EPA to Destroy the Entire Transportation Industry

Posted on June 11, 2015June 11, 2015 by Denise Simon

The White House climate change, greenhouse emissions and clean air act is about to be completely out of control. The question is where is the Congress and where are you? Remember Barack Obama said in his commencement speech that climate change was the top threat to national security.

Washington (CNN)The Environmental Protection Agency announced Wednesday it will propose a declaration that says carbon emissions from commercial planes contribute to climate change and hurt human health.

EPA also said it was working with the International Civil Aviation Organization, which includes 191 member states, to develop carbon dioxide standards for planes that would impact airlines in the U.S. and across the world.

“The EPA administrator is proposing to find that (greenhouse gas) emissions from certain classes of engines used primarily in commercial aircraft contribute to the air pollution that causes climate change and endangers public health and welfare,” the agency said in a statement, announcing an Aug. 11 hearing on the proposal and a 60-day window for the public to weigh in.

The move was the first step towards regulating air pollution from commercial airlines, but the ICAO standards aren’t expected to be adopted until early 2016. The earliest the EPA would be able to put out a notice of new standards would be in 2017, after President Barack Obama is out of office, and a final rule wouldn’t go into effect until at least 2018.

The future regulation would apply to commercial aircraft and business jets, but not military aircraft, which the EPA does not have jurisdiction over.

Wednesday’s announcement is the latest in a series of moves from the Obama administration geared at combating climate change, which Obama has characterized as an immediate national security threat.

*** WSJ: The Obama administration is planning a series of actions this summer to rein in greenhouse-gas emissions from wide swaths of the economy, including trucks, airplanes and power plants, kicking into high gear an ambitious climate agenda that the president sees as key to his legacy.

And in August, the agency will complete a suite of three regulations lowering carbon from the nation’s power plants—the centerpiece of President Barack Obama’s climate-change agenda.

The proposals represent the biggest climate push by the administration since 2009, when the House passed a national cap-and-trade system proposed by the White House aimed at reducing carbon emissions.

Anticipating the rules, some of which have been telegraphed in advance, opponents of Mr. Obama’s regulatory efforts are moving to block them. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R., Ky.), is urging governors across the country to defy the EPA by not submitting plans to comply with its rule cutting power-plant emissions.

Nearly all Republicans and some Democrats representing states dependent on fossil fuels say the Obama administration is going beyond the boundary of the law and usurping the role of Congress by imposing regulations that amount to a national energy tax driven by ideological considerations.

“The Administration seems determined to double down on the type of deeply regressive regulatory policy we’ve already seen it try to impose on lower-and-middle-class families in every state,” Mr. McConnell said in a statement. “These Obama administration regulations share several things in common with the upcoming directives: they seem motivated more by ideology than science, and they’re likely to negatively affect the economy and hurt both the cost and reliability of energy for hard-working American families and small-business owners.”

Two factors are driving the timing of the push this summer. The administration wants to complete it ahead of December’s United Nations summit on climate change, where world leaders will meet in Paris to decide whether to agree on a global accord to cut carbon emissions. The EPA’s regulatory agenda represents nearly everything Mr. Obama is set to offer world leaders on what the U.S. is doing to address climate change.

Secondly, once the EPA rules on emissions by power plants become final, states will have a year to submit plans while lawsuits challenging the rule are expected to be heard by the courts. The administration wants to make sure that its officials can oversee as much of these two developments as possible instead of relying on the next president, especially if it is one of the GOP White House candidates who have expressed opposition to the EPA’s climate agenda altogether.

General Flynn on Iran and 450 to Al-Taqaddum Air Base

Posted on June 10, 2015June 10, 2015 by Denise Simon

The original request for additional U.S. troops to Iraq was 1000, yet the White House authorized 450 for purposes of intelligence gathering and training as well as some ground surveillance.

al Taqaddum is 74 kilometers from Baghdad and the ultimate mission is to retake Ramadi and Fallujah. This was a Marine base comprised of The airfield is served by two runways 13,000 and 12,000 feet (3,700 m) long. that was eventually turned over to the Iraqi military in 2009.

Meanwhile, today, June 10, 2015, General Flynn gave testimony before the Joint Foreign Affairs and HASC Subcommittees on Iran’s hegemony in the region.

