Category Archives: Middle East

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?

 

 

 

Syria in Blackout, Country at a Halt

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Lights out in Syria: Nationwide blackout brings country to a halt

DAMASCUS, Syria, March 3 (UPI) — Officials are scrambling to determine the cause of a nationwide blackout in Syria.

“Electricity has been cut across all provinces and teams are trying to determine the reason for this unexpected cut,” state news agency SANA reported. “Engineers and technicians are working on finding out why this sudden power cut happened in order to fix it promptly and restore electricity in the next few hours.”

Although electricity is available for only 2-4 hours a day in war-torn Syria — or not available at all — nationwide blackouts are rare.

The Syrian Telecommunication Establishment said some Internet services have partially halted “as a result of sudden damage to one of the network hubs” and that repair teams are working to fix it.

Syria has been blighted by a complex civil war in which the Islamic State, the Syrian government and multiple Syrian rebel groups fight for control of territory. The Syrian government under President Bashar al-Assad has previously blamed blackouts on rebel attacks, while the United Nations has said that electricity has been restricted as a weapon of war.

A cease-fire in the Syrian civil war between the government and rebels that was brokered by the United States and Russia began midnight Friday.

Efforts to relaunch power service could take two to 12 hours, a Ministry of Electricity official said in a video posted online late Thursday afternoon.

Shortly before the reports of the outage, the ministry said on its Facebook page Thursday that militants had hit part of a power-generating station with rockets in the western city of Hama. The Syrian government hasn’t said whether this attack was linked to the nationwide outage; the ministry said maintenance workers were fixing the damage.

CNN: Syria’s power infrastructure has been damaged during the war, accounting in part for frequent outages even in areas that it still serves.

Thursday’s outage came in the middle of a two-week truce between government forces and certain militant groups — a pause in fighting that is meant to allow humanitarian aid to reach people who have been cut off by the war.

U.N. envoy: ‘visible’ progress in Syria truce, success ‘not guaranteed’

Syria’s ceasefire has shown clear signs of progress, the top UN envoy for the war-ravaged country said Thursday, but warned there was no guarantee it would succeed.

“The situation… on the ground could be summarized as fragile. Success is not guaranteed, but progress has been visible,” Staffan de Mistura told reporters in Geneva as the cessation of hostilities entered its sixth day.

The ceasefire brokered by the United States and Russia came into effect on Saturday but does not include territory controlled by the ISIS group or Al-Nusra.

“The level of violence in the country is being greatly reduced. Ask the Syrian people,” de Mistura said.

His comments came shortly before entering a meeting of a UN-backed international task force co-chaired by Moscow and Washington that is overseeing the truce.

“In general, the cessation has been holding,” he said, while acknowledging that “there are still a number of places where fighting has continued,” including in parts of Damascus and Homs.

But the good thing, he stressed, is that incidents of fighting “have been contained”.

As a result of the relative calm, aid workers have been delivering desperately-needed assistance to besieged areas where nearly half a million people are trapped.

Another four million people are living in hard-to-reach areas.

Following a meeting of the task force overseeing the delivery of humanitarian aid, de Mistura’s special advisor Jan Egeland voiced hope that the ceasefire would “lead to a big leap forward… in reaching many hundreds of thousands more people.”

“Considering how it has been, we are obviously making great progress, but there is a lot left to be done,” he told AFP.

In the last three weeks, 236 trucks had been sent out to 115,000 people in besieged areas, he said, adding that by the weekend, aid workers were hoping to have reached another three or four areas in Kfar Batna in the Eastern Ghouta region, which are home to another 20,000 people.

De Mistura has said a new round of peace talks will resume in Geneva on March 9, after his first attempt to engage the warring parties in indirect negotiations floundered last month.

He had been hoping to get started on March 7, but acknowledged that logistical problems, such as finding hotel rooms for participants as the Swiss city hosts one of the world’s biggest car shows, had forced him to push the talks back.

Since the talks would consist of indirect “proximity talks”, participants would not all need to arrive by March 9, with some expected to arrive as late as the 14th, he said.

It might be a good idea to invest in a NBN battery for sale to power backup broadband to improve internet speed and keep locals connected during a blackout. My friend told me that it was really helpful for him in his blackout.

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.

