Tag Archives: Medill National Security Journalism Initiative

War On Drugs, America’s Public Enemy No. 1

CHICAGO — I was sitting in a cab with my classmate as the driver drove down the streets of Austin, a neighborhood on the West Side of Chicago, which has the highest number of homicide cases in the city.

“What are you two Asians doing in a black neighborhood?” the driver asked.
“We are reporters.” I answered.

The driver, an immigrant from Pakistan, pointed to a row of houses that were either burned down or boarded up and asked: “Do you think this is America?”

I don’t know the answer. Austin, and other neighborhoods on the west and south sides, is obviously part of America. But it is not the America that I pictured.

I began to search for answer to the question, and through this process I learned. a shocking fact – that the U.S. has the highest incarceration rate in the world. According to the International Center for Prison Studies, the country houses 22 percent of the world’s prisoners. So what happens to “land of the free, home of the brave?”

As I talked to community leaders, a lot of them mentioned the “war on drugs,” and especially how it applies to African-Americans.

It all started in 1971 when then-President Richard Nixon declared that, “America’s public enemy number one in the United States is drug abuse.” Since then, the U.S. has been spending more and more money on drug enforcement. According to a story in Quartz, the U.S. now spends more than $40 billion each year on drug prohibition.

In fact, some current and former law enforcement officers have begun to question the effectiveness of the war on drugs.

James Gierach, a former Cook County assistant state’s attorney in the 1970s and now a member of Law Enforcement Against Prohibition, believes the war on drugs creates the very problem it tried to prevent.

“Al Capone was in favor of the prohibition of liquor. Why? Because it was the foundation of his business. It enabled him to make $2 billion dollars a year in today’s currency…. Drug cartels around the world are in favor of the war on drugs… because when you outlawed something that people want, it makes that commodity the most valuable commodity in the face of the earth. We tell the kids don’t do drugs and we slide a pot of gold next to the choice we tell them not to take,”

David Simon, a former crime reporter with the Baltimore Sun and creator of the TV show “The Wire,” said in the documentary “The House I Lived In” that the war on drugs undermines the law enforcement’s ability of fighting crime.
“There are lots of detectives I admired for their professionalism, for their craft. The drug war created an environment in which none of that was rewarded,” he said. “A drug arrest does not require anything other than getting out of your radio car and jacking people up against the side of a liquor store. Probable cause? Are you kidding?”

According to Simon, the “simplicity” of a drug arrest means a police officer can make more arrests and get paid for the extra hours he worked.

“Compare that guy to the one guy doing police work—solving a murder, a rape, a robbery, a burglary. If he gets lucky, he makes one arrest for the month… At the end of the month, when they look and when they see officer A, he made 60 arrests. Officer B, he made one arrest. Who do you think they make the sergeant?” Simon said.

Therefore the war on drugs creates an incentive for law enforcement to go into a neighborhood and arrest people while interring with other police works. In the long run, it creates the distrust between police and the community.

In my opinion, drug abuse is a public health issue instead of a criminal justice issue. The tax money should go to prevention and treatment instead of building prisons.

Drugs do not dignify individuals, and there is no argument. But the war on drugs that lasts for more than 40 years do not accomplish any of its original goals.

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Is war a racket?

Screenshot 2015-08-27 14.40.11

Although considered at the time to be grandiose hearsay, General Smedley Butler’s testimony concerning the “Business Plot” to overthrow the Federal government was found credible in 1934 by a special McCormack-Dickstein congressional committee.

In his testimony before the McCormack-Dickstein committee, in which Butler accused many powerful business tycoons and politicians – such as DuPont, J.P. Morgan, even Prescott Bush (father to George H.W. Bush) – of attempting to persuade him to lead 500,000 soldiers in taking the reigns of government from FDR and his progressive proclivities. One year later, the Marine Corps major general wrote a 39-page treatise, “War is a Racket”.

Butler was a war hero. In fact, he was the most decorated Marine of his time, receiving the Congressional Medal of Honor twice. So it may have been a shock for some Americans to hear their famed general accuse powerful people of treason, or the country of racketeering. Or to read sentiments such as this in magazines:

“I spent 33 years and four months in active military service and during that period I spent most of my time as a high class muscle man for Big Business, for Wall Street and the bankers. In short, I was a racketeer, a gangster for capitalism. I helped make Mexico…safe for American oil interests in 1914. I helped make Haiti and Cuba a decent place for the National City Bank boys to collect revenues in. I helped in the raping of half a dozen Central American republics for the benefit of Wall Street. I helped purify Nicaragua for the International Banking House of Brown Brothers in 1902-1912. I helped make Honduras right for the American fruit companies in 1903. In China in 1927 I helped see to it that Standard Oil went on its way unmolested. Looking back on it, I might have given Al Capone a few hints. The best he could do was to operate in three districts. I operated on three continents.” (Common Sense, 1935)

In “War is a Racket”, Butler focuses mainly on the actions of the United States, but one of his main arguments is that all wars are rackets, in that all wars are “conducted for the benefit of the very few, at the expense of the very many. Out of war a few people make huge fortunes.”

