Who keeps buying California's scarce water? Saudi Arabia

Saudi-based Almarai owns 15,000 acres of an irrigated valley – but what business does a foreign food production company have drawing resources from a US desert?

Four hours east of Los Angeles, in a drought-stricken area of a drought-afflicted state, is a small town called Blythe where alfalfa is king. More than half of the town’s 94,000 acres are bushy blue-green fields growing the crop. Massive industrial storehouses line the southern end of town, packed with thousands upon thousands of stacks of alfalfa bales ready to be fed to dairy cows – but not cows in California’s Central Valley or Montana’s rangelands. Instead, the alfalfa will be fed to cows in Saudi Arabia.

The storehouses belong to Fondomonte Farms, a subsidiary of the Saudi Arabia-based company Almarai – one of the largest food production companies in the world. The company sells milk, powdered milk and packaged items such as croissants, strudels and cupcakes in supermarkets and corner stores throughout the Middle East and North Africa, and in specialty grocers throughout the US. Each month, Fondomonte Farms loads the alfalfa on to hulking metal shipping containers destined to arrive 24 days later at a massive port stationed on the Red Sea, just outside King Abdullah City in Saudi Arabia.

With the Saudi Arabian landscape there being mostly desert and alfalfa being a water-intensive crop, growing it there has always been expensive and draining on scarce water resources, to the point that the Saudi government finally outlawed the practice in 2016. In the wake of the ban, Almarai decided to purchase land wherever it is cheap and has favorable water conditions to produce enough feed for its 93,000 cows. In 2012, they acquired 30,000 acres of land in Argentina, and in 2014, they bought their first swath of land in Arizona. Then, in 2015, they bought 1,700 acres in Blythe – a vast, loamy, agricultural metropolis abutting the Colorado river, where everything but the alfalfa seems cast in the hue of sand. Four years later, the company owns 15,000 acres – 16% of the entire irrigated valley.

But what business does a foreign company have drawing precious resources from a US desert to offset a lack of resources halfway around the globe? What Fondomonte Farms is doing is merely a chapter in the long story of water management in the west, one that pierces the veil on the inanities of the global supply chain – how easy it is to move a commodity

like alfalfa, or for that matter lettuce or clementines or iPhones, across more than 13,000 miles of land and sea, how much we rely on these crisscrossing supply lines, and at what cost to our own natural resources.

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2019/mar/25/california-water-drought-scarce-saudi-arabia

Michael Avenatti Appears to Have Used PAC as Personal Slush Fund

Reimbursed himself $31,000 on travel, spent on luxury hotels

Embattled Democratic lawyer Michael Avenatti, who on Monday was arrested for an extortion plot involving Nike and was separately alleged to embezzle client money while falsifying tax returns, appears to have used a political action committee that he established to help liberal candidates as a personal slush fund, Federal Election Commission filings show.

Avenatti launched his PAC, the Fight PAC, last summer as he was contemplating a presidential run to help Democratic candidates with "the size and presence to really fight back and advocate for a position of strength as opposed to weakness." From the committee's launch in late August 2018 to Dec. 31, 2018, Avenatti's PAC hauled in $113,000 in total contributions. During this time, the Fight PAC reported $101,000 worth of operating expenditures—much of which were reimbursements for Avenatti's jet-setting ways and stays at lavish hotels. Avenatti reimbursed himself $31,776.78 last October for the likes of food, beverage, lodging, and transportation through three separate transfers, filings show. The amount Avenatti spent so far this year is not yet known, as FEC filings for the first quarter are not due until April 20.

In addition to the tens of thousands Avenatti spent on reimbursing himself for travel, the PAC also reports thousands more toward luxury hotels in Washington, D.C., New York City, Cambridge, Md., and Puerto Rico, among other destinations. The PAC spent thousands at Jefferson Hotel in D.C., Park Hyatt in New York, Hyatt Regency Cambridge in Maryland, and the Condado Plaza Hilton in Puerto Rico, all five-star hotels. Additional funds were put toward airfare while tens of thousands more were spent on fundraising, advertising, and consulting work. No money was given to any Democratic candidates as of the end of 2018 despite its intended goal of helping candidates, the filings show. Avenatti was charged on Monday with attempting to extort millions of dollars from Nike by releasing "damaging" information against the company if they did not pay him. The Democratic lawyer was also arrested in the state of California for bank and wire fraud after allegedly embezzling money from one of his clients and falsifying tax returns.

https://freebeacon.com/politics/michael-avenatti-appears-to-have-used-super-pac-as-personal-slush-fund/

Facebook Is a Client of Company Run by Elizabeth Warren’s Daughter

Sen. Elizabeth Warren's (D., Mass.) daughter runs a company that includes among its clientele the social media giant Facebook, one of the tech companies the 2020 candidate would like to break up. Amelia Warren Tyagi is president and co-founder of Business Talent Group, which assists companies in finding consultants and workplace talent. Facebook is listed on the company's homepage as a client, as well as Pfizer Pharmaceuticals, which came under her mother's ire last year for raising prescription drug prices. Sen. Warren has released a proposal to break up Facebook, Amazon, Google and other major tech companies to "promote more competition" and "restