Senator Feinstein’s Loyalty to China First

Posted on September 23, 2018September 23, 2018 by Denise Simon

Now, this is the woman that concocted the while Dr. Ford v. Brett Kavanaugh chaos event in Washington DC and refused to hand that pesky letter over to Chairman Grassley…

Personally, she should be brought up before the Senate Ethics Committee, it would be a gesture for sure but then we could have a Senate vote of no confidence in Di-Fi…another gesture, but tactics nonetheless.

Meanwhile:

Senator Cruz is not well liked by many Democrats in the Senate because he exposes them, that is if anyone is listening. It was not too long ago that Ben Shapiro published in his DailyWire that Senator Cruz proposed some legislation to rename a road and Feinstein earnestly objected. Hah, it is an interesting story found here.

Related reading: Chinese spy who defected tells all

Now, just before that, a scandal that went away real fast was that lil miss Dianne had an American aide working for the Chinese (read spy) on her payroll for years. BUT, that was not the first time the FBI came knocking on her door for much the same reason. Really you say? Yes….

Only back in 1997 as explained by the LATimes: federal investigators have detected that the Chinese government might attempt to seek favor with Feinstein. Last year, she was one of six members of Congress who received warnings from the FBI that China might try to improperly influence them through illegal campaign contributions.

The article has another interesting paragraph: At the same time, far from the spotlight, Feinstein’s husband, Richard C. Blum, has expanded his private business interests in China–to the point that his firm is now a prominent investor inside the communist nation.

For years, Feinstein and Blum have insisted that they maintained a solid “firewall” between her role as an influential foreign policy player and his career as a private investor overseas.

But such closely coinciding interests are highly unusual for major figures in public life in Washington. And now, as controversy heats up over improper foreign influence in the U.S. political process, the effectiveness of the firewall between those interests could be called into question.

Firewall eh?

SAN FRANCISCO SHANGHAI SISTER CITIES photo

Well there is this other thing in California called the ‘California Asia Business Council’. See Di-Fi’s husband in the photo?

Asia Night 203 back row in the middle

Recipients of Cal-Asia’s prestigious New Silk Road Award include: Ms. Weili Dai, President and Co-founder of Marvell Technology Group; Dr. Chong Moon Lee, Founder, Diamond Multimedia; The Asia Foundation (presented to Dr. David Arnold, President); Alexander D. Calhoun, Senior Counsel, Squire Sanders & Dempsey; Daniel K. H. Chao, Chairman of Bechtel Greater China (retired); John S. Chen, Chairman, CEO, and President of Sybase; Hon. Dianne Feinstein, US Senator; Dr. Ta-Lin Hsu founder and chairman of H&Q Asia Pacific; C. Richard Kramlich, chairman and co-founder of New Enterprise Associates; G. Paul Matthews, Founder, Matthews International Capital Management; Dr. William F. Miller, SRI International, Stanford, and Silicon Valley visionary; Hon. George P. Shultz, Former Secretary of State; Washington SyCip, Founder of SGV & Co. and “Asia’s Wise Business Owl”; Amb. Linda Tsao Yang, former US Director, Asian Development Bank.

(Senator Feinstein got an award….firewall?)

Cal-Asia’s Mission
…is to promote commerce between the U.S. and Asia. We are proud to have received two awards for our efforts from the US Department of Commerce.

Other Cal-Asia News

–Foreign Direct Investment in ASEAN
–APEC Meetings for 2015 started in January in Hanoi and will culminate with the Manila summit. Meeting locations and dates: APEC Events Calendar. General info on APEC outcomes, plans: http://www.apec.org/

—EXIM BANKReport to the U.S. Congress on the Export-Import Bank of the United States and global export credit competition, 2014
–OECD list of export credit agencies
—Asian ExIm Banks

Ah, but there is more:

SAN FRANCISCO, May 4, 2017 — Richard C. Blum, founder and chairman of Blum Capital Partners, delivers remarks at Asia Society Northern California’s Fourteenth Annual Dinner.

