Euro Arms Pipeline to Middle East

Posted on July 28, 2016July 28, 2016 by Denise Simon

Making a Killing: The 1.2 Billion Euro Arms Pipeline to Middle East

An unprecedented flow of weapons from Central and Eastern Europe is flooding the battlefields of the Middle East.

Lawrence Marzouk, Ivan Angelovski and Miranda Patrucic BIRN Belgrade, London, Sarajevo

BalkanInsight: As Belgrade slept on the night of November 28, 2015, the giant turbofan engines of a Belarusian Ruby Star Ilyushin II-76 cargo plane roared into life, its hull laden with arms destined for faraway conflicts.

Rising from the tarmac of Nikola Tesla airport, the hulking aircraft pierced the Serbian mist to head towards Jeddah, Saudi Arabia.

It was one of at least 68 flights that in just 13 months transported weapons and ammunition to Middle Eastern states and Turkey which, in turn, funnelled arms into brutal civil wars in Syria and Yemen, the Balkan Investigative Reporting Network, BIRN, and the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project, OCCRP, has found. The flights form just a small part of €1.2 billion in arms deals between the countries since 2012, when parts of the Arab Spring turned into an armed conflict.

Belgrade Airport | BIRN

Meanwhile, over the past two years, as thousands of tonnes of weapons fly south, hundreds of thousands of refugees have fled north from the conflicts that have killed more than 400,000 people. But while Balkan and European countries have shut down the refugee route, the billion-euro pipeline sending arms by plane and ship to the Middle East remains open – and very lucrative.

It is a trade that is almost certainly illegal, according to arms and human rights experts.

“The evidence points towards systematic diversion of weapons to armed groups accused of committing serious human rights violations. If this is the case, the transfers are illegal under the ATT (United Nations’ Arms Trade Treaty) and other international law and should cease immediately,” said Patrick Wilcken, an arms-control researcher at Amnesty International who reviewed the evidence collected by reporters.

But with hundreds of millions of euros at stake and weapons factories working overtime, countries have a strong incentive to let the business flourish. Arms export licences, which are supposed to guarantee the final destination of the goods, have been granted despite ample evidence that weapons are being diverted to Syrian and other armed groups accused of widespread human rights abuses and atrocities.

Robert Stephen Ford, US ambassador to Syria between 2011 and 2014, told BIRN and the OCCRP that the trade is coordinated by the US Central Intelligence Agency, CIA, Turkey and Gulf states through centres in Jordan and Turkey, although in practice weapon supplies often bypass this process.

BIRN and the OCCRP examined arms export data, UN reports, flight records, and weapons contracts during a year-long investigation that reveals how thousands of assault rifles, mortar shells, rocket launchers, anti-tank weapons, and heavy machine guns are pouring into the troubled region, originating from Bosnia and Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Croatia, the Czech Republic, Montenegro, Romania, Serbia and Slovakia.

Read all the documents used in the investigation at BIRN’s online library BIRN Source.

Since the escalation of the Syrian conflict in 2012, these eight countries have approved the shipment of weapons and ammunition worth at least 1.2 billion euros to Saudi Arabia, Jordan, United Arab Emirates, and Turkey.

The figure is likely much higher. Data on arms export licences for four out of eight countries were not available for 2015 and seven out of eight countries for 2016. The four recipient countries are key arms suppliers to Syria and Yemen with little or no history of buying from Central and Eastern Europe prior to 2012. And the pace of the transfers is not slowing, with some of the biggest deals approved in 2015.

Eastern and Central European weapons and ammunition, identified in more than 50 videos and photos posted on social media, are now in use by Western-backed Free Syrian Army units, but also in the hands of fighters of Islamist groups such as Ansar al-Sham, Al Qaeda-affiliated Jabhat al-Nusra, the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant, ISIS, in Syria, factions fighting for Syrian President Bashar-al Assad and Sunni forces in Yemen.

On April 7, 2016, twitter User @bm27_uragan, who monitors the spread of weapons in the Syrian conflict, posted a video apparently of Free Syrian Army rebel using Serbian made Coyote M02 heavy machine gun in Southern Aleppo in Syria. The Coyote M02 has been independently identified as a Coyote M02.

Markings on some of the weapons identifying the origin and date of production reveal significant quantities have come off production lines as recently as 2015.

Out of the 1.2 billion euros in weapons and ammunition approved for export, about 500 million euros have been delivered, according to UN trade information and national arms export reports.

The frequency and number of cargo flights – BIRN and the OCCRP identified at least 68 in just over one year – reveal a steady flow of weapons from Central and Eastern Europe airports to military bases in Middle East.

The most commonly used aircraft – the Ilyushin II-76 – can carry up to 50 tonnes of cargo or approximately 16,000 AK-47 Kalashnikov rifles or three million bullets. Others, including the Boeing 747, are capable of hauling at least twice that amount.

But arms and ammunitions are not only coming by air. Reporters also have identified at least three shipments made by the US military from Black Sea ports carrying an estimated 4,700 tonnes of weapons and ammunition to the Red Sea and Turkey since December 2015.

One Swedish member of the EU parliament calls the trade shameful.

“Maybe they –[Bulgaria, Slovakia and Croatia] – do not feel ashamed at all but I think they should,” said Bodil Valero, who also served as the rapporteur for the EU’s last arms report.“Countries selling arms to Saudi Arabia or the Middle East-North Africa region are not carrying out good risk assessments and, as a result, are in breach of EU and national law.”.

OCCRP and BIRN talked to government representatives in Croatia, Czech Republic, Montenegro, Serbia, and Slovakia who all responded similarly saying that they are meeting their international obligations. Some cited that Saudi Arabia is not on any international weapons black lists and other said their countries are not responsible if weapons have been diverted.

A question of legality

The global arms trade is regulated by three layers of interconnected legislation — national, European Union, EU, and international – but there are no formal mechanisms to punish those who break the law.

Beyond the blanket ban on exports to embargoed countries, each licence request is dealt with individually.

