Presidential Daily Briefing for Trump on Russia

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There are rumors flying that the intelligence agencies are holding back on key items that would otherwise be included in the PDB’s, especially items regarding Russia. Okay, we cannot know for sure that is true or not. In fact there are denials this is accurate. While countless media outlets are reporting that some ‘higher-ups’ in some intel agencies are in a war with President Trump, it is all because he is in a war with them. Sheesh….while all this is going on, other allied world leaders are watching all this and are feeling quite uneasy over intelligence collaboration and most especially where all this leads.

Image result for russian spy ship norfolk, virginia

Some one needs to restore order and confidence here and do it fast. At issue is Russia and Iran.

  1. The Russian spy ship doing an ‘in-your-face’ Atlantic coast water adventure and is presently just outside of Norfolk, Virginia and headed back to the Cuba region.
  2. Meanwhile, the new Secretary of State, Rex Tillerson is in Germany meeting with his Russian counterpart Sergey Lavrov.
  3. Another item is General Dunford is in Azerbaijan, meeting with Russian Chief of General Staff of the Armed Forces, Gerasimov.
  4. Qassem Soleimani, head of the Iranian Qods Force is in Moscow. Soleimani has a U.S. and U.N. travel ban and sanctions on him such that he is not allowed to travel. Hah…
  5. Ciaran Martin, head of GCHQ’s new National Cyber Security Centre states that Russia is escalating the rate of hacks against the UK. The United States, Canada, Australia and the UK are the four countries of record that make up GCHQ.
  6. Deputy Defense Secretary Bob Work met with Ukrainian Foreign Affairs Minister Pavlo Klimkin at the Pentagon regarding discussion over the recent escalation of violence by combined Russian separatist forces in eastern Ukraine.
  7. Because of Russian aggression and the lasting threat to the Baltic States, General Mattis has ordered U.S. troops deploy in Bulgaria.
  8. Russian troops attacked Ukrainian positions 139 times using heavy armor in all sectors in Donbas in the past 48 hours.

    Situation in Donbas February 13, 2017 Ukraine conflict map

    9.  Russia tells White House it will not return Crimea to Ukraine.
    10. Russia has secretly deployed a new cruise missile that American officials say violates a landmark arms control treaty, posing a major test for President Trump as his administration is facing a crisis over its ties to Moscow. The missile (Kalibr) is a SSC-8. It is a nuclear capable missile first tested in 2008. While this launch was ground based, it can also be launched from a submarine and is capable of holding 1000 lbs of conventional explosives or a nuclear warhead. There are variants to this weapon, there is also the Iskander and the 9M728. Nonetheless, it is a violation of the INF Treaty.
    Lastly and a very good thing, while Vladimir Putin is calling for full intelligence cooperation with the United States, General Mattis has not, no….not ready. Further, Mattis said that Russia needs to prove itself….tic tic tic…

    11. Soldiers, tanks and M88 recovery vehicles from the 1st Battalion, 8th Infantry Regiment’s “Fighting Eagles” recently arrived at the airbase in Romania in support of Operation Atlantic Resolve. So far, more than 350 U.S. soldiers have arrived this month with another 150 set to arrive before the end of February.

So, should there be some normalizing of relations between the White House and the Kremlin? Nah….has not worked out so well when it comes to Iran or Cuba…

Trump Admin vs. Shadow Operations

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Trump and his team were and still are ill-prepared for the opposition hostilities aimed at his people and administration. One must question whether Trump’s operation was ready to take on the legal warfare for his temporary travel suspension. One must question whether Trump is ready for the Russian aggressions. And what about the fights for tax reform and the full repeal of Obamacare?

Obama’s advice to Trump: ‘Reality has a way of biting back’

Okay, but there can be only one president at a time and sadly it seems that Obama has a quasi-shadow presidency in full operation and gaining traction to destroy the Trump presidency where Obama can run policy from points all across the country. How so you ask?

Image result for obama trump Vanity Fair

Well we have former CIA Director John Brennan who re-tooled the agency during his last two years as director. Re-tooled it how? Perhaps to carry on policy favoring the Obama doctrine and Iran leaving a few well placed loyal operatives to do the work. But most of all, restructured his spies for the world of cyber. Humm, right?

Then we have Ben Rhodes, the former deputy of the Obama National Security Council. He is working the media channels with wild abandon giving talking points and missions for media to ensure sand stays in the gears of the Trump administration. After all, Rhodes worked those very same channels and the lobby operations during the Iranian nuclear agreement talks. Remember, Ben Rhodes’ brother, David is the president of CBS News.

