Category Archives: Insurgency

The 7th Fleet Deployment v. China

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SOUTH CHINA SEA – USS Stockdale (DDG 106) is conducting a routine patrol in international waters of the South China Sea as part of the John C. Stennis Strike Group and Great Green Fleet on a regularly scheduled 7th Fleet deployment.

“The strike group is exercising our right to operate in international waters,” said Rear Adm. Ron Boxall, commander, John C. Stennis Strike Group. “Our presence here promotes peace and stability in the region. We’ve got vibrant economies in the Western Pacific, and it’s really important for us to be there for our national interests and to ensure that we can keep the sea lanes free.”

In recent months, other U.S. Navy ships have conducted similar operations in the 7th Fleet area of operations including the Arleigh Burke-class guided-missile destroyers USS Curtis Wilbur (DDG 54), USS Lassen (DDG 82), USS McCampbell (DDG 85) and USS Preble (DDG 88), the multi-purpose amphibious assault ship USS Essex (LHD 2), the Ticonderoga-class guided missile cruiser USS Chancellorsville (CG 62) and the Freedom-class littoral combat ship USS Fort Worth (LCS 3). The amphibious dock landing ship USS Ashland (LSD 48) completed a similar patrol, Feb. 26.

Stockdale is currently on patrol in 7th Fleet as part of the John C. Stennis Strike Group (JCSSG). The strike group is comprised of USS John C. Stennis (CVN 74) with Carrier Airwing (CVW) 9 and Destroyer Squadron (DESRON) 21 embarked, Arleigh Burke-class guided-missile destroyers USS Chung-Hoon (DDG 93), USS Stockdale (DDG 106), USS William P. Lawrence (DDG 110) and Ticonderoga-class guided-missile cruiser USS Mobile Bay (CG 53).

CVW-9 consists of Helicopter Maritime Strike Squadron (HSM) 71, Helicopter Sea Combat Squadron (HSC) 14, Airborne Early Warning Squadron (VAW) 112, Electronic Attack Squadron (VAQ) 133 and Strike Fighter Squadrons (VFA) 151, 97, 41, 14.

JCSSG is providing a ready force supporting security and stability in the Indo-Asia- Pacific.

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For a full photo essay, go here.

What China Has Been Building in the South China Sea

NYT: China has placed runways and radar facilities on new islets in the South China Sea, built by piling huge amounts of sand onto reefs. The construction is straining already taut geopolitical tensions.

The speed and scale of China’s island-building spree in the South China Sea last year alarmed other countries with interests in the region. After announcing in June that the process of building seven new islands by moving sediment from the seafloor to reefs was almost done, China has focused its efforts on building ports, three airstrips, radar facilities and other military buildings on the islands. The installations bolster China’s foothold in the Spratly Islands, a disputed scattering of reefs and islands in the South China Sea more than 500 miles from the Chinese mainland. China’s activity in the Spratlys is a major point of contention between China and the United States, and has prompted the White House to send Navy destroyers to patrol near the islands twice in recent months.

The speed and scale of China’s island-building spree in the South China Sea last year alarmed other countries with interests in the region. After announcing in June that the process of building seven new islands by moving sediment from the seafloor to reefs was almost done, China has focused its efforts on building ports, three airstrips, radar facilities and other military buildings on the islands. The installations bolster China’s foothold in the Spratly Islands, a disputed scattering of reefs and islands in the South China Sea more than 500 miles from the Chinese mainland. China’s activity in the Spratlys is a major point of contention between China and the United States, and has prompted the White House to send Navy destroyers to patrol near the islands twice in recent months.

Sources: C.I.A., NASA, China Maritime Safety Administration

The new islands allow China to harness a portion of the sea for its own use that had been relatively out of reach. Although there are significant fisheries and possible large oil and gas reserves in the South China Sea, China’s efforts serve more to fortify its territorial claims than to help it extract natural resources, said Mira Rapp-Hooper, formerly the director of the Asia Maritime Transparency Initiative at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a Washington research group. Though they are too small to support large military units, the islands will also enable sustained air and sea patrols, strengthening China’s influence in the area.

