Category Archives: Trump Administration

Not All of Central America is Desperate, but Is

Posted on by

Belize and Costa Rica are thriving. Tourism for Belize is the top economic earner, then comes sugar and citrus production. The country enjoys an estimated annual growth of 2.5%. Costa Rica also has a strong economy with almost 4% annual growth and both countries have foreign investors.

So when it comes to El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras, they are among the poorest countries in the region. Seems those countries maintain an 85% poverty rate. The SOUTHCOM  Commander, Navy Admiral Craig Faller was in the region in January for a week visit to the three countries discussing security cooperation with emphasis on training, counter-drug missions and humanitarian operations. The United States maintains flight operations that track, detect and monitor all vehicles and crafts for illicit drug trafficking.

USAID has these cockamamie work plans in the region that promotes prosperity. That includes securing borders, increasing economic and business opportunities and stopping corruption. How is that working out? Just skim this document for context.

USAID gives $181 million to Honduras annually. Guatemala receives $257 million while El Salvador accepts $118 million. But hold on that is not all. We also have this other U. S. organization called Millennium Challenge. This is yet another cockamamie operation designed to partner with countries worldwide to promote growth and lift people out of poverty while investing in future generations through education.

Under the Hillary Clinton and John Kerry State Departments, Millennium Challenge has these workshops. Read more here.

Meanwhile, people are still bailing out of Central America in these caravans and the plight of Central America is now a plight for the United States coming through our Southern border.

So, check out how the caravans are using social media and encrypted communications to mobilize.

***

How does a Central American migrant caravan form?

By MARIA VERZA and MARCOS ALEMANtoday
In this Oct. 28, 2018 file photo, migrants charge their cell phones as a caravan of Central Americans trying to reach the U.S. border halts for a rest day in San Pedro Tapanatepec, Oaxaca state, Mexico. Hundreds of Central Americans are now getting as many details as possible before leaving north towards the U.S. border. Increasingly they’re organized over Facebook and WhatsApp as they try to join together in large groups they hope will make the trip safer, and without having to hide themselves from authorities. (AP Photo/Rebecca Blackwell, File)

SAN SALVADOR, El Salvador (AP) — “When does the next caravan leave?” ″Can I go? I’m from Guatemala.” ″What papers do I need for my kids?”

The questions pile up on the phones of hundreds of Central Americans, all with the same goal: Get as many details as possible before leaving their country.

Costly phone calls with relatives and friends in the United States to work out the route or find the best smuggler are a thing of the past for many Central Americans. Now would-be migrants create chat groups and organize using social media to leave in caravans.

“The social networks have had an empowering role in this new way of migrating,” said Abbdel Camargo, an anthropologist at the College of the Southern Border in Mexico. “They organize themselves en masse in their home countries, formed by entire families, and the networks serve them as a mechanism for safety and communication throughout the journey.”

The roots of the migrant caravan phenomenon began years ago when activists organized processions – often with a religious theme – during Holy Week to dramatize the hardships and needs of migrants. A minority of those involved wound up traveling all the way to the U.S. border.

That changed last year: On Oct. 13, hundreds of people walked out of Honduras and as the days passed and they crossed Guatemala, the group grew to more than 7,000 migrants. U.S. President Donald Trump seized on the new phenomenon to ramp up his anti-immigrant policies.

Since then, and parallel to the usual clandestine migrant flow north, smaller caravans have continued to leave the so-called Northern Triangle of Honduras, El Salvador and Guatemala.

And increasingly they’re organized over Facebook and WhatsApp as they try to join together in large groups they hope will make the trip safer, and without having to hide from authorities.

The most recent caravan left the bus station in San Pedro Sula in northern Honduras on April 10, and journalists from The Associated Press have been following various online migrant chats since late March.

“Anyone know anything about the caravan leaving on the 10th? They say the mother of all caravans is going,” one message said.