In the case of Syria, there are currently no sanctions on supplying weapons to the opposition.

As a result, the lawfulness of the export approval hinges on whether countries have carried out due diligence on a range of issues, including the likelihood of the arms being diverted and the impact the export will have on peace and stability.

Bosnia and Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Croatia, the Czech Republic, Montenegro, Romania, Serbia and Slovakia are signatories of the UN’s Arms Trade Treaty, which entered into force in December 2014, and lists measures to prevent the illicit trade and diversion of arms.

Member states of the EU are also governed by the legally-binding 2008 Common Position on arms exports, requiring each country to take into account eight criteria when accessing arms exports licence applications, including whether the country respects international human rights, the preservation of “regional peace, security and stability” and the risk of diversion.

As part of their efforts to join the EU, Bosnia and Herzegovina and Montenegro have already accepted the measures and have amended their national law. Serbia is in the process of doing so.

Weapons exports are initially assessed based on an end-user certificate, a key document issued by the government of the importing country which guarantees who will use the weapons and that the arms are not intended for re-export.

Authorities in Central and Eastern Europe told BIRN and the OCCRP that they also inserted a clause which requires the buyer to seek approval if they later want to export the goods.

Beyond these initial checks, countries are required to carry out a range of other risk assessments based on national and EU law and the ATT, although conversations with, and statements from, authorities revealed little evidence of that.

OCCRP and BIRN talked to government representatives in Croatia, Czech Republic, Montenegro, Serbia, and Slovakia who all responded similarly saying that they are meeting their international obligations. Some cited that Saudi Arabia is not on any international weapons black lists and other said their countries are not responsible if weapons have been diverted. The three other countries did not respond to requests for comment.

The Czech Foreign Ministry was the only public body to directly address concerns about human rights abuses and diversions, saying it took into account both when weighing up an export licence and had blocked transfers on that basis.

How legal are these arms sales to the Middle East? Find out more here

Saudi Arabia – The weapons king

The Central and Eastern European weapons supply line can be traced to the winter of 2012, when dozens of cargo planes, loaded with Saudi-purchased Yugoslav-era weapons and ammunition, began leaving Zagreb bound for Jordan. Soon after, the first footage of Croatian weapons in use emerged from the battleground of Syria.

According to a New York Times report from February 2013, a senior Croatian official offered the country’s stockpiles of old weapons for Syria during a visit to Washington in the summer of 2012. Zagreb was later put in touch with the Saudis, who bankrolled the purchases, while the CIA helped with logistics for an airlift that began late that year.

While Croatia’s government has consistently denied any role in shipping weapons to Syria, former US ambassador to Syria Ford confirmed to BIRN and the OCCRP the New York Times account from an anonymous source of how the deal was hatched. He said he was not at liberty to discuss it further.

This was just the beginning of an unprecedented flow of weapons from Central and Eastern Europe into the Middle East, as the pipeline expanded to include stocks from seven other countries. Local arms dealers sourced arms and ammunition from their home countries and brokered the sale of ammunition from Ukraine and Belarus, and even attempted to secure Soviet-made anti-tank systems bought from the UK, as a Europe-wide arms bazaar ensued.

Prior to the Arab Spring in 2011, the arms trade between Eastern Europe and Saudi Arabia, Jordan, the United Arab Emirates, UAE, and Turkey – four key supporters of Syria’s fractured opposition – was negligible to non-existent, according to analysis of export data.

But that changed in 2012. Between that year and 2016, eight Eastern European countries approved at least 806 million euros worth of weapons and ammunition exports to Saudi Arabia, according to national and EU arms export reports as well as government sources.

Jordan secured export licences worth 155 million euros starting in 2012, while the UAE netted 135 million euros and Turkey 87 million euros, bringing the total to 1.2 billion euros.

Qatar, another key supplier of equipment to the Syrian opposition, does not show up in export licences from Central and Eastern Europe.

Jeremy Binnie, Middle East arms expert for Jane’s Defence Weekly, a publication widely regarded as the most trusted source of defence and security information, said the bulk of the weapon exports from Eastern Europe would likely be destined for Syria and, to a lesser extent, Yemen and Libya.

“With a few exceptions, the militaries of Saudi Arabia, Jordan, the UAE and Turkey use Western infantry weapons and ammunition, rather than Soviet-designed counterparts,” said Binnie. “It consequently seems likely that large shipments of such materiel being acquired by – or sent to – those countries are destined for their allies in Syria, Yemen, and Libya.”

BIRN and the OCCRP obtained confidential documents from Serbia’s Ministry of Defence and minutes from a series of inter-ministerial meetings in 2013. The documents show the ministry raised concerns that deliveries to Saudi Arabia would be diverted to Syria, pointing out that the Saudis do not use Central and Eastern European stock and have a history of supplying the Syrian opposition. The Ministry turned down the Saudi request only to reverse course more than one year later and approve new arms shipments citing national interest. Saudi security forces, while mostly armed by Western producers, are known to use limited amounts of Central and Eastern European equipment. This includes Czech-produced military trucks and some Romanian-made assault rifles. But even arms exports destined for use by Saudi forces are proving controversial, given their involvement in the conflict in Yemen.

The Netherlands became the first EU country to halt arms exports to Saudi Arabia as a result of civilian deaths in Yemen’s civil war, and the European Parliament has called for an EU-wide arms embargo.

Supply Logistics: Cargo flights and airdrops

Weapons from Central and Eastern Europe are delivered to the Middle East by cargo flights and ships. By identifying the planes and ships delivering weapons, reporters were able to track the flow of arms in real time.

Detailed analysis of airport timetables, cargo carrier history, flight tracking data, and air traffic control sources helped pinpoint 68 flights that carried weapons to Middle Eastern conflicts in the past 13 months. Belgrade, Sofia and Bratislava emerged as the main hubs for the airlift.