Then we have Van Jones, the shamed former Obama ‘green czar’ that contributes to CNN. He launched a non-profit called Megaphone Strategies. What is that? It is an operation that promotes demonstrations and rallies all in the name of ‘social justice’. Humm right?

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Okay, so back to Obama….

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Obama’s Shadow Presidency

Well-funded Organizing for Action promises to crack conservative skulls to halt the Trump agenda.

Vadum: Former President Obama is waging war against the Trump administration through his generously funded agitation outfit, Organizing for Action, to defend his monumentally destructive record of failure and violent polarization.

It is a chilling reminder that the increasingly aggressive, in-your-face Left in this country is on the march.

Acclaimed author Paul Sperry writes in the New York Post:

Obama has an army of agitators — numbering more than 30,000 — who will fight his Republican successor at every turn of his historic presidency. And Obama will command them from a bunker less than two miles from the White House.

In what’s shaping up to be a highly unusual post-presidency, Obama isn’t just staying behind in Washington. He’s working behind the scenes to set up what will effectively be a shadow government to not only protect his threatened legacy, but to sabotage the incoming administration and its popular “America First” agenda.

What is Organizing for Action? It is a less violent version of Mussolini’s black shirts and Hitler’s brown shirts, or of the government-supported goon squads that Venezuela’s Hugo Chavez and Cuba’s Castro brothers used to harass and intimidate their domestic opponents.

OfA isn’t, strictly speaking, a new group. After the 2008 election, the group, then known as Organizing for America, was a phony grassroots campaign run by the Democratic National Committee that sought to replicate the community organizing techniques Obama learned from the teachings of his fellow Chicagoan, Saul Alinsky. OfA was created in large part because the White House could not legally use the 13 million e-mail addresses that the Obama campaign compiled in 2008.

Former U.S. Rep. Bob Edgar (D-Penn.), sounded the alarm about OfA in 2013, suggesting the group was dangerous to democracy. “If President Obama is serious about his often-expressed desire to rein in big money in politics, he should shut down Organizing for Action and disavow any plan to schedule regular meetings with its major donors,” he said as president of the left-wing group Common Cause. “Access to the President should never be for sale.”

“With its reported promise of quarterly presidential meetings for donors and ‘bundlers’ who raise $500,000, Organizing For Action apparently intends to extend and deepen the pay-to-play Washington culture that Barack Obama came to prominence pledging to end,” Edgar said. “The White House’s suggestion this week that this group will somehow be independent is laughable.”

But Edgar’s admonitions were ignored and since then Organizing for Action has thrived and grown rich, just like the Obamas.

As FrontPage previously reported, Obama has rented a $5.3 million, 8,200-square-foot, walled mansion in Washington’s Embassy Row that he is using to command his community organizing cadres. Michelle Obama will join the former president there as will the Obama Foundation. To stay on track, Obama wants his former labor secretary, Tom Perez, to win the chairmanship of the DNC in a party election later this month. “It’s time to organize and fight, said Perez who appears to be gaining on frontrunner and jihadist Rep. Keith Ellison (D-Minn.). “We must stand up to protect President Obama’s accomplishments,” adding, “We’re going to build the strongest grassroots organizing force this country has ever seen.”

No ex-president has ever done this before, sticking around the nation’s capital to vex and undermine his successor. Of course, Obama is unlike any president the United States has ever had. Even failed, self-righteous presidents like Jimmy Carter, who has occasionally taken shots at his successors, didn’t stay behind in Washington to obstruct and disrupt the new administration.

Organizing for Action, a 501(c)(4) nonprofit that doesn’t have to disclose its donors, is at the head of Obama’s network of left-wing nonprofit groups. OfA, Sperry warns, has “a growing war chest and more than 250 offices across the country.”

On its website, the group claims that there are “5 million Americans who’ve taken action” with OfA, and that those individuals “are part of a long line of people who stand up and take on the big fights for social justice, basic fairness, equal rights, and expanding opportunity.” Among its key issues are “turning up the heat on climate change deniers,” comprehensive immigration reform (which includes mass amnesty), “telling the stories of the millions who are seeing the life-saving benefits of Obamacare,” fighting for “a woman’s health care” which is “a basic right,” and redistributing wealth from those who earned it to those who didn’t.

