Category Archives: government fraud spending collusion

15 Kiloton Nuclear Detonation, North Korea

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North Korea Claims Nuke Test Proves It Can Miniaturize Warheads

VOA: North Korea has claimed the past two tests involved hydrogen bombs, which are much more powerful than atomic bombs. Analysts, however, said the January blast was not big enough to be a full thermonuclear explosion or “H-bomb.”

South Korea’s meteorological agency said Friday’s test produced a 10-kiloton blast, nearly twice the power of the country’s nuclear test in January but slightly less than the Hiroshima bombing, which was measured about 15 kilotons.

N.Korea conducts fifth and largest nuclear test, drawing broad condemnation

 

AP/MSN: North Korea conducted its fifth and biggest nuclear test on Friday and said it had mastered the ability to mount a warhead on a ballistic missile, ratcheting up a threat that its rivals and the United Nations have been powerless to contain.

The blast, on the 68th anniversary of North Korea’s founding, was more powerful than the bomb dropped on Hiroshima, according to some estimates, and drew condemnation from the United States as well as China, Pyongyang’s main ally.

Diplomats said the United Nations Security Council would discuss the test at a closed-door meeting on Friday, at the request of the United States, Japan and South Korea.

Under 32-year-old dictator Kim Jong Un, North Korea has accelerated the development of its nuclear and missile programmes, despite U.N. sanctions that were tightened in March and have further isolated the impoverished country.

South Korean President Park Geun-hye, in Laos after a summit of Asian leaders, said Kim was showing “maniacal recklessness” in completely ignoring the world’s call to abandon his pursuit of nuclear weapons.

U.S. President Barack Obama, aboard Air Force One on his way home from Laos, said the test would be met with “serious consequences”, and held talks with Park and with Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, the White House said.

China said it was resolutely opposed to the test and urged Pyongyang to stop taking any actions that would worsen the situation. It said it would lodge a protest with the North Korean embassy in Beijing.

There were further robust condemnations from Russia, the European Union, NATO, Germany and Britain.

North Korea, which labels the South and the United States as its main enemies, said its “scientists and technicians carried out a nuclear explosion test for the judgment of the power of a nuclear warhead,” according to its official KCNA news agency.

It said the test proved North Korea was capable of mounting a nuclear warhead on a medium-range ballistic missile, which it last tested on Monday when Obama and other world leaders were gathered in China for a G20 summit.

Pyongyang’s claims of being able to miniaturise a nuclear warhead have never been independently verified.

Its continued testing in defiance of sanctions presents a challenge to Obama in the final months of his presidency and could become a factor in the U.S. presidential election in November, and a headache to be inherited by whoever wins.

“Sanctions have already been imposed on almost everything possible, so the policy is at an impasse,” said Tadashi Kimiya, a University of Tokyo professor specialising in Korean issues.

“In reality, the means by which the United States, South Korea and Japan can put pressure on North Korea have reached their limits,” he said.

UNPRECEDENTED RATE

North Korea has been testing different types of missiles at an unprecedented rate this year, and the capability to mount a nuclear warhead on a missile is especially worrisome for its neighbours South Korea and Japan.

“The standardisation of the nuclear warhead will enable the DPRK to produce at will and as many as it wants a variety of smaller, lighter and diversified nuclear warheads of higher strike power,” KCNA said, referring to the country’s formal name, the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea.

It was not clear whether Pyongyang had notified Beijing or Moscow of its planned nuclear test. Senior officials from Pyongyang were in both capitals this week.

Chinese Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying said she had no information to provide when asked if China had advance warning of the test, and would not be drawn on whether China would support tougher sanctions against its neighbour.

Although Beijing has criticised North Korea’s nuclear and missile tests, it has repeatedly expressed anger since the United States and South Korea decided in July to deploy the Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) anti-missile system in the South.

China calls THAAD a threat to its own security and will do nothing to bring North Korea back to the negotiating table on its nuclear programme.

Preliminary data collected by the Vienna-based Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty Organization (CTBTO), which monitors nuclear tests around the world, indicates the magnitude – around 5 – of the seismic event detected in North Korea on Friday was greater than a previous one in January.

Jeffrey Lewis of the California-based Middlebury Institute of International Studies said the highest estimates of seismic magnitude suggested this was North Korea’s most powerful nuclear test so far.

