NoKo Crossed the Nuclear Power Threshold, 60?

Posted on August 8, 2017August 8, 2017 by Denise Simon

The best defense is to take them out before they are fired…..we can and we know where they are.

We Know the Locations of N Korea Nuclear Sites

Primer: North Korean delegation wraps up Iran visit

Trip included opening of new embassy and meetings with foreign representatives

North Korea’s newly built embassy in Tehran opened Wednesday, according to the North’s state-run KCNA news agency. It said the new embassy was “built to boost exchanges, contacts and cooperation between the two countries for world peace and security and international justice.”

After the second ICBM test last month, defense experts said it appeared North Korea’s long-range ballistic missile had the range to reach half, if not most, of the continental United States. Iran could have an ICBM capability similar to North Korea within a few years, as just last week it successfully launched a satellite-carrying rocket that some see as a precursor to long-range ballistic missile weapon capability.

‘Extensive’ missile cooperation

“There’s been fairly extensive cooperation on missiles,” said Bunn. “And in fact, early generations of Iranian missiles were thought to be basically modestly adapted North Korean missiles.” More here.

North Korea now making missile-ready nuclear weapons, U.S. analysts say

North Korea has successfully produced a miniaturized nuclear warhead that can fit inside its missiles, crossing a key threshold on the path to becoming a full-fledged nuclear power, U.S. intelligence officials have concluded in a confidential assessment.

The new analysis completed last month by the Defense Intelligence Agency comes on the heels of another intelligence assessment that sharply raises the official estimate for the total number of bombs in the communist country’s atomic arsenal. The U.S. calculated last month that up to 60 nuclear weapons are now controlled by North Korean leader Kim Jong Un. Some independent experts believe the number of bombs is much smaller.

The findings are likely to deepen concerns about an evolving North Korean military threat that appears to be advancing far more rapidly than many experts had predicted. U.S. officials last month concluded that Pyongyang is also outpacing expectations in its effort to build an intercontinental ballistic missile capable of striking cities on the American mainland.

While more than a decade has passed since North Korea’s first nuclear detonation, many analysts believed it would be years before the country’s weapons scientists could design a compact warhead that could be delivered by missile to distant targets. But the new assessment, a summary document dated July 28, concludes that this critical milestone has already been reached.

“The IC [intelligence community] assesses North Korea has produced nuclear weapons for ballistic missile delivery, to include delivery by ICBM-class missiles,” the assessment states, in an excerpt read to The Washington Post. The assessment’s broad conclusions were verified by two U.S. officials familiar with the document. It is not yet known whether the reclusive regime has successfully tested the smaller design, although North Korean officially last year claimed to have done so.

The DIA and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence declined to comment.

An assessment this week by the Japanese Ministry of Defense also concludes there is evidence to suggest that North Korea has achieved miniaturization.

Kim Jong Un is becoming increasingly confident in the reliability of his nuclear arsenal, analysts have concluded, explaining perhaps the dictator’s willingness to engage in defiant behavior, including missile tests that have drawn criticism even from North Korea’s closest ally, China. On Saturday, both China and Russia joined other members of the U.N. Security Council in approving punishing new economic sanctions, including a ban on exports that supply up to a third of North Korea’s annual $3 billion earnings.

The nuclear progress further raises the stakes for President Trump, who has vowed that North Korea will never be allowed to threaten the United States with nuclear weapons. In an interview broadcast Saturday on MSNBC’s Hugh Hewitt Show, national security adviser H.R. McMaster said the prospect of a North Korea armed with nuclear-tipped ICBMs would be “intolerable, from the president’s perspective.”

“We have to provide all options . . . and that includes a military option,” he said. But McMaster said the administration would do everything short of war to “pressure Kim Jong Un and those around him, such that they conclude it is in their interest to denuclearize.” The options said to be under discussion ranged from new multilateral negotiations to reintroducing U.S. battlefield nuclear weapons to the Korean Peninsula, officials familiar with internal discussions said.

