Evacuation From Yemen - Houthis Want to Be Our Friends, Despite That Slogan

Photo from blog.haykal.sg

In a New York Times interview published today (U.S. Embassy Shuts in Yemen, Even as Militant Leader Reaches Out) the leader of the Houthi militia expressed his desire to be friends with everybody:

Mr. Sammad also said the Houthis wanted a Yemen with good relationships with the United States and other countries, provided that its sovereignty was respected. The militants’ slogan, which is chanted at rallies and painted on walls in Sana, includes the phrase “Death to America.”

“It’s not meant to suggest harming American people,” Mr. Sammad said. “This is just a slogan.”

Just a slogan? Only figurative language? Okay, then. Still, it seems very unfriendly, especially after some Houthis shot up of one of our embassy vehicles, which, according to the NYT, happened on 19 January and was a factor in the decision to evacuate our embassy.

I think something about that slogan is getting lost in translation. The Houthis ought to dial it back if they hope to achieve the good relationship with us that Mr. Sammad says they want. They could do it in steps. Start by changing the slogan to something like “Go screw yourself, America!” Then, “Go home, America!” Then, “Good riddance to you, America!” And finally, “Hey buddy, got any loose change, America?”

Some other excerpts from Sammad's interview:

In his first interview since the Yemeni government collapsed, the leader of the Houthi militants who control Sana, the capital, depicted his movement as eager to share power with its rivals and to reach out to the country’s traditional allies, including the United States and Saudi Arabia — even as the American Embassy prepared to shut down. Saleh Ali al-Sammad, the senior Houthi leader in Sana, made the remarks as a new round of United Nations-mediated talks among the Houthis and other major political parties to try to form a government entered a second day. Yemen has been leaderless since the president and his cabinet resigned on Jan. 22, citing Houthi pressure and attacks.

-- snip --

Mr. Sammad’s remarks, and his unusual willingness to be interviewed by an American news organization, suggested that the Houthis were anxious to climb down from the position they took on Friday, when they declared a unilateral plan for forming a new government.

-- snip --

Mr. Sammad took pains to say that the Houthis wanted normal relations with the United States and other countries. No diplomats have been harmed since September, when the Houthis took over security operations in Sana, he said, adding, “We are not against the missions or individuals themselves, but against policies adopted by America.” However, an attack on an American Embassy car on Jan. 19 at a Houthi roadblock was far worse than previously known, according to a Western diplomat who was briefed on the attack and spoke on the condition of anonymity because of diplomatic sensitivities. He said the armored car had been hit with 87 rounds of automatic weapons fire, but the vehicle’s armor withstood the onslaught, and those inside, including two diplomats, were able to escape to safety. “The Americans are furious,” he said. A 2012 attack on an American diplomatic compound in Benghazi, Libya, killed four staff members, including the ambassador.

Once again, those armored vehicles have proved to be worth every penny they cost. They have saved more U.S. diplomats from being killed than any other physical countermeasure the USG puts out there.

By the way, I highly recommend following this Twitter account for news and educated opinion on events in Yemen. It was the source of the photo above.

Most Eyebrow-Raising Headline of the Week

"How a McDonald's Sausage Burrito contains more than 100 ingredients - including one chemical used in FIREWORKS" - UK Daily Mail






"Among the scrambled egg mix is ... sodium benzoate, which is also added to fireworks to produce a whistling sound"

Diversify Your Passport Portfolio For Only $500,000

Such a deal! The U.S. Government allows up to 10,000 foreign citizens per year to flat-out buy permanent resident status in the United States, if they invest $1,000,000 in a business or only $500,000 in a targeted employment area, i.e., a high unemployment or rural area.

Well, technically, it's conditional permanent residence, says the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Service (USCIS), but the conditions are only loosely enforced, according to ABC News.