Going back to 2009 and swell company here at this event:

April 23, 2009 – Blum Center Groundbreaking with Vice President Al Gore. (Peg Skorpinski)The groundbreaking ceremony for the new home of the Blum Center will take place on Thursday, April 23 at 1:30 pm PST – with Center Founder and UC Regents Chair Richard C. Blum joined by Former Vice President Al Gore, UC Berkeley Chancellor Robert Birgeneau, College of Engineering Dean S. Shankar Sastry, and University of California President Mark Yudof. The ceremony will be followed by a reception where faculty and students will present a wide range of innovations aimed at making lasting change for the nearly three billion people that live on less than two dollars a day.

That Center is for developing countries like China….really? Yup…interesting, there are more friends…

Four years ago, Mr. Blum founded the Global Economy and Development Center at The Brookings Institution and the Brookings Blum Roundtable Conference, to develop policy research and new strategies to alleviate poverty. He is also a trustee and a member of the executive committee of The Carter Center, founded by former President Jimmy Carter, and serves on the boards of William J. Clinton Foundation and The Wilderness Society.

More?

Feinstein and Shanghai Mayor Jiang Zemin reportedly visited each other regularly in the 1980s, with Jiang once spending Thanksgiving in San Francisco with Feinstein and her husband. Jiang supposedly danced with Feinstein during one such visit, which surely must have been a propaganda coup for the CCP a la Ted Kennedy and the Soviets.

The Federalist has an interesting summary, yet this stuck out:

In a June 2010 interview with the Wall Street Journal covering a trip to China in which she met with old pals Jiang and former premier Zhu Rongji, Feinstein seemed to further downplay and even alibi the Tiananmen Square massacre:

I think that was a great setback for China in the view of the world. And I think China has also – as we would – learned lessons from it.

It just so happens I was here after that and talked to Jiang Zemin and learned that at the time China had no local police. It was just the PLA [People’s Liberation Army]. And no local police that had crowd control. So, hence the tanks.

Clearly none of that made good sense. But that’s the past. One learns from the past. You don’t repeat it. I think China has learned a lesson.

That year, Feinstein also challenged the Obama administration’s $6.4 billion arms sale to Taiwan, calling it a “substantial irritant” to U.S.-China relations. Be sure and read all of Ben Weingarten’s piece here.

Nations Stand with Britain Against Russia and Poison Attack

Posted on September 7, 2018September 7, 2018 by Denise Simon

LONDON — The leaders of the United States, France, Germany and Canada on Thursday endorsed Britain’s assessment that a nerve-agent attack on a former Russian spy and his daughter in March was conducted by Russian military officers and “almost certainly” approved at a senior level of the Russian government.

The leaders urged Russia to provide a “full disclosure” of its Novichok nerve-agent program and said they would “continue to disrupt together the hostile activities of foreign intelligence networks on our territories.”

The joint statement was released shortly before London’s and Moscow’s envoys to the United Nations squared off in an emergency Security Council meeting called by Britain to brief diplomats on the investigation.

British ambassador Karen Pierce methodically outlined evidence that she said pointed to the Kremlin’s complicity in the attack, which occurred March 4 in the quiet English city of Salisbury.

Two Russians — using the names Alexander Petrov and Ruslan Boshirov — were charged Wednesday in absentia with attempting to murder Sergei Skripal and his daughter, Yulia, with Novichok, a military-grade nerve agent.

Pierce acknowledged the two suspects, who flew back to Russia shortly after the attack, cannot be extradited under the Russian constitution. But she said Britain will ask Interpol to issue an alert to arrest them if they ever leave Russian territory, so they can be tried in Britain. More here from the Washington Post.

Very important short video

Deeper dive:

Sergei Skripal, the Russian double agent who was poisoned with a military-grade nerve agent in England earlier this year, worked with Spanish intelligence after his defection to the United Kingdom, according to sources. Skripal, a former military intelligence officer who spied for Britain in the early 2000s, had kept a low profile while living in the English town of Salisbury. He was resettled there in 2010 by the British Secret Intelligence Service (MI6), after he was released from a Russian prison. But he and his daughter Yulia made international headlines in March, after they were poisoned by a powerful nerve agent that nearly killed them. The attack has been widely blamed on the Russian government, but the Kremlin denies that it had a role in it.

