Category Archives: Failed foreign policy

Biden Admin Ignores Cartels Trafficking Human Organs

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Will someone in the Washington DC please ask Joe Biden or DHS Secretary Mayorkas how many deaths is the right number before the border is closed?

It is not only well know but proven that the cartels have illicit partnerships with the Chinese Communist Party for trafficking narcotics especially fentanyl. Fentanyl kills on average 100,000 Americans per years. But it is worse than we know.

On the Interpol website, the following is posted in part (notice the inclusion of ‘migrants’):

Vulnerable communities

Organized criminal groups profit from the desperation of the unemployed, migrants, asylum seekers and refugees to coerce them into selling an organ. Victims of human trafficking for sexual and labour purposes also find themselves at additional risk.

The techniques used for the recruitment and control of the victims are the same as those used for other types of human trafficking, such as promises of job opportunities abroad, as well as the use of threats and violence.

Most often, victim-donors receive a smaller amount of the money than had been agreed with the recruiter or broker, and in some cases they may not get any of the promised payment. Many victim-donors have suffered post-operative complications and health issues.

The socioeconomic impact of the COVID-19 pandemic is expected to fuel THBOR as it will likely be easier for brokers to coerce vulnerable individuals to sell an organ to improve their economic conditions. This is exacerbated by the fact that legal organ donations, and therefore transplants, have suffered major decreases since the outbreak of COVID-19.

Actionable intelligence

“While trafficking in human beings for organ removal is not a new phenomenon, it is underreported due to the clandestine nature of the crime, combined with a lack of awareness by law enforcement agencies and the deficiency of information sharing channels between the medical and police sectors,” said Cyril Gout, INTERPOL’s Direct of Operational Support and Analysis. More here.

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Then going back to 2007, Reuters published a series of articles titled the Transplant Trade listing China and Columbia as hotspots for trafficking of human organs. Where is Reuters now exactly as a follow up?

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How about just as recently as 2020 when the National Institute of Health published much the same titled ‘The Untold Story’?

2020 May; 17(9): 3204.
Published online 2020 May 5. doi: 10.3390/ijerph17093204
PMCID: PMC7246946
PMID: 32380680

Organ Trafficking and Migration: A Bibliometric Analysis of an Untold Story

Juan Gonzalez, Ignacio Garijo, and Alfonso Sanchez*
Author information Article notes Copyright and License information Disclaimer

Abstract

The debate over trafficking of human beings for the purpose of organ removal (THBOR) remains largely absent from policy debates, as its crime is hardly detected, reported and sparsely researched. However, criminal networks continue to exploit vulnerable populations, particularly migrants. To help bridge this gap in knowledge, we employ a bibliometric analysis to examine whether the nexus between organ removal and migration is being addressed by the current academic literature. Our results indicate that (1) research exploring the link between THBOR and migrants is relatively scarce; (2) organ trafficking literature output is largely clustered in a couple of Western countries, and (3) despite the international nature of the topic, most empirical studies on organ trafficking and migration lack representation within the social sciences and humanities. Taken together, our results point to a huge gap on scientific publications between THBOR and migration. Quantitative data is required to lift the current knowledge constraints and better inform policymakers.

Keywords: organ trafficking, migration, health, human trafficking, THBOR, refugees
Why is all of this important? Illegal migration has been a catastrophe across the world for many years and yet no world leaders or organizations seem to address it much less prosecute it especially the United States….how about those pesky ‘American values’? So, Fox News, a news organization that has been dogged in reporting almost alone the crisis at the Southern border, the cartels and the fentanyl deaths, sent investigative reporter Sara Carter on a mission.

Biden slammed for ‘immoral’ open-border policy after human trafficker describes what happens to children

Cartels harvest children’s organs, then fill the corpse with drugs for trafficking, according to one smuggler

At least the Republicans in the House know about it and tried to advance some legislation in 2021. Where are the Democrats as co-sponsors or how come this has not advanced?

H.R.1434 – Stop Predatory Organ Trafficking Act of 2021

SEC. 2. Findings.

