Category Archives: Failed foreign policy

Have You Met Christiana?

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  • She is a member of the Carbon Finance Advisory Panel
  • She is an Advisory Committee Member of Green Cross International, founded by Pres. Gorbachev
  • She is an invited member of the Clinton Global Initiative
  • She is a member of the Global Roundtable on Climate Change led by Jeffrey Sachs at Columbia University
  • She is a technical advisor to the Prototype Carbon Fund at the World Bank
  • She was personally trained by Al Gore to deliver his presentation of ‘An Inconvenient Truth’
  • She is the Executive Secretary of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change
  • She even blogs at the UNFCCC

Are you beginning to see a crusader here because there is notoriety and money and power involved? Wonder how many times she has visited the White House…

UN Climate Chief: We Are Remaking The World Economy

The United Nation’s climate chief says that reordering the global economy to fight climate change is the “most difficult” task the international body has ever undertaken.

“This is probably the most difficult task we have ever given ourselves, which is to intentionally transform the economic development model, for the first time in human history,” Christiana Figueres, who heads up the U.N.’s Framework Convention on Climate Change, told reporters.

“This is the first time in the history of mankind that we are setting ourselves the task of intentionally, within a defined period of time, to change the economic development model that has been reigning for the, at least, 150 years, since the industrial revolution,” Figueres said.

Figueres’s remarks come ahead of a meeting in Geneva next week where delegates will pour over draft treaty texts that the U.N. hopes countries will agree to in December. She doesn’t expect global warming to be solved by one treaty, but was optimistic in will be solved in the coming years. “That will not happen overnight and it will not happen at a single conference on climate change, be it COP 15, 21, 40 – you choose the number,” she said. “It just does not occur like that. It is a process, because of the depth of the transformation.”

The climate chief even held up President Obama as a shining example of steps countries can take to tackle global warming.

“The international community is quite grateful for the fact that in his second term, President Obama has turned his attention quite clearly and quite decisively to climate change,” Figueres told reporters.

“He has not only spoken about his commitment both to his national agenda on climate change, but also to the international process, and has been quite clear in his political leadership,” Figueres said, touting the EPA’s success cutting carbon dioxide emissions from power plants.

The EPA will finalize rules to cut carbon emissions from new and existing power plants this summer. Critics of these rules say they will hurt the economy through job losses and higher energy prices. Supporters, however, say it will spur green energy development and set an example for other countries to follow.

Obama’s 2016 budget proposal boosts EPA funding to help it finalize emissions rules for power plants. The budget would also give the EPA $4 billion to reward states that reduce emissions even more than federal mandates require.

Figueres also cheered Obama’s agreement with China to reduce carbon emissions by 2030 and to give the U.N.’s climate fund a $3 billion boost.

“So for all of these reasons, certainly a very welcome leadership from the United States as a single nation,” Figueres said. “Countries can attain a certain level of emission reductions on their own, but they can do much more if they collaborate with each other, in particular with certain specific sectors.”

But while Figueres seems rosy about a deal, there are already signs of countries backing away from a tough international climate treaty.

France’s foreign minister, Laurent Fabius, told an audience at an event in New Delhi, India that a climate treaty should not hurt national economic growth. “An agreement that would leave some countries to consider their growth hampered by its provisions will not be accepted,” Fabius said. *** If you can stand this nonsense and fleecing of policy and global threats, you can read more here about Christiana. One more thing, controlling climate change brings gender equality….really?

 

Cyber-attacks surging in Utah

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NSA facility is likely cause….

SALT LAKE CITY — Utah state officials have seen what they describe as a sharp uptick in attempts to hack into state computers in the last two years, and they think it related to the NSA data center south of Salt Lake City.

The increase began in early 2013 as international attention focused on the NSA’s $1.7 billion warehouse to store massive amounts of information gathered secretly from phone calls and emails.

