Category Archives: Insurgency

Obama Allowing Yemen Leaders to Betray Strategy

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It was in March of 2015 conditions in Yemen exploded at the orders of Iran to deploy the Houthi against Saudi Arabia.

In 2010 the Obama administration used Yemen as the core operational hub for killer drones against militant terror cells and for the policy of his counter-terrorism campaign. This was all authorized by Obama’s signature known as ‘presidential findings’. Yemen is actually the birthplace of Osama bin Ladin’s father and is also known as the location of the death of Anwar Awlaki and the concocted bombing operation of the Detroit bound airline.

What is forgotten is the CIA operated a drone base there and an air base while Yemen’s president, Abdu Rabu Mansour appeared to participate in the betrayal of stopping America’s war on terrorism with regard to al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula. The hostilities began in such swift order that evacuations were immediate and by any means possible. The United States was forced to leave behind $500 million in military assets and gear much less the CIA’s entire intelligence platform was stolen and in the hands of the enemy.

But actually it is worse, simply put, the United States was thrown out.

From Defense-Aerospace: China is about to take over a military base from the United States in the small East African nation of Djibouti, according to the website of China’s nationalistic tabloid the Global Times.

Djibouti reportedly ordered the US to vacate the Obock military base so that it can be turned over the People’s Liberation Army. According to US-based magazine CounterPunch, the announcement was made in May, a day after US secretary of state John Kerry visited the country.

The move is said to be “deeply worrying” for Washington as it comes amid a wave of Chinese investment in Djibouti that includes a US$3 billion rail project to connect the country with the capital of neighboring Ethiopia, Addis Ababa, and US$400 million in investments to modernize the country’s undersized port.

The deals have had Djibouti’s president Ismail Omar Guelleh “openly talking about the importance of his new friends from Asia,” the CounterPunch article said.

Djibouti is currently home to Camp Lemmonnier, the largest permanent US military installation in Africa, which houses 4,000 troops and a fleet of drones. The US Defense Department pays Djibouti nearly US$63 million per year for use of the base.

Though the US is losing only a secondary military installation in Obock, Washington is likely more concerned with what the base will provide China, which is strategic positioning in the Horn of Africa at a key entry point from the Indian Ocean to the Red Sea and a gateway to the Suez Canal.

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Today hostilities continue in Yemen and there is some interesting cooperation in the region with Saudi Arabia. It appears the Obama administration has approved playing both sides of the battlefield.

From USNews in part: The U.S. knows the Saudi government has employed cluster bombs in its ongoing war against Shiite Muslim rebels in neighboring Yemen, but has done little if anything to stop the use of the indiscriminate and deadly weapons during what has become a human rights catastrophe in one of the Arab world’s poorest countries.

With watchdog groups warning of war crimes and attacks striking civilians in Yemen, the Pentagon declined to comment publicly on whether it has discussed cluster bombs with Saudi Arabia or encouraged its military to cease using them, deferring all such questions to the State Department. But a Pentagon official, speaking on the condition of anonymity, tells U.S. News “the U.S. is aware that Saudi Arabia has used cluster munitions in Yemen.”

Deferrals by the Pentagon on the topic are nothing new, though the use of the weapons by the Saudis – some of which were reportedly supplied by the U.S. – appears to be only a recent tactic. Former spokesman Army Col. Steve Warren told reporters in May the Defense Department was looking into claims the Saudis were using cluster munitions and called on all sides to “comply with international humanitarian law, including the obligation to take all feasible measures to minimize harm to civilians.” Warren’s successor, Navy Capt. Jeff Davis, was asked about similar reports in July and did not at that time have any new information.

Multiple groups are fighting in Yemen, but the heart of the conflict lies between forces loyal to U.S.- and Saudi-backed President Abed Rabbo Mansour Hadi, who fled from Yemen to Saudi Arabia earlier this year. They’re fighting against Shiite Houthi rebels aligned with, if not directly backed by, chief Saudi rival Iran. Deposed Yemeni President Ali Abdullah Saleh has also re-emerged and allied himself with the Houthis.

The U.S. supports the Saudi-led coalition of Arab nations battling the Houthis with an operations center in Saudi Arabia and another in Bahrain. Through them, the American military provides intelligence and logistics support as well as air tankers to help refuel the coalition’s jets.

That assistance, however, doesn’t grant the U.S. much sway over the way Saudi Arabia is waging its war.

