Category Archives: Insurgency

Cuban Migrants Flood the SW Border

Posted on by

2015: At Least 44,000 Cubans Entered US Through Texas and Southern Border This Year, Number on the Rise – Report

The number of Cubans attempting to come to the Unites States via Texas has increased this year, thanks in large part to the thaw in political tensions between the U.S. and Cuba.

 

After President Obama and Cuban leader Raul Castro announced their plans to normalize relations between the two nations, many Cubans feared that the special migrant status they have enjoyed for over 50 years would come to an end. The current “wet foot, dry foot policy” allows anyone who has fled Cuba and entered the U.S. the ability to pursue residency and work in the country.

The Los Angles Times reports that at least 44,000 Cubans have reached the southern U.S. border during the fiscal year which ended in September. This figure is more than twice as many of the 17,466 Cubans who came through the southern border the year before. Full article here.

Tension Simmers as Cubans Breeze Across U.S. Border

LAREDO, Tex. — They are crossing the border here by the hundreds each day, approved to enter the United States in a matter of hours. Part of a fast-rising influx of Cubans, they walk out to a Laredo street and are greeted by volunteers from Cubanos en Libertad, or Cubans in Freedom, who help them arrange travel to their American destination — often Miami — and start applying for work permits and federal benefits like food stamps and Medicaid, available by law to Cubans immediately after their arrival.

The friendly reception given the Cubans, an artifact of hostile relations with the Castro government, is a stark contrast with the treatment of Central American families fleeing violence in their countries. And it is creating tensions in this predominantly Mexican-American city, where residents saw how Central American migrants, who came in an influx in 2014, were detained by the Border Patrol and ordered to appear in immigration courts.

“The people here are starting to feel resentment,” said Representative Henry Cuellar, Democrat of Texas, whose congressional district includes the city. “They are asking, is it fair that the Cubans get to stay and the Central Americans are being deported?”

The disparity will be in sharp relief next week when Pope Francis comes to the border at El Paso to offer prayers for the many migrants who have faced danger or arrest trying to cross the United States border.

Town officials have warned Cubans not to loiter in the streets. Local bus companies complain that Cubans are chartering special vans to travel. Some residents here have also begun to speak up.

A group of veterans from Afghanistan and Iraq held two protests by the border bridge in recent weeks, saying the federal government was spending money on Cubans when it was not meeting the needs of people here.

“We make everyone from Central America wait in line, while the Cubans walk in even though they are not refugees,” said Gabriel Lopez, a Mexican-American Navy veteran who is president of the group of veterans. “We are saying, don’t open the borders to Cubans and give them instant benefits while we have American veterans living on the streets.”

In coming weeks the number of Cubans is expected to spike, as more than 5,000 who have been stalled in Costa Rica since late last year will leave there on regular plane flights agreed to by governments in Central America and Mexico. Already about 12,100 Cubans entered through Laredo and other Texas border stations in the last three months of 2015, according to official figures. Border officials say as many as 48,000 Cubans could cross here this year, more than all those who came in the last two years combined.

Under the Cuban Adjustment Act, a law Congress passed in 1966 in the early years of enmity with Fidel Castro, any Cuban who sets foot on American soil is given permission to enter, known as parole. Cubans are also eligible for federal welfare benefits including financial assistance for nine months under separate policies from the 1980s. After a year, they can apply for permanent residency, a gateway to citizenship.

The recent exodus from Cuba began in mid-2014, even before President Obama in December of that year announced a restoration of diplomatic relations with the government, now led by Mr. Castro’s brother Raúl. In a major change, President Raúl Castro allowed Cubans to leave the country without exit visas. Many Cubans have said that rumors that the special entry to the United States would be canceled had caused them to pack up and go.

“The rumors are unfounded,” Alan Bersin, assistant secretary of Homeland Security, said in an interview, seeking to dispel the fears. “The Cuban Adjustment Act is still in effect and is part of the overall immigration policy and there is no intent presently to change that.”

Mr. Cuellar has called for the act to be repealed, but he acknowledges there is little prospect that Congress will act this year.