Most frequent were flights operated from Belgrade, the capital of Serbia. The flights were either confirmed as carrying weapons, were headed to military bases in Saudi Arabia or the UAE or were carried out by regular arms shippers.

The Middle East Airlift

At least 68 cargo flights from Serbia, Slovakia, Bulgaria and the Czech Republic have carried thousands of tons of munitions in the past 13 months to Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, and Jordan, three key suppliers of the Syrian rebels.

These were identified through detailed analysis of airport timetables, cargo carrier history, flight tracking data, leaked arms contracts, end user certificates, and air traffic control sources.

Cargo flights from Central and Eastern Europe to the Middle East, and particularly military bases, were extremely uncommon before late 2012, when the upsurge in weapons and ammunition purchases began, according to EU flight data and interviews with plane-spotters.

The most commonly used aircraft – the Ilyushin II-76 – can carry up to 50 tonnes of cargo or approximately 16,000 AK-47 Kalashnikov rifles or three million bullets. Others, including the Boeing 747, are capable of hauling at least twice that amount.

Of the 68 flights identified, 50 were officially confirmed to have carried arms and ammunition:

Serbia’s Civil Aviation Directorate confirmed that 49 flights departing or passing through Serbia were carrying arms and ammunition from June 1, 2015 to July 4, 2016. The confirmation came following weeks of refusal to comment on grounds of confidentiality and after BIRN and the OCCRP presented its evidence, including photographs showing military boxes being loaded onto planes at Belgrade’s Nikola Tesla Airport on four different occasions.

An official at the Bulgarian National Customs Agency confirmed one flight, operated by Belarussian cargo carrier Ruby Star Airways, was carrying arms from the remote Bulgarian Gorna Oryahovitsa Airport to Brno–Turany Airport, the Czech Republic, and on to Aqaba, Jordan.

An additional 18 flights were identified as very likely to have been carrying arms and ammunition based on one of three variables: the air freight company’s history of weapons supplies; connections to earlier arms flights; or a destination of a military airport:

Ten flights were made to Prince Sultan Air Base in Al Kharj, Saudi Arabia and Al Dhafra Air Base in Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates, indicating the likely presence of weapons or ammunition. Additionally, 14 flights to Prince Sultan and Al Dhafra air bases are confirmed as having carried weapons during the same period by Serbia’s Civil Aviation Directorate.

Seven flights were operated from Slovakia and Bulgaria by Jordan International Air Cargo, part of the Royal Jordanian Air Force, which were revealed to have carried weapons and ammunition from Croatia to Jordan in the winter of 2012. Bulgarian retired colonel and counter-terrorism expert Slavcho Velkov, who maintains extensive contacts with the military, told BIRN and the OCCRP that the Sofia-Amman flights “were transporting weapons to Saudi Arabia, mostly for the Syrian conflict.” Additionally, one other flight operated by this airline is confirmed as having carried weapons during the same period by Serbia’s Civil Aviation Directorate.

One flight was operated by a Belarussian cargo carrier TransAVIAexport Airlines, which has a long history of transporting weapons. In 2014, the airline was hired by Serbian arms dealer Slobodan Tesic to transport Serbian and Belarussian weapons and ammunition to air bases in Libya controlled by various militant groups. The United Nations, UN, Sanctions Committee investigated the case and found potential breaches of UN sanctions, according to a 2015 UN report. Additionally, five flights operated by this airline are confirmed as having carried weapons during the same period by Serbia’s Civil Aviation Directorate.

Many of these flights made an additional stop in Central and Eastern Europe – meaning they were likely picking up more weapons and ammunition – before flying to their final destination.

EU flight statistics provide further evidence of the scale of the operation. They reveal that planes flying from Bulgaria and Slovakia have delivered 2,268 tons of cargo – equal to 44 flights with the most commonly used aircraft – the Ilyushin II-76 – since the summer of 2014 to the same military bases in Saudi Arabia and UAE pinpointed by BIRN and OCCRP.

Distributing the weapons

Arms bought for Syria by the Saudis, Turks, Jordanians and the UAE are then routed through two secret command facilities – called Military Operation Centers (MOC) – in Jordan and Turkey, according to Ford, the former US ambassador to Syria.

These units – staffed by security and military officials from the Gulf, Turkey, Jordan and the US – coordinate the distribution of weapons to vetted Syrian opposition groups, according to information from the Atlanta-based Carter Center, a think tank that has a unit monitoring the conflict.

“Each of the countries involved in helping the armed opposition retained final decision-making authority about which groups in Syria received assistance,” Ford said.

A cache of leaked cargo carrier documents provides further clues to how the Saudi military supplies Syrian rebels.

According to the documents obtained by BIRN and the OCCRP, the Moldovan company AeroTransCargo made six flights in the summer of 2015 carrying at least 250 tonnes of ammunition between military bases in Saudi Arabia and Esenboga International Airport in Ankara, the capital of Turkey, reportedly an arrival point for weapons and ammunition for Syrian rebels.

Pieter Wezeman, of the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, a leading organisation in tracking arms exports, said he suspects the flights are part of the logistical operation to supply ammunition to Syrian rebels.

From the MOCs, weapons are then transported by road to the Syrian border or airdropped by military planes.

A Free Syrian Army commander from Aleppo, who asked to remain anonymous to protect his safety, told BIRN and OCCRP that weapons from Central and Eastern Europe were distributed from centrally controlled headquarters in Syria. “We don’t care about the county of origin, we just know it is from Eastern Europe,” he said.

The Saudis and Turks also provided weapons directly to Islamist groups not supported by the US and who have sometimes ended up fighting MOC-backed factions, Ford added.

The Saudis are also known to have airdropped arms and equipment, including what appeared to be Serbian-made assault rifles to its allies in Yemen.

Ford said that while he was not personally involved in negotiations with Serbia, Bulgaria and Romania over the supply of weapons to Syria, he believes that the CIA is likely to have played a role.

“For operations of this type it would be difficult for me to imagine that there wasn’t some coordination between the intelligence services, but it may have been confined strictly to intelligence channels,” he said.