Determining the precise makeup of North Korea’s nuclear arsenal has long been a difficult challenge for intelligence professionals because of the regime’s culture of extreme secrecy and insularity. The country’s weapons scientists have conducted five nuclear tests since 2006, the latest being a 20- to 30-kiloton detonation on Sept. 9, 2016, that produced a blast estimated to be up to twice that of the bomb dropped on Hiroshima, Japan, in 1945.

But producing a compact nuclear warhead that can fit inside a missile is a technically demanding feat, one that many analysts believed was still beyond North Korea’s grasp. Last year, state-run media in Pyongyang displayed a spherical device that government spokesmen described as a miniaturized nuclear warhead, but whether it was a real bomb remained unclear. North Korean officials described the September detonation as a successful test of a small warhead designed to fit on a missile, though many experts were skeptical of the claim.

Kim has repeatedly proclaimed his intention to field a fleet of nuclear-tipped ICBMs as a guarantor of his regime’s survival. His regime took a major step toward that goal last month with the first successful tests of a missile with intercontinental range. Video analysis of the latest test revealed that the missile caught fire and apparently disintegrated as it plunged back toward Earth’s surface, suggesting North Korea’s engineers are not yet capable of building a reentry vehicle that can carry the warhead safely through the upper atmosphere. But U.S. analysts and many independent experts believe that this hurdle will be overcome by late next year.

“What initially looked like a slow-motion Cuban missile crisis is now looking more like the Manhattan Project, just barreling along,” said Robert Litwak, a nonproliferation expert at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars and author of “Preventing North Korea’s Nuclear Breakout,” published by the center this year. “There’s a sense of urgency behind the program that is new to the Kim Jong Un era.”

While few discount North Korea’s progress, some prominent U.S. experts warned against the danger of overestimating the threat. Siegfried Hecker, director emeritus of the Los Alamos National Laboratory and the last known U.S. official to personally inspect North Korea’s nuclear facilities, has calculated the size of North Korea’s arsenal at no more than 20 to 25 bombs. Hecker warned of potential risks that can come from making Kim into a bigger menace than he actually is.

“Overselling is particularly dangerous,” said Hecker, who visited North Korea seven times between 2004 and 2010 and met with key leaders of the country’s weapons programs. “Some like to depict Kim as being crazy – a madman – and that makes the public believe that the guy is undeterrable. He’s not crazy and he’s not suicidal. And he’s not even unpredictable.”

“The real threat,” Hecker said, “is we’re going to stumble into a nuclear war on the Korean Peninsula.”

In the past, U.S. intelligence agencies have occasionally overestimated the North Korean threat. In the early 2000s, the George W. Bush administration assessed that Pyongyang was close to developing an ICBM that could strike the U.S. mainland – a prediction that missed the mark by more than a decade. More recently, however, analysts and policymakers have been taken repeatedly by surprise as North Korea achieved key milestones months or years ahead of schedule, noted Jeffrey Lewis, director of the Center for Nonproliferation Studies’ East Asia Nonproliferation Program. There was similar skepticism about China’s capabilities in the early 1960s, said Lewis, who has studied that country’s pathway to a successful nuclear test in 1964.

“There is no reason to think that the North Koreans aren’t making the same progress after so many successful nuclear explosions,” Lewis said. “The big question is why do we hold the North Koreans to a different standard than we held [Joseph] Stalin’s Soviet Union or Mao Zedong’s China? North Korea is testing underground, so we’re always going to lack a lot of details. But it seems to me a lot of people are insisting on impossible levels of proof because they simply don’t want to accept what should be pretty obvious.”

C’mon People It is the Welcoming Cities Initiative

Posted on August 8, 2017August 8, 2017 by Denise Simon

Yes….welcome to our cities and partly thanks the Clinton Global Initiative….ah yes….the Clintons again.

This is all supposed to enhance business, employment and bring more economic success to America…right? Well, how about cost comparisons….like Los Angeles…

Photo/Truthdig

FNC: Illegal immigrant families received nearly $1.3 billion in Los Angeles County welfare money during 2015 and 2016, nearly one-quarter of the amount spent on the county’s entire needy population, according to data obtained by Fox News.