“This is quite new for Saudi Arabia to be so assertive in their foreign policy and the use of their military, which is precisely why the Pentagon is bending over backward [for them],” says Charles Schmitz, a Towson University professor and expert on Yemen. “They want to reassure the Saudis that the U.S. is still on their side, so they’re letting them do whatever they want.”

Clashes have taken place throughout Yemen, but have been focused on recent weeks in and around the key port city of Aden, where Saudi-led forces established a beachhead against the Houthi stronghold earlier this month and have slowly expanded outward.

The conflict has grown increasingly deadly, and the deployment of cluster bombs has only added to the carnage. Almost 4,000 people have been killed, with 19,000 injured and more than a million displaced from their homes, according to accountings by the Red Cross and other organizations.

The U.S. and Saudi Arabia are among 80 countries that have not signed The Convention on Cluster Munitions, a treaty banning the use of such weapons, according to the Cluster Munition Coalition. The Defense Department also has deemed the bombs “legitimate weapons with clear military utility.”

Indeed, from a pure military perspective, a cluster bomb is ideal. The ordnance – which breaks apart in flight to disperse multiple, smaller explosives – is an excellent “area denial weapon” in military-speak, with its ability to cause massive destruction over wide swathes of territory while using relatively few military personnel. In Yemen, a largely arid country that shares a long border with Saudi Arabia, such weapons can be used to great effect.

But cluster bombs are also very difficult to control and extraordinarily dangerous to noncombatants. The explosives disperse more widely than precision-guided weapons and may not detonate on impact, making them potentially deadly long after combatants have left a battlefield.

“These weapons should never be used under any circumstances,” Human Rights Watch arms director Steve Goose said in May, when his organization released a report alleging the use of cluster bombs in Yemen. “Saudi Arabia and other coalition members – and the supplier, the U.S. – are flouting the global standard that rejects cluster munitions because of their long-term threat to civilians.”

However, since the U.S. is not leading the current war in Yemen – and since it hasn’t sworn off such weapons itself – it is no position morally or militarily to dictate the actions of a partner like Saudi Arabia.

“Actual U.S. strategy in the Middle East right now is to try and get allies and proxies to take the lead on actual fighting, a variant of the ‘lead from behind’ approach [taken] in Libya,” says Chris Harmer, a 20-year Navy officer now with the Institute for the Study of War. “It is simply not possible for the U.S. to tell allies and proxies who are doing the fighting what weapons to use. If the U.S. wants to minimize the use of cluster munitions against terrorist-affiliated groups such as the Houthis in Yemen, then the U.S. needs to take the lead in the fight.

“Absent a willingness to do so, the U.S. has no standing to tell its allies how to conduct the fight.”

Like most in the Middle East, the Saudi military has dedicated itself largely to internal security, not external operations. That has changed during the tenure of President Barack Obama, who has encouraged allies in the region – the beneficiaries of expensive U.S.-developed military equipment – to fight neighborhood wars for themselves instead of expecting American intervention.

One of the main exceptions aside from Yemen was when Saudi Arabia quietly launched a ground campaign into neighboring Bahrain during the 2011 Arab Spring uprisings in an effort to rescue the ruling government’s fellow Sunni Muslims from bubbling discontent among the Shiite majority there. Saudi-backed government forces were accused of heavy-handedness, though those reports were largely drowned out by larger uprisings elsewhere at the time. Many believe the harsh response was meant also to send a signal to Iran, believed to have been involved in stirring the uprising in Bahrain.

In Yemen, reports from the ground indicate the violence has reached new heights in recent weeks, following the collapse of a humanitarian cease-fire in late July after less than a day.

Defund UNRWA and Terminate it Over Fraud

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The Best Way to Fix UNRWA’s Budget Crisis

Algemeiner: Out of UNRWA’s $100 million deficit that threatens to delay the school year, $28 million comes from Jordan.

That covers the costs for 120,000 students in 175 schools taught by 5,500 teachers throughout Jordan for four months.

This means that the annual budget for educating Jordan’s students of Palestinian origin is $70 million.

Nearly every one of these students is already a Jordanian citizen.

Jordan says that it cannot afford to educate these students, relying instead on UNRWA, even though this means that the kingdom has two separate school systems with two separate bureaucracies, two separate transportation systems, two separate administrations.

