UN Declares Sadness and Desperation in Venezuela is About Food

Posted on March 5, 2018March 5, 2018 by Denise Simon

Except for the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, Nikki Haley that is.

Amid growing food insecurity and rising malnutrition among children on the back of a protracted economic crisis in Venezuela, the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) on Friday called on all actors for rapid and coordinated assistance efforts to reach those most in need.

“While precise figures are unavailable because of very limited official health or nutrition data, there are clear signs that the crisis is limiting children’s access to quality health services, medicines and food,” said the UN agency in a news release, Friday, underlining the severity of the situation.

According to UNICEF, national reports in 2009 (the most recent official figures) showed that the prevalence of wasting (low weight to height ratio) in children under five was, at the time, 3.2 per cent.

However, more recent non-official studies indicate “significantly higher rates” of as much as 15.5 per cent, and an additional 20 per cent of children at risk of malnutrition.

Similarly, the State of Food Security and Nutrition in the World 2017 (a comprehensive report on the subject prepared by a number of UN agencies) suggested that undernourishment – a measure of hunger indicating the proportion of population with inadequate energy consumption – in Venezuela rose from 10.5 per cent in 2004-2006 to 13 per cent in 2014-2016.

In response, the Venezuelan Government has implemented measures to mitigate the impact of the crisis on the country’s children, including providing regular food packages at affordable prices to the most vulnerable families, cash transfers, and strengthening of nutritional and recuperation services.

“But more needs to be done to reverse the worrisome decline in children’s nutritional wellbeing,” said UNICEF, calling for the rapid implementation of a short-term response to counter malnutrition, based on disaggregated data and coordinated between the Government and partners.

On its part, the UN agency is working with the Ministry of Health, National Institute of Nutrition and the civil society to strengthen and expand nutritional surveillance at the community level and provide nutritional recuperation services through partners organizations.

The efforts are being implemented through activities such as nutrition screening days aiming to reach over 113,000 children, provision of supplementary and therapeutic foods when required, training programmes and communication campaigns, added UNICEF.

Venezuela has been mired in a socio-economic and political crisis since 2012 and has witnessed rising consumer prices even as the overall economy has contracted.

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Some 3 million Venezuelans—a tenth of the population—have left Venezuela since late leader Hugo Chavez started his socialist revolution in 1999. More than 500,000 have fled to Colombia—many illegally—hoping to escape grinding poverty, rising violence and shortages of food and medicine in the once-prosperous nation.

Photographer Jaime Saldarriaga joined Reuters journalists at the Paraguachón border crossing to document the exodus from Venezuela, which is now on a scale echoing the departure of Myanmar’s Rohingya people to Bangladesh.

Venezuelans line the street at the border between Venezuela and Colombia, in the city of Cúcuta. Jaime Saldarriaga/Reuters

Hundreds of migrants lugging heavy suitcases and overstuffed backpacks walk along the road to the Colombian border town of Maicao, beneath the blazing sun. The Venezuelans arrive hungry, thirsty and tired, often unsure where they will spend the night—but they are relieved to have escaped the calamitous situation in their homeland.

The broken line snakes back eight miles (13 km) to the border crossing, where more than a hundred Venezuelans wait in the heat outside the migration office.

Venezuelans walk along a highway in Colombia after crossing the border at Paraguachón. Jaime Saldarriaga/Reuters

Money-changers sit at tables stacked with wads of bolívares—Venezuela’s currency—made nearly worthless by hyperinflation under President Nicolas Maduro’s socialist government.

A money changer uses a calculator at the Paraguachón border crossing between Colombia and Venezuela. Jaime Saldarriaga/Reuters

“It’s migrate and give it a try or die of hunger there. Those are the only two options,” Yeraldine Murillo, 27, who left her six-year-old son behind in the Venezuelan city of Maracaibo, told Reuters. “There, people eat from the trash. Here, people are happy just to eat,” she said, adding she hopes to find work in Colombia’s capital, Bogotá, and send for her son.

