Category Archives: FBI

DNC: Tom Perez/Keith Ellison, DemRulz

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Politico: New Democratic National Committee Chair Tom Perez and Deputy Chair Keith Ellison are taking their buddy show on the road.

Starting later this month, the pair will embark on what they are calling a “Democratic Turnaround Tour” that hits a collection of states that the party lost in 2016 and where there are ongoing races. The first stops, beginning March 24, are in Detroit and Flint, Michigan — where Hillary Clinton was the first Democrat to lose since 1988.

That trip will be followed by visits to Texas — where Democrats are looking to make inroads — and to the states that will hold the two gubernatorial races in 2017, New Jersey and Virginia.

Perez and Ellison are set to announce the tour on Wednesday night, less than two weeks after the former Labor secretary won the chairmanship and named the Minnesota congressman his deputy in Atlanta.

After a four-month long campaign that devolved into a messy proxy war between the establishment wing of the party and the Bernie Sanders wing of the party, the two have gone out of their way to appear together.
It started with a joint press conference following Perez’s victory — in which they were wearing each other’s campaign pins — and continued at President Donald Trump’s first address to Congress, at which Perez was Ellison’s guest.

Now, their push to unify the party is heading to some of the states most vital to the Democrats’ comeback strategy.

When they are traveling, the duo will meet with local party members to talk about the importance of local organization — a key point in both of their campaigns for the chairmanship. But they will also push for Democrats to convey a positive economic message to respond to Trump, not simply an anti-Trump one like the party’s prevailing push during the 2016 campaign.

*** Per Wikipedia:

Perez announced his candidacy for Chair of the Democratic National Committee on December 15, 2016.[158] He argued that the party needs to go to the suburbs, the exburbs and rural America, and talk to people.[159] Perez promised not to take money from federal lobbyists, foreign nationals, or current Labor Department employees.[160] His candidacy was endorsed by former Vice President Joe Biden and other Obama administration officials.[161]

On February 25, 2017 Perez was elected DNC chair.[162][163] Perez won on the second ballot with 235 votes, beating nearest rival Representative Keith Ellison who earned 200 votes.[162] After winning the election, Perez named Ellison as Deputy Chairman of the DNC.[161] Perez is the first Latino and the first Dominican-American to chair the Democratic National Committee.[164]

*** DeRay gets another paying gig, he is among friends.

Image result for deray mckesson blm dnc  BET

 

Shady Globalism Hurts Personally When it Involves Water

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We witnessed the Flint, Michigan water crisis, where it was just safe to drink and few cared until they did. The water crisis goes far beyond Michigan where drinking water and water for showers, cooking and washing clothes is just not safe. Gray or used water is scooped to flush toilets. Where you ask? California and it was not due to the 5 year drought. The crisis goes beyond California, it is in Arizona and the corn/wheat belt in the middle of the country.

Really? How does globalism fit into the issue?

Big corporations, Wall Street and Hedge Funds as well as Saudi Arabia and Qatar are part of the crisis.

Individual farmers and small agriculture business has faded away, sold out to big Agri-corporations where offers to buy the land is a cover as the water and aquifers are more valuable. Water is the new gold or oil. Urban and suburban areas, just plain people are paying the price to save water for the sake of water to be available for bigger operations. In fact it is so bad, domestic and foreign interests are pumping water in one location and transferring via privately owned pipe to locations up to and perhaps more than 100 miles away.

When it comes to the EPA controlling water access and use, the agency was not wrong but it was actually wrong for reasons far beyond the headlines. The EPA is protecting, controlling and managing water not for the individual but rather for Wall Street firms and foreign investments.

The EPA is not the only agency, it includes the Department of Agriculture. Trump’s nominee for Secretary of Agriculture, Sonny Perdue has not yet been confirmed however Scott Pruitt has been confirmed as Secretary of the EPA.

Saudi Arabia

Saudi Arabia
Exports of U.S. food and agricultural products to Saudi Arabia reached a record $1.5 billion in fiscal year 2014. Major exports include coarse grains, soybeans, dairy products, and vegetable oils.

In September 2012, the United States signed a trade and investment framework agreement (TIFA) with the Gulf Cooperation Council (which includes Saudi Arabia, as well as the United Arab Emirates, Kuwait, Qatar, Oman and Bahrain) to continue expanding and liberalizing trade relations. More here.

