Europe on the Brink of Collapse: Schengen Agreement Suspended

Posted on September 13, 2015September 13, 2015 by Denise Simon

As posted on this site earlier, the Schengen Agreement, the open European borders treaty is now in question as suspension has happened between Germany and Austria.

A raw and partial translation into English from the German labor minister:

Federal Labour Minister Andrea Nahles warned in a tedious process of integration of the refugees coming to Germany. Not even one out of ten bring with the requirements to be conveyed directly in a work or training, the SPD politician said on Thursday in the Bundestag: “Usually lack the knowledge of German, but also other.” Nahles: “not all who come, there are highly qualified. Clearly, this is not so. The Syrian physician is not the normal case.” Although she was convinced that we will be able to provide first aid treatment of refugees. But Nahles is skeptical to the labour market. You need in most cases “supplementary qualification”, in many cases but only “an undergraduate education”.

Nahles said: “that is reflected in the unemployment statistics. I hope that everyone who says today that do we press, we take on the people we want to remember that even in a year.” This is “Then there’s no sign of a failed labour market policy, but a sign that we a running task must cope with a large.”

In the parliamentary debate on the budget for her Department, Nahles underlined that she will require 2016 expected to an additional three billion euros in its budget. Alone for the livelihood of refugees who are expected to remain in Germany, she count on spending from one to two billion euros. Nahles said one could say still no exact number. This depends on how quickly how many asylum applications are accepted and how many family members would comply. For programmes for the integration into the labour market, she quote 600 million to 1.1 billion euros. An additional 180 million euros would be needed for work-related courses. It will be not enough that they turn for a year “in crisis mode”, “and then everything goes back to normal”.

This is a historic moment for Europe due to the hundreds of thousands refugees flooding into every country and the consequences for Europe’s stability is in question. Social and entitlement programs will be insolvent, crime has risen to epic numbers, protests and civil unrest is an hourly occurrence, the banking and currency system is in jeopardy. These are all conditions and tools that America must learn quickly to not fall victim to the same circumstance.

Congressman Mike McCaul had this message this weekend:

To speak of the terror threat and jihad recruiting component is capping off dangerous environment.

Islamists in Germany trying to recruit young refugees

Berlin (AFP) – Muslim radicals in Germany are trying to recruit some of the growing numbers of asylum seekers reaching the country, according to intelligence services quoted by the German news agency DPA.

The Islamic extremists “are trying to approach the young unaccompanied refugees, who arrive in our country without their families and are particularly looking for contacts and support,” a spokesman for the intelligence service in the southern state of Bavaria told DPA.

He said many of the youths are approached around reception centres but also at Munich railway station where many of the asylum seekers have arrived from Hungary and Austria in recent days.

The Islamic extremists “want to take advantage of the insecurity and distress of the refugees,” he said.

***

‘We can’t take any more!’ Germany stops ALL trains from Austria as they reintroduce border controls and temporarily suspend Schengen Agreement

Germany has become the destination for many desperate Syrian refugees

Munich, which has been the main entry point, is now at breaking point

Germany has announced a reintroduction of ‘temporary’ border controls

The move marks a dramatic shift back from Europe’s Schengen agreement

Europe is struggling to deal with the huge influx of people fleeing violence

German politicians have called for urgent action on the migrant crisis as the country today halted all trains from Austria due to an overwhelming influx of refugees.

This evening Germany reinstated controls at its borders with Austria in an historic move which saw the open borders Schengen Agreement temporarily suspended.

The decision marks a dramatic shift away from the current abolishment of passport checks throughout Europe’s Schengen zone.

German Interior Minister Thomas de Maiziere said: ‘At this moment Germany is temporarily introducing border controls again along [the EU’s] internal borders. The focus will be on the border to Austria at first.

‘The aim of these measures is to limit the current inflows to Germany and to return to orderly procedures when people enter the country.

Mr de Maiziere added: ‘This step has become necessary. The great readiness to help that Germany has shown in recent weeks… must not be overstretched.’

The Interior Minister did not specify how long the border controls would remain in place or give details of exactly how incoming migrants would be handled. He said there could be disruption to rail travel. Most migrants have been arriving by train.