So why not just redirect the money earmarked for UNRWA to Jordanian schools directly?

Western nations should be happy to get rid of Jordanian apartheid where Palestinians are treated as second-class citizens. They can and should be mainstreamed into Jordanian society, something that should have happened decades ago.

By no definition can they be considered “refugees.” So why continue to treat them that way?

A five or seven year program to fund Jordan’s existing education (and medical) system to accommodate Palestinians, and phase out the current apartheid system for to million so-called “refugees,” is something that everyone who cares about equal rights should support.

And Canada could be in the forefront to kickstart such a program.

In 2007, Canada gave $32 million to UNRWA. As it soon realized that UNRWA is not aligned with Canadian values, the nation dropped its support to zero, redirecting some of it to various specific PA projects.

UNRWA is at a crossroads. It cannot continue to fund fund its ever-growing “refugee” population without a plan to reduce the number of people on its rolls, as it was originally intended to do. There is no rational reason for Jordanian citizens who happen to have Palestinian ancestry to be considered “refugees.” The only reason UNRWA exists in Jordan is as a crutch to help Jordan’s budget (besides the political reason of inflating the number of “refugees” to pressure Israel forever.)

It is past time to force UNRWA to change its working definition of “refugee” to be more aligned with that of the UNHCR and to phase out aid to the fake “refugees’ who are citizens of Jordan. This budget crisis gives the world a chance to do exactly that, by using limited aid funds smartly and at the same time to eliminate two million “refugees.”

The same can be done in the West Bank and Gaza, two other places that Palestinians cannot possibly be called “refugees” by any sane definition. Since most countries recognize “Palestine” as a state, pay the PA to take responsibility for their own people – with a deadline.

The money saved can help the stateless Arabs of Palestinian origin wasting away in Lebanon and Syria, where UNRWA aid is most urgently needed until a more permanent solution is found.

Enlightened nations like Canada and Australia and the U.S. would also be happy to replace the current UNRWA dinosaur with a real plan to reduce its budget while directing funds at those who need them most.

Now is the chance to accomplish something useful before UNRWA implodes and its current welfare recipients are left with nothing but anger.

Deeper Dive on UNRWA

The U.S. Senate received lately a precedent decision regarding refugees UNRWA and the Palestinian Arabs. To understand the change one should have mentioned that UNRWA’s beginning was appropriate.  A UN relief organization for the British Mandate Arabs, most of whom fled and some were deported, due to Arab aggression seeking to destroy Israel just as it has been established. But the treatment of refugees changed direction, and instead of a caretaker, UNRWA became a reproduction, exacerbation and perpetuation plant of tremendous size.

There are two UN bodies dealing with refugees. High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) that handles all the world’s refugees, and UNRWA, which deals only with the ones that became the Palestinian Arabs (at first they did not know that they are so. They were Arabs. Separate identity developed later). The Commissioner dealt with fifty million people. They won the first aid, and they are no longer refugees. UNRWA, however, started the way with 711 thousand, and miraculously has made them into more than five million. The Commissioner rehabilitates refugees. UNRWA fosters, multiplies and perpetuates the refugee problem.

This paradox is known to anyone who has eyes in his head. It comes from many reasons. One is the strange definition of UNRWA refugee: “They were in the territory of Palestine between June 1946 and May 1948 and lost both their homes and livelihoods as a result of the Arab – Israeli conflict.” But over time their descendants also came into the frame, and strangely enough, and contrary to the definition, also those who were not needed in the first place, and even those who became wealthy later – were still considered a refugee. Thus the number of “refugees” is rising over the years in somewhat vertiginous and strange manner.

Against this background, in recent months MK Dr. Einat Wilf worked, in cooperation with AIPAC, to influence the primary source of funding for UNRWA – the United States. The result is the “Kirk Amendment,” named after the Republican senator Mark Kirk. His amendment would require the State Department to report what is the actual number of original refugees, answering to the definition that appears in the original mandate of UNRWA. It is estimated at only 30,000.

There is something sophisticated in Kirk’s amendment, because the Amendment does not demand a cut in aid or a change in the criteria. These are reporting requirements only – A report on the number of original refugees, and a report on the number of descendants. But reports on the amendment made it clear that this entails a first step towards a more fundamental change. As following the report the question will rise – why should taxpayers pay for those who are not really refugees?

