Tensions betweenWashington and the Kremlin have reached Cold War levels
amid reports Vladimir Putin is deploying nuke-ready missiles in the
Russian province of Kaliningrad – which borders Poland, Belarus and
Lithuania."...
"The report itself
is only five and a half pages long in large print (with another 7 pages
for future security recommendations). It’s important to note what the
report does NOT say…It does NOT allege any of the following:
It doesn’t address American intelligence services’ less-than-stellar history of truthfulness, and the fact that they routinely skew intelligence to justify preordained policy outcomes.
It doesn’t address the fact that – according to the Los Angeles Times – the U.S. interfered in foreign elections 81 timesbetween 1946 and 2000…compared to only 36 times by the Ruskies....
In other words, the report really doesn’t say much of anything."
On Monday, House Intelligence Committee Chairman Devin Nunes sent a letter
to DNI James Clapper requesting the director immediately brief congress
(Friday, December 16th). Both Clapper and Brennan are now refusing to explain their public claims.
The fact that both agency heads would refuse to brief congress on the
issue is further evidence the entire construct is demonstrably false,
intended solely to create an anti-Trump narrative and undermine the
incoming presidency.
Here’s the press releasefrom House Intelligence Committee Chairman Devin Nunes:
“It is unacceptable that the Intelligence Community
directors would not fulfill the House Intelligence Committee’s request
to be briefed tomorrow on the cyber-attacks that occurred during the
presidential campaign. The legislative branch is constitutionally vested with oversight
responsibility of executive branch agencies, which are obligated to
comply with our requests. The Committee is vigorously looking into
reports of cyber-attacks during the election campaign, and in particular
we want to clarify press reports that the CIA has a new assessment that
it has not shared with us. The Committee is deeply concerned that intransigence in sharing
intelligence with Congress can enable the manipulation of intelligence
for political purposes. The Committee will continue its efforts and will
insist that we receive all the necessary cooperation from the relevant
leaders of the Intelligence Community.” (read more)
Focusing on arms deals to developing
nations, the extensive report found that Saudi Arabia was the top arms
importer with deals worth around $94 billion from 2008-2015. Under Obama
the overall sales, pending delivery of equipment and specialised
training for troops, to Saudi Arabia alone has ballooned to $115 billion.
Saudi
Arabia is spearheading a coalition of Arab nations in a bombing
campaign closing in on two years against the insurgent Houthi militias
in Yemen, who took over the capital Sanaa in September 2014. The United
States has sent special operations forces to assist the Arab coalition in a grinding war that has seen over 10000 killed, 2.2 million displaced and nearly half a million children on the brink of famine from the ensuing crisis.
Earlier this month, the United States decided to halt future sales of precision-guided munitions,
which are supposed to hit specific targets and minimize collateral
damage, to the Gulf kingdom citing civilian deaths in Yemen. But experts
are skeptical this will deter Saudi Arabia from continuing to fuel its
regional proxy wars.
“Frankly it was a really minor and temporary
punishment. I don’t view it as a major consequence and it is more
symbolic than anything,” said Cole Bockenfeld, deputy director of policy
at Project on Middle East Democracy.
He pointed to the US partially suspending military
aid to Egypt after the military overthrew the unpopular government in
July 2013 as another example of the lack of political will of the Obama
administration to rock relations with its allies. The Congressional
report, Conventional Arms Transfers to Developing Nations 2008-2015, noted that Egypt was the biggest recipient of arms deliveries last year worth $5.3 billion.
Although the highly lucrative global market for arms dipped to around
$80 billion in 2015 compared to $89 billion in 2014, the US still
ranked first in weapons sales with $40 billion in inked deals.
Russia remains the
United States’ closest competitor with around 20 percent share of the
market. Its most important client is India, which was the second largest
arms importer behind Saudi Arabia at $34 billion over a period of seven
years, as well as Latin American countries such as Venezuela.
Under
Putin, Russia has ramped up its military footprint in the Middle East
by supporting Bashar Al Assad’s regime in Syria, driving the Qatari and
Saudi-backed rebels out of Aleppo earlier this month with multiple civilian casualties. It has been accused of using incendiary weapons such as TOS1A and BETAB-500 that burn their victims and have flattened whole areas of eastern Aleppo.