OfA communications director Jesse Lehrich told Memphis-based WREG that the “grassroots energy that’s out there right now is palpable.” The group is “constantly hearing from volunteers who are excited to report about events they’re organizing around and all of the new people that want to get involved.”

Organizing for Action is drowning in money, by nonprofit standards.

By the end of 2014, OfA, which was formally incorporated only the year before, had taken in $40.4 million, $26 million of which was raised in 2014, according to the organization’s IRS filings. OfA’s big donors are members of the George Soros-founded Democracy Alliance, a donors’ consortium for left-wing billionaires devoted to radical political change. Among the DA members donating to OfA are: Ryan Smith ($476,260); Marcy Carsey ($250,000); Jon Stryker ($200,000); Paul Boskind ($105,000); Paul Egerman ($100,000); and Nick Hanauer ($50,000).

OfA also runs a project called the Community Organizing Institute (COI) which it says partners “with progressive groups and organizations to educate, engage, and collaborate.”

Organizing for Action describes COI in almost lyrical terms:

Building upon the rich history of community organizing in Chicago, the COI is a place to share stories, best practices, and innovations in order to build our community and empower individuals in the fight for change. It is a shared space for organizers, policy makers, advocates, and change-agents to come together for workshops, panel discussions, presentations, trainings, film screenings, and social gatherings—building a strong foundation for partnerships.

Translation: at COI you can learn how to spark riots, get arrested to make a political statement, organize lynch mobs and voter fraud on a massive scale, intimidate and shake down corporations, blackmail lenders, race-bait public officials and businesses into submission, smear and terrorize your opponents, shield illegal aliens from law enforcement, lead squatters to invade foreclosed homes, encourage welfare fraud, and use tax dollars to promote cockamamie social-engineering schemes.

Obama is “intimately involved” in OfA’s operations and issues tweets from the group’s account, Sperry writes. “In fact, he gave marching orders to OFA foot soldiers following Trump’s upset victory.”

“It is fine for everybody to feel stressed, sad, discouraged,” Obama said in a post-election conference call from the White House. “But get over it.” Progressives have to “move forward to protect what we’ve accomplished.”

“Now is the time for some organizing,” he said. “So don’t mope.”

Organizing for Action has been doing anything but moping.

In recent weeks its activists organized marches across the country. Some became riots. After President Trump issued Executive Order 13769 temporarily banning visitors from seven terrorism-plagued Muslim countries, OfA organized “spontaneous” demonstrations at airports.

Obama praised the airport rabble-rousers, saying through a spokesman he was “heartened by the level of engagement taking place in communities around the country.”

“Citizens exercising their Constitutional right to assemble, organize and have their voices heard by the elected officials is exactly what we expect to see when American values are at stake.”

Reinforcements are coming to beef up Organizing for Action’s position, Sperry adds.

OfA will be soon aided by “the National Democratic Redistricting Committee, launched last month by Obama pal Eric Holder to end what he and Obama call GOP ‘gerrymandering’ of congressional districts.”

And more unruly protests, rioting, and violent attacks on Trump supporters will follow.

Russian Aggression, Testing U.S. Navy, Rattling the WH?

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After President Obama expelled Russian diplomats, shuttered two Russian compounds and added more sanctions on Russia, there was no immediate response from the Kremlin. Or was there a response we are just learning about? Seems Moscow at the orders of Vladimir Putin did decided to reply and did so aggressively.

On the heels of North Korea launching a missile capable of having a nuclear weapon tip while the Prime Minister of Japan was visiting the United States, seems was an opportune time for Russia to additionally do much the same with these two other provocative actions. Nothing from the Pentagon just yet either.

 

Russian jets in ‘unsafe’ encounters with destroyer: U.S. official

U.S. Navy guided-missile destroyer USS Porter sails in the Bosphorus, on its way to the Mediterranean Sea, in Istanbul, Turkey, February 11, 2017. REUTERS/Murad Sezer

U.S. Navy guided-missile destroyer USS Porter sails in the Bosphorus, on its way to the Mediterranean Sea, in Istanbul, Turkey, February 11, 2017. REUTERS/Murad Sezer

Reuters: Multiple Russian military aircraft came close to a U.S. Navy destroyer in the Black Sea on Feb. 10, incidents considered “unsafe and unprofessional,” a U.S. official said on Tuesday.

