Category Archives: Industry Jobs Oil Economics

Smuggling, Surrender and Sovereignty

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Where is the Federal Bureau of Investigation? The global smuggling network includes the U.S. southern border and then has many elements within cities throughout the America.

Under the Department of Homeland Security and with the wink of approval by the Department of Justice and the White House, surrender of security at the Southern border is real. Lines of sovereignty have disappeared.

The world is a very messy place especially when it comes to human rights, dignity and law enforcement. The question is why? Does it come down to resources, money and indifference?

The United States has a history of a forward-leaning country that puts emphasis on stopping festering criminal and terror networks but given failed policy domestically and internationally, America has fallen silent. There are good people that do good work within government and they earn our recognition and praise yet sadly that work and success is being lost due in part to the sheer volume of a hidden and robust war caused by people, money and greed. The notion of paying any consequence for criminal activity has fallen silent, there are few consequences.

 

If people can be successfully smuggled throughout a global network and reach our Southern border only to be moved again inside our cities then anything can be smuggled without notice and successful smuggling is winning over prosecution.

Human Smuggling Case Evokes South America’s Terror-Linked History

‘A Somali man used Brazil as a staging ground to smuggle people, including members of a terrorist group into the United States, witnesses are expected to testify during a sentencing hearing Thursday in San Antonio.

Ahmed Mohammed Dhakane pleaded guilty in November to two counts of making false statements on his 2008 asylum application. He failed to disclose his terrorist affiliations and that he had acted as an alien smuggler.

The U.S. didn’t charge Dhakane with smuggling or terrorism counts, but prosecutors are hoping that testimony will convince the court that a terrorism enhancement, combined with several others, should be applied to Dhakane’s sentence to give him the maximum sentence of 20 years in prison.’ More here.

 

Armenians Smuggled Through U.S.-Mexico Border

‘This past Saturday, 44 year-old Grigor Chatalyan of North Hollywood was arrested for smuggling Armenians through the U.S.-Mexico border. The Armenians were reportedly first sent to Moscow to obtain fraudulent Russian passports. The next stop on the journey was Cancun, Mexico where they received permanent resident or passport cards in order to cross into the U.S., reported the Union-Tribune.

The costs paid by the Armenian nationals are reportedly up to $18,000 per person according to federal officials.

Overwhelmed agents trying to monitor and patrol America’s borders are constantly challenged with smugglers bringing unlawful travelers from many countries in addition to Armenia and Mexico. Breitbart’s Brandon Darby wrote about a UN report last July that “identifies both Mexican cartels and street gangs as conduits for individuals from Africa and Asia entering the U.S illegally.” More here.

EXCLUSIVE: Documents Detail Heinous Crimes Committed by Gang Members Being Housed in Nogales Processing Center

‘By U.S. legal standards many gang members operating in Central American countries and traveling north are classified as minors due to being under the age of 18. However, many young males are actively engaged in violent cartel and criminal activity, yet are treated as children when processed through the Department of Health and Human Services or Department of Homeland Security systems. Due to current policy, these “minor” gang members cannot be separated by Border Patrol agents from the rest of the general population of children. According to the FBI, MS-13 regularly targets middle and high school students for recruitment. The FBI also lists 18th Street as one of the most violent gangs in the country. Business Insider describes 18th Street as having special focus on document fraud and homicide.

According to sources inside the processing center, these unaccompanied MS-13 and 18th Street minors are being held for placement inside the United States.’ Read more here including documents.

MS-13 gang labeled transnational criminal group, a first for US street gang

MS-13 gang is a violent group engaged in the drug, sex, and human trafficking trades in the US. Designating MS-13 gang a transnational criminal organization helps US officials target it more aggressively.

By Howard LaFranchi, Staff writer

‘For the first time, a street gang operating in the United States has been officially designated a transnational criminal organization, empowering officials to more aggressively target the group, Mara Salvatrucha MS-13, which engages in the drug, sex, and human trafficking trades.

MS-13 is an El Salvador-based gang that over three decades has developed into a violent criminal force from Los Angeles to Washington, D.C.

But what countries are cooperating with the United States? Mexico is not cooperating and in fact is making conditions more severe and all their plans and operations are ill conceived.

FBI investigating gunfire on U.S. agents by Mexican authorities

A Mexican law enforcement helicopter crossed into U.S. airspace and fired two shots, just missing American Border Patrol agents and prompting a quick apology from Mexican authorities in what is the second incursion this year of Mexican forces into United States territory, U.S. law enforcement officials said Friday.

The incident, now the subject of an FBI criminal investigation, occurred about 5:45 a.m. Thursday in southern Arizona, about 100 yards north of the U.S.-Mexico border, as Mexican law enforcement officers were chasing kidnapping suspects trying to escape into the United States, U.S. officials said.

It is time to admit failure, it is time to challenge our State Department, it is time to confront the Department of Justice it is time that we force protections for our own safety and national security. It is a matter of time before something much more tragic is in our future.

Soviet/Russia, What Needs to be Defined

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Glasnost and Perestroika

During an interview in 1989 Mikhail Gorbachev is quoted as saying “I detest lies” (1.). It was this yearning for the truth that lead him to introduce the policy of glasnost literally openness in English. The liberal press exploited this leeway and continuously challenged its boundaries. Glasnost. Hardliners tried to retain their grip on people’s minds by frequent attacks on the radicals in the conservative press. Prada the flagship Communist Party newspaper thundered “that extremists and nationalists were hiding their true face behind a mask of commitment to perestroika (2.).

Today, Russia is full of contradictions and this is precisely what Vladimir Putin demands.

There is very little change from the previous Soviet Union to Russia today. The former USSR suffered financially and brought down the Kremlin while the remake of Russia is full of starts and stops. World leaders know very well that Russia today operates with the old KGB model while straddling two governing standards, that of communism and that of controlled capitalism.

This is where the Russian mafia, collusion by oligarchs and the Kremlin as well as countries that are forced to interact with Russia get caught up in the web of thuggish and deadly scandals including Europe, the Baltics and the West.

Spending time with those pesky Wikileaks cables tells us some proven histories. In one cable from January 2010, Spanish prosecutor Jose “Pepe” Grinda Gonzales claimed that in Russia, Belarus and Chechnya “one cannot differentiate between the activities of the Government and OC (organised crime) groups”.

On the heels of the Soviet loyalists shooting a commercial aircraft out of the sky killing all on board over the Russian/Ukrainian borders, Putin still refuses to come clean with any explanation as evidence mounts his people under his orders are guilty. This leads to foreign state leaders seeking tangible consequences for this action against Russia and Putin. To date, many Russian oligarchs have fled the country due to selective prosecution and prison by the Kremlin and those that have remained in Russia are pressing the panic button for what sanctions are still to come as a result of the downed aircraft.

Countries are boxed in by having to do business with Russia for obvious reasons that included existing agreements like in the case of France already in the pipeline and most especially for oil and gas energy resources but most of all will Putin continue his threatening annexing of other Baltic States?

The British government set up a judicial inquiry Tuesday into the strange death eight years ago of former KGB officer and Russian dissident Alexander Litvinenko, who authorities believe was slipped a lethal dose of radioactive polonium in his tea at a London hotel, possibly at the behest of the Kremlin.

Litvinenko was not the only person in the old KGB who was publically blowing the whistle but he was the most aggressive. If anyone within the Kremlin, any businessman, any dissenter challenges Putin, the thug personality comes out and the result is prison or even deadlier.

Then there is the case of money laundering and how Putin controls the oligarchs, his loyalists and his adversaries. Yet, Putin himself is well known among elitist circles are being a money-launderer himself and all global leaders just look the other way. Very little is written about Putin’s own secret money-laundering schemes for obvious reasons. So one only need to investigate SPAG. There is even a documentary on how Putin was up to his chin in money laundering where the road to Germany began in Columbia.

 

 

‘PUTIN, it turns out, may be a less than perfect pitchman for his anticorruption campaign. New revelations are focusing attention on a murky episode from his past in St. Petersburg, a city known to many Russians as the country’s “criminal capital.” The indictment of a onetime business associate in Western Europe on charges of money laundering and fraud is raising serious questions about Putin’s former role in the affairs of a mysterious Russo-German property-development firm. The company, called the St. Petersburg Real Estate Holding Company (known by its German acronym, SPAG), has not been charged and denies any wrongdoing, but U.S. and European intelligence officials suspect it is linked to the laundering operations of Russian mobsters and Colombian drug dealers. Until he was inaugurated as president, Putin was on SPAG’s advisory board and, according to U.S. and European intelligence officials as well as a SPAG director, he spent more time on its affairs than the Kremlin will now admit. Since then Putin has also maintained a close relationship with the onetime head of SPAG’s Russian operations, Vladimir Smirnov.’