In fact, these questions have been popping up. U.S. Undersecretary of State, Thomas Nides, sent a letter to the Senate Appropriations Committee, which is urging them to vote against the amendment. He claims that the issue is particularly sensitive, the U.S. should not intervene in determining the number of refugees, and that this matter should be resolved in negotiations between Israel and the Palestinian Arabs. Embassy of Jordan in Washington has put pressure against the adoption of the amendment, and Nides notes in his letter that the amendment might create “a negative reaction, especially in Jordan.”

Nides’s request was denied. The amendment passed. Meanwhile there are no strong blast waves. And it’s a shame. It’s time to blow up the bloated balloon, of ever-swelling Palestinian refugees numbers. On the day the Palestinian “refugees” will be treated similarly to the tens of millions of other refugees in the world – will be the day when the situation will begin to improve, along with prospects for peace. Because the “refugee problem,” as the Arab side stated over and over again, “is perpetuated in order to achieve the solution of the elimination of Israel.”

The treatment so far of the problem of refugees has become the biggest obstacle to peace. It’s time for a change. The U.S. Senate took a preliminary step, limited and uncertain – A step in the right direction. Hopefully, the next steps will follow.

International norms

And more points to the attention of the Congress: By official count of UNRWA, the number of refugees in Lebanon reached early last year to 425,000. However, according to a study published by the American University of Beirut, which UNRWA itself has helped finance; it is only 260 to 280 thousands. They are immigrating and fleeing from Arab countries, because they suffer from severe apartheid in the Arab world (also according to the report). So there is no connection between the number registered and funded and the number of those still there. So the United States, which is the primary contributor, should pose the obvious question: where exactly does the money go, when there is a 57% exaggeration in the number of refugees?

And yet another fraud: under the UN Refugee Convention, Article 1 (A) 2, those who received citizenship in any country, cannot be considered a refugee. And here, according to UNRWA’s official publication, Jordan has more than two million refugees, the vast majority of whom have Jordanian nationality. So you can decrease two millions in Jordan, and another 150 thousand in Lebanon and Syria is likely in a similar situation. There the number is also an inflated. Recommendation to this effect is also found in the report filed by James Lindsey. For seven years, Lindsey served as a senior UNRWA official. After his retirement, he was a research fellow in the “Washington Institute”, where he published a comprehensive study with deep reform proposals.

And the parade goes on. UNRWA has a staff of more than 29,000 people, only two hundred of whom are not Palestinians – a great mechanism that also deals with incitement through the education system held by the organization. This is the largest agency of the United Nations. Just for comparison, UNHCR, the Commission that handles all other refugees of the world, holds a much smaller team of 7,685 employees, and handles 34 million refugees.

UNRWA – has one employee per 172 patients. In UNHCR – one employee per 4,424 patients.

UNRWA per capita budget is also more than double than the UNHCR. Considering that many of those listed are already citizens of other countries, or that the lists are inflated, as in Lebanon, then it means that a Palestinian Arab “refugee” costs the international community, particularly the U.S., far more than any other refugee in the world.

The chain of absurdities and frauds must be stopped. Uniformity in definitions and norms is necessary. The anti-Israel side argues again and again that Israel should abide by international norms – Great and just demand. This is exactly what should happen, even with the refugees – the same definitions for “who is a refugee”, and the same treatment of rescuing the really needing rather than perpetuating them as “refugees.” This will be the greatest contribution of the international community to promote peace. Senator Kirk began. Hopefully he will continue.

Ben-Dror Yemini is a journalist, a researcher and a lecturer

 

 

The Argument for Terminating Passport/Visa Waiver Program

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Other countries are taking a hardline stance against immigration and those foreigners seeking refuge. Failed nations are to blame when advanced countries do little to control crime, terror insurgencies and financial tailspins. The United States is experiencing historic influxes of people seeking asylum, refuge and otherwise aliens from worldwide locations. However, the United States is not alone when it comes to failed international relations and policy but Europe is as well, where a larger debate on the matter is required.

Europe migrant crisis: Surge in numbers at EU borders

BBC: The number of migrants at the EU’s borders reached a record high of 107,500 in July, officials say, as a sharp surge in expected asylum requests was reported in Germany.

Germany has seen a wave of migration from Syria and the Balkans, and now says it could receive as many as 750,000 asylum seekers this year.

The EU has been struggling to cope with migrant arrivals in recent months.

France and the UK say they will sign a deal to tackle the crisis in Calais.