The data was obtained from the county Department of Public Social Services — which is responsible for doling out the benefits — and gives a snapshot of the financial costs associated with sanctuary and related policies.

The sanctuary county of Los Angeles is an illegal immigration epicenter, with the largest concentration of any county in the nation, according to a study from the Migration Policy Institute. The county also allows illegal immigrant parents with children born in the United States to seek welfare and food stamp benefits.

I know you don’t want to read a 94 page document, but at least skim the document. You will learn there are millions upon millions of corrupt dollars floating across the country, for years that put foreign migrants and many illegals at that above Americans for jobs and business development.

Partner Organizations

Welcoming Cities and Counties has been recognized as a 2013 Clinton Global Initiative Commitment to Action

.

This initiative is also supported by a growing list of partner organizations, including:

City of Chicago

German Marshall Fund of the United States

Maytree’s Cities of Migration

AS/COA

Sanctuary cities are lawless cities and at the core is the following:

Cities and counties that join Welcoming Cities and Counties

will have the chance to:

•

Hear from local government leaders who are making the most of their diversity, by creating

“immigrant -friendly” welcoming plans.

•

Learn about large and small communities that are responding to demographic change and supporting long-term immigrant integration in a way that speaks to and benefits all members of the community.

•

Access new tools and resources to help advance welcoming resolutions, initiatives and strategies

.

•

Receive support and recognition for their efforts to foster more vibrant, inclusive, and welcoming communities.

•

Participate in national and transatlantic learning exchanges that highlight promising practices from globally competitive cities

***

How bad is it all?

A new wave of local government policies has emerged across cities that is aimed at improving immigrants’ economic and social integration. This report examines the group of cities that joined the Welcoming America’s Welcoming Cities initiative, a notable example of this new policy movement.

Welcoming America is a national grassroots -driven cooperative that launched the Welcoming Cities and Counties initiative in 2013 to provide a venue for immigrant –

welcoming communities to share resources and exchange best practices. We focus on cities in this report because they make up the majority of the program participants (only four out of 54 local participating governments are counties). Read this document here, and start with page 5.

Some cooperation came from the following:

Numerous individuals helped make this guide possible, but our special appreciation goes to its lead author, Steve Tobocman of Global Detroit and his team, including Francis Grunow, Sloan Herrick, Kyle Murphy, Beth Szurpicki, Kate Brennan, and Raquel Garcia Andersen. We also thank the number of individuals who worked with Steve and his team to provide details on their local efforts, including Amanda Bergson-Shilcock, formerly of the Welcoming Center for New Pennsylvanians, Betsy Cohen of St. Louis Mosaic, Todd Adams at Visibility Marketing, Paul McDaniel at the Immigration Policy Center, and Robyn Webb of the Greater Halifax Partnership. We also want to thank Susan Downs-Karkos and Rachel Peric who provided extremely valuable editing to the document.

We hope you will find this guide to be a useful resource in your work, and that you will stay connected by sharing your ideas and joining our growing network of partners across the United States. For more information, or to get involved, please visit us at www.welcomingamerica.org. You can find more information about the local immigrant

economic development organizations in the Rust Belt, many of which are featured throughout this guide, through the WE Global Network at www.weglobalnetwork.org.

Maduro is Taking Venezuela Where Castro Tells Him

Posted on August 7, 2017August 7, 2017 by Denise Simon

The rogue countries across the globe are Russia, Iran, North Korea, China and Cuba. What is in common here is they have each other and they work their foreign policy agendas in locations that threaten the West at every turn including militarily.

Iran, China and Russia are running the influence operations in North Korea. Russia is running the influence operation in Cuba, Nicaragua, Bolivia and Syria. China and Pakistan is the enabler to North Korea. China is in Africa, Russia is in Africa, Iran is in Iraq and Afghanistan….they are all policy, money and oil opportunists….crazy right?