Germany’s national railway, Deutsche Bahn, said it had halted service between Austria and Germany for 12 hours at authorities’ orders.

The rules of Europe’s passport-free travel zone, known as the Schengen area, allow countries to reintroduce controls in exceptional circumstances, and the European Commission said that ‘the current situation in Germany … appears to be a situation covered by the rules.’

In a statement the EU executive said: ‘The temporary reintroduction of border controls between member states is an exceptional possibility explicitly foreseen in and regulated by the Schengen Borders Code, in case of a crisis situation.’

It added that the executive would keep the situation under review and said the aim would be to return to the normal situation of no border checks between member states of the Schengen zone ‘as soon as feasible’.

The European Commission added: ‘The German decision of today underlines the urgency to agree on the measures proposed by the European Commission in order to manage the refugee crisis.’

It is not yet clear exactly what the temporary measures include, but the move comes as German authorities have warned they are at ‘the limit’ in coping with the migrant crisis, with locals claiming Munich is on the brink of collapse.

German newspaper Bild cited security sources as saying the state government in Bavaria had asked the federal police to help deal with the task.

The newspaper said the federal police would send 2,100 officers to Bavaria to help it secure its borders.

Germany has become the destination for many desperate Syrian refugees fleeing their war-torn home country, after it waived EU rules in August.

Tens of thousands of people have crossed Austria by train on their way to Germany since the two countries threw open their borders to the migrants last weekend. A record number were expected to enter Austria from Hungary on Sunday.

The German government announced the nation would take in applications for Syrian asylum-seekers, regardless of where they first arrived in the EU.

Munich, in Germany’s southern state of Bavaria, has been the main entry point for those entering the country.

Some 13,015 refugees arrived in Munich yesterday alone and 1,400 more are expected to reach the city today – but there are fears it is already at breaking point.

A police spokesman in Munich said: ‘Given the numbers from yesterday, it is very clear that we have reached the upper limit of our capacity.’

Federal transport minister Alexander Dobrindt added how ‘effective measures are necessary now to stop the influx’. For the photo essay and complete story, click here.

Even Russia is Cheating When it Comes to Gold

Posted on September 12, 2015September 12, 2015 by Denise Simon

In 2012, a Russian agent (spy) who worked for a bank as cover was arrested in New York. The criminal complaint is here.

Then there were the Russian gangs (mafia) in New York in the last decade.

A former correspondent for the venerable emigre newspaper “Novoye Russkoye Slovo,” Grant has cultivated convicted murderers and extortionists as sources and landed interviews with notorious reputed crime kingpins like Ukrainian-born Semion Mogilevich, listed by the FBI on its “10 Most Wanted” list of fugitives.

When bodies began piling up in the turf wars that rocked Russian-speaking New York neighborhoods like Brighton Beach in the 1990s, it was Grant that U.S. journalists turned to to make sense of the murky motivations and underworld machinations behind the bloodshed.

Putin’s agents in America have been very busy.

Ever since Putin reclaimed the presidency last year, the trampling of the rule of law has only accelerated. It is now being used to stifle the last remnants of political opposition. There are lots of recent examples, like the bogus charges brought against Alexei Navalny, the heroic investigative blogger, and the posthumous case currently being prosecuted against, believe it or not, Sergei Magnitsky. And then there’s the case of Dmitry Gudkov and his father, Gennady.
Both men were opposition politicians in Russia’s Duma. Both supported the Sergei Magnitsky Act, which President Obama signed in December and which freezes the U.S. assets of Russian government officials who are labeled “gross human rights violators.” Putin and his underlings are understandably threatened by the new law. They have retaliated by passing a bill banning the adoptions of Russian children by Americans. (That’s right. The Putin government is getting back at the United States by punishing Russian orphans.) Gennady Gudkov, a former K.G.B. official, had built a security company, Oskord, with some 4,000 employees. Last summer the government conducted an “inspection” and found the company to have committed numerous violations. It quickly put Oskord out of business. Two months later, a committee of the Duma charged Gudkov with violating Duma rules and tossed him out of Parliament. More details here.

Would those Russian diamonds be fake by chance in New York?