Whistleblowers: US Gave Visas to Suspected Forgers, Fraudsters, Criminals:

An ABC News investigation found that in addition to reaching wealthy foreign investors, the program [see this description] has become a magnet for those seeking to sidestep the scrutiny of the traditional immigration process. In one case, immigration officials pushed through a visa application from Chinese investor in a Las Vegas hotel project despite an internal review that found the investor had previously been turned back at the border, and much of his visa application had likely been fabricated, immigration records show.

-- snip --

The document summarizes 41 investigations, some open and some now closed, into allegations ranging from espionage to fraud to drug trafficking involving investors in various EB-5 investment projects.

One regional center [a private sector entity certified by Homeland Security to recruit foreign investors for specific business ventures that will qualify for EB-5 visas] run by an Iranian-born businessman living in Beverly Hills was approved to raise roughly $25 million in investment money from foreign sources even when one of his businesses was being raided by agents. Federal officials told ABC News the businessman is suspected of allegedly smuggling banned items to Iran.

Another regional center raised money from Chinese investors to finance the construction of federal buildings, including an FBI headquarters building in San Diego, raising what one internal document called “national security concerns” that “pertain to Chinese investors having visibility to FBI blueprints/information.”

-- snip --

In 2013, then-Virginia gubernatorial candidate Terry McAuliffe was accused by political opponents of trying to prod federal officials to approve visas for investors in an electric vehicle start-up venture he ran. He denied that he sought undue influence. In 2014, questions about an EB-5 investment scheme in South Dakota became grist for political ads targeting then-U.S. Senate candidate Mike Rounds, who was attacked for his role in oversight of investment projects while he was governor. Rounds called the attacks political and "inaccurate" and "defamatory."

McAuliffe is now Governor of Virginia, and has - so far as I can tell - given up his ownership in that tiny electric car company. Here's an excerpt from a 2013 WaPo story about the cozy connections between politicians, businessmen, and government officials that facilitated McAuliffe's access to foreign sources of capital.

An electric-car company co-founded by Virginia gubernatorial candidate Terry McAuliffe (D) is being investigated by the Securities and Exchange Commission over its conduct in soliciting foreign investors, according to law enforcement documents and company officials.

In May, the SEC subpoenaed documents from GreenTech Automotive and bank records from a sister company, Gulf Coast Funds Management of McLean. The investigation is focused, at least in part, on alleged claims that the company “guarantees returns” to the investors, according to government documents.

GreenTech has sought overseas investors through a federal program that allows foreigners to gain special visas if they contribute at least $500,000 to create U.S. jobs. Gulf Coast, which is run by Anthony Rodham, the brother of former secretary of state Hillary Rodham Clinton, seeks investors for GreenTech and arranges the visas.

The story noted that McAuliffe's GreenTech and Tony Rodham's Gulf Coast shared office space while they tag-teamed Chinese investors. Cozy, you see?

The [subpoenaed] documents counter the impression left last week by a top U.S. immigration official, Alejandro Mayorkas, who testified in front of a Senate panel that he met with McAuliffe on one occasion, “and that was the extent of the interaction.”

The documents show that Mayorkas and other senior DHS officials had a dozen e-mail and telephone contacts with McAuliffe, Rodham, and other representatives of GreenTech and Gulf Coast.

Mayorkas, who has been nominated to be second-in-command at DHS, is under investigation by the agency’s inspector general for allegedly providing special treatment for GreenTech. The investigation is preliminary and has not produced any findings of wrongdoing. Nonetheless, Senate Republicans have said they will not consider Mayorkas’s nomination until it is completed.

The new documents also show that some career DHS employees believe that Mayorkas broke protocol by altering a draft decision about GreenTech and how it handled stock returns to investors.

Whistleblowers have alleged to Senate investigators that Mayorkas became overly involved in GreenTech’s case.

Where would we be without our whistleblowers? Now, if only there were someone in Washington who cared enough to end this cash-for-visas scheme.