“In the cyber world, that’s a big deal,” Utah Public Safety Commissioner Keith Squires told a state legislative committee this week.

While most of the attempts are likely innocuous, cyber experts say it is possible low-level hackers, “hactivists” unhappy with the NSA’s tactics, and some foreign criminal groups might erroneously think the state systems are linked to the NSA.

“Maybe these hackers are thinking: ‘If we can attack state systems, we can get info that NSA isn’t releasing,” said Richard Forno, director of the University of Maryland, Baltimore County’s, graduate cybersecurity program.

The state tracks the attempts with an automated system it purchased after a breach of health care information in 2012. The system detects, stops and counts the attempts to get into the computers, Squires said.

With that new equipment in place in January 2013, the state was seeing an average of 50,000 a day with spikes up to 20 million, Squires told The Associated Press. In February 2013, the number rose to an average of 75 million attacks a day, with up to 500 million on some days.

Attacks include direct attacks on websites, emails fishing for passwords, and something called “port scans,” where people probe a computer looking for weak spots.

The NSA didn’t immediately have any comment about the attacks.

Tim Junio, a cybersecurity researcher at Stanford University, said what officials refer to as “attacks” are likely just “noise from low-tech people rather than concerted efforts for meaningful foreign intelligence collection.”

But both Forno and Junio agree the NSA data center could draw the attention of hackers who think they can target state-run utilities that power the center. Being able to disrupt an NSA operation in any way would bring international notoriety to a foreign state or criminal group, Junio said.

State officials acknowledge that part of the increase is driven by an overall rise in hacking across the country. Hackers’ motivations vary, and it was impossible to determine what might be behind the activity in Utah.

Some steal personal information, like customer lists, to commit identity theft. Some take control of email servers to steal messages, send unwanted advertising or disguise the origin of their communications. Some steal corporate or government secrets from email or cloud servers, or use unlocked file servers as digital “dead drops” for their hacking tools, pirated movies, stolen files and more.

For hackers seeking notoriety, the NSA would be a prized target because it employs the world’s best hackers and routinely gives advice about how to keep computers safe from online criminals.

*** How much more do you really need to know?

In the 10 years since the Pew Research Center and Elon University’s Imagining the Internet Center first asked experts about the future of cyber attacks in 2004 a lot has happened:
 Some suspect the Russian government of attacking or encouraging organized crime assaults on official websites in the nation of Georgia during military struggles in 2008 that resulted in a Russian invasion of Georgia.
 In 2009-2010, suspicions arose that a sophisticated government-created computer worm called “Stuxnet” was loosed in order to disable Iranian nuclear plant centrifuges that could be used for making weapons-grade enriched uranium. Unnamed sources and speculators argued that the governments of the United States and Israel might have designed and spread the worm.
 The American Defense Department has created a Cyber Command structure that builds Internet-enabled defensive and offensive cyber strategies as an integral part of war planning and war making.
 In May, five Chinese military officials were indicted in Western Pennsylvania for computer hacking, espionage and other offenses that were aimed at six US victims, including nuclear power plants, metals and solar products industries. The indictment comes after several years of revelations that Chinese military and other agents have broken into computers at major US corporations and media companies in a bid to steal trade secrets and learn what stories journalists were working on.
 In October, Russian hackers were purportedly discovered to be exploiting a flaw in Microsoft Windows to spy on NATO, the Ukrainian government, and Western businesses.
 The respected Ponemon Institute reported in September that 43% of firms in the United States had experienced a data breach in the past year. Retail breaches, in particular, had grown in size in virulence in the previous year. One of the most chilling breaches was discovered in July at JPMorgan Chase & Co., compromised. Obama Administration  officials have wondered if the breach was in retaliation by the Putin regime in Russia over events in Ukraine.
 Among the types of exploits of individuals in evidence today are stolen national ID numbers, pilfered passwords and payment information, erased online identities, espionage tools that record all online conversations and keystrokes, and even hacks of driverless cars.
 Days before this report was published, Apple’s iCloud cloud-based data storage system was the target of a so-called “man-in-the-middle” attack in China that was aimed at stealing users’ passwords and spying on their account activities. Some activists and security experts said they suspected the Chinese government had mounted the attack, perhaps because the iPhone 6 had just become available in the country. Others thouThe threat of cyber attacks on government agencies, businesses, non-profits, and individual users is so pervasive and worrisome that this month (October 2014) is National Cyber Security Awareness Month.
To explore the future of cyber attacks we canvassed thousands of experts and Internet builders to share their predictions. We call this a canvassing because it is not a representative, randomized survey. Its findings emerge from an “opt in” invitation to experts, many of whom play active roles in Internet evolution as technology builders, researchers, managers, policymakers, marketers, and analysts. We also invited comments from those who have made insightful predictions to our previous queries about the future of the Internet.