Zerohedge: Over the past several years, incidents involving fake gold (usually in the form of gold-plated tungsten) have emerged every so often, usually involving Manhattan’s jewerly district, some of Europe’s bigger gold foundries, or the occasional billion dealer. But never was fake gold actually discovered in the form monetary gold, held by a bank as reserve capital and designed to fool bank regulators of a bank’s true financial state. This changed on Friday when Russia’s “Admiralty” Bank, which had its banking license revoked last week by Russia’s central bank, was reportedly using gold-plated metal as part of its “gold reserves.”

According to Russia’s Banki.ru, as part of a probe in the Admiralty bank, the central bank regulator questioned the existence of the bank’s reported quantity of precious metals held in reserve. Citing a source, Banki.ru notes that as part of its probe, instead of gold, the “regulator found gold-plated metal.”

The Russian website further adds that according to “Admiralty” bank’s financial statements, as of August 1 the bank had declared as part of its highly liquid assets precious metals amounting to 400 million roubles. The last regulatory probe of the bank was concluded in the second half of August, said one of the Banki.ru sources. Another source claims that as part of the probe, the auditor questioned the actual availability of the bank’s precious metals and found gold-painted metal.

The website notes that shortly before the bank’s license was revoked, the bank had offered its corporate clients to withdraw funds after paying a commission of 30%. This is shortly before Russia’s central bank disabled Admiralty’s electronic payment systems on September 7.

Admiralty Bank was a relatively small, ranked in 289th place among Russian banks in terms of assets. On August 1 the bank’s total assets were just above 8 billion roubles, while the monthly turnover was in the order of 40-55 billion rubles. The balance of the bank’s assets was poorly diversified: two-thirds of the bank’s assets (4.9 billion rubles) were invested in loans. The rest of the assets, about 30%, were invested in highly liquid assets.

Or at least highly liquid on paper: according to Banki.ru the key reason for the bank’s license revocation was the central bank’s insistence that the bank had insufficient reserves against possible loan losses.

The Russian central bank has not yet made an official statement.

The first question, obviously, is if a small-to-mid level Russian bank was using gold-plated metal to fool the central bank about the quality of its “gold-backed” reserves, how many other Russian banks are engaged in comparable fraud. The second question, and perhaps more relevant, is how many global banks – especially among emerging markets, where gold reserves remain a prevalent form of physical reserve accumulation – are engaging in comparable fraud.

Finally, what does this mean for gold itself, whose price on one hand is sliding with every passing day (thanks in part to what is now a record 228 ounces of paper claims on every ounce of physical gold as reported before), even as it increasingly appears there is a major global physical shortage. If the Admiralty bank’s fraud is found to be pervasive, what will happen to physical gold demand as more banks are forced to buy the yellow metal in the open market to avoid being shuttered and/or prison time for the executives?

Obama Applying Every Nasty Political Tactic to Close Gitmo

Posted on September 12, 2015September 12, 2015 by Denise Simon

Bypass Congress, throw in the Iran deal, sanctions, vetoes and more. The White House may even threaten Secretary of Defense Ash Carter with his job as he did with former Secretary Hagel.

A sample detainee:

Bid to Shutter Gitmo Roils Pentagon, White House, Congress

WASHINGTON (AP) – The Obama administration’s struggling quest to close the U.S. detention center at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, is mired in state and federal politics. Frustrated White House and Pentagon officials are blaming each other for the slow progress releasing approved detainees and finding a new prison to house those still held.

Defense Secretary Ash Carter is facing criticism from some administration officials who complain that he has not approved enough transfers, even though 52 Guantanamo detainees are eligible. Carter’s predecessor, Chuck Hagel, was forced from the Pentagon job in part because the White House felt he was not moving quickly enough to send detainees to other countries.

Two officials said the White House is frustrated because President Barack Obama discussed the issue with Carter when he was hired this year to lead the Defense Department, and they believed Carter was on board with the White House’s plans to act faster.

Other U.S. officials note that Carter has approved some transfers and is pushing his staff to move quickly to get more to his desk. But many other proposed transfers are slogging through the bureaucracy, under review by a long list of defense, military, intelligence and other administration offices. The transfers cannot be approved unless officials believe the detainees will not return to terrorism or the battlefield upon release and that there is a host country willing to take them.