He said the seismic magnitude and surface level indicated a blast with a 20- to 30-kilotonne yield. Such a yield would make this test larger than the nuclear bomb dropped by the United States on the Japanese city of Hiroshima in World War Two.

“That’s the largest DPRK test to date, 20-30kt, at least. Not a happy day,” Lewis told Reuters.

South Korea’s military put the force of the blast at 10 kilotonnes, which would still be the North’s most powerful nuclear blast to date.

“The important thing is, that five tests in, they now have a lot of nuclear test experience. They aren’t a backwards state any more,” Lewis said.

Executive Orders, Statutes, Rules and Regulations Relating to North Korea

The North Korea sanctions program represents the implementation of multiple legal authorities.  Some of these authorities are in the form of executive orders issued by the President.  Other authorities are public laws (statutes) passed by The Congress.  These authorities are further codified by OFAC in its regulations which are published the Code of Federal Regulations (CFR).  Modifications to these regulations are posted in the Federal Register.  In addition to all of these authorites, OFAC may also implement United Nations Security Council Resolutions (UNSCRs) with regard to the North Korea.
Proclamations

  • Proclamation 8271 – Termination of the Exercise of Authorities Under the Trading With the Enemy Act With Respect to North Korea (Effective Date – June 27, 2008)

Executive Orders

  • 13722 – Blocking Property of the Government of North Korea and the Workers’ Party of Korea, and Prohibiting Certain Transactions With Respect to North Korea (Effective date – March 16, 2016)
  • 13687 – Imposing Additional Sanctions with Respect to North Korea (Effective date – January 2, 2015)
  • 13570 – Prohibiting Certain Transactions With Respect To North Korea (Effective date – April 18, 2011)
  • 13551 – Blocking Property of Certain Persons With Respect to North Korea (Effective date – August 30, 2010)
  • 13466 – Continuing Certain Restrictions With Respect to North Korea and North Korean Nationals (June 26, 2008)

Determinations

Statutes

Aleppo, #Syria: Rather Die in Dignity in Their Homes

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If you think you understand the civil war in Syria and the plight of the refugees, you don’t. Not even world leaders understand it all either and furthermore Syria does affect America and the West. Is there a solution? No.

Stripes/AP: GENEVA — American officials played down hopes Friday of an imminent cease-fire agreement for Syria as U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry held a fourth set of negotiations with his Russian counterpart in the past two weeks. Officials had suggested Kerry wouldn’t travel to Geneva unless a deal was clearly at hand.

The talks between Kerry and Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov aim to produce a nationwide cease-fire in Syria after more than five years of warfare and as many as 500,000 deaths.

A deal hinges on an unlikely U.S.-Russian military partnership that would come into force if Moscow can pressure its ally, Syrian President Bashar Assad’s government, to halt offensive operations. Washington would have to persuade the anti-Assad rebels it supports to end any coordination with al-Qaida and other extremist groups.

Neither side has succeeded in doing its part despite months of diplomacy. And the task may be getting even more difficult as fighting rages around the divided city of Aleppo, Syria’s most populous and the new focus of the conflict.

Assad’s government appeared to tighten its siege of the former Syrian commercial hub on Thursday, following several gains over the weekend. Forty days of fighting in Aleppo has killed nearly 700 civilians, including 160 children, according to a Syrian  human rights group. Volunteer first-responders said they pulled the bodies of nine people, including four children, from the rubble following air raids on a rebel-held area, after reports of helicopters dropping crude barrel bombs over the area on Friday.

U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry, left, and Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov meet in Geneva, Switzerland, Friday, Sept. 9, 2016, to discuss the crisis in Syria. American officials played down hopes Friday of an imminent cease-fire agreement for Syria.
Kevin Lamarque/Pool Photos via AP

The U.S. officials accompanying Kerry to Geneva said they couldn’t guarantee an agreement Friday and more talks may be needed. Aleppo will be a large part of the day’s discussions, they said, along with the technical details of a cease-fire, defining everything from how far back from demilitarized areas combatants would have to stay to the types of weapons they would need to withdraw from front lines. The officials, who briefed reporters traveling on Kerry’s plane, were not authorized to discuss the developments publicly and spoke on condition of anonymity.

Kerry and Lavrov held several sessions of talks Friday in Geneva. It was unclear how long the talks would go on. A State Department official said late in the day that the two sides were advancing proposals toward a cease-fire and unimpeded humanitarian access for Syrians most in need.