Congress finds the following:

(1) Global Financial Integrity estimates that up to 10 percent of all transplants rely on organs that have been illicitly obtained. These organs are often bought from vulnerable, impoverished persons.

(2) The illicit organ trade is lucrative; demand is high, and buyers can pay up to over $200,000 to secure a kidney outside the legitimate market according to Global Financial Integrity. By some estimates, organ trafficking raises between $840 million and $1.7 billion. This can bankroll terrorist and transnational crime activity.

(3) It has been reported that the Islamic State has used stolen organs to finance its war activities and to treat injured fighters, sanctioning the removal of organs from living captives.

(4) A severe shortage of transplanted organs helps fuel organ trafficking. As of 2014, according to the Global Observatory on Donation and Transplantation, the 120,000 transplants conducted globally only accounted for 10 percent of the patients waiting for an organ transplant.

(5) According to a 2013 United Nations report from the Special Rapporteur on trafficking in persons, especially women and children, the economic and social divisions within and among countries is notably reflected in the illicit organ trafficking market, in which the victims are commonly poor, unemployed, and more susceptible to deceit and extortion.

The Left leaning think tank, The Brookings Institute published an extensive report on the topic. One take-away in part –>

Vanda Felbab-Brown: What struck me most in my research on China’s role in Mexico’s illicit economies was the intensifying intermeshing of drug trafficking and wildlife trafficking. Chinese criminal groups, suppliers, and consumers increasingly play a significant role in Mexico’s drug trafficking and wildlife trafficking.

In drug trafficking, Chinese brokers are the dominant suppliers of scheduled and non-scheduled, unregulated precursor chemicals for the production of methamphetamine, fentanyl and other synthetic opioids and previously also of finished fentanyl and its analogs. Mexican drug cartels then sell fentanyl and methamphetamine throughout North America and increasingly beyond. Chinese actors also launder money for Mexican drug trafficking cartels.

Related reading from the DEA

Can’t show any photos, they are too graphic.

 

The indifference is staggering. Ever wonder if there is any reporting of this in the Presidential Daily Briefing? Would it matter?

Carry on…

 

Exactly Why Was That Mar A Lago Search Warrant so Broad?

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Consider the following….here is where critical thinking is important and there are some assumptions below which could turn out to be factual….could….

President Trump did have some legally and politically savvy people working for him within his administration and outside of government. It is true he also had some real duds….and post his presidency, he has had a lot of visitors come with ideas, objectives and action plans….

With all that in mind….it cannot be overlooked that the Biden administration employs hundreds of left-over Obama officials and clearly they are helping to drive so much of is damaging the country today.

The full text of the search warrant is found here.

Of note is this section: e, or transmission of national defense information or classified material; c. Any government and/or Presidential Records created between January 20.2017, and January 20, 2021; 

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Something real fascinating is this short Reuters report –> (note the date)

Trump says he has declassified documents related to Russia, Clinton email probes

By Reuters Staff

Hummm, right?

During the Trump administration and certainly after his presidency, we heard the term DEEP STATE…so did any of those ‘savvy legal and political  hounds tell President Trump to declassify more than just what is noted above?

Consider the fear that the Biden White House, political operatives and the Department of Justice may be harboring with all that President Trump DID declassify….or at least should have that would become as they say ‘nuclear’ if the timing is right leading into the midterms and for sure going into 2024.

So…let’s look back a little shall we? It is important as people have short memories especially dealing with crime across the country and inflation so maybe take notes here.

These are not in any particular order:

