Night Wolves, Putin’s Hells Angels

Posted on August 2, 2018August 2, 2018 by Denise Simon

The Slovak foreign ministry says it is “disturbing” that the Night Wolves – a Russian nationalist biker gang close to President Vladimir Putin – now have a base in Slovakia.

The base has old military vehicles and lies in Dolna Krupa, a village 70km (44 miles) from the capital Bratislava.

The Russian government calls it the Night Wolves’ “European headquarters”.

The bikers are under US sanctions, accused of providing military help for the pro-Russian rebels in Ukraine.

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So close in fact, Putin rode with them and endorses the group.

Earlier this year, the Night Wolves did a 9 day tour. Bosnia? Yes. Members of the Night Wolves motorcycle gang visiting a monastery in Serbia. The gang’s tour, funded with a grant from the Kremlin, was billed as a “pilgrimage” meant to showcase the shared Orthodox faith of Russia and the region.CreditLaura Boushnak for The New York Times

Heck, the rode through the Balkins.

The Night Wolves billed their tour, funded with a $41,000 grant from the Kremlin, as a “pilgrimage” meant to showcase the shared Orthodox faith of Russia and the region, at least the bits of it inhabited by ethnic Serbs like Republika Srpska, which is legally part of Bosnia and Herzegovina.

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Performances organized by the Russian hyper-patriotic biker club Night Wolves stand as prime examples of the Kremlin’s new take on old propaganda efforts. Their spectacles tend to display the full gamut of the Kremlin’s imagery and messaging, from the evil of the United States and Ukrainians to the glorification of the Russian Orthodox Church and the Russian military.

An analysis of Night Wolves spectacles reveals how the Kremlin’s agent provocateurs make use of the fuzzy lines between patriotism, pro-Putinism, Russian Orthodoxy, civic/national duty, and militarism. The purposes of these anti-American scripts are many, not least of which is to garner psychological and physical support for the motherland one way or the other, especially during the Euromaidan era, but also to create a sense of Russian identity, which has been vacuous since the early 1990s. The alarming aspect is that these types of fantastical attractions can transform patriotic attendees into actual networks of gun-toting Russian combatants, which may be part of the government’s objective. Read more here, chilling operation concocted by the Kremlin.

Rock videos supporting the Night Wolves? Yes, glad you asked.

Did they have some role in Crimea and Ukraine? Yup. In 2014:

As night fell on Friday , there were signs that the Ukrainian peninsula of Crimea was slipping beyond Kiev’s reach. The parliament remained under siege by pro-Russian protesters, armed men of unknown allegiance were guarding the airports and the Night Wolves, a biker gang with close ties to the Kremlin, blockaded the roads.

Three hundred men in military uniforms with no identifying insignia had entered the Sevastopol airport compound on Thursday night, witnesses said, in what Ukraine’s new interior minister, Arsen Avakov, described as a “military invasion and occupation”.

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In 2014, the U.S. Treasury added the Night Wolves to the sanctions list due to Crimea and in violation of the Minsk Agreement.

The Night Wolves biker group had its members serve in the Crimean self-defense forces as early as February 2014, which supported local Crimeans against the Government of Ukraine. In March 2014, the Night Wolves conducted intimidation and criminal activities within Ukraine and also abducted and subsequently assaulted a Ukrainian Border Guard official. This biker group also participated in the storming of the gas distribution station in Strikolkove and the storming of the Ukrainian Naval Forces Headquarters in Sevastopol. In early-April 2014, the Night Wolves helped smuggle a former senior Ukrainian official out of Ukraine and also helped obtain Russian passports for another larger group of senior Ukrainian officials that they helped get into Russia. The Night Wolves have been closely connected to the Russian special services, have helped to recruit separatist fighters for Donetsk and Luhansk, Ukraine, and were deployed to the cities of Luhansk and Kharkiv. The Night Wolves group is being designated because it is an entity that is responsible for or complicit in, or has engaged in, directly or indirectly, actions or policies that threaten the peace, security, stability, sovereignty, or territorial integrity of Ukraine.