It is NOT Just George Soros

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Soros Clones: 5 Liberal Mega-Donors Nearly as Dangerous as George Soros

From Buffett to Bloomberg, top left-wing supporters give $2.7 billion to push a liberal agenda.

Born: June 21, 1967

Net Worth: $7.6 Billion

Foundation: Omidyar Network Fund, Democracy Fund

Rating: 2 out of 5

Media Outlets: First Look Media, Center for Public Integrity, Center for Responsive Politics, Sunlight Foundation

EBay founder and chairman Pierre Omidyar took the idea of funding the liberal media one step further when he built a media powerhouse all of his own. He used $250 million of his own money and created the news start-up First Look Media.

Omidyar staffed First Look with career liberal journalists from other outlets, including The Guardian’s Glenn Greenwald and Slate’s Matt Taibbi. Greenwald’s liberal rants now have a prominent place at The Intercept, First Look’s online magazine. That was the only news-oriented part of the website up and running at the time of this report.  

Greenwald was one of two journalists entrusted by Edward Snowden with the leaked NSA documents. (The other, Laura Poitras, also works at The Intercept.) According to the outlet’s own website, The Intercept’s “short-term mission is to provide a platform to report on the documents previously provided by NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden.”

According to Greenwald, The Intercept launched earlier than originally planned due to an “obligation to the NSA documents to have a place to report them.” Besides reporting on the Snowden documents, The Intercept promised to “move forward with what we believe is essential reporting in the public interest.”

Because of his connection to Snowden, Greenwald’s romantic partner, David Miranda, was temporarily held at London’s Heathrow airport in August 2013 under the U.K.’s Terrorism Act 2000. British authorities confiscated Miranda’s external hard drive containing “58,000 highly classified UK intelligence documents,” according to Greenwald’s then-employer The Guardian. Starting in June, 2013, Greenwald wrote a series of articles publicizing material from Snowden’s stolen files.

Omidyar prefers to keep his own politics quiet, but his funding revealed what his words didn’t. Through his foundation, the Omidyar Network Fund, he gave more than $213 million to liberal organizations – in addition to the $250 million he spent on First Look.

The liberal groups he funded included George Soros’ Open Society Foundations, the Tides Foundation (a foundation used to funnel liberal money anonymously to a variety of causes), as well as left-wing journalism groups like the Center for Public Integrity and the Center for Responsive Politics.

Another one of Omidyar’s pet projects was promoting the idea of a “post-political” world. At first, the idea of a world without political bickering might sound appealing, but Omidyar’s end goal was to limit political opposition to the majority.

Omidyar himself said as much in the announcement notice for the creation of his latest grantmaking operation, the Democracy Fund. In the January 2013 open letter, Omidyar repeatedly accused the Republican-dominated Congress of being run by “big donors and lobbyists,” as well as being “dominated by the demonization of opponents and deceptive political rhetoric.”