There were three separate incidents involving Russian aircraft and the USS Porter, Captain Danny Hernandez, a spokesman for U.S. European Command, said. One involved two Russian Su-24 jets, another a separate Su-24, and the third involved a larger IL-38.

“USS Porter queried all aircraft and received no response,” Hernandez said.

“Such incidents are concerning because they can result in accident or miscalculation,” he added.

The incidents involving the Su-24 were considered to be unsafe and unprofessional by the commanding officer of the Porter because of their high speed and low altitude, while the IL-38 flew at an unusually low altitude, Hernandez said.

Another U.S. official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the closest incident that day involved the lone SU-24, which came within 200 yards of the Porter at an altitude of 300 feet (91 meters).

This is not the first time interactions have taken place between Russian jets and U.S. ships. In April 2016 two Russian warplanes flew simulated attack passes near a U.S. guided missile destroyer in the Baltic Sea. The flights by the warplanes were so close they created wake in the water.

***

Russia sends spy ship near US coast, deploys banned missiles at home, officials say

FNC: A Russian spy ship was spotted patrolling off the East Coast of the United States on Tuesday morning, the first such instance during the Trump administration — and the same day it was learned the Kremlin had secretly deployed controversial cruise missiles inside Russia and buzzed a U.S. Navy destroyer, U.S. officials told Fox News.

The Russian ship was in international waters, 70 miles off the coast of Delaware and heading north at 10 knots, according to one official. The U.S. territory line is 12 nautical miles.

It was not immediately clear where the ship is headed.

Later Tuesday, a U.S. official confirmed to Fox News that Russia had deployed ground-launched cruise missiles to two locations inside the country in December. The New York Times first reported that the Obama administration had previously seen the missiles — then in a testing phase — as a violation of a 1987 treaty between the U.S. and Russia that banned ground-launched intermediate-range missiles.

But Russia has pressed ahead with its program, apparently testing a Trump administration which has sought better ties with Moscow — but is also fresh off the loss of National Security Adviser Michael Flynn, who resigned Monday night in the wake of a scandal surrounding his communications with Russia.

The ship, the SSV-175 Viktor Leonov, last sailed near the U.S. in April 2015, an official said. It was also seen in Havana in January 2015.

Image result for vishnya class intelligence ship

The Russian spy ship is also armed with surface-to-air missiles.

“It’s not a huge concern, but we are keeping our eyes on it,” one official said.

This action by the Russian military follows recent missile test launches by Iran and North Korea.

In the past, Russian spy ships have loitered off the coast of Kings Bay, Ga., home to a U.S. Navy ballistic missile submarine base. During the Cold War, Russian intelligence gathering ships routinely parked off U.S. submarine bases along the East Coast

In September 2015, another Russian spy ship was spotted near the U.S. outside the submarine base in Kings Bay.

Outside of U.S. intelligence gathering satellites monitoring the Russian spy ship’s voyage north, there are several airborne platforms along the East Coast that could be used by the U.S. military to monitor the Russian ship, according to one official.

Currently there are four U.S. Navy warships in the Atlantic off the coast of Norfolk participating in normal training, but none have been tasked with shadowing the Russian spy ship.

There are no U.S. Navy aircraft carriers nearby. The USS Eisenhower, an aircraft carrier, is currently off the coast of Florida doing carrier qualifications, with young pilots making their first landings. Ike does not currently have strike aircraft. More here from FNC.

***

This Russian ship presently off the coast of Delaware began in Cuba and is expected to continue heading north to the New London, CT area and will turn around heading south again. It is know as a Vishnya class ship (AGI, Auxiliary, General Intelligence) and the ships are armed with two AK-630 close-in weapon systems and SA-N-8 SAM launchers. These ships are large, purpose built ships designed for signal and communications intelligence electronic information gathering via an extensive array of sensors.[3] The data could be transmitted to shore via satellite link antennas housed in two large radomes. The Russian Navy operates seven of these ships.

Trump Sanctions VP of Venezuela, Finally

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U.S. Hits Venezuelan Vice President With ‘Kingpin’ Act Sanctions

  • Tareck El Aissami is highest-ranking Venezuelan on list
  • People on Treasury Department list have assets blocked
 
Nicolas Maduro, Venezuela’s president, right, waves to attendees while accompanied by Tareck El Aissami, Venezuela’s vice president, before the start of his annual address at the Supreme Court in Caracas on Jan. 15, 2017. Photographer: Carlos Becerra/Bloomberg

Bloomberg: The Trump administration imposed sanctions against Venezuelan Vice President Tareck El Aissami, after years of investigation by U.S. authorities into his alleged participation in drug trafficking and money laundering.