Since Aug. 26, Kerry and Lavrov have now met twice each in Geneva and in China on the sidelines of a global economic summit. They’ve held a flurry of phone calls in recent days. Both governments had said they were close to a package that would go beyond several previous truces between the Syrian government and armed opposition — all of which failed to hold. For Kerry, securing a sustainable peace in Syria has become his biggest objective as America’s top diplomat since last summer’s Iran nuclear deal.

In addition to those killed, Syria’s conflict has chased millions of people from their homes, contributing to Europe’s worst refugee crisis since World War II. Amid the chaos of fighting between Syria’s government and rebels, the Islamic State group has emerged as a global terror threat.

In part from Rand:

One-third of the population has fled the country or has

been displaced internally. By the end of 2014, more than half

of the population could be living as refugees—a situation conducive

to future terrorism.

Civil wars are devastating. Both sides destroy infrastructure

and wage economic warfare, causing devastation and dislocation.

Beyond the casualties of war, human capital is destroyed

by the lack of health services and education as investment

shifts to weapons. Sectarian conflicts, which Syria’s civil war

has become, further shred the country’s social fabric. They last

a long time.

Syria’s civil war is grinding down the country’s national

institutions while creating the conditions for continuing local

conflict. Brutal government counterinsurgent tactics, the pervasive

lawlessness that comes with the breakdown of authority,

and the imposition of harsh Islamic rule in some rebel zones are

displacing a large portion of the population. It is not yet clear

which side in the contest will be able to offer protection to those

who wish to escape Islamist tyranny but can no longer survive

in sectarian enclaves loyal to the regime. For many Syrians,

flight abroad with slender prospect of return is the only option,

but these same Syrian refugees will add to existing sectarian

tensions in neighboring countries and will become the recruiting

grounds for new cohorts of extremists and the targets of

their enemies, furnishing new generations of fighters and criminals

for employment in Syria and elsewhere. We will be dealing

with the effluent of Syria’s conflict for years to come.

 

$1.7 Billion to Iran, but the Cash Does not End There

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FNC: As many as 100,000 Iranian-backed fighters are now on the ground in Iraq, according to American military officials — raising concerns that even if the Islamic State falls, it may only be replaced by another anti-American force which fuels more sectarian violence in the region.

The ranks have swelled inside a network of Shiite militias known as Popular Mobilization Forces. Since the rise of Sunni-dominated ISIS fighters inside Iraq more than two years ago, the Shiite forces have grown to 100,000 fighters, Col. Chris Garver, a Baghdad-based U.S. military spokesman, confirmed in an email to Fox News. The fighters are mostly Iraqis.

Garver said not all the Shia militias in Iraq are backed by Iran, adding: “The [Iranian-backed] Shia militia are usually identified at around 80,000.”

According to some experts, this still is an alarmingly high number.

Even more troubling to the U.S. military are reports that Qassem Soleimani, an Iranian general who commands the Islamic Revolutionary Guard’s Quds Force, is now on the ground outside Mosul ahead of an expected ground operation to retake Iraq’s second-largest city which has been under ISIS control for the past two years.

According to the Long War Journal, a spokesman for the Iranian-backed forces said earlier this month that Soleimani is expected to play a “major role” in the battle for Mosul.  

When asked about Shia militias participating in the liberation of Sunni-dominated Mosul, the top U.S. military commander in Iraq said last week, “The government of Iraq is in charge of this war. We’re here to support them. So, who they [want in] the campaign is really their decision.” 

A U.S. military official could not confirm Soleimani’s presence in Mosul, but said Soleimani had been seen throughout Iraq and Syria in the past two years coordinating activities. More here.

****  

Protecting money designated for Iraq is sneaking into the hands of the Iranian militia. Exactly what are we knowingly funding and who is tracking it?

(U//FOUO) Section 1236 Report: Department of Defense (DoD) Quarterly Progress Report on the Authority to Provide Assistance to Counter the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL)  Document here but heavily redacted.

**** Yes, there is more….

SecurityAssistance: Following the collapse of Iraq’s fighting force, the United States is again trying to train and equip the Iraqi military to effectively defeat a terrorist group.  In FY2015, Congress allocated $1.6 billion for the Iraq Train and Equip Fund (ITEF) with $1.2 billion for official Iraqi forces, $350 million for Kurdish forces, and $24 million for tribal security forces.

