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Service Quality and Reputation
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ALERT: Starting April 3, 2017, USCIS will temporarily suspend premium processing for all H-1B petitions. This suspension may last up to 6 months. We will notify the public before resuming premium processing for H-1B petitions. Read more here: USCIS Will Temporarily Suspend Premium Processing for All H-1B Petitions
US suspends expedited processing of H-1B visas
(CNN) The US is temporarily suspending expedited processing of H-1B visas, eliminating the option of shorter wait times for the program that helps highly skilled foreigners work at US companies.
Under the current system, companies submitting applications for H-1B visas for potential employees can pay extra for expedited processing, which is referred to as premium processing. Premium processing costs an additional $1,225 and ensures a response from the US Citizenship and Immigration Services in 15 days or the fee is refunded. Processing of standard H-1B applications — those that are not premium — takes between three to six months.
The suspension is effective April 3, and could last up to six months, according to USCIS.
The change comes as President Donald Trump is said to be drafting a new version of his court-halted executive order that banned travelers from seven Muslim-majority countries from entering the US. The new ban will exclude existing visa holders, sources familiar with the plan have told CNN.
Fierce competition
The H-1B visa program is the main pathway for highly skilled foreigners to work at US companies. Various industries, including tech, engineering, journalism, medicine and academia, vie each year for the program’s 85,000 visas.
The visas are doled out by a lottery, and the number of applicants continues to swell each year. Last year, the demand was three times greater than the quota.
Outsourcing firms flood the system with applicants, obtaining visas for foreign workers and then farming them out to tech companies. They take a sizable cut of the salary.
While the visas are used to fill the US skills gap, Trump has spoken out about abuse of the program.
Calls for reform
A bipartisan bill introduced this week in Congress calls for reform of visas for highly skilled workers.
**** C’mon Donald…it is not enough as you said on the campaign trail.
That never happened, though critics held their tongues. After all, Trump had repeatedly campaigned for H-1B reforms, even inviting laid-off Disney IT workers to speak at his campaign rallies. Even so, patience is ending.
Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Ill), a long-time critic of the H-1B visa program and co-sponsor of a reform bill with Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa), accused Trump today of failing “to put American workers first by cracking down on H-1B visa abuse.
“I am disappointed that you have broken your campaign promise to take action on the first day of your Administration to reform foreign guest worker visas – especially the H-1B visa – to put American workers first,” Durbin wrote in a letter to Trump sent Friday.
The White House did not respond to a request for comment. Durbin’s letter could be dismissed by some as a partisan attack by a Democrat, but he is not alone. The IEEE-USA has also warned that Trump is in danger of “letting down American workers.”
A key issue is the upcoming April 1 H-1B visa lottery. Trump has voiced support for a merit-based distribution system. As it stands now, however, the H-1B visas for the 2018 fiscal year will be distributed by lottery, no different than any other year. As a result, the IEEE-USA has warned that unless Trump moves to change the lottery, thousands of visas will go to offshore outsourcing firms.
IT workers have long complained about training H-1B-holding replacements, and Trump has spoken of the problem.
It’s not clear how much authority Trump even has to change the lottery. There are three competing views.
The IEEE-USA believes Trump needed to make a regulation to change the annual H-1B distribution. But Trump needed to do so this week to meet a 30-day notice requirement. But an official from the American Immigration Lawyers Association believes the only way Trump can change the lottery is with legislation, which means he has to wait for Congress to act. A third view is that Trump can change the lottery right up to April 1 with an executive order.
The Trump administration has given no indication of what it will do about this year’s visa lottery.
“The American people deserve an explanation for your decision not to pursue H-1B reforms on your first day in office,” wrote Durbin.
“If you do not take action in the next few weeks, outsourcers will secure the right to import tens of thousands of low-wage foreign guest workers to replace American workers,” wrote Durbin. “This is in addition to hundreds of thousands of H-1B workers who are already employed by outsourcing companies in the United States.”
Primer: In deference to the ATF, it is known with historical cases that tobacco smuggling does fund terror, see document at end of post)
In 2013, Sixteen Palestinian men, some with ties to convicted terrorists, were indicted in a scheme of cigarette smuggling that spanned New York, Maryland, Delaware, Virginia and New Jersey states. Some of them had ties to known terrorist organizations. See the official case here.
