Category Archives: The Denise Simon Experience

Who is at Fault When it Comes to Syria Refugees?

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This matter comes down to no policy on the war in Syria and the misguided, yet no less corrupt leaders in this matter include the National Security Council at the White House, Barack Obama himself and the failed control and management at the State Department which began with Hillary Clinton and now with John Kerry.

The United Nations is at the core of the mismanagement and Western countries are left to clean up the mess, while some are now saying NO.

U.N. Calls on Western Nations to Shelter Syrian Refugees

“In the case of Syrian refugees, our intelligence on the ground is alarmingly slim, making it harder to identify extremists,” said Representative Michael McCaul, Republican of Texas and chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee.

The United Nations high commissioner for refugees, António Guterres, has stepped up calls for industrialized countries, including the United States, to shelter 130,000 Syrian refugees over the next two years.

The figure is a fraction of the nearly four million refugees who have poured into the countries bordering Syria — chiefly Jordan, Lebanon and Turkey — straining their resources and plunging many displaced people into poverty.

So far, the high commissioner’s pleas have not been met. Governments around the world have promised to take in just under two-thirds of what the United Nations is urging, while a great many more Syrians have chosen to make perilous journeys by land and sea in search of asylum in Europe. More here from the New York Times.

McCaul Says Admitting Unvetted Syrian Refugees into the U.S. is “Very Dangerous”

WASHINGTON, D.C. – Chairman Michael McCaul, of the House Homeland Security Committee, wrote a letter to President Obama last Thursday expressing concerns over the Administration’s announced plans to resettle some 2,000 Syrian refugees in the United States this year. Terrorists have made known their plans to attempt to exploit refugee programs to sneak terrorists into the West and the U.S. homeland. Chairman McCaul’s letter points out the potential national security threat this poses to the United States.

Chairman McCaul: “Despite all evidence towards our homeland’s vulnerability to foreign fighters, the Administration still plans to resettle Syrian refugees into the United States. The Director of the National Counterterrorism Center and the Deputy Director of the FBI both sat before my Committee this Congress and expressed their concern with admitting refugees we can’t properly vet from the global epicenter of terrorism and extremism in Syria. America has a proud tradition of welcoming refugees from around the world, but in this special situation the Obama Administration’s Syrian refugee plan is very dangerous.”

Read Chairman McCaul’s letter HERE.

 

The Subcommittee on Counterterrorism and Intelligence will hold a hearing on June 24th to examine the refugee resettlement program and discuss vulnerabilities to our security exposed by the Administration’s plan.

It was last year that Barack Obama lifted restrictions on the refugee program.

U.S. eases rules to admit more Syrian refugees, after 31 last year

President Barack Obama’s administration announced on Wednesday that it had eased some immigration rules to allow more of the millions of Syrians forced from their homes during the country’s three-year civil war to come to the United States.

Only 31 Syrian refugees – out of an estimated 2.3 million – were admitted in the fiscal year that ended in October, prompting demands for change from rights advocates and many lawmakers.

Hundreds of thousands of Syrians have been taken in by neighboring countries such as Jordan, Lebanon and Turkey.

The rules changes granted exemptions on a case by case basis to the “material support” bar in U.S. immigration law, according to an announcement in the Federal Register signed by Secretary of State John Kerry and Jeh Johnson, the Secretary of Homeland Security.

That bar had made it impossible for anyone who had provided any support to armed rebel groups to come to the United States, even if the groups themselves receive aid from Washington.

The advocacy group Human Rights First said, for example, that the existing law had been invoked to bar a refugee who had been robbed of $4 and his lunch by armed rebels, and a florist who had sold bouquets to a group the United States had designated as a terrorist organization.

“These exemptions will help address the plight of Syrian refugees who are caught up in the worst humanitarian crisis in a generation,” Illinois Senator Richard Durbin, chairman of the U.S. Senate subcommittee on human rights, said in a statement.

It was not immediately clear how many Syrians would be affected by the rules change.

By early January, 135,000 Syrians had applied for asylum in the United States. But the strict restrictions on immigration, many instituted to prevent terrorists from entering the country, had kept almost all of them out.

Washington has provided $1.3 billion in humanitarian assistance to aid Syrian refugees. This year, the United Nations is also trying to relocate 30,000 displaced Syrians it considers especially vulnerable. Witnesses at a Senate hearing last month had testified that Washington would normally accept half.