The Treasury Department announced the move Monday, placing El Aissami and another Venezuelan on a U.S. list of foreign nationals with suspected ties to drug trafficking. El Aissami has consistently denied all allegations against him. His office declined to comment on the U.S. decision after it was announced.

“He facilitated shipments of narcotics from Venezuela, to include control over planes that leave from a Venezuelan air base, as well as control of drug routes through the ports in Venezuela,” according to a Treasury Department statement. “He also facilitated, coordinated, and protected other narcotics traffickers operating in Venezuela.”

El Aissami is the highest-ranking Venezuelan hit by U.S. sanctions and the most-senior government leader of any country on the so-called Specially Designated Nationals list, according to a U.S. official, who discussed the matter on condition of anonymity. Those listed have their assets blocked and U.S. citizens, institutions and companies are prohibited worldwide from dealing with them, according to the Treasury Department.

The sanctions mark an extraordinary step against the second-in-command of a foreign government and are sure to lead to a further deterioration of U.S. relations with the government of Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro, who appointed El Aissami as vice president on Jan. 4 amid a deepening economic and humanitarian crisis.

Business Associate

The U.S. also listed Samark Lopez Bello, a Venezuelan citizen with no public government affiliation, who’s considered to be El Aissami’s business associate. According to the official, El Aissami facilitated shipments of more than 1,000 kilograms of drugs on multiple occasions from Venezuela to U.S. and Mexico, and used Lopez Bello to acquire properties on his behalf.

“Lopez Bello is a key frontman for El Aissami and in that capacity launders drug proceeds,” according to the Treasury statement.

Sanctions were also imposed on eight companies based in Venezuela, the British Virgin Islands, Panama and the U.K. The U.S. also froze assets of five U.S.-based companies with real estate holdings in Miami, according to the statement. Together, the actions are designed to freeze tens of millions of dollars in assets, said the U.S. official.

While U.S. officials were gathering evidence under President Barack Obama and prior to El Aissami’s ascent to the vice presidency, action stalled until now. The designations didn’t require President Donald Trump’s personal approval, and Trump has not been involved in the discussions, according to another U.S. official, who also spoke on condition of anonymity.

Any Tool

“It is not a political message, an economic message, it is not a message between governments,” said William R. Brownfield, assistant U.S. secretary of state for international narcotics and law enforcement affairs and a former ambassador to Venezuela between 2004-2007. “It is not even a message of diplomacy. It is a message that says that we will in fact use any tool, any legal and lawful tool in our inventory, to go after those that are engaged in international drug trafficking.”

The measures are being imposed under the the Foreign Narcotics Kingpin Designation Act, which was signed into law by President Bill Clinton in 1999. It has targeted approximately 2,000 individuals since 1999, including eight Venezuelan officials, U.S. officials said.

Brownfield, who has served in his position since 2011, said in his experience the evidence behind the planned designations “is as tight an evidence package as I have seen.”

El Aissami, the son of Syrian and Lebanese immigrants, has long been one of Venezuela’s most controversial and feared politicians. In just over a decade, the 42-year-old climbed government ranks from a student leader in rural Venezuela, to interior minister, to his previous post as the governor of Aragua state.

Decree Powers

In the weeks since becoming vice president, El Aissami received wide-reaching decree powers from Maduro, who tapped him to lead a newly formed “commando unit” against alleged coup plotters and officials suspected of treason. Among the slew of arrests since the unit’s formation is a substitute legislator from a hard-line opposition party and a retired general who, years before, broke ranks with the government.

The sanctions are coming less than a week after a bipartisan group of U.S. lawmakers called for further measures against Maduro’s government. In a Feb. 8 letter to Trump, 34 members of Congress including Senators Ted Cruz and Robert Menendez cited El Aissami’s appointment and urged the U.S. to “take immediate action to sanction regime officials.”

The measures promise to worsen a relationship long strained by mistrust and Venezuelan accusations that Washington supported a failed attempt to overthrow then-President Hugo Chavez in 2002. In the years following the attempted coup, Chavez aggressively criticized U.S. ties to Latin America, helped lead rallies around South America against “Yankee aggression” and nationalized investments by companies including U.S.-based Exxon Mobil Corp.