Trump
recently lambasted defense firm Lockheed Martin for their $400 billion
F-35 fighter jet program with the Pentagon as ‘out of control’ spending
on Twitter, but Bockenfeld sees no major change in policy from the outgoing Obama administration.
“I
do expect US arms exports to increase under Trump,” he said. “I don’t
see the use of arms sales as leverage as very likely in the next
administration.”"
Migrant workers would instead be given a "training renumeration" during this period, the report proposes.
According to German newspaper Süddeutschen Zeitung,
a refugee with a foreign degree would still have undertake the
internship until their qualifications were equal to a German one.
Such an
move would encourage more companies to offer professional
qualifications, the association said, which would otherwise be put off
paying trainees the obligatory salary.
However, the association
said the scheme should not be limited to refugees and migrants, saying
the rules should apply to all foreign and German nationals undertaking
such training.
Yesterday, the first day of 2017, the new minimum wage of €8.84 was introduced in Germany, up from €8.50.
It also raised concerns that
it could be "water on the mills of the right-wing populists, who like to
make the claim that foreigners 'take Germans' jobs away because they
are cheaper to have' mood against refugees". "
"A review by The New York Times of thousands of court records and
internal agency documents showed that over the last 10 years almost 200
employees and contract workers of the Department of Homeland Security have taken nearly $15 million in bribes while being paid to protect the nation’s borders and enforce immigration laws.
The
Times’s findings most likely undercount the amount of bribes because in
many cases court records do not give a tally. The findings also do not
include gifts, trips or money stolen by Homeland Security employees.
Throughout
his campaign, President-elect Donald J. Trump said border security
would be one of his highest priorities. As he prepares to take office,he will find that many of the problems seem to come from within.
“It
does absolutely no good to talk about the building of walls or tougher
enforcement if you can’t secure the integrity of the immigration system,
when you have fraud and corruption with your own employees,” said an
internal affairs official at the Department of Homeland Security who
spoke on the condition of anonymity.
“Any
amount is bad, and one person alone can do a lot of damage,” said John
Roth, the inspector general at the Department of Homeland Security. “It
doesn’t have to be widespread.”
Law
enforcement experts say the bribing of border and immigration agents is
not surprising. As security along the border has tightened with the
addition of fences, drones and sensors, drug cartels and human smugglers
have found it increasingly more difficult to operate.
“So
it makes sense that cartels would target and try to corrupt border
interdiction agents,” said Fred Burton, chief security officer at
Stratfor, a global intelligence company, and a former deputy chief of
counterterrorism at the State Department’s Diplomatic Security Service.
“It’s very similar to the tactics and tradecraft used by foreign
intelligence services during the Cold War.”
Homeland
Security officials, acknowledging that internal corruption is a
problem, have hired more internal affairs investigators, provided ethics
training and started to administer polygraph tests to new applicants,
along with countersurveillance training to employees so they can
recognize when they are being targeted by criminal organizations.
Customs
and Border Protection, which has had dozens of its officers arrested
and charged with bribery, said it had made additional changes to combat
corruption. Jeh Johnson, the secretary of Homeland Security, in 2014
gave authority to the agency’s internal affairs office to conduct
criminal investigations for the first time. And Mark Morgan, a former
F.B.I. agent who had investigated corruption on the border, was put in
charge of the Border Patrol.
“Polygraphs
have made it so we don’t hire people with significant problems,” said
R. Gil Kerlikowske, commissioner of the customs agency. “The bigger
problem is what happens to people who are already on board. These
changes address that.”
In
February, Johnny Acosta, a Customs and Border Protection officer in
Douglas, Ariz., was sentenced to eight years in prison for bribery and
drug smuggling. Mr. Acosta, who was arrested as he tried to flee to
Mexico, took more than $70,000 in bribes and helped smuggle over a ton
of marijuana into the United States.
In a plea agreement, Johnny
Acosta, a Customs and Border Protection officer, admitted to taking
bribes and participating in a scheme to smuggle marijuana across the
United States-Mexico border.Last
month, Eduardo Bazan, a Border Patrol agent in McAllen, Tex., was
arrested and accused of helping a drug trafficking organization smuggle
cocaine. According to court records, Mr. Bazan admitted to receiving
$8,000 for his help. José Cruz-López,
a Transportation Security Administration screener at Luis Muñoz Marín
International Airport in San Juan, P.R., was arrested around the same
time and accused of taking $215,000 in bribes to help smuggle drugs.