The Star

A video showing more than a dozen men dressed in military fatigues, some carrying rifles, began circulating widely on social media around that time. In the recording, a man who identified himself as Capt. Juan Caguaripano said the men were members of the military who oppose Maduro’s socialist government and called on military units to declare themselves in open rebellion.

“This is not a coup d’etat,” the man said. “This is a civic and military action to re-establish the constitutional order.” More from the Associated Press.

So, while Venezuela is in a full blown tailspin….who owns the chaos there via Maduro? Cuba…

2004, the agreement was signed.

To further help, the University of Miami has an archived summary here.

So, it goes like this and the burden belongs to Obama and John Kerry for the plight of Venezuelans.

Photo

The Guns of Venezuela

Castro is calling the shots in Caracas. Sanctions have to be aimed at him.

WSJ: In a video posted on the internet Sunday morning, former Venezuelan National Guard captain Juan Caguaripano, along with some 20 others, announced an uprising against the government of Nicolás Maduro to restore constitutional order. The rebels reportedly appropriated some 120 rifles, ammunition and grenades from the armory at Fort Paramacay in Valencia, the capital of Carabobo state. There were unconfirmed claims of similar raids at several other military installations including in Táchira.

The Cuba-controlled military regime put tanks in the streets and unleashed a hunt for the fleeing soldiers. It claims it put down the rebellion and it instructed all television to broadcast only news of calm. But Venezuelans were stirred by the rebels’ message. There were reports of civilians gathering in the streets to sing the national anthem in support of the uprising.

Note to Secretary of State Rex Tillerson: Venezuelans want to throw off the yoke of Cuban repression. They need your help.

Unfortunately Mr. Tillerson so far seems to be taking the bad advice of his State Department “experts.”

The same bureaucrats, it should be noted, ran Barack Obama’s Latin America policy. Those years gave us a rapprochement with Havana that culminated with the 44th president doing “the wave” with Raúl Castro at a baseball game in 2016. Team Obama also pushed for Colombia’s surrender to the drug-trafficking terrorist group FARC in a so-called peace deal last year. And it supported “dialogue” last year to restore free, fair and transparent elections in Venezuela. The result, in every case, was disaster.

Any U.S.-led international strategy to liberate Venezuela must begin with the explicit recognition that Cuba is calling the shots in Caracas, and that Havana’s control of the oil nation is part of its wider regional strategy.

Slapping Mr. Maduro’s wrist with sanctions, as the Trump administration did last week, won’t change Castro’s behavior. He cares only about his cut-rate Venezuelan oil and his take of profits from drug trafficking. To affect things in Venezuela, the U.S. has to press Cuba.

Burning Cuban flags, when they can be had, is now practically a national pastime in Venezuela because Venezuelans understand the link between their suffering and Havana. The Castro infiltration began over a decade ago when Fidel sent thousands of Cuban agents, designated as teachers and medical personnel, to spread propaganda and establish communist cells in the barrios.

As I noted in this column last week, since 2005 Cuba has controlled Venezuela’s citizen-identification and passport offices, keeping files on every “enemy” of the state—a k a political opponents. The Venezuelan military and National Guard answer to Cuban generals. The Venezuelan armed forces are part of a giant drug-trafficking operation working with the FARC, which is the hemisphere’s largest cartel and also has longstanding ties to Cuba.

These are the tactical realities of the Cuba-Venezuela-Colombia nexus. The broader strategic threat to U.S. interests, including Cuba’s cozy relationship with Middle East terrorists, cannot be ignored.

Elisabeth Burgos is the Venezuelan ex-wife of the French Marxist Regis Debray. She was born in Valencia, joined the Castro cause as a young woman, and worked for its ideals on the South American continent.