Oil Prices

“It is obviously a decision for the government of Venezuela and its constitutional authorities to determine what steps they will take and how they will react to this designation,” Brownfield said.

Even under Obama, who generally avoided engaging publicly with Chavez or Maduro, ties between the two nations remained strained. In March 2015, Obama expanded U.S. sanctions against Venezuelan officials and declared worsening relations with the South American nation to be a national emergency as Maduro attempted to stifle dissent.

With the drop in oil prices that began in 2014, Venezuela’s economy collapsed. A nation that just a few decades ago was the wealthiest in Latin America has become synonymous with dysfunction, with consumers forced to wait in hours-long lines for basic goods, including medicine. An informal inflation index compiled by Bloomberg shows that prices are rising at almost 1,200 percent annually, the fastest rate in the world.

Political Network

It is in this context that El Aissami, nicknamed “the narco of Aragua” by Venezuela’s beleaguered opposition, has thrived. Critics allege he has used his vast political network to help turn the country into an international hub for drugs. The State Department, in its 2015 International Narcotics Control Strategy Report, described the Caribbean nation as a “major cocaine transit country,” citing “endemic corruption throughout commerce and government, including law enforcement.”

The vice president’s ties to the nation’s civil registry services before he became interior minister have also fueled accusations by U.S. investigators that he’s aided Middle Eastern extremists by allowing them to create Venezuelan identities and a web of front companies to move money outside the country’s borders.

El Aissami has previously denied any alleged drug ties, saying they are little more than media slander, and has offered to hand himself over to authorities if anyone could produce proof.

El Aissami has been investigated by the Homeland Security Department and Drug Enforcement Administration since at least 2011 for alleged money laundering to the Middle East, specifically Lebanon, according to two people familiar with the probe.

As the number two official in Venezuela, El Aissami would be in line to replace Maduro should he cede to opposition pressure to step aside because of the country’s economic implosion and social unrest. Maduro has so far quashed the opposition’s attempt to hold a referendum on his removal before his term ends in about two years.

***

Hat tip to Infodio for the summary dated 2013.

Hugo Chavez’s soft spot for terrorists wasn’t reserved to Basques only. For there’s extensive documentation (link is external) proving Chavez’s association, and support to Colombia’s narco-terrorists from FARC (link is external). With regards to Middle Eastern terrorists there’s been much in the way of talk but little proof. It has been said that Margarita Island in Venezuela is a Hezbollah hotbed. Others have claimed, without much evidence, that Venezuela has “sent shipments” of Uranium to Iran. However, the U.S. Department of the Treasury announced in June 2012 that it was targetting a money laundering network related to Hezbollah and its operations in Colombia and Venezuela (link is external). And here’s where things get interesting.

Tareck Zaidan El Aissami Maddah (DOB 12 Nov. 1974, ID. 12.354.211) is the current chavista Governor of Aragua state in Venezuela. He is one of five children of Zaidan Amin El Aissami El Musfi and May Maddah de El Aissami, a Muslim couple of Lebanese origin. El Aissami (TEAM) has had a meteoric rise within chavismo, owing to his excellent relations with Adan Chavez, brother and mentor of the late Hugo, whom he met while reading law in Universidad de los Andes. Despite his young age, El Aissami has been appointed to sensitive roles, such as Head of ONIDEX: Venezuela’s equivalent to the Home Office, responsible for identification and immigration.

The most interesting aspect of El Aissami’s operation however, is not money laundering by his proxies, but rather abuse of his station at ONIDEX to give Venezuelan IDs to a number of internationally wanted criminals / terrorists. The news from OFAC linked above reveal that Hezbollah operatives in South America got Venezuelan IDs under El Aissami’s “watch”. While in charge, ONIDEX created new identities for a number of people. Intelligence reports sent to us claim that as many as 173 individuals believed to be collaborating with terrorism, drug trafficking and money laundering were either naturalised, or got Venezuelan visas and IDs using fake names. Abbas Hussein HARB, for instance, identified by OFAC as part of a money laundering network related to Hezbollah and Ayman Saied JOUMAA, has two Venezuelan IDs (21495203 and 26405022). As of this writing both are valid. Kassem Mohamad SALEH, also designated as Hezbollah collaborator, has a valid Venezuelan ID (22075502), as shown in electoral records. Read the full summary here, excellent work.