In this Feb. 8, 2019 file photo, 17-year-old Honduran migrant Josue Mejia Lucero, his girlfriend Milagro de Jesus Henriquez Ayala, 15, and Josue’s 3-year-old nephew Jefferson, look at cell phones as they lie in bed at the Agape World Mission shelter in Tijuana, Mexico. Hundreds of Central Americans are now getting as many details as possible before leaving north towards the U.S. border. (AP Photo/Emilio Espejel, File)

Élmer Alberto Cardona, a 27-year-old shopkeeper from Honduras, saw an announcement on Facebook just days after being deported from the U.S. to San Pedro Sula and said he didn’t think twice: He collected his three children, ages 3, 6 and 9, and headed north again on April 10.

He and his wife had left with the first caravan in October and made it to Tijuana, across the border from California. They obtained Mexican humanitarian visas that allowed them to temporarily live and work locally, but decided to cross the border and turn themselves over to U.S. border agents to request asylum.

It didn’t go well and they were detained in facilities in different states. He was deported first and his wife was still locked up when he started the journey again, this time with his children.

“I think it will go better this time; it looks like a lot of people are getting together,” he said by phone near the Honduras-Guatemala border.

It’s not clear who is launching the chats. The AP called the number of the person who created one of the WhatsApp chats. The woman who answered said her husband had lived in the U.S. for eight years, was deported and now wanted to return. After a few minutes, a male voice was heard and then she suddenly hung up and no one answered again.

In that group, members give bits of advice: Everyone should bring their passports and those thinking of traveling with children or coming from far away should arrive a day before the caravan leaves. “To take a child you just need a passport and permission if the mother isn’t going.” ″Take a photo with the mother and the baby.”

Some chats appear to be created for a set departure date. Others remain active from earlier caravans or with an eye toward future ones. They usually have various administrators who give advice from points on the route. WhatsApp group members’ phone numbers are from Honduras, El Salvador, Guatemala, Mexico and even the United States. Friends and relatives share invitations.

People aren’t afraid to ask delicate questions in the chats: “Group, in Mexico can you find someone to take you to the other side?” And suspicions come out: “Don’t trust.” ″Remember that in Mexico there are a lot of kidnappings.” ”’There are no coordinators, that’s what people have to say so there aren’t problems.”

The messages also explore ways to seek protection against the robberies, extortion, kidnappings that have long plagued those crossing Mexico. Some express fear that the gangs have tried to infiltrate: “This dude works with the Zetas, a friend of mine from Olancho told me he knows him and that he’s still with them,” said someone who shared a photo of the alleged criminal.

Attention to the recent caravans soared in late March, when Mexican Interior Secretary, Olga Sánchez Cordero met with then-Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen, and without giving details, said that “the mother of all caravans” was forming with more than 20,000 people.

Shortly thereafter, Trump threatened again to close the border with Mexico and suspend aid to El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras.

While some in the group that left San Pedro Sula referred to it as “the mother of all caravans,” it had fewer than 3,000 people when it arrived at the Mexican border.

The caravans often grow when they reach Mexico because other migrants who are already waiting in the border area tend to join. As of mid-April, there were more than 8,000 migrants, including those who left San Pedro Sula on April 10, at various places in the southern state of Chiapas, according to Mexico’s National Human Rights Commission.

For those hoping to join, the chats provide information in real time about where to meet up — “Caravan where are you going?” ″We’re waiting for you here” — and also about roadblocks, places in Mexico where visas are being processed or sites where there’s been a problem.

Members also upload photos and videos to let their families know where they are and how they’re doing.

And though the April 10 caravan is still in southern Mexico, people in some groups are about forming others: “Another is leaving April 30, Salvadoran friends.”

___

Anyone Fretting over the Real Russian Hacking from the Mueller Report?

Posted on by

Remember the timeline, it was the Comey FBI, the Brennan CIA, the Lynch Department of Justice and the Obama White House. So, Obama only expelled a pile of Russians and closed 3 dachas. Remember? When the dust settles just a little, President Trump has some work to do to clean up this hacking mess via Russia. Congress has some work to do also by defining some kind of hacking legislation.

The Mueller Report’s conclusions about Russian operations are unambiguous: the GRU’s Unit 26165 did the hacking, and the Internet Research Agency managed the influence campaign. The Report also concluded that the GRU’s Unit 74455 retailed the results of the doxing through its subsidiaries DCLeaks and Guccifer 2.0, and through a sympathetic WikiLeaks.