During his two years as Pentagon chief, Hagel approved 44 detainee transfers. Carter, in his first seven months, has transferred six.

Obama has promised to close the facility since he was a presidential candidate in 2008. He said it ran counter to American values to keep people in prison, many without criminal charges or due process.

Opponents have argued the detainees are essentially prisoners of war.

From a peak of 680 prisoners, 116 remain. Finding acceptable places for them has been an intractable problem.

“Finding a solution for these individuals involves complicated negotiations with international partners, extensive consultations with the leaders of the national security and legal organizations and final approval by me,” Carter told reporters.

A key player in the process is Gen. Martin Dempsey, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Dempsey, who spent more than three years as a commander in Iraq, continues to be very cautious in his recommendations for transfers. His opinions carry a lot of weight.

According to U.S. officials familiar with the process, Carter recently notified Congress of two transfers, and has four whose files are ready to go to Capitol Hill, likely later this month. Congress has 30 days to review the transfers before they are made public.

A number of U.S. officials familiar with the ongoing discussions spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to talk about the subject publicly.

The movement of detainees is only part of the challenge. A greater hurdle will be finding a U.S.-based prison to house the 64 detainees considered too dangerous to be sent to another country. Congress has opposed any effort to bring detainees to America, so Obama’s long-stated goal of closing Guantanamo before he leaves office in January 2017 is more likely to die on the steps of Capitol Hill.

Aware of those objections, the White House last month stalled Pentagon efforts to send a plan to Congress outlining several U.S. prisons that could be upgraded and used for the detainees. Early drafts of the plan included some rough estimates of the costs and the time needed for renovations.

U.S. officials said the administration was worried that sending the plan to Congress could affect the crucial vote on the Iran nuclear deal by infuriating lawmakers who do not want the detainees moved to the U.S. or who adamantly oppose having them in a prison in their state or district. The resolution of disapproval of the Iran deal failed in the Senate, handing Obama a victory on that issue.

Three to five civilian facilities are being eyed as potential sites, officials said. A Pentagon team has gone to military facilities in South Carolina and Kansas to develop better estimates of construction and other changes that would be needed to house the detainees as well as conduct military commission trials for those accused of war crimes.

The visits to the Navy Consolidated Brig in Charleston, South Carolina, and the United States Disciplinary Barracks at Fort Leavenworth in Kansas triggered immediate outrage from lawmakers and governors there.

Republican Govs. Nikki Haley of South Carolina and Sam Brownback of Kansas have threatened to sue the administration if detainees are brought to either state.

Both the House and Senate have pending legislation that would maintain prohibitions on transferring detainees to U.S. facilities. The Senate legislation allows the restrictions to be lifted if the White House submits a plan to close the facility and it’s approved by Congress.

GOP Sen. John McCain of Arizona, chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, has made it known he would consider a comprehensive plan to close Guantanamo, but said it must include answers to a number of tough legal and policy questions, including whether detainees held in the U.S. would have additional rights.

Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., has opposed using the Charleston brig because it is in a populated area.

Sen. Pat Roberts, R-Kan., has said flatly that, “Not on my watch will any terrorist be placed in Kansas.”

Carter has acknowledged the challenge of getting a U.S. facility approved by Congress, but has insisted that some lawmakers have indicated a willingness to consider a plan.

“This would be a good thing to do if – if we can all come together behind a plan to do it,” Carter told reporters. “Our responsibility is to provide them with a plan that they can consider that is a responsible one.”

Criminal Network Tactics on Europe’s Refugee CrISIS

Posted on September 12, 2015September 12, 2015 by Denise Simon

ISIS Terrorist Arrested in Stuttgart “Refugee” Center; “Boxes” of Fake Syrian Passports Intercepted

An ISIS terrorist posing as an “asylum seeker” has been arrested by German police in a “refugee” center in Stuttgart, and German customs officers have seized boxes containing Syrian passports being smuggled into Europe.

masked-ISIS

According to a report carried by RTL’s German language service, the terrorist is a 21-year-old Moroccan using a “false identity” who had registered as an asylum seeker in the district of Ludwigsburg. He was identified after police linked him to a European arrest warrant issued by the Spanish authorities. He is accused of recruiting fighters for ISIS, where he acted as a contact person for fighters who wanted to travel to Syria or Iraq.