Corruption
investigators said the case of the former Border Patrol agent Ivhan
Herrera-Chiang illustratesthe damage a single compromised agent can
cause.In 2013, he was sentenced to 15 years for providing sensitive law
enforcement information to drug cartels.
Ivhan Herrera-Chiang, a
former Border Patrol agent who is known as La Mujer, was accused in a
criminal complaint of passing information about a confidential informant
to a member of a drug cartel who planned to have the informant killed.Mr.
Herrera-Chiang also entered law enforcement databases on his work
computer to run drug seizure checks and even provided information on
confidential informants in Mexico. That information included one
informant whom federal law enforcement officers were able to locate
before he could be killed, court records said. Mr. Herrera-Chiang
admitted to receiving about $4,500 in bribes for his efforts, but his
co-conspirator put the amount between $60,000 and $70,000.
“Corrupt
C.B.P. law enforcement personnel pose a national security threat,” a
Department of Homeland Security report released in May concluded. The
report also revealed numerous problems with efforts to root out
corruption among Border Patrol and customs agents. The report said the
“true levels of corruption within C.B.P. are not known. ”
Convicted
former border and immigration agents give different reasons for taking
bribes, from financial troubles to drug use. But for many, it was simple
greed.
Records
show that Border Patrol officers and customs agents, who protect more
than 7,000 miles of the border and deal most directly with drug cartels
and smugglers, have taken the most in bribes, about $11 million.
But
the issue of bribery extends well beyond front-line agents at the
border. Department of Homeland Security employees who enforce
immigration and customs laws and provide citizenship benefits and
aviation security have also been arrested or indicted on and convicted
of charges of taking bribes.
Last month, Daniel Espejo Amos,
a former immigration service officer at the United States Citizenship
and Immigration Services in Los Angeles, pleaded guilty to taking
$53,000 in bribes from immigration lawyers on behalf of 60 immigrants
who were not eligible to become naturalized citizens of the United
States. Mr. Amos certified that the immigrants met the requirements for
citizenship, even though one person’s English-language skills were so
poor that copies of test answers were given to him so he could memorize
them for a naturalization interview.
Transportation
security officers and screeners with access to secure areas of airports
that could be used to smuggle weapons and even carry bombs onto planes
have taken hundreds of thousands of dollars in bribes as well, records
show.
Mr.
Roth, the inspector general, said rooting out corrupt employees is a
top priority for his office, which gets 300 to 400 cases a year alleging
corruption. The office takes about 100 of the cases and sends the rest
to internal affairs offices at ICE, Customs and Border Protection, the
T.S.A. and Citizenship and Immigration Services.
The
Border Corruption Task Force, which is directed by the F.B.I. and
includes agencies from the Department of Homeland Security as well as
the Drug Enforcement Administration, has also pursued dozens of
corruption and bribery cases that have ended in convictions.
Instead, the report said, the
agency based its investigations on reporting from other employees,
other government agencies or the public, by which time the corruption
could have festered for decades.
The
agency also needed to more than double the number of internal affairs
criminal investigators to 550 from about 200, the report said. It said
the agency’s 2017 budget calls for an increase of only 30 investigators.
James
Tomsheck, the former head of internal affairs at Customs and Border
Protection, said many of the problems the agency is facing with corrupt
agents had to do with inadequate prehiring screening programs.
From his dramatic and disastrous change of US policy on Israel to his
executive order restricting 1.65 million acres of land from development
despite local objections, Obama is trying to make it impossible for
Donald Trump and a GOP-controlled Congress to govern.
Even Thursday’s announcement of wide-ranging sanctions against Russia
presents Trump with a foreign-policy crisis immediately upon taking
office.
By contrast, many of Obama’s predecessors have stood back in their
final days in office and refrained from any dramatic shifts, in
deference to the agenda of the man voters sent to succeed them.
But Obama won’t accept the election results. As he suggested the
other day, Trump’s election was a fluke — and he himself would have
easily been re-elected if allowed to stand for a third term.
He believes this not just because he’s an effective campaigner, but
because he thinks his “vision” and policies continue to be backed by “a
majority of the American people.”
But Obama, like many Democrats, fails to understand what happened in
the election: Voters were calling for real change from the status quo —
from his policies. Indeed, before the vote, he himself said it was a
referendum on him and his policies.