A.T.F. Filled Secret Bank Account With Millions From Shadowy Cigarette Sales
Charlie Batten, a fifth-generation tobacco farmer and U.S. Tobacco Cooperative Inc. board member, at his farm in Four Oaks, N.C. The co-op negotiated a deal to buy a tobacco distribution company whose owners had secret ties to the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives.Credit Jeremy M. Lange for The New York Times
NYT’s/WASHINGTON— Working from an office suite behind a Burger King in southern Virginia, operatives used a web of shadowy cigarette sales to funnel tens of millions of dollars into a secret bank account. They weren’t known smugglers, but rather agents from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives.
The operation, not authorized under Justice Department rules, gave agents an off-the-books way to finance undercover investigations and pay informants without the usual cumbersome paperwork and close oversight, according to court records and people close to the operation.
The secret account is at the heart of a federal racketeering lawsuit brought by a collective of tobacco farmers who say they were swindled out of $24 million. A pair of A.T.F. informants received at least $1 million each from that sum, records show.
The scheme relied on phony shipments of snack food disguised as tobacco. The agents were experts: Their job was to catch cigarette smugglers, so they knew exactly how it was done.
Government records and interviews with people involved reveal an operation that existed on a murky frontier — between investigating smuggling and being complicit in it. After The New York Times began asking about the operation last summer, the Justice Department disclosed it to the department’s inspector general’s office, which is investigating. The inspector general “expressed serious concerns,” court records show.
It is unclear how broadly the A.T.F. adopted this practice, at what level it was approved, and whether it continues. Nearly all references to the A.T.F. have been blacked out of public court records, and most documents are entirely sealed.
The investigation and the looming racketeering trial will bring renewed scrutiny to the A.T.F., which has been buffeted in recent years by the botched gun-tracking operation known as Fast and Furious and its mismanagement of undercover investigations. Members of Congress, particularly Republicans, have heaped criticism on the agency for decades, and the National Rifle Association has lobbied to limit the agency’s authority and funding.
While government auditors have previously cited problems with A.T.F.’s tobacco investigations, this operation went beyond what was identified in that audit, released in 2013. The A.T.F. and the Justice Department declined to comment.
Documents in the racketeering lawsuit outline the A.T.F. operation. The tobacco cooperative is suing a former employee and a consultant who, according to court documents, both worked as A.T.F. informants. The informants have denied all wrongdoing.
Discarded cigarettes at a U.S. Tobacco manufacturing plant in Timberlake, N.C. The U.S. Tobacco co-op is made up of about 700 tobacco farmers who pool their crops and share the profits.Credit Jeremy M. Lange for The New York Times
Part of their defense, records show, is that they acted on behalf of the government. In response, a judge recently added the United States government as a defendant.
Since last summer, The Times has fought to make all the documents public, but the Justice Department has argued successfully in court to keep them secret. Crucial details, however, have been revealed through poor redaction, documents that were filed publicly by mistake and the sheer difficulty of keeping so much a secret for so long.
Buying Into an Operation
In spring 2011, U.S. Tobacco Cooperative was looking to expand its distribution network. The co-op is made up of about 700 tobacco farmers — from Virginia to Florida — who pool their crops and share the profits. Based in Raleigh, N.C., the company is a major exporter to China and produces discount-brand cigarettes including Wildhorse, Traffic and 1839.
“These are really, really good people,” said Stuart D. Thompson, the cooperative’s chief executive. “Every year, they take all their chips. They put them on the table, and they hope they get them all back.”
The company began negotiating to buy a tobacco distributor in Bristol, Va., Big South Wholesale. Big South’s owners, Jason Carpenter and Christopher Small, had a network of customers and owned a warehouse.
They also had an existing secret relationship with the A.T.F., records show.
The two men have filed court documents acknowledging “participation in undercover law enforcement activities.” And a judge’s sealed order, which is publicly available online, revealed that the two men worked “on behalf of various government agencies, primarily the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives.”
Photo
Jason Carpenter and Christopher Small, who owned Big South Wholesale in Bristol, Va., have acknowledged participating in undercover law enforcement operations.
