Category Archives: Failed foreign policy

North Korea’s Underwater War

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S. Korea slams North over submarine, artillery deployments

Seoul (AFP) – North Korea has mobilised dozens of submarines and doubled its artillery units along the border, South Korea said Sunday, accusing Pyongyang of undermining top-level talks aimed at averting a military confrontation.

A defense ministry spokesman said 70 percent of the North’s total submarine fleet — or around 50 vessels — had left their bases and disappeared from Seoul’s military radar.

The movement of such a large number of submarines was “unprecedented,” the spokesman said, adding that Seoul and Washington were beefing up their military surveillance in response.

“The number is nearly 10 times the normal level… we take the situation very seriously,” he said.

The North has also doubled the number of artillery units along the heavily-fortified land border with the South, he added.

The move came as top officials from both Koreas resumed a talks aimed at easing military tensions after a marathon negotiating session the night before ended without final agreement.

“The North is adopting a two-faced stance with the talks going on,” said the spokesman.

Yonhap news agency, citing military officials, said the submarine deployment was the largest since the end of the 1950-53 Korean War.

“No one knows whether the North will attack our warships or commercial vessels… we are mobilising all our surveillance resources to locate them,” it quoted one military official as saying.

The North operates more than 70 submarines — one of the world’s largest fleets — compared to about 10 in the South, according to Seoul’s latest defense white paper.

The South accused Pyongyang in 2010 of using a submarine to torpedo a Seoul warship resulting in the loss of 46 lives — a charge the North denied.

Tension flared on the Korean peninsula after Seoul accused Pyongyang of planting landmines across the border that earlier this month maimed two South Korean soldiers.

Pyongyang denied involvement but Seoul retaliated by resuming loudspeaker propaganda broadcast hated by the North along the border on August 10.

The North’s leader Kim Jong-Un last week ordered his military to move to a war-footing after an exchange of artillery fire on Thursday that claimed no casualties but further escalated tensions.

We have counter-measures my friends but this is a dangerous time, no doubt.

There are more measures and operations is full use, but it would not be prudent to note those here, for operational security reasons.

However, it should be know that China has yet another piece of advance technology that we should know about.

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We have those too and certainly more lethal.

Remember, China never innovates, they only imitate, which is to say they hack and steal anything and everything. Question is who are they sharing it with… Some sources for underwater technology are here.

 

Why Should the Civil War in Syria Concern You?

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Latakia, Syria is one of the locations of Bashir al Assad’s homes. It has been yet one of many sites of deadly hostilities since the civil war began.

Syrian airstrikes just killed 50 rebels that have been taking the fight against the Assad regime.

Latakia is 4th largest city in Syria, made up of mostly Alawites, a culture from the 9th century and the Assad family dynasty is Alawite, which is to say, an Alawite is known to be from Ali ibn Abi Talib, the son in law of the prophet Mohammad. During the Ottoman Empire, the Alawites were suppressed and an attempt was make to convert them to Sunni.

Anyway, Latakia is no more the destination of choice for the elites of the Middle East. The video above demonstrates how ordinary citizens have become crafty fighters, trained on their own and resourceful when it comes to using powerful military gear, weapons, procurement and to what end?

Consider, there has been a generation that has now passed where children are now adults and their only known education is a battlefield, shelling, fighting, use of weapons and no peace. No one can determine how long this war will continue, yet with the Iranian war machine in full support of Bashir al Assad, it will continue. For generations to come, new breeds will be battlefield tested and experienced and where will our own in the United States be?

Let that sink in.

Who is This David Kendall, the Clinton’s Lawyer

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If and it is a big IF, some of the Hillary emails in question were not marked with any classified designations, then one must take a hard look at all of Hillary’s inner circle with particular emphasis on Huma Abedin. Why? Huma sent emails to Hillary which was a collection of several classified electronic dispatches that were classified and summarized them into a regular and unprotected email. Confused? More here. Heh, there were passages about snipers, people movement and vehicles.