Ms. Burgos eventually broke free of the intellectual bonds of communism and has lived in Paris for many years. In a recent telephone interview—posted on the Venezuelan website Prodavinci—she warned of the risks of the “Cuban project” for the region. “Wherever the Cubans have been, everything ends in tragedy,” she told Venezuelan journalist Hugo Prieto. “Surely we have no idea what forces we face,” Mr. Prieto observed—reflecting as a Venezuelan on the words of Ms. Burgos—because, as she said, there is “a lot of naiveté, a lot of ignorance, about the apparatus that has fallen on [Venezuelans]: Castroism.”

Cuban control of citizens is as important as control of the military. In Cuba this is the job of the Interior Ministry. For that level of control in Venezuela, Ms. Burgos said, Mr. Maduro must rely on an “elite of exceptional experts” Castro grooms at home.

Cuba, Ms. Burgos said, is not “simply a dictatorship.” For the regime it is a “historical political project” aiming for “the establishment of a Cuban-type regime throughout Latin America.” She noted that along with Venezuela the Cubans have taken Nicaragua, Bolivia, Ecuador, and are now going after Colombia. “The FARC, turned into a political party and with all the money of [the narcotics business], in an election can buy all the votes that it wants.”

Mr. Tillerson is forewarned. Castro won’t stop until someone stops him. To get results, any U.S.-led sanctions have to hit the resources that Havana relies on to maintain the repression.

Chicago Mayor Sues DoJ/Sessions, Sanctuary City Money

Posted on August 7, 2017August 7, 2017 by Denise Simon

Primer:

Jamie Gorelick — a partner at Wilmer Hale who also represents Ivanka Trump and Jared Kushner on non-Russia related legal issues, is one of the many attorneys who is listed as pro bono counsel on the suit. Last year Chicago received $2.3 million in JAG funds. Over the years, the city has purchased SWAT equipment, police vehicles, radios and Tasers with the money.

The suit revolves around specific conditions Sessions announced in July for a federal program, the Edward Byrne Memorial Justice Assistance Grant, or Bryne JAG, which provides federal funding to support local law enforcement efforts.

“(The executive branch) may not unilaterally concoct and import into the Byrne JAG program sweeping new policy conditions that were never approved (and indeed were considered and rejected) by Congress and that would federalize local jails and police stations, mandate warrantless detentions in order to investigate for federal civil infractions, sow fear in local immigrant communities, and ultimately make the people of Chicago less safe,” attorneys for the city wrote in Monday’s filing. More here.

Inquisitr

‘Sanctuary city’ Chicago sues Trump administration

Chicago (AFP) – The city of Chicago filed suit Monday against the Donald Trump administration for withholding funds from so-called “sanctuary cities” that fail to cooperate with tougher federal efforts cracking down on undocumented immigrants.

The lawsuit, the first of its kind, challenges the Trump administration’s requirement that cities detain suspects for questioning by federal immigration authorities or see their grant funding for municipal police departments withheld.

Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel on Monday called the policy counterproductive.

“By forcing us, or the police department, to choose between the values of the city and the philosophy of the police department… I think it’s a false choice, and it undermines our actual safety agenda,” Emanuel told CNN.

“We will always be a welcoming city,” he continued, adding that local police departments rely on the cooperation of the immigrant community — both documented and undocumented.

“Our police department is part of a neighborhood, part of a community, built on the premise of trust,” the mayor said.

“We want you to come to Chicago if you believe in the American dream,” he added.

The federal grant at the center of the lawsuit provided $2.3 million to Chicago last year to purchase police equipment, such as cars, computers, radios and Tasers, Emanuel said.

The federal government’s new rules would tie the grant to requirements that, among other things, cities give federal immigration authorities unlimited access to local police stations to interrogate arrestees, Chicago officials said.

The city is asking a federal court to declare such requirements unlawful.

Trump has targeted sanctuary cities as part of his promised crackdown on illegal immigration, and the Department of Justice implemented the new funding requirement last month.

Supporters of “sanctuary city” policies say requiring local police to fully cooperate with immigration enforcement erodes with the communities they serve and frustrate law enforcement efforts.

The Department of Justice (DOJ) criticized the lawsuit in a statement that accused Emanuel of “protecting criminal aliens and putting Chicago’s law enforcement at greater risk.”