Hey SEALS, Turnover your Weapons

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Twisted priorities at the Pentagon, mandated by the White House and congressional budgets, then couple that with waste, fraud and abuse, ladies and gentlemen, our problems are much worse than can be defined.

Just WHOA…

SOCOM investigating Navy SEAL weapons shortages

STRIPES: WASHINGTON — The general in charge of U.S. Special Operations Command said Tuesday that he is looking into claims that Navy SEALs and other elite forces have shortages of key equipment.

Gen. Joseph Votel assured House lawmakers that the command will resolve any problems that it discovers in equipping special operators, such as a lack of service weapons, in preparation for increasingly common missions around the world.

Rep. Duncan Hunter, R-Calif., and other House lawmakers raised the alarm earlier this month on supply shortages in the special operations community, causing soldiers to dip increasingly into their own pockets to purchase basic military gear such as helmets, global positioning devices and medical supplies.

Most concerning, according to Hunter, is SEALs are now asked to hand over their personalized weapons after returning from deployment so they can be handed off to other SEALs who are deploying.

“I look forward to talking to Navy Special Warfare Command about this specific issue and make sure we understand it,” said Votel, who was testifying to members of the House Armed Services Committee. “If there is something that we are contributing to that is impacting the readiness of our operators, we’ll certainly take immediate actions to kind of correct that.”

Votel said the issue might be related to maintenance and the high usage of SEAL weapons.

“These guys do put a lot of rounds through the weapons,” he said. “What we do try to do is ensure with that many rounds going through our weapons that they do have the right level of depot maintenance when they do come back from deployments or long training periods.”

Hunter, who wrote a letter in February to the Navy Special Warfare Command about the concerns, brushed aside the general’s suggestion.

“This is not a factor of too many rounds going through the weapon barrel, and then you just change out the barrel anyway,” Hunter said.

He said the weapons are the most important pieces of equipment for the SEALs. They put time into calibrating their weapons and applying optics and lasers, then are forced to turn them over for reconfiguration.

“I’ve had multiple SEALs at multiple times over the last six months come to me in San Diego … and tell me how things have changed dramatically from five or six years ago, meaning they don’t get weapons now to work up with for two years,” Hunter said. “They get their weapon when a guy comes back and hands over the weapon.”

The military has increased its reliance greatly on special operations forces since 9/11. As such operations hit a high mark, other reports of supply shortages have come up as well.

Last month, the nonprofit group Troops Direct reported the Marine Corps Fleet Anti-Terrorism Security Team deployed to Benghazi, Libya after the embassy attack there and lacked crucial equipment including sniper supplies and batteries.

Meanwhile, troops often have to buy their own medical equipment such as tourniquets, and shell out about $1,000 each for their own helmets or $500 for GPS devices, according to the group.

The shortfalls in SEAL weapons have surfaced, as the Navy Special Warfare Command budget increased by $11 million during the past couple of years, according to Hunter.

Rep. Richard Nugent, R-Fla., a member of the House Armed Services Committee, said he could not understand why the Navy would rotate SEALs’ service weapons and that he wanted answers.

“That’s the [weapon] you sleep with, the one you work with, so I will be interested to hear from Rep. Hunter the answer you come back with,” Nugent told Votel.

****

Lacking basic gear, special operators stuck buying their own equipment

STRIPES: WASHINGTON – Sean Matson, who recently left active-duty as a Navy SEAL, said the military measured his head four times – each time before deployment – with plans to provide him a more advanced ballistic helmet.

But the new helmet never materialized. During a deployment in Africa, Matson and six of his fellow SEALs each shelled out about $900 for updated helmets that held the lights, communications devices and batteries needed for their missions.

“There was never a clear solution to it, so guys were going out spending $800-$900 on their own ballistic helmet,” said Matson, who is now CEO of the military supply company Matbock.

Elite troops such as the SEALs are more and more forced to dip into their own pockets to purchase basic military gear such as helmets, global positioning devices and medical supplies, according to Matson and others involved in the military’s unofficial civilian-side supply network who came to Capitol Hill on Thursday.

House lawmakers have taken notice and said they will request an explanation from Defense Secretary Ash Carter.

“These are the guys we assume have the best gear all the time,” said Rep. Duncan Hunter, R-Calif., a Marine Corps combat veteran.

Hunter said special operations troops have been approaching him in his California district complaining about the inability to get needed materials and he has been investigating the issue.