But “the claim that American foreign policy is dictated by economic interests…is a vast over-simplification,” said Michael Morgan, professor of history at UNC at Chapel Hill. “If you say that the [U.S.] only goes to war to help American corporations, well then, that’s an exclusively materialist explanation of foreign policy. There are many more factors other than material interests that influence foreign policy,” he added.

If Morgan is correct, and Butler’s argument lacks nuance, it may have been because of the age in which the general lived. “General Butler’s military experience – Nicaragua, Honduras, Philippines, Mexico – was among the most politicized and aggressive uses of the military advancing U.S. foreign policy interests in U.S. history,” said William Braun, a professor at the U.S. Army War College. With “the exceptions being actual war,” he added.

Whatever the case, whether war is sometimes or always a racket, the fact remains that war has at times been a racket. It remains that the U.S. has used it in such a way, and is arguably still. Economic interest is not the only variable in U.S. foreign policy; however, it is one that is, sadly, lucrative even for the Americans who detest it.

 

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Turkey joining the fight against ISIS

WASHINGTON – For the first time since the Islamic State – also known as ISIS – began to spread across Iraq and Syria, neighboring Turkey has launched air strikes against positions of the jihadist organization in Syria.

Air Forces commanded from Ankara responded to the attacks launched by ISIS last month in the Turkish location of Suruç and the bordering city of Kilis. With this new development, the conflict takes on a new profile, perhaps one that many were expecting from a NATO ally, to slow down and undermine the progress and consolidation capabilities of the Islamic State.

For Ayça Alemdaroglu, Associate Director at the Keyman Modern Turkish Studies Program, this decision is related to Turkey’s domestic policy situation. “The governing party is making a clear effort to maintain its power in times of decreasing electoral support. A way to balance this is to look for support in the international community – especially the U.S. – and so, their current fight with the Kurds is not seen.”

If the Islamist militias were aiming at a military escalation, they are indeed succeeding. So far Turkey, which borders to the south with Syria and Iraq, had maintained a poorly defined defensive posture towards the advancement of ISIS. This, even though ISIS’ assault to Kobanî in October last year came dangerously close to the Turkish border.

Turkey, let’s not forget, has also been a haven for sympathizers of jihadism. Many of them are in the Kurdish southern provinces that have chosen to provide support to ISIS given the lack of prospects offered by the Turkish government for their cause.

Alemdaroglu, who has worked as a post-doctoral scholar at the Anthropology Department at Stanford and earned her doctorate in sociology at Cambridge, highlights the fact that several reports indicate that the Turkish government has been indirectly supporting ISIS. “Central intelligence agencies from Turkey have been transporting trucks across the boarder loaded with ammunitions, including anti-aircraft rockets that end up in the hands of Al-Qaeda,” she says.

Turkey is also the gateway to the territories controlled by ISIS for youths coming from all over Europe and the rest of the world to join the Islamist militia. And if that isn’t enough, there are more than a million and a half Syrian refugees living on Turkish soil.

Ankara had wanted to maintain its own agenda on the issue and on more than one occasion refused to provide facilities to the U.S. military. However, in this new stage, the Turkish government has yielded to Washington’s request to use the Incirlik Air Base and although the details of the agreement are unknown, it appears that the U.S. activity in the area will require greater Turkish cooperation.

The U.S. has made their conditions very known to Turkey in order for this cooperation to succeed. Among them is to fully respect the Kurds, who have become key allies to America in the area, and which they have armed to the teeth to avoid having a single boot on the ground.

So far Turkish Presidente Erdoğan has found it difficult to agree, mainly because he doesn’t like the Kurds to be armed by the U.S. and gaining international recognition for their work to eradicate extreme jihadism in the area.

This agreement and the new attitude of the Turkish government will mark a profound change in the management of the crisis by both Washington and Ankara. Before this, it was unacceptable that Turkey, a country that belongs to NATO, had turned a blind eye to the jihadist activity in its own territory.

Furthermore, it was strategically ineffective for the U.S. to combat ISIS militarily from bases and aircraft carriers located more than a thousand miles away.

This turning point, however, will not come without risks and the crisis could spill over to neighboring countries and even deepen the less known violence happening in Turkey right now.