How Servers are Really Involved in Hillary’s Server-Gate

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Hillary admits during an interview she has an iPad and iPhone along with her NON-Government issued Blackberry.

Okay, we were told that Bill had one and it was not expandable for Hillary to use when she was a senator. She bought one of her own. Then we hear about a server that was in a bathroom, a server that was in a data center in New Jersey, yet are we sure we have an accurate could, an accurate handle on locations and what does the FBI have at this point?

Hillary’s emails WERE backed up to another server – and it may still exist – as the FBI works to figure out how well the data was scrubbed

DailyMail: Tens of thousands of emails once housed on former secretary of state Hillary Clinton’s private computer server were moved to another device after a Colorado company took possession of the device in 2013, leaving open the possibility that copies of messages Clinton later chose to delete might still exist.
The FBI seized the server this week in a stunning move, signaling a new intensity in the investigation into whether Clinton knowingly send or received top-secret classified information through her private address while she was America’s top diplomat.
Bloomberg reported Thursday night that Barbara Wells, an attorney for Platte River Networks, Inc., confirmed that while the server hardware now controlled by the FBI ‘is blank and does not contain any useful data,’ its contents could still be safe and sound elsewhere.
That’s because the server’s messages were ‘migrated’ to another server that still exists, she said, before ending the Bloomberg interview without specifying where that device is located and who owns it – only that her company no longer has it.

‘The data on the old server is not now available on any server or device that is under Platte River’s control,’ Wells said.
A Monmouth University poll, released Wednesday, shows that 52 per cent of American voters believe the federal government should pursue a criminal investigation in the case.
That number might soon grow: The Monmouth survey was conducted before the server landed in the hands of law enforcement, along with three thumb drives held by her lawyer that reportedly contain raw copies of 30,490 emails she handed over to State Department investigators late last year.
A random sample of 40 of those messages examined by U.S. Intelligence Community Inspector General Charles McCullough’s office included two that contained information later classified as ‘top secret.’
Another 31,830 emails, however, were deleted at Clinton’s request after her staffers sifted through them and determined that they were personal in nature.
Republicans on Capitol Hill cried foul in March after she casually acknowledged during a combative press conference that she had made that decision without oversight from anyone in government.
Clinton and her presidential campaign have insisted, most recently in a 4,000-word explanation this week, that those messages were not work-related.

Clinton used an ‘@clintonemail.com’ address exclusively during her four years as secretary of state instead of keeping her correspondence on a ‘@state.gov’ account. That made it more likely that her emails were open to hackers, and made it impossible for the State Department to keep a complete archive.
An aide to a Republican member of the Senate Intelligence Committee told DailyMail.com that McCCullough has been pressed to give Congress regular updates if more classified information is discovered.
‘We’re not letting go of this,’ he said, while denying that going after Clinton was a political exercise.
‘I don’t care if it’s Hillary Clinton or Ted Cruz,’ he said, naming a Texas senator who is running for president, but who is not a committee member. ‘If we don’t aggressively follow this wherever it leads, what good are we?’
It’s not clear if Clinton’s long-deleted data actually exists on another machine, even though Wells says it was once moved there.
But even if it’s gone for good, the FBI’s digital forensic experts may be able to recover some or all of it from the ‘clean’ Platte River server – depending on the method that was used to ‘wipe’ it.
Methods also exist to determine if traces of a malicious hack remain behind.
Hard drives store information in large sections that are separate from a ‘directory’ block – a sort of table of contents that tells a computer where to find each file’s many constituent pieces. Click here for a timeline of email facts, dates and people.

 

So Long to the Oreo Cookie

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A piece of Americana has taken the route south, Mexico. May we suggest the Hydrox cookie of yester-year?

Maybe at issue is the corporate tax structure. Maybe it is the increase in the misguided minimum wage. Maybe it is the diving work ethic. Maybe it is Michelle Obama’s attack on food. Maybe those liberal mayors like New York’s former mayor Bloomberg all regulating free choice of food. Maybe it is all that re-tooling of nutritional food labels. Maybe it is all of those.

How US Sugar Policies Just Helped America Lose 600 Jobs

The manufacturer of Oreo cookies recently announced plans to move production of Oreos from Chicago to Mexico, resulting in a loss of 600 U.S. jobs.

This should be a wake-up call to defenders of the U.S. sugar program and other job-destroying trade barriers.

The leading ingredient in Oreos is sugar, and U.S. trade barriers currently require Americans to pay twice the average world prices for sugar.

Sugar-using industries now have a big incentive to relocate from the United States to countries where access to their primary ingredient is not restricted.

If the government wants people making Oreo cookies and similar products to keep their jobs, a logical starting point would be to eliminate the U.S. sugar program, including barriers to imported sugar.

This obvious connection between the lost jobs and sugar quotas was missed by many observers. According to one online commenter: “This is why tariff[s] on products coming to U.S must be raised.”

That’s backwards. When protectionist policies like the U.S. sugar program lead to offshoring, the response shouldn’t be to pass new laws to discourage such offshoring or to raise tariffs even higher. The response should be to eliminate government policies that encourage offshoring in the first place.

The loss of Oreo cookie jobs should reinforce a lesson on the job-destroying aspect of protectionist trade policies.

According to a 2006 report from the government’s International Trade Administration: “Chicago, one of the largest U.S. cities for confectionery manufacturing, has lost nearly one-third of its SCP manufacturing jobs over the last 13 years. These losses are attributed, in part, to high U.S. sugar prices.”

That lesson appears to be lost on unions that are supposed to represent the workers losing their jobs in Chicago.

For example, The Bakery, Confectionery, Tobacco Workers and Grain Millers Union consistently has opposed free trade agreements with sugar-producing countries like Australia, Brazil, and Mexico—the kind of trade deals that just might protect their members’ jobs.

So that’s how the cookie crumbles.

2014….the Comeback

The Oreo-buster is back.

Hydrox cookies, those Oreo-like chocolate sandwich cookies, could reappear on store shelves as early as September, says Ellia Kassoff, CEO of Leaf Brands, which recently acquired the rights to the unused Hydrox trademark.

“The cosmic difference between Hydrox and Oreo is that Hydrox is a little more crispy; a little less sugary and stands up better in milk,” says Kassoff, who will make the official announcement later this month at the Sweets & Snacks Expo in Chicago on May 20.

Even in a new world of nutritional consciousness, there is little evidence that America’s sweet tooth is fading. Sales of packaged cookies and baked goods are expected to top $17 billion by 2017 — up from $13 billion in 2012, reports Packaged Facts. While the return of Hydrox is expected to be a hit with Baby Boomers who may fondly remember the brand — formerly owned by Kellogg’s, Keebler and Millennials who are not very familiar with the cookie brand, which hasn’t been regularly sold on store shelves in almost a decade.

“We’ll use social media to reach out to Millennials,” says Kassoff. The 46-year-old CEO says that he likes to acquire old brands or trademarks that still have fans. “We recycle brands that get left on the side of the road.”

But the Hydrox brand has special meaning to him. As a young kid raised by parents who were Orthodox Jews, he was only permitted to eat Hydrox — not Oreos — because, he says, at the time, Oreos were not kosher but Hydrox were. Today, both are kosher.

The move by Leaf Brands — which also owns trademarks to Astro Pops, Wacky Wafers and Farts Candy — comes just two years after giant Oreo celebrated its 100th birthday. Little-known, however, is that Hydrox was the original creme-filled chocolate sandwich cookie when it debuted in 1908 — followed four years later by Oreo.

But executives at Mondelez, which owns the Oreo brand, are hardly showing any signs of concern. “Oreo is America’s favorite cookie,” says Laurie Guzzinati, a company spokeswoman. She declined to comment specifically on the return of Hydrox. Oreo sales, which exceed $2 billion globally and $1 billion in North America, have grown double-digits in the U.S. for the past two years.

Its been years since Oreo had a genuine rival on the shelf. Kellogg stopped making Hydrox in 2002. Then, in 2008, when Hydrox turned 100, Kellogg briefly resumed distribution, but only for a limited time.

Hydrox still has an online fan page, and a few months ago, Bill Burnett, of Salina, Okla., posted this wishful note about Hydrox: “My brother and I loved them. I never got a taste for the inferior “Oreo,” which was far less tasty as the wonderful Hydrox. I think I’ve only bought one package of them in 50 years! Bring Hydrox back again!”

In fact, says Kassoff, it’s fans like Burnett who convinced him to bring back the brand. “I hear from all of them,” he says. “I know millions of people are waiting for the product.”

But unlike the cookies giants, which typically must sell at least $100 million worth of a brand for it to be an even modest success, Burnett says he can sell a fraction of that and do just fine.

The pricing will be roughly where Hydrox was for years: less expensive than Oreos but more expensive than store brands. If a 14-ounce package of Oreos retails for about $4; Hydrox will be $3 and store brand sandwich cremes often cost about $2, he says.