This first confirmed arrest of a bogus “asylum seeker” came simultaneously with the admission by a German finance ministry spokesman that “boxes” of fake Syrian passports, destined for sale and distribution to the hordes of nonwhite invaders seeking to settle in Europe as bogus “war refugees,” had been seized.

That news, carried in a report by the German Tagespiegel newspaper, also revealed that 10,000 fake Syrian passports were seized by police in Bulgaria, on their way to Germany.

The finance ministry official said both genuine and forged passports were in the packets intercepted in the post. Possession of these passports is a vital part of claiming “asylum” as “war refugees.”

The Tagespiegel also revealed that the fake Syrian passports are being sold for about $1,500 each—and the fact that many of the “refugees” can afford to buy multiple passports is yet another indication of the bogus nature of their claims to be “asylum seekers.”

Significantly, the Tagespiegel article continued, “It is not only Syrians who are interested in Syrian passports. Refugees from Iraq, Afghanistan, and Pakistan want to become Syrian in order to secure their recognition as asylum seekers in Western Europe. According to press reports, nine out of ten refugees who came from Macedonia to Serbia claimed they were Syrians.”

The trade in fake Syrian passports was also confirmed by the head of the EU frontier police, Fabrice Leggeri, in a recent interview with the Europe 1 TV station.

Leggeri told Europe 1 that the trade in fake Syrian passports originated in Turkey. “There are people who are now in Turkey, buying false Syrian passports because they have obviously realized that it is a windfall since Syrians get asylum in all Member States in the European Union,” he said.

“People who use false Syrian passports often speak in Arabic. They may originate in North Africa or the Middle East, but have the profile of economic migrants.”

*** Second Tactic

Muslim Migrants Converting to Christianity to Improve Asylum Chances

Muslim migrants in Germany are converting to Christianity “in droves” in the hope it will improve their chances of winning asylum.

Hundreds of Iranians and Afghanis have been baptised at Trinity Church, a Lutheran church in Berlin, where Pastor Gottfried Martens offers a three-month “crash course” for new converts.

AP reports on one baptism where Martens asked Iranian refugee Mohammed Ali Zonoobi: “Will you break away from Satan and his evil deeds? Will you break away from Islam?” To which Zonoobi fervently responded: “Yes”.

Martens then baptised him “In the name of the Father, Son and Holy Ghost.” Mohammed renamed himself Martin.

Martin Zonoobi, a carpenter from Iran, arrived in Germany with his wife and children five months ago. He is one of many who have converted, with many claiming true belief has prompted them.

However, Pastor Martens admits that some convert just to improve their chances of winning asylum in Germany – as Christians who have apostatised from Islam they are likely to suffer heavy persecution if they are sent home.

Martens says motive is not important, however. “I know there are – again and again – people coming here because they have some kind of hope regarding their asylum,” he said.

“I am inviting them to join us because I know that whoever comes here will not be left unchanged.”

Many are so taken by the Christian message that they end up genuinely changing their beliefs anyway, Martens says. He adds that of those who have converted, only around one in ten stop attending church afterwards.

Although being Christian alone does not mean they will automatically win asylum – Merkel has even said that Islam “belongs in Germany” – many hope this will be enough to sway authorities.

None will openly admit converting just for asylum purposes as it could lead to them being deported as Christian coverts, possibly facing the death penalty when they return home.

Martens’s church is now reporting a surge in the congregation from 150 two years ago to more than 600 now. Some of the migrants coming to be converted are travelling from places as far afield as Rostock on the Baltic coast.

There no official figures on how many Muslims have converted to Christianity in Germany over the past few years, and the number is still tiny compared to the country’s four million strong Muslim population. Nonetheless, Martens describes the rate of conversions as a “miracle”.

He also claims to have at least 80 people, mostly migrants, waiting to be baptised.

Zonoobi’s wife Afsaneh, now known as Katarina, said the Christening marks a new beginning.

“Now we are free and can be ourselves,” she said.

“Most important, I am so happy that our children will have a good future here and can get a good education in Germany.”