“If you think about national security in a much broader sense, the security of human beings for example, what Turkey is doing right now is not strengthening national security at all. I just came back from Turkey on August 10 and there were two attacks in Istanbul. I think around 10 people died. This could be unrelated to the main ISIS issue but it shows that Turks are not safe at this moment,” says Alemdaroglu.

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Oshkosh, B’Gosh: The US Military Is Finally Replacing the Humvee

WASHINGTON — This week marks the beginning of the end for the Humvee.

A UH-60M Black Hawk helicopter being operated by B Company, 43rd Assault Helicopter Battalion, 3rd Cavalry Regiment, 3rd Infantry Division, lifts off after having a High Mobility Multipurpose Wheeled Vehicles (HMMWV) sling loaded to it by Soldiers on the ground assigned to Dog Company, 1st Battalion, 503rd Infantry Regiment, 173rd Infantry Brigade Combat Team (Airborne), 4th Infantry Division and Lithuanian Land Forces Soldiers assigned to the Grand Duchess Birutė Uhlan Battalion (BUB), during exercise Uhlan Fury being held at the Gen. Silvestras Zlikaliskas Training Area, Pabrade, Lithuania, Aug. 10, 2015. The U.S. units are in Europe as part of Atlantic Resolve, a demonstration of continued U.S. commitment to the collective security of NATO and to enduring peace and stability in the region. U.S. Army Europe is leading Atlantic Resolve enhanced land force multinational training and security cooperation activities taking place across Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Romania, and Bulgaria to ensure multinational interoperability, strengthen relationships among allied militaries, contribute to regional stability and demonstrate U.S. commitment to NATO. (U.S. Army Photo by Sgt. James Avery, 16th Mobile Public Affairs Detachment)

A UH-60M Black Hawk helicopter being operated by B Company, 43rd Assault Helicopter Battalion, 3rd Cavalry Regiment, 3rd Infantry Division, lifts off after having a High Mobility Multipurpose Wheeled Vehicles (HMMWV) sling loaded to it by Soldiers on the ground assigned to Dog Company, 1st Battalion, 503rd Infantry Regiment, 173rd Infantry Brigade Combat Team (Airborne), 4th Infantry Division and Lithuanian Land Forces Soldiers assigned to the Grand Duchess Birutė Uhlan Battalion (BUB), during exercise Uhlan Fury being held at the Gen. Silvestras Zlikaliskas Training Area, Pabrade, Lithuania, Aug. 10, 2015. The U.S. units are in Europe as part of Atlantic Resolve, a demonstration of continued U.S. commitment to the collective security of NATO and to enduring peace and stability in the region. U.S. Army Europe is leading Atlantic Resolve enhanced land force multinational training and security cooperation activities taking place across Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Romania, and Bulgaria to ensure multinational interoperability, strengthen relationships among allied militaries, contribute to regional stability and demonstrate U.S. commitment to NATO. (U.S. Army Photo by Sgt. James Avery, 16th Mobile Public Affairs Detachment)

That’s because the US Army chose Oshkosh Defense to manufacture about 55,000 joint light tactical vehicles (JLTVs) that will become the successors to Humvees and mine-resistant, ambush-protected vehicles (MRAPs). The initial contract awarded to Oshkosh on Tuesday is for $6.7 billion and 17,000 vehicles. The total contract, valued at up to $30 billion, could provide the Wisconsin-based company with work through 2040.

The new offering provides underbody and side-armor protection similar to a tank’s, but retains the on-ground and in-theater mobility of an all-terrain vehicle. The vehicle’s reduced weight allows it to be transported by Chinook helicopters and amphibious vessels, a feat that was largely impossible with MRAPs.

Thousands of MRAPs were purchased in response to the traditional Humvees’ failures to sufficiently protect troops from the widespread use of improvised explosive devices (IEDs) by Iraqi insurgents in the mid-2000s. It was not unusual for soldiers to stack sandbags on the floors of the vehicles for added protection — and still have to contend with canvas for doors. The introduction of the MRAP solved the protection problem, though it came at the expense of battlefield mobility.

“Our JLTV has been extensively tested and is proven to provide the ballistic protection of a light tank, the underbody protection of an MRAP-class vehicle, and the off-road mobility of a Baja racer,” John M. Urias, president of Oshkosh Defense, said in a statement.

The new vehicle reflects the military’s various needs in modern warfare — protecting troops from roadside bombs, traversing mixed terrain quickly, transporting vehicles within and between combat theaters.

The Humvee, which has been the military’s go-to vehicle for decades, was born in 1979, when AM General began early design work on the M998 Series high mobility multipurpose wheeled vehicle — or HMMWV, pronounced “Humvee” — to replace the legendary Army Jeep. In 1983, the company was awarded an initial contract worth $1.2 billion to make 55,000 Humvees.