Memo to the president: You lost.
Whether it was the lackluster economy, ObamaCare, trade, the sweeping
failure of his foreign policy or illegal immigration, voters sought
something very different.
The results, as many have since come to realize, is that the
Democratic Party now caters to a hard-left, elite core located on the
two coasts — and has abandoned the working-class Americans in the
heartland it so loudly claims to champion.
Which is why Democrats have also been losing seats, especially at the
state level. Voters are fed up with Democratic failures — to the point
where they were willing to take a chance on an untested novice like
Trump.
Obama’s failure to follow tradition and respect votersis par for the
course. He spent much of his tenure pushing the bounds and overstepping
his constitutional authority — through regulatory edicts and executive
actions. So his latest power grab should come as no surprise.
But it’s one thing for Obama to have delusions about the popularity
of his agenda. It’s quite another to try to preserve a discredited
legacy by handcuffing America’s next democratically elected president."
In
fact, had those people who agreed that Mr. Trump lacked “a sense of
decency” voted for Mrs. Clinton, she would have been elected the next
president.
Mrs.
Clinton and Mr. Trump equally won over party loyalists. Yet about one
in five voters did not have a favorable view of either candidate. These
voters overwhelmingly backed Mr. Trump. Exit polls demonstrated that if voters who disapproved of both candidates had divided evenly between them, Mrs. Clinton would have won.
Several weeks before the election, a Quinnipiac University poll
found that 51 percent of white working-class voters did not believe
that Mr. Trump had a “sense of decency” and ranked Mrs. Clinton slightly
higher on that quality.
But
they were not voting on decency. Indeed, one-fifth of voters — more
than 25 million Americans — said they “somewhat” disapproved of Mr.
Trump’s treatment of women. Mr. Trump won three-quarters of these
voters, despite their disapprobation.
Bluntly
put, much of the white working class decided that Mr. Trump could be a
jerk. Absent any other champion, they supported the jerk they thought
was more on their side — that is, on the issues that most concerned
them.
And
anti-immigrant blowback, for instance, was not what unified them. Mr.
Trump proposed expelling illegal immigrants yet more of his voters, by a
50 percent to 45 percent margin, said illegal immigrants working here
should be offered a chance to apply for legal status rather than be
deported.
Mr. Obama’s support among these whites was at its peak in 2008after the stock market crash. At the depths of the Great Recession that followed, blue-collar white men experienced the most job losses.
Their support began hemorrhaging
after Mr. Obama chose early in his presidency — when congressional
Democrats could have overcome Republican obstruction — to fight for
health care reform instead of a “new New Deal.”
By 2016, Mr. Trump personified the vote against the status quo, one still not working out for them. A post-campaignstudy [by MIT Dept. of Economics]
comparing the George W. Bush coalition in 2000 to the Trump coalition
in 2016 found that Mr. Trump particularly improved in areas hurt most by
competition from Chinese imports,from the bygone brick and tile
industry of Mason City, Iowa, to the flagging furniture plants of
Hickory, N.C.The study concluded that, had the import competition from
China been half as large, Mrs. Clinton would have won key swing states
and the presidency with them.
This argument does not ignore bigotry. Racism appeared more concentrated among Trump voters. One [Reuters] poll
found that four in 10 Trump supporters said blacks were more “lazy”
than whites, compared with one-quarter of Clinton or John Kasich
supporters.
But
traits are not motives and don’t necessarily decide votes. Consider
that four in 10 liberal Democrats, the largest share of any group, said
in 2011 that they would hold a Mormon candidate’s faith against him or
her. It would be silly to argue that, therefore, liberals voted for Mr.
Obama because Mitt Romney was Mormon.
Democrats
need only recall Mr. Clinton to understand how voters can support
someone in spite of his faults. Mr. Clinton won re-election in 1996
despite a majority, including about a third of liberal voters, saying he
was not honest.His approval rating reached the highest point
of his presidency during the Monica Lewinsky scandal. It wasn’t that
Democrats and independents endorsed Mr. Clinton’s behavior. They opposed
Republicans more.
"David Paul Kuhn, a political
analyst, is the author of the political novel “What Makes It Worthy”
and “The Neglected Voter: White Men and the Democratic Dilemma.”"