Trade is a good thing for sure for farmers but the little guy is shut out of the trade system due to access of water and volume. The United States is feeding the Middle East.

The Office of Agricultural Affairs (OAA) is part of the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Foreign Agricultural Service (FAS), which has 93 offices covering 171 countries

OAA promotes and facilitates exports of U.S. agricultural products to Saudi Arabia and Bahrain.

OAA promotes exports of U.S. agricultural products by:

  • Conducting and participating in market development activities with non-profit U.S. high value food product and commodity trade associations.
  • Hosting trade promotion events.
  • Identifying possible opportunities for U.S. products, and placing potential importers in contact with U.S. exporters.
  • Recruiting representatives of Saudi food and agricultural product importers to attend major regional and U.S. based food and agricultural shows.
  • Providing match making and trade lead services.

OAA facilitates the export of U.S. agricultural products by:

  • Reporting on market opportunities and conditions.
  • Resolving trade policy issues by working with the governments of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and Bahrain, and with the Gulf Standardization Organization (GSO).
  • Counseling and informing exporters and importers of U.S. agricultural products.
  • Developing and maintaining contacts in the food, logistics and agriculture sectors.
  • Coordinating workshops, technical seminars, and other events with non-profit U.S. commodity trade associations and other organizations.

***

The Middle Eastern kingdom, Saudi Arabia, needs hay for its 170,000 cows. So, it’s buying up farmland for the water-chugging crop in the drought-stricken American Southwest. 14,000 acres to be exact. Almarai Co. bought land in January that roughly doubled its holdings in California’s Palo Verde Valley, an area that enjoys first dibs on water from the Colorado River. The company also acquired a large tract near Vicksburg, Arizona, becoming a powerful economic force in a region that has fewer well-pumping restrictions than other parts of the state.

“Southern California and Arizona have good water rights. Who knows if that will change, but that’s the way things are now,” said Daniel Putnam, an agronomist at the University of California, Davis.

Over the last decade, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates emerged as significant buyers of American hay as their governments moved to curb water use. Together they accounted for 10 percent of U.S. exports of alfalfa and other grasses last year.

The land purchases signal that Almarai doesn’t just want to buy hay; it wants to grow. And it’s not the only Arab-owned Gulf company to take that approach.

Al Dahra ACX Global Inc., a top U.S. hay exporter based in Bakersfield, California, is owned by Al Dahra Agriculture Co. of United Arab Emirates. It farms extensively in Southern California and Arizona and, according to its website, plans to add 7,500 acres in the United States for alfalfa and other crops. The exporter packages crops grown across the West at its two plants in California and one in Washington state.

Most of the farms that Arab companies own worldwide are in developing nations. For instance, Qatar’s sovereign wealth fund has holdings in Latin America and Africa.

But part of the kingdom’s long-term food security strategy means investing in higher-cost countries with greater political stability, said John Lawton, owner of Agriculture Technology Co., a farming company in Saudi Arabia.  More here from CSMonitor.

*** What about household use of water that is not drinkable?

The problem is that the groundwater it is using is unsafe for nearly 800,000 residents, according to the state’s water resources control board, because of longtime contamination from nitrates and arsenic.

That’s meant less drinkable water in California’s struggle to survive more than three years of severely dry weather.

“Most areas affected by contamination don’t have surface water supplies so they have to find new groundwater sources,” said Kurt Souza, a branch chief of the division of drinking water at the California State Water Resources Control Board.

“But that’s not always easy to do,” Souza added. “Sometimes you can find new ground locations for water and sometimes you can’t.”

The lack of rain and subsequent heavy demand on ground wells—which are also facing supply problems—is making a bad situation worse, said Sara Aminzadeh, executive director of the California Coastkeeper Alliance, a statewide advocacy group for safe water. According to the state water resources study, unsafe levels of arsenic are the top contaminant in groundwater supplies, followed by nitrates.

Nitrates are most often traced to farming chemicals and animal waste. Arsenic is found naturally in soil and rock in much of the world and seeps into groundwater.

Chronic low exposure to arsenic has been traced to respiratory problems in children and adults as well as having links to diabetes, cardiovascular diseases and cancers of the skin. More here from NBC, video included.