The Humvee has since accompanied troops in Panama, the Persian Gulf, Bosnia, Iraq, Afghanistan, and elsewhere. But now the mainstay military vehicles are being sold off by the dozen, with the bidding starting at $7,500.

In the early ’90s, AM General began production of the Hummer, the Humvee’s commercial spinoff. General Motors later assembled, distributed, and marketed the vehicle before it was discontinued. The last new Hummer was sold in 2010.

The Pentagon dismissed the Humvee’s original manufacture’s design concept for the JLTV, along with an offering by Lockheed Martin, the world’s largest defense contractor.

Lockheed Martin said in a statement that it was disappointed that the Army and Marine Corps did not select its design.

“We believe we presented a very strong solution and await the customers’ debrief to hear more detail regarding the reasons behind this selection before making a decision about a potential protest,” the statement said.

If the defense goliath chooses to protest the Pentagon’s decision, the Government Accountability Office, which has a forum to resolve disputes over awards of federal contracts, will review the military’s decision.

AM General also expressed disappointment in the decision and is “considering all available options,” a company spokesman said in a statement.

The competition to win the multi-billion dollar contract began in 2012. Each competitor provided 22 prototypes for the JTLV program. These were then tested over a 14-month period.

“I am tremendously proud of the JLTV program team,” Heidi Shyu, the assistant secretary of the Army for Acquisition, Logistics, and Technology, said in the announcement. “Working with industry, they are delivering major improvements in protected mobility for soldiers and have succeeded in executing a program that remains on-budget and on-schedule.”

Oshkosh is scheduled to begin manufacturing the vehicles in the first quarter of 2016 so the Army can start getting the trucks in the field by 2018.

Published in conjunction with Vice News Logo

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Transforming thoughts of climate change

WASHINGTON – I remember studying abroad about three years ago on a program called Semester at Sea, during one of my summers as an undergraduate student. I was taking three classes and one of them was marine biology. My roommate on the ship, Maggie, went to school in Ohio as a computer engineer. We got along fine, but I’ll never forget our first day of biology class.

Our professor took us to the deck of the ship and began talking about all of the different creatures we would be able to see while out here in the middle of the ocean traveling from port to port.

He went on to describe the role these creatures play in their own microcosms, but also in the world at large and in our everyday lives, whether we realize it or not. We ended up discussing issues of global warming, the rising seas, glacial melt, energy shift, higher temperatures and droughts – all topics we would come back to many times over the course of the summer.

But when Maggie and I got back to our room after that first day of class she looked at me and said, “You know, when he was talking about all the global warming stuff — I’m sorry but I just don’t believe him. I know that’s a load of hogwash.”

I was completely shocked. While I knew that there were many non-believers out there, I didn’t know any of them. Not to mention, at this point it was 2012 and there was someone my age—albeit very conservative in her political persuasion—who actually thought the idea of global warming was a myth (and especially a computer engineer, no?).

How can a population cause so much destruction to the natural environment and cause extinction for many of its inhabitants and not see any repercussions? Until this day, that still boggles my mind. I didn’t even know how to respond to Maggie other than trying to morph the expression in my face quickly enough to hide my true feeling.

I managed to say, “Oh, really? Yeah….I mean, I definitely believe in that.” I wasn’t exactly trying to start anything, so I quickly changed the subject since I knew there were just clearly some fundamental differences in our beliefs, and we still had a whole summer to live together.

My point is, that even just three years ago and I’m sure still today, there are people who simply ignore the majority of scientists and research, and argued against the concept of climate change. But now, the conversation has changed or at least, it’s beginning to. Today it’s not about if it’s true or false, it’s about how we can best counter the domino effects that have been set into motion.

Across the U.S. our nation’s leaders and commander in chief have taken action, so much so that the United States is actually leading global efforts to address the issue of climate change. That’s because they’ve realized something: the issue of climate change is connected to American interests at home and abroad.

It may be hard to see the connection but at the basest level of analysis you can deduce that for national security, there is a purely logistical concern about the effects of climate change.

Dr. Boudrias, an expert in environmental studies at the University of San Diego, put it this way, “there’s no doubt at this point, having talked to military members at a national level, that they are clearly concerned of the affects of climate change on national security and international conflicts.” Boudrias explained that the issue of climate change comes into play for military installations around the world.

“If you think of Navy bases and understand the problems that come with rising sea levels, the issues begin to change,” said Boudrias, “If climate change effects water resources and you have a drought, then in the logistics of your bases—having enough water for your troops, for your facility, there are going to be major problems.”

Go beyond a military scope and think about natural disasters. Though it’s unclear whether climate change will increase the number of hurricanes, it’s a fact that its effects intensify their impacts.