The basics of cigarette smuggling are simple. Each state sets its tobacco taxes. Buying cigarettes in low-tax states, like Virginia, and secretly selling them in higher-tax states, like New York, generates large profits. More complicated schemes have shipped cigarettes to Indian reservations, where they are not taxed, then rerouted them for sale on the black market.
A.T.F. agents try to disrupt these networks. Often that means working with informants to buy and sell tobacco on the black market, much the way agents pose as drug dealers to investigate cartels.
Because so much of the case remains sealed, Mr. Carpenter and Mr. Small are prohibited from answering questions about nearly every aspect of the case. “Everything we did that is being attacked now in litigation, we did in good faith,” they said in a statement.
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Stuart D. Thompson, chief executive of U.S. Tobacco, on the manufacturing floor of the plant in Timberlake, N.C.Credit Jeremy M. Lange for The New York Times
Exactly who at U.S. Tobacco knew about their A.T.F. ties and what they knew are a matter of dispute. But there were signs that Big South was not a simple tobacco distributor. Its assets included more than two dozen vehicles, including expensive S.U.V.s and a fleet of Mercedes, B.M.W., Audi, Lexus and Jaguar sports cars.
Early 2011 was a time of intense pressure inside the A.T.F. The agency was under fire from Congress over the Fast and Furious operation, in which agents allowed gun traffickers to buy weapons and ship them to Mexico, hoping the shipments could lead them to major weapons dealers. Justice Department auditors began scrutinizing how A.T.F. agents managed their tobacco smuggling investigations.
With that audit continuing, the A.T.F. issued new rules to tightly monitor undercover investigations. Soon after those rules went into effect, U.S. Tobacco completed its purchase of Big South for $5.5 million, a deal that gave Big South the authority to buy and sell cigarettes on behalf of the cooperative. Almost immediately, the farmers say, Mr. Carpenter and Mr. Small began defrauding them.
It worked like this: An export company working with the A.T.F. placed an order for cigarettes to be shipped internationally — thus not subject to American taxes. Big South would instead ship bottled water and potato chips, making it look as if cigarettes had been exported. Mr. Carpenter and Mr. Small would then buy the tobacco at a slight markup through a private bank account. Lastly, they would sell the tobacco to Big South, again at a markup.
Because they had the authority to buy on behalf of the tobacco cooperative, “Carpenter and Small simply sold products to themselves,” the farmers wrote in court documents. All of these transactions occurred on paper. The cigarettes never left the Virginia warehouse.
“It’s what I saw with my own eyes,” said Brandon Moore, the warehouse manager and one of the people who discussed the transactions in the case. Their accounts fit with descriptions in court records.
Mr. Moore said he was aware of the A.T.F. operation but became troubled by it as he learned more. “It shouldn’t be going on, even if it is the A.T.F.,” he said.
In one deal described in the lawsuit, the informants bought tobacco at $15 a carton and sold it to U.S. Tobacco at $17.50. The profit, about $519,000, went into what was known as a “management account.” That account, while controlled by Mr. Carpenter and Mr. Small, helped pay for A.T.F. investigations.
Mr. Moore, the warehouse manager, said agents often told him what to buy on the company’s credit card. For instance, he recalled spending tens of thousands of dollars at Best Buy on iPads, televisions and other gifts to curry favor with potential criminal targets.
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A testing room at U.S. Tobacco’s Timberlake facilities, where buyers can sample types of tobacco.Credit Jeremy M. Lange for The New York Times
Mr. Carpenter and Mr. Small have also acknowledged in court documents receiving more than $1 million each, though it is not clear from public documents whether that was profit or reimbursement for expenses paid on behalf of the government.
How that arrangement began is unclear. Ryan Kaye, an A.T.F. supervisor, testified that the management account was created “as a result of verbal directives from the A.T.F. program office and other headquarters officials.” Mr. Kaye’s full statement is sealed, but excerpts are cited in one publicly available document.
The defendants in the lawsuit contend that U.S. Tobacco got a good deal on the cigarettes, even at the prices they paid. The farmers tell a different story, saying they never would have purchased Big South if they understood that Mr. Carpenter and Mr. Small had a side arrangement that involved selling them tobacco at inflated values.
Thomas Lesnak, a retired A.T.F. agent who was involved in the operation, dismissed suggestions that anything was done improperly. He said he could not discuss Big South because the Justice Department was still conducting investigations based on information developed during operations based at the warehouse.