But success won’t come simply. At least one brand guru says Hydrox has lots of work to do. “Oreo conveys round and is fun to say and hear. Hydrox sounds scientific and medicinal … not appetizing at all,” says Steven Addis, CEO of Addis. “Oreo has become part of the fabric of America. Like Coke. This makes it somewhat unassailable, even from a superior product.”

 

 

More Than Once Israel on the Cusp of Attacking Iran

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RFE: Israel’s Channel 2 TV reported August 21 that a plan for Israel to strike Iranian nuclear facilities was blocked on three separate occasions in recent years.

In an audio recording of former defense minister Ehud Barak obtained by the TV station, Barak said that he drew up the attack plans against Iran, and they were approved by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

He said Israeli army chief Gabi Ashkenazi blocked one planned attack in 2010, by refusing to certify that the army was prepared to carry out the attack.

A second attack was aborted when hawkish Israeli ministers Moshe Ya’alon and Yuval Steinitz withdrew support, he said, while in 2012, Israel decided the timing was bad for an attack because of a U.S.-Israel military exercise.

The TV station said Barak tried to prevent broadcast of the bombshell revelations, but Israel’s military censor allowed it.Ya’alon and Steinitz issued a statement expressing bewilderment at the military’s decision to permit the broadcast.

The report comes as Israel has been strenuously lobbying against a nuclear deal between Iran and world powers that aims to curb Tehran’s nuclear activities in exchange for sanctions’ relief.

TOI: According to the August 21, 2015 edition of The Times Of Israel

Israel aborted a planned military strike against Iran’s nuclear infrastructure in 2012 — because the time selected for the operation coincided with a U.S. military exercise in the region.  Earlier planned military strikes in 2010 and 2011, were reportedly thwarted by deliberate leaks by those opposed to such an operation.  Israel’s Channel 2 News, reports that the U.S. was adamantly opposed to such an Israeli strike on Iran in 2012; but, that the Israeli political leadership had decided to proceed any way.  But, Tel Aviv ultimately decided to abort the mission, because the strike would have occurred at the same time that the U.S. and Israeli were conducting a joint military exercise.  Israel’s Channel 2 News reported that it relied on tape recordings of former Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak; and, other unnamed foreign reports — to reach the judgment that Israel had decided to strike Iran, only to abort the mission later.

     “The attack [pre-emptive military strike], was being readied for January 2012; but, that [time period] coincided with the long planned, Austere Challenge 12 Exercise,  the largest planned joint U.S./Israeli military exercise.  “We intended to carry it out, so I went to (then U.S Defense Secretary Leon) Panetta; and, asked him if we could change the date of the exercise,” former Defense Minister Barak said in a recording broadcast by Channel 2.  “So, they delayed it as much as they could….to a few days before the U.S. election (in the U.S. that November).  However, The Times of Israel reports, the new date set for a pre-emptive Israeli military strike – was also not convenient.”

     “You demand that the U.S. respect your sovereignty; and, decide you want to do it (strike Iran), even if America is opposed to it — and, is contrary to their interests,” Minister Barak said in the recording.  “You can’t find yourself then going back on that — by trying to force America to be party to (the strike), just as it comes here [Israel], for a pre-planned [joint military] drill.  That’s how it [the pre-emptive military strike] ran into difficulties in 2012,” he explained.

     Israel’s Channel 2 News added that Barak’s revelation about a thwarted 2012 military strike – was only one in a series of bombshells in the tape recordings of his conversations broadcast Friday night in Israel.  Defense Minister Barak also “detailed how he and then Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu wanted to strike [Iran] in 2010 and 2011; but, were thwarted by opposition by the Army’s Chief of Staff and ministerial colleagues.”  These new revelations “come from conversations related to a new biography of Minister Barak — being written by Danny Dor, and Ilan Kfir.  The Times of Israel adds that the former Defense Minister and Prime Minister, “attempted to prevent the broadcast of the recordings but Israel’s military’s censors allowed Channel 2 to play them.”

     I believe these reports are accurate.  As to the reasons why Israel did not go through with a pre-emptive strike?  I suspect the reasons are more nuanced and complicated than portrayed here.  Some reliable reporting in Israel suggest that Prime Minister Netanyahu never really intended to authorize a pre-emptive military strike against Iran; but, was in fact bluffing – in an attempt to influence U.S. elections; and, perhaps extract additional military concessions from Washington.