Take for example, Hurricane Sandy, which caused an estimated $65 billion in damages. The magnitude of power the storm wielded was only increased by the rising sea levels. We saw the destruction of homes, crops, land, depleting the area of human necessities needed to survive and leaving people homeless, jobless, displaced from their own families and impoverished.

Even in more recent years we have seen an increase in the number of North Atlantic tropical storms per year, jumping from 11 annually to 16. The rise in sea surface temperatures, which could be related to global warming, has a direct correlation to that number.

What about at even more basic level? We don’t need a hurricane or an increase in the number of tornadoes to see that something has to change. Just think about something as basic to us in the U.S like water, with global warming comes decreased rainfall, higher temperatures, desertification and energy shifts. According to A Medill student journalism project, Global Warning, “the UN projects climate change will double the number of droughts worldwide and extend their length.”

With potable water level low around the world, that scarcity coupled with increased urbanization, ethnic tension, poverty, etc. and something is going to happen. The National Intelligence Council predicts that fresh water scarcity “could lead to conflict in the Nile, state failure in Pakistan and Yemen and large movement of people along the Rio Grande.”

But bring that even closer to home, what about California right now? Where the drought is so bad, Gov. Jerry Brown introduced mandatory water cuts for the first time in the state’s history.

How is water scarcity going to effect the ~38 million people and 900 miles of wildlife who call that state home?

Even further than that, it’s a state that grows much of the produce shipped across the U.S, so what is that going to mean for everyone who call the U.S. home?

I know that for myself, being from California, it’s something I think of a lot.

When I first heard that climate change was an issue of national security I didn’t make that immediate connection, but climate change has the ability to affect our everyday life and it can happen instantly.

As Boudrias said, “climate change is complicated and the connections are everywhere.”

It changes the whole economic, social and political world, it’s a symbiotic relationship—when one part of that equation falters it creates a butterfly effect to the other.

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Conflict drives the emergence of disease in refugee camps

DFID Burma (Courtesy of the UK Department for International Development)

DFID Burma (Courtesy of the UK Department for International Development)

WASHINGTON – Conflict and poverty are key factors in the emergence of disease worldwide according to Dr. Peter Hotez, who is President Barack Obama’s appointed science envoy focused on global health and vaccine development.

Hotez is one of four presidentially appointed scientists tasked with taking on a major scientific challenge on behalf of the United States.

“The forces of poverty and conflict are driving the emergence of disease,” said Hotez in a recent interview. He is finishing a book on the topic and has focused much of his work on the issue in his role as dean of the National School of Tropical Medicine at Baylor College in Houston and as the President of the Sabine Vaccine Institute in Washington.

He looks back and various instances of pandemics and disease outbreaks and points to either poverty or conflict – or often both – as the root cause for the impact on human life.

“One of the reasons Ebola came out of West Africa…was that those countries had emerged out of 10 years of devastating conflict with a complete breakdown in public health infrastructure, human migrations, deforestation,” said Hotez. All those forces combine to create the perfect storm that allowed Ebola to flourish. This is not new. This has been a recurring theme that we have seen since the 1970s.”

He believes the next Ebola will be the diseases coming out of areas occupied by ISIS. The Middle East and North Africa will be the next big wave of catastrophic epidemics “and it would be nice if we could be proactive about it for once,” said Hotez.

He went on to describe that there is a critical failure in the pathway toward vaccine development. The institutions that are responsible for strategic preparations are lacking the ability to make products. For instance, the Ebola vaccine was sitting with completed science for more than 10 years but with no manufacturer until it was too late said Hotez.

“That really was a terrible failure.”

Though the community still has a long, said Hotez, they are now working with the Saudis and the Malaysians to build vaccine infrastructure through public-private partnerships.

The refugee camps for those fleeing ISIS have become a hot bed of Leishmaniasis, a parasitic disease that causes scarring skin ulcers and can be fatal, said Hotez. The disease is transmitted through a bite from a sand fly and with the hastily set up refugee camps, piles of trash have made a home for the insects.

“There has been an explosion in cases coming out of the conflict zones,” he said.

The WHO Eastern Mediterranean Regional Office, based out of Cairo, is responsible for surveillance in the camps receiving refugees from the ISIS areas. The problem is they only get a glimpse of what is spilling out of the conflict zones and coming across the borders, said Hotez.

There have been more than 100,000 new cases of Leishmaniasis in the last 18 months and the locals call it “lepo evil,” said Hotez.

He said that the major driving force in disease is human behavior.

“Everyone is focusing on climate change right now but I think it’s actually social forces that are far more important,” said Hotez.