*** Third Tactic

Since 2013, human smuggling of Syrians and other Middle Easterners into is viable industry

With The Help Of Smugglers, Syrian Refugees Sneak Into Europe

The 27-year-old Syrian, who once smuggled arms for Syrian rebels, is now waiting in Istanbul for a human smuggler to get him to Europe. He says his name is Mohammed. He does not offer a second name. He will go by air, he says, the safest route. He has paid a smuggler more than $8,000, and he’s sure he will get to Austria.

In the past week, he connected seven friends with smugglers.

“I know that most of them made it,” he says, with a tight smile. He is traveling light. Everything he owns is in a backpack.

“I am leaving Syria under a lot of pressure,” he explains.

He seems exhausted by the waiting. Twenty days ago, he got into a fight with an al-Qaida-linked group while helping a friend in the Syrian town of Sarqib. Mohammed says he killed two of their men.

“I needed to leave Syria because I was facing death,” he says.

He joins a surge of Syrian refugees smuggled to Europe. Many are from Syria’s educated, professional class, and have the means for the underground routes. The preferred destination is northern Europe, where economies are strong and the Syrians believe they can start over again.

The numbers seeking asylum in European Union countries doubled this year to more than 36,000, according to EU officials. The journey is long, but the travel is safe, depending on how much you are willing to pay.

Air routes are top of the line. The price tag for Sweden, the most desired destination, is $16,000.

The most dangerous route is by sea, where smugglers sell space on overcrowded fishing boats. The Italian coast guard recently rescued 120 mostly Syrian refugees off the Italian coast. In October, 30 Syrians drowned in a shipwreck between Malta and Italy.

More than 2 million Syrians have fled their homeland since Syria’s civil war broke out more than two years ago. Most have resettled in neighboring countries, including Lebanon, Jordan and Turkey.

Many believed it was a temporary move. But as the war grinds on, some Syrians are making a different calculation. There may be nothing to go home to for years.

Negotiating The Best Deal A Matter Of Life And Death

Over the past several months, the Syrian exodus has increasingly focused on Europe. For many, the journey starts in Turkey, where the human smuggling trade has long flourished.

In the Fatih district of Istanbul, past an outdoor market and down a narrow alley, the tea houses and kabob shops caters to Syrian refugees.

The menus are in Arabic, and so are the conversations. This is the place to make contact with a smuggler and begin the negotiations over price and destination. The tables are full. Syrian men drink sugary tea and swap stories about the best routes and prices.

Abdel Ghani, a medical technician from Qamishli, in northern Syria, sold his house to finance his trip. He’s on his third try.

“It becomes an addiction. I would try 100 times,” he says and shakes his head and laughs at his latest failed attempt. His smuggler got him a fake Swiss passport, but the birthdate made him 20 years older than his actual age.

He grew his beard, tried to stick out his lip like the man pictured in the passport. He made it to the Istanbul boarding gate before his documents were spotted as fakes.

He watched other Syrian families with fake passports board the plane. His documents were confiscated, but he wasn’t detained.

“I’m going to try again the day after tomorrow. I hope to get to Sweden,” he pledges.

Another Syrian at the table, a real estate agent before the revolt, says he sold everything he owned, and paid a smuggler $35,000 to get his wife and daughters to Germany. The trip took four months to arrange. He interviewed more than one smuggler.

“I had to pick a smuggler for my kids; it’s a matter of life and death,” he says, noting that his family arrived safely in Germany a month ago. “We got the right smuggler.”

Every part of a smuggled trip is a matter of luck. Hiring the right smuggler is only the first hurdle; getting into Europe is just the beginning of the journey.

There’s been a surge in the number of Syrians arrested in Romania, Macedonia and Bulgaria. Thousands of Syrian refugees are languishing in Greek detention camps. These are the perils of the route to northern Europe that begins with an air ticket, but usually involves trains, buses and sometimes a final border crossing on foot.

As Demand Rises, So Do Prices

A smuggler, who gives his name as Abu Salman, doesn’t want to talk in the restaurant. He invites us to a shabby hotel lobby next door. He’s in his 50s, wearing a frayed gray suit. He says he owned a successful restaurant in Syria before the revolt. Now, his trade is in people.

“There are Turks we’ve been working with; there is a relationship of trust,” he says.