The recent influx is nothing like the chaotic rush of Cubans fleeing the Communist government that overwhelmed South Florida with the Mariel boatlift in 1980, and the rafter crisis in 1994. The federal border authorities, who have been watching the number of Cubans growing steadily, added officers and opened extra rooms in the border station, doubling their capacity to process them. Most Cubans move through in less than an hour, officials said.

Frank Longoria, assistant director of field operations for United States Customs and Border Protection, said that despite their numbers, the Cubans’ entry has not affected the huge flows of people and freight trucks each day through Laredo, the country’s largest land port of entry.

At the border, Cubans are fingerprinted and pass through routine criminal and terrorism background checks. There is no special vetting for Cubans, and there are no medical examinations or vaccination requirements.

“Right now I feel like the freest Cuban in the whole world,” said Rodny Nápoles, 39, a coach of the Cuban national women’s water polo team who crossed into Laredo this week.

This week, the first direct flights from northern Costa Rica to the Mexican city just across the border brought more than 300 Cubans, including at least 41 pregnant women and their families.

One of them, Yadelys Rodríguez Martín, 28, who was 19 weeks pregnant, sat down to rest and enjoy a moment of relief on the front steps of Cubanos en Libertad, right after emerging from the border station. After traveling through Ecuador and being stuck for three months in Costa Rica because of a political dispute in the region, she said she was stunned by how quickly she had been admitted into the United States.

“We are not used to things happening so fast,” Ms. Rodríguez said.  More here.

U.S. nor Saudi +20 Can Stop Putin’s Bombing

Posted on by

As Obama is in California playing golf, the White House says he took time to have a phone call with Putin on Syria and Ukraine. Not even Obama, heh…..seems to be able to convince Putin to stop bombing U.S. allies in Syria.

   Russian airstrikes in areas around Aleppo.

Turkey to Extend Strikes on Kurdish Fighters in Syria

VoA: Turkey says it will continue to target U.S.-allied Kurdish fighters on the Syrian frontier near its border, despite mounting international pressure on the Ankara government to stop the artillery bombardments.

Turkish Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoğlu, in telephone talks Sunday, told German Chancellor Angela Merkel that Turkish forces will “not permit” the Kurdish People’s Protection Units fighters (YPG), of the Democratic Union Party (PYD) “to carry out aggressive acts.”

Both France and the United States have called for an “immediate halt” to the Turkish bombardments.

According to Turkish official,s Davutoğlu spoke this weekend with U.S. Vice President Joe Biden concerning Turkish anger about YPG military encroachments in northern Syria, adding that Biden had said he would pass the Turkish Prime Minister’s remarks on to the “relevant parties.”

U.S. officials say there is little to be done to counter militarily the Russian-backed Assad offensive and they argue the vicious five-year-long Syrian civil war that has left upwards of 250,000 dead won’t be resolved by the clash of arms but through a negotiated political settlement. Full story here.

****

RIYADH: Troops from around 20 countries were gathering in northern Saudi Arabia Sunday for “the most important” military maneuver ever staged in the region, the official news agency SPA reported.

The “Thunder of the North” exercise involving ground, air, and naval forces sends a “clear message” that Saudi Arabia and its allies “stand united in confronting all challenges and preserving peace and stability in the region,” SPA said.

Saudi Arabia is currently leading a military campaign against Iran-backed rebels in its southern neighbor Yemen. Last December, it also formed a new 35-member coalition to fight “terrorism” in Islamic countries.

Sunday’s announcement also comes as the kingdom, a member of the US-led coalition targeting the jihadist Daesh group, said it has deployed warplanes to a Turkish air base in order to “intensify” its operations against Daesh in Syria.

SPA did not specify when the military exercise will begin or how long it will last.

However, the agency called it the “most important and largest in the region’s history” in terms of the number of nations taking part and the weaponry being used.

Twenty countries will be taking take part, SPA said.

Among them are Saudi Arabia’s five partners in the Gulf Cooperation Council, as well as Chad, Egypt, Jordan, Malaysia, Morocco, Pakistan, Senegal and Tunisia, it added.