Aleksandr Zaldostanov, also known as “the Surgeon,” is the leader of the Night Wolves. Zaldostanov chairs the overall Night Wolves organization, and some of his responsibilities include the punishing of chapter groups and members for disloyalty to the Night Wolves organization. During the late-March storming of the Ukrainian Naval Forces Headquarters in Sevastopol, he coordinated the confiscation of Ukrainian weapons with the Russian forces. Zaldostanov is being designated for being a leader of a group, the Night Wolves, that is engaging in, directly or indirectly, actions or policies that threaten the peace, security, stability, sovereignty, or territorial integrity of Ukraine.

Finally U.S. Sanctions Turkey over U.S. prisoners

Posted on August 1, 2018August 1, 2018 by Denise Simon

Primer:

Ankara for years has been providing support to Hamas, Iran, ISIS, al Queda and Libya jihadists, yet it’s this incredibly stupid decision to hold an American hostage that has ultimately earned Turkey its first US sanctions.

U.S. Prepares List of Turkey Economic Sanctions Targets

The U.S. has prepared a list of Turkish entities and individuals to target should it decide to impose sanctions on Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s government for imprisoning U.S. citizens and employees of its diplomatic mission, according to two people with knowledge of the matter.

The lira slid.

While negotiations to release one of the people, evangelical Pastor Andrew Brunson, are ongoing, the preparation of the so-called “designation packages” shows how close the U.S. has come to imposing unprecedented penalties against a NATO ally. The sanctions are modeled on those against the Russian government and oligarchs close to President Vladimir Putin, the people said, asking not to be named because of the sensitivity of the issue.

The U.S. has extended deadlines this week to release Brunson or face sanctions, according to Turkish and U.S. officials familiar with the talks. The people and entities determined in the designation packages would need to be approved by the Treasury secretary and secretary of state.

The sanctions are being prepared under the Global Magnitsky Act of 2016, which allows the U.S. government to target individuals, companies or other entities involved in corruption or human-rights abuses anywhere in the world. Sanctions under the act allow for the seizure of assets in the U.S., travel bans and prohibitions on doing business with U.S. entities.

Lira Plunges

Turkey’s lira plunged to a record low of 4.9985 after Bloomberg News reported the possible sanctions, extending its decline to 4.5 percent since July 26, when Vice President Mike Pence threatened sanctions over the Brunson case. Yields on Turkey’s 10-year debt hit a record 18.86 percent on Tuesday. The Borsa Istanbul 100 index has lost 36 percent in dollar-adjusted terms this year, the second-worst performance in the world after Venezuela.

A U.S. Treasury spokesman didn’t immediately reply to an emailed request for comment.

The scope of the sanctions highlights the disconnect between Washington and Ankara as they try to negotiate a way out of the deadlock, with Turkish officials still apparently believing the Trump administration is bluffing.

Bankers who have met with Turkish officials say the sanctions threats are not being taken seriously in Ankara, even as they risk cutting off financing to an economy dependent on imported capital. For their part, U.S. officials’ patience with Turkey’s negotiating tactics is wearing thin.

‘Hostages’

Within the State Department, Brunson and other prisoners including NASA scientist Serkan Golge and three Turkish employees of the U.S. mission to Turkey are referred to as “hostages.” The U.S. says they’re innocent and being held by Turkey for the sole purpose of extracting concessions on other points of tension in the U.S.-relationship.

The two countries have quarreled over a panoply of foreign policy issues that have driven the onetime allies to outright hostility. Foremost among them are differences over policy in Syria and Iran, Turkish suspicions about the U.S. response to a 2016 coup attempt against Erdogan, and the Turkish leadership’s budding friendship with Putin.