For more confusion on the shadiness of the whole thing, here are a few additional items. If it is going on in California, perhaps we need to investigate and ask the same questions in other farming regions of the country. Then perhaps we need deeper research out of the EPA and the Department of Agriculture where most of this gained additional traction and success under the Obama administration.

By the way, it was never really about that pesky Delta Smelt fish that the other environmentalists were trying to protect. That was a cover story.

  • The Monterey Amendment: Monterey Amendment ended up in court, challenged by the Planning and Conservation League, Citizens Planning Association of Santa Barbara County, and a small SWP contractor, the Plumas County Flood Control and Water Conservation District.In 2000, a state appeals court agreed with the challengers that the Environmental Impact Report for the amendment did not analyze provisions for completion of the SWP or permanent water shortages.

    In 2003, a settlement was reached that called for preparation of a new EIR, more detailed reporting of the project’s actual delivery capability and public participation on any project amendments.

    DWR in 2007 released a draft EIR, which discusses the project alternatives, growth inducement, water supply reliability, as well as potential areas of controversy and concern. The final EIR was released in 2009. DWR decided to continue to operate the SWP under the existing Monterey Amendment to the SWP long-term water supply contracts, including the Kern Water Bank transfer, and under the Settlement Agreement entered in PCL v. DWR. DWR’s decision was challenged by two groups of plaintiffs on issues relating to the adequacy of the EIR and the validity of the Monterey Amendment. The cases are currently being heard by the trial court. Final resolution of the issues is likely to take a number of years.

  • Roll International Corporation/Kern Water Bank: The Wonderful Company LLC, formerly known as Roll Global, is a private corporation based in Los Angeles, California. With revenues of over $4.8 billion,[1] it functions as a holding company for Stewart and Lynda Resnick, and as such is a vehicle for their personal investments in a number of businesses. The company currently counts as business divisions the following brands: flower delivery service Teleflora, juice company POM Wonderful, bottled water company FIJI Water, Wonderful Pistachios and Wonderful Almonds (formerly Paramount Farms), Wonderful Citrus (formerly Paramount Citrus), sea freight company Neptune Pacific Line, JUSTIN Vineyards and Winery, pest control company Suterra, and in-house marketing agency Wonderful Agency
  • Paramount Farming: Paramount Farming Company, LLC produces almonds, pistachios, and pomegranates in California. It also offers pomegranate, mango, tangerine, blueberry, and cherry juices. The company was founded in 1986 and is headquartered in Bakersfield, California. Paramount Farming Company, LLC operates as a subsidiary of Roll International Corporation.
  • Westside Mutual Water Co., LLC.
  • IN 2014, California will establish statewide management of water pumped from the ground, under legislation signed Tuesday by Gov. Jerry Brown. This really limits household usage and benefits big farming entities.
  • California is sinking even faster than scientists had thought, new NASA satellite imagery shows. Some areas of the Golden State are sinking more than 2 inches (5.1 centimeters) per month, the imagery reveals. Though the sinking, called subsidence, has long been a problem in California, the rate is accelerating because the state’s extreme drought is fueling voracious groundwater pumping. California Sinking Faster Than Thought, Aquifers Could Permanently Shrink
    New NASA imagery reveals that parts of California are sinking at an astonishing rate, with some parts of the San Joaquin Valley sinking as much as 2 inches per month.

    Credit: Canadian Space Agency/NASA/JPL-Caltech

    Editor’s Note: This story was updated at 2:00 p.m. E.T.

    California is sinking even faster than scientists had thought, new NASA satellite imagery shows.

    Some areas of the Golden State are sinking more than 2 inches (5.1 centimeters) per month, the imagery reveals. Though the sinking, called subsidence, has long been a problem in California, the rate is accelerating because the state’s extreme drought is fueling voracious groundwater pumping. 

    “Because of increased pumping, groundwater levels are reaching record lows — up to 100 feet (30 meters) lower than previous records,” Mark Cowin, director of California’s Department of Water Resources, said in a statement. “As extensive groundwater pumping continues, the land is sinking more rapidly, and this puts nearby infrastructure at greater risk of costly damage.” [It’s Raining Spiders! The Weirdest Effects of California’s Drought]

    What’s more, this furious groundwater pumping could have long-term consequences. If the land shrinks too much, and for too long, it can permanently lose its ability to store groundwater, the researchers said.