The US may not have just played a role in the logistics behind delivering Gulf-sponsored weapons from Eastern Europe to the Syrian rebels. Through its Department of Defense’s Special Operations Command (SOCOM), it has also bought and delivered vast quantities of military materiel from Eastern Europe for the Syrian opposition as part of a US$500 million train and equip programme.

Since December 2015, SOCOM has commissioned three cargo ships to transport 4,700 tons of arms and ammunition from ports of Constanta in Romania and Burgas in Bulgaria to the Middle East likely as part of the covert supply of weapons to Syria.

The shipments included heavy machine guns, rocket launchers and anti-tank weapons – as well as bullets, mortars, grenades, rockets and explosives, according to US procurement documents.

The origin of arms shipped by SOCOM is unknown and the material listed in transport documents is available from stockpiles across Central and Eastern Europe.

Not long after one of the deliveries, SOCOM supported Kurdish groups published an image on Twitter and Facebook showing a warehouse piled with US-brokered ammunition boxes in northern Syria SOCOM would not confirm or deny that the shipments were bound for Syria.

US procurement records also reveal that SOCOM secured from 2014 to 2016 at least 25 million euros (27 million dollars) worth of Bulgarian and 11 million euros (12 million dollars) in Serbian weapons and ammunition for covert operations and Syrian rebels..

A Booming Business

Arms control researcher Wilcken said Central and Eastern Europe had been well positioned to cash in on the huge surge in demand for weapons following the Arab Spring.

“Geographical proximity and lax export controls have put some Balkan states in pole position to profit from this trade, in some instances with covert US assistance,” he added. “Eastern Europe is rehabilitating Cold War arms industries which are expanding and becoming profitable again.”

Serbian Prime Minister Aleksandar Vucic boasted recently that his country could produce five times the amount of arms it currently makes and still not meet the demand.

“Unfortunately in some parts of the world they are at war more than ever and everything you produce, on any side of the world you can sell it,” he said.

Arms manufacturers from Bosnia and Herzegovina and Serbia are running at full capacity with some adding extra shifts and others not taking new orders.

Saudi Arabia’s top officials – more used to negotiating multi-billion-dollar fighter-jet deals with Western defence giants – have been forced to deal with a handful of small-time arms brokers operating in Eastern Europe who have access to weapons such as AK-47s and rocket launchers

Middlemen such as Serbia’s CPR Impex and Slovakia’s Eldon have played a critical role in supplying weapons and ammunition to the Middle East

The inventory of each delivery is usually unknown due to the secrecy surrounding arms deals but two end-user certificates and one export licence, obtained by BIRN and the OCCRP, reveal the extraordinary scope of the buy-up for Syrian beneficiaries.

For example, the Saudi Ministry of Defence expressed its interest in buying from Serbian arms dealer CPR Impex a number of weapons including hundreds of aging T-55 and T-72 tanks, millions of rounds of ammunition, multi-launch missile systems and rocket launchers. Weapons and ammunition listed were produced in the former Yugoslavia, Belarus, Ukraine, and the Czech Republic.

An export licence issued to a little-known Slovakian company called Eldon in January 2015 granted the firm the right to transport thousands of Eastern European rocket-propelled grenade launchers, heavy machine guns and almost a million bullets worth nearly 32 million euros to Saudi Arabia.

BIRN and OCCRP’s analysis of social media shows weapons that originated from the former states of Czechoslovakia and Yugoslavia, and Serbia, Croatia and Bulgaria are now present on the battlefields of Syria and Yemen.

While experts believe the countries continue to shirk their responsibility, the weapons pipeline adds more and more fuel to a white hot conflict that leads to more and more misery.

“Proliferation of arms to the region has caused untold human suffering; huge numbers of people have been displaced and parties to the conflict have committed serious human rights violations including abductions, executions, enforced disappearances, torture and rape,” said Amnesty’s Wilcken.

Additional reporting by Atanas Tchobanov, Dusica Tomovic, Jelena Cosic, Jelena Svircic, Lindita Cela, RISE Moldova and Pavla Holcova.

This investigation is produced by BIRN as a part of Paper Trail to Better Governance project.

DNC Emails: Big Donors Get Big Jobs in Govt

Posted on July 25, 2016July 25, 2016 by Denise Simon

Votes kinda sorta matter but money, PAC’s, foreign contributions, big donors, bundlers matter more.

But it was not a good morning for Debbie Wasserman Schultz as she addressed Florida delegates.

DNC emails: Behind the scenes look at care of big donors

McClatchy: PHILADELPHIA: In May, after yet another State Dinner at the White House passed, major Democratic donor Cookie Parker dashed off a frustrated email that was forwarded to Democratic Party officials about her failure to receive any coveted invites or board appointments.

“I have been patient and not kicked up a stink because it is not my style. But as the Obama Administration winds down, I am feeling very down about this,” wrote Parker, founder and owner of KMS, a Los Angeles software company. “I raised a lot of money for the DNC for both cycles … and here I sit venting and feeling very much under appreciated.”

On another occasion, days before a coveted State Dinner for Nordic leaders, Democratic National Committee Chairman Debbie Wasserman Schultz asked White House officials if they could find an extra ticket for another major donor, Florida lawyer Mitchell Berger.

On yet another, Erik Stowe, the DNC finance director for Northern California, outlined benefits given to different tiers of donors to the Democratic convention: priority booking at high-end hotels and tickets to major convention events and exclusive VIP parties.

Those were among the examples of special care – and sometimes special scrutiny – of major donors that were in thousands of leaked emails hacked from the DNC.

Many showed that while the White House often denies donors are given special treatment, the donors demand and expect it. And staff at the Democratic National Committee worked to reward donors with tickets to White House events and seats next to President Barack Obama based on a contributor’s financial generosity, many times after they blatantly asked for perks.