Migrants told Reuters they were paying up to 400,000 bolívares for a kilo of rice in Venezuela. The official monthly minimum wage is 248,510 bolívares—around $8 at the official exchange rate, or $1.09 on the black market.

Food shortages, which many migrants jokingly refer to as the “Maduro diet,” have left people noticeably thinner than in photos taken years earlier for their identification cards.

Mechanic Luis Arellano and his children were among the lucky ones who found beds at a shelter in Maicao run by the Catholic diocese with help from the U.N. refugee agency. The 58-year-old said his children’s tears of hunger drove him to flee Venezuela. “It was 8 p.m. and they were asking for lunch and dinner and I had nothing to give them,” he said, spooning rice into his 7-year-old daughter’s mouth. He raised his children’s spindly arms and said: “[These aren’t] the size they should be.”

Read More: Venezuela Must Stop Presidential Elections

The shelter, where bunk beds line the walls of the bedrooms, provides food and shelter for three days and, for those joining family already in Colombia, a bus ticket onwards. It will soon have a capacity for 140 people a night—a fraction of the daily arrivals.

At another shelter in the border city of Cucuta, some 250 miles (400 km) to the south, people regularly spend the night on cardboard outside, hoping places will free up. The largest city along the frontier, Cucuta, has borne the brunt of the arriving migrants.

About 30,000 people cross the pedestrian bridge that connects the city with Venezuela on daily entry passes to shop for food.

The mass migration is stirring alarm in Colombia. A migration official told Reuters as many as 2,000 Venezuelans enter Colombia legally through the border crossing at Paraguachón each day, up from around 1,200 late last year. But officials estimate as many as 4,000 people cross illegally every day.

Colombia is letting the migrants access public health care and send their children to state schools. Santos is asking for international help to foot the bill, which the government has said runs to tens of millions of dollars.

Under pressure from overcrowded frontier towns such as Maicao, Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos announced a tightening of border controls this month, deploying 3,000 additional security personnel. But the measures are unlikely to stem the flow of illegal migrants pouring across the 1,379-mile (2,219 km) frontier.

While many feel a duty to welcome the migrants, in part because Venezuela accepted Colombian refugees during that country’s long civil war, others fear losing jobs to Venezuelans being paid under the table. After locals held a small anti-Venezuelan protest last month, police evicted 200 migrants who were living on a sports field, deporting many of them.

Migrants are verbally abused by some Colombians who refuse them work when they hear their accents, said Flavio Gouguella, 28, from Carabobo. “Are you a Veneco? Then no work,” he said, using a derogatory term for Venezuelans.

Locals also worry about an increase in crime and support police efforts to clear parks and sidewalks. They already have to cope with smuggled subsidized Venezuelan goods damaging local commerce, and have grown tired of job-seekers and lending their bathrooms to migrants. Spooked by police raids, migrants in Maicao have abandoned the parks and bus stations where they had makeshift camps, opting to sleep outside shuttered shops. Female migrants who spoke to Reuters said they were often solicited for sex.

Despairing of finding work, some entrepreneurial migrants turn the nearly worthless bolivar currency into crafts, weaving handbags from the bills and selling them in Maicao’s park. “This was made from 80,000 bolivars,” said 23-year-old Anthony Morillo, holding up a square purse featuring bills with the face of South America’s 19th-century liberation hero Simon Bolivar. “It’s not worth half a bag of rice.”

Despite four months of violent anti-government protests last year, Chavez’s successor Maduro is expected to win a fresh six-year term at elections on April 22. The opposition, whose most popular leaders have been banned from running, are boycotting the vote. Go here for more photos.

Obama, McDonough Lied by Omission: 2016 Election 7 States

Posted on February 28, 2018February 28, 2018 by Denise Simon

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DHS disputes the NBC reporting with the following:

Jeanette Manfra, National Protection and Programs Directorate (NPPD) Assistant Secretary for the Office of Cybersecurity and Communications, released the following statement regarding the recent NBC news coverage on the Department of Homeland Security’s efforts to combat election hacking.