Since February, Abu Salman says he has arranged for more than 500 Syrians to get to Europe. Most made it, though 150 are still stuck in Bulgaria.

As he explains the business, his cell phone rings. His cousin is calling from the Netherlands, where he just arrived.

“There was a delay of a month,” explains Abu Salman. His cousin had to spend time in Bulgaria and Serbia before finally getting to the Netherlands. The delays add to the cost. But this still counts as a success. Abu Salman is building a reputation.

“People are starting to call me from Syria, ‘Please make all the arrangements,’ they say,” according to Abu Salman.

The prices are rising as the demand grows.

“It used to be $6,000 for a boat to France,” he says. Now it’s $10,000, and some smugglers are asking for more. But desperate Syrians continue to sell everything they have and pay whatever it takes.

Example: Depths of Chinese Hacking the U.S.

Posted on September 8, 2015September 8, 2015 by Denise Simon

Former Top FBI Lawyer and Counterintelligence Official Admits Chinese Hacked His Home Computer

September 8, 2015

China Allegedly Hacked Top Former FBI Lawyer

Jeff Stein, Newsweek

Marion “Spike” Bowman, a top former FBI lawyer and U.S. counterintelligence official who heads an influential organization of retired American spies, says a hacker from China penetrated his home computer, beginning with an innocent-looking email last spring.

“It was an email supposedly from a woman in China, and I exchanged correspondence with her a couple of times,” says Bowman, who was deputy general counsel to three FBI directors between 1995 and 2006. “She sent me a document that a friend of hers had supposedly written, in English, and wanted my opinion on it,” he tells Newsweek. She also sent him her picture.

“I never got around to replying, so I never heard from her again,” says Bowman, who went on to become deputy director of the National Counterintelligence Executive, which is tasked with developing policies to thwart foreign spies and terrorists.

But then, a week ago, he says, he got another message from China via his email account at George Washington University, where he has lectured on national security law since 2003.

“It was apparently from a university in China asking me come to speak at a conference on the environment”—not even remotely one of his areas of expertise, Bowman says. He called the FBI.

After a forensic examination of his machine, the FBI told him “they had found a malware type that’s designed to find out what’s on my computer,” Bowman says. “It wasn’t anything to infect it.” Still, just being able to read the contents of a target’s computer can reveal lots of valuable information like emails and documents, contact files with phone numbers and other personal data, like home addresses.

“Somebody who really knows what they’re doing” can wreak havoc, he says.

The FBI didn’t tell him exactly who was behind the hack, he says, “but they think they identified the woman” in a picture she sent along with one of her emails last spring. “It was somebody that they knew,” Bowman says. “I didn’t inquire any further.”

Before joining the FBI, Bowman was a Navy lawyer assigned to advise SEAL teams on clandestine operations, among other sensitive matters. His portfolio at the FBI gave him intimate knowledge of the details of operations to counter threats from foreign spy agencies.

“I still carry lots of deep Cold War secrets in my head,” he says, although not on his computer. But he is still very active in national security circles as chairman of the board of directors of the Association of Former Intelligence Officers, an organization with several thousand members nationwide, about half of them former CIA personnel.

Bowman’s revelation follows several months of bad news about the vulnerability of government computers to foreign hackers, the latest being a report published Monday saying that Chinese and Russian intelligence agencies are “aggressively aggregating and cross-indexing hacked U.S. computer databases” to catch American spies working overseas. China-based hackers breached about 22 million files held by the federal Office of Personnel Management, officials say.

“At least one clandestine network of American engineers and scientists who provide technical assistance to U.S. undercover operatives and agents overseas has been compromised as a result” of the Russian and Chinese exploitation of the files, the Los Angeles Times reported, citing two U.S. officials.

The story, Bowman says, was “pretty much on target.”

*** It obviously is much worse than we know for the Obama administration to sign off on a sanction and or other consequence ahead of the Xi’s visit to the United States next week.

U.S. may punish Chinese hacking before Xi’s visit

Imposing sanctions before this month’s summit could derail other priorities.

Top government officials are floating the idea of retaliating within the next week to Chinese cyberattacks, possibly by imposing targeted sanctions on some officials and firms, people familiar with the discussions say. But outside experts say it would be wiser to wait until after this month’s White House summit with Chinese President Xi Jinping.