The arrangement began to break down in late 2012, when Mr. Thompson joined U.S. Tobacco as the chief financial officer. He was curious why his warehouse was placing so many orders for a brand of cigarette that competes against U.S. Tobacco. He could not get a straight answer, the company said in court documents.
In March 2013, Mr. Moore picked up the phone, called Mr. Thompson and explained what was happening. “I did what I did because of the ethics of it,” Mr. Moore said recently. “What was happening there was wrong.”
Once U.S. Tobacco discovered the bookkeeping irregularities, it reported them to the Justice Department, which investigates white-collar crime and government misconduct. Records show that the Justice Department, which includes the A.T.F., investigated some aspects of the case but no charges were filed.
“We voted unanimously to give everything we had to the government,” said Charlie Batten, a U.S. Tobacco board member whose family has worked the same North Carolina soil for generations. “We thought they would take it and run with it. What happened was, they’ve fought us tooth and nail.”
Because of the sealing order, Mr. Thompson, Mr. Batten and others are prohibited from discussing what happened to the money — even with their own farmers.
Three years into its lawsuit, U.S. Tobacco still cannot disentangle itself from the government. The cooperative recently told a judge that it was under investigation by the Treasury Department.
All those secret tobacco sales, it turns out, should have been taxed. And the government wants its money.
In our view, the United States of America represents so many things that conflict with Californian values, and our continued statehood means California will continue subsidizing the other states to our own detriment, and to the detriment of our children.
Although charity is part of our culture, when you consider that California’s infrastructure is falling apart, our public schools are ranked among the worst in the entire country, we have the highest number of homeless persons living without shelter and other basic necessities, poverty rates remain high, income inequality continues to expand, and we must often borrow money from the future to provide services for today, now is not the time for charity.
However, this independence referendum is about more than California subsidizing other states of this country. It is about the right to self-determination and the concept of voluntary association, both of which are supported by constitutional and international law.
It is about California taking its place in the world, standing as an equal among nations. We believe in two fundamental truths: (1) California exerts a positive influence on the rest of the world, and (2) California could do more good as an independent country than it is able to do as just a U.S. state.
In 2016, the United Kingdom voted to leave the international community with their “Brexit” vote. Our “Calexit” referendum is about California joining the international community. You have a big decision to make.
****
He’s the founder of a Californian independence movement. Just don’t ask him why he lives in Russia.
WaPo: Louis J. Marinelli is a man on a quixotic mission: to help California secede from the United States and become an independent country.
Surprisingly, this quest has been going relatively well of late. Marinelli’s group, Yes California, is attempting to collect 585,000 signatures necessary to place a secessionist question on the 2018 ballot. Buoyed by California’s already tense relationship with President Trump, the campaign has received a large amount of press coverage and support over the past few months.
But for the 30-year-old Yes California president, there remains one annoying problem: People keep asking him why he lives in Russia.
In the wake of Yes California’s recently acquired momentum, a lot of people have taken note of Marinelli’s unusual home base. Numerous articles have appeared in the Californian media noting Marinelli’s choice of residence. On social media, discussions about Marinelli often take on a deeply conspiratorial tone.
“Hands off California, Putin,” a rival secessionist movement, the California National Party, tweeted in January. “We won’t take orders from your puppet Moscow Marinelli.”
Marinelli has perhaps compounded the issue by making numerous appearances on Russian state media (approximately once a week, by his own estimation), at times offering a political viewpoint that seems to line up neatly with the Kremlin’s. In late December, the Russian media gave widespread coverage to Marinelli as his group opened a “Californian Embassy” in Moscow.
Speaking via video chat from his home in Yekaterinburg earlier this month, Marinelli seemed exasperated when quizzed about his decision to live in Russia.
“And Barack Obama was born in Kenya, right?” he said incredulously.
“The fact that I’m an English teacher in Yekaterinburg doesn’t mean there’s some Russian government conspiracy or support for our campaign,” Marinelli said. “The fact that I studied Russian language courses at Saint Petersburg State University in 2007 or ’08 doesn’t mean that I know Vladimir Putin, who graduated from there in 1975.”
He offered an explanation for his circumstances that went into more detail than one posted in a FAQ section on the Yes California website. It presented a reasonable — though unusual — set of events that had resulted in him leading a Californian independence movement from half a world away.