According to the fact sheet, the United States has already provided Iraq’s security forces over 1,200 military vehicles, approximately 20,000 smalls arms and heavy weapons, 2,000 additional AT-4 anti-tank weapons and nearly 300 counter improvised explosive device equipment and more than 2,000 Iraqi Kurdish Forces received U.S. military training. In addition, the administration has requested an additional $715 million for ITEF for FY2016, which both houses of Congress have included in their versions of this year’s National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA).

Iraq does not just receive funding through ITEP though. Allocations for U.S. Foreign Military Financing (FMF) program began in FY 2012 for $850 million, originally intended to build up Iraq’s long-term sustainment and logistics capabilities, but as IS gained momentum in Iraq in 2014, portions of FMF funding were redirected to urgent counterterrorism supplies, including critical resupply of Hellfire missiles, rockets, tank ammunition, small arms/ammo and individual soldier items. Moving into FY2016, the administration has requested $250 million for FMF, the same amount that was allocated in FY 2015.

While these two programs compose the majority of security assistance to Iraq, some U.S. security aid programs still provide millions of dollars in funding to Iraq each year such as the Nonproliferation, Anti-Terrorism, Demining, and Related Programs (NADR). From FY 2012-2015, Congress allocated on average $28 million annually for NADR, a relatively small decline in funding compared to the $30 million allocated annually during the last two years of the Iraq war.

U.S. security assistance to Iraq has returned to levels not seen since the end of the Iraq War in an effort to rebuild the Iraqi military and combat the Islamic State. The State Department stresses its dedication “to helping Iraq improve security, maintain sovereignty, and push back against terrorism, most recently ISIL.” As the United States continues its campaign against IS into 2016 one hopes that U.S. assistance is more effective compared to the last go-round, especially since the latest video released by IS depicts the fighters training with American-made M16 assault rifles.

****

The Department of Defense was required to budget and buy Iran’s designated ‘heavy water’. Really? Yes.

In part from ScienceMag: DOE has struck a deal to purchase 32 tons of heavy water—water containing the hydrogen isotope deuterium—from the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran.

The $8.6 million sale, expected to be completed Friday morning in Vienna, helps Iran meet a commitment under last July’s nuclear deal to shed heavy water—and it will have a swords-to-ploughshares payoff. “We’re securing material that will allow us to do great science,” says Thom Mason, director of Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Tennessee. DOE will resell a portion to industry for uses such as nuclear magnetic resonance imaging and protecting optical fibers and semiconductors against deterioration by blasting them with deuterium gas. DOE will also send 6 tons to Oak Ridge for an upgrade of the Spallation Neutron Source (SNS), the world’s most powerful accelerator-driven machine for generating neutrons for research.

****

In part from ExchangeMonitor: Heavy water, which is used in some plutonium-producing nuclear reactors, is key for nuclear weapons development.

The agreement requires Iran to redesign and rebuild its heavy-water reactor at Arak; focus on using light water for future power and research reactors; not to build any new heavy-water reactors or accumulate the material for 15 years; and make all excess domestic heavy water available for export to foreign buyers.

In a prepared statement, the Department of Energy said there were no plans for additional purchases of Iranian heavy water: “The U.S. will not be Iran’s customer forever. It is exclusively Iran’s responsibility to find a way to meet its JCPOA commitments, whether that is by selling, diluting or disposing of future stocks of heavy water to remain within the JCPOA limit.”

Some of the heavy water will be used at the Oak Ridge lab’s Spallation Neutron Source (SNS), with the rest provided to commercial users.

An amendment from Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.) against purchases of heavy water from Iran temporarily held up passage of the Senate energy appropriations bill this spring. The amendment was eventually stripped from the legislation.

A bill from Rep. Mike Pompeo (R-Kan.) to prohibit any federal entity in any fiscal year from spending money on Iranian heavy water passed the House in July and was referred to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.

Kase Lawal, Hillary, Barack and Boko Haram

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Bring Back Our Girls: Michelle Obama and Malala Yousafzai support campaign for return of kidnapped Nigeria schoolgirls

 BuzzNigeria.com  A video was released in August with new Boko Haram demands but YouTube removed it.