What is Unit 26165, Russia's elite military hacking centre?

Boris Zilberman on Twitter: "DOJ indictment against the ...

At one point, the Russians used servers located in the U.S. to carry out the massive data exfiltration effort, the report confirms.

Much of the information was previously learned from the indictment of Viktor Borisovich Netyksho, the Russian officer in charge of Unit 26165. Netyksho is believed to be still at large in Russia.

The operatives working for the Russian intelligence directorate, the GRU, sent dozens of targeted spearphishing emails in just five days to the work and personal accounts of Clinton Campaign employees and volunteers, as a way to break into the campaign’s computer systems.

The GRU hackers also gained access to the email account of John Podesta, Clinton’s campaign chairman, of which its contents were later published.

Using credentials they stole along the way, the hackers broke into the networks of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee days later. By stealing the login details of a system administrator who had “unrestricted access” to the network, the hackers broke into 29 computers in the ensuing weeks, and more than 30 computers on the DNC.

The operatives, known collectively as “Fancy Bear,” comprised several units tasked with specific operations. Mueller formally blamed Unit 26165, a division of the GRU specializing in targeting government and political organizations, for taking on the “primary responsibility for hacking the DCCC and DNC, as well as email accounts of individuals affiliated with the Clinton Campaign,” said the Mueller report.

The hackers used Mimikatz, a hacking tool used once an intruder is already in a target network, to collect credentials, and two other kinds of malware: X-Agent for taking screenshots and logging keystrokes, and X-Tunnel used to exfiltrate massive amounts of data from the network to servers controlled by the GRU. Mueller’s report found that Unit 26165 used several “middle servers” to act as a buffer between the hacked networks and the GRU’s main operations. Those servers, Mueller said, were hosted in Arizona — likely as a way to obfuscate where the attackers were located but also to avoid suspicion or detection.

In all, some 70 gigabytes of data were exfiltrated from Clinton’s campaign servers and some 300 gigabytes of data were obtained from the DNC’s network.

Meanwhile, another GRU hacking unit, Unit 74455, which helped disseminate and publish hacked and stolen documents, pushed the stolen data out through two fictitious personas. DCLeaks was a website that hosted the hacked material, while Guccifer 2.0 was a hacker-like figure who had a social presence and would engage with reporters.

Under pressure from the U.S. government, the two GRU-backed personas were shut down by the social media companies. Later, tens of thousands of hacked files were funneled to and distributed by WikiLeaks .

Mueller’s report also found a cause-and-effect between Trump’s remarks in July 2016 and subsequent cyberattacks.

“I hope you’re able to find the 30,000 emails that are missing,” said then-candidate Trump at a press conference, referring to emails Clinton stored on a personal email server while she headed the State Department. Mueller’s report said “within approximately five hours” of those remarks, GRU officers began targeting for the first time Clinton’s personal office.

More than a dozen staffers were targeted by Unit 26165, including a senior aide. “It is unclear how the GRU was able to identify these email accounts, which were not public,” said Mueller.

Mueller said the Trump campaign made efforts to “find the deleted Clinton emails.” Trump is said to have privately asked would-be national security advisor Michael Flynn, since convicted following inquiries by the Special Counsel’s office, to reach out to associates to obtain the emails. One of those associates was Peter Smith, who died by suicide in May 2017, who claimed to be in contact with Russian hackers — claims which Mueller said were not true.

Does that implicate the Trump campaign in an illegal act? Likely not.

“Under applicable law, publication of these types of materials would not be criminal unless the publisher also participated in the underlying hacking conspiracy,” according to Elie Honig, a CNN legal analyst. “The special counsel’s report did not find that any person associated with the Trump campaign illegally participated in the dissemination of the materials.”

Massive Arrests of Medical Professionals, Professional Drug Dealers

Posted on by

Hat tip to the Appalachian Regional Prescription Opioid Strike Force. According to the Justice Department, the suspects wrote some 350,000 prescriptions and distributed 32 million pills.