It seems the New York Times has an axe to grind with the Clintons, imagine that. But the NYT is the go to media outlet when it comes to the White House and it cannot be forgotten that it was in fact the New York Times that was first to draw blood with regard to the Clintons. This was likely due to, but not proven at the hands of Valerie Jarrett protecting the White House from any concocted Clinton scheme and scandal.

Do, who is David Kendall? There must be some praise to the New York Times as they did list some, albeit, some Clinton scandals but the list if far from complete.

As a side matter, it will also come down to who can out-lawyer who in Washington DC…will Kendall always win?

From Whitewater to Email: David Kendall, the Clintons’ Dogged Lawyer

WASHINGTON — At first, he had to worry about a remote piece of land in Arkansas that no one wanted. Then there were billing records that went missing before mysteriously reappearing in the White House. And of course there was the blue dress.

Today, the object of concern for David E. Kendall is a tiny thumb drive that sat in a safe at his law firm until a couple weeks ago before attracting the attention of Congress, the F.B.I. and the news media. Once again, the whirlpool of Washington politics has arrived at Mr. Kendall’s doorstep as he defends perhaps the world’s most famous client.

For more than 20 years, Mr. Kendall has been on the front lines for Bill and Hillary Rodham Clinton as their personal lawyer, battling investigators and litigants in the superheated environment where law and politics meet. From Whitewater to impeachment, he has waged legal warfare to keep the Clintons’ political careers on track. So as Mrs. Clinton faces questions about her use of a personal email server as secretary of state, no one is surprised she turned to Mr. Kendall.

The latest furor has put Mr. Kendall under a spotlight in a way that discomfits the tight-lipped and camera-shy lawyer. From Mrs. Clinton’s foes come public questions about why he had the thumb drive containing her email and whether he secured it properly. From Mrs. Clinton’s friends come private questions about whether he has managed the situation effectively and whether he should be more outspoken to protect a Democratic presidential candidate leading in the polls.

“They always say, ‘Is Kendall the lawyer to do this or that?’” said James Carville, the former political strategist for Mr. Clinton who expresses great admiration for Mr. Kendall. “I never saw that there was a huge conflict. But you know, sometimes lawyers are lawyers and spokespeople are spokespeople.”

Mr. Kendall, said Mr. Carville, is not a public pit bull. “He has no bluster about him,” Mr. Carville said. “He’s aggressive, but he doesn’t have an in-your-face kind of thing about him. I don’t think he views that as his role. The chances that he’s going to talk to the press are way beyond remote.”

Unsurprisingly, Mr. Kendall declined to comment last week. But he enjoys Mrs. Clinton’s deep confidence.

“He has their complete trust, and he’s earned their complete trust,” said Robert Barnett, another lawyer for the Clintons and a partner with Mr. Kendall at Williams & Connolly in Washington. “There’s nobody more dedicated to his clients than David Kendall. There’s nobody who spends more time thinking about how to help his clients than David Kendall.”

To critics, that is the problem. Mr. Kendall, who turned over the thumb drive to the Justice Department on Aug. 6, has become so integrated into the Clinton apparatus that he risks crossing the line from lawyer to participant, they said. Two Republican senators wrote him letters in recent weeks questioning his handling of the thumb drive.

“The problem with the Clintons is once you begin working with them or acting as their agent you often get caught up in their scandals,” said Tom Fitton, the president of Judicial Watch, a watchdog group suing over Mrs. Clinton’s email. “So now Mr. Kendall is stuck having to explain his handling of the classified information Mrs. Clinton gave him.” More from the NYT’s here.

How Servers are Really Involved in Hillary’s Server-Gate

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Hillary admits during an interview she has an iPad and iPhone along with her NON-Government issued Blackberry.