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Several reefs have been destroyed outright to serve as a foundation for the new islands, and the process also causes extensive damage to the surrounding marine ecosystem. Frank Muller-Karger, professor of biological oceanography at the University of South Florida, said sediment “can wash back into the sea, forming plumes that can smother marine life and could be laced with heavy metals, oil and other chemicals from the ships and shore facilities being built.” Such plumes threaten the biologically diverse reefs throughout the Spratlys, which Dr. Muller-Karger said may have trouble surviving in sediment-laden water. 

Although China was a relative latecomer to construction in the Spratly archipelago, its island building is much more extensive than similar efforts by other countries in the area. The recent activity has unsettled the United States, which has about $1.2 trillion in bilateral trade go through the South China Sea every year.

Washington does not recognize China’s ownership of the islands, and in February President Obama reiterated the government’s position that “the United States will continue to fly, sail and operate wherever international law allows.” To reinforce the message, the United States Navy sent missile destroyers in October and January within 12 nautical miles of the islands, the conventional limit for territorial waters. According to statements from David Shear, the top Pentagon official in charge of Asia and the Pacific, the last time before October that the United States had sent ships or aircraft that close to the islands was in 2012.

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What Is on the Islands

China has built airstrips, ports, radar facilities, solar arrays, lighthouses and support buildings on the islands. The airstrips and ports lengthen the reach of Chinese ships and planes, while the radar facilities allow the country to keep a closer eye on what is happening nearby. Imagery from January compiled for a recent report by the C.S.I.S. suggests that China may be constructing a longer-range high-frequency radar installation on Cuarteron Reef that would help the country monitor air and ship traffic in the south, farther from the Chinese mainland.

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Fiery Cross Reef is one of China’s most strategically important new islands, with an airstrip that is long enough to allow the country to land any plane, from fighter jets to large transport aircraft.

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Two additional airstrips on Mischief Reef and Subi Reef that China has been building since mid-2015 are nearing completion, bringing China’s total to three airstrips in the region.

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Though China’s airstrips expand the country’s ability to operate in the South China Sea, they are not the first in the region — every other country that occupies the Spratlys already operates an airstrip as well.

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Vietnam, Malaysia, the Philippines and Taiwan have also expanded islands in the Spratlys, but at a much smaller scale than China’s efforts.

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China’s reefs hosted smaller structures for years before the current surge in construction. By preserving these initially isolated buildings, China can claim that it is merely expanding existing facilities, similar to what other countries have done elsewhere in the region.

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Construction on Johnson South Reef from January 2014 to February 2016.

Image by DigitalGlobe, via CSIS Asia Maritime Transparency Initiative

 

Whoa, Could This Be on San Bernardino Shooter’s Phone?

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San Bernardino County DA: Dec. 2 terrorist may have been planning cyber attack

SBSun: A legal brief filed Friday in U.S. District Court in Riverside by San Bernardino County’s top prosecutors said Syed Rizwan Farook may have planted a virus on his work-issued iPhone that could launch a cyber attack capable of infecting and crashing the county’s computer network.

iPhone Amicus Brief that explains the infecting malware.

The brief, filed by District Attorney Michael Ramos and Chief Deputy District Attorney Gary Fagan, is one of several that were filed this week supporting a federal magistrate’s Feb. 16 order compelling Apple Inc. to help the FBI access an encrypted work-issued iPhone used by Farook.

“The iPhone is a county owned telephone that may have connected to the San Bernardino County computer network,” Ramos and Fagan wrote in their friend of the court brief, one of several filed this week in support of the government. “The seized iPhone may contain evidence that can only be found on the seized phone that it was used as a weapon to introduce a lying dormant cyber pathogen that endangers San Bernardino County’s infrastructure.”

A plethora of briefs were also filed by some the world’s biggest technology companies, digital privacy advocates and civil liberty organizations including Facebook, Amazon.com, Pinterest, Microsoft, Snapchat, Yahoo, and the American Civil Liberties Union in support of Apple.