Retired Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn was director of the Defense Intelligence Agency until August 2014
He testified Wednesday in a congressional hearing that the administration doesn’t have ‘a permanent fix but merely a placeholder’ for the Iran crisis
Flynn said the notion that the U.S. can ‘snap back’ sanctions on Tehran if it breaks an agreement is ‘fiction’
Warned that ‘Iran’s nuclear program has significant – and not fully disclosed – military dimensions’
Obama administration has less than three weeks to finalize a nuclear agreement that would pare back Iran’s ability to build a nuclear weapon.

His full written presentation is found here. In part however, his situation report is not only chilling but demonstrates what the future predictions include.

Wishful Thinking:

In lengthy written remarks, Flynn asserted that Iran has “every intention” of building a nuclear weapon, and their desire to destroy Israel is “very real.”

“Iran has not once (not once) contributed to the greater good of the security of the region,” he said in his remarks, noting their fighters “killed or maimed thousands of Americans and Iraqis” in Iraq.

The administration is working alongside five other world powers to try and strike a nuclear deal – which would aim to curb Tehran’s nuclear program in exchange for sanctions relief – by the end of the month. But Flynn said Iran already has made it clear they will put limits on inspections, making for “incomplete verification.” Plus he said it’s “unreasonable” to believe international sanctions could be resumed once lifted.

He also echoed concerns of some other analysts in saying the “perceived acceptance” of Iran’s program will likely “touch off a dangerous domino effect in the region” as Saudi Arabia and other nations seek nuclear capability.

As for the rising threat posed by the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria, Flynn voiced concern that the U.S. is not keeping up with the crisis. He said there is “absolutely no end in sight,” and “no clear U.S. policy” for dealing with it.

Putin’s Plan for a Military Artic Region

Posted on June 10, 2015June 10, 2015 by Denise Simon

Despite sanctions against Russia, the Artic is still at risk. The recent G-7 meeting brought more solidarity agreement of sanctions on Russia but only due to Putin’s hostilities against Ukraine and in violation on the Minsk Agreement. The full text of the agreement is here in English. No conversations have taken place with regard to Putin’s operations in the Artic.

Going back to 2103, Putin not only announced his aggressions for the Artic region, he is intensifying operations while there is no mission to stop his objectives. Two years later, he is succeeding.

Russia has been building new ships and preparing to deploy troops along its northern border as melting Arctic ice will make it possible for more commercial traffic to transit the so called Northern Sea route. There is also the potential for large mineral deposits in the region.

“There are plans to create a group of troops and forces to ensure military security and protection of the Russian Federation’s national interests in the Arctic in 2014,” Defense Minister Sergey Shoigu said at the same meeting.

Putin’s declaration highlights several military moves the Russians have made in relation to the Arctic in the last few years.

Nikolai Patrushev, the head of Russia’s Security Council, announced in mid-2012 it would create ten naval bases along its northern coast. In May, Russia announced it would be constructing up to four new ships for duty in the Arctic.

Putin’s remarks follow Canada’s plan to claim Arctic territories — including the North Pole — as sovereign Canadian territory, the country’s foreign minister announced on Monday.

“We are determined to ensure that all Canadians benefit from the tremendous resources that are to be found in Canada’s far north,” John Baird said, according to an Associated Press report.

Last week, Canada made preliminary claims to some Arctic regions and plans to make more.

Russia, of all the eight members of the Arctic Council, has the most naval assets to patrol the surface of the Arctic.

Russia has more than 37 government icebreakers compared to Canada’s six and America’s five, according to a July review from the U.S. Coast Guard.

However Canada is currently constructing a new surface naval force, complete with a collection of ships that would be designed to operate in cold climates.

Under the sea, the U.S. nuclear submarine force remains as the dominant power in the region.

Russia is interested in the Arctic for a number of reasons, though natural resources and pure geopolitical imperatives are the major driving forces behind Moscow’s thinking. The Arctic contains an estimated 30 percent of the world’s undiscovered natural gas and 13 percent of its undiscovered oil reserves, regarded by Moscow as important sources of foreign investment that are critical to the country’s economic development. The Northern Sea Route from East Asia to Europe via the Arctic Ocean provides another economic opportunity for developing infrastructure in northern Russia.

Militarizing the Arctic will be a key imperative for the Russian military throughout 2015 and beyond — alongside modernization in general and bolstering forces in Crimea and the Kaliningrad exclave. According to the Russian Ministry of Defense, Soviet-era bases in the Arctic are being reactivated in response to NATO’s renewed interest in the region.

The airstrip on the archipelago of Novaya Zemlya is being renovated to accommodate modern and next generation fighter aircraft in addition to advanced S400 air defense systems. Part of the Northern Fleet will also be based on the island chain, which is ideally positioned for operations in the Arctic region. The Northern Fleet represents two-thirds of the entire Russian Navy, which is the only navy in the world to operate nuclear-powered icebreaker ships. Great detail can be read here.