60 people charged in Appalachian prescription opioid takedown

In a case out of Dayton, Ohio, the DOJ said a doctor who is alleged to have been the highest prescriber of controlled substances in the state, and several pharmacists, are charged with operating an alleged “pill mill.” According to the indictment, the DOJ says, “Between October 2015 and October 2017 alone, the pharmacy allegedly dispensed over 1.75 million pills.”

The Department of Justice worked alongside the Department of Health and Human Services as well. According to NIH’s National Institute on Drug Abuse, Ohio and West Virginia rank at the top of opioid overdoses in the country.

CINCINNATI (AP) — Federal authorities said Wednesday they have charged 60 people, including a doctor accused of trading drugs for sex and another of prescribing to his Facebook friends, for their roles in illegally prescribing and distributing millions of pills containing opioids and other drugs.

U.S. Attorney Benjamin Glassman of Cincinnati described the action, with 31 doctors facing charges, as the biggest known takedown yet of drug prescribers. Robert Duncan, U.S. attorney for eastern Kentucky, called the doctors involved “white-coated drug dealers.”

Authorities said the 60 includes 53 medical professionals tied to some 350,000 prescriptions and 32 million pills. The operation was conducted by the federal Appalachian Regional Prescription Opioid Strike Force, launched last year by the Trump administration.

Authorities said arrests were being made and search warrants carried out as they announced the charges at a news conference. They didn’t immediately name those being charged.

U.S. health authorities have reported there were more than 70,000 drug overdose deaths in 2017, for a rate of 21.7 per 100,000 people. West Virginia and Ohio have regularly been among the states with the highest overdose death rates as the opioid crisis has swelled in recent years.

Among those charged was a Tennessee nurse practitioner who dubbed himself the “Rock Doc” and is accused of prescribing dangerous combinations of drugs such as fentanyl and oxycodone, authorities said.

An indictment states that Jeff Young operated a clinic in Jackson, Tennessee, and promoted his practice with the motto “work hard, play harder.” The indictment states he prescribed drugs that were highly addictive and at high risk of abuse as he tried to promote a “Rock Doc” reality TV pilot and podcast while obtaining sex and money for prescriptions.

A message seeking comment was left Wednesday for his attorney.

Another western Tennessee doctor is also accused of often trading drug prescriptions for sex.

Others charged include a Kentucky doctor who is accused of writing prescriptions to Facebook friends who came to his home to pick them up, another who allegedly left signed blank prescriptions for staff to fill out and give to patients, and a Kentucky dentist accused of removing teeth unnecessarily and scheduling unneeded follow-up appointments.

A Dayton, Ohio, doctor was accused of running a “pill mill” that allegedly dispensed 1.75 million pills in a two-year period. Authorities said an Alabama doctor recruited prostitutes and other women he had sexual relations with to his clinic and allowed them to abuse drugs in his home.

Most of those charged came from the five strike force states of Alabama, Kentucky, Ohio, Tennessee and West Virginia. One person each was also arrested in Pennsylvania and Louisiana.

“The opioid crisis is the deadliest drug crisis in American history, and Appalachia has suffered the consequences more than perhaps any other region,” U.S. Attorney General William Barr said in a statement in Washington.

N Korea Test Fires Tactical Weapon

Posted on by

(Reuters) – Satellite images from last week show movement at North Korea’s main nuclear site that could be associated with the reprocessing of radioactive material into bomb fuel, a U.S. think tank said on Tuesday. The U.S. State Department declined to comment on intelligence matters, but a source familiar with U.S. government assessments said that while U.S. experts thought the movements could possibly be related to reprocessing, they were doubtful it was significant nuclear activity.

***

SEOUL, April 18 (Yonhap) — North Korean leader Kim Jong-un has supervised a test-firing of a new tactical guided weapon, calling its development an “event of very weighty significance” in beefing up its military power, state media reported Thursday.

The Korean Central News Agency said the test happened Wednesday but did not specify what the newly developed weapon was. It was the first time since November the North’s leader has overseen a weapons testing.

“Saying that the completion of the development of the weapon system serves as an event of very weighty significance in increasing the combat power of the People’s Army, he noted that it is a very good thing that the field of national defense science has waged a dynamic struggle for attaining core research goals,” Kim was quoted as saying by the KCNA.