The Magnitsky sanctions under consideration could be just the start of what would look like a U.S. assault on Turkey’s vulnerable economy. The U.S. is also considering a hefty fine on state-run lender Turkiye Halk Bankasi AS for its role in evading U.S. sanctions targeting Iran’s nuclear program, and it would impose sanctions on Turkey when it receives delivery of a missile defense system from Russia, expected in 2019.

Deal Fails

As of last week, the Americans thought they had a deal that would bring Brunson home, according to accounts by officials on both sides of the matter. In return for the release of evangelical pastor, who’s been imprisoned for almost two years on charges including involvement in the failed coup, the U.S. administration would recommend a lenient fine on Halkbank. The U.S. also offered to send Mehmet Hakan Atilla, a former executive at the bank who’s been jailed in the U.S., back to Turkey to serve out the rest of his term.

As a final sweetener to the Turks, U.S. President Donald Trump said he’d get Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to release a Turkish citizen, Ebru Ozkan, who’d been arrested in Israel on accusations of abetting Hamas. Netanyahu did it, and Ozkan was sent back to Turkey on July 16.

The Americans waited for Erdogan to deliver on his side of the deal: Brunson was to be released and then deported at a hearing on July 18. Instead, Turkey changed the conditions of the agreement at the last minute, with Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu interjecting to demand that any probe of Halkbank be dropped, according to Turkish and U.S. officials. The deal fell apart and Brunson was moved to house arrest.

The Americans had been carrying out the negotiations through a backchannel with a person close to Erdogan, according to people familiar with the matter. But they have had a difficult time gauging whether or not the Turkish side fully comprehends the possible consequences of U.S. sanctions on Turkey’s economy.

That’s made it harder for the U.S. to take decisive action as the U.S. is reluctant to take action that could risk tanking the economy of a nominally allied country, or bringing down its banking system. Turkish companies and banks depend on foreign capital to plug one of the world’s largest current-account deficits, which requires about $200 million a day in foreign financing.

Ironically, the damage that U.S. action could do to Turkey makes it more hesitant to act and strengthens Turkey’s negotiating position, according to Asli Aydintasbas, an Istanbul-based senior policy fellow at the European Council on Foreign Relations.

“I have seen this over and over in this relationship going back two decades, on a much smaller scale,” Aydintasbas said. “The price of actually doing something is so big that Turkey has a psychological advantage. It’s as if they have more power, whereas it’s the other way around.”

Facebook Announces Foreign Intrusion Again, 290,000 Accounts

Posted on July 31, 2018July 31, 2018 by Denise Simon

The details: “About two weeks ago we identified the first of eight Pages and 17 profiles on Facebook, as well as seven Instagram accounts, that violate our ban on coordinated inauthentic behavior,” said Nathaniel Gleicher, the company’s head of cybersecurity policy, in blog post. Those pages and accounts have been removed.

“In total, more than 290,000 accounts followed at least one of these Pages, the earliest of which was created in March 2017,” Gleicher said. “The latest was created in May 2018.”

The New York Times was the first to report that the company had identified the operation.

What they’re saying: Gleicher said Facebook has not attributed the campaign to a specific actor like Russia’s Internet Research Agency, which was behind the 2016 campaign.

There are some similarities to what they say before and after the 2016 elections, and Facebook found evidence of some connections between recent accounts and IRA accounts that were disabled last year.

But there are also differences: “For example, while IP addresses are easy to spoof, the IRA accounts we disabled last year sometimes used Russian IP addresses. We haven’t seen those here,” Gleicher said.

Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg told reporters that the company is still investigating: “This is an early stage for us to be sharing this information because we don’t have perfect information.”

The content included several related to divisive political issues.

One post released by Facebook was posted by a page called “Resisters” and featured an image of President Trump with the text: “If Trump wants to beat Barack Obama’s Twitter record for most liked tweet he only needs to tweet 2 words ‘I resign.'”

