implements one of the principal elements of the program launched by NATO leaders at the September 2014 Wales Summit to upgrade NATO’s rapid-response capacity and to begin adapting the alliance to the challenges from Russia in the east. Among the other key elements in NATO’s adaptation are the creation of a high-readiness “spearhead” task force—Secretary General Stoltenberg announced October 8 that lead nations for the spearhead force have been identified through 2022 (France, Germany, Italy, Poland, Spain, Turkey, and the United Kingdom), demonstrating resolve by NATO members to put resources behind its top-priority initiative. Thus far, the United States has deferred a decision to become a lead nation for the spearhead force, but the Obama administration’s European Reassurance Initiative invested $1 billion in Fiscal Year 2015 in strengthening European defense, enabling U.S. force rotations, security assistance, and pre-positioning of equipment in Europe. Sustaining U.S. investments beyond FY15 will be essential to ensuring European—and transatlantic—security.

Need more? al Qaeda in the Maghreb, deploying more special forces to Iraq against ISIS, additional success and growth of ISIS in Afghanistan, terror plan or Asia discovered, the Taliban is aiding and harboring al Qaeda in Afghanistan.

There is more, but you understand that since America under Barack Obama has retreated, the enemies are exploiting the weakness and lack of strategy by the West, where the United States used to lead.

MI5 and the FBI: Terrorists on Twitter-Social Media

Twitter is the least cooperative technology company calling terrorists on the internet ‘freedom fighters. This was revealed in testimony this week.

Twitter has come under criticism from some analysts who say the social media company has failed to swiftly remove accounts that recruit potential terrorists and incite violence, raising concerns that the United States has not done enough to combat the Islamic State’s rapid expansion of its propaganda operations online.

Mark Wallace, CEO of the Counter Extremism Project, said on Wednesday that the Islamic State (also known as ISIS or ISIL) terrorist group has effectively used social media sites such as Twitter to propagandize and radicalize individuals, including Americans. His nonprofit project recently chronicled 66 U.S. citizens who are accused of joining or attempting to join the Islamic State, plotting attacks in the United States, providing financial support to extremist groups, or disseminating radical propaganda.

“These individuals have very different backgrounds and experiences, but the one characteristic they seem to share is active participation on social media,” he said in testimony to the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform.

The terror group known as Islamic State or Daesh has deployed and exploited unprescendented use of social media, where the effectiveness is beyond definition. Intelligence agencies in the West are grappling with solutions pushing the protections of free speech and use of the internet.

In part from Newsweek: The head of Britain’s internal counter-intelligence service MI5, has warned that ISIS and other extremist groups “continue to aspire to mass casualty attacks against the U.K.” and that an increasing proportion of their communication online and via encrypted channels is out of reach of Britain’s security services.

“All of this means the threat we are facing today is on a scale and at a tempo that I have not seen before in my career,” Andrew Parker said in his keynote speech made at a lord mayor’s event in London on Wednesday night.
Parker also warned of the “three-dimensional threat” that ISIS pose—at home, overseas and online. “We are seeing plots against the U.K. directed by terrorists in Syria; enabled through contacts with terrorists in Syria; and inspired online by Isil’s [ISIS] sophisticated exploitation of technology.”

Parker said MI5 must evolve its activities in order to combat modern threats, and emphasized that the agency’s ability to intercept communications has “been a key component in MI5’s toolbox throughout our history.”

The MI5 boss said he imagined the forthcoming defence review would garner more public interest than previous debates on similar matters. “But I hope that the public debate will be a mature one, ” he added. “Informed by the three independent reviews, and not characterized by ill-informed accusations of ‘mass surveillance’, or other such lazy two-worded tags.”

When it comes to the very similar requests by FBI Director, James Comey, his pleas are in earnest yet, tech companies and the U.S. Constitution actually prevent some actions due to the 1st Amendment. It is a slippery slope for both sides.

FBI Director James Comey called for a national conversation about how far tech companies should be allowed to go in applying encryption to their devices, saying law enforcement faces growing and overlapping challenges in accessing data needed to prosecute crimes.

During a speech at the Brookings Institution Thursday, Comey said the new forms of encryption being developed for mobile devices, as well as the rapid growth of the devices themselves, make it tough for the FBI to keep up with ways criminals can “go dark.”

“With going dark, those of us in law enforcement and public safety have a major fear of missing out,” Comey said. “Missing out on predators who exploit the most vulnerable among us; missing out on violent criminals who target our communities; missing out on a terrorist cell using social media to recruit, plan and execute an attack. We have seen case after case — from homicides and car crashes to drug trafficking, domestic abuse and child exploitation — where critical evidence came from smartphones, hard drives and online communication.”

To advance the discussion, Congress is holding hearings with counter-terrorism experts and they too make a compelling argument siding with Comey.