Over the summer, thousands of migrants have sought to get to the UK through the Channel Tunnel from makeshift camps around the northern French city.

 

France’s Interior Minister Bernard Cazeneuve and his British counterpart, Theresa May, say they will sign a deal there on Thursday to strengthen their countries’ co-operation on security, the fight against criminal smugglers, human traffickers, and clandestine immigration.

In early August, the UK pledged to add €10m (£7m) to a fund established in September 2014 to secure the port of Calais, and initially endowed with €15m over three years.

‘Third consecutive record’

EU border agency Frontex said the number of migrants surpassed the 100,000 mark in a single month for the first time since it had begun keeping records in 2008.

The Warsaw-based agency said in a statement that the figure of 107,500 migrants for July was the “third consecutive monthly record, jumping well past the previous high of more than 70,000 reached in June”.

The German government had earlier forecast that 450,000 asylum seekers could arrive in 2015, but is now set to increase that to 650,000 or higher.

UN High Commissioner for Refugees Antonio Guterres said more countries in Europe should share the burden.

“It is unsustainable in the long run that only two EU countries, Germany and Sweden, take in the majority of refugees,” he told German daily Die Welt.

Hungary’s southern border marks the edge of the EU’s Schengen zone of passport-free travel and is thus a target for migrants seeking to enter the EU.

Its government has said it will send thousands of police officers to its southern border with Serbia in its latest step to stem the flow of migrants. More here.

SAN DIEGO (AP) — Walking into Mexico at the nation’s busiest border crossing with the United States is no longer an uninterrupted stroll for foreigners.

Starting late Wednesday, pedestrians going to Tijuana from San Diego at the San Ysidro crossing must choose between a line for Mexicans who get waved through, and a line for foreigners who must show a passport, fill out a form and — if staying more than a week — pay 322 pesos, or roughly $20, for a six-month permit.

About a dozen foreigners stood in line Wednesday night, directed by English-speaking agents to six inspection booths where they got passports stamped. It took about 10 minutes from start to finish.

Travelers have long followed similar protocol at Mexican airports, but the new border procedure marks a big change at land crossings that weren’t designed to question everyone. Pedestrians and motorists have generally entered Mexico unencumbered along the 1,954-mile border with the United States.

“This is about putting our house in order,” said Rodulfo Figueroa, Mexico’s top immigration official in Baja California state, which includes Tijuana.

The changes, which have been in the works for years, come as Donald Trump has surged to the top of the Republican field in the U.S. presidential race. He has insisted that Mexico sends criminals to the U.S. and pledges to build a border wall at Mexico’s expense.

For Mexico, it is a step toward closing an escape route for American criminals who disappear in Mexico. Border inspectors will tap into international criminal databases. Motorists will see no change, and if lines get too long, officials will also wave pedestrians through.

More than 120 Americans expelled from Mexico this year while living in Baja California had arrest warrants in the U.S., according to Figueroa, delegate of the National Migration Institute. Some ordered to leave last year were on the FBI’s most-wanted list.

But authorities say benefits extend beyond stopping unwanted visitors. A recent hurricane stranded twice as many Americans in Cabo San Lucas than U.S. authorities thought were there, Figueroa said, and registering as a foreigner would have made it easier to identify those who needed help.

Figueroa said Mexico can initially process about 1,000 foreigners daily, up from about 50 currently.

“If the line becomes clogged up, we will just let everybody through,” Figueroa said. “If we can’t check everybody, we won’t.”

Figueroa said San Ysidro is believed to be the first U.S. land crossing to have a separate line for foreigners to show passports and that it will serve as a model for others as they are upgraded. Aurora Vega, a spokeswoman for the National Migration Institute, referred questions to other departments. Officials at the Foreign Relations Department and Mexican Embassy in Washington had no immediate comment.

About 25,000 pedestrians (and 50,000 motorists) cross daily at San Ysidro to work, shop and play but it is unclear how many are foreigners in Mexico. U.S. Customs and Border Protection says about one-third entering San Diego are U.S. citizens, one-third are U.S. legal residents and the rest are from other countries, largely Mexico. An unknown number have dual citizenship or residency in the U.S. and Mexico.

Both countries have long wrestled with logistical hurdles of stopping people going to Mexico by land. The U.S. occasionally stops motorists and pedestrians as they leave — mainly to check for guns and cash — but it doesn’t have a system to record exits like at airports, seen by many as a significant shortcoming in border security.