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DHS makes sure terrorists don’t get access to chemical facilities

"IED Baghdad from munitions". Licensed under Public Domain via Commons - https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:IED_Baghdad_from_munitions.jpg#/media/File:IED_Baghdad_from_munitions.jpg

“IED Baghdad from munitions”. Licensed under Public Domain via Commons – https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:IED_Baghdad_from_munitions.jpg#/media/File:IED_Baghdad_from_munitions.jpg

WASHINGTON – Chemicals are an important part of modern society but, in the wrong hands, they can be deadly weapons. The government has recognized this danger and taken on the act of trying to protect the American people by protecting the stocks of chemicals across the country.

Since the 9/11 attacks the United States has collectively feared a repeat terrorist attack on domestic soil. In, then-President George W. Bush called for the creation of what is now called the Department of Homeland Security to address and attempt to resolve this very fear.

Part of that effort includes the work done by the Office of Infrastructure Protection, which has a mission to work with the chemical industry to protect critical infrastructure, including chemical facilities, from terrorist attacks.

A key piece of the critical infrastructure that needs to be protected is chemical facilities.

“We are talking about things where people could turn a facility into a weapon much like the terrorists in 9/11. They took something that we would not have expected to be used as a weapon and turned it into [a weapon]. And this presents a significant concern for the department,” said Todd Klessman, a senior policy advisor at the Department of Homeland Security.

He said there are two main concerns when it comes to chemical site facilities. The first is the prevention of an attack directly on the facility. Some of these sites are located in heavily populated urban areas. A release of a toxic gas or substance would result in many people injured or dead. Experts point to the Bhopal disaster in India in 1984, in which a gas leak at a pesticide plant killed at least 3,787 people and injured more than 550,000 others.

The second concern is a terrorist stealing chemicals to build a bomb elsewhere, Klessman said at a talk about chemical weapons and security at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a Washington based think tank.

Acknowledging this infrastructure vulnerability, Congress authorized the creation of the Chemical Facility Anti-Terrorism Standards program in 2007 and reauthorized it for an additional four years in 2014. This legislation gave DHS regulatory authority over “high-risk chemical facilities.” The first task was to determine what that category meant.

“What we decided was that it didn’t really matter what type of facility these chemicals were at. The chemicals will present threats or risk based on their nature, not necessarily the type of facility,” said Klessman, in an interview.

The department developed a list of 325 chemicals of interest and set out to base their regulator efforts on this list, rather than on categories of facilities. Each of the chemicals on the list presented a security risk in at least one of three categories:

  • Release hazards – Toxics, flammables and explosives
  • Theft aversion hazards ­– Precursors to chemical weapons, explosives, improvised explosive devices (IEDs) or weapons of mass destruction
  • Sabotage hazards – Chemicals that when mixed with water will turn into toxic hazards

This results in DHS regulating a large swath of industry that is not just limited to what would traditionally be classified as chemical facilities. Alongside the many manufacturing facilities regulated are mines, education facilities, prisons and wineries.

Once the department has determined that a facility is within the highest risk category, it works with a company to implement an appropriate security plan. There are about 3,000 facilities in the high-risk category with only 111 falling into the highest risk group.

“Rather than give prescriptive standards and tell a facility that they must have this type of fence or they must have this type of camera system, we’ve identified 18 areas of security and asked the facility to tell us how they are going to address this,” said Klessman. This allows the facilities to build up on what they already have in place and recognizes that this is not a one size fits all security solution.

“It also makes it so that the terrorists cannot simply read our manual and determine how they can overcome our security,” he said. “If we had a requirement of a ten foot fence then the terrorist could just go build an 11-foot ladder.”

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Extreme weather events on the rise, related to climate change

WASHINGTON – Heavy rainfall events, devastating droughts and intense wildfires are all on the rise. The increased instances of these extreme weather events can be directly related to climate change. If something is not done to slow the climate change process, these extreme events will get worse and could ultimately become not only a national security threat—but an international security threat.

The National Center for Biotechnology Information defines extreme weather events as “weather phenomena that are at the extremes of the historical distribution and are rare for a particular place and/or time, especially severe or unseasonal weather.”

In recent years, it has been recorded that there has been more heavy rainfall that leads to severe flooding in the Northeast region of the United States and more droughts in the West, particularly in California. These events are directly related to a steady change in the global climate.

“We need to be aware that climate change is going to make these extremes even worse,” said Dr. David Easterling, chief of the Scientific Services Division at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s National Climatic Data Center in Ashville, NC. Easterling studies climate change’s effect on extreme weather events.

Easterling warned that an extreme weather event like a drought could lead to international problems.

“If there were simultaneous droughts in the central United States, Russia and China, all areas where a lot of grain is grown…that can effect a lot of people,” said Easterling.