The same page also created an event for a counter-protest to the upcoming ““Unite the Right” rally in Washington. “Inauthentic admins of the ‘Resisters’ Page connected with admins from five legitimate Pages to co-host the event,” said Gleicher.

Though the company released some sample posts from the pages, Facebook officials said on a call with reporters that it would not get into the broad details of the content — beyond what it had released publicly — but were working with researchers to evaluate it.

*** Early patterns, language and tactics are once again pointing to Russia, however that is not confirmed.

CNet: Facebook has discovered a new campaign of “inauthentic behavior” that’s used dozens of Facebook pages and accounts, and $11,000 worth of ads, to promote political causes prior to the US midterm elections, the social network said Tuesday.

The world’s largest social network is already in the hot seat with lawmakers over its role in the 2016 US presidential election. Russian trolls affiliated with the Kremlin-linked Internet Research Agency used a combination of paid ads and organic posts to spread misinformation and sow discord among voters ahead of the election.

In the wake of the scandal, Facebook made several changes to its advertising operations. They include a stricter verification process for political ads, and labeling ads with who paid for them. On Tuesday, Facebook’s head of cybersecurity policy, Nathaniel Gleicher, wrote in a company blog post that his team couldn’t say for sure who was behind the new campaign.

“Some of the activity is consistent with what we saw from the IRA before and after the 2016 elections,” Gleicher said. “And we’ve found evidence of some connections between these accounts and IRA accounts we disabled last year.” But there are differences as well, Gleicher said.

The people behind the new fake accounts are taking more steps to cover their tracks, and Facebook hasn’t found any activity coming from Russian IP addresses. What’s more, the ads were purchased in US and Canadian dollars.

Gleicher said there was a connection between the fake accounts and pages and planned protests in Washington next week.

Sen. Mark Warner, a Virginia Democrat who’s helped lead the Senate Intelligence Committee’s investigation into Russian efforts to influence the 2016 presidential election, said the news shows that social media remains a propaganda target for the Russians.

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“Today’s disclosure is further evidence that the Kremlin continues to exploit platforms like Facebook to sow division and spread disinformation,” Warner said, “and I am glad that Facebook is taking some steps to pinpoint and address this activity. I also expect Facebook, along with other platform companies, will continue to identify Russian troll activity and to work with Congress on updating our laws to better protect our democracy in the future.”

Facebook said it’s working with law enforcement to investigate the campaign.

Iran’s Actions in the Middle East, Where’s the Money?

Posted on July 30, 2018July 30, 2018 by Denise Simon

Obama admin secretly used the Federal Reserve Bank to move $8.6 million to Iran for nuclear-related material. Then they circled back and tried to use the Fed to move several billion dollars more for Iran. Note from State Dept meeting with Oman bank:

It is getting more nefarious since the Kerry/Obama team are gone and left lots of unfinished business behind, or just ignored it.

Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Corps are employing German companies to disguise their illicit funding of the war against the pro-US government in Yemen.

Time Magazine reported on Thursday: “For several years, Iran’s elite Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) had been using German front companies to buy advanced printing machinery, watermarked paper and specialty inks in violation of European export controls.”

According to interviews with US Treasury Department officials, Time added: “The IRGC had then printed counterfeit Yemeni banknotes potentially worth hundreds of millions of dollars and used the bogus rials to fund its proxy war against the beleaguered pro-US government in the capital of Sanaa. German companies were being used as a cover by the Iranians to finance the world’s worst humanitarian conflict.”

The report said that US officials, who uncovered the Iranian counterfeiting operation, met with their German counterparts at the Federal Ministry of Finance in Berlin last April.

The Jerusalem Post reviewed intelligence agency reports from German states covering Iran. The reports document Iran’s strategy of using front companies to engage in illicit procurement of nuclear and missile technology in Germany during 2017.

According to Time: “The evidence, uncovered by US illicit-finance investigators, was meant to sway the Germans, but not just in hopes of countering Iran’s moves on the southern tip of the Arabian Peninsula” but also “to convince Berlin that Tehran cannot be trusted and that the Germans should join the Trump Administration in imposing economy-crippling sanctions on Iran.”