Numerous individual instances point to a systemic problem in the military’s supply chain but a blind spot exists between Defense Department vendors and the troops who need the gear and supplies, Hunter said.

“It’s been impossible for me to find out how the money is getting stopped and why it is not going down to where it’s supposed to be,” he said.

Aaron Negherbon is the executive director of the nonprofit group Troops Direct, which ships needed and requested supplies – from boot laces to tablet devices — to servicemembers who cannot get it through their commands.

Less than two days after the attack on the U.S. embassy in Benghazi, Libya, Negherbon said he was contacted by the commander of a Marine Corps Fleet Anti-Terrorism Security Team that was being deployed there.

The commander told him the team lacked a variety of crucial equipment, including sniper supplies, he said.

“They came to us for…batteries because they didn’t have any of those … It is kind of like, ‘What the heck is going on?’” Negherbon said.

He said troops often have to buy their own medical equipment such as tourniquets, and shell out about $1,000 each for their own helmets or $500 for a GPS device that they need for duty during a deployment.

“The question is, why can’t you get this?” Negherbon said.

Often the answer seems to be a higher command does not have the money budgeted or the equipment was approved but not available from vendors.

“That is a good thing, we know where the problem is but [those issues] are very profound,” he said.

A small group of House Republican lawmakers gathered Thursday to hear the concerns.

Rep. Adam Kinzinger, R-Ill., an Air Force combat veteran, said the military has to weigh the concerns of supplying needed equipment with the desire of troops to always have the newest gear on the market.

Still, Kinzinger said the shortfalls in the supply chain could become a major issue if deployments ramp up again to the levels seen during the height of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars.

Rep. Chris Gibson, R-N.Y., an Army veteran, said the group should write a letter to Carter, saying they have serious concerns about supply breakdowns, including the inability of Matson and his fellow SEALs to get helmets capable of mounting lights, though the equipment was approved.

“If you’ve got a situation where unit is approved for an Ops-Core [brand ballistic] helmet and it’s not getting it, we need to understand what the problem is … that is unacceptable,” he said.

bin Ladin’s Book Shelf, Declassified

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The Usama bin Ladin Book Shelf, all links are functional, Posted by ODNI

 

In the weeks following the raid on Osama bin Laden’s compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan by United States forces, U.S. Intelligence Community analysts sifted through the recovered digital and hard copy materials in search of clues that would reveal ongoing al-Qa`ida plots, identities and locations of al-Qa`ida personnel, and other information of immediate importance.

On May 20, 2015, the ODNI released a sizeable tranche of documents recovered from the compound used to hide Osama bin Laden. March 1, 2016, marks the release of the second tranche of material gleaned from the Abbottabad raid.  These releases, which followed a rigorous interagency review, align with the President’s call for increased transparency–consistent with national security prerogatives–and the 2014 Intelligence Authorization Act, which required the ODNI to conduct a review of the documents for release.
Pointer Declassified Material – March 1, 2016  (113 items)  new


| HIDE SECTION |
Pointer Declassified Material – May 20, 2015  (103 items)
Pointer Publicly Available U.S. Government Documents   (75 items)
Pointer English Language Books   (39 items)
Pointer Material Published by Violent Extremists & Terror Groups   (35 items)
Pointer Materials Regarding France   (19 items)
Pointer Media Articles   (33 items)
Pointer Other Religious Documents   (11 items)
Pointer Think Tank & Other Studies   (40 items)
Pointer Software & Technical Manuals   (30 items)
Pointer Other Miscellaneous Documents   (14 items)
Pointer Documents Probably Used by Other Compound Residents   (10 items)
The Intelligence Community will be reviewing hundreds more documents in the near future for possible declassification and release.  An interagency taskforce under the auspices of the White House and with the agreement of the DNI is reviewing all documents. All documents whose publication will not hurt ongoing operations against al-Qa‘ida or their affiliates will be released.This list contains U.S. person information that is being released in accordance with the Fiscal Year 2014 Intelligence Authorization Act (section 309) requirement that the Director of National Intelligence conduct a declassification review of certain items collected during the mission that killed Osama bin Laden on May 1, 2011, and make publicly available any information declassified as a result of such review.

All publications are unclassified and available commercially or in the public domain. The U.S. Intelligence Community does not endorse any of the publications appearing on this list.