“Recent NBC reporting has misrepresented facts and confused the public with regard to Department of Homeland Security and state and local government efforts to combat election hacking. First off, let me be clear: we have no evidence – old or new – that any votes in the 2016 elections were manipulated by Russian hackers. NBC News continues to falsely report my recent comments on attempted election hacking – which clearly mirror my testimony before the Senate Intelligence Committee last summer – as some kind of “breaking news,” incorrectly claiming a shift in the administration’s position on cyber threats. As I said eight months ago, a number of states were the target of Russian government cyber actors seeking vulnerabilities and access to U.S. election infrastructure. In the majority of cases, only preparatory activity like scanning was observed, while in a small number of cases, actors were able to access the system but we have no evidence votes were changed or otherwise impacted.

“NBC’s irresponsible reporting, which is being roundly criticized elsewhere in the media and by security experts alike, undermines the ability of the Department of Homeland Security, our partners at the Election Assistance Commission, and state and local officials across the nation to do our incredibly important jobs. While we’ll continue our part to educate NBC and others on the threat, more importantly, the Department of Homeland Security and our state and local partners will continue our mission to secure the nation’s election systems.

“To our state and local partners in the election community: there’s no question we’re making real and meaningful progress together. States will do their part in how they responsibly manage and implement secure voting processes. For our part, we’re going to continue to support with risk and vulnerability assessments, offer cyber hygiene scans, provide real-time threat intel feeds, issue security clearances to state officials, partner on incident response planning, and deliver cybersecurity training. The list goes on of how we’re leaning forward and helping our partners in the election community. We will not stop, and will stand by our partners to protect our nation’s election infrastructure and ensure that all Americans can have confidence in our democratic elections.”

U.S. intel: Russia compromised seven states prior to 2016 election

The U.S. intelligence community developed substantial evidence that state websites or voter registration systems in seven states were compromised by Russian-backed covert operatives prior to the 2016 election — but never told the states involved, according to multiple U.S. officials.

Top-secret intelligence requested by President Barack Obama in his last weeks in office identified seven states where analysts — synthesizing months of work — had reason to believe Russian operatives had compromised state websites or databases.

Three senior intelligence officials told NBC News that the intelligence community believed the states as of January 2017 were Alaska, Arizona, California, Florida, Illinois, Texas and Wisconsin.

The officials say systems in the seven states were compromised in a variety of ways, with some breaches more serious than others, from entry into state websites to penetration of actual voter registration databases.

While officials in Washington informed several of those states in the run-up to the election that foreign entities were probing their systems, none were told the Russian government was behind it, state officials told NBC News.

All state and federal officials who spoke to NBC News agree that no votes were changed and no voters were taken off the rolls.

After NBC’s report on the compromised states aired Tuesday night, Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Acting Press Secretary Tyler Houlton challenged its accuracy in a series of tweets. “NBC’s reporting tonight on the 2016 elections is not accurate and is actively undermining efforts of the Department of Homeland Security to work in close partnership with state and local governments to protect the nation’s elections systems from foreign actors,” wrote Houlton.

“As we have consistently said, DHS has shared information with affected states in a timely manner and we will continue to do so. We have no intelligence — new or old — that corroborates NBC’s reporting that state systems in seven states were compromised by Russian government actors. We believe tonight’s story to be factually inaccurate and misleading.”

On Wednesday morning, however, Michael Daniel, the top White House cybersecurity official at the end of the Obama administration, told NBC News that the government’s assessment when he left the White House in January 2017 was that networks in seven states were compromised. He said he could not account for whether that assessment had changed in the past year.

Daniel, who is now president of the Cyber Threat Alliance, an industry group, said it was the intention of the Obama administration to inform those states, “but clearly it didn’t happen the way that we wanted it to.”

He said he could not name the states because some of the assessment was based on classified information.

“This continued debate about whether or not the states were notified is actually distracting from the larger point, which is that we need to build the relationship between the federal government and state governments in the electoral area to improve cybersecurity,” he said.