  1. All things Benghazi
  2. IRS Targeting
  3. The side deals of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (Iran nuclear deal)
  4. ATF gunwalking scandal and Eric Holder among others
  5. The unlawful assassination of the U.S. citizen by drone Abdulrahman al Awlaki in Yemen
  6. Boundless Informant (the whole NSA metadata/Booz Allen Hamilton scandal
  7. The Clinton Foundation
  8. Deepwater Horizon oil spill
  9. The 2013 crisis of the Department of Justice spying on investigative reporters least of which was Associated Press, James Rosen of Fox News and Sharyl Attkisson
  10. Dropmire
  11. Fairview
  12. The Hemisphere Project
  13. Hillary Clinton email server and alias email names and addresses including those inside the Obama White House
  14. The New Black Panthers Party voter intimidation case
  15. Operation Choke Point
  16. PRISM
  17. Project Cassandra
  18. The real John Brennan Senate spying scandal including the matter of CIA black sites
  19. Solyndra
  20. Giving Russia the Iranian nuclear fuel
  21. Giving Russia the Syrian chemical weapons
  22. The Taliban 5 and Bowe Bergdahl
  23. Uranium One
  24. The war on coal
  25. XKeyscore
  26. The re-opening of the embassy and the new relations with Cuba
  27. Operation Fast and Furious
  28. The Veterans Affair deaths
  29. The major attack on General Michael Flynn and the DoJ lawyers
  30. Islamic State and the JV Team

You get the point and for sure there are others you can list. Make a few check marks on those items that are still affecting policy today and why.

What is the National Archives keeping from public access and why is this library so concerned just now about documents? It is likely just a front operation for the real mission….yes?

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Sometimes we are forced to read ‘stuff’ from websites that are clearly bent towards the Left and such is the case with ‘JustSecurity’. What is notable on this particular site is Avril Haines was or is on the advisory board. Who is she? Ah…she is the Director of National Intelligence for the Biden administration and yes a lawyer too. Who else among those advisors was or is at ‘JustSecurity’ you ask? How about Jake Sullivan? Yes…that Jake Sullivan that was deputy chief of staff to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and is now part of the National Security team for the Biden administration. His wife Maggie is a lawyer too and guess what….she is legal counsel to Attorney General Merrick Garland…..yeesh…right? Many of these people are targets of the John Durham probe…

https://external-content.duckduckgo.com/iu/?u=https%3A%2F%2Fimg.theepochtimes.com%2Fassets%2Fuploads%2F2021%2F02%2F21%2FGettyImages-1183766895-1-e1613945881969-1200x722.jpg&f=1&nofb=1 source/EpochTimes/AlexWong/Getty Image (for news and or commentary only, not commercial use)

But back to this particular item at ‘JustSecurity’ as they are in a panic about Kash Patel.

As a primer and just published yesterday —>

As this article was going to press, ABC News published a report that weeks before the Mar-a-Lago search, former President Donald Trump’s associate Kash Patel “vowed to retrieve classified documents from the National Archives and publish them on his website.”

If that scheme involved Trump himself and the Mar-a-Lago documents, it could have significant legal implications for the Justice Department’s ongoing criminal investigation. Any plan to release the documents could potentially trigger specific elements of the Espionage Act and other criminal statutes designed with the core purpose of preventing unlawful dissemination of classified and other sensitive government documents. As I discuss below, credible evidence of such a plan also would likely factor into the Justice Department’s decision on whether to bring criminal charges. Read on here on the full summary.

Thoughts everyone?

 

The Fall of Afghanistan Report, One Year Later

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Axios is reporting in part:

The White House is planning to circulate a new memo on Capitol Hill defending President Biden’s decision to withdraw troops from Afghanistan and claiming the move strengthened national security by freeing up critical military and intelligence agents, according to a copy of the document obtained by Axios.

Why it matters: The memo comes as many across Washington are still seeking answers about the flawed evacuation. Republicans in particular are planning to use the one-year anniversary to reexamine the failures that led to the Afghan capital swiftly falling into the hands of the Taliban.

Driving the news: The memo was written by National Security Council spokesperson Adrienne Watson in part as an attempt to preempt criticism from Republicans who are releasing an interim report on Sunday outlining what they see as the failures of the administration’s preparations for the evacuation.

  • The GOP report, led by Rep. Michael McCaul (R-Texas), ranking member of the House Foreign Affairs Committee and the likely chair of the panel if Republicans take back the majority next year, claims the Biden administration left key decisions on how to evacuate civilians from Kabul until the final hours before the city fell to the Taliban.
  • “There was a complete lack and a failure to plan. There was no plan and there was no plan executed,” McCaul said on CBS’ “Face the Nation” on Sunday morning.