Hillary’s Team Now Attacking Gowdy’s Document Protections

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Jake Sullivan, Hillary’s policy advisor and Cheryl Mills, the aide and lawyer for Hillary are slated to testify before the Benghazi commission the first week of September. Answering questions about the destroyed Blackberry cell phones will be among the questions.

Meanwhile, the Hillary camp is shooting arrows at the Gowdy Benghazi commission over its own protections of classified documents. Desperation and accusations are becoming a daily occurrence.  Honestly, this smacks of the Benghazi co-chair, Elijah Cummings working in collusion with the Hillary team.

In July:

Politico: At least two former top aides to former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton have turned over documents to the State Department in response to a request sent to 10 former officials in March asking them to return any official agency records in their possession, according to a court filing late Tuesday.

Former Clinton Chief of Staff Cheryl Mills and former Director of Policy Planning Jake Sullivan produced “a number” of records through their attorneys on June 26, State Department records official John Hackett said in a declaration submitted in connection with a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit filed by the conservative group Judicial Watch. More here.

Hillary Clinton aide: Gowdy committee has classified docs on server, too

Politico: Hillary Clinton’s campaign, under fire over the ongoing emails controversy, is pointing a finger at House Republican Benghazi investigators, accusing the panel of having classified documents on an unsecured system just like Clinton did.

On a phone call Friday afternoon, campaign spokesman Brian Fallon said the House Select Committee on Benghazi had on an unsecured computer system at least one Clinton email that State did not consider classified — but which the intelligence community now considers classified.

“[Benghazi Chairman] Trey Gowdy treated emails, in this case, in the same way Hillary Clinton did, considering them unclassified and … storing them on unclassified computer systems,” Fallon said. “So in light of this I don’t really see what leg Congressman Gowdy has to stand on in his criticisms of Secretary Clinton on this point.”

Fallon called on Gowdy personally to confirm the allegation, suggesting perhaps he could also have to turn over his staff’s technology like Clinton has done with the Justice Department: “By the same logic that is now being applied to Hillary Clinton’s email, some could say that the House Benghazi Committee should also have its systems looked at to see if they have emails that are now considered classified.”

A Gowdy aide rejected the comparison. The executive branch has classification authorities, so if a classified document was sent to the legislative branch unclassified, Congress isn’t in a position to change the marking.

“We didn’t put it in the bathroom,” a GOP committee spokesperson said sarcastically, referring to a report last week that the small Denver-based computer company that handled Clinton’s email stored its servers in a bathroom closet. “Our system and server for handling classified information in electronic format was subjected to and passed a year of painstaking planning, documentation, and review by numerous security and IT professionals in the Intelligence Community.”

A spokesman for Democrats on the Benghazi panel said the committee was “instructed that it needed to move the document from unclassified computer systems and files to classified computer systems and files,” after the FBI discovered a line that they wanted classified.

The staffer said the panel isn’t to blame — just as Clinton isn’t. “[L]ike Secretary Clinton, Committee members and staff could not have known to treat that document as classified when we received it, because it was not marked or easily identifiable as classified information.”

The attempt to redirect questions about Clinton’s email practices back at congressional investigators comes amid a cacophony of headlines about the issue. On the heels of the bathroom report, a federal judge said this week that Clinton violated government policy with her email set-up.

Fallon was referring to one of the original Clinton emails that subsequently raised flags with the FBI: a Nov. 18, 2012 missive detailing arrested suspects involved in the attack that left four Americans dead in the 2012 Benghazi attacks, sent by State official William Roebuck, now U.S. Ambassador to Bahrain.

Fallon said the committee received copies of the email months ago because the State Department did not — and still does not — consider it classified. But the intelligence committee is arguing that the information is indeed secret and sensitive, and should therefore be classified.

“Since the State Department provided the email forwarded by [top Clinton policy aide] Jake [Sullivan] to the Benghazi Committee several months before the FBI asked for any redaction, it has seemed to us highly plausible that for several months Congressman Gowdy’s staff may have been treating the email as unclassified just as we did and handling it on unclassified systems on Capitol Hill,” Fallon said.

Fallon also praised Gowdy for complaints the South Carolina Republican made in July about over-classification of documents. On July 8, Gowdy sent a letter to the Obama Administration asserting that overly aggressive classification of documents was hindering his information gathering.

“It’s not just the Clinton campaign saying that there’s a lean in favor of over-classification in government… it turns out that Trey Gowdy himself agrees with us,” he said.