In summary, the Russian mafia, the thug network is world-wide by design and even includes our Southern border and it even goes into Chicago, at least.

More than 200 years ago, the renowned Russian historian Nikolai Karamzin summed up the situation in his country in two words: “They steal.”

They still do, and the news in Russia lately has been dominated by one high-profile corruption scandal after another. Allegations of wrongdoing have reached high into the defense and agriculture ministries and the Russian space program, among other institutions. Nearly nine in 10 Russians say corruption is the nation’s biggest problem.

All the theft, corruption, lies ad fraud has a leader that approves, Vladimir Putin. Glasnost and Perestroika be damned.

 

 

Illegal Alien Process, Background and Military Component

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I have read countless documents, court rulings, studies and interviews as the matter of the incursion at the Southern border has many moving parts. I will make this easy for the reader.

CRS Insights Unaccompanied Alien Children: A Processing Flow Chart

Lisa Seghetti, Section Research Manager ([email protected], 7-4669)

July 16, 2014 (IN10107)

Within the Departments of Homeland Security and Health and Human Services, several agencies are involved in apprehending, processing, placing, and repatriating unaccompanied alien children (UAC). Customs and Border Protection (CBP) apprehends, processes, and detains the majority of UAC arrested along U.S. borders. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) physically transports UAC from CBP to the Department of Health and Human Services Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR) custody. ORR is responsible for detaining and sheltering UAC who are from non-contiguous countries and those from contiguous countries (i.e., Canada and Mexico) for whom there is a concern that they may be victims of trafficking or have an asylum claim, or who do not desire to return to their country voluntarily, while they wait for their claim to be processed or for an immigration hearing. U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) is responsible for the initial adjudication of asylum applications and processes trafficking petitions filed by UAC. The Executive Office for Immigration Review (i.e., immigration courts) in the U.S. Department of Justice conducts the immigration proceedings that determine whether the UAC is allowed to remain in the United States or is deported to his or her home country. If a UAC is ordered removed or chooses to voluntarily depart from the United States, ICE is responsible for returning the alien to his/her home country. For an overview on this topic, see CRS Report R43599, Unaccompanied Alien Children: An Overview.

Figure 1.Unaccompanied Alien Children

A Processing Flow Chart  Full graphic can be seen here.

ICE flow chart

But as Governor Perry deploys 1000 National Guard on parts of the Texas border, what does that mean and what will/can they do?

The Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) is charged with preventing the entry of terrorists, securing the borders, and carrying out immigration enforcement functions. U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP), a component of DHS, has primary responsibility for securing the borders of the United States, preventing terrorists and their weapons from entering the United States, and enforcing hundreds of U.S. trade and immigration laws. Within CBP, the U.S. Border Patrol’s mission is to detect and prevent the illegal entry of aliens across the nearly 7,000 miles of Mexican and Canadian international borders and 2,000 miles of coastal borders surrounding Florida and Puerto Rico.

Although the military does not have primary responsibility to secure the borders, the Armed Forces generally provide support to law enforcement and immigration authorities along the southern border. Reported escalations in criminal activity and illegal immigration, however, have prompted some lawmakers to reevaluate the extent and type of military support that occurs in the border region. On May 25, 2010, President Obama announced that up to 1,200 National Guard troops would be sent to the border to support the Border Patrol. Addressing domestic laws and activities with the military, however, might run afoul of the Posse Comitatus Act (PCA), which prohibits use of the Armed Forces to perform the tasks of civilian law enforcement unless explicitly authorized. There are alternative legal authorities for deploying the National Guard, and the precise scope of permitted activities and funds may vary with the authority exercised.

 Justice Scalia wrote the opinion in the case of Flores v. Reno the basis for where we are today with processing, shelters, detention and deportation.

The Flores-Reno settlement agreement, Homeland Security Act of 2002, and the Trafficking Victims Protection Reauthorization Act (TVPRA) are the guiding principles when dealing with UACs.

 The number of UACs in the Rio Grande Valley/Harlingen Field Office geographical area has seen an increase of 367.6 percent since fiscal year 2011.