Details: The memo argues the GOP report is “riddled with false claims” and puts the onus on former President Trump for striking a 2020 deal with the Taliban — known as the “Doha agreement” — to evacuate the U.S. from the region by May 2021.

***

While some Afghanis fled to Iran were offered immunity to return, the report to soon be released is in stern opposition to the Biden White House positive spin. And while often inviting Biden administration officials to participate, especially the U.S. State Department, none did.

From the Military Times in part:

Thousands of Afghan security personnel, including special forces troops, likely fled to Iran with U.S. equipment and military knowledge as their country fell to Taliban insurgents last year, according to a new report released by House Republican leaders on Monday.

The 119-page document accuses President Joe Biden’s administration of failing to adequately prepare for the evacuation of Afghan allies in the months leading up to the full withdrawal of U.S. troops from the country in August 2021. This includes using just 36 consular officers to process more than 100,000 requests for evacuation.

The authors said their findings come from interviews with whistleblowers, previously unreleased State Department memos and interviews with individuals on the ground in Afghanistan in the days leading up to the withdrawal.

It does not include any direct testimony from senior administration officials, who have previously criticized Republicans’ work on the issue as politically motivated.

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There is a somewhat accurate report published by GZERO…it reads as follows:

Contrary to the hopes of optimists, no “Taliban 2.0” has emerged. The regime hasn’t really reformed, and is as hardline as it was when it ruled the country from 1996 to 2001.

There is no constitution. Religious policing is back with a vengeance. The media is muzzled. And the recent US killing of al-Qaida leader Ayman al-Zawahiri in a Kabul enclave that houses senior members of the Haqqani Network — whose boss is the current interior minister — has confirmed the skeptics who thought the Taliban could or would never disassociate from international terrorism.

Financially, things are as bad as they can get. The economy has essentially collapsed under the weight of international isolation, sanctions, and aid cuts. It was so hooked to the war that six months after the American withdrawal, GDP fell by a third. Now, Afghanistan is near universal poverty and starvation.

Women and girls have had it the worst. Millions of them have found themselves out of school, out of jobs, and out of public life altogether. The Taliban’s supreme leader vetoed a government edict to let them back to class in March, a political development that underscores serious schisms within the regime’s conservative and moderate — by Taliban standards — elements.

On Sunday, on the eve of the re-establishment of the “Islamic Emirate,” a few brave women marched in a rare protest in Kabul. They were beaten and scared off by automatic gunfire.

Afghan women wearing traditional burqas walk past a cemetery in Kabul (AFP via Getty Images) More details here

Afghan women wearing traditional burqas walk past a cemetery in Kabul (AFP via Getty Images)

But the United States is financially providing money support in Afghanistan….

Please note –>

SIGAR noted in its January 2022 report that,4

    • The UN’s Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs reported that donors contributed $1.67 billion for Afghanistan humanitarian assistance programs in 2021. The United States contributed the largest amount, over $425 million. These amounts far exceeded previous years’ humanitarian assistance.

 

    • …On December 22, the Treasury Department broadened the types of activities authorized under U.S. licenses, and the UN Security Council established a UN sanctions exemption to facilitate the delivery of humanitarian and other forms of aid to Afghanistan.

 

    • On January 11, 2022, the White House announced an additional $308 million in U.S. humanitarian aid for Afghanistan. On that same day, the UN launched a $5 billion funding appeal for its 2022 Afghanistan Humanitarian Response Plan, the largest single- country aid appeal in UN history.

 

  • On January 26, the UN announced an additional appeal for $3.6 billion as part of its Transitional Engagement Framework. In total, the framework calls for more than $8 billion in humanitarian and other aid for Afghanistan.

No one can really estimate what is really required at this point or what arrangements the U.S. and other outside powers can make to allocate such aid to the Taliban or any other successor government, but the current outlook of estimates – that are even as high as $8.6 billion – seem to ignore several critical aspects of the financing of the past Afghan central government and the impact of its spending on the Afghan people before it was defeated and collapsed.