McClatchy: HOUSTON — A Texas oilman who’s accused of defrauding the Nigerian government by illegally pumping and exporting 10 million barrels of oil is a major fundraiser for Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign.

Kase Lawal of Houston is at least the fourth person accused or convicted of criminal wrongdoing to help finance Clinton’s political ambitions since 2000 and the second in her quest for the White House. The list also includes Chinese and Pakistani fugitives and a former Miami lawyer who was convicted of defrauding Cuba.

There’s no indication that Clinton’s campaign was aware of Lawal’s legal problems when it accepted his help in raising more than $100,000, but a McClatchy investigation in the U.S. and Nigeria suggests that her campaign did little to scrutinize the background of one of its top fundraisers.

****

In 2010, Kase Lawal, Member, Advisory Committee for Trade Policy and Negotiations for the White House. CAMAC Energy, NYSE (CAK) was founded in 2005. CAMAC Energy Inc. has offices in Hartsdale, New York; Houston, Texas; Beijing, China and Lagos, Nigeria.

****

Lawal maxed out donations to Hillary’s 2016 primary campaign, and his wife Eileen donated $50,000—the most allowed—to President Obama’s 2009 inaugural committee.

Lawal describes himself as a devout Muslim who began memorizing the Quran at age 3 while attending an Islamic school. “Religion played a very important role in our lives,” he told a reporter in 2006. “Every time you finish a chapter they kill a chicken, and if you finish the whole thing, a goat.” In Africa, Lawal has been at the center of multiple criminal proceedings, even operating as a fugitive. Over the last decade, he faced charges in South Africa over an illegal oil scheme along with charges in Nigeria of illegally pumping and exporting 10 million barrels of oil.

Read more: http://newsrescue.com/report-links-nigerian-corrupt-billionaires-clinton-foundation-boko-haram/#ixzz4Jgxw7OrA

Read more: http://newsrescue.com/report-links-nigerian-corrupt-billionaires-clinton-foundation-boko-haram/#ixzz4Jgxf5UtN

 

Hillary Clinton Obstructed Boko Haram Terror Designation as Her Donors Cashed In

Source: Hillary Obstructed Boko Haram’s Terror Designation as Her Donors Cashed In | PJ Media

By Patrick Poole

…as Boko Haram began to ramp up its terror campaign in 2011 and 2012, Hillary Clinton obstructed the official terror designation of the group over the objections of Congress, the FBI, the CIA and the Justice Department.

Why did Hillary Clinton’s State Department drag its feet on the terror designation in the face of near unanimous opposition from the rest of the U.S. government?

A recent series of reports exposes that a close Clinton family confidante — and Hillary campaign bundler — profited from Nigeria’s lucrative oil fields. He engaged in multiple illegal deals throughout Africa. …

Why is no one in the media talking about Hillary and Boko Haram?

It is worth nothing that Congress had to drag a reluctant State Department kicking and screaming to get Boko Haram designated in November 2013, after Hillary Clinton had left office.

Hillary Clinton’s willful obstruction in the matter is easy to document:

  • Members of Congress discovered in 2014 that the Clinton State Department intentionally lied and downplayed the threat from Boko Haram, and worked to kill bills in both the House and the Senate calling for their designation in 2012.
  • As Reuters reported, the Justice Department’s National Security Division strongly urged the State Department to designate Boko Haram, but then a group of 21 American academics rallied to the State Department’s aid by sending a letter to Hillary Clinton strongly arguing against Boko Haram’s designation.
  • We also now know that the Obama administration was sitting on intelligence— obtained as a result of the Bin Laden raid— that revealed Boko Haram’s direct connection to al-Qaeda and the international terror network in 2011 and 2012. In other words, Hillary’s State Department was arguing that Boko Haram had no such connections, that it wasn’t a transnational terror threat, even though the Obama administration — and likely Clinton herself — knew that was false.

An important two-part investigative series by WORLD magazine reporters Mindy Belz and J.C. Derrick provides some insight:

Belz and Derrick discovered that Hillary Clinton’s obstruction of the Boko Haram designation, and the continuing chaos in northern Nigeria — Africa’s largest economy and the 10th largest oil producer in the world — directly benefited Clinton Global Initiative donors and a close Clinton confidante who bundled campaign cash for Hillary.