The attempt to kill Skripal surprised some intelligence observers due to the fact that the Russian government had officially pardoned the double agent prior to exchanging him with Russian spies who had been caught in the West. As intelNews wrote in May, “typically a spy who has been pardoned as part of an authorized spy-swap will not need to worry about being targeted by the agency that he betrayed. If it indeed tried to kill Skripal, the Russian government may therefore have broken the unwritten rules of the espionage game”. Eventually, however, it was revealed that, instead of retiring after his defection to the UK, Skripal traveled extensively in Eastern Europe, where he advised local intelligence agencies on how to defend against Russian espionage. The double agent participated in MI6-sponsored events in which he briefed intelligence practitioners in at least two countries, Estonia and the Czech Republic. These activities may have convinced the Kremlin that Skripal had broken the unwritten conditions of his release, namely that he would not participate in any intelligence-related activities against Russia.

Now The New York Times has claimed that, in addition to consulting for Czech and Estonian spies, Skripal also visited Spain, where he met with officers from the country’s National Intelligence Center (CNI). Citing an unnamed Spanish former police chief and Fernando Rueda, a Spanish intelligence expert, The Times said that Skripal advised the CNI about the activities of Russian organized crime in Spain and the alleged connections between Russian mobsters and the Kremlin. When he traveled to Spain under MI6 protection, said the paper, Skripal was effectively returning to the place where he had been initially recruited to spy for the British. Skripal spent several years in Spain, said The Times, serving as a military attaché at the Russian embassy in Madrid. It was there that he began to work secretly for MI6. However, the precise timing of Skripal’s return trips to Spain after 2010, as well as the content of his discussions with Spanish intelligence officials, remain unknown, according to The Times. Hat tip.

Trends in Chinese Military Worrying the U.S.

Posted on August 21, 2018August 21, 2018 by Denise Simon

WASHINGTON —

China is not an enemy, but it is certainly an adversary of the United States, and the Defense Department’s 2018 report to Congress examines the trends in Chinese military developments.

Congress mandates the report, titled “Military and Security Developments Involving the People’s Republic of China.” While the report highlights military developments, it also addresses China’s whole-of-government approach to competition.

China’s economic development is fueling extraordinary changes in relationships it maintains around the world, according to the report. On the face of it, China’s “One Belt, One Road” initiative sounds benign – it looks to build infrastructure for developing countries and Chinese neighbors.

Chinese leaders have funded serious projects as far away as Africa under the initiative. They have built roads in Pakistan and made major inroads in Malaysia. China has a major stake in Sri Lanka. Kazakhstan, Mongolia, Laos and Djibouti also are involved.

The Chinese government seeks to overturn the established international order that has kept the peace in the region since World War II and allowed Asian countries to develop.

But “One Belt, One Road” money and projects come with strings. The “one road” leads to China, and nations are susceptible to Chinese influence on many levels – political, military, and especially, economic.

Economic Clout

In 2017, China used its economic clout in South Korea as a bludgeon to get Seoul to not allow the United States to deploy the Terminal High-Altitude Area Defense system in the country as a counterweight to North Korea’s nuclear missile program. The Chinese government informally lowered the boom on South Korea economically to influence the THAAD decision.

South Korean cars and other exports were embargoed. About a quarter of all goods South Korea exports goes to China, so this had an immediate effect on the economy. In addition, tourism suffered, as nearly half of all entries to South Korea are from China, and South Korean retail stores in China were crippled.

The South Korean government decided to allow the THAAD to deploy, but China’s economic muscle movement had to be noted in other global capitals.

South China Sea

“In its regional territorial and maritime disputes, China continued construction of outposts in the Spratly Islands, but also continued outreach to South China Sea claimants to further its goal of effectively controlling disputed areas,” the DoD reports says in its executive summary. In other words, China is using military power and diplomatic efforts in tandem to claim the South China Sea.

The People’s Liberation Army has come a long way from the human-wave attacks of the Korean War, and Chinese leaders want to build a military worthy of a global power. “Chinese military strategy documents highlight the requirement for a People’s Liberation Army able to secure Chinese national interests overseas, including a growing emphasis on the importance of the maritime and information domains, offensive air operations, long-distance mobility operations, and space and cyber operations,” the report says.

Chinese military planners looked at what the United States accomplished in Operation Desert Shield/Desert Storm in 1990 and 1991 and charted their way forward. The PLA is fundamentally restructuring to challenge and beat any military in the world.

The PLA – still the largest force in the world – actually cut people to streamline command and control and modernize forces. The Chinese seek to win at all levels of conflict, from regional conflicts to wars with peer competitors. “Reforms seek to streamline command and control structures and improve jointness at all levels,” the report said. The PLA is using realistic training scenarios and exercising troops and equipment regularly.

