Fix Bayonets Secretary Spencer, Remember?

In an interview with CBS news after being fired Monday evening, Spencer said Trump’s insistence on maintaining Gallagher’s rank as a Navy SEAL tells troops that they “can get away with it,” if they commit a crime. “We have to have good order and discipline, it’s the backbone of what we do,” he said. Spencer added be believes Trump doesn’t fully understand the definition of a war fighter. “A war fighter is a profession of arms,” Spencer told CBS’s David Martin outside the Pentagon. “And a profession of arms has standards.”

Did any of the Pentagon military brass or bureaucracy (profession of arms) speak out at all when President Obama interfered/intervened of the scandal of Bowe Berghdal and the trade of 5 Taliban commanders? What about when President Obama commuted the 35 year sentence of Army Pvt. Chelsea Manning for stealing thousands of pages of classified material? Secretary Spencer where is your commentary on those cases? What about General Cartwright when he admitted to lying to federal investigators on the 2012 leak of classified material to the press regarding the covert cyber attack against Iran’s nuclear program, a cyber operation known at Stuxnet?

As the daughter of a Marine that fought in World War ll and Korea, it is striking to me the unique differences of war then as to military conflict today. Anyone out there care to comment on the number of bureaucrats and lawyers today as compared to those battles in the last several decades? Anyone? To be sure, the ethos of the military for decades has been core values, ethics, loyalty, duty, respect, selfless service, honor, integrity and personal courage. But hold on. To currently serving military and to veterans, please comment, has the brass bureaucracy and lawyers impeded the ethos of the military over political correctness and rules of engagement?

Secretary Spencer has earnestly defended the handling of the Gallagher case. Do you sir defend the Navy prosecutors for spying on Gallagher’s defense team among other tactics such that the prosecution team was fired? So, the latest review on Gallagher was to review the case for keeping his rank and trident over a photo with a corpse. Others ‘posing’ with the corpse were not punished, why not? Oh yeah they got immunity in exchange for testimony. You mean no penalty or drop in rank or removal of an award?

I hold the collection of slides and film my father took at war in Korea. Among those photos. he stands beside a corpse with a cigarette in the mouth. Should my father’s Navy Cross be posthumously be revoked? And when it comes to Rules of Engagement, would the bureaucracy and lawyers forbid fixed bayonets?

From the Arlington National Cemetery website in part:

First Lieutenant Lucian L. Vestal of “Fox” Company, 2d Battalion, Fifth Marine Regiment was a man with an easy smile who liked to joke with his platoon. The smile left his face when he received his mission on May 28 to make a frontal assault across open ground near Hangye and take a hill.

He ordered his men to fix bayonets and led them out. There is something inherently eerie about the command to fix bayonets in combat. The sound of cold metal sliding from the scabbard, the metallic click of the knife locking to the rifle lug and bonding with its man chills the soul more than chambering a round. Men can chamber a round when hunting game or on the rifle range. Marines seldom fix naked steel unless against other men when death is imminent; one-on-one, muno u mum. The site of Marines advancing with fixed bayonets also has a disturbing psychological effect on the enemy. The Communists opened up with everything they had; machine guns, small-arms fire and grenades.

Marines around Vestal were dropping and only a few feet from the enemy position, Vestal himself was painfully wounded in the stomach. They closed with the Communists, driving them in fear from their  positions while Vestal calmly redeployed his platoon, directed the evacuation of his wounded and set up a screen of protective fire. They evacuated Vestal with the last of the wounded. He used his smile to hide his pain and again joked with his fellow Marines, who promptly recommended Vestal for the Navy Cross.

War is for sure ugly. It could be argued today it is uglier by an additional means and that is bureaucracy. In 2018, the Senate Armed Services Committee approved the first ‘chief management officer’ for the Pentagon to ‘shake up the bureaucracy. Congress has written the law may times and that bureaucracy seeps down to the commands and battlefield. The warfighters see it, feel it, experience it while ‘wining hearts and minds of the enemy’ but not so much for our own warfighters.

Image result for marines with dead viet cong December 1967, dead Viet Cong 

 

Image result for marines with dead viet cong A dead Viet Cong soldier who broke into the air base at An Khe in the Highlands of the Republic of South Vietnam. Take a look at the Army soldiers and what they are wearing. This is 1968 and in the Highlands some of them have not been issued jungle fatigues, boots and M16’s. However, back in Saigon all the brass were wearing starched jungle fatigues and M16’s were everywhere. No wonder we called them REMF’s. Tom Bigelow photo.