ISIS Tactics Include Taxes and Treasures

Posted on June 10, 2015June 10, 2015 by Denise Simon

With a multi-country coalition, air strikes, ground intelligence gathering, surveillance drones and up to 1000 more troops being deployed to Iraq, the White House has no strategy and blames the Pentagon.

The Pentagon has a division that is assigned to war-gaming and planning in all conditions across the globe that is based on human intelligence, information gathered from diplomatic staff in all embassies, use of software, estimations, locations of military assets, threats from the enemy, money, transportation, secret deals, ordnance positioning and more. The Pentagon always has several strategies that are current and nimble that require dynamic alterations as even minor conditions change. For Obama to blame the Pentagon is childish and misguided.

Despite nine months and $2.44 billion in U.S. airstrikes against the fighters and their oil facilities and smuggling networks, the self-proclaimed Islamic State has proven to be as resilient financially as it’s been militarily.

The group that President Barack Obama dismissed in January 2014 as a junior varsity team last year seized an estimated $675 million from banks, plus $145 million in oil sales and ransom payments and tens of millions more from other commercial enterprises, looting and extortion, according to U.S. Treasury and United Nations figures.

“This isn’t your average terrorist group operating from your average safe haven,” said Juan Zarate, a former assistant secretary of Treasury for terrorist financing and financial crimes who spent years targeting al-Qaeda funding. “They have access to oil in Iraq and Syria; access to major population centers; access to banks, antiquities and smuggling groups — all of that allows them to be more agile and have access to more capital and resources than your average terrorist group.”

“The truth is nobody really knows how much they’re making now,” said Daveed Gartenstein-Ross, a senior fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies. “The U.S. government is getting closer to pegging the group’s finances because of things like last month’s raid in eastern Syria. But no one knows how much they’re getting versus their spending.”

Islamic State “is in some ways a proto-state, in some ways a terrorist organization, in some ways an insurgency and in some ways a transnational criminal group,” he said. Like drug cartels in Colombia and Mexico and al-Qaeda offshoots in Somalia, northern Mali and Yemen, the group is extorting taxes, plundering local resources and taking a cut of commercial enterprises, he said. Read much more detail here.

ISIS has published their objectives on the internet for the world to see and yet operates with unhindered. ISIS is fully functional in an estimated 12 countries while the Obama administration is in neutral to lead the coalition in both offensive and defensive measures. The impact of the coalition is inert.

Egypt, a country working to recover from a power revolution is at particular risk.

From Oren Kessler in part: Egypt’s once-foundering economy is slowly rising from the abyss. President Abdel-Fattah al-Sisi has cut costly fuel and food subsidies, cut red tape on investments, instructed the Central Bank to tackle the black market in foreign currencies and vowed to bring unemployment under 10 percent.

His efforts are beginning to bear fruit. In May, the ratings agency Standard & Poor’s revised Egypt’s country outlook from stable to positive, predicting real GDP growth over the next three years of 4.3 percent – double the average of the four years since the revolution. Meanwhile, the government’s suspension of the capital gains tax sent stocks soaring 6.5 percent in a single day.

Still, no economic turnaround will be complete without a recovery in tourism. The U.S. State Department currently urges citizens to exercise caution in traveling to the country, and advises against any non-essential travel in Sinai, where an insurgency by Islamic State-linked militants has raged since the military ouster of Muslim Brotherhood president Mohamed Morsi in July 2013. At the same time, shadowy pro-Brotherhood groups calling themselves Ajnad Misr (“Soldiers of Egypt”) and the “Popular Resistance Movement” are increasingly targeting the populous mainland, including Cairo, Alexandria and the cities of the Nile Delta. The government accuses the now-banned Brotherhood of responsibility for virtually every attack, but the extent to which the group is actually orchestrating the violence remains unclear.

What is clear is that continued terrorism, particularly against tourists, has the capacity to set back the fragile gains Cairo has made in restoring stability and reviving its economy. For Egypt, persuading visitors to come soak up the country’s sights and sun will require convincing them beyond a reasonable doubt that traveling to the land of the Pharaohs will not be a one-way ticket. More detail here.

Relying on the U.S. for an Iraq Strategy is Suicidal

Posted on June 8, 2015June 8, 2015 by Denise Simon

The US does not yet have a “complete strategy” for helping Iraq regain territory from Islamic State (IS), President Barack Obama has said.