Dear President Trump, Please Stop It

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Remember the circle jerk where the Federal government gives Planned Parenthood $500 million a year for subsidizing the organizations low cost healthcare for women? Planned Parenthood has a political action committee that has donated to members of Congress….so Federal dollars get cycled right back to member of Congress. Some like this for 2016/ House: Total to Democrats: $534,489  Total to Republicans: $7,500

(See the recipients here)  Related reading: Planned Parenthood workers, PACs donated $25M to Dems since 2000

Essentially the same model is used for corporate subsidies….hold on to you oh sh*t bar for this one:

First examine the Export Import Bank shall we? Authorization to fund the ExIm Bank in 2015 was stopped by Congress and corporations freaked out. Why you ask? Well one reason dealt with an investigation from 2014: The U.S. Export-Import Bank has suspended or removed four officials in recent months amid investigations into allegations of gifts and kickbacks, as well as attempts to steer federal contracts to favored companies, several people familiar with the matter said. More here from the WSJ.

The Export Import Bank was designed to give small business a better edge in competing on national and global markets. So…how has that worked out?

Using a report published in 2015:

Using a dataset that the US Export-Import Bank recently made available to the public, one can see which foreign companies are among the top purchasers of American exports financed by the bank’s subsidy programs. The following table shows the top 10 foreign buyers, based on the total amount of financing authorized from fiscal years 2007 through 2013.

**

The number one buyer was the Mexican state-owned petroleum company, Pemex, which has a market capitalization of $416 billion but has somehow needed more than $7 billion in US-taxpayer-backed financing to facilitate deals with American exporters in recent years. Such assistance from the federal government to Pemex, along with other oil companies on the list, raises eyebrows, particularly considering that the current administration, which supports the reauthorization of the Ex-Im Bank, hasn’t exactly been pro-fossil fuels.

Other top buyers include foreign airlines that purchased aircraft from Boeing, which isn’t surprising given that Boeing is, by an overwhelming margin, the chief beneficiary of export assistance from the bank. Emirate Airlines, which has benefitted from $3.4 billion in US-backed financing, proudly boasts on its website that it has “recorded an annual profit in every year since its third in operation.”

The table further undermines the claim made by the Ex-Im Bank’s defenders that it provides critical support to US small businesses. Instead, it provides evidence that the biggest beneficiaries of the Ex-Im Bank’s largesse are large multinational corporations, here and overseas.

*** Okay, that is just the Export Import Bank…let us move on to other federal subsidies some of which during the campaign trail Senator Ted Cruz advocated for termination. He was right. How so?

From 2015: *(See any small companies listed below?) Read more here.  Note the numbers below are BILLIONS.

Now the private and free enterprise system and corporations should have success. But are these companies standing on their own or just part of another circle jerk for political favors? Hah….rhetorical question until you see who is participating. How about Google….the most profitable and successful tech company out there. Well yes but… Besides Intel, Google is the top tech company that receives government subsidies, picking up more than $630 million from states like Oregon, North Carolina and a few others. What does a multi-billion dollar company that controls the majority of the world’s Internet need with more than $630 million in government subsidies, you ask? Well, you know, for things like property taxes and training reimbursements. What, do you all think that money just grows on trees?! Also, don’t even think about googling “Google government subsidies” because THEY WILL KNOW ABOUT IT. How about WalMart?

Yup, Walmart, the retail giant also benefits greatly from more than 260 different grants from multiple states totaling nearly $150 million. With that kind of money, it’s no wonder they can manage to sell anything and everything in their stores.

Seems Goldman Sachs had the red carpet to the cash the check here door too.

Remember that company that essentially caused the whole recession a few years ago and then managed to get billions in bailout money from the federal government because the U.S. Treasury and Federal Reserve were both stacked with the company’s former CEOs and high-level employees? Well, just so you know, they also do pretty well in the subsidies department. Goldman Sachs has raked in over $660 million, mostly from their home state of New York, but with some help from New Jersey, Utah and Michigan as well. Hooray! More here from PolicyMic.

Are we sure all these corporations including Disney or Intel are told to get these subsidies, they must hired American employees? Nope…hardly…but shouldn’t that be a stipulation? Disney has apparently survived a scandal by hiring foreign workers replacing Americans. It was just reported last year that Intel fired 12,000 employees only to be replaced by foreigners. Domestic corporations are getting big money from various federal programs and then abuse the H1B visa system.

Convoluted right? Where is the outrage? Hey President Trump….stop it all please…Please?