A Saudi source said on Thursday that members of the new “anti-terrorism” coalition will gather in Saudi Arabia next month for its first publicly announced meeting.

Riyadh has said the alliance would share intelligence, combat violent ideology and deploy troops if necessary.

****

The Lebanese militant group has started ‘locking on’ to Israeli jets using advanced radars

I24: Amid ongoing tension on Israel’s northern borders, a new threat has emerged for Israeli fighter pilots conducting spying missions in Lebanon, Walla reports.

Using radar technology it has acquired since Russia’s entry into the Syrian civil war, Hezbollah has started using sophisticated radars to “lock on” to Israeli spy jets on reconnaissance flights over its northern neighbor.

The new technology can identify all Israeli fighter jets, according to sources within Israel’s security establishment. By locking on to the jets as targets, Walla says, Hezbollah can then fire missiles at them.

Nonetheless, the sophistication of Israel’s fighter fleet means they are equipped to deal with such threats, which enables them to detect and follow radars that threaten to lock onto them ahead of launching missiles.

In such an event, pilots can change their plane’s route, especially when they are simply on an intelligence-gathering mission.

Israeli security officials believe Hezbollah has acquired the technology through its ties with Russia, forged as a result of their mutual fight against Islamic State in Syria, Walla reported.

“The connection between Hezbollah, Russia and Syria have greatly changed the rules of the game in the region,” a security official was quoted as saying in Walla.

“Hezbollah is indicating to Israel that it is ready for the next stage.”

During the last all-out war between Israel and Hezbollah in 2006, the Shi’ite militant group hit just one Israeli fighter jet using an anti-tank missile, but while the aircraft was grounded. In the wake of the war, Hezbollah began acquiring advanced anti-aircraft weapons from Iran and Syria, Walla says.

The Israel Air Force has on several occasions attacked weapons convoys making their way from Syria to Lebanon over the last few years, according to foreign media reports.

In January, The Daily Beast reported that the Russians are supplying Hezbollah with sophisticated weaponry, including precision ground-to-ground missiles,  long-range tactical missiles, laser guided rockets, and anti-tank weapons.

The Hezbollah militants who told The Daily Beast about the arms transfers said that the group, the Assad regime and Iran have a “relationship of complete coordination” and that Hezbollah is receiving the arms “with no strings attached.”

“We are strategic allies in the Middle East right now—the Russians are our allies and give us weapons,” one of the Hezbollah officers in charge of five units in Syria told The Daily Beast.

Facts: Mexico to U.S. Immigration

Posted on by

Unaccompanied Alien Children Charged in Execution-Style Murder, Media Calls Them “Baby-Faced Boys”

It appears that the recent execution-style murder of a Massachusetts man was committed by two Central American teens that came to the U.S. as Unaccompanied Alien Children (UAC) under President Obama’s open border free-for-all. Tens of thousands of illegal immigrant minors—mostly from El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras—have entered the country through the Mexican border since the influx began in the summer of 2014 and the administration has relocated them nationwide.

News reports indicate that the 17-year-olds charged in the gruesome Massachusetts killing entered the U.S. recently as UAC’s and both have ties to MS-13, according to authorities cited by various outlets. They lived in Everett and one of the teens, Cristian Nunez-Flores, moved to Massachusetts from his native El Salvador a year and a half ago which is when the influx of Central American minors began. His parents remain in El Salvador, according to a local news article. The other gangbanger’s name is Jose Vasquez Ardon and he too is a recent arrival from Central America. Prosecutors say the teens, described in a local news article as “baby-faced boys,”shot a 19-year-old in the head. Both are being held without bail for obvious reasons. A must read summary here.

*** Meanwhile***

5 facts about Mexico and immigration to the U.S.

PewResearch: Pope Francis is expected to make immigration a major theme of his visit to Mexico. By traveling northward across Mexico, he intends to symbolically retrace the journey of Mexican and Central American migrants traveling to the United States. After the pope leaves Mexico City, his route will begin in the southern state of Chiapas, which shares a long border with Guatemala, and end in Ciudad Juárez, located across the U.S.-Mexico border from El Paso, Texas, a longtime entry point to the U.S.