Armed with assault rifles and clad in tactical gear, Farook, 28, and his wife, Tashfeen Malik, 29, walked into the Inland Regional Center in San Bernardino shortly before 11 a.m. Dec. 2 and opened fire on a crowd of about 70 people, killing 14 people and wounding 22 others. The Redlands couple were killed in a shootout with police hours after the attack.

Most of those killed or wounded in the mass shooting, including Farook, were employees of the county’s environmental health services division, who were attending a training seminar that morning.

FBI agents found two smashed mobile phones in a dumpster behind Farook’s Redlands townhouse, and his work-issued iPhone 5C was found, intact but passcode encrypted, in a black Lexus parked in front of the residence. Investigators believe that phone contains communications between Farook and some of the victims and possible other information that could be germane to the criminal investigation.

Ramos and Fagen are the first to broach the subject of a possible cyber attack Farook may have been planning.

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Farook’s employment with the county provided him access to information that could have made the county vulnerable to a security breach and exposed employees to danger, Ramos said Friday in a telephone interview.

He said survivors of the shooting and family members of those killed in the attack are trying to move on with their lives but still have questions about the attack, such as why they were targeted and if they face future threat.

“All of this information could be on that one phone. (Farook and Malik) were using phones and hard drives, we believe, to prepare for these terrorist attacks,” Ramos said.

He said U.S. Magistrate Sheri Pym’s Feb. 16 order followed the letter of the law, and the U.S. Constitution.

“A federal magistrate determined there was probable cause to issue a search warrant to have Apple allow the FBI access to that information on the phone,” Ramos said. “Nobody’s rights are being violated. No one’s.”

Survivors of the shooting and family members of those who died still have questions about whether there was a third shooter, according to the prosecutors’ brief.

“Although the reports of three individuals were not corroborated, and may ultimately be incorrect, the fact remains that the information contained solely on the seized iPhone could provide evidence to identify, as of yet, unknown coconspirators who would be prosecuted by the district attorney for multiple murders and attempted murders in San Bernardino County,” the brief states.

Those sentiments were raised in another friend of the court brief filed Thursday on behalf of some of the victims of the shooting and surviving family members, one of whom wrote a personal letter to Apple CEO Tim Cook saying many victims claim to have seen “three assailants, not two, walking around in heavy boots as they carried out their murders.”

FBI spokeswoman Laura Eimiller said that forensic evidence indicates two weapons were fired at IRC, and that victim/witness accounts often vary during traumatic events.

While the majority of victims said they saw two shooters, some said there was only one and others said there were three, Eimiller said in an e-mail.

“Our investigation is continuing and we will continue to evaluate any new information that is developed or that comes our way,” Eimiller said.

Even el Chapo Got into the United States?

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Was Border Patrol ordered to deny?

Customs and Border Patrol: Agency has ‘no info’ on report ‘Chapo’ Guzman snuck into U.S.

FoxLatino: Mexican drug lord Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán allegedly snuck into the United States twice last year while on the run from authorities following his dramatic prison escape.

The cartel boss’s daughter, Rosa Isela Guzmán Ortiz, said that shortly after “El Chapo” sat down for his Rolling Stone Magazine interview with Sean Penn, he escaped capture with the help of corrupt Mexican officials and evaded U.S. Border Patrol to sneak into California.

Guzmán Ortiz would not disclose the location in southern California where the drug lord was holed up, but said he came to visit her at her five-bedroom house which the drug kingpin bought for her and her four children.

“My dad deposited the money in a bank account with a lawyer and a while after he came to see the house, his house. He came twice,” Guzmán Ortiz told the Guardian.

The claims made by Chapo’s daughter cannot be independently verified and are likely to raise concerns among intelligence authorities in both the U.S. and Mexico.

Jacqueline Wasiluk, a Customs and Border Protection spokeswoman, told the Washington Post on Friday that the agency has “no information that substantiates the claims in news reports” about Guzmán.