Previous efforts to question more foreigners entering Mexico met resistance in Tijuana, whose economy partly relies on Americans who visit restaurants, beaches, doctors and dentists. Lines to enter the United States at San Ysidro have exceeded four hours.

Roberto Arteaga, who has made tacos, shined shoes and sold tickets for private bus and van rides in Southern California during 28 years as a street vendor near the border crossing, says requiring passports and imposing a fee for longer stays sends the wrong message.

“We should be welcoming,” he said during a lull in business Tuesday. “This will hurt Tijuana’s economy.”

Other crossers said the move was overdue.

“Anything to keep the country safer is much better for everyone,” Cynthia Diaz of Oceanside, near San Diego, said as she stood in line to return to the U.S with her niece, who visited Tijuana for a root canal. “It’s safer for us on the other side too.”

The 2 Emails that Jumped the Hillary Server Investigation

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They destroyed the Blackberry Phones…what????

WashingtonTimes: The State Department destroyed the BlackBerry devices issued to two top aides of former Secretary Hillary Rodham Clinton and never issued Mrs. Clinton a device at all, officials told a federal court Wednesday in a filing that raises still more security questions.

The filing came a day before officials will have to appear in court to detail the steps they took to try to track down Mrs. Clinton’s emails, and whatever computers or other devices she may have used to send them. For sure keep reading here.

If you don’t think Trey Gowdy of the Benghazi Investigation group in Congress is not on top of things, then you need to think again. Further, it must be noted, the co-chairman of the Benghazi Commission serving with Gowdy is Elijah Cumming of Maryland and to date, he has done nothing but obstruct the investigations.

Classified emails from Clinton aides kick-started FBI probe, candidate downplays controversy

FNC:

EXCLUSIVE: An email from a top Clinton adviser containing classified military intelligence information, and one from a top aide containing classified information about the Benghazi terror attack, were the documents that kick-started the FBI investigation into the mishandling of classified information, Fox News has learned.

The emails, among thousands on Hillary Clinton’s personal server, were released to the Benghazi select committee in May and have been widely discussed but Fox News for the first time has identified which Clinton aides sent them and the subject matter.

The revelation came as the Democratic presidential candidate and former secretary of state tried to brush aside the burgeoning scandal, joking at a campaign event when asked by Fox News whether she had wiped her private server clean, “What, with like with a cloth or something? I don’t know how it works at all.”

Clinton last week handed the FBI her private server, which she used to send, receive and store emails during her four years as secretary of state.

Fox News has identified two of the Benghazi-related emails on the server that were deemed to contain classified information at the time they were sent.

The first was forwarded by Clinton adviser Huma Abedin and contained classified material from military intelligence sources. The 2011 email forwards a warning about how then-Ambassador Chris Stevens was “considering departure from Benghazi” amid deteriorating conditions in a nearby city. The email was mistakenly released by the State Department in full, and is now considered declassified.

New details raise concerns over security of Hillary’s server
The second was sent by Clinton aide Jake Sullivan and contained classified information as well as sensitive law enforcement information on Benghazi. The partly redacted November 2012 email detailed how Libyan police had arrested “several people” with potential connections to the terror attack.

Abedin and Sullivan now work for the Clinton presidential campaign. A spokeswoman for the intelligence community inspector general confirmed to Fox News that the information was classified at the time it was sent.

But Clinton campaign spokesman Brian Fallon says the information was not classified at the time the emails were sent. In maintaining this position, the campaign pointed to the fact that the State Department shared this judgment, as the Abedin email was released in full by the State Department on its FOIA website. The campaign spokesman acknowledged there is disagreement with the intelligence community inspector general.

A State Department spokesman said they shared Fallon’s stance.

The emails are now just a fraction of those under review by the intelligence community. On Tuesday, while Clinton joked about her server’s apparently missing contents, Fox News has learned the FBI is aggressively trying to recover the data.

An intelligence source familiar with the review told Fox News that FBI investigators are confident they may be able to recover some of the deleted files, a detail first reported by NBC News.

Yet at the contentious press conference on Tuesday, Clinton insisted anything she did with her email server was “legally permitted.”

In the press conference following a Las Vegas town hall meeting Tuesday, Fox News’ Ed Henry pressed the Democratic presidential candidate by pointing out that leadership is about taking responsibility.