“It is also easy to get lost in the cybersecurity industry’s ability to parse words, and the differing definitions of malicious cyber activity. But between what the states themselves detected and what the federal government detected through law enforcement and intelligence, it clearly showed a really broadbased Russian campaign to probe and figure out how they could gain access to different components of our electoral systems.”

According to classified intelligence documents, the intelligence community defines compromised as actual “entry” into election websites, voter registration systems and voter look-up systems.

NBC News reached out to all seven states that were compromised, as well as 14 additional states that DHS says were probed during the 2016 election.

To this day, six of the seven states deny they were breached, based on their own cyber investigations. It’s a discrepancy that underscores how unprepared some experts think America is for the next wave of Russian interference that intelligence officials say is coming.

Eight months after the assessment, in September 2017, the Trump administration’s DHS finally contacted election officials in all 50 states to tell them whether or not their systems had been targeted. It told 21 states they had been targeted, and U.S. officials acknowledged that some of those attempts had been successful.

“I think the Obama administration should have been doing much more to push back against the Russians across the board,” said Juan Zarate, an NBC News analyst who was deputy national security adviser for combating terrorism under President George W. Bush. “I think the U.S. was very meek and mild in how we responded to Russian aggression.”

Denis McDonough, who was Obama’s last chief of staff, strongly disagrees, arguing the administration acted to thwart the Russians before and after the election. Obama administration spokespeople also say they transmitted sensitive intelligence regarding state compromises to congressional leaders.

“The administration took a series of steps to push back against the Russians to include far-ranging sanctions, diplomatic steps to push people associated with the Russian effort out of this country and also warning our friends and allies,” he said.

The Trump DHS, like under the Obama administration, has declined to share the intelligence assessment of which states were actually compromised, according to state election officials.

This month, in an exclusive interview with NBC News, Jeanette Manfra, the current head of cybersecurity at DHS, said that “an exceptionally small number” of those 21 states “were actually successfully penetrated.” But Manfra declined to answer questions about the classified intelligence assessment, or to say specifically how many states had been penetrated.

Top election officials from all 50 states met in Washington this month for a National Association of Secretaries of State conference and received temporary security clearances for a classified threat briefing from intelligence officials. According to two officials present, one from the intelligence community and the other a state official, the actual intelligence on state compromises was not shared.

While numerous state election officials told NBC News that the Department of Homeland Security has been stepping up communications with them, many say they’re worried they are still not getting enough information from Washington.

Illinois itself had detected a “malicious cyberattack” on its voter registration system in the summer of 2016 and reported it to DHS, saying its voter rolls had been accessed but nothing had been altered. It is the only state to acknowledge actual compromise.

The other six states from the January 2017 assessment, however, say that when DHS told them last September that their systems had been targeted, it still did not tell them that their systems had been compromised. All six also say that based on their own cyber investigations, they believe their election systems were never compromised.

Three states said publicly in September that while some state websites were affected, none were directly related to voting; specifically, Texas, Wisconsin and California say some sites were “scanned.” But a former senior intelligence official told NBC News that these types of probes can also be serious, either as gateways to other networks or as reconnoitering for future attacks.

Fears of a repeat in 2018

Nearly 16 months after the presidential election, and more than eight months before the critical midterms, many state and federal officials are convinced the Russians will be back. They’re concerned that 2016 was laying the groundwork for a possible future attack.

“We have an extreme sense of urgency on insuring security of the 2018 elections, because you don’t get a chance to do it over,” said Alex Padilla, California’s secretary of state, who said there was no evidence of a successful hack in California.

Several state election officials, including Padilla, told NBC News they think they should have been told that U.S. intelligence agencies believed they’d been breached whether or not that turned out to be true.

“It is hugely imperative that intelligence be shared with state elections officials immediately in order to protect our election infrastructure and the integrity of election results,” Padilla said.