Okay, we were told that Bill had one and it was not expandable for Hillary to use when she was a senator. She bought one of her own. Then we hear about a server that was in a bathroom, a server that was in a data center in New Jersey, yet are we sure we have an accurate could, an accurate handle on locations and what does the FBI have at this point?

Hillary’s emails WERE backed up to another server – and it may still exist – as the FBI works to figure out how well the data was scrubbed

DailyMail: Tens of thousands of emails once housed on former secretary of state Hillary Clinton’s private computer server were moved to another device after a Colorado company took possession of the device in 2013, leaving open the possibility that copies of messages Clinton later chose to delete might still exist.
The FBI seized the server this week in a stunning move, signaling a new intensity in the investigation into whether Clinton knowingly send or received top-secret classified information through her private address while she was America’s top diplomat.
Bloomberg reported Thursday night that Barbara Wells, an attorney for Platte River Networks, Inc., confirmed that while the server hardware now controlled by the FBI ‘is blank and does not contain any useful data,’ its contents could still be safe and sound elsewhere.
That’s because the server’s messages were ‘migrated’ to another server that still exists, she said, before ending the Bloomberg interview without specifying where that device is located and who owns it – only that her company no longer has it.

‘The data on the old server is not now available on any server or device that is under Platte River’s control,’ Wells said.
A Monmouth University poll, released Wednesday, shows that 52 per cent of American voters believe the federal government should pursue a criminal investigation in the case.
That number might soon grow: The Monmouth survey was conducted before the server landed in the hands of law enforcement, along with three thumb drives held by her lawyer that reportedly contain raw copies of 30,490 emails she handed over to State Department investigators late last year.
A random sample of 40 of those messages examined by U.S. Intelligence Community Inspector General Charles McCullough’s office included two that contained information later classified as ‘top secret.’
Another 31,830 emails, however, were deleted at Clinton’s request after her staffers sifted through them and determined that they were personal in nature.
Republicans on Capitol Hill cried foul in March after she casually acknowledged during a combative press conference that she had made that decision without oversight from anyone in government.
Clinton and her presidential campaign have insisted, most recently in a 4,000-word explanation this week, that those messages were not work-related.

Clinton used an ‘@clintonemail.com’ address exclusively during her four years as secretary of state instead of keeping her correspondence on a ‘@state.gov’ account. That made it more likely that her emails were open to hackers, and made it impossible for the State Department to keep a complete archive.
An aide to a Republican member of the Senate Intelligence Committee told DailyMail.com that McCCullough has been pressed to give Congress regular updates if more classified information is discovered.
‘We’re not letting go of this,’ he said, while denying that going after Clinton was a political exercise.
‘I don’t care if it’s Hillary Clinton or Ted Cruz,’ he said, naming a Texas senator who is running for president, but who is not a committee member. ‘If we don’t aggressively follow this wherever it leads, what good are we?’
It’s not clear if Clinton’s long-deleted data actually exists on another machine, even though Wells says it was once moved there.
But even if it’s gone for good, the FBI’s digital forensic experts may be able to recover some or all of it from the ‘clean’ Platte River server – depending on the method that was used to ‘wipe’ it.
Methods also exist to determine if traces of a malicious hack remain behind.
Hard drives store information in large sections that are separate from a ‘directory’ block – a sort of table of contents that tells a computer where to find each file’s many constituent pieces. Click here for a timeline of email facts, dates and people.

 

Hillary’s Team Now Attacking Gowdy’s Document Protections

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Jake Sullivan, Hillary’s policy advisor and Cheryl Mills, the aide and lawyer for Hillary are slated to testify before the Benghazi commission the first week of September. Answering questions about the destroyed Blackberry cell phones will be among the questions.

Meanwhile, the Hillary camp is shooting arrows at the Gowdy Benghazi commission over its own protections of classified documents. Desperation and accusations are becoming a daily occurrence.  Honestly, this smacks of the Benghazi co-chair, Elijah Cummings working in collusion with the Hillary team.