The U.S. government, along with numerous local and state officials, have realized that climate change and its relation to extreme weather events can lead to potential problems and have taken measures to address the issue.

For instance, naval bases have taken into account the need to possibly raise airstrips in preparation for sea level rise. States and cities have been tackling a rise in hot weather days by implementing heat advisory systems and creating cooling stations around in areas experiencing extreme heat.

The White House has also been looking into America’s national security both domestically and abroad. In May 2015, the White House released “The National Security Implications of a Changing Climate,” which compiles findings from numerous federal reports about the effects that climate change is having on people.

“The national security implications of climate change impacts are far reaching, as they may exacerbate existing stressors, contributing to poverty, environmental degradation, and political instability, providing enabling environments for terrorist activity abroad,” said the report.

Both the White House report and Easterling warned that extreme weather events could cause flooding, which could impact transportation by washing away roads and flooding airports. Floods can also present health risks to humans such as the lack of safe drinking water.

Easterling also noted that climate change is inevitable, but the rate at which it occurs has a lot to do with humans.

“Consider that long term, climate change is happening because we’re putting a lot of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere…” said Easterling. “If we can reduce how much carbon dioxide we are putting in the atmosphere, then we can eventually begin reducing the impact that carbon dioxide is having on the climate.”

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People are generally clueless when it comes to cybersecurity

WASHINGTON – The scariness of cyber attacks seems like something straight out of the Twilight Zone. Think about it: The world revolves around computers and personal information can be stolen with one click of a mouse. The problem is that most people do not think about cyber threats.

Dr. Marshini Chetty, an assistant professor of Human-Computer Interaction at the University of Maryland, said that people don’t tend to think about cybersecurity unless they are actually in the industry or in some situation where they have to be aware of security.

“We find that if they haven’t heard about it in some big news story or someone hasn’t informed them that there’s been like a big credit card breach or something like that,” Chetty said, “They aren’t really aware of security on a daily basis.”

Chetty said that the media plays a huge role to raise awareness about cybersecurity issues to the general public. “The more educated the public is, the better it is for everyone,” she said.

She noted that the U.S. government is taking great measures to educate people about their online safety. Her government-funded research, which focuses on evaluating people’s behaviors when it comes to completing software updates, is required to have a component that makes educational materials available to the public.

Antoinette Isama, a 23-year-old student from Silver Spring, Md., knows that security threats loom. “I definitely take it seriously, even in regards to online shopping. I don’t save my credit card information. I think it should be taken more serious because it’s easier and easier for someone to steal your information.”

Although individuals can take measures to protect themselves from hackers, there is only so much that can be done. “If you’ve entrusted your data to a third party….it’s up to them to make sure their systems are secure.” Chetty said. She warned of a possible cyber attack that could be targeted at the network system of a company that is not properly protected or equipped to handle a large-scale breach, which could possibly put millions of people’s personal data at risk of being stolen.

“Generally when people are not aware of privacy and security issues they can easily get themselves into trouble,” Chetty said, “Whether that’s sharing information that they didn’t intend to share or having machines that are not protected.”

According to Chetty, individuals can take steps to keep their personal information safe in cyberspace. Making sure personal machines are always up to date, securing passwords and not staying logged in to public computers are all measures that can be taken to protect against a cyber attack.

Isama said that worrying about cyber attacks is wasting time.

“I don’t [worry] because attempts are already happening. It’s a reality now. Now it’s about being preventative.”

 

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Philippine government invites former occupying military powers back to ward off China

Admiral Harry Harris, commander of the United States Pacific Command, arrived in the Philippines on Tuesday for a three-day visit that highlights broad changes to the Southeast Asian nation’s military strategy. The Philippines has lately welcomed the militaries of the US and Japan in order to send a unified signal to China as it asserts its presence in the South China Sea. Though its relationships with the US and Japan have been historically complex, the Philippine government’s current concerns over a newly aggressive China are encouraging it to move past that.

“You’re seeing sort of these odd historic partnerships grow,” Jerry Hendrix, the director of the Defense Strategies and Assessments Program at the Center for a New American Security, told VICE News. “All this means that the South China Sea isn’t going to be settled in the way that China desires it to be any time soon.”

China is the most active country that has declared dominion over islands in the South China Sea and reclaimed land by piling dredged sand on top of narrow reefs, but it’s not the only one. Vietnam, Malaysia, Taiwan, and the Philippines have all engaged in this, just to a far lesser degree. As of June, the Chinese had reclaimed more than 2,900 acres of land, according to the US Department of Defense. In comparison, the Philippines had built up only 14 acres.

“China has now reclaimed 17 times more land in 20 months than the other claimants combined over the past 40 years, accounting for approximately 95 percent of all reclaimed land in the Spratly Islands,” wrote the Department of Defense in the Asia-Pacific Maritime Security Strategy, which it released last week.