North Korean leader Kim Jong-un inspects a flight drill of the North's Air and Anti-aircraft Force on April 17, 2019, in this photo released by the Korean Central News Agency on April 18. As is customary, the agency didn't provide the location. (For Use Only in the Republic of Korea. No Redistribution) (Yonhap) North Korean leader Kim Jong-un inspects a flight drill of the North’s Air and Anti-aircraft Force on April 17, 2019, in this photo released by the Korean Central News Agency on April 18. As is customary, the agency didn’t provide the location. (For Use Only in the Republic of Korea. No Redistribution) (Yonhap)

“After watching the power of the new-type tactical guided weapon, he pointed out that our national defense scientists and workers in the field of the munitions industry performed another great work in increasing the country’s defense capabilities,” the KCNA said.

Kim also set the “phased and strategic goals” for maintaining his country’s munitions production, putting national defense science and technology on a “cutting edge level,” and ordering “detailed tasks and ways to attain them.”

The test-firing came after Kim suggested a year-end deadline for denuclearization negotiations with the United States following the breakdown of his February summit with U.S. President Donald Trump.

On Wednesday, Pyongyang’s media said that the North Korean leader visited an air force unit and reviewed a flight exercise in his first public inspection of military activities in five months.

 

Title lll vs. Cuba for Cuban Exiles, About Time

Posted on by

There is a provision of the Cuban trade embargo that no U.S. president has ever used. President Trump has decided to be the first, according to White House officials. But it’s far from clear if it will do much to dislodge the island’s communist government.

It’s called Title III. It allows Americans – in this case mostly Cuban-Americans – to use U.S. federal courts to sue foreign companies that do business in Cuba on property taken from them by the Castro revolution.

Conservative Cuban exiles insist President Trump’s activation of Title III (part of the 1996 Helms-Burton Act that tightened the U.S. trade embargo against Cuba) will have a chilling effect on foreign investment in Cuba – particularly for European and Canadian companies. That, they insist, will undermine the island’s economically failing regime.

“I do think it will be a turning point,” says Cuban-American attorney Marcell Felipe, who heads the Inspire America Foundation, a pro-democracy NGO in Miami. “For too long the Spanish and Canadian governments and their business interests have promoted respect for human rights everywhere in the world while they support a regime that imprisons anyone who dissents.”

But critics of Trump’s Title III move says it’s primarily another political bone tossed to his Cuban exile supporters – who he believes won Florida for him in the 2016 election.

Cuban-American attorney Pedro Freyre, who heads international practice at the Akerman law firm in Miami and represents firms that may face Title III lawsuits, warns it will be hard to collect money from those suits. Countries like Spain and Canada already have laws in place to block Cuban embargo-related litigation, and he points out that no U.S. president ever triggered the provision before for fear it could lead to retaliation against U.S. business interests around the world.

Freyre also believes it will probably take much more to topple Cuba’s repressive government.

“After watching the Cuban regime navigate 60 years of sanctions and having a rotten economy and a bad political system,” says Freyre, “it’s clear it’s particularly adept at survival. So I am skeptical that this will accomplish that.”

National Security Advisor John Bolton is expected to formally announce the Title III decision when he visits Miami on Wednesday. Sources close to the Trump administration tell WLRN the Title III decree may also include tightening U.S. government officials’ interaction with Cuban officials on the island – and possibly a dramatic scaling back of the amount of remittances Cuban-Americans can send to Cuba and the trips they can take there each year.

***  Image result for bolton in miami cuba

US National Security Adviser John Bolton is set to outline President Donald Trump’s plan to fully implement Title III of the Helms-Burton Act, a previously suspended section of the US trade embargo on the Communist-run country during a speech in Miami, the official said.
It is a move that is widely considered to be part of the administration’s efforts to ramp up pressure on Havana over its support for Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro — who Trump criticized as a “Cuban puppet” in February. Cuban officials have decried the increased sanctions on the communist-run island and offered to enter into negotiations to repay US companies for seized property.
During a speech in Miami last year, Bolton promised the crowd a tough US approach to the “troika of tyranny,” his term for Cuba, Venezuela and Nicaragua, saying they represented “the perils of poisonous ideologies left unchecked.”