He said the Pentagon was reviewing ways to help Iraq train and equip its forces.

Mr Obama also said a full commitment to the process was needed by the Iraqis themselves. Much more here.

Meanwhile, Qatar and Saudi Arabia are blaming the White House for the fall of Ramadi. ‘In May 2015, despite airstrikes by the U.S.-led international coalition, the Islamic State (ISIS) won another strategic victory when it captured the city of Al-Ramadi, the capital of Al-Anbar governorate, which is home to a Sunni majority. Articles in Saudi Arabia and Qatar, which are both members of the anti-ISIS coalition, expressed fear and concern regarding the fall of Al-Ramadi and ISIS’s advance towards the Saudi and Jordanian borders.‘

‘Al-Quds Al-Arabi’: The Fall Of Al-Ramadi Has Proven That Continuing To Rely On The U.S. Is Suicidal and Former ‘Al-Sharq Al-Awsat’ Editor: U.S. Has Given Iran Free Reign In Iraq

Iran is taking over Assad’s fight in crucial parts of Syria

Iranian commanders overseeing the Assad regime’s fighting efforts on the frontlines south of Idlib have reportedly executed three Syrian army officers.

London-based Al-Quds al-Arabi said that the three officers were Sunnis who were among the regime troops that withdrew from the Mahmbel and Bsanqoul checkpoints following rebel advances in the southern Idlib province area on Saturday.

The three officers, who were also accompanied by several soldiers, were accused deserting their duty and “betraying the homeland,” the daily reported Sunday.

According to the report, none of the other Syrian officers or soldiers present at the time were able to prevent the execution as “officers responsible for military operations in the Jourin area are under the command of Iranian officers.”

A Free Syrian Army (FSA) commander told the paper that “the regime has handed over the operations room to Iranian officers and leadership.”

“The recent execution has caused a state of fear and terror among remaining regime troops,” the FSA commander added, saying he expected “more defections and more field executions.”

syria map

There are still Sunni soldiers and officers bearing arms in the ranks of the regime’s army who will receive humiliating treatment during the coming period.”

Activists in the Latakia region also spoke to the paper about the impact the Iranian takeover of the operations room has had on morale among regime troops.

“Morale is very low among regime soldiers; in fact, it has become non-existent since the Iranian officers took over the operations room,” according to an activist identifying himself as Abu Said.

“Syrian officers, among them Alawites, have become secondary members, whose tasks can sometimes be reduced to handing out tea and coffee.”

Iran Navy commander REUTERS/Fars News/Hamed JafarnejadIranian officers have imposed strict rule in the Syrian army, and morale is suffering.

Iranian command

The reported handover of power to Iranian officers follows the visit Revolutionary Guards Quds Force commander Qassem Soleimani paid to the Jourin area in late

May, after which he announced that a “surprise” was in the works in Syria.

The Iraqi Kurdish Bas News outlet on Monday reported that major command changes have been conducted on the Latakia-Hama-Idlib front following Soleimani’s trip.

A Hama-based media activist said that the Syrian regime’s chief of operations in the area, General Jamal Younis, had been removed from his post and replaced by an Iranian general known only by his moniker Iffari, who set up his headquarters in Jourin.

Sarmad Khalil, an activist and member of the Hama Media Center, said in press statements that the IRGC’s military operations command is located in Hama Airbase.

Rebel-IRGC lines stretch from military checkpoints in the town of Maharda, north of Hama, through the towns of Helfaya, Tel al-Nasiriyah and Rohbet Khattab to Taybet al-Imam and the international highway connecting the Hama and Aleppo provinces, according to the activist.

The IRGC has also established a military base on Zein al-Abideen Mountain north of Hama city, Khalil said.

A top pro-Assad daily in Lebanon said last week that Iran has deployed troops into northwest Syria in preparation for a counterattack in Idlib.

“During the last [few] days, and through a joint Syrian-Iranian-Iraqi decision, more than 20,000 Iranian, Iraqi, and Lebanese fighters have poured into the area,” As-Safir reported in a dramatic article published Tuesday.

ISIS Islamic State Iraq Syria control Reuters

The report said that the new troops had been sent to the regime’s front lines in the northern Hama province village of Jourin and areas in the southern part of the Idlib province, which rebels seized last week following months of sweeping advances.

AFP later reported that thousands of Iraqi and Iranian fighters have been deployed to Syria in a bid to secure the capital and recapture the Idlib province’s Jisr al-Shughur, which lies on a highway leading into the regime’s coastal stronghold of Latakia.