It goes like this: Buffalo-born Marinelli moved to California in 2006. A year later, he upped sticks and went to Saint Petersburg State University to study Russian. He lived “on and off” in Russia between 2007 and 2011, during which time he met his wife, a Russian citizen. The pair moved back to San Diego, but Marinelli’s partner ran into problems with the U.S. immigration system.
“Her visa had expired and there was really no way for us to easily adjust her status,” Marinelli said. “If she had left the country, she’d be banned for 10 years, and so that wasn’t an option.”
Marinelli said they received a “glimmer of hope” last August that would allow his wife, who has been unable to leave the country until her legal status in the United States was secured, a chance to return home. She was desperate to visit her family, he said, so Marinelli found an apartment in Yekaterinburg and a job teaching English for a semester that provided him a visa. But then, according to his telling, “the immigration thing kind of fell through,” and his wife was unable to travel.
The end result was that Marinelli was obliged to go to Russia, he said, while his Russian wife was stuck in San Diego. “We’re still working on resolving the problem,” Marinelli said, adding that his wife was in the process of getting a green card. “Hopefully that goes well and we can end this chapter of our lives.”
It’s a strange situation — and not exactly how some of Marinelli’s partners in Yes California describe it (Marcus Ruiz Evans, the group’s vice president, told The Washington Post that Marinelli’s wife also lived in Russia).
But it is a plausible scenario.
Marinelli’s ties to Alexander Ionov are perhaps bigger conspiracy fodder. Ionov is the founder of the Anti-Globalization Movement of Russia, a group that supports various secessionist movements around the world. Last September, he put on a Kremlin-sponsored event in Moscow for Western secessionists that Marinelli and other representatives of Yes California attended.
Reached via email, Ionov said that about 30 percent of the funding for the event came from the Russian government. But he said none of that money was given to any U.S. groups, including Yes California. Marinelli also pushed back on the idea that this represents a link with the Russian government.
“We don’t have any communication with or contact with or receive any support of any kind from the Russian government or any Russian government officials,” Marinelli said.
“We’re not actively pursuing a dialogue with Vladimir Putin here in Russia even though I’m in Russia,” he added.
Would Putin want a dialogue? Some experts said that while Ionov and his group may have some limited ties to the Kremlin, they are ultimately small fry in Moscow.
Simon Saradzhyan, the founding director of the Russia Matters Project at Harvard’s Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, said that the Russian government probably wasn’t taking the Yes California project very seriously, “if only because that chances that this movement can eventually win independence for that state are close to zero.” But Saradzhyan also noted that Russia could well be interested in getting revenge on Washington for what it saw as U.S. support for Chechen separatism in the 1990s.
Fiona Hill, a Russia expert with Brookings Institution, said in an email that historical Russian links to California added further intrigue to the situation.
“Russia had a major early-19th century colony in California and there has been quite a lot of interest in promoting this from circle’s close to the Kremlin,” Hill said, pointing to Kremlin-connected oligarch Viktor Vekselberg and his interest in Fort Ross, the former colony in what is now Sonoma County.
It sounds outlandish, but after an election in which Russian interference supposedly helped a former reality television star with no political experience gain entry to the White House — well, perhaps it doesn’t seem that outlandish. Marinelli didn’t sound like a fan of the way that election turned out. He repeatedly criticized Trump during his interview with WorldViews, noting how the U.S. president had threatened to defund California.
Marinelli also admitted that he voted for Trump — a tactical decision, he explained. “We need things that we can use to promote the cause, and I think Donald Trump is a daily advertisement for that cause,” he said, noting that his vote didn’t matter much in California, anyway.
When it comes to Marinelli’s thoughts on the other president in his life, Putin, he keeps his cards closer to his chest. He said he doesn’t have an emotional connection to Russia in the same way he does the United States, which is actually “a great thing” about living in Yekaterinburg.
Back home, he said, he was often frustrated by what he saw as America’s failings.
“I think every country has progress to make on some fronts. People say, for example, that Russia has progress to make when it comes to civil rights and human rights,” he said. “And the United States doesn’t? In Russia, police aren’t shooting people because of their skin color. There’s pros and cons.”
Damascus, Syria is known as the city of Jasmine. It is rich in religious history including Christians, Jews and Muslims. If there is any question about how Iran is advancing their power in the region to include Syria and eventually erasing history, then read on.