    The state’s sinking isn’t new: California has long suffered from subsidence, and some parts are now a few dozen feet lower than they were in 1925, according to the U.S. Geological Survey.

    But the state’s worst drought on record — 97 percent of the state is facing moderate to exceptional drought — has only accelerated the trend. To quantify this accelerated sinking, researchers at the Department of Water Resources and NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, compared satellite imagery of California over time. Thanks to images taken from both satellites and airplanes using a remote-sensing technique called interferometric synthetic aperture radar (InSAR), which uses radar to measure elevation differences, researchers can now map changes in the surface height of the ground with incredible precision. For the current study, the team stitched together imagery from Japan’s satellite-based Phased Array type L-band Synthetic Aperture Radar and Canada’s Earth Observation satellite Radarsat-2, as well as NASA’s airplane-based Uninhabited Aerial Vehicle Synthetic Aperture Radar.

    Certain hotspots are shrinking at an astonishing rate — regions of the Tulare Basin, which includes Fresno, sank 13 inches (33 cm) in just eight months, they found. The Sacramento Valley is sinking about 0.5 inches (1.3 cm) per month. And the California Aqueduct — an intricate network of pipes, canals and tunnels that funnels water from high in the Sierra Nevada mountains in northern and central California to Southern California — has sunk 12.5 inches (32 cm), and most of that was just in the past four months, according to the new study.

    The unquenchable thirst for groundwater in certain regions is largely a result of agriculture: Most of the state’s agricultural production resides in the fast-sinking regions around some of the state’s most endangered river systems — the San Joaquin and Sacramento rivers. As the heat and lack of rainfall have depleted surface-water supplies, farmers have turned to groundwater to keep their crops afloat.

    Subsidence isn’t just an aesthetic problem; bridges and highways can sink and crack in dangerous ways, and flood-control structures can be compromised. In the San Joaquin Valley, the sinking Earth has destroyed the outer shell around thousands of privately drilled wells.

    “Groundwater acts as a savings account to provide supplies during drought, but the NASA report shows the consequences of excessive withdrawals as we head into the fifth year of historic drought,” Corwin said. “We will work together with counties, local water districts, and affected communities to identify ways to slow the rate of subsidence and protect vital infrastructure such as canals, pumping stations, bridges and wells.”

     

 

 

Investigation: Obama Gave Soros Money for Leftist Revolutions

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Ah what you say? I have been begging for moments like this, where finally those with known but hidden facts are finally demanding investigations and whistleblowers bubble to the surface. Yippee!!

Furthermore as you read on, you will likely agree with me, that Rex Tillerson has the worst job in government. Remember many of the former Hillary and Kerry State Department personnel have quit, walked out or are stonewalling the new Trump administration in the diplomatic realm as they refuse often to cooperation with House and Senate committees.

Some of this may not turn out well for the previous administration team. And by the way, Obama spent our taxpayer dollars to deny access to government documents.

The Obama administration in its final year in office spent a record $36.2 million on legal costs defending its refusal to turn over federal records under the Freedom of Information Act, according to an Associated Press analysis of new U.S. data that also showed poor performance in other categories measuring transparency in government.

For a second consecutive year, the Obama administration set a record for times federal employees told citizens, journalists and others that despite searching they couldn’t find a single page of files that were requested.

And it set records for outright denial of access to files, refusing to quickly consider requests described as especially newsworthy, and forcing people to pay for records who had asked the government to waive search and copy fees.

The government acknowledged when challenged that it had been wrong to initially refuse to turn over all or parts of records in more than one-third of such cases, the highest rate in at least six years. More here from ABC.

***

Further:

Top lawyers who helped the Obama White House craft and hold to rules of conduct believe President Donald Trump and his staff will break ethics norms meant to guard against politicization of the government — and they’ve formed a new group to prepare, and fight.

United to Protect Democracy, which draws its name from a line in President Barack Obama’s farewell address that urged his supporters to pick up where he was leaving off, has already raised a $1.5 million operating budget, hired five staffers and has plans to double that in the coming months. They’ve incorporated as both a 501(c)(3) and 501(c)(4), allowing them to operate as a nonprofit but participate in some forms of political advocacy as well.

They started by submitting 50 Freedom of Information Act requests this week that they believe will confirm their suspicions. The plan is to bring what they find to reporters, build it into pressure for congressional oversight with the help of a campaign director they’ll hire, and, as necessary, to file lawsuits.

They’re also hoping to establish themselves as a base for government employees worried about ethics violations — up to and including becoming whistleblowers — and are hoping that their website, https://unitedtoprotectdemocracy.org/,can become a resource. More details here from Politico.

Related reading: C’mon Trump, Americans are Still Angry

*** Image result for soros white house

Congress Demands Investigation Into Obama Admin Meddling in
Foreign Elections

Obama admin gave taxpayer money to Soros to spark leftist political revolution

A group of leading senators is calling on newly installed Secretary of State Rex Tillerson to immediately launch an investigation into efforts by the Obama administration to sway foreign elections by sending taxpayer funds to “extreme and sometimes violent political activists” that promote leftist causes, according to a copy of the letter.

The lawmakers disclosed multiple conversations with foreign diplomats who outlined active political meddling by the Obama administration’s State Department, including the use of taxpayer funds to support leftist causes in Macedonia, Albania, Latin America, and Africa.

A portion of this State Department funding appears to have gone to organizations supported by the controversial liberal billionaire George Soros, according to the letter, which was authored by Republican Sens. Mike Lee (Utah), Jim Inhofe (Okla.), Thom Tillis (N.C.), Ted Cruz (Texas), David Perdue (Ga.), and Bill Cassidy (La.).

The senators are asking Tillerson to launch a full-scale investigation into these funding efforts in order to determine how exactly the Obama administration sought to promote left-leaning causes and political parties across the globe.

The latest disclosures of this activity mirror efforts by the Obama administration to send taxpayer funds to Israeli organizations that opposed Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in the country’s last election.

Political leaders from a range of nations spent months informing the lawmakers about these activities.

“Over the past few months, elected officials and political leaders of foreign nations have been coming to me with disappointing news and reports of U.S. activity in their respective countries,” Lee said in a statement. “This includes reports of diplomats playing political favorites, USAID funds supporting extreme and sometimes violent political activists, and the U.S. government working to marginalize the moderates and conservatives in leadership roles.”

“This sort of political favoritism from our missions around the world is unacceptable and endangers our bilateral relationships,” he said.

The senators are seeking an investigation that would review “all funds associated with promoting democracy and governance and review the programs, accounts, and multiplicity of U.S. entities involved in such activities.”

Such an investigation could shed light on the distribution of taxpayer funds to organizations and causes meant to instigate left-leaning political change abroad.

The letter insists that Tillerson should “review how all our tax dollars are being utilized in order to halt activities that are fomenting political unrest, disrespecting national sovereignty and civil society, and ultimately undermine our attempts to build beneficial international relationships.”

The lawmakers outline specific evidence of political meddling.

“We have received credible reports that, over the past few years, the U.S. Mission there has actively intervened in the party politics of Macedonia, as well as in the shaping of its media environment and civil society, often favoring left-leaning political groups over others,” they wrote.

This activity was pushed by USAID and groups associated with Soros’ Open Society Foundations, according to the lawmakers.

The organizations are said to have pushed a “progressive agenda” meant to “invigorate the political left” using taxpayer funds, according the letter.

“Respected leaders from Albania have made similar claims of U.S. diplomats and Soros-backed organizations pushing for certain political outcomes in their country,” the lawmakers wrote.

“Time and again, foreign leaders visiting Washington have expressed concerns to us about how American taxpayer funds are being used counterproductively in their respective countries,” the lawmakers disclosed, referring to efforts undertaken in Latin America and Africa.

This type of interference in foreign countries must stop immediately, the lawmakers said.

 

Russian Special Forces now in Libya

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Image result for Khalifa Haftar libya oil ports Haftar was protected by and lived in the U.S., becoming a citizen. We dispatched him to Libya to launch an interim government. Now he and Egypt both have turned to Russia for full control and support, Putin has complied, happily. John Kerry, Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama are not responding to calls on line 4. Hah…

BBC: Forces loyal to Libyan military strongman Khalifa Haftar say they have retaken key oil-rich areas in the country’s east.

Ground, sea and air forces were engaged in the fight for sites at Ras Lanuf, Sidra and Ben Jawad from a rival Islamist militia, a spokesman said.

Meanwhile, Russia has denied reports that it has deployed special forces to the region in support of Gen Haftar. {See below, emphasis added}

Libya has been in chaos since the overthrow of Colonel Gaddafi in 2011.

The oil terminals had been seized by the Benghazi Defence Brigades (BDB) – a mix of militias that includes Islamists – earlier this month, which then handed them over to the Petroleum Facilities Guard, affiliated to the UN-backed unity government based in Tripoli.

Gen Haftar is allied to an administration based in the eastern city of Tobruk, which is challenging the authority of the UN-backed government.

Russia moving special forces into Libya

U.S. sources claim Russia moving special forces into Libya to aid Libyan military commander Khalifa Haftar.

U.S., Egyptian and diplomatic sources say that Russia has apparently been moving special forces to an airbase in western Egypt near the border with Libya in recent days, according to a report by Reuters.

Image result for Khalifa Haftar Newsweek

The U.S. is concerned that such a Russian deployment may signify Russian support for Libyan military commander Khalifa Haftar, who suffered a setback on March 3 when the Benghazi Defense Brigades (BDB) attacked oil ports controlled by his forces.

U.S. officials claimed that their surveillance units had observed Russian special operations forces and unmanned aircraft at Sidi Barrani, which is about 100 km from the Egypt-Libya border. The apparent Russian deployments have not been previously reported.

The Russian defense ministry did not respond to these claims on Monday and Egypt denied the presence of any Russian contingent on its soil.

Mohamed Manfour, commander of the Benina air base near Benghazi in Libya, denied that Haftar’s Libyan National Army (LNA) had received military assistance from the Russian state or from Russian military contractors, and said there were no Russian forces or bases in eastern Libya.

Over the past two years a number of Western countries, including the U.S., have sent special operations forces and military advisors into Libya. The U.S. also carried out air strikes to support a successful Libyan campaign last year to oust ISIS from its stronghold in the city of Sirte.

Russia has shown increasing involvement in Libya in recent months and appears to be taking steps to back Haftar to lead the battle-torn kingdom, which has been split between local warlords in the aftermath of a 2011 NATO-backed uprising against the late leader Muammar Gaddafi, who was an ally of Russia. Several dozen armed private security contractors from Russia operated until February in a part of Libya that is under Haftar’s control.

The top U.S. military commander overseeing troops in Africa, Marine General Thomas Waldhauser, told the U.S. Senate last week that Russia was trying to exert influence in Libya to strengthen its leverage over whoever ultimately holds power.

“They’re working to influence that,” Waldhauser told the Senate Armed Services Committee on Thursday. Asked whether it was in the U.S. interest to let that happen, Waldhauser said: “It is not.”

Russian involvement in Libyan affairs appears to be growing at a time when it is limiting its operations in Syria to attempts to force a resolution without taking charge of the country. Waldhauser believes that this is Russia’s eventual goal in Libya, which will enable it to gain leverage there in the event that Haftar gains control of the country. It is also eyeing Libya’s oil fields as a source of economic opportunities.

Image result for libya oil ports

Russia, however, says that its primary objective in the Middle East is to contain the spread of violent Islamist groups.

Meanwhile who is Khalifa Belqasim Haftar? (Wikipedia file)

Haftar was born in eastern Libya. He served in the Libyan army under Muammar Gaddafi, and took part in the coup that brought Gaddafi to power in 1969. He commanded the Libyan contingent against Israel in the Yom Kippur War of 1973.[3] In 1987, he became a prisoner of war during the war against Chad. While held prisoner, he and his fellow officers formed a group hoping to overthrow Gaddafi. He was released around 1990 in a deal with the United States government and spent nearly two decades in the United States, gaining U.S. citizenship.[4] Haftar lived comfortably in Virginia, relatively close to CIA headquarters, from the early 1990s until 2011.[5] In 1993, while living in the United States, he was convicted in absentia of crimes against the Jamahiriya and sentenced to death.

Haftar held a senior position in the forces which overthrew Gaddafi in the 2011 Libyan Civil War. In 2014 he was commander of the Libyan Army when the General National Congress (GNC) refused to give up power in accordance with its term of office. Haftar launched a campaign against the GNC and its Islamic fundamentalist allies. His campaign allowed elections to take place to replace the GNC, but then developed into a civil war.

Haftar’s campaign attracted opponents to the GNC to join him as well as armed groups including Zintan‘s al-Qaqaa and Sawaaq brigades, regional military police, the Saiqa special forces group in Benghazi, the Libyan air force and Ibrahim Jadhran’s federalist militias.[6]

Haftar has been described as “Libya’s most potent warlord,” having fought “with and against nearly every significant faction” in Libya’s conflicts, and as having a “reputation for unrivalled military experience”.

***

Internal rivalries based on region, city, tribe, political factions, ethnicity, and militia membership have supplanted dictatorial repression. The costs of this multi-layered disunity are stark: Libya has lost billions of dollars in potential revenues due to fights over control of the oil sector. And nearly 5,000 people have been killed due to the instability since 2014, when Libya formally divided politically.

Perhaps the most immediate barrier to implementation is the role of General Khalifa Haftar, commander of the Libyan National Army (LNA). Although Secretary of State John Kerry did not mention him by name in his statement in Vienna after the meeting to support Libya on May 16, Haftar was clearly on his mind when he said battles of individuals serving their own interests undermined Libya’s security, and that Libya was at a crossroads between a fate of chaos fueled by personal rivalries or unity and peace. Article Eight of the current agreement stipulates that the Presidency Council should be the Supreme Commander of the Libyan Army, in control of all senior-level security official appointments and dismissals. In effect, this provision would give the Presidency Council control of Haftar’s fate. The pro-Haftar eastern government has made removal of this article one of its few conditions for recognizing the Government of National Accord (GNA).

This impasse underscores the need for Libyans to decide once and for all what relationship the military should have with civilian institutions in Libya, and specifically what role Haftar can or will play in the future of Libya. This has also been a difficult impasse for Western governments to navigate, harkening to a recurring Middle East policy battle between prioritizing counter-terrorism and security, and longer-term interests like political stability, rule of law and human rights. Haftar has contributed to counter-terrorism efforts against groups like Islamic State, especially in Benghazi, while undermining Libya’s long-term stability. More here from May of 2016.

Maritime Traffic, Pirates, Smuggling and Dark Beacons

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Maritime traffic is hardly considered a top priority and it should be. For illicit activities on the high seas, there is major intelligence value when it comes to smuggling and pirates.

Image result for gps maritime pirates cargo

— Israeli navy veteran Ami Daniel points at his computer screen and explains why the ship he was tracking should have been stopped and searched. It sailed near the Libyan port of Tobruk and waited four days more than a mile off the coast without ever docking, then moved west to Misrata, which it had never visited before.

Next came Greece, where it waited another four days offshore.

Whatever was on the ship — possibly drugs, weapons or people — likely eventually made its way to Europe’s shores, he said.

At a time of deep concern over migrant smuggling, Daniel said his company Windward has the ability to pick up such suspicious maritime behavior that would otherwise go unnoticed.

Ninety percent of the world’s trade is via the oceans, and ports simply cannot check even a fraction of all the containers. For that reason, they try to narrow it down with watch lists of ships.

But with turbulence in northern Africa and the collapse of Libya, smuggling networks have taken advantage of the situation while also becoming more sophisticated, Silvia Ciotti, head of the EuroCrime research body, explained.

And with the influx of hundreds of thousands of refugees across the seas, resources in Europe have been stretched threadbare.

The same smugglers taking desperate migrants and refugees into Europe also take contraband goods, Ciotti said.

“One day it is drugs. One day it is weapons. They do not care,” she said. If a ship’s activities are unusual — turning off its radar or visiting an at-risk port — it will be flagged. More here for ToI.

Image result for gps maritime traffic

The company is Windward, a rather new company that did get an interesting investor, former CIA director, General David Petraeus.

Using what it calls activity-based intelligence, Windward, a five-year-old maritime data and analytics firm here, probes beyond the ship-tracking services available on today’s market to validate identities of ocean-going vessels.

It compares their patterns of behavior and past associations with other ships —even where they loaded or didn’t load in specific ports of call.

“Nobody knows who’s the real owner of 75 percent of the world’s vessels,” said Daniel. “The reason is, for business reasons, they are registered under various flags of convenience by a lawyer who has one share and nobody knows who’s on top of him.

“So the tools of looking at data bases or registries are great in theory, but not in practice.”

The same holds true, company executives here say, for the Automated Information System (AIS), satellite-supported tracking system initiated in recent years by the US Coast Guard and now required by ocean-going vessels and passenger ships. Specific findings from the report showed an increase in GPS manipulation of 59 percent over the past two years; that 55 percent of ships misreport their actual port of call for the majority of their voyage; that large cargo ships shut off AIS transmissions 24 percent longer than others; and that 19 percent of the ships that “go dark” are repeat offenders.

To illustrate this point, Windward conducted an analysis specifically for Defense News, in which the company employed “reverse engineering” of a known arms smuggling incident to highlight similarly suspicious behavior by a ship that managed to evade detection by law enforcement authorities.

Its baseline case was the Haddad, a 39-year-old, Bolivian-flagged cargo vessel that embarked from Iskenderun, Turkey, in early September. It was ultimately seized by Greek authorities south of Crete with a cache of some 5,000 shotguns and a half million rounds of undocumented ammunition.

Using the route plied by the 66-meter Haddad, which sailed along the Turkish coast en route to Libya before being stopped, Windward came up with a similar profile of another ship which, for a variety of legal and proprietary reasons, it preferred to call Vessel X.

Like the Haddad, Vessel X was more than 30 years old and around the same size, about 75 meters. It left the same Turkish port on Aug. 19 — less than a month prior to Haddad — bearing a flag of convenience, this one from the South Pacific island of Vanuatu.

A day later, Vessel X stopped in an area near the Turkish shore where there was no other port in the area or any other reason to stop at that location, company analysts found. More here from DefenseNews.

Meanwhile, pirating is back in the news.

Somali pirates just hijacked a commercial ship for the first time in five years

WaPo: In 2010 and 2011, groups of armed Somali men were hijacking merchant vessels off Somalia’s coast at an almost daily pace. Thousands of hostages of myriad nationalities were taken, and billions of dollars were lost on ransoms, damages and delayed shipments.

The crisis was so severe that a naval task force with more than two dozen vessels from European Union countries, the United States, China, Russia, India and Japan banded together to restore order to one of the world’s busiest shipping routes. They largely succeeded. In 2015, there were 17 pirate attacks near Somalia, down from 151 in 2011. Many of those attacks were on smaller fishing boats from nearby countries, mostly by disgruntled Somali fishermen, but not commercial ships.

Until Tuesday.

Somali officials acknowledged that the Aris 13, an oil tanker, had been escorted to the Somali coast by at least eight and perhaps as many as dozens of armed men on two small skiffs. Reports from organizations that monitor piracy could not conclusively identify which flag the ship was flying or where it was owned, but Sri Lanka’s Foreign Ministry confirmed that eight of its nationals were on board as crew. The ship was on its way south to Mogadishu, Somalia’s capital.

The attack originated in the Puntland region, which is semiautonomous. “The vessel’s captain reported to the company they were approached by two skiffs and that one of them could see armed personnel on board,” an unidentified Middle East-based official told the Associated Press. “The ship changed course quite soon after that report and is now anchored.”

The U.S. Navy’s 5th Fleet oversees anti-piracy efforts along Somalia’s coast. Concerns about piracy’s reemergence in the region have been growing in concurrence with greater exploitation of Somalia’s waters by foreigners engaged in illegal fishing. Deprived of a livelihood, some Somali fishermen have turned back to hijacking to get by.

Salad Nur, described as a “local elder” by the Associated Press, said that the men involved in Tuesday’s hijacking had been searching for a commercial vessel for days on the open water. “Foreign fishermen destroyed their livelihoods and deprived them of proper fishing,” Nur said.

Piracy is also on the rise on the other side of Africa. Armed groups based along Nigeria’s coast have made that region the most dangerous for seafarers. That coast is also a major oil shipping route. Now that oil prices have dropped, pirates there have taken to kidnapping crew members for ransom rather than siphoning off oil, as the abductions have proved more lucrative.