Guzmán Ortiz said that she doesn’t know specifically how the drug lord arrived in the U.S. but that “El Chapo” allegedly paid off high-level Mexican officials.

“All I know is that my dad told his lawyer to deliver some checks to [a politician’s] campaign, and asked that he respect him,” she said.

The bombshell story from Guzmán Ortiz comes after “El Chapo’s” lawyer said the drug lord asked him to negotiate with U.S. authorities for a lighter sentence and confinement at a medium-security prison.

The cartel boss was recaptured in early January during a raid by Mexican Marines, which took place in the city of Los Mochis. During the raid, five suspects were killed and six – including Guzmán – were arrested. Marines seized two armored vehicles, eight rifles, one handgun and a rocket-propelled grenade launcher.

He escaped from incarceration last July through a mile-long tunnel dug to what authorities say was a building in plain sight of the Altiplano prison that was set up specifically for the prison break. The tunnel leading from the drug lord’s cell to the building was equipped with a ventilation system and a customized motorcycle.

Guzmán has been indicted on a number of federal jurisdictions throughout the U.S., among them Brooklyn, Manhattan, Chicago and Miami, as well as other cities where the Sinaloa Cartel operates.

Mexican drug lord Guzman seeks to speed up extradition to U.S.

MEXICO CITY (Reuters) – Captive Mexican drug lord Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman is attempting to accelerate his extradition to the United States in the hope that he will be treated better in prison there, his lawyers said on Wednesday.

Guzman, who has twice escaped from Mexican maximum security prisons, was captured in Mexico in January, six months after his last jailbreak. The Mexican government quickly said it would initiate extradition proceedings for him to the United States.

The world’s most notorious drug kingpin undertook legal steps to block his extradition, but his lawyers said he was so fed up with his treatment in Mexico that he was looking to move.

“He asked me to do whatever we could to put a stop to the situation he’s in, ‘I just want them to let me sleep,’ he kept saying and told me ‘try to get the quickest extradition possible for me, try and see about speaking to the U.S. government,'” one of the lawyers, Jose Refugio Rodriguez, told local radio.

Guzman has also complained about the amount of communication he is allowed with his family, being excessively cooped up in his cell, and that his cell is too cold, the lawyers said.

A second lawyer, Juan Pablo Badillo, told Reuters by telephone that the process would still take time.

“Since I was able to speak to (Guzman) from Feb. 15, he said he would analyze how we could start this process. It would definitely need to be subject to an agreement with the United States,” Badillo said.

Emerging Putin’s Geo Aggressions

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Putin has an inside circle and it is bid-rigging and creating wealth though fraud and collusion. Cunning, calculated, measured and well planned, Putin has a global objective. Is he stoppable beyond Syria?

Few have spoken about the national blackout, the cyber-attack on Ukraine’s power grid. If it can happen in Ukraine, it can happen in America. It must be noted who owns and controls companies with ties to infrastructure….Putin’s friends. For a chilling read, go here.

In part: In a statement announcing the sanctions, the U.S. Treasury Department alleged that Putin “has investments” with Gunvor, the oil-trading firm that Timchenko founded but exited a day before he was hit with U.S. sanctions, and “may have access to Gunvor funds.”

Washington has not released any evidence to substantiate these claims, which the Kremlin and Gunvor deny. (The firm also says CEO Torbjorn Tornqvist was in charge of daily operations.)*

Meanwhile, Navalny filed a lawsuit earlier this month accusing Putin of a conflict of interest in awarding $1.75 billion in state financing to a company part-owned by Shamalov, his alleged son-in-law. A Moscow court rejected the lawsuit, saying it did not qualify for consideration under “administrative proceedings.” Full article here.

When it comes to Crimea and most recently Ukraine, does anyone care? For a data cache on Russian aggressions on Ukraine, go here.

According to Ukrainian officials on March 1 Russia sent three trains with ammunition to the occupied city of Ilovaisk and two tanks and four armoured personnel vehicles to Novoazovsk.