I think the DNC needs to get to the bottom of the facts and then take appropriate action on any of these emails Clinton campaign manager Robby Mook on ABC

About 20,000 emails were released Friday by WikiLeaks, which provided a searchable database of correspondence of seven DNC officials between January 2015 to May 2016. McClatchy could not independently verify the emails.

The White House and the DNC did not respond to requests for comment. Berger said he was grateful that Wasserman Schultz tried to get him into a State Dinner, though she was unsuccessful and he still has never been. He said both Democrats and Republicans try to reward donors. “It’s not necessarily an unusual thing thing for political parties to do,” he said. “This is my 11th presidential election. It’s not unusual.”

Other donors could not be reached for comment Sunday.

The emails include those that raise questions about the organization’s impartiality during the Democratic presidential primary between Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders, which cost chairwoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz her job Sunday, and show how the DNC coordinated its message with others and responded to inquiries from journalists, including those at McClatchy.

Democratic National Committee Chairwoman Debbie Waserman Schultz will no longer be given a major speaking role at the Democrats’ convention that starts Monday ion Philadephia

The emails also show several instances where Democratic staffers disagreed about which donor was more worthy of the reward.

In one exchange, National Finance Director Jordan Kaplan and Mid-Atlantic Finance Director Alexandra Shapiro argue which contributor should be allowed to sit next to Obama at a DNC event.

Kaplan told Shapiro to move Maryland ophthalmologist Sreedhar Potarazu and give the seat to New York philanthropist Philip Munger because he is the largest donor to Organizing for America, a group that pushes Obama’s policies. “It would be nice to take care of him from the DNC side,” Kaplan wrote.

But Shapiro explained that the Potarazu family had contributed $332,250 while Munger had only donated $100,600.

[Get the political buzz of the day, every day from McClatchy]

In another email, Michael Rapino, chief executive officer and president of Live Nation Entertainment, wrote that he assumed he received an invitation to the Nordic state dinner because he was not happy to be passed over the previous time.

“I know they are trying to make it up to me bc I would not donate to his party said I was done with demo party bc they should have invited me to the Canadian state dinner given I am Canadian,” he wrote to a consultant, who passed the message to the DNC.

On another occasion, the emails showed several DNC staffers busy searching for a photo from a 2015 Kennedy Center Honors reception of Obama and a donor. They couldn’t find one but the donor kept contacting them. The last email noted, “The donor just emails me again. Any news?”

Yet another email noted that Democrats were trying to connect with donor Gus Arnavat, who served in the Obama administration as the executive director for the United States on the Inter-American Development Bank and could help them meet other donors. “He is working with a group of ambassadors who want to be in Philadelphia and coordinate their own event,” DNC communications director Luis Miranda explains in an email to a convention official.

It just goes to show you their exact moral compass. I mean, they will say anything to be able to win this. I mean, this is time and time again, lie after lie Republican Donald Trump

In the hunt for dollars, the DNC was sometimes, but not always, willing to overlook potential donors with questionable backgrounds, the emails show.

The DNC approved the attendance of Roy Black, a Miami-based attorney who has represented singer Justin Bieber on a driving under the influence charge; the founder of the sexually-charged “Girls Gone Wild” video series; baseball star Alex Rodriguez in a 2013 steroid case; and conservative talk radio host Rush Limbaugh.

In a May 12, 2016, email, DNC finance assistant Karina Marquez asked the committee’s vetting operation to review Black as one of six possible hosts for an Obama event. Black was approved to host an Obama event in 2007.

Kevin Snowden, a DNC deputy compliance officer, wrote in a May 12, 2016 email that “the only issue is Roy Black. New issues have come up since his last vet in February 2016.” White House aide Bobby Schmuck agreed in a May 12 email that Black shouldn’t host the event but it would be “fine” for him to attend.

The DNC vetted George Lindemann Jr. after he was convicted of three counts of wire fraud in 1995 in connection with a federal investigation into insurance fraud and horse killing.

“Finance asked us to vet as potential POTUS host/donor,” Chadwick Rivard, senior research supervisor, compliance, for the DNC, wrote in a May 9, 2016, email to DNC staffers and Schmuck.

An email with summary research notes on Lindemann said that after serving 21 months in prison he “has attempted to rehabilitate his image with philanthropic activity” and has made “sizeable contributions to Democratic and Republican candidates, committees and PACs. A few of these contributions have been returned.”

Schmuck sent an email to Claytron Cox, a DNC regional finance director, and wrote that Lindemann, Jr., “fails for everything.”

Read more here: http://www.mcclatchydc.com/news/politics-government/election/article91623012.html#emlnl=Morning_Newsletter#storylink=cpy

Another Terror Attack in Germany, Risks in USA

Posted on July 24, 2016July 24, 2016 by Denise Simon

Al Qaeda chief urges kidnappings of Westerners for prisoner swaps

Al Qaeda chief Ayman al-Zawahiri has appeared in an audio interview calling on fighters to take Western hostages and exchange them for jailed jihadists, the monitoring service SITE Intelligence Group said on Sunday.

In recording posted online, Al-Zawahiri called on the global militant network to kidnap Westerners “until they liberate the last Muslim male prisoner and last Muslim female prisoner in the prisons of the Crusaders, apostates, and enemies of Islam,” according to SITE. More here from Reuters.

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A 21-year-old Syrian refugee was arrested on Sunday after killing a pregnant woman with a machete in Germany, the fourth violent assault on civilians in western Europe in 10 days, though police said it did not appear linked to terrorism.

The incident, however, may add to public unease surrounding Chancellor Angela Merkel’s open-door refugee policy that has seen over a million migrants enter Germany over the past year, many fleeing war in Afghanistan, Syria and Iraq.

German police said they arrested the machete-wielding Syrian asylum-seeker after he killed a woman and injured two other people in the southwestern city of Reutlingen near Stuttgart. Much more here from Newsweek.

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Related reading on NGO’s: UNHCR – Partnership in Resettlement

So what about the real vetting process in the United States you ask…..it is a great question.

After the Paris attacks, the White House called in 34 governors to discuss the policy and vetting process of refugees into the United States. While we focus on ‘Syrian’ refugees, they hardly make up the majority and it is this fact that must be noted. Even so, the White House, 3 days later published a chart of the vetting program and it does have some gaps (questions) that too must be answered.

‎Refugees undergo more rigorous screening than anyone else we allow into the United States. Here’s what the screening process looks like for them:

The full text is found here from the White House.

The admission of refugees to the United States and their resettlement here are authorized by the Immigration and Nationality Act (INA), as amended by the Refugee Act of 1980. The INA defines a refugee as a person who is outside his or her country and who is unable or unwilling to return because of persecution or a well-founded fear of persecution on account of race, religion, nationality, membership in a particular social group, or political opinion. In special circumstances, a refugee also may be a person who is within his or her country and who is persecuted or has a well-founded fear of persecution on account of race, religion, nationality, membership in a particular social group, or political opinion. The maximum annual number of refugee admissions (refugee ceiling) and the allocation of these numbers by region of the world are set by the President after consultation by Cabinet-level representatives with members of the House and the Senate Judiciary Committees.

The Department of State’s (DOS’s) Bureau of Population, Refugees, and Migration (PRM) is responsible for coordinating and managing the U.S. Refugee Admissions Program. Prospective refugees can be referred to the U.S. program by the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), a U.S. embassy, or a designated nongovernmental organization (NGO), or in some cases, they can access the U.S. refugee program directly. PRM generally arranges for an NGO, an international organization, or U.S. embassy contractors to manage a Resettlement Support Center (RSC) that assists in refugee processing.

Following the consultations, the President issues a Presidential Determination that sets the refugee ceiling and regional allocations for that fiscal year. Once the Presidential Determination for a fiscal year has been issued, INA Section 207 also allows for additional refugee admissions in response to an “emergency refugee situation.” In such a situation, the President may, after congressional consultation, issue an Emergency Presidential Determination providing for an increase in refugee admissions numbers.

For FY2016, the Obama Administration initially proposed a refugee ceiling of 75,000 and held consultations with Congress on that proposal. The proposal reportedly included an allocation of 33,000 for the Near East/South Asia, the region that includes Syria.5 The Administration subsequently announced that the United States would admit at least 10,000 Syrian refugees in FY2016. On September 29, 2015, the Obama Administration released the Presidential Determination on Refugee Admissions for Fiscal Year 2016.6 It sets the FY2016 refugee ceiling at 85,000, with 79,000 admissions numbers allocated among the regions of the world and 6,000 admissions numbers comprising an unallocated reserve.7 The allocation for the Near East/South Asia region is 34,000.

Actual Admissions

In FY2015, the United States admitted 69,933 refugees. The Near East/South Asia region accounted for 24,579 admissions, of which 1,682 were Syrian refugees. In the first month of FY2016 (October 2015), total refugee admissions were 5,348, Near East/South Asia region admissions were 1,979, and Syrian admissions were 187. From October 1, 2010, through October 31, 2015, the United States admitted a total of 2,070 Syrian refugees.

Role of the Department of Homeland Security

USCIS adjudicates refugee applications and makes decisions about eligibility for refugee status. USCIS officers in the Refugee Corps interview each applicant in person and consider other evidence and information to determine whether the individual is eligible for refugee status. More comprehensive reading here.

Trump’s 1st Day to Day 100 as President

Posted on July 20, 2016July 20, 2016 by Denise Simon

Some of this is impossible to disagree with considering there is so much to repair and restore. The question becomes just what are the priorities to this possible new administration and has the full mission been fully explained and published? There is argument that many Obama Executive Orders should in fact be terminated or amended immediately yet, there is no indication of this occurring as noted below.

So let’s begin with this former Goldman Sachs fella shall we?

A must read: Drudge and Breitbart Wont Tell You this on Trump

Report: Trump wants ex-Goldman Sachs partner to head Treasury

TheHill: Donald Trump is reportedly planning to nominate Steve Mnuchin, his campaign’s finance chairman, for Treasury secretary if he wins the White House in November. Anthony Scaramucci, a major fundraiser for the Trump campaign, told Fortune on Tuesday that the presumptive GOP nominee announced his intentions to a group of prospective donors. Trump tapped Mnuchin in early May to lead the campaign’s fundraising operation. The move raised eyebrows among Republican donors and fundraising operatives, many of whom had never heard of him.

Gingrich pushing Trump to issue hundreds of executive orders on first day

TheHill: CLEVELAND — Newt Gingrich, who is expected to serve as a senior policy adviser in Donald Trump’s administration if the GOP presidential nominee is elected, says he would urge a newly elected President Trump to sign as many as 300 executive orders on his first day in office.
Gingrich, who, while serving as Speaker of the House in the 1990s, struck deals with former President Bill Clinton to reform welfare and balance the budget, says Trump will have to build excitement in Congress to break the legislative gridlock that has defined most of President Obama’s administration.
“You’ve got an extraordinary opening day, where you sign [200] or 300 executive orders,” Gingrich told a gathering at The Union Club Tuesday evening.

Gingrich said one thing Trump might do right off the bat is move the U.S. Embassy in Israel from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, something Trump pledged to do earlier this year. The move would please many pro-Israeli Jewish voters and Christians, who want Jerusalem to serve as the country’s undivided capital.

Gingrich also highlighted an executive order authorizing construction of the Keystone XL pipeline as another item on the first-day agenda.

“You have a whole bunch of stuff you can do on day one that gives you a sense of excitement,” he said at the event in downtown Cleveland hosted by the law firm Dentons.

Executive orders from Trump could do much to undo actions taken by President Obama, who has relied on executive orders extensively to move forward with his agenda.

Gingrich said Trump should start preparing for his first hundred days as soon as September by meeting with Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) and Speaker Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) to pick five or six legislative items to pass in the first four months of 2017.
“In September, early October, you try to find with McConnell and Paul Ryan five or 10 big things,” he said.

Gingrich thinks Trump should unveil a list of policy proposals similar to the Contract with America, which Gingrich famously designed in 1994, to give voters a rationale for giving Republicans control of the House after 40 years of Democratic rule.

“Sometime in the next 60 days, they need to outline just a handful of big things, and they need to accomplish them by April 30th, which is the hundred days, and that will build a momentum of achievement,” he said.

But Gingrich acknowledged it will be important to bring Democrats on board. Otherwise, Trump’s legislative agenda is likely to get hung up by filibusters in the Senate and other obstructionist tactics.

“They ought to get as many Democrats as they can,” he said.

Gingrich and Trump sat down for a two-and-a-half-hour meeting recently in Indianapolis, where they discussed the possibility of Gingrich serving as Trump’s running mate.

When it became apparent that Gingrich would likely not get the nod, Trump asked him what role he would like to serve in the administration. Gingrich asked to be given a special position akin to a tsar in charge of reviewing the federal bureaucracy.

“He said, ‘Look, if you don’t get the vice presidency, what do you want?’ ” Gingrich recounted. “I said I want to be the senior planner for the entire federal government, and I want a letter from you that says Newt Gingrich is authorized to go to any program in any department, examine it and report directly to the president.”

He said he wanted to serve in the job without pay to have “absolute ability to say what I think.”

But Gingrich, who was one of the most divisive figure in politics when he served as Speaker — played a central role in the 1995-96 government shutdown and oversaw impeachment proceedings against Clinton — acknowledged that soliciting Democratic cooperation will be essential.

He said Trump is well suited to strike bipartisan deals because of his professional experience working with Democratic politicians in New York and other cities on major real estate projects.

Gingrich said that, if elected, Trump should use his deal-making skills to put together a massive infrastructure bill that would be paid for with royalties from opening federal lands to oil and gas drilling, mining, and other development.
He said giving energy and mining companies access to federal lands could generate up to $1 trillion for infrastructure projects.

Haley Barbour, a longtime party strategist who served as Republican National Committee chairman in 1994, when Republicans took over the House, said it would be a good idea for Trump to come up with something similar to the Contract with America.
“I think it is very helpful to Trump politically to talk about serious, substantive policy,” he said. “One of the issues is a lot of Republicans and independents are not sure what he’s really for. So lay it out.

“It would give a lot of Republicans who are not certain some comfort,” he added. “Talk about economics, budget, debt, crime.”

Barbour, who voted for Ohio Gov. John Kasich in the presidential primary, is attending his 11th Republican National Convention.

Going towards day 100:

IF DONALD TRUMP WAS PRESIDENT The world v the Donald

HIS presidency is only 100 days old, yet already some are wondering if Donald Trump will ever again match the approval ratings he enjoyed one week after inauguration day. His “Made in America” summit, held in a blizzard-lashed White House on January 27th, delighted the public, according to opinion polls, even as it reminded the president’s critics of an event more suited to Vladimir Putin’s Russia. Mr Trump dressed down two dozen corporate chieftains on live television as “dishonest and greedy” and demanded that they promise, on the spot, to close or scrap named manufacturing plants in China within his first term and bring production back to America. The newspapers the next day carried images of Tim Cook, the head of Apple, and Dennis Muilenburg, the boss of Boeing, shivering in the North Portico as they waited, coatless, to be picked up by their drivers after declining to make such a promise, prompting their summary expulsion from the building.

Supporters also cheered Mr Trump’s appointment in his first week of Joe Arpaio, the hardline sheriff of Maricopa County, Arizona, to chair a presidential task force on building a fortified border with Mexico within three years, named “Make America Safe Again”. There was a more muted response to a third announcement: that the new president’s first overseas visit would be to Moscow, for a meeting with Mr Putin to explore common ground in the fight against Islamist terrorism.

True, Mr Trump promised he would strike “only the toughest deals, the smartest deals, or I walk from the table”. But his quick offer to meet the Russian president reminded many Americans, uncomfortably, of the murky espionage scandal that played so large a role in the defeat of Hillary Clinton. In October top-secret files had appeared on the internet, allegedly extracted by hackers from Mrs Clinton’s private e-mail server when she was secretary of state, identifying individuals as American intelligence assets in Russia and Ukraine; one, an Israeli-Russian businessman, was soon afterwards found dead at a Geneva hotel. Mrs Clinton continues to deny any knowledge of the leaked documents. Her husband, ex-President Bill Clinton, sparked fresh headlines with an intemperate interview in March in which he charged that “Kremlin dirty tricks” helped to swing the 2016 election.

One hundred days into the Trump era, that Moscow trip remains on hold. Like much else it has been delayed by diplomatic, military and commercial moves by China, Mexico and Russia that a dissident Republican, Senator Lindsay Graham of South Carolina, has called a “pre-emptive strike by the rest of the world” against Mr Trump’s “America First” agenda.

No date has been set for Mr Trump’s emergency trip to Beijing, announced by him on Twitter several weeks ago but now deemed “just a suggestion” by the White House spokesman, Sean Hannity. There has been no suggestion of a summit with the leader who has most gleefully cast himself as the anti-Trump, President Enrique Peña Nieto of Mexico.

Relations with Russia trouble the Washington national-security establishment the most. The president faces growing questions about the mysterious disappearance of a helicopter carrying Estonian troops over the Baltic Sea on March 1st, amid claims that the aircraft may have been shot down by a Russian warship. Mr Trump is being pressed over reports that he told the Estonian president in a telephone call that his small Baltic republic, a member of NATO, needs to “get smart and shut up”, because America’s national interest lies in co-operating with Russia in Syria, not with defending European allies. Declining to address those reports, Mr Trump used a rambling White House press conference to complain about the media, about official leaks and about disloyalty at the Pentagon, where, he said, “there are a lot of generals who need firing, believe me.”