The head of the DOJ, US Attorney General Jeff Sessions, last week said the policy would improve safety for immigration officers who now have to track down suspects who already had been detained and released by local police.

“By forcing police to go into more dangerous situations to re-arrest the same criminals, these policies endanger law enforcement officers more than anyone,” Sessions said.

Loretta Lynch used an Alias in Govt Emails

Posted on August 7, 2017August 7, 2017 by Denise Simon

Using an alias was a common practice under the Obama administration when we first learned about Lisa Jackson doing so while at the EPA, calling herself Richard Windsor….weird huh? Eric Holder used an alias. Not to be forgotten, the top law enforcement officer, Eric Holder while heading the Department of Justice did the same thing, he was Lew Alcindor.

Not too be outdone….here comes Loretta Lynch doing the same thing on official government email communications, she was none other than Elizabeth Carlisle. Sheesh…

Loretta Lynch used the alias “Elizabeth Carlisle” for official emails as attorney general, including those related to her infamous tarmac meeting last summer with former President Clinton.

The emails were included in 413 pages of Justice Department documents provided to conservative watchdog groups Judicial Watch and American Center for Law and Justice.

Top federal officials using email aliases is not illegal or new, considering others in the former Obama administration also used them, arguing security concerns and spam to their official email addresses swamping their in-boxes. More here.

So, when a Freedom of Information request comes in asking for documents relating to an event using government official’s real names, the reply from FOIA officers can then be: “no documents responsive to your request” that is until outside organizations and investigative journals are on to the plots. Such is the case regarding the tarmac meeting between Loretta Lynch and Bill Clinton. The FBI responded with ‘no documents to the request, but the now Trump Department of Justice responded with 400 pages of documents. Much blame is being placed on James Comey controlling the FBI FOIA requests, however, let us remember he reported to the Justice Department….remember that?

In ‘some’ fairness, Comey in congressional testimony stated he was angry and lost faith in the Justice investigation as it related to the Hillary Clinton affair(s).

The common posture of the people on the Trump team is to regarding Comey as a Hillary loyalist and compromised. This is especially true regarding the offered information on a meeting to his friend and law professor, who later called the New York Times and read the newspaper a personal journal entry of Comey’s at Comey’s behest. Now, this for sure sounds as it is a questionable tactic, and it is.

We cant know how much more background there is or all the facts and context, but we are in the core o a building government crisis, past and present.

So, let’s go a little deeper, shall we?

“No records responsive to your request were located,” FBI Chief of Record/Information David Hardy wrote a letter responding to ACLJ’s Freedom of Information Act request.

“For your information, Congress excluded three discrete categories of law enforcement and national security records from the requirements of the FOIA.”

(Exemptions may apply in cases of classified information relating to foreign policy or national defense, trade secrets, and personnel and medical files.)

The released emails include several exchanges between FBI media official Richard Quinn and DOJ’s Office of Public Affairs Director Melanie Newman.

The video is here.

One of those emails, sent by Newman under the subject line “FLAG”, said she wanted to “flag a story that is gaining some traction” about the “casual, unscheduled meeting” between Lynch and President Clinton.

She instructed Quinn to “let me know if you get any questions about this.”

Newman in the email also provide Quinn with some talking points. Although they are supposedly public statements – and separate emails indicate that they had been sent to reporters of major media outlets – the talking points, as well as many other parts of the release, were redacted.

An email sent by Newman to another staff member on July 1, titled “FBI just called,” shows that the agency was “asking for guidance” in responding to media questions about reports stating FBI agents had ordered ‘No photos, no picture, no cell phones’ at the Clinton-Lynch meeting.

ABC Breaking News | Latest News Videos

The conversation then continued via phone calls. One hour later, Carolyn Pokomy from the Office of the Attorney General said in an email reply, “I will let Rybicki know.” Jim Rybicki was then the FBI’s chief of staff and senior counselor to Comey.

The information she sent to Rybicki was also redacted. Read more here.