From the second article from Belz and Derrick:

Perhaps the most prominent Nigerian with ties to the Clintons is Houston-based Kase Lawal. The founder of CAMAC Energy, an oil exploration and energy consortium, Lawal had a long history with Bill Clinton before becoming a “bundler” for Hillary’s 2008 presidential bid, amassing $100,000 in contributions and hosting a fundraiser in his Houston home — a 14-room, 15,264-square-foot mansion. Lawal maxed out donations to Hillary’s 2016 primary campaign, and his wife Eileen donated $50,000 — the most allowed — to President Obama’s 2009 inaugural committee.Lawal describes himself as a devout Muslim who began memorizing the Quran at age 3 while attending an Islamic school. “Religion played a very important role in our lives,” he told a reporter in 2006. “Every time you finish a chapter they kill a chicken, and if you finish the whole thing, a goat.”

Today the Houston oil exec — who retired in May as CEO but continues as chairman of the board of CAMAC, now called Erin Energy — tops the list of wealthiest Nigerians living in North America. His firm reports about $2.5 billion in annual revenue, making it one of the top private companies in the United States.

In Africa, Lawal has been at the center of multiple criminal proceedings, even operating as a fugitive. Over the last decade, he faced charges in South Africa over an illegal oil scheme along with charges in Nigeria of illegally pumping and exporting 10 million barrels of oil.

In the Democratic Republic of Congo, Lawal arranged a 2011 plot to purchase 4 tons of gold from a rebel warlord, Bosco Ntaganda, linked to massacres and mass rapes.Ntaganda was on a U.S. sanctions list, meaning anyone doing business with him could face up to 20 years in prison. Lawal contacted Clinton’s State Department, and authorities in Congo released his plane and associates in the plot.

He never faced charges in the United States, and he remains a commissioner for the Port Authority of Houston.

Lawal’s energy firm holds lucrative offshore oil licenses in Nigeria, as well as exploration and production licenses in Gambia, Ghana, and Kenya, where he operates in a conflict-ridden area largely controlled by Somalia’s al-Shabaab militants.

The firm also has held contracts in Nigeria for crude oil lifting, or transferring oil from its collection point to refineries. Until last year, when newly elected President Muhammadu Buhari began an effort to reform the process, contracting for lifting has been awash in kickbacks, bribes, and illegal activity.

Overland lifting contracts often involve partnership with the North’s past and present governors, including those who serve as quasi-warlords with ties to Boko Haram and other militants.

Lawal’s enterprises have long been rumored to be involved in such deals, as have indigenous oil concerns like Petro Energy and Oando, Nigeria’s largest private oil and gas company, based in Lagos and headed by Adewale Tinubu, another controversial Clinton donor.

In 2014, Oando pledged 1.5 percent of that year’s pre-tax profits and 1 percent of future profits to a Clinton Global Initiative education program. This year, Adewale gained notoriety when the Panama Papers revealed he holds at least 12 shell companies, leading to suspicion of money laundering, tax evasion, and other corruption.

In 2013 Bill Clinton stood alongside Adewale’s uncle, Bola Tinubu, while attending the dedication of a massive, controversial reclamation project called Eko Atlantic. Critics call Bola Tinubu, leader of the ruling All Progressives Congress party, Nigeria’s “looter in chief.” A Nigerian documentary says that when the billionaire landowner was governor of Lagos State (1999-2007), he funneled huge amounts of state funds — up to 15 percent of annual tax revenues — to a private consulting firm in which he had controlling interest.

In the United States, where he studied and worked in the 1970s and ’80s, Tinubu is still a suspect in connection with a Chicago heroin ring he allegedly operated with his wife and three other family members. In 1993 Tinubu forfeited $460,000 to American authorities, who believe he trafficked drugs and laundered the proceeds.

But wait, there’s more:

Beneath the surface, literally, Boko Haram was making it possible for illicit operators to lay claim to the area for their own purposes, and to pump oil from Nigeria’s underground reserves to Chad. Using 3-D drilling, Chad operators can extract Nigerian oil — without violating Nigerian property rights — to sell on open markets. One benefactor of the arrangement is Ali Modu Sheriff, a leading politician in the North, Borno State governor until 2011, and an alleged sponsor of Boko Haram, who is close friends with longtime Chad President Idriss Déby.The very terrorism that seems to be deterring oil exploration in reality can help illicit extraction, forcing residents to flee and giving cover to under-the-table oil traders. In 2015, a year when overall oil prices dipped 6 percent, Lawal’s Erin Energy stock value skyrocketed 295 percent—the best-performing oil and gas stock in the United States.