New Capabilities

China is investing billions in new capabilities including artificial intelligence, hypersonic technology, offensive cyber capabilities and more. China also has launched an aircraft carrier and added many new ships to the PLA Navy. The Chinese Navy is more active and making more port calls than in years past. Further, the PLA Marine Corps is expanding from 10,000 personnel to 30,000.

The PLA Air Force has been reassigned a nuclear mission, giving China a nuclear triad — along with missile and subs — for the first time.

Cyber operations play a significant role in the Chinese military. The PLA has a large corps of trained and ready personnel. Cyber espionage is common, and there are those who believe China was able to get plans of the F-35 Thunderbolt II joint strike fighter, which they incorporated into its J-20 stealth fighter.

The U.S. National Security Strategy and National Defense Strategy recognize that China and Russia are strategic competitors of the United States. Still, the United States must engage with China, and maintenance of cordial military-to-military relations is in both nations’ best interests.

“While the Department of Defense engages substantively with the People’s Liberation Army, DoD will also continue to monitor and adapt to China’s evolving military strategy, doctrine and force development, and encourage China to be more transparent about its military modernization,” the report says.

The United States military will adapt to counter and get ahead of moves by any competitor, DoD officials said.

Turkey is Holding Pastor Brunson Because of a Bank

Posted on August 20, 2018August 20, 2018 by Denise Simon

Pastor Andrew Brunson faces life in prison in Turkey for fraudulent charges of supporting a terror organization and political espionage. Brunson has lived in Turkey for 23 years. He even filed an application to renew his visa application in October of 2016. More details here.

Meanwhile, as the Turkish currency tanked due to sanctions and trade issues, the lira value held for about a week until investors got in the game due to interest and enticements by the Turkish Finance Minister and President Erdogan.

So, what is the reason for detaining and the charges on the Pastor? Seems, Erdogan is using the Pastor as a tool for two reasons. One includes an anti-Erdogan activist that has lived in the United States 1999. He was/is a preacher himself and has an estimate 5 million followers. Erdogan included Gulen as one of the reasons for the attempted/alleged coup.

But the other reason is Iran. Seems Eli Lake an investigative journalist understands it better than all the rest. Why? During the Obama administration, nothing else mattered but to get an Iran nuclear deal. Those rogue governments, foreign leaders and financial institutions helping Iran evade sanctions were purposely ignored and overlooked by the Obama White House.

It was last week that the Erdogan government made an offer to the United States to release Pastor Brunson if the United States would drop charges and the investigation of the Halkbank.

President Trump gave Turkey an answer….NO.

The Trump administration rebuffed Turkey’s offer to release detained American pastor Andrew Brunson if the U.S. halts the investigation into Turkish bank Halkbank, The Wall Street Journal reported Sunday.

The Turkish government agreed to drop terrorism charges against the pastor in exchange of the U.S. government dropping fines totaling billions of dollars against the bank. A senior White House official said the offer was rejected.

Turkey has taken advantage of the United States for many years. They are now holding our wonderful Christian Pastor, who I must now ask to represent our Country as a great patriot hostage. We will pay nothing for the release of an innocent man, but we are cutting back on Turkey!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) August 16, 2018

So, there is this bank and the gold. Happened earlier this year, stemming from a 2012-2013 case:

Mehmet Hakan Atilla, an executive at Turkey’s majority state-owned Halkbank (HALKB.IS), was convicted on five of six counts he faced, including bank fraud and conspiracy to violate U.S. sanctions law, in Manhattan federal court.

photo

Atilla was also found not guilty on a money laundering charge.

Prosecutors had accused Atilla of conspiring with gold trader Reza Zarrab and others to help Iran escape sanctions using fraudulent gold and food transactions. Zarrab pleaded guilty and testified for the prosecutors.

In several days on the witness stand, Zarrab had described a sprawling scheme that he said included bribes to Turkish government officials and was carried out with the blessing of current President Tayyip Erdogan.

Halkbank had no immediate comment. Attempts to reach Erdogan’s spokesman for comment on the allegations at the trial have been unsuccessful. Erdogan has publicly dismissed the case as a politically motivated attack on his government.