“Look, Ed, I take responsibility,” Clinton replied. “In retrospect, this didn’t turn out to be convenient at all and I regret that this has become such a cause celebre. But that does not change the facts. The facts are stubborn — what I did was legally permitted.”

The FBI is holding Clinton’s server in protective custody after the intelligence community’s inspector general raised concerns recently that classified information had traversed the system.

Clinton told reporters she was “very comfortable that this will eventually get resolved and the American people will have plenty of time to figure it out.”

When asked whether she oversaw the process to wipe the server clean, Clinton said, “my personal emails are my personal business. Right? We went through a painstaking process and through 55,000 pages we thought could be worth relating,” she continued. “Under the law, that decision is made by the official. I was the official. I made those decisions.”

As she departed the room, a reporter asked whether the email scandal will ever end, Clinton turned to reporters shrugged and said, “Nobody talks to me about it other than you guys.”

Fox News’ Ed Henry and The Associated Press contributed to this report.

*** There is a history of Obama giving a pass to those in his administration when it comes to violating law and controlling classified material. There are some names missing in the story below such as Thomas Drake at the NSA but, you are encouraged to read the summary here and consider if the Obama White House will in the end give Hillary ‘executive privilege’ much as he did with Eric Holder over Fast and Furious. My vote is yes.

 

 

Cocaine/Narcotic Trafficking Routes into the United States

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‘El Chapo’ Guzmán’s key role in the global cocaine trade is becoming clearer

BusinessInsider: Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzmán’s Sinaloa cartel in Mexico is the largest drug-trafficking organization in the world, and its deep ties to Colombia are becoming more apparent.

According to a recent report from from Colombian newspaper El Tiempo, Sinaloa controls 35% of the cocaine exported from Colombia — the largest producer of the drug in the world. These drugs are coming into the US and effecting work-working Americans lives. Police are doing hardly anything to stop the drug cartle either and are making false arrests everywhere. If you have been accused of drug trafficking then you may want to contaxt someone like these philadelphia criminal lawyers to see if you can get legal assistance.

Sinaloa

Stratfor A look at Sinaloa’s operations in Mexico.

Now that El Chapo has escaped from a Mexican prison, Colombian generals who worked to bring down the notorious Colombian drug lord Pablo Escobar are reportedly hunting down the notorious Sinaloa cartel leader, too.

Born in the mountains of Sinaloa state on Mexico’s west coast, El Chapo’s cartel has expanded throughout the country and around the world over the last several decades.

According to Spanish newspaper El País, the cartel’s marijuana and poppy fields in Mexico cover more than 23,000 miles of land, an area larger than Costa Rica. It has operatives in at least 17 Mexican states and operations in up to 50 countries, Insight Crime reports.

A look at Sinaloa’s operations in Mexico.

In addition to its reported involvement in the heroin trade in the Middle East, it is active in Europe and in the US, where, according to the DEA in 2013, it “supplies 80% of the heroin, cocaine, marijuana and methamphetamine — with a street value of $3 billion — that floods the Chicago region each year.”

The cartel is adept at sneaking the drug across borders and into the US. Cocaine has been found smuggled in frozen sharks, sprinkled on donuts, and crammed into cucumbers. The cartel is perhaps best known for the hundreds of elaborate smuggling tunnels it has built (the most recent allowing its boss to escape prison).

cartel drug mapBusiness Insider/Andy KierszA look at how drugs from Sinaloa have passed through the US.

Sinaloa’s second-in-command, Ismael “El Mayo” Zambada, reportedly directs the cartel’s Colombian business dealings through two Mexicans based in the country, “Jairo Ortiz” and “Montiel” — both aliases.

‘Lacoste,’ ‘Apple,’ and ‘Made in Colombia’

Documents from police and security forces seen by El Tiempo indicate the Sinaloa cartel works closely with criminal groups and guerrilla forces to run a trafficking network that exports more than one-third of the cocaine produced in Colombia.

Through an unidentified businessman, the Sinaloa cartel works with the criminal organization Los Urabeños, which was formed by remnants of right-wing paramilitaries in the mid-2000s, according to Colombia Reports.

This unidentified businessman works with Los Urabeños, its leader Dario Antonio Úsuga, and the cartel to coordinate shipments of drug cargos, labeled “Lacoste,” “Apple,” and “Made in Colombia,” to destinations in Europe and Asia, according to El Tiempo.