Now? AFP
BEIRUT: Syrian government forces fired rockets at a rebel-held area on Damascus’s outskirts on Sunday, pressing an attack that began the day before and has killed up to 16 people, a medical worker and war monitors said.
The medical worker and the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said it was the biggest attack on the Qaboun area, to the city’s northeast, in at least two years.
At least three shells hit government-held areas closer to the center of Damascus and near Qaboun on Sunday, but there were no reports of casualties, a Hezbollah-run military media unit and a Reuters witness said.
On Saturday, a government sniper killed one person in the area and rockets hit a cemetery on Qaboun’s outskirts, the medical worker, who asked not to be named, told Reuters.
The British-based Observatory also reported attacks on a cemetery.
Reuters could not independently verify the accounts.
There was no immediate government comment on the Damascus fighting.
The Observatory said 16 people had died in the violence around Qaboun since Saturday, the highest death toll from fighting there for more than two years.
The medical worker in nearby Eastern Ghouta, just outside Damascus, said at least 13 people had died. He said he could hear explosions coming from Qaboun early on Sunday.
Violence in western Syria has increasingly tarnished a shaky cease-fire which took effect on Dec. 30, backed by Damascus ally Russia and Turkey, which supports rebels.
***
The Syrian Commission for Media has issued a report regarding purchases and long-term renting carried out by figures with close ties to the Syrian regime, including Abdullah Nazzam, Iran’s man in Syria. Real estate offices in Damascus have confirmed Nazzam’s unprecedented activity in buying property in capital.
Reports from Damascus and Tehran said that Iran’s men have expanded their purchase activities to include a number of properties in the capital since last June.
The activities of pro-regime businessmen in the purchase of real estate were largely limited to areas of eastern Damascus, namely the Old City, but after June, Abdullah Nazzam expanded his sights on the entire capital.
In addition, the Iranians have also increased their purchasing activities in Eastern Ghouta, largely in Maliha, which is owned by the state, making it easier for the Iranians to circumvent local Syrian laws, especially after the decline of Eastern Ghouta’s battalions after fierce fighting rocked the region last year.
Syrian opposition sources confirmed earlier that many hotels – including Caldah, Iwan, Asia, Damascus International, Venice and Petra – are now owned by the Iranian Embassy in Damascus, in addition to holding shares in the Samiramis Hotel. The Iranian Embassy also sought to buy huge portions of real estate in the Old City of Damascus, specifically in the area extending from behind the Umayyad Mosque to the Bab Touma area, and in the western region of al-Maryamiyah neighborhood.
VOA
*** Iranians Buying Up Land in War-Torn Syria
New buildings are seen in Damascus, Syria, in this file photo. Iranians are investing in and providing labor for some of the construction in the war-torn country. AFP PHOTO/ LOUAI BESHARA
VOA: Iran’s government wants its builders to buy up property in Shi-ite majority neighborhoods of Syria’s capital, Damascus.
It is also asking construction workers to go to Syria.
This information comes from construction industry officials in Tehran and Iranian experts.
Iranian analyst Fariborz Saremi said owning real estate gives Iran more control over Syria and other parts of the Middle East.
Rich and conservative Iranian business people with ties to the government are buying expensive homes in Damascus, according to news reports. This is influencing price increases in Syria’s real estate markets.
“Five million houses have been destroyed in the civil war,” said Syrian economist Khorshid Alika told Voice of America. “The increased Iranian demand to buy land and properties has naturally led to more inflation in the market.”
Iran’s interest in Syrian real estate is not new. But it increased after the rebel uprising began in 2011.
Government-run media have been reporting recently about how Iran joined Russia to support Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. Assad’s government has been fighting against rebels and the Islamic State terror group.
Iran is not only asking people to buy homes and property in Syria. The country is also asking construction workers and contractors to take jobs there.
One contractor said a fellow contractor with close ties to the Iranian government told him he had a chance to make money in Damascus.
“When we asked about the security, he said that the zone is even more secure than Tehran,” Iranian contractor Amir Maghsoudloo told VOA.
Iran is home to about 3 million people from Afghanistan. Many fled the war-torn country. Most earn low wages in Iran. They are being offered better paying construction jobs in Syria.