U.S. prosecutors have criminally charged nine people, though only Zarrab, 34, and Atilla, 47, have been arrested by U.S. authorities.

BANKERS’ CHOICE

“Foreign banks and bankers have a choice: you can choose willfully to help Iran and other sanctioned nations evade U.S. law, or you can choose to be part of the international banking community transacting in U.S. dollars,” Joon Kim, the acting U.S. Attorney in Manhattan, said in a statement after the verdict was read. “But you can’t do both.”

In December of 2017, the Turkish Justice Minister Abdulhamit Gul demanded in a letter to U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions that Korkmaz be returned to Turkey, calling him “a fugitive, a terror suspect facing serious allegations.”

The Turkish government has said that followers of the U.S.-based cleric Fethullah Gulen were behind both the Turkish investigation and the U.S. case, as well as the 2016 failed coup in Turkey. Gulen has denied the accusations. More here.

Trump Admin Seeking Global Cyber Dominance

Posted on August 16, 2018August 16, 2018 by Denise Simon

Finally!

Archivo:Presidential-policy-directive 20.pdf - Wikipedia ...

President Trump signed an order that reverses the classified rules and cyber processes from the Obama administration, known as IVE PPD 20. It was signed in October 2012, and this directive supersedes National Security Presidential Directive NSPD-38. Integrating cyber tools with those of national security, the directive complements NSPD-54/Homeland Security Presidential Directive HSPD-23.

Per WikiPedia:

After the U.S. Senate failed to pass the Cybersecurity Act of 2012 that August,^[12] Presidential Policy Directive 20 (PPD-20) was signed in secret. The Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC) filed a Freedom of Information Request to see it, but the NSA would not comply.^[13] Some details were reported in November 2012.^[14] The Washington Post wrote that PPD-20, “is the most extensive White House effort to date to wrestle with what constitutes an ‘offensive’ and a ‘defensive’ action in the rapidly evolving world of cyberwar and cyberterrorism.”^[14] The following January,^[15] the Obama administration released a ten-point factsheet.^[16]

On June 7, 2013, PPD-20 became public.^[15] Released by Edward Snowden and posted by The Guardian,^[15] it is part of the 2013 Mass Surveillance Disclosures. While the U.S. factsheet claims PPD-20 acts within the law and is, “consistent with the values that we promote domestically and internationally as we have previously articulated in the International Strategy for Cyberspace”,^[16] it doesn’t reveal cyber operations in the directive.^[15]

Snowden’s disclosure called attention to passages noting cyberwarfare policy and its possible consequences.^[15]^[17] The directive calls both defensive and offensive measures as Defensive Cyber Effects Operations (DCEO) and Offensive Cyber Effects Operations (OCEO), respectively.

President Trump has taken this action to aid not only the military, but it would work to deter foreign actors, impede election influence and apply new penalties for violations. There have been high worries by officials due to electric utilities and the brute cyber attacks.

***

Some lawmakers have raised questions in recent months about whether U.S. Cyber Command, the chief agency responsible for conducting offensive cyber missions, has been limited in its ability to respond to alleged Russian efforts to interfere in U.S. elections due to layers of bureaucratic hurdles.

The policy applies to the Defense Department as well as other federal agencies, the administration official said, while declining to specify which specific agencies would be affected. John Bolton, Mr. Trump’s national security adviser, began an effort to remove the Obama directive when he arrived at the White House in April, the official said.

As designed, the Obama policy required U.S. agencies to gain approval for offensive operations from an array of stakeholders across the federal government, in part to avoid interfering with existing operations such as digital espionage.

Critics for years have seen Presidential Policy Directive 20 as a particular source of inertia, arguing that it handicaps or prevents important operations by involving too many federal agencies in potential attack plans. But some current and former U.S. officials have expressed concern that removing or replacing the order could sow further uncertainty about what offensive cyber operations are allowed.

One former senior U.S. official who worked on cybersecurity issues said there were also concerns that Mr. Trump’s decision will grant the military new authority “which may allow them to have a domestic mission.”

The Obama directive, which replaced an earlier framework adopted during the George W. Bush administration, was “designed to ensure that all the appropriate equities got considered when you thought about doing an offensive cyber operation,” said Michael Daniel, who served as the White House cybersecurity coordinator during the Obama administration. “The idea that this is a simple problem is a naive one.” More here from the WSJ.