“I heard from one person that it could be as early as next week,” Jim Lewis, director of the Center for Strategic and International Studies’ Strategic Technologies Program, told POLITICO. He added, “I still think it would be best to wait for the summit.”

Calls for U.S. retalation to Chinese hacking have risen to a furor since the China-linked breach of highly sensitive security clearance forms from 21.5 million current and former federal employees, disclosed in June.

But imposing sanctions before the late-September summit would risk derailing a serious conversation on cyber issues along with myriad other topics, including China’s economic troubles, Chinese belligerence in the South China Sea and cooperation on climate change.

Some China watchers even suspect that the White House is trying to improve its bargaining position in advance of the summit by floating the possibility of sanctions in a serious way.

“My sense is that they’re floating the idea to try to create some kind of leverage in the meetings,” said Adam Segal, a China scholar and director of the Digital and Cyberspace Policy Program at the Council on Foreign Relations.

If the White House did impose sanctions before the meeting, it would be deeply embarrassing to the Chinese and to Xi personally and risk the Chinese doing something to downgrade the summit’s importance, Segal said. “I think if they’re going to do it before the summit, they’ve got to be prepared for the summit to really take a downward turn,” he said.

Business leaders are also dubious about imposing sanctions before Xi’s visit.

The White House should use the summit “as an opportunity to engage in effective dialogue on the cyber issue. If sanctions jeopardize that opportunity, we’d rather see them put it off,” the leader of a major industry organization said in an interview, speaking without attribution because he was speculating about government policy.

If the White House ultimately imposes targeted sanctions, the association leader added, the sanctions should be “based on transparent, credible evidence that’s legally sound.” They should also be designed with a clear path forward that, ultimately, leads to fewer China-linked cyberattacks, he said.

“Most business executives we’ve spoke with felt the indictments against Chinese PLA officers didn’t meet that test,” he added, referring to the May 2014 U.S. indictments of five hackers employed by China’s People’s Liberation Army. That was the Obama administration’s most significant diplomatic strike against Chinese hacking to date.

“[The indictments] didn’t seem to advance anything and they seemed to increase tension rather than reduce it around the issue,” the official said.

In the wake of the OPM hacks, some political leaders have called for much more belligerent responses to Chinese hacking. They include GOP White House contenders Mike Huckabee, who has urged the U.S. to hack back against the communist nation, and Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker, who has suggested canceling the Obama-Xi summit entirely.

But even cyber hawks warned that aggressive action could backfire in advance of the summit.

“I think everything is going to basically be on hold until the Iran deal goes through and until after President Xi comes to meet with [President Obama],” said Rep. Dutch Ruppersberger (D-Md.), who was formerly ranking member on the House Intelligence Committee.

Ruppersberger added that “we have to eventually draw a line on cyberattacks,” and that the U.S. bargaining position relative to China may be improved now because of the tailspin in the Chinese stock market and other financial difficulties.

The White House has routinely declined to speak publicly about the possibility of sanctioning China for cyberattacks or any more forceful follow-up to the PLA indictments. Press secretary Josh Earnest has said several times that Obama plans to raise cyber concerns with Xi during their summit.

“There’s no doubt that the president will certainly raise, as he has in every previous meeting with his Chinese counterpart, concerns about China’s behavior in cyberspace,” Earnest said during an Aug. 26 news conference.

White House officials have determined they must respond to China’s hacking of OPM, but have been debating for months what the appropriate response should be and when to impose it, Lewis said.

The option of targeted cyber sanctions, which Obama created by executive order in April, has long been on the table along with additional indictments or some form of diplomatic protest, he said.

White House officials have fingered China for the OPM hack anonymously but have not done so, thus far, on the record.

A forceful response to the OPM hack and to Chinese theft of U.S. companies’ intellectual property and trade secrets has also been delayed by more pressing diplomatic priorities, Lewis said, including securing Chinese cooperation for a deal to halt Iran’s nuclear weapons program

“This administration has done more than any other on cybersecurity, but, in a lot of cases, it ends up being No. 2 because of the need to get agreement on other things,” Lewis said. “Cyber always ends up coming in second place, particularly when it comes to China.”