Some Damascus construction projects are run by Afghan nationals from Iran, said Tahi Esmali. He is an Afghan national who works as a bricklayer. He had worked in Iran before moving to Syria in 2015.
Iranian interests are not limited to Damascus. Iranian business people and companies are looking to invest in projects in the central Syrian city of Homs. The Syrian military and its Lebanese Hezbollah allies recaptured Homs in late 2015.
The Iranian government has supported Syrian President Assad. Recent reports in state-run media say that Iran increased the size of its Revolutionary Guard Corps in Syria.
*** What more is causing all the interest in Syria by Iran and Russia? Well there are other countries with interests as well….pipelines.
Originally, Europeans were strongly in favor of deposing Assad for so-called “humanitarian reasons”. Their humanitarian concerns for Assad’s repressive regime veil the truth – Europe resents depending on Russia for 40 per cent of its gas. Russian President Putin annexed Crimea and maintained a belligerent stance, pushing Europe to favor the pipeline proposal of Qatar and Saudi Arabia. The Saudi plan to duct natural gas all the way to Europe through Syria and Turkey came with a catch – Assad would have to be toppled. The US supported the initiative as Russia’s only Mediterranean naval base would disappear with Assad. Thus, the Western world had itself a new plan that would bring peace and prosperity to the region. That is after the “initial shakeout” necessary to oust Assad.
The “initial shakeout” didn’t go as planned. Russia-backed Assad proved far more resilient than anticipated. But more importantly, western-backed Islamic militias committed such barbaric acts of terror they even made Assad, and Russia, look good in comparison. An emboldened ISIS gradually took over several of the region’s oil fields to fund its operations to the tune of $50 million per month by smuggling oil into Turkey. The routes and means were well established during the previous oil embargo on Iraq and so are the financial networks that profit from it in Turkey. Today, crude oil illegally smuggled by ISIS into Turkey accounts for a fairly significant 3.5 per cent of Turkey’s total oil imports. More here.
When it comes to left-wing political objectives, none other than George Soros is part of the discussion. The Obama White House hosted Soros and Tom Steyer often to pursue funding of climate change initiatives. Soros had access to the Obama operatives on a whim. The internet is full of posts, articles and documents regarding Soros and his involvement in successful financial plots against the United States, but it goes far beyond that, all the way to Europe and former Soviet states. We wait, as the new Secretary of State Rex Tillerson gains control of Foggy Bottom with terminations and continues the clean up process, it will be interesting to see all the collusion by Soros with our government, especially USAID and policy.
Coming from the U.S. State Department and Members of Congress:
Lawmakers probe US funding for Soros groups, left-wing causes in Europe
FNC: George Soros’ alleged meddling in European politics has caught the attention of Congress.
Concerns about Soros’ involvement most recently were raised by the Hungarian prime minister, who last week lashed out at the Soros “empire” and accused it of deploying “tons of money and international heavy artillery.”
But days earlier, Republican lawmakers in Washington started asking questions about whether U.S. tax dollars also were being used to fund Soros projects in the small, conservative-led country of Macedonia.
Rep. Christopher Smith, R-N.J., led a group of House lawmakers in writing to Ambassador Jess Baily — an Obama appointee — demanding answers. Sen. Mike Lee, R-Utah, also expressed concerns about USAID money going to Soros’ Open Society Foundations as part of a broader concern that the U.S. Embassy has been taking sides in party politics.
“I have received credible reports that, over the past few years, the US Mission to Macedonia has actively intervened in the party politics of Macedonia, as well as the shaping of its media environment and civil society, often favoring groups of one political persuasion over another,” Lee said in his letter.
Together, the concerns reflect growing conservative pushback against Soros’ operations in Europe.
Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban last week ripped the Hungary-born billionaire’s “trans-border empire.” Orban has been one of the central European voices speaking out against the push by E.U. leaders to absorb Syrian refugees and has been criticized for his hardline stance.
Soros’ Open Society Foundations — one of the billionaire’s biggest groups operating across the globe — fired back, saying Orban was trying to deflect attention from other issues.
“The Open Society Foundations for over 30 years have supported civil society groups in Hungary who are addressing profound problems in education, health care, media freedom and corruption,” Laura Silber, the organization’s chief communications officer, said in a statement to The Associated Press. “Any attacks on this work and those groups are solely an attempt to deflect attention from government inability to address these issues.”