Reluctance to share the information may be due, in part, to the classification of the intelligence itself. Multiple intelligence officials told NBC News that determining the Russian government was behind the hacks depended on “exceptionally sensitive sources and methods” including human spies and eavesdropping on Russian communications.

No state election official at the time had a security clearance sufficient to permit access to such sensitive information, according to DHS.

“Look, whether or not state elections officials had the proper clearance has unfortunately been an excuse in my opinion, a bureaucratic response for why information or intelligence hasn’t been more quickly shared with state elections officials,” Padilla said.

“We’ve got to fix that right away, because it does us no good, [when somebody is] sitting in Washington, D.C., with a bit of information about a significant cyberthreat and elections officials and locals are completely unaware. That doesn’t help anybody and that needs to be addressed,” Padilla said.

Zarate said that he thought “too much of this has happened behind the veil of the government,” and that “much more has to be discussed openly with the public about what we know of the kinds of attacks that are happening, who may be behind them, and how we defend ourselves against [them].”

A spokesperson for Florida’s secretary of state, Mark Ard, said the state was informed by DHS in September 2017 that Florida had been targeted by hackers in 2016. “This attempt was not in any way successful and Florida’s online elections databases and voting systems remained secure,” Ard said.

Texas Secretary of State Rolando Pablos said in a statement that his agency had not seen any evidence that any voting or voting registration systems in Texas were compromised before the 2016 elections.

The public information officer for the Wisconsin Elections Commission said the commission has never detected a successful hack on its system, “nor has it ever been notified of one by the Department of Homeland Security or any other state or federal agency.”

A spokesperson for the Arizona secretary of state, Matt Roberts, said the state had still not been informed of a successful hack, and had seen no evidence of one. Roberts said the state had not been told that “ANY Arizona voting system has been compromised, nor do we have any reason to believe any votes were manipulated or changed. No evidence, no report, no nothing.”

Alaska did not respond to repeated requests for comment, but has previously denied that any breach occurred.

Bradley Moss, a lawyer specializing in national security, tried to lift the veil and find out what U.S. intelligence knew about the Russian attempts to compromise the voter system. He sued for disclosure of government files and won last week, receiving 118 top-secret pages from the intelligence community. The pages referred to “compromises” and other breaches but the pages were almost completely blacked out for security reasons.

Said Moss: “The spreadsheets show that there were documented breaches of election networks. That there were documented, numerous documented instances of attempted breaches of state election networks, and that there was a widespread concern among several agencies in the intelligence committee about the sanctity and the integrity of these election networks.”

In a statement, DHS said it has been working with state and local officials for more than a year on the issue.

“This relationship is built on trust and transparency, and we have prioritized sharing threat and mitigation information with election officials in a timely manner to help them protect their systems,” DHS acting press secretary Tyler Houlton said.

“In addition to granting state officials clearances to give them access to classified information, we work to declassify information rapidly and have the ability to grant one-day waivers when necessary to provide state officials with information they may need to protect their systems.

“We are committed to this work and will continue to stand by our partners to protect our nation’s election infrastructure and ensure that all Americans can have the confidence that their vote counts — and is counted correctly.”

A statement from the Office of the Director of National Intelligence said only: “The declassified Intelligence Community Assessment of January 6, 2017, found that Russian actors did not compromise vote tallying systems. That assessment has not changed.”

Next steps

At a Senate hearing on Tuesday, the National Security Agency director, Adm. Mike Rogers, acknowledged that the White House has not directed him to try to stop Moscow from meddling in U.S. elections.

Sen. Claire McCaskill, D-Mo., said that was “outrageous” and asked whether the U.S. was in a position to stop Russia from “doing this again.”

“We’re taking steps but we’re probably not doing enough,” Rogers said.

“I want to know, why the hell not?” McCaskill shot back. “What’s it going to take?”

While the FBI and the Department of Homeland Security say they are taking steps to shore up cyberdefenses, FBI Director Christopher Wray told Congress this month that the instructions did not come from the top.