In July:

Politico: At least two former top aides to former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton have turned over documents to the State Department in response to a request sent to 10 former officials in March asking them to return any official agency records in their possession, according to a court filing late Tuesday.

Former Clinton Chief of Staff Cheryl Mills and former Director of Policy Planning Jake Sullivan produced “a number” of records through their attorneys on June 26, State Department records official John Hackett said in a declaration submitted in connection with a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit filed by the conservative group Judicial Watch. More here.

Hillary Clinton aide: Gowdy committee has classified docs on server, too

Politico: Hillary Clinton’s campaign, under fire over the ongoing emails controversy, is pointing a finger at House Republican Benghazi investigators, accusing the panel of having classified documents on an unsecured system just like Clinton did.

On a phone call Friday afternoon, campaign spokesman Brian Fallon said the House Select Committee on Benghazi had on an unsecured computer system at least one Clinton email that State did not consider classified — but which the intelligence community now considers classified.

“[Benghazi Chairman] Trey Gowdy treated emails, in this case, in the same way Hillary Clinton did, considering them unclassified and … storing them on unclassified computer systems,” Fallon said. “So in light of this I don’t really see what leg Congressman Gowdy has to stand on in his criticisms of Secretary Clinton on this point.”

Fallon called on Gowdy personally to confirm the allegation, suggesting perhaps he could also have to turn over his staff’s technology like Clinton has done with the Justice Department: “By the same logic that is now being applied to Hillary Clinton’s email, some could say that the House Benghazi Committee should also have its systems looked at to see if they have emails that are now considered classified.”

A Gowdy aide rejected the comparison. The executive branch has classification authorities, so if a classified document was sent to the legislative branch unclassified, Congress isn’t in a position to change the marking.

“We didn’t put it in the bathroom,” a GOP committee spokesperson said sarcastically, referring to a report last week that the small Denver-based computer company that handled Clinton’s email stored its servers in a bathroom closet. “Our system and server for handling classified information in electronic format was subjected to and passed a year of painstaking planning, documentation, and review by numerous security and IT professionals in the Intelligence Community.”

A spokesman for Democrats on the Benghazi panel said the committee was “instructed that it needed to move the document from unclassified computer systems and files to classified computer systems and files,” after the FBI discovered a line that they wanted classified.

The staffer said the panel isn’t to blame — just as Clinton isn’t. “[L]ike Secretary Clinton, Committee members and staff could not have known to treat that document as classified when we received it, because it was not marked or easily identifiable as classified information.”

The attempt to redirect questions about Clinton’s email practices back at congressional investigators comes amid a cacophony of headlines about the issue. On the heels of the bathroom report, a federal judge said this week that Clinton violated government policy with her email set-up.

Fallon was referring to one of the original Clinton emails that subsequently raised flags with the FBI: a Nov. 18, 2012 missive detailing arrested suspects involved in the attack that left four Americans dead in the 2012 Benghazi attacks, sent by State official William Roebuck, now U.S. Ambassador to Bahrain.

Fallon said the committee received copies of the email months ago because the State Department did not — and still does not — consider it classified. But the intelligence committee is arguing that the information is indeed secret and sensitive, and should therefore be classified.

“Since the State Department provided the email forwarded by [top Clinton policy aide] Jake [Sullivan] to the Benghazi Committee several months before the FBI asked for any redaction, it has seemed to us highly plausible that for several months Congressman Gowdy’s staff may have been treating the email as unclassified just as we did and handling it on unclassified systems on Capitol Hill,” Fallon said.

Fallon also praised Gowdy for complaints the South Carolina Republican made in July about over-classification of documents. On July 8, Gowdy sent a letter to the Obama Administration asserting that overly aggressive classification of documents was hindering his information gathering.

“It’s not just the Clinton campaign saying that there’s a lean in favor of over-classification in government… it turns out that Trey Gowdy himself agrees with us,” he said.