And quite a slick scheme it is. I found a nice description of the EB-5 visa business model in a Fortune magazine story:

At the heart of the program is an unusual trade: Because the immigrants care far more about getting a green card than anything else (their families get visas too), they’re willing to accept a token financial return. In fact, when “administrative” fees of about $50,000 are added, they’re typically paying for the privilege of sinking $500,000 into a U.S. venture for five to seven years—with no guarantee that they’ll ever get it back. And in part because of distance and language barriers, the targets of EB-5 pitches seem ill-equipped (or disinclined) to assess the business risks.

Though the government issues the visas, private developers reap the benefits. After middlemen get their piece, the cost of EB-5 capital runs between 4% and 6% a year—less than half of what developers would typically have to pay for mezzanine debt [which is defined here] or to equity investors. Raising $100 million through EB-5 can add $20 million to a project’s bottom line.

The growing demand for EB-5 financing is being met largely by new Chinese millionaires, eager for greater freedom and less pollution, or to send their kids to college in the U.S. More than 80% of the program’s applicants now come from China, making it the mother lode for EB-5 prospecting.

-- snip --

Many EB-5 attorneys represent both the project and the investors, a clear conflict, and take undisclosed fees from developers—up to $60,000 per immigrant—to steer clients to particular projects ... The EB-5 program isn’t overseen by a financial regulator but by the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS), part of the Department of Homeland Security. Accustomed to processing visas and conducting immigrant background checks, USCIS is ill-equipped to review business plans, job-creation studies, and securities offerings. The SEC retains the power to police fraud. What that means is the agency has no mechanism to sniff out a problem until it has exploded, at which point the agency can only clean up the mess.

-- snip --

They are one of the oddities of the EB-5 system. “Regional centers,” which are legally required and USCIS-certified, sound as if they are federal offices, but they’re not. They are typically private, profit-making operations that pool EB-5 money for development projects. Oh, and there’s one other quirk: These seemingly independent operations are often launched and operated by the very developers who are raising money, giving them an extra measure of control.

The regional centers that operate independently can be highly lucrative. Centers usually charge a developer about 2% annual interest for at least five years on whatever amount of immigrant capital they raise. A $60 million deal can thus generate $6 million or more in income. One major operator, the New York City Regional Center, expects its total income on just four large ventures to total $50,187,500, according to a worksheet prepared in a lawsuit between feuding business partners.

Like banks and Wall Street firms, regional centers sell securities and handle millions. Yet there are no rules on who can own or run a center, and no audit requirements. A regional center doesn’t have to report publicly on its performance, identify its principals, or disclose any financial, legal, or regulatory problems they have encountered.

These Chinese investors, and the occasional non-Chinese, are approved for permanent resident status by USCIS, even though it has no expertise in evaluating finance or investment proposals. The Federal agency that polices investment fraud has no involvement in EB-5 visa matters at all unless and until it is called in after a project becomes a disaster. The foreign investors, our new Economic Citizens, are hooked up with their investment opportunities by unregulated middlemen who work for the project developers and profit from both ends of the deals they put together. And this money-making machine is fueled by visas that are teased or coerced out of the bureaucracy by politicians who are exchanging favors with the project developers and each other. 

Wow, it sounds like everybody wins. Except for anyone who cares about what ABC News called "the traditional immigration process" - and law - or worries about the national security implications that follow when that process is abused.
 
  

Foreign Affairs Budget Request for 2016 is Released

So the Obama Administration has proposed a Federal government budget of 4 trillion dollars for 2016. Strictly speaking, it's only S3.99 trillion, which is advertising brilliance, according to Roger Sterling.

The FY 2016 budget justification for Department of State, Foreign Operations, and Related Programs accounts for $43.7 billion of the total Federal budget, plus another $7.0 billion for Overseas Contingency Operations (i.e., the tail ends of wars in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Pakistan). Historically, the cost of conducting the Foreign Affairs of the United States has been just a little bit over one percent of the entire Federal budget, and it looks like that proportion will hold steady for next year.