 Most UACs are Other Than Mexican (OTM) nationals, which causes significant increases in processing time (administrative/criminal casework) and requirements for long term detention.

 The amount of time and resources needed to provide humanitarian care is extensive and increases with escalating UAC numbers.

 ORR tries to place apprehended UACs as close to the referring location as possible to minimize travel requirements for CBP and ICE.

 The HHS ORR Intake Center operates 24-7 but makes UAC referral placements from 9 a.m. – 9 p.m. each day.

 Each morning the HHS ORR Intake Center has approximately 30-90 initial placement referral requests pending from the previous night.

 The national discharge rate of UACs is approximately 80-90 per day.

 There are approximately 5,000 beds available in the HHS ORR network that service approximately 25,000 UACs annually.

 Each agency uses different data systems to manage UACs.

 

 

 

 

 

The Personal Lives of ISIS leadership

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While the United States is deep with scandalapalooza especially at the southern border, there are other foreign policy conditions and wars being waged. Yes, we must remember Sudan, Nigeria, Syria, Afghanistan and Iraq.

We have come to know little about ISIS except that al Baghdadi is running a caliphate in Iraq unimpeded.

al Baghdadi and his family have a long history that included al Nusra and al Qaeda. So now we find out who al Baghdadi is married to and we know what she looks like.

Photos surface of ISIS leader Baghdadi’s wife

By Staff writer | Al Arabiya News
Thursday, 17 July 2014

Photos of the wife of Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the leader of the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria, have surfaced online, offering a glimpse into the private life of the so-called ‘caliph.’

Knowledge of Saja Hamid al-Dulaimi came to the fore shortly after the release in March of a group of nuns who were kidnapped months earlier in the historic Syrian town of Maaloulah.

An online video at the time of the release showed the nuns being transported by masked gunmen waving the banner of the Nusra Front, an al-Qaeda affiliate. Activists said the nuns were freed in exchange for the release of women prisoners held by President Bashar al-Assad’s government.

 

According to media reports, Dulaimi’s identity was first revealed by Abu Maan al-Suri, a Nusra Front member who said Baghdadi’s wife had been among the detained female prisoners who were released.

Dulaimi, according to al-Suri, had been detained alongside her two sons and smaller brother.

Details about her early life are sketchy.

Dulaimi’s first husband was an Iraqi named Fallah Ismail Jassem, a leading member of the Rashideen Army who was gunned down by the Iraqi army in the province of Anbar in 2010, according to media reports.

There are also unconfirmed reports that suggest Saja al-Dulaimi may have worked as a hair dresser. Others say she may have worked as a seamstress in Anbar province and Al-Amryiah in Baghdad.

Dulaimi’s family allegedly all adhere to the ideology of ISIS, including her father Ibrahim Dulaimi, a so-called ISIS “emir” in Syria who was reportedly killed in September 2013 during an operation against the Syrian army in Deir Attiyeh.

Her sister, Duaa, was allegedly behind a suicide attack that targeted a Kurdish gathering in Arbil, according to some reports.

Then there is the real cabinet assignments of ISIS.

By Staff writer | Al Arabiya News
Friday, 11 July 2014

Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the self-proclaimed leader of the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS), has reportedly formed a cabinet to be in charge of his newly established “caliphate.”

Documents published by The Telegraph newspaper this week revealed for the first time in details the structure of the group, which has claimed universal authority throughout the Muslim world, declaring Baghdadi its caliph.

The British newspaper published an infograph that explains the leadership arrangement under Baghdadi, based on documents seized from an ISIS member’s house following a raid by the Iraqi army.

 

According to the illustration, Baghdadi appointed a “deputy to the emir. ” Fadel Abdullah al-Hiyali, nicknamed Abu Muslim al-Turkmani, serves as Baghdadi’s deputy and is in charge of overseeing Iraqi provinces under ISIS.

The spearhead also formed a “war office” to oversee warehouses and “martyrs.”

One of this department’s members is “in charge of operations using improvised explosive devices (IEDs) and rigging bombs,” the newspaper reported.

The ISIS chief has also selected a group of ministers for an array of tasks.

One minister was put in charge of prisoners and detainees, while another is responsible for managing the financial issues of Iraqi provinces under ISIS.