The group’s stated goal is “to build vibrant and tolerant democracies whose governments are accountable to their citizens” but critics claim it’s a front for Soros’ hard-left political maneuverings.
Former Macedonian PM Nikola Gruevski says Soros has a “decisive influence” on his country’s politics.
“If it were not for George Soros behind it with all the millions he pours into Macedonia, the entire network of NGOs, media, politicians, inside and out … the economy would be stronger, we would have had more new jobs,” he said in a recent interview with Macedonia’s Republika newspaper.
Macedonia, while small, is a broadly conservative country. It has a flat rate tax of 10 percent, a small-government philosophy and a ruling conservative party (VMRO-DPMNE) that has greeted the election of President Trump warmly and pledged to work with him.
Lee’s staff recently met with Macedonia lawmakers, who also passed on a white paper from a citizen’s initiative called “Stop Operation Soros” which alleges U.S. money has been funding hard-left causes in the country — including violent riots in the streets, as well as a Macedonian version of Saul Alinsky’s far-left handbook “Rules for Radicals.”
In an extensive 40-page dossier, the group alleges USAID money is being used to fund activists and exclusively left-wing media groups as a way to sway the country’s politics.
The Open Society Foundations did not respond to a request for comment from Fox News.
On the Soros connection, Lee’s letter asked if the Mission has “selected the Open Society Foundations as the major implementer of USAID projects in Macedonia” and if the group has been perceived to have political bias in Macedonia.
In a reply dated Feb. 9, the State Department told Lee that the Mission in the country has worked to advance U.S. interests “in a non-biased, non-partisan, objective and transparent manner.” The letter claimed U.S. government assistance has not funded partisan political activities in Macedonia, but noted that from 2002 to the present, USAID had provided three grants to Foundation Open Society – Macedonia (FOSM).
One of these grants is outlined on the USAID website. Between 2012 and 2016, USAID gave almost $5 million in taxpayer cash to FOSM for “The Civil Society Project,”which “aims to empower Macedonian citizens to hold government accountable.” USAID’s website links to www.soros.org.mk, and says the project trained hundreds of young Macedonians “in youth activism and the use of new media instruments.”
The letter from the State Department to Lee said USAID also recently funded a new Civic Engagement Project which partners with four organizations, including FOSM. It was not clear how much this project would cost, but Smith put the figure at $9.5 million.
“The money is very significant, in fact there is still money in the pipeline, from 2017 to 2021, 9.5 million,” Smith said in a recent radio interview with the Family Research Council’s Tony Perkins. “It’s one thing to do election monitoring, which is a very noble cause to make sure there’s free and fair elections, but it’s quite another thing to be backing parties that Soros and his gang want to see in control of that country.”
It isn’t the only time Soros has worked with the State Department. Among the emails of Clinton campaign chairman John Podesta released by Wikileaks was one from 2011 in which Soros urged Hillary Clinton to take action in Albania over recent demonstrations in the capital of Tirana.
Soros asked Clinton to “bring the full weight of the international community to bear on Prime Minister Berisha and opposition leader Edi Rama to forestall further public demonstrations and to tone down public pronouncements” and appoint a senior European official as mediator.
Former Macedonian PM Gruevski cited the WikiLeaks emails as proof “[Soros] can go visit top leading American officials whenever he wants to, arranges meetings day in day out and has significant influence.”
While Soros has often been a bogeyman for the American right, the liberal businessman has kept a steady pressure and funding of left-wing causes within America as well.
“This guy is a spider with lots of webs,” GOP strategist Brad Blakeman told Fox News’ “Strategy Room.” “He controls numerous third-party groups, where he uses his influence. We’ve seen it internally with Black Lives Matter, the demonstrations taken place after the inaugural — this is what he does.”
After violent left-wing activists rioted at Berkeley in protest of a lecture by Breitbart editor Milo Yiannopoulos, The Daily Caller reported that the main group behind the protests — Refuse Facism — was backed by The Alliance for Global Justice — which in turn is backed by The Tides Foundation, a Soros-funded group.
Soros also has donated to Media Matters and has been a major financial contributor to the Center for American Progress, a liberal think tank founded by Podesta.
AFP
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