    • Some 75% of all Afghan government spending came from aid. As SIGAR notes, “prior to the collapse of the Islamic Republic, international aid contributed to around 40% of Afghanistan’s GDP and 75% of public expenditures.5 Total government spending financed most of the modern sector of the Afghan economy except for hard currency earnings from the export of narcotics.

 

  • For political reasons, much of the economic data on Afghanistan did not include narcotics exports. However, UNDOC estimates that, “the gross output of the Afghan opiate economy was between $1.8 and $2.7 billion in 2021, comprising the equivalent of 9–14% of Afghanistan’s GDP and exceeding the value of all of Afghanistan’s officially recorded licit exports for 2020 (estimated at 9% of GDP).6

Hat tip to at Least One Whistleblower

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Primer:

According to Bloomberg News, the Biden administration is also reallocating $860 million in funding for COVID-19 relief to cover pandemic costs relating to illegal immigrant children.

In a letter reviewed by the news outlet, Health Secretary Xavier Becerra told members of Congress that his department would move funding to ensure illegal immigrant children’s safety, in addition to the staff taking care of them at shelters. Additionally, last year to General Accounting Office performed a comprehensive audit and the result(s) stinks when it comes to the Department of Defense.

source

In part:

The Department of Defense has provided U.S. Customs and Border Protection with personnel and other support for at least 2 decades. DOD evaluates requests for assistance against 6 criteria, including cost and how providing support would affect military readiness.

We looked at 4 such requests for assistance that DOD approved. We found that DOD used unreliable cost estimates and didn’t fully evaluate the effects of the requests on military readiness. Also, DOD didn’t track all costs or give Congress timely information on the full costs it incurred for homeland security support, as it was mandated to do. Our 7 recommendations address these issues. The full report is found here. 

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As you read on….just wonder if any personnel in the National Guard sends a weekly or monthly report to the Pentagon….and…has anyone asked in there is an FBI task force at the border doing FBI stuff?

Hat tip to PM: In an exclusive sit-down interview, an active member of the National Guard has gone on record against Joe Biden sharing “America is probably the weakest it’s ever been.” From harrowing stories of finding mutilated bodies at the border, to the cartel shooting at our service members, the border has gotten so bad that this National Guardsman was willing to risk his career to speak out.


“We’re very vulnerable,” he said on condition of anonymity. “It’s only a matter of time before somebody actually gets shot, or something bad actually happens.”

When asked if he felt his life was being put at risk by the current administration’s policies at the border, he said “absolutely. You never know who is crossing. You never know who is going to cross. Under Trump, it seemed like it was a lot more controlled. The border flowed a lot easier. The numbers spoke for themselves, and now it’s kind of like, you know, everybody is allowed to come in.”

 


He explained how the cartels use extreme measures to “intimidate and scare” border agents.
“Here in the valley,” he said, “you’re going to see a lot of drug flow and a lot of violence from the cartel to try to cover that up. They push large groups of migrants across.”
“They shoot at us quite often,” he said of the cartels. He detailed how the cartels would leave bodies around “to show us like, ‘hey, this is what we’re doing.'”
In one instance, he said that National Guardsmen found the body of a man whose head had been dipped in acid by the cartel.


Of that instance, he said “Border Patrol let us know that there was a body somewhere in the area, and some of the guys went looking for it, and sure enough they ended up finding it on our side of the river, which tells us that the cartel crossed him over and left it there for us to find and went back.”
He said this was a “scare tactic” from the cartels, and that “morale wise… it puts everybody more on an edge.”
“The way I see it,” he continued, “America is probably at its weakest, as weak as it’s ever been in a long time right now. We’re very vulnerable, and I feel like it’s only a matter of time before somebody actually gets shot, or something bad actually happens. And for the administration to realize, ‘hey, maybe we do need to do something here,’ versus under Trump, he didn’t take those chances.”
Despite this, he said, it is the children abandoned at the border that haunt him.
“Probably for me being shot at, and the dead bodies, that doesn’t really hold much weight, but when I see the kids—I think that’s what has mentally been draining me.”
The Guardsman spoke about meeting an 11-year-old girl, whose mother sent her alone to America, equipping her with a box of condoms.
“When I found her, she had three condoms left in a box of like 15. Pretty much the coyotes did what they wanted with her and she was only 11,” the Guardsmen shared.
He now believes “it’s only a matter of time before a Guardsman loses his life to the cartel.”