Partial List of Omidyar’s Donations Since 2004:

  • First Look Media: $250,000,000
  • Sunlight Foundation: $20,505,184
  • Center for Public Integrity: $2,150,000
  • Open Society Foundation (London): $677,142
  • Tides Center: $501,000

 

Conclusion

George Soros doesn’t work alone. Despite liberal cries about conservative “dark money,” the left continued to be financed by an intricate network of dozens of millionaires, billionaires and foundations. This report highlighted only a handful of the most prominent members of this group.

The media coverage of these liberal donors was inexcusable. It was not the job of the media to promote or applaud partisan efforts, and it was negligent of them to ignore or bury connections between liberal policy initiatives and the liberals who funded them. Journalists were far more apt to cover conservative billionaires and their influence than they were to cover liberal billionaires.

As George Soros retires more and more from the political funding spotlight, liberal bankrollers like Buffett, Bloomberg, Steyer, Omidyar and the younger Soros were vying to take his place. And this report is just the tip of that iceberg. There are dozens of other millionaires, billionaires and political game changers on the left. Several big liberal players were not included in this report, including Rob McKay, the Taco Bell heir and big campaigner for higher minimum wage laws; George Kaiser, the billionaire oil tycoon who invested heavily in Oklahoma politics; Drummond Pike, the creator of the highly influential Tides Foundation.

Methodology

For this Special Report, the MRC’s Business and Media Institute looked at 990 tax returns for foundations and nonprofits associated with Bloomberg, Buffett, Steyer, Omidyar and Soros. These tax returns are available through Guidestar and the Foundation Directory. All net worth amounts come from the Forbes Billionaires List.

To gauge the media coverage of these liberal donors, BMI looked for mentions of their names in Nexis transcripts for the morning and evening news shows on ABC, CBS and NBC from January 2001 to June 2014.

Recommendations for Journalists

The Business and Media Institute has the following recommendations for journalists who are reporting on political organizations, donors and funding.

  • Follow the Money: Liberal billionaires funded a wide range of political organizations and media groups. These groups were then considered authorities by major media outlets, including ABC, NBC, CBS and CNN. Instead, reporters should challenge the biases of these groups.
  • Treat Public Figures Equally: Media outlets are quick to report on funding by Charles and David Koch to conservative organizations, but they often completely ignore the wide range of funding by liberal donors. Among them, these five liberal donors are worth more than $109 billion dollars, and they aren’t alone.
  • Dig Into Backgrounds of Both Sides: The Society of Professional Journalists Code of Ethics states that journalists should, “Support the open exchange of views, even views they find repugnant.” It is incumbent upon journalists to analyze the background and funding sources for groups and individuals on both ends of the political spectrum.

— Mike Ciandella is MRC Business Senior Analyst at the Media Research Center. *** If you are rolling your eyes by now, it gets worse, add in the interference regarding the Ukraine.

Gitmo Detainee Joined ISIS, Dead by Drone

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(CNN)He was a Taliban commander captured by the United States and held at Guantanamo Bay. But he was let go and returned to Afghanistan. Mullah Abdul Rauf went on to become a recruiter for ISIS in Afghanistan.

He was killed in a drone strike Monday, two officials told CNN.

Rauf and five others were killed, four of them Pakistani militants, said Mohammed Jan Rasoulya, the deputy governor of southern Helmand province. A senior Afghan security source confirmed Rauf’s death.

The Washington Post, in a headline last month, called him “the shadowy figure recruiting for the Islamic State in Afghanistan.”

The New York Times called him the “militant commander at the center of the concerns in Helmand Province” but said some local Taliban figures “dismiss claims” that he had established “a significant new Islamic State cell in Helmand Province.”

He was known to many with the name “Khadim” tacked on to the end of his name.

“Until 9/11, the hard-nosed Khadim commanded (Taliban creator) Mullah Omar’s elite mobile reserve force, fighting regime opponents all over Afghanistan,” Newsweek wrote of Rauf in a 2011 list of list of most-wanted insurgents. “Arrested and sent to Guantanamo soon after the Taliban’s collapse, he was released in late 2007, having convinced his jailers that he wanted only to go home and tend his farm. Escaping from house arrest in Kabul, he fled to Pakistan.”