On the economic front moves by Chinese authorities against American companies have panicked investors. The first firm to be hit was Boeing, days after a speech by Mr Trump calling it “just disgusting” that the aerospace giant is planning to open a new facility in China. Chinese state media gave prominent coverage to a speech by an aviation regulator warning that planned sales of hundreds of aircraft to Chinese airlines might need to be reviewed if “certain entities are not the reliable long-term suppliers that they claim to be.”

Soon afterwards the China headquarters of Apple, a computer firm, and Pfizer, a drugs company, were raided by antitrust investigators from the State Administration for Industry and Commerce; both firms say they are in full compliance with competition laws. In early March the Ministry of Environmental Protection announced that the most popular models sold by General Motors and Ford in China will face new tests of their exhaust emissions. Brushing aside assurances from American car executives that their emissions comply with all Chinese laws, the ministry added that Chinese consumers might care to wait for tests to be completed before choosing an American vehicle. More poetically, a recent editorial in the state-run Global Times talked of China being willing to take “resolute actions” against “an arrogant foreign leader who prattles like a monk about honesty while hiding a stolen goose in his sleeve”. Read more here as Mexico is next up as summarized by The Economist.

Venezuela, Chaos in our Hemisphere, Inflation Skyrockets

Posted on July 12, 2016July 12, 2016 by Denise Simon

Venezuelans flee to Mexico to escape economic crisis

Kimberly-Clark: Venezuela seizes and re-opens US-owned factory

BBC: The government of Venezuela has said it has seized a factory owned by the US firm Kimberly-Clark.

The firm had said it was halting operations in Venezuela as it was unable to obtain raw materials.

But the labour minister said on Monday that the factory closure was illegal and it had re-opened “in the hands of the workers”.

Kimberly-Clark, which makes hygiene products including tissues and nappies, said it had acted appropriately.

Over the weekend it became the latest multinational to close or scale back operations in the country, citing strict currency controls, a lack of raw materials and soaring inflation.

Reuters: No to the closure” read graffiti on the firm’s gates over the weekend

General Mills, Procter & Gamble and other corporations have reduced operations in Venezuela as the country is gripped by economic crisis and widespread shortages of basic household goods.

What has gone wrong in Venezuela?

Labour Minister Oswaldo Vera, from the ruling Socialist Party (PSUV), visited the factory in Maracay and said it was illegal.

Almost 1,000 workers had asked him to re-start production, he said.

Mr Vera said: “Kimberly-Clark will continue producing, now in the hands of the workers.

“We’ve just turned on the first engine.”

The Texas-based company said in a statement: “If the Venezuelan government takes control of Kimberly-Clark facilities and operations, it will be responsible for the well-being of the workers and the physical asset, equipment and machinery in the facilities going forward.”

In just 12 hours, more than 35K Venezuelans cross Colombian border to buy food, medicine

FoxNewsLatino – Cucuta – In just 12 hours, more than 35,000 Venezuelans crossed the border into Colombia on Sunday to buy food and medicines in the city of Cucuta, when the Venezuelan government agreed to opened border crossings for one day only.

People began crossing the Simon Bolivar international bridge at 5:00 a.m. to purchase products that are scarce in Venezuela.

“We’re from here in San Antonio (and), honestly, we don’t have any food to give our children, so I don’t think it’s fair that the border is still closed,” a Venezuelan woman told EFE in Cucuta.

The woman, who preferred to not give her name, crossed the international bridge with her husband and children ages 5 and 2.

The border crossings between Tachira state and Norte de Santander province were closed on Aug. 19, 2015, by Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro, who said he took the measure to fight smuggling and prevent members of paramilitary groups from entering Venezuela.

Maduro later ordered all crossings along the 1,378-mile border closed.

Tachira Gov. Jose Gregorio Vielma Mora said Saturday that the border would be opened on Maduro’s orders.

After the announcement, hundreds of Venezuelans began lining up to cross the Simon Bolivar international bridge.

“A second entry by Venezuelans into Colombia was planned by the Venezuelan right, with the pretext of buying food and medicines,” Vielma Mora said.

The governor was apparently referring to an incident last Tuesday, when about 500 Venezuelans from the city of Ureña crossed the closed Francisco de Paula Santander international bridge and went into Cucuta to buy food.

Norte de Santander Gov. William Villamizar, for his part, said in a Twitter post after visiting the border crossings that the humanitarian corridor “has benefited 25,000 people” who were able to buy “food and medicines.”

Villamizar spoke with some of the people streaming across the border and posed for photos with a family carrying a poster that read, “Colombia, gracias por su solidaridad con Venezuela” (Colombia, Thanks for Your Solidarity with Venezuela).

“This is super nice on Colombia’s part, very good,” Rosalba Jaimes, a San Antonio resident, told EFE.

Betty Rojas, a Venezuelan already heading home, said she and others planned to cross whenever the border was open.

“We bought rice, pasta, sugar, toilet paper, butter, everything we could bring back. We had enough for lots of stuff,” Rojas told EFE, adding that she wanted to tell the Colombian government “thank you.”

Cucuta police chief Col. Jaime Barrera said officers would “guarantee security in Cucuta’s business districts for the thousands of people coming from Venezuela.

Officers have been posted at the border crossings and at businesses across the border city, the provincial police chief said.

Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos and Foreign Minister Maria Angela Holguin visited Cucuta on Wednesday.

The president said he would try to negotiate with Maduro in an effort to reopen the border crossings.

Venezuela: Decree Grants New Powers To President, Defense Minister

Stratfor: Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro issued a presidential decree July 11 granting new, sweeping powers to himself and Defense Minister Vladimir Padrino Lopez, Sumarium reported. Maduro said the decree establishes a new program that concentrates economic and political power at the very top of government, which will enable the country to correct its economic woes and get production back on track. Moreover, all government institutions and ministries in the country will now fall under the direct control of the president and the defense minister. The president said that he will provide more information about the decree, which effectively makes Padrino Lopez a second head of state in Venezuela, within the coming days.