US President Donald Trump issued an executive order in 2017 extending the designation of the IRGC as a terrorist organization. But Germany has declined to outlaw the IRGC as a terrorist entity. The mass circulation Bild reported on Thursday that Germany will permit former IRGC member Hadi Mofateh to run the Iranian regime-controlled Islamic Center of Hamburg.

Time wrote that weeks after the initial meeting in the German finance ministry, “American officials presented their hosts with one last set of documents: detailed blueprints on how the Trump Administration was preparing to unleash financial warfare on the Iranian economy.”

Germany is widely considered the least cooperative of the US’s European allies in confronting Iran’s bellicose activities, according to two sources familiar with US-German talks on the Iran nuclear deal. German exports to the Islamic Republic of Iran climbed to €3.5 billion in 2017, up from €2.6b. in 2016.

A German intelligence report from the city-state of Hamburg in July said Iran’s regime is continuing to seek weapons of mass destruction.

The Post reviewed the 211 page document that says: “some of the crisis countries… are still making an effort to obtain products for the manufacture of atomic, biological and chemical weapons of mass destruction (proliferation) and the corresponding missile carrier technology (rocket technology).”

The Hamburg report added: “The current main focus points of countries in the area of relevant proliferation activities are: Iran, Syria, Pakistan and North Korea.”

***

The Trump administration said in December that it believed 80 percent of the manpower supporting the Syrian regime was made up of “Iranian proxies,” including foreign Shiite fighters. Israel has accused Iran of sending as many as 80,000 fighters to Syria.

It is impossible to know the exact number of Afghan recruits in Syria, because many slip back and forth between Iran and Afghanistan, do not tell their families where they are, and hide their military service for fear of being sent to prison in Afghanistan for fighting on behalf of another country. Yet for some, especially those from the long-persecuted Hazara minority, it seems to be a secret badge of honor.

“Nobody forced us to go fight, but it gives you a kind of pride,” said Hussain, 26, a muscular Hazara man in Herat with scars on his face and hands from old shrapnel wounds. He has served in four deployments in Syria since 2014, earning upward of $600 a month, and returned again two months ago from the front. He said he originally decided to enlist while he was working as a carpenter in Iran and saw a video of Islamic State fighters chopping off victims’ heads. More details here.

London’s Crime is Surging and 80 Terrorists to be Released

Posted on July 30, 2018July 30, 2018 by Denise Simon

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London’s Mayor, Sadiq Khan is under fire for the growing crime in his city. How can the murder rate be higher than in New York?

As of March, London accounted for 17 percent of all recorded crime in England and Wales in the year prior, as well as 42 percent of all recorded robberies. A third of all knife crime took place in London as well.

London temporarily overtook New York in the number of murders in early 2018. In February, London’s police investigated 15 murders while New York saw 11 homicides. In March, the Metropolitan Police murder numbers increased further to 22, while the NYPD’s jumped to 21. New York has since recorded more murders.

Remember those Beatles, ISIS suspects? Well, Britain’s Home Office has suspended cooperation with the United States in extraditing them mostly due to the death penalty.

A combination picture shows Alexanda Kotey and El Shafee Elsheikh, who the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) identified as British nationals, in undated handout pictures in Amouda, Syria, released February 9, 2018 by the Syrian Democratic Forces.HANDOUT/REUTERS

Dozens of convicted terrorists are about to be released

BRITAIN is bracing itself, with 80 terrorists expected to be free to walk the streets by Christmas — and that’s not all the bad news.

AS MANY as 80 convicted terrorists will be free to roam British streets by the end of the year, including an Islamist preacher who urged people to join the Islamic State.

The extraordinary situation has arisen because about 40 per cent of the sentences for terrorism issued between 2007 and 2016 will have ended by Christmas — meaning police are powerless to stop them walking free.