Hillary Sold our Uranium, Is Biden Selling our Lithium?

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As a reminder about the U.S. uranium, click here to refresh your memory about Uranium One and Hillary Clinton. Disgustingly, it appears Hillary finessed this scandal too.

Now we have yet another very similar scandal and it involves the Biden administration and lithium which is used for batteries…for those electronic vehicles. Lithium is not only used for batteries but also for amour plating, special glasses, air conditioning and often in drugs for manic depression. Chile and Brazil are large producers of lithium, yet the United States does have deposits and is way behind China in ownership and uses.

That condition is getting worse it seems due to the constant deference of the Biden administration to China.

The BBC reported earlier this month that the FBI Director Christopher Wary met with the head of MI5 to mutually discuss the epic threats of China. Wray stated in part:

Wray warned the audience – which included chief executives of businesses and senior figures from universities – that the Chinese government was “set on stealing your technology” using a range of tools.

He said it posed “an even more serious threat to western businesses than even many sophisticated businesspeople realised”. He cited cases in which people linked to Chinese companies out in rural America had been digging up genetically modified seeds which would have cost them billions of dollars and nearly a decade to develop themselves.

He also said China deployed cyber espionage to “cheat and steal on a massive scale”, with a hacking programme larger than that of every other major country combined.

One has to wonder if Wray did this in public fashion because the Bureau’s cases and intelligence are being ignored in the Presidential Daily Briefings at the White House.

Anyway, back to the lithium.

Steve Miller authored a piece at Real Clear Investigation that reads in part:

A Chinese-dominated mining company has procured millions of dollars in American subsidies to extract lithium in the United States – but, given a dearth of U.S. processing capacity, the mineral is likely to be sent to China with no guarantee that the end product would return as batteries to power President Biden’s envisioned green economy.

Critics say the scenario would increase U.S. energy dependence on a hostile power – one accused of using forced labor in the manufacture of both lithium batteries and solar panels – and undercuts the Biden administration’s emphasis on domestic sourcing of green energy.

Lithium has taken the spotlight in Biden’s energy plan, since it is a key element needed to produce batteries for electric vehicles and solar panel storage. The administration acknowledges the lithium processing challenge – tacitly – in a June 2021 report produced by the U.S. Department of Energy. “The nation would benefit greatly from development and growth of cost-competitive domestic materials processing for lithium-battery materials,” the report reads.

The White House in March issued an order invoking the Defense Production Act, a 1950’s-era law meant to prioritize production of materials in the name of national security. The action allows the federal government to direct taxpayer funds to private companies to extract more lithium in the U.S. – including foreign-based interests.

Prominent in the initiative is Canadian-based Lithium Americas, a publicly traded group whose largest shareholder is Chinese-owned lithium mining giant Ganfeng Lithium, which is currently under investigation in China for alleged insider trading.

Lithium Americas is seeking to mine lithium from Thacker Pass, an 18,000-acre wilderness area on the Nevada-Oregon border. If the mining is approved, Thacker Pass would join a mine at Silver Peak outside of Tonopah, Nevada, as one of the only active lithium mines in the U.S. The company projects it will yield 80,000 tons of lithium a year, which would make it one of the largest lithium mines in the world, producing a quarter of the world’s demand.

Lithium Americas’ local company, Lithium Nevada, has been approved to receive Nevada tax abatements worth $8.5 million. And the parent company has applied for a loan through the Department of Energy. Read the full summary here.

photo from Nevada Division of Environmental Protection website

Seems the Federal government is approving all kinds of sell off deals for China including oil from our emergency reserves, much less real estate. Exactly who is ultimately approving all this as members of the Committee for Foreign Investment in the United States and why is the president not using his pen to veto/forbid the transactions? (rhetorical)