When Sen. Jack Reed, D-R.I., asked Wray if the president had directed him or the bureau to take “specific actions to confront and blunt” ongoing Russian activities, Wray said, “We’re taking a lot of specific efforts to blunt Russian efforts.”

Reed then asked, “Specifically directed by the president?” Wray answered, “Not as specifically directed by the president.”

The White House on Tuesday pushed back on any suggestion they’re not doing enough, saying President Trump is “looking at a number of different ways of making sure that Russia doesn’t meddle in our elections.”

For the future, Zarate suggests taking a lesson from the past.

“After 9/11, the walls between law enforcement and intelligence sources had to be broken down in order to connect the dots,” Zarate said. “There has to be a whole-of-government and whole-of-nation approach to dealing with what is an assault on American democracy.”

Cyber: ‘Our adversaries have grown more emboldened’

Posted on February 27, 2018February 27, 2018 by Denise Simon

Primer:

Russia hasn’t been sufficiently penalized for its meddling in the 2016 U.S. elections and that has emboldened Moscow to continue interfering in American elections, Adm. Michael Rogers, Commander of the U.S. Cyber Command, told the Senate Armed Services Committee on Tuesday.

“They haven’t paid a price sufficient to change their behavior,” Rogers said under questioning by Sen. Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn. Although the United States has taken some actions, including imposing additional sanctions and Special Counsel Robert S. Mueller III has indicted more than a dozen Russians for their role in the interference, “it hasn’t changed the calculus,” Rogers said, adding that “it hasn’t generated the change in behavior that we all know we need.”

In another exchange with Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., Rogers said that Russian President Vladimir Putin has probably come to the conclusion that “that there’s little price to pay here so I can continue the activity” of interfering in the U.S. election system. More here.

*** In context however, where is Senator(s) Warren and Blumenthal’s proposed legislation on sanctions or punishment toward Russia for cyber and active measures interference? It was political posturing by Warren and Blumenthal when they can introduce multi-faceted legislation as Russia, China and North Korea continue to attack the United States via layered cyber operations including espionage.

Meanwhile…. Image result for admiral rogers nsa photo

WASHINGTON, Feb. 27, 2018 —

Although competitors such as China and Russia remain the greatest threat to U.S. security, rogue regimes such as Iran and North Korea have increased in capabilities and have begun using aggressive methods to conduct malicious cyberspace activities, the military’s top cyber officer told Congress today.

Navy Adm. Michael S. Rogers, director of the National Security Agency, commander of U.S. Cyber Command and chief of the Central Security Service, testified at a Senate Armed Services Committee hearing.

“Our adversaries have grown more emboldened, conducting increasingly aggressive activities to extend their influence without fear of significant consequence,” Rogers said. “We must change our approaches and responses here if we are to change this dynamic.”

But as the cyber domain has evolved, Rogers told the senators, Cybercom’s three major mission areas endure: protecting the Department of Defense Information Network; enabling other joint force commanders by delivering effects in and through cyberspace; and defending the nation against cyber threats through support to the Department of Homeland Security and others when directed to do so by the president or secretary of defense.

Cybercom Milestones

Rogers highlighted milestones in Cybercom’s growth.

Joint Force Headquarters DODIN, the subordinate headquarters responsible for securing, operating and defending the Defense Department’s complex information technology infrastructure, has achieved full operational capability, he said.

Joint Task Force Ares, created to lead the fight in cyber against the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria, has successfully integrated cyberspace operations into broader military campaigns, has achieved some “excellent results,” and will continue to pursue ISIS in support of the nation’s objectives, the admiral told the Senate panel.

Cybercom also has significantly enhanced training in cyber operation platforms to prepare the battlespace against key adversaries, he said.

Milestones expected to be achieved this year include Cyber Command’s elevation to a combatant command responsible for providing mission-ready cyberspace operations forces to other combatant commanders, Rogers said.

New Facility

In addition, the admiral said, Cybercom will be moving into a state-of-the-art integrated cyber center and joint operations facility at Fort Meade, Maryland, enhancing the coordination and planning of operations against cyber threats.