Police and the government have admitted more resources will have to be pumped into keeping a close eye on the terrorists, at a time when resources are already stretched coping with a crime wave that has seen 80 killings in London so far this year.

UK Security Minister Ben Wallace said police would focus on getting them to “disengage” from extremism, but that would require a different approach than trying to prevent them being radicalised in the first place.

“It is a concern because what we are seeing nowadays is a large group of people who have effectively crossed the Rubicon to becoming radicalised. That is the mindset that they have now accepted or adapted,” he told BBC Radio.

To deal with the influx, police would be putting resources into efforts to “to try and make them disengage — that is slightly different from ‘deter them in the first place’ … and into how we effectively supervise them if they are released back into the community”.

That meant monitoring the terrorists, which inevitably would come at a cost both financial and through rediverting staff from other duties.

The actual number released could even be higher than 80, as some prisoners are eligible for release halfway through their sentences.

Those eligible for parole include Anjem Choudary, an Islamist preacher, who was jailed for five years in 2016 for inviting people to support Islamic State.

All the sentences given to people for financing terrorism, having terrorist information, or not disclosing information about terrorist acts, will have expired by the end of the year. Another two dozen will have lapsed by next year.

The discovery of the end of the sentences for 40 per cent of those issued between 2007-2016 was made by The Guardian last month. A former head of counter-terrorism, Richard Walton, told the paper the release of so many convicted terrorists was “worrying” — and any attempt to monitor them was “time-intensive” especially when the individuals knew they were being watched, so “often lie low for a period”.

Terrorist prisoners released on licence place a resource burden on both specialist counter-terrorism detectives and on mainstream policing. A risk-management process is used to monitor those released on licence and the monitoring of high-risk offenders is extremely resource-intensive.”

He went on to say: “Intelligence is often insufficient to gauge whether they have any intent to reoffend owing to their recent incarceration.”

That made monitoring them after their release even more difficult, especially as they were aware of the close attention security agencies were paying to them.

A program already exists to try to integrate terrorists back into the community, but so many returning to the community means extra vigilance will be needed.

To add to the problem the probation union has already warned its resources were stretched, while a 2016 review found extremism in British jails — where 700 inmates are considered to have extremist views — meant there was a real risk prisoners could be radicalised while they were behind bars.

News.com.au asked police what steps were being taken to ensure public safety given Mr Walton’s view and that of Mr Wallace, who believed there were challenges ahead.

A spokesman from the Met Police would only say they and intelligence agencies were working “tirelessly and at pace” to keep the public safe from terrorism.

“This includes monitoring and assessing existing and emerging threats and risks, including the release of convicted terrorists, and putting into place actions to mitigate them through a range of operations and activities.”

A Home Office spokesman told news.com.au national security would always be the government’s “main priority”.

“Terrorists released on licence are closely managed by the National Probation Service. They are subject to very restrictive licence conditions including, for example, living in approved premises; restrictions on movement and stringent curfews. Failure to adhere to conditions results in enforcement action, including prison recall.”

Terrorists are managed by multiple agencies and preparations begin months before their release. But the Home Office would not discuss specifics, and refused to say how many were being released.

“All offenders of extremist or terrorist concern are managed actively as part of a comprehensive counter-terrorism case management process. It would not be appropriate to release figures for how many of those offenders due to be released this year are deemed to be high risk.”

Since March last year there have been 12 terror plots thwarted and four other extreme far-right plots, and there can be up to 500 active investigations at any one time.

Meanwhile, this week a UK think tank urged the Government to replace laws surrounding treason that date back to 1351.

In a statement, Policy Exchange said a new treason law updated for modern times was needed, and argued a workable law of treason would mean offenders could be convicted and jailed for much longer.

“Many of them will … have betrayed this country. If they had been convicted of treason and imprisoned for life, the UK would be considerably safer,” the statement said.