U.S. immigration from Latin America has shifted over the past two decades. From 1965 to 2015, more than 16 million Mexicans migrated to the U.S. in one of the largest mass migrations in modern history. But over the past decade, Mexican migration to the U.S. has slowed dramatically. Today, Mexico increasingly serves as a land bridge for Central American immigrants traveling to the U.S.

Here are five facts about Mexico and trends in immigration to the U.S.

1Mexico increases deportations of Central AmericansMexico is stopping more unauthorized Central American immigrants at its southern border. The Mexican government said in 2014 that it would increase enforcement at its southern border in response to an increased flow of Central Americans traveling through Mexico to reach the U.S. In 2015, the government there carried out about 150,000 deportations of unauthorized immigrants from El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras, a 44% jump over the previous year. These three Central American countries alone accounted for nearly all (97%) of Mexico’s deportations in 2015.

2Despite increased enforcement by Mexico, many unauthorized Central Americans are still reaching the U.S. via Mexico. At the U.S.-Mexico border, the number of families and unaccompanied children apprehended by U.S. Customs and Border Protection officials is again rising, though it’s too early to tell how 2016 will compare with prior years. From Oct. 1, 2015, to Jan. 31, 2016, 24,616 families and 20,455 unaccompanied children – the vast majority of them from Central America – were apprehended at the southwestern U.S. border, double the total from the same time period the year before. Apprehensions of unaccompanied children rose to record levels in fiscal 2014, then decreased by 42% in fiscal 2015.

3More Cubans are also traveling through Mexico to reach the U.S. The number of Cubans migrating through Mexico to reach the U.S. spiked dramatically last year after President Barack Obama said the U.S. would renew ties with the island nation. In fiscal 2015, 43,159 Cubans entered the U.S. via ports of entry, a 78% increase over the previous year. Two-thirds of these Cubans arrived through the U.S. Border Patrol’s Laredo Sector in Texas. (Cubans who pass an inspection can enter the U.S. legally under the Cuban Adjustment Act of 1966.)

4Fewer Mexicans are migrating to the U.S. today than in the past. In fact, more Mexicans left than came to the U.S since the end of the Great Recession. Between 2009 and 2014, 870,000 Mexican nationals left Mexico to come to the U.S., down from the 2.9 million who left Mexico for the U.S. between 1995 and 2000. Of those moving back to Mexico, many cite family as the reason for their return. About 1 million Mexican immigrants and their U.S.-born children moved from the U.S. to Mexico between 2009 and 2014, and 61% said they had done so to reunite with family or to start a family, according to the 2014 Mexican National Survey of Demographic Dynamics.

5More Mexicans now say life is about the same in the U.S. and Mexico. In 2015, 33% of Mexican adults said life in the U.S. is neither better nor worse than life in Mexico, up from 23% who said this in 2007. Still, about half of Mexican adults believe life is better in the U.S. and 35% of Mexicans said they would move to the U.S. if they had the opportunity and means to do so, similar shares as in 2009.

Aleppo Codex, Oldest Surviving Treasure

Posted on by

As the chatter among some world leaders centers around a cessation of hostilities in Syria, tragically Aleppo is a big turning point for history and control. If Damascus is the next target, then history in the region is all but erased.

The Aleppo Codex was written in the 10th century, C.E. At some point the Codex was transferred to Egypt and emerged in Syria. It remained there for 600 years until in 1947, there were riots against Jews and their properties in Aleppo and an ancient synagogue was burned but the Codex survived with some damage. The Aleppo Jewish and Christian community protected the Codex allegedly in a cave as the most sacred possession.

The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) has officially recognized the Codex as a world treasure.

World treasure: UNESCO recognizes oldest surviving copy of Hebrew Bible

FNC: It is one of the world’s greatest treasures.

Written sometime around 930 A.D. in the town of Tiberias on the shores of the Sea of Galilee, the Aleppo Codex is the oldest surviving copy of the Hebrew Bible, according to experts.