Today frontal assaults on the enemy or fixed bayonets are but a forgotten memory. Bureaucracy and lawyers make it so. Law and order is well understand among the ranks as is the military ethos, a photo with a corpse is hardly crime for court martial or is it? And the long war goes on.

 

 

 

Thousand Talents = J Visa = Espionage = Stupid

It was just this morning that I sent a text to a former CIA operative asking if he was comfortable with the FBI being the lone government agency tracking foreign spies operating in the United States. His reply was NO. Sigh…My gut was telling me that espionage in the United States is out of control and while performing some research for about an hour, it IS out of control. Understand foreign operatives come from several countries into the United States using several visa methods and for the sake of this article, the concentration will be on China. It is a sure bet however, the same techniques are used by other rogue countries that just are for sure either best described as adversaries or enemies of our homeland.

So, back to the question of the FBI being the lone tracking government agency. One of the first Reuters articles had this headline: FBI wishes it had acted quicker as China stole intellectual property

The admission by John Brown, assistant director of the Counterintelligence Division at the FBI, backed up a Senate subcommittee report that found federal agencies had responded too slowly as China recruited the researchers, leaving U.S. taxpayers unwittingly funding the rise of China’s economy and military. Despite China’s announcement in 2008 of the Thousand Talents Plan – for which China had originally hoped to recruit 2,000 people but ended up recruiting more than 7,000 by 2017 – the FBI did not respond strongly until last year, the report released on Monday by the Senate’s Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations found. 

Just a few days before that Reuters’ article there was this headline: U.S. charges Chinese national with stealing trade secrets

Haitao Xiang, 42, an employee of Monsanto and its Climate Corp subsidiary from 2008 to 2017, was stopped by federal officials at a U.S. airport before he could board a flight to China carrying proprietary farming software, the department said in a statement.

“The indictment alleges another example of the Chinese government using Talent Plans to encourage employees to steal intellectual property from their U.S. employers,” Assistant Attorney General John Demers said.

Notice 9 years of employment above. Sigh. Read on, there is more.

US prosecutors have accused a tour guide of picking up US security secrets and delivering them cloak-and-dagger-style to Beijing. From October 2015 to July 2018, an FBI double agent conducted “dead drops,” in which, authorities say, Peng fetched information in the San Francisco Bay Area and Columbus, Georgia. Authorities say the double agent, identified only as “the Source,” went to the FBI in 2015, after the State Security Ministry tried to recruit him as a spy by telling him that he could rely on “Ed,” who had family and business dealings in China. As officials grapple with the threat of infiltrators trying to steal information from US companies, prosecutors have opened multiple cases against people suspected of spying for China. Last October, prosecutors charged a spy with attempting to steal trade secrets from several US aviation and aerospace companies.

Just last week in the Senate, the Homeland Security Committee Chairman, Portman held a hearing. Finding a summary from the hearing on the FBI website was the following:

Time and time again, the Communist government of China has proven that it will use any means necessary to advance its interests at the expense of others, including the United States, and pursue its long-term goal of being the world’s superpower by 2049. Among its many ways of collecting information, prioritized in national strategies such as the Five-Year Plan, the Chinese government oversees expert recruitment programs known as talent plans. Through these programs, the Chinese government offers lucrative financial and research benefits to recruit individuals working and studying outside of China who possess access to, or expertise in, high-priority research fields. These talent recruitment programs include not only the well-known Thousand Talents Plan but also more than 200 similar programs, all of which are overseen by the Chinese government and designed to support its goals, sometimes at U.S. taxpayers’ expense. Read on here.

Senate report accuses China of technology theft | NHK ...

200 similar programs? WHAT?

The Thousand Talents program is nothing more than a espionage recruiting operation. This past September, the FBI arrested Zhongsan Liu who was operating a front operation in New Jersey called the China Association for International Exchange of Personnel. According to the criminal complaint, Liu beginning in 2017 used the company to fraudulently procure U.S. visas for for many Chinese officials under J-1 research. Liu has actually led this front group however for 26 years. The program among others were created and directed by the Chinese government’s State Administration of Foreign Expert Affairs. Liu is a senior official of that agency. He also worked at the Chinese embassy in Washington and at the consulate in New York while this recruiting operation was going on.