Some in the Philippines are wary of Japan because of its occupation of the country during World War II, as well as of the US owing to the Philippine-American War and its Cold War military presence in the region. Despite this, the Philippine government sees the strategic advantage of fostering these partnerships.

“The government, recognizing its strategic position, would love to see the US visit regularly — like on a weekly basis,” Hendrix remarked. In exchange, the US can further project its influence toward Asia, which has been the focus of a pivot in foreign policy on the part of the Obama administration.

It is a lot like the local convenience store that gives the cops free coffee when they come by. The increased police presence this encourages helps to deter criminals from robbing the place. Even if the storeowner isn’t always on the best terms with the cops on the beat, it’s still better to give away some coffee than it is to get robbed.

In April 2014, the US signed an Enhanced Defense Cooperation Agreement (EDCA) with the island nation. The agreement would allow US troops to build facilities and store gear in the country, and to conduct joint training exercises with the Philippine military.

“The EDCA facilitates increased bilateral defense cooperation activities by providing the US access to [Philippine military] facilities and areas on a rotational basis,” Department of Defense spokesman Commander Bill Urban told VICE News. “The US government is not building any bases in the Republic of the Philippines.”

Earlier this year, Japanese and Filipino forces began joint military exercises for the first time. Already they have conducted two maritime exercises under the guise of humanitarian assistance and disaster response, but recent talks of establishing a Visiting Forces Agreement (VFA) indicate that this is the beginning of a burgeoning defense relationship between the two Asian countries.

The VFA would involve the exchange of military equipment and technology, as well as training and personnel exchanges, said Philippine Defense Secretary Voltaire Gazmin. Talks just started, however, and the Philippines’s last VFA, with Australia, took seven years to become official.

But not everyone in the Philippines is so thrilled about the new military cooperation, and both the VFA and EDCA are being legally challenged by local Filipino activists.

There is a natural resistance within the Filipino population to a foreign military presence. World War II episodes like the Bataan Death March, in which thousands died when Japan’s military brutally forced 76,000 American and Filipino prisoners of war to walk 66 miles, are still deeply resented by some Filipinos, Hendrix said.

Two former Philippine senators spoke out against Japanese military aid in Juneat the press club in Manila. Former Senator Leticia Ramos-Shahani advocated for the creation of a self-supporting military and expressed grave caution about the cooperation with Japan.

“Don’t forget they invaded us,” Shahani said. “I watched the Japanese enter the Open City of Manila. And I cried. To see foreign troops enter your native land is one of the most humiliating experiences. I hope you will never experience that.”

But Japan has worked hard to rebuild its reputation in the post-WWII era, particularly with initiatives that offer economic assistance as well as disaster relief.

The US relationship with the Philippines has also changed in the past few decades. In 1992, after almost a century on the island, the Philippines kicked the US military out of Subic Bay Naval Base in the East China Sea as part of its effort to become militarily self-sufficient.

Nevertheless, the US says it still has the Philippines’ back.

“Our commitment to the Philippines is ironclad. We are in constant and close touch with our Philippine ally,” David Shear, assistant secretary of defense for Asian-Pacific security affairs, told VICE News during a Pentagon news conference. “There should be no doubt, either in the region or among our Philippine friends, about the strength of the American commitment and of the strength of the American deterrence.”

The Philippine government’s resources have grown strained as it deals with domestic terror attacks by Abu Sayyaf, an al Qaeda-linked militant group. Abu Sayyaf has been taking hostages and is holding at least nine people, according to the government-run Philippines News Agency.

“The Philippine Navy has a need for just about everything,” Douglas H. Paal, vice president for studies at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, told VICE News. “They have never been able to maintain a viable navy or air force.”

Both Japan and the US have already provided the Philippines with equipment, including deeply discounted ships and planes. In 2011, the US refurbished two Coast Guard Hamilton-class cutters at a cost of $25 million and then gave them to the Philippine Navy free of charge. In 2013, it increased military aid to the Philippines by two-thirds.

More recently, in June, Philippine President Benigno Aquino III signed a deal with a Japanese shipbuilder to buy a fleet of 10 patrol vessels. The Japanese government financed the deal with a low-interest $150 million loan.

The Philippines’ military relationships are now anchored largely on China’s continuing reclamation and militarization of islands in the South China Sea.

“It is becoming increasingly clear why China desires to establish its hold over the islands and water in question,” Hendrix wrote in a recent piece for Defense One. “Despite arguments about energy and food supplies that may lay in abundance below the waters of the South China Sea, Beijing’s actions make increasingly clear that it seeks control for its own military advantage and to establish dominance over the other nations in the region.”

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