“Without cyberspace superiority in today’s battlefield, risk to mission increases across all domains and endangers our security,” Rogers said.

Cybercom’s focus on innovation and rapid tech development has extended all the way to small businesses and working with the private sector while maintaining cybersecurity, Rogers told the committee.

“We intend in the coming year to create an unclassified collaboration venue where businesses and academia can help us tackle tough problems without needing to jump over clearance hurdles, for example, which for many are very difficult barriers,” Rogers explained.

After serving more than four years as a commander of Cybercom and after nearly 37 years of service as a naval officer, Rogers is set to retire this spring.

“I will do all I can during the intervening period to ensure the mission continues, that our men and women remain ever motivated, and that we have a smooth transition,” he said.

N Korea Linked to Syrian Chemical Weapons

Posted on February 27, 2018February 27, 2018 by Denise Simon

While there has been some chatter that the United States would consider talks with North Korea, that likelihood appears rather dim.

Ambassador Joseph Yun, the special representative for North Korea Policy, is retiring this week after more than 30 years in the Foreign Service.

Yun is yet another member of the Senior Foreign Service who is leaving while the department is still under a hiring freeze and many top roles have not been filled.

There has been growing frustration among the diplomatic ranks over the Trump administration’s handling of foreign policy and Secretary of State Rex Tillerson’s “redesign” plan of the department. Spokesperson Heather Nauert said in a statement Yun was retiring for “personal reasons and the Secretary has reluctantly accepted his decision and wished him well.” More here.

Meanwhile….as more sanctions have been applied to North Korea, the Trump administration’s biggest national security challenge, the U.S. Treasury sanctioned one person, 27 companies and 28 ships, according to a statement on the U.S. Treasury Department’s website.

The United States also proposed a list of entities to be blacklisted under separate U.N. sanctions, a move “aimed at shutting down North Korea’s illicit maritime smuggling activities to obtain oil and sell coal.”

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UNITED NATIONS — North Korea has been shipping supplies to the Syrian government that could be used in the production of chemical weapons, United Nations experts contend.

The evidence of a North Korean connection comes as the United States and other countries have accused the Syrian government of using chemical weapons on civilians, including recent attacks on civilians in the Damascus suburb of eastern Ghouta using what appears to have been chlorine gas.

The supplies from North Korea include acid-resistant tiles, valves and thermometers, according to a report by United Nations investigators. North Korean missile technicians have also been spotted working at known chemical weapons and missile facilities inside Syria, according to the report, which was written by a panel of experts who looked at North Korea’s compliance with United Nations sanctions.

The report highlights the potential danger posed by any such trade between Syria and North Korea, which could allow Syria to maintain its chemical weapons while also providing North Korea with cash for its nuclear and missile programs.

The possible chemical weapons components were part of at least 40 previously unreported shipments by North Korea to Syria between 2012 and 2017 of prohibited ballistic missile parts and materials that could be used for both military and civilian purposes, according to the report, which has not been publicly released but which was reviewed by The New York Times.

The eight experts who make up the panel all come from different countries and possess specific expertise in areas like weapons of mass destruction, maritime transport and customs controls. Since 2010 the panel has had a mandate from the Security Council to investigate possible sanctions violations by North Korea and present its findings in an annual report.

Though experts who viewed the report said the evidence it cited did not prove definitively that there was current, continuing collaboration between North Korea and Syria on chemical weapons, they said it did provide the most detailed account to date of efforts to circumvent sanctions intended to curtail the military advancement of both countries.

William Newcomb, who was chairman of the United Nations panel of experts on North Korea from 2011 to 2014, called the report “an important breakthrough.”

Since the start of the Syrian civil war in 2011, there have been suspicions that North Korea was providing equipment and expertise to maintain the chemical weapons program of Syria’s president, Bashar al-Assad. Those suspicions were not assuaged when in 2013 Syria signed onto the Chemical Weapons Convention and claimed to give up its chemical weapons stocks.