Los Urabeños, aka Clan Úsuga, is regarded as the most powerful of Colombia’s remaining criminal organizations and as the only one with a truly national reach.

Many of the Pacific and Caribbean smuggling routes are controlled by Los Urabeños, and its influence is so extensive that, over the last 18 months, 600 Colombian officials have been jailed for supporting the group.

The Sinaloa cartel has also formed an alliance with the left-wing guerrillas of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (Farc).

The Farc began peace negotiations with the government in late 2012 and agreed to suspend drug trafficking as a part of the talks. Sinaloa then began franchising drug operations from Farc rebels, allowing the cartel to expand its reach into the production stages of the cocaine trade.

The Mexican cartel reportedly works with two Farc leaders in southern Colombia and pays as much as $40,000 per shipment for cocaine that leaves the Pacific coast departments of Nariño and Cauca.

The Sinaloa cartel also works with “La Empresa,” a criminal group based in the Pacific port city of Buenaventura, to direct shipments. La Empresa has, according to Colombia Reports, allied with Colombian criminal group “Los Rastrojos” (with whom the Sinaloa cartel has also aligned) to fight off the Pacific coast expansion of Los Urabeños.

(La Empresa, El Tiempo notes, has been linked to the “casas de pique” — buildings in outlying areas of Buenaventura used to torture and dismember rival gang members.)

The Sinaloa cartel has also provided weapons and financing to the Oficina de Envigado, a Medellin-based crime syndicate that assumed much of Pablo Escobar’s operations after his death in 1993.

Sinaloa “retained the services of ‘La Oficina’ to support drug trafficking around the world,” the US Treasury Department has said.

According to El Tiempo, “the FARC, ‘los Úsuga,’ and ‘la Empresa’ are keys in Sinaloa’s strategy to control eight ports on the Pacific, from Mexico to Peru.”

“In Colombia, [the Sinaloa cartel] already directs 50% of the drugs that leave from [the ports of] Tumaco, Buenaventura, and el Urabá, which form a network with ports in Peru (El Callao and Talara), Ecuador (Esmeraldas and San Lorenzo) and Guatemala,” according to intelligence documents seen by El Tiempo.

Drugs are shipped by fastboat from Colombia, primarily to Guatemala’s Puerto Quetzal, which handles almost all of the cocaine coming out of Colombia.

A kilo of cocaine that reaches Guatemala is worth $10,000, according to El Tiempo. The price hovers around $12,000 to $15,000 at the US border, and a kilo can sell in the low six figures once it reaches the US.

‘A possible refuge’

The panoply of ties that the Sinaloa cartel has built throughout the Western Hemisphere lead many to believe El Chapo, the fugitive Sinaloa boss, could seek “a possible refuge” in Colombia.

In fact, on July 19, just eight days after El Chapo rode to freedom on a motorcycle through a mile-long, air-conditioned underground tunnel in central Mexico, El Tiempo reported that officials from the DEA and FBI had requested “all available information on the movements, personnel, and contacts of the Sinaloa cartel in the country.”

In the six months prior to El Chapo’s escape, the Mexican army captured nearly 2,800 kilos of cocaine — a 340% increase over the same period in 2014. The increase in seizures comes despite UN reports indicating that drug cultivation and trading in Colombia had stabilized.

The hunt for El Chapo has also drawn in several officials from the very country to which he may be headed. In late July, El Tiempo reported that three retired Colombian generals and six active police officials were headed north to assist with the search.

The Colombian generals — two former heads of the national police and the former chief of the now disbanded secret police — were selected because of their roles in similar mission: The effort to bring down the Cali cartel and Pablo Escobar’s Medellin cartel — two of the Colombian drug-trafficking organizations that ran roughshod over Colombian society in 1980s and 1990s.

The generals, who a Colombian police source called the “most effective three musketeers the country has against the narcos,” left Mexico in early August.

But, according to Michael Lohmuller at Insight Crime, whatever advice they left behind may not be enough to bring down Sinaloa’s drug boss.

The 22 years since the controversial killing of Escobar have seen marked advancements in the operations, sophistication, and evasiveness of drug cartels.

Moreover, modern-day Colombian police have failed to catch their country’s own most wanted kingpin: Dario Antonio Úsuga — the head of Los Urabeños and El Chapo’s ally.

Narcotic trafficking documentary