Although the United States does not publicize the names of detainees at Guantanamo, a document posted by WikiLeaks showed that the United States recommended Rauf be “transferred to the control of another country for continued detention” as early as 2004.

In a 2011 hearing of the House Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations — part of the Armed Services Committee — a lawmaker asked about Rauf and another former detainee.

Ed Mornston, director of the Joint Intelligence Task Force of the Defense Intelligence Agency, responded that “there have been instances where detainees who have been transferred from Gitmo have reengaged and have been in the fight and have impacted the lives of U.S. service members. We do track that. I can’t discuss that much further in this open session, but we do in fact know that that has happened.”

*** But what else needs to be known about Afghanistan…..

Report: Afghan police-Taliban ties being investigated

KABUL, Afghanistan — Afghanistan’s national spy service is investigating the police force in Kunduz, a northern province that has fallen prey to criminal gangs, The New York Times reported Sunday.

So far at least 32 police officers have come under suspicion, a member of Parliament from Kunduz, Abdul Wadud Paiman, and other officials told the Times. Of those, more than a dozen police officers have been arrested, including several senior commanders, a spokesman for the governor, Wasi Basil, said. Others have been fired or suspended.

Mullah Mujahid, a Taliban commander in Kunduz province, was arrested last month. Under interrogation, the Times wrote, Mujahid began describing how police officers helped Taliban fighters, sometimes selling them ammunition, other times tipping them off to impending police operations, and began naming names, Paiman said.

The number of officers involved makes it one of the most significant corruption investigations within the national police force in years, the Times wrote. Although the police force in Afghanistan has a reputation for corruption, charges are rare.

                                       

Security in the province, which shares a border with Tajikistan, has worsened in recent years. By some estimates, Kunduz has about 3,000 armed militiamen, the paper reported.

By late last year, with most foreign troops departed, the Taliban effectively controlled two of the districts in Kunduz. President Ashraf Ghani has declared Kunduz a priority and appointed a new governor and security officials for the province. The army sent in troop reinforcements from a neighboring province.

It is not entirely clear why the most recent arrest of Mujahid, in mid-January, turned out so differently from his previous arrests, Paiman is reported as saying.

Mujahid, who is 30 years old and whose actual name is Anwar ul Haq, remains in custody, Paiman said, telling the Times, “Mullah Mujahid confessed in the interrogation and named who helped them from within the police.”

For the moment, it is not entirely clear whether investigators believe Mujahid’s allegations are credible. But the accusations against the officers go beyond selling ammunition, a not uncommon form of corruption, officials said.

Some have been accused of “sending information to the militants so that the Taliban could plan their attacks or ambushes,” Basil told the Times.

The Cuban Adjustment Act ala Mexico

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The Cuban Adjustment Act of 1996 (CAA) provides for a special procedure under which Cuban natives or citizens and their accompanying spouses and children may get a green card (permanent residence). The CAA gives the Attorney General the discretion to grant permanent residence to Cuban natives or citizens applying for a green card if:

They have been present in the United States for at least 1 year
They have been admitted or paroled
They are admissible as immigrants

HAVANA — President Obama’s opening to Cuba has accelerated a surge in Cuban migration to the United States, the latest U.S. statistics show, as many on the island grow worried that America’s long-standing immigration benefits for Cubans are now in jeopardy.

Last month the Coast Guard intercepted 481 Cubans in rickety boats and rafts, a 117 percent increase from December 2013. But the boaters account for only a fraction of those attempting to reach the United States. At the Miami airport and ports of entry along the Mexican border, the number of Cubans who arrived seeking refuge jumped to 8,624 during the last three months of 2014, a 65 percent increase from the previous year.