“Chinese government sources claim over 44,000 highly skilled Chinese personnel have returned to China since 2009 through talent plans,” the report said. “As noted by China Daily, which is owned by the Chinese Communist Party: ‘China has more than 300 entrepreneurial parks for students returned from overseas. More than 24,500 enterprises have been set up in the parks by over 67,000 overseas returnees.'”

According to the Pentagon’s latest annual report on the Chinese military, the Thousand Talents Plan is used to bolster the People’s Liberation Army military buildup.

“China uses various incentive strategies to attract foreign personnel to work on and manage strategic programs and fill technical knowledge gaps, including the ‘Thousand Talents Program,’ which prioritizes recruiting people of Chinese descent or recent Chinese emigrants whose recruitment the Chinese government views as necessary to Chinese scientific and technical modernization, especially with regard to defense technology,” the report said.

The program of China’s Thousand Talents is really an unadvertised method to facilitate the legal and illicit transfer of U.S. technology, intellectual property and know-how as summarized by the National Intelligence Council.The NIC is a midterm and long term strategic thinking center formed in 1979. That report is found here. It is dated 2018 and titled: How China’s Economic Aggression Threatens the Technologies and Intellectual Property of the United States and the World

Do we really want a trade deal after all this with China? It can be argued that the trade has already taken place by China’s theft. This all complicates the bi-lateral signing of a trade deal between the United States and China or does it in the end?

Basic qualifications for the Thousand Talents program include the following:

1. Basic Qualifications for Candidates

The Recruitment Program for Innovative Talents (Long Term) targets people under 55 years of age who are willing to work in China on a full-time basis, with full professorships or the equivalent in prestigious foreign universities and R&D institutes, or with senior titles from well-known international companies or financial institutions.

2. Preferential Policies and Treatments

Awardees will be conferred the title of “National Distinguished Experts” and be provided with enabling working and living conditions.

(1) Enabling working conditions

Awardees are entitled to assume some leadership, professional or technical positions in universities, R&D institutes, central SOEs as well as state-owned commercial and financial institutions; to serve as project principals of the National Key Scientific and Technological Projects, “863 Program”(or the National High-tech R&D Program), “973 Program”(or the National Program on Key Basic Research Project), the National Nature Science Fund Projects; to apply for S&T funds and industrial development funds from government to support scientific research as well as production and operating activities in China; to participate in the consultation and demonstration of China’s major projects, the formulation of key scientific research plans and national standards, the construction of major projects, etc; to determine the expenditure and employment within the prescribed scope of responsibilities as project principals; to be engaged in various domestic academic organizations and the election of academicians of the Chinese Academy of Sciences and the Chinese Academy of Engineering(foreign academicians) and become the candidates of a wide range of government rewards.

(2) Special living benefits

Awardees as well as their spouses and minor children with alien nationality may apply for “Permanent Residence for Aliens” and/or multiple entry visas, the validity of which lasts 2-5 years. Awardees with Chinese citizenship will be free to settle down in any city of their choice and will not be restricted by his or her original residence registry. Each awardee shall receive a one-off, start-up package of RMB 1 million yuan from the nation’s central budget; be entitled to medical care, social insurance including pensions, medical insurance and work-related injury insurance; and may purchase one residential apartment for personal use. The housing and meal allowance, removing indemnity, home-leave-subsidy, and children-education-allowance in the wage income in Chinese territory within 5 years shall be deducted before taxes in accordance with relevant laws and regulations. Employers have to offer job opportunities to spouses, and children will have guaranteed admission to schools. The income level should be decided on their previous jobs overseas through negotiation with due living allowances.

(3) Key points of the Recruitment Program of Global Experts in the Field of Liberal Arts and Social Science

By the end of 2010, overseas high-level scholars in fields of liberal arts and social sciences, particularly urgently needed professionals specialized in Intellectual Property Law, Environment and Resources Protection Law, International Law, Diplomacy, Psychology etc. are eligible to apply for the Key National Innovative Projects. People who are introduced by this program shall support the Communist Party of China and the socialist system, maintaining compliance with the Constitution, laws, regulations and policies of the People’s Republic of China, with full professorships or the equivalent in prestigious foreign universities, R&D institutes and other institutions of art and culture, enjoying a high global reputation and being influential in their academic fields which are urgently needed in China; they shall be within 60 years of age, andd willing to work in China on a full-time basis.