The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization, UNESCO, added the millennium-old manuscript earlier this week to its International Memory of the World Register, which honors some of the most important discoveries in human history.

“It is regarded as the oldest complete Hebrew Bible in the world,” Don Bassett, director of the Biblical Museum of History in Tennessee, told FoxNews.com. “The text has been preserved with phenomenal accuracy,” Bassett said.

Damage to Historical Sites in the Syrian Civil War | Graphiq   Interactive map of damaged or destroyed sites.

All current versions of the Old Testament are believed to have stemmed “in one way or another, from this ancient manuscript,” Adolfo Roitman, head curator of the Shrine of the Book Museum in Jerusalem, told the Christian Post.

“The best Bible for scholarly study available today is traceable back to the Aleppo Codex,” added Bassett.

The Codex, which was smuggled out of Syria and brought into Israel in 1958, currently resides at the museum.

Some 190 pages of the Codex — around 40 percent of the total — are missing, Bassett told FoxNews.com.

The missing pages include four out of five books of the Pentateuch — the first section of books in the Bible also called the Five Books of Moses — and five books from the last section –Lamentations, Ecclesiastes, Esther, Daniel and Ezra, i24News reported.

World's Oldest BibleExpand /

“It’s fitting the Aleppo Codex has been designated as a world treasure, given its storied past and significance to Jews and Christians through the ages,” said Michael Holmes, Ph.D., executive director of the Museum of the Bible’s research arm, the Scholar’s Initiative. “It’s simply unparalleled in the world of biblical manuscripts.”

There is also a disagreement over who owns the priceless text.

Filmmaker Avi Dabach, who is making a documentary on the ancient manuscript, told the newspaper he believes the Codex belongs to the Jewish community that fled Syria.

“In the 1960s the Aleppo-Jewish community sued the people who brought the Codex to Israel,” Dabach said, according to the Christian Post. “The Israeli authorities decided to confiscate this item and then, from a position of strength, force on the community an arrangement.”

UNESCO says on its website that the manuscript, also known as the “Crown,” is “the oldest extant nearly complete Hebrew Bible (Old Testament).”

“It is considered by many scholars to be the most exact and authoritative Hebrew Bible and served as a source of text, cantillation and vocalization of the Bible – both in the past and present,” according to UNESCO.

It was not a Hardware Issue, it was a Cyber Intrusion, IRS

Posted on by

IRS Confirms It Was a Victim of an Automated Attack

The attack, which occurred in January, targeted the electronic filing PIN application form on the IRS.gov Website. Experts said there are lessons to be learned.

eWeek: The U.S. Internal Revenue Service (IRS) is gearing up for another busy tax season, and it appears that hackers are getting ready, too. On Feb. 9, the IRS confirmed that it was the victim of an automated attack in January that targeted the electronic filing PIN application form on the IRS.gov Website.According to the IRS, attackers made use of personal information, including Social Security numbers, that was stolen from other non-IRS Websites. The attackers then used that information in an attempt to generate fraudulent E-File PIN numbers on IRS.gov. With a PIN number, an attacker could have potentially been able to file a tax return or gain access to other taxpayer information.The IRS investigation has found that 464,000 unique Social Security numbers (SSNs) were used in the attack, with 101,000 being successfully able to access the E-File PIN. The IRS is emphasizing that it has halted the attack and is contacting those who are affected.”No personal taxpayer data was compromised or disclosed by IRS systems,” the agency stated. “The IRS also is taking immediate steps to notify affected taxpayers by mail that their personal information was used in an attempt to access the IRS application.”

In May 2015, the IRS reported that its Get Transcript service was attacked. Get Transcript enables users to get information about their tax account transactions. As is the case with the new attack against the E-File PIN, the Get Transcript service attack involved user information that was stolen from third-party sites. The success rate for the Get Transcript attackers, however, was higher than it was for the E-File PIN attackers, where 100,000 out of 200,000 hack attempts were successful.