NATO’s top commander says Russian military activity in eastern Ukraine is increasing. Earlier, General Philip Breedlove also warned of ‘disturbing trends’ – including more sniper fire and shelling on the frontline. The NATO leader claims Russia has placed “well above” 1,000 pieces of military hardware in Ukraine over the past 12 months. More here.

Then comes Kazakhstan, where it appears covert pro-Russian adjustments are next up for Putin and Kazakhstan is taking notice.

Reuters in part: Demographically, the region therefore has much in common with Ukraine’s Crimea peninsula and the eastern Donbass region, whose majority Russian-speaking populations pulled out of Kiev’s orbit with help from Moscow.

There is no separatist rebellion in northern Kazakhstan, but the ethnic Russians, who make up more than a fifth of the country’s 18 million population, are feeling increasingly insecure and some sympathize with the separatists in Ukraine.

The Ukraine experience has made the Kazakh authorities highly sensitive to any signs of disloyalty by ethnic Russians. Ethnically based political parties are banned.

Last year, a court in eastern Kazakhstan sentenced a user of Vkontakte, a Russian-based social network, to five years in prison for posting a poll which asked people whether they would support the idea of that region, which also has a big ethnic Russian population, becoming part of Russia.

“Their bodies are in Kazakhstan but their minds are in Russia,” said political analyst Dosym Satpayev, talking about what he described as the significant portion of the Kazakh population influenced by Russian media.

“There are signs that (the authorities) in Kazakhstan are beginning to realize it also faces a separatist threat,” said Satpayev, who runs the Risk Assessment Group, a think tank.

There are no signs of Moscow promoting separatism in Kazakhstan, although it wants to keep the country in its orbit. More here.

So beyond the matter of Putin taking over Syria, then gaining power and control in Afghanistan again, there is the matter of the Arctic. Enter ICEX.

Military: The U.S. Navy’s submarine force is setting up a temporary command center on a sheet of Arctic ice, where U.S. underwater capabilities will be put to the test in the increasingly strategic High North.


The five-week submarine drill coincides with separate war games in Norway called Cold Response involving 16,000 U.S. and NATO forces. Marines have been launching stinger missiles and maneuvering tanks, and the Air Force has dispatched three B-52 Stratofortress bombers.
Together, the exercises underscore the emergence of the Arctic as an area of concern as melting ice caps raise the prospects for competition over vital undersea natural resources. The area could become a flash point between the U.S. and Russia.


“The Arctic environment plays a key role in national defense,” said U.S. Submarine Forces commander Vice Adm. Joseph E. Tofalo in a statement announcing the launch of Ice Exercise 2016. “With over a thousand miles of Arctic coastline, the U.S. has strong national security and homeland defense interests in the region.”


Then ICEX drill, which is being conducted in the Arctic Ocean, aims to evaluate the terrain and assess the readiness of U.S. submarines operating under ice. It does not explicitly address concerns of a growing Russian military presence.
Still, Russian activity in the High North has grabbed the attention of top U.S. military commanders.
“We are facing a very challenging situation in the Arctic,” European Command’s Gen. Philip Breedlove told lawmakers last week. “Many of our NATO allies, Canada and the U.S. are concerned about what we see as the militarization of the Arctic now by Russia.”
Since 2008, Russia has been steadily upgrading its forces in the Arctic: reopening air bases, restoring air-defense radar stations and building new submarines. The moves are all in response to new security challenges brought on by melting ice and the prospect of new shipping lanes.
Moscow’s actions reflect a focus on “goals beyond the Arctic region,” the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute said in a recent report examining Russian military capabilities and intentions in the region. More here.

Is there some negotiating or new deal that can stop Putin? Anyone?

 

 

 

When Sharia/ISIS Goes Capitalist and Trading

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Islamic State ‘earning millions by playing the stock market’

Group using cash looted from banks in Mosul to speculate on international currency markets

Telegraph: Isil is making millions of dollars for its war chest by playing foreign currency markets under the noses of bank chiefs, it was revealed today.