With regard to application procedures, the “Liberal Arts and Social Sciences” plan is a subdivision of “The Recruitment Program for Key Disciplines”. Overseas talents are required to sign an employment contract or a letter of intention for talent recruitment with employers before applying for the Program. Please refer to the application procedures of “The Recruitment Program for Innovative Talents (Long Term)”.

 

 

 

Nunes Should Subpoena General Abizaid

So much was been said in testimonies on The Hill during the impeachment inquiries about President Trump placing a hold on military assistance to Ukraine for various reasons as asserted by Democrats. President Trump has questioned foreign funding going all the way back to his campaign days and still he continues to question the investment(s) and use of that aid not only for Ukraine but for Lebanon, Pakistan and Afghanistan. IN 2018, Trump delivered a speech at the United Nations on this very issue that for some countries and non-government agencies caused some panic and rightly so.

But for Ukraine we need to travel back in time, a short time, in 2016 when Defense Secretary Ashton Carter along with his Ukrainian counterpart Stepan Poltorak signed a partnership agreement in London that would increase the defense capability of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, promote the defense sector and strengthen military-technical cooperation. This was all in an effort to further Ukraine’s ability to protect its territory. It was during this time that Secretary Carter assigned then retired General Abizaid to be the manager of Ukraine with his counterpart to bring reforms, meet new standards, strengthen democratic civilian control over the armed forces and transition personnel structure making it compatible with NATO standards including corruption.

Now, 3 years prior to this, the Obama White House provided a FACT SHEET detailing support for Ukraine. In the fact sheet, there are some key items:

1. The U.S. government has provided $291 in assistance as well as a $1 billion loan guarantee. The breakdown is described as $7 million in humanitarian aid for those affected by the conflict. $46 million in security assistance for Ukraine’s military and border guards.  This assistance includes the provision of body armor, helmets, vehicles, night and thermal vision devices, heavy engineering equipment, advanced radios, patrol boats, rations, tents, counter-mortar radars, uniforms, and other related items.

2. Obama assigned Commerce Secretary Penny Pritzker to lead the US delegation for Ukrainian government and business leaders to discuss economic reforms to attract foreign investment capital.

3. Obama instructed continued work at the congressional level to seek other opportunities of assistance including other defense and interoperability initiatives with Western forces.

4. The Obama administration was also seeking coordination with Ukraine to strengthen election integrity and security, an inclusive Constitutional reform, public outreach, defend human rights, social protection programs, energy subsidies to increase use among households but most of all technical assistance to restructure Ukraine’s national oil and gas company Naftogaz. (Naftogaz is a subsidiary of Burisma)

5. Retool media and expand the reach. The Broadcasting Board of Governors (BBG) will launch a daily, 30-minute Russian language television news program that will be a joint production of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty and the Voice of America. The program will be shown on television affiliates in Ukraine, as well as in Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia, Moldova, Georgia, and possibly other countries. BBG will seek to make the program available to Russian-speaking news-seekers worldwide via digital platforms.

6. Obama directed U.S. authorities to work closely with Ukrainian authorities to help recover stolen assets, processing activities and evidence collection. Additionally, the Obama administration directed U.S. agencies to aid Ukraine officials to develop laws and regulations to establish anti-corruption institutions to combat corruption more effectively. Further, the United States was directed by Obama to contribute to international efforts including through the OECD and the EBRD to deter bribery and improve the Ukraine business climate. (The OECD = the French based Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development and the EBRD = European Bank for Reconstruction and Development)

So, what do we have, the Obama admin plan, read Marshall plan for Ukraine failed. Then they had to rethink it all and send in other plan that sought to bolster military assistance for Ukraine using Secretary Carter and General Abizaid. Still, the military conflict manifested in Ukraine due to Russian forces. Interesting none of the witnesses expressed Obama failures.

Looking at Ukraine through President Trump’s view says he was proceeding with cooperation but wanted more reviews given the exceptional events since 2016 and rightly so including all things Biden, Burisma, corruption, theft, money-laundering and especially the change in the country’s leadership.

This brings us to NATO. Yes, President Trump did have some contempt for NATO not so much because it has been somewhat ineffective with regard to Russia but more due to NATO members not only not paying their mandated dues but member countries were not offering like assistance of that of the United States then or now. In 2018, President Trump with this envoy had a presentation in part dealing with Ukraine in the regard to the Nord Stram 11 gas pipeline.

Nord Stream II could cost Ukraine up to $2 billion annually in transit revenues, severely undermining our efforts to help secure an independent and economically sustainable Ukraine.