Many Cubans have heard warnings for years that their unique immigration privileges — which essentially treat anyone from the island who sets foot on U.S. terra firma as a political refugee — would not last forever.

Mexican border now a major entry point for Cuban migrants

Although a homemade raft overloaded with desperate people is the most enduring image of the decades-long migration to the U.S. from Cuba, that is not the way most Cubans without visas now arrive.

Most walk across the Mexican border.

“It is surprising. And it is surprising that we are now seeing those numbers officially reported,” said Jorge Duany, a Florida International University professor who studies migration patterns. During the last three months of 2014, nearly 6,500 Cubans arrived at the U.S.-Mexico border, according to U.S. Customs and Border Protection. That figure is up from 4,328 from the same period the previous year, an increase of 50 percent.

Sombrero Beach, in Marathon, Florida

The number of Cubans without visas processed through the agency’s Miami field office more than doubled over that same period, rising from 893 to 2,135. Many flew directly to Miami aboard flights from Spain, South America, the Bahamas or the Cayman Islands, using passports from Spain and other third countries.

The 1,900-mile long Southwest border, for years the main entry point for undocumented migrants from Mexico and Central America, was also ground zero for a recent spike in Cuban migrants.

The spike includes arrivals of Cubans by air and sea, and was fueled in part by fears that talks between the Obama Administration and Cuba could result in changes in the preferential treatment undocumented Cuban migrants have enjoyed since 1966.

Rumors that the Adjustment Act — and the 1995 amendment providing for the so-called “wet-foot, dry-foot” policy – was at risk began to sweep the island in the wake of President Obama’s Dec. 17 speech in which he said the U.S. wanted to normalize relations with the Castro government. Existing policies allow Cubans who reach U.S. soil– with or without visas – to stay and within a year apply for permanent residency.

“The primary concern is the possibility of the Cuban Adjustment Act being affected,” said Oscar Rivera, director of the resettlement agency Church World Service in Doral. “That seems to be an issue in Cuba right now. That’s what we’re hearing.”

The surge in Cuban migrants triggered by the announcement may be most evident in the number of Coast Guard interdictions at sea. In December 2014, 331 Cubans in boats and rafts were stopped before they could reach the U.S. All were taken back to Cuba. During the last three months of 2014, 132 Cubans made it to shore in Florida, up from 105 during the same period in 2013, according to Border Patrol figures. Unknown is the number who landed without being detected and did not report to U.S. officials, or who perished at sea. But balseros, or rafters, make up only a fraction of those attempting to reach the U.S. “It is no longer chiefly the heroic individual who floats himself across,” said Duany, director of FIU’s Cuban Research Institute. “Much of the traffic in people now is well-organized by smuggling groups. It is how the coyotes (smugglers) make a living.”  Many of those Cubans who enter the U.S. through Mexico begin their journey in Ecuador. In the past six years, more than 100,000 Cubans have left the island for the Andean nation because Ecuador does not require a visa or special permission to visit.

Ramon Saul Sanchez, leader of the anti-Castro group Democracy Movement, said the Cuban government welcomes the flow of its citizens to South America, through Mexico and into Florida because it relieves social pressure on the island.

Once in the U.S., those arrivals then “refresh the source of income” to Cuba by sending money home to relatives on the island, Sanchez said.

Cubans also enter the U.S. with visas issued by the Interest Section in Havana. Current accords call for a minimum of 20,000 visas a year, but Duany said that recently the number of visas issued has averaged 32,000 annually.

Regardless of any changes to the Cuban Adjustment Act, or the lifting of the embargo, Duany predicts migration from Cuba will increase over the next decade. “The economic conditions, the living conditions in Cuba, don’t seem to improve, and the force of family ties remains strong,” he said. “I don’t see any indication that will change.”  David Abraham, a University of Miami law professor and expert in Cuban migration, agrees. “Change in Cuba comes slowly,” he said. “What’s driving people to come here doesn’t change. That’s economic opportunity.”