The terror group is earning up to $20m (£14.29m) a month by funnelling dollars looted from banks during its takeover of the Iraqi city of Mosul into legitimate currency markets in the Middle East.

It then makes huge returns on currency speculation, which are then wired back via unsuspecting financial authorities in Iraq and Jordan, a parliamentary committee was told on Wednesday.

Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant’s (Isil) extraordinary venture into white collar crime is now a major source of income, along with oil smuggling and extortion from people living in Isil-controlled areas.

Details of the scam emerged during a hearing of a specially-convened Foreign Affairs sub-committee set up to examine Britain’s role in Isil financing.

The hearing was told that Isil finance chiefs would play the international stock markets using cash looted during their 2014 take over of Mosul, in which the group got its hands on an estimated $429m from the city’s central bank.

They also used money “siphoned off” from pension payments that are still being made by the Iraqi government to civil servants living in the city.

The details were revealed to the hearing by John Baron, the sub-committee’s chair, who demanded to know whether the British government – which has pledged to help cut off Isil’s finance networks – was taking proper action against it.

“The cash that Isil has looted, along with siphoned off pension payments, is routed into Jordanian banks and brought back into the system via Baghdad,” he said. “That allows the system to be exploited by Isil, in that they take a turn (profit) on the foreign currency actions and siphon that cash back.”

The profits were channeled back into Isil coffers by “hawala” transfers, an unregulated system of money transfer whereby cash payments are made via agents in one country after a similar amount is presented as collateral in another.

Infographic: How Does ISIS Fund Itself? | Statista

Tobias Ellwood, a junior Foreign Office minister, admitted to the committee that there was a “porousness” in the local financial system but said that work was now underway to shut it down. It had been done without the active connivance of bank staff, he added.

In December, the Central Bank of Iraq named 142 currency-exchange houses in Iraq that the US suspected of moving funds for Islamic State. It banned them from its twice-monthly dollar auctions in a bid to stop the terror group getting its hands on the cash – a main source of exchange in war-torn Iraq.

But Mr Ellwood conceded: “Iraq could have moved faster on this”. Asked if the similar moves had been made in Jordan, he said he was unable to give an answer.

“Jordan plays an important role in the (anti-Isis) coalition,” he added. “Work is being done to close it down, I don’t think there is anything near as much from that source of revenue as before.”

The committee heard claims that Isil’s “rake off” from foreign currency speculation was a “significant part of their income stream”, although Mr Ellwood said he thought that estimates of $20m were excessive.

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Spiegel: Some members of the intelligence community even view spying in the global financial system with a certain amount of concern, as revealed by a document from the NSA’s British counterpart — the Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ) — that deals with “financial data” from a legal perspective and examines the organization’s own collaboration with the NSA. According to the document, the collection, storage and sharing of “politically sensitive” data is a highly invasive measure since it includes “bulk data — rich personal information. A lot of it is not about our targets.”

Indeed, secret documents reveal that the main NSA financial database Tracfin, which collects the “Follow the Money” surveillance results on bank transfers, credit card transactions and money transfers, already had 180 million datasets by 2011. The corresponding figure in 2008 was merely 20 million. According to these documents, most Tracfin data is stored for five years.

Monitoring SWIFT

The classified documents show that the intelligence agency has several means of accessing the internal data traffic of the Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication (SWIFT), a cooperative used by more than 8,000 banks worldwide for their international transactions. The NSA specifically targets other institutes on an individual basis. Furthermore, the agency apparently has in-depth knowledge of the internal processes of credit card companies like Visa and MasterCard. What’s more, even new, alternative currencies, as well as presumably anonymous means of payment like the Internet currency Bitcoin, rank among the targets of the American spies.

The collected information often provides a complete picture of individuals, including their movements, contacts and communication behavior. The success stories mentioned by the intelligence agency include operations that resulted in banks in the Arab world being placed on the US Treasury’s blacklist.

In one case, the NSA provided proof that a bank was involved in illegal arms trading — in another case, a financial institution was providing support to an authoritarian African regime. Full article here.