Ukraine continues its long journey to reforming its economy and achieving faster growth. Progress has been made on improving the governance and profitability of Naftogaz, the state-owned gas company, and improving oversight and resilience of the financial sector. Just last week, the Rada strengthened the anti-corruption process. But, Ukraine’s work – and the work of the U.S. and the EU in supporting reform efforts – is not complete. To grow, further progress is needed, including land reform, de-monopolization, natural gas price reforms, and further measures to counter corruption in the lending system.

Included in the remarks again was Naftogaz, once again it is a subsidiary of Burisma. Lots of corruption within Naftogaz as noted here. It is no wonder VP Biden was assigned the Ukraine portfolio and took advantage of circumstances.

In part from 2016:

“Russia criticizes our support of Ukraine. But Ukraine is an independent state and it asked for support. This is absolutely the legitimate right of every country, to ask for support and receive it. So there is no reason for criticism of the fact that we support a democratic government,” said Stoltenberg.

He recalled that NATO is providing support to Ukraine through a number of trust funds in the fields of logistics, management and reform of the military sector.

“We established a Commission Ukraine-NATO, which is a platform for our political and practical cooperation. But, of course, you can always do more. We work with the Ukrainians [to determine] what kind of support we can provide, policy and practice,” he added.

Stoltenberg noted that one of the biggest achievements of the summit in Warsaw was the fact that NATO formulated its policy towards Russia: a military fortification but also political dialogue.

So, to those Republicans on the Schiff Intelligence Committee, how about calling in General Abizaid for perspective and background to diffuse those Democrats that omit other Ukraine facts. Perhaps that would explain why poor Ukraine has lost 14,000 lives in the hot war with Russia. Add to the list of witnesses, Victoria Nuland, Susan Rice, Tom Donnilon, Ben Rhodes and Goesta Ljungman the onsite IMF representative in Ukraine. The investigations in Ukraine go way beyond Burisma and the Bidens.

 

 

Trump Should Eliminate 2 Agencies

Formed in 1947, The National Security Council  is the President’s in house forum for national security and foreign policy matters. The President also has the ‘President’s Intelligence Advisory Board which is to assess intelligence collection and activities. The operating budget is unknown but it is estimated to be in the range of $18 billion.

The 1947 National Security Act established the NSC in order to “advise the President with respect to the integration of domestic, foreign, and military policies relating to the national security so as to enable the military services and the other departments and agencies of the government to cooperate more effectively in matters involving the national security.” Presidents have latitude to structure and use the NSC as they see fit. In practice, the NSC staff’s activities now extend somewhat beyond providing policy advice. First, as one former NSC official notes, “White House involvement is often needed for precise execution of policy, especially when secrecy is required to perform delicate tasks.” Second, the rise in strategic importance of transnational threats such as terrorism and narco-trafficking, along with post-Cold War military campaigns in the Balkans, Iraq and Afghanistan, have increasingly necessitated “whole of government” responses that leverage diplomatic, military, and development tools from a variety of different U.S. government agencies. The NSC often coordinates such responses, and as the international security environment has become more complex, whole-of-government responses to individual crises have become more frequent, translating into even greater NSC involvement. This is leading many scholars and practitioners to question the appropriate size, scope and role for the NSC.

Much has changed since 1947 especially under the GW Bush administration and then later under the Obama administration where the size of the NSC grew dramatically with approved appropriations from Congress. The NSC appears to have an estimated 400-500 people assigned. With this size of agency heads on the Council, staffers, lawyers and rotations, how can there be any real control? Are there misguided agendas inside the Council? For sure. What about leaks? Oh yes. At least 3 people assigned to the NSC have been fingered as leakers or whistle-blowers since Trump became President. An estimated 80% of the NSC staff comes from the CIA, the State Department and the Pentagon.

Image result for national security council

There are competing agencies inside the Federal government, think tanks, non-government agencies and the entire diplomatic wing as well as the agencies operating under what is commonly referred to as the IC= intelligence community. This agency is simply redundant and has overlapping policies.

Speaking of redundant, the next agency that should be eliminated is the DNI, know as the Director of National Intelligence, created in 2004. It is currently headed by Joseph Maguire. It oversees 16 other intelligence agencies, advises the President and produces the PDB, the Presidential Daily Briefing which is also shared with several other officials that are cleared to receive it. DNI was recommended by the 9/11 Commission report due to intelligence failures leading up to the attack on the United States. The annual budget for DNI is estimated to be in the range of $90 billion and there are over 2000 employees. There are 6 centers and 15 offices where the NIP, National Intelligence Program resides.