Security experts contacted by eWEEK are not surprised that the IRS is once again reporting an attack against its systems. The fact that the IRS.gov site was attacked with SSNs stolen from other third-party sites is, however, somewhat ironic.”One of the most successful ways hackers steal citizens’ Social Security numbers is through fraudulent phishing emails or phone calls that appear to be from the IRS,” Darren Guccione, CEO and co-founder of Keeper Security, told eWEEK.

Hackers know the public is terrified of being identity-theft victims and exploit this fear well, often by telling someone they’ve been a victim already and asking for their Social Security number, Guccione noted.Lance James, chief scientist at Flashpoint, commented that one of the big concerns he sees with the latest IRS attack is the continued reliance on Social Security numbers. “We need to rethink what a Social Security number means these days when it comes to accessing data,” James told eWEEK. “It should not be the administrator password for a person’s life.”Andy Hayter, security evangelist at G DATA Software, also commented on the risks associated with SSN disclosure. Every bit of an individual’s personally identifiable information that is collected via a breach is one more piece of information that can, and someday will, be used against a person, he said.
“As long as information such as Social Security numbers is used as identification, we will have bad actors trying to collect as much information about individuals to do harm, either through theft or worse,” Hayter told eWEEK.Inga Goddijn, executive vice president at Risk Based Security, noted that taxpayers should be concerned that questionable security practices at organizations completely unrelated to the IRS have the potential of affecting their tax returns.

Though the IRS has stated that no personal taxpayer data was compromised or disclosed in the new attack, JP Bourget, CEO of Syncurity, noted that there is still a real risk.”While maybe the IRS can in the end prevent any bad outcomes for taxpayers, I can imagine a few scenarios where a bad guy attempts to file a tax return for a refund that then holds up a valid refund to someone who is owed a refund, and even depending on that refund,” Bourget told eWEEK. “There’s also the angle of now your account is flagged and the uncertainty of how that affects a taxpayer over time and what hidden costs may arise from that.”One potentially positive outcome that could result from the IRS attack is that lessons learned could help prevent the next attack. Goddijn said that it would be helpful if the IRS can share more detail as to how the agency detected the attack and ideas for preventing these types of enumeration attacks in the future. She added that the U.S. government has been pushing for more threat intelligence sharing and improved security practices for all organizations.”Why not take this opportunity to lead the charge and share more about the attack with the security community,” Goddijn said. “That may help stop the next, similar assault on a high-value target.”

In 2015:

USAToday: Criminals hacked into an Internal Revenue Service website and gained access to approximately 100,000 tax accounts, the agency said Tuesday. Another 100,000 attempts were made but were not successful.

The attack appears to have first begun in February, the agency said.

The hackers got in by taking information about taxpayers they’d acquired from other sources and using it to correctly answer several personal identity verification questions in the IRS’ “Get Transcript” application, the IRS said in a statement.

This allowed them to get information about tax accounts through the application. The information stolen included Social Security information, date of birth and street address.

The Get Transcript application allows users to view their tax account transactions, line-by-line tax return information or wage and income reported to the IRS for a specific tax year. It was used to securely retrieve approximately 23 million taxpayer transcripts last year, the IRS said.

The information the hackers used to get in was probably previously stolen by other hackers who then sold it on the open market, said Rob Roy, chief technology officer of HP Enterprise Security Products.

The hackers who bought it “appear to have hired an army of people to submit over 200,000 queries into the IRS site over a period of four months. Not exactly a quick and easy operation,” he said.

“The matter is under review by the Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration as well as the IRS’ Criminal Investigation unit, and the ‘Get Transcript’ application has been shut down temporarily,” the IRS said.

The agency will provide free credit monitoring services for the approximately 100,000 taxpayers whose accounts were accessed.

The theft was discovered late last week when IRS staff noticed unusual activity on the application. Further investigation showed that attempts were made beginning in February.

The breach does not involve the main IRS computer system that handles tax filing submissions. “That system remains secure,” the IRS said.

“The IRS historically has been very security, it has to be by virtue of the data it collects. But it just goes to show that even the most secure system can be attacked,” said Larry Ponemon of the Ponemon Institute, a data security research group.