Cabinet member Abdullah Ahmed al-Meshedani, also called Abu Kassem, is tasked with managing “the arrival of foreign and Arab jihadists” and is in charge of “overseeing the running of guesthouses for them.”

“He is also reportedly a ‘transporter of suicide bombers’,” The Telegraph said.

Six ISIS members were also reportedly tasked with overseeing the Iraqi provinces of Baghdad, Anbar, Salaheddin, Kirkuk, and provinces along the state’s borders.

Baghdadi sent out a public message earlier this month after ISIS proclaimed a “caliphate” on the territory it has captured.

ISIS militants and their allies among Iraq’s Sunni Muslim minority have seized large swathes of Iraq over the past weeks in a battle with forces loyal to Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki.

The so called “Caliphate” aims to connect Muslim countries separated by modern-day borders.

Beyond Spying on You, What You See is Manipulated

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First of all, beyond the NSA there is a consortium of 4 countries that collaborate on intelligence, data-mining of social media, and score their findings. The consortium is called GCHQ (Government Communications Headquarters) located in Britain and is the flagship of all cyber transactions as well as telecom transactions.

GCHQ is also known as the four eyes, watching everything and everyone globally without exception, areas more robustly than others, all for unique reasons.

GCHQ’s dark arts: Leaked documents reveal online manipulation, Facebook, YouTube snooping

By for Zero Day

GCHQ has developed a toolkit of software programs used to manipulate online traffic, infiltrate users’ computers and spread select messages across social media sites including Facebook and YouTube.

Screen Shot 2014-07-14 at 08.11.51

 

The UK spy agency’s dark arts were revealed in documents first published by The Intercept, and each piece of software is described in a wiki document written up by GCHQ’s Joint Threat Research Intelligence Group (JTRIG). The document, which reads like a software inventory, calls the tools part of the agency’s “weaponised capability.”

Some of the most interesting capabilities of the tools on the list include the ability to seed the web with false information — such as tweaking the results of online polls — inflating pageview counts, censoring video content deemed “extremist” and the use of psychological manipulation on targets — something similar to a research project conducted with Facebook’s approval, which resulted in heavy criticism and outrage levied at the social media site.

A number of interesting tools and their short descriptions are below:

  • ASTRAL PROJECTION: Remote GSM secure covert Internet proxy using TOR hidden service
  • POISON ARROW: Safe malware download capability
  • AIRWOLF: YouTube profile, comment and video collection
  • BIRDSTRIKE: Twitter monitoring and profile collection
  • GLASSBACK: Technique of getting a target’s IP address by pretending to be a spammer and ringing them. Target does not need to answer.
  • MINIATURE HERO: Active skype capability. Provision of realtime call records (SkypeOut and SkypetoSkype) and bidirectional instant messaging. Also contact lists.
  • PHOTON TORPEDO: A technique to actively grab the IP address of MSN messenger user
  • SPRING-BISHOP: Finding private photos of targets on Facebook
  • BOMB BAY: The capacity to increase website hits, rankings
  • BURLESQUE: The capacity to send spoofed SMS messages
  • GESTATOR: Amplification of a given message, normally video, on popular multimedia websites (YouTube)
  • SCRAPHEAP CHALLENGE: Perfect spoofing of emails from Blackberry targets
  • SUNBLOCK: Ability to deny functionality to send/receive email or view material online
  • SWAMP DONKEY: A tool that will silently locate all predefined types of file and encrypt them on a targets machine
  • UNDERPASS: Change outcome of online polls (previously known as NUBILO).
  • WARPATH: Mass delivery of SMS messages to support an Information Operations campaign.
  • HUSK: Secure one-on-one web based dead-drop messaging platform.

The list, dated from 2012, says that most of the tools are “fully operational, tested and reliable,” and adds: “Don’t treat this like a catalogue. If you don’t see it here, it doesn’t mean we can’t build it.”

“We only advertise tools here that are either ready to fire or very close to being ready,” the document notes.

The release of these documents comes in the same week that the UK intelligence agency’s spying activities are being investigated by surveillance watchdog the Investigatory Powers Tribunal (IPT). Civil liberty groups set a legal challenge against the GCHQ in order to question the legal standing of schemes such as Tempora — a project revealed in the NSA scandal that showed the agency placed data interceptors on fiber-optic cables that carry Internet traffic to and from the UK.