Image result for odni

There are four directorates, each led by a deputy director of national intelligence:

Enterprise Capacity Directorate
Mission Integration Directorate
National Intelligence Council
National Security Partnerships Directorate
Strategy & Engagement Directorate
Intelligence Advanced Research Projects Activity

There are four mission centers, each led by a director of that center:

Cyber Threat Intelligence Integration Center
National Counterproliferation Center
National Counterterrorism Center
National Counterintelligence and Security Center

There are also four oversight offices:

Office of Civil Liberties, Privacy and Transparency
Office of Equal Employment Opportunity & Diversity
Office of the Intelligence Community Inspector General
Office of General Counsel

For sure many things have changed with regard to national security and foreign relations since 1947 but it can be argued that confusion ensues with all the competing departments. There is the matter of the ongoing Overseas Contingency Operation, Cyber wars and now the military frontier of Space.

Image result for defense intelligence agency

So the solution is to eliminate these two agencies and concentrate the work on the DIA, Defense Intelligence Agency. The DIA is in fact an intersection of the Department of Defense, the Intelligence Community, mobilized warfighters, policy-makers and force-planners including weapons systems acquisitions. DIA also covers, history, doctrine, economics, chemistry, asymetrical capabilities, cyber and political science.

Do you see the need for streamlining, control, management, and eliminating competing challenges? Perhaps this is but one solution to stopping leaks, draining more of the swamp, achieving concise intelligence and policy.

 

Lebanon Has Fallen, Anyone Care?

Lebanon was once known as the ‘Switzerland of the East’ because post the Lebanese Civil War, the country had calm and prosperity excelling in tourism, commerce, agriculture and banking. Lebanon was a major center of Christianity under Roman Empire rule.

Image result for lebanon

Today, Christians in Lebanon are called Maronites. Christians, Muslims and Druze including some Greek Orthodox make up separate enclaves to co-exist. 40% of the country is Christian, 55% is Muslim and the rest is Druze or Greek Orthodox.

Image result for lebanon

After the war against Israel in 1948, Lebanon has an estimated 500,000 Palestinians that fled the military conflict.

In 2000, Israel withdrew from Southern Lebanon and the Syrian military occupied the country. In 2005, the former Prime Minister was assassinated by a car bomb explosion. This triggered the Cedar Revolution which demanded Syria withdraw troops which was completed by mid 2005. Yet in 2006, Hezbollah launched a series of rocket attacks into Israel from Lebanon. Israel responded in earnest.
In 2008, the Lebanese government declared Hezbollah in the country was illegal as this was considered an attempted coup that later the Doha Agreement was signed where the Lebanese government was forced to cave to all opposition demands.
Still having sectarian violence, opposing factions have caused more political unrest where being forced to accept 1.5 million Syrian refugees has added to the debt and increased taxes.

The government of Lebanon is essentially ruled by Hezbollah which is fully backed by Iran. Many within the political system as well as the religious factions are demanding an end to the sectarian system that Hezbollah relies on to leverage power. This chaos is demanding tactical decisions on behalf of the United States, the Arab leaders, Israel, Europe and the United Nations. There is no leader, al Hairi resigned.

Image result for lebanon

Today: Newspaper al-Joumhuria cited Berri, an ally of the Shi’ite group Hezbollah, as telling visitors that efforts to form a new government were “completely frozen” and awaiting developments at any moment.

Struggling with a massive public debt and economic stagnation, Lebanon has sunk into major political trouble since protests erupted against its ruling elite a month ago, leading Prime Minister Saad al-Hariri to quit on Oct. 29.

On Sunday, banks, which have mostly been closed since the protests began, announced temporary measures including a weekly cap of $1,000 on cash withdrawals and restricting transfers abroad to cover urgent personal spending only. Efforts to form a new government, needed to enact urgent reforms, hit a setback at the weekend when former finance minister Mohammad Safadi withdrew his candidacy for the post of prime minister, sparking bitter recriminations.

Berri said he still hoped Hariri would agree to form a new cabinet, al-Joumhuria reported.

“The country is like a ship that is sinking little by little,” the paper quoted him as saying. “If we don’t take the necessary steps, it will sink entirely.”