“We knew stuff was going on,” Mr. Newcomb said. “We really wanted to up the game on chemical weapons programs, and we just weren’t able to get what we needed to do so.”

The report, which is more than 200 pages long, includes copies of contracts between North Korean and Syrian companies as well as bills of lading indicating the types of materials shipped. Much information was provided by unidentified United Nations member states. More here.

Money Approved in 2016 to Counter Russian Disinformation

Posted on February 27, 2018February 27, 2018 by Denise Simon

Government does move slowly, in some cases if at all at tackling specific issues. With the cheap but effective disinformation campaign launched by Russia via the Internet Research Agency during the U.S. election season, the Mueller operation continues including the indictment of several Russian operatives.

A little factoid which has not been covered by media, much less how the visa got approved is curious, but a former IRA supervisor from Russia has moved to Bellevue, Washington. She is running a blog…ah what? This suspected ex-troll factory manager talked of filing for a Social Security Number (SSN). Burdonova declined to comment to TV Rain about her reasons for the move to the U.S. and denied having worked for the Internet Research Agency. The IRA, since at least 2014, worked to “interfere with the U.S political system” in part by supporting Donald Trump and “disparaging” Hillary Clinton.

The organization used social media advertising to spread misinformation and even staged political rallies in the U.S., the indictment alleged. Officials from Facebook, Twitter and Google have admitted their platforms were abused. More here from Newsweek.

Image result for global engagement center state department rex tillerson photo

So, between the U.S. State Department and the Pentagon, $40 million has been allocated to the Global Engagement Center to counter the Russian disinformation operation and China or other rogue nations are not exempt from the soon to be American response.

The State Department describes it this way:

The work of the GEC is focused around four core areas: science and technology, interagency engagement, partner engagement, and content production.

Science & Technology: The GEC’s Science & Technology team is charged with enabling the U.S. government and its partners to increase the reach and effectiveness of their communications. The team conducts research on target audiences and utilizes data science techniques to measure the effectiveness of our efforts. Among other techniques, the Science & Technology team performs A/B testing and multivariate analysis to measure the effectiveness of our content distribution. The GEC utilizes hypothesis-driven experimentation and applies a “create-measure-learn” approach to its activities to maximize effectiveness.

Interagency Engagement: The GEC liaises regularly across the interagency and coordinates closely with the relevant national security departments and agencies to identify efficiencies and opportunities in the messaging and partnership space. The GEC’s staff includes detailees from throughout the interagency, including the Department of Defense, Intelligence Community, United States Agency for International Development, and Broadcasting Board of Governors.

Partner Engagement: One of the GEC’s overarching strategies is to identify, cultivate, and expand a global network of partners whose voices resonate with individuals most vulnerable to harmful propaganda. These partners work tirelessly to drive a wedge between susceptible audiences and those nations, groups, and terrorists seeking to influence them. The GEC conducts on-the-ground training sessions to enable these partners to develop their own content and disseminate it through their distribution networks. The GEC also leverages rigorous research and data science to improve tactics and techniques and inspire innovation.

Content Production: The GEC and its partners have established programming across multiple platforms, including social media, satellite television, radio, film, and print. This programming is conducted in various languages, including Arabic, Urdu, Somali, and French. These platforms allow the U.S. government and its partners to inject factual content about terrorist organizations into the information space to counter recruitment and radicalization to violence. They also allow us to develop and disseminate messaging on effective themes, such as exposing ISIS’s financial and governance failures; its violence against women, children, and religious minorities; and its ongoing territorial losses.

The GEC is currently led by Acting Coordinator Daniel Kimmage.

Congress had mandated the initiative to counter propaganda and disinformation after Russia’s meddling in the 2016 US election. Lawmakers and career foreign service officers were deeply critical when Tillerson didn’t move to use any of the funding, and cited his inaction as another example of the agency’s dysfunction.

A similar operation was allegedly applied to counter Islamic State Islamic propaganda and sophisticated media messaging. Measuring effectiveness is still in question.