According to a budget Fact Sheet that State sent out today, the request includes $3.4 billion for Worldwide Protective Operations and $4.8 billion for overseas infrastructure. Included in that 4.8 is $2.2 billion for facility security upgrades and new embassy construction in Lebanon, Saudi Arabia, Guatemala, and Paraguay.

Those protection and facility security costs cover the needs of 86,000 overseas U.S. government employees from 30-plus agencies who staff 275 diplomatic missions.

Now, it's up to our elected representatives in Congress to either vote for that budget or to once again "make priorities and choices" to fund less than requested.

Most Eyebrow-Raising Headline of the Week

Of course, that's "Florida man who had sex with ... "

"Man who had sex with a dolphin in the '70s claims the dolphin seduced him" - UK Daily Mail

The Unicorn Eludes Trey Gowdy at Benghazi Hearing #3

I'm normally a 'plague on both your houses' guy when it comes to the U.S. Congress, but I have to say that the Democrat side won hands down at the third hearing of the House Select Committee on the 2012 attack in Benghazi.

There was not much reason for Chairman Trey Gowdy (Hysteric - SC) to call the hearing in the first place. He had only two witnesses, one of whom - the Congressional liaison from CIA - was asked almost nothing, and the other of whom - Congressional liaison from the State Department - served as Gowdy's whipping boy for Hillary Clinton.

Gowdy sang his usual aria of outrage for an opening statement, accusing Hillary State of stonewalling the Committee's requests for more and more documents and witnesses, but that fell flat very quickly when the Democratic senior member pointed out the Committee had waited from May to November before making its first request.

Elijah Cummings (D-MD):

Rather than blaming Federal agencies, we should acknowledge that the reason for the delay lies in the Committee's own actions. The committee waited six months before sending its first request for new documents. Six months. It took the Committee almost a month longer to request witness interviews from the State Department.

Who is stonewalling whom?

The hearing then devolved into accusations of Gowdy's one-sided management of the Committee's business. He has not convened an organizational meeting or created Committee rules, has given no notice to the minority side when the majority interviewed witnesses in private, and allegedly misrepresented to the minority what those witnesses said. He has ignored the Justice Department's concerns that witness testimony could effect its ongoing investigation and even denied, during his flaying of the whipping boy, that Justice has any such concerns. And, he has issued an open-ended request for "all" State Department documents without specifying particular topics, or dates, or facts in contention, or people other than Hillary "seventh floor principals", with the result that no number of documents State can produce will even be enough.

Representative Linda Sánchez (D-Cal) spanked Gowdy good and hard starting at the 54 minute mark of the video above. First, she produced a letter from Justice stating its concerns about witness testimony. Second, she credibly accused Gowdy of withholding witness statements that contradicted his narrative of State Department conspiracies to destroy evidence. Third, she summed up the inanity of holding yet another investigation of the Benghazi attack after eight previous Congressional investigations have found nothing.

Eight months later, our Committee still lacks that scope, transparency, and more than ever the credibility. Now, more than ever, I'm convinced that my colleagues on the other side of the aisle are in search of this mythical creature, this Unicorn, and the Unicorn being some kind of nefarious conspiracy and that nefarious conspiracy they're looking for does not in fact exist.

The Unicorn of conspiracy may be mythical, but the political reason for holding Committee hearings through 2015 is quite real, and obvious. Once Hillary announces - if in fact she does - she will have to overcome her disastrous 'what difference does it make' outburst at a Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing in 2013. Benghazi issues, both real and fictitious, will do major political damage to her campaign.

Most Eyebrow-Raising Headline of the Week

"Selfies on stolen iPad helps lead to suspects' arrests" - ABC Eyewitness News Houston








"They are not very bright crooks," said Harris County Pct 1 Constable Alan Rosen ... they "didn't know what iCloud is."