…

Hillary Clinton’s obstruction of the Boko Haram terror designation in the face of FBI, CIA, DOJ, and Congressional urging to do so is a documented fact. But the reason for Hillary’s obstruction, which the establishment media has never pressed Clinton for, remains unanswered.

The New Faces of Illegal Immigrants into America

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Mexico issues transit visas to surge of African migrants

MEXICO CITY (AP)— Mexican immigration authorities say 424 migrants from African countries arrived at the southern state of Chiapas over two days last week.

The National Immigration Institute said Tuesday that it has issued them 20-day transit visas that will allow the migrants to reach the U.S.-Mexico border, where they plan to request asylum.

Officials call it an unusual surge and say most of the migrants first went to Brazil or Ecuador to start their journey through Latin America.

Most of the Africans presented themselves voluntarily to immigration officials in the Chiapas town of Tapachula. They did not specify their nationalities. Immigration support staff in Tijuana has been aiding migrants from the Congo, Somalia and Ghana to arrive at the U.S. port of entry at San Isidro.

DailyCaller has more:

Guatemala is facing an influx of African immigrants on their way to the United States, having caught 56 times more so far in 2016 than they did in all of 2015.

Only 13 African immigrants were caught in Africa in all of 2015, and by September 2, 2016 729 Africans had been caught by Guatemalan authorities, La Prensa reports.  The majority of the African immigrants are from the Democratic Republic of Congo, Ghana, Senegal, and Somalia.

The country is facing an increase of immigrants in general. In 2015, the national police reported 1,131 immigrants caught from various countries. By August 29, 2016, they had intercepted 2,514 immigrants, an increase of 122.2 percent.

Jorge Pereza Breedy, head of the International Organization for Migration in El Salvador, Guatemala, and Hondoras, said that changes in the situation in Europe has led these immigrants to come to Central America. “The saturation of the transit route in Europe and the increase in border security is one of the principal factors in the increase of Asian and African emigrants in Central America,” Breedy told La Prensa.

The African immigrants aren’t in Guatemala to stay there and instead are making there way northward towards Mexico and the United States. “It’s not that they want to come to this country to stay, they want to get to the United States,” Danilo Rivera of the Central American Institute for Social and Development Studies said to La Prensa. (RELATED: Mexico Shipping Hundreds Of Illegal Africans To US Border)

Recently, El Salvadoran authorities busted a human smuggling ring which generated $150,000 a year bringing immigrants illegally to the United States from Brazil.

**** But there is still more:

The New Face of American Immigration

This year candidates have focused on migrants from Mexico, but nationally and in most states, India and China have become the top sources for new arrivals.

By Jieqian Zhang, Paul Overberg and Andrew Van Dam WallStreetJournal
Click here for the interactive map.

Mexico: 37,290
India: 13,662
El Salvador: 8,709
Honduras: 7,925
China: 6,249

Additional Notes:
  • Totals reflect the estimated number of non-U.S. citizens who reported living each source country a year earlier, regardless of immigration status.
  • Totals for China don’t include Taiwan. Other than that, countries were coded and grouped according to Ipums’ definitions.
  • Popups on the map show the values for India, China and Mexico, and the two other highest sources of immigrants.
  • Additional reporting from Janet Adamy
  • Source: Census Bureau via University of Minnesota (Ipums)

Going back to 2010, the matter of Africans fleeing to Latin America and then to the United States began for several reasons.

YaleGlobal: Latin America is becoming an increasingly common destination for African immigrants as Europe tightens its immigration controls and suffers from xenophobia and migration-related violence. Brazil, for example, which has the largest black population outside Africa, offers a more culturally receptive society. Though most of the population is white, Argentina receives a fair share of African migrants too. That country is attractive because immigrants can legalize their status and receive temporary work permits, even with the high level of unemployment, and have access to free healthcare and Spanish classes taught by Catholic church charities. While Europe shutters its borders, and the US tightens immigration, other countries that have historically grown through immigration are picking up the slack. – YaleGlobal

More African Immigrants Finding a Home in Latin America

As European countries tighten up border controls, a rising number of Africans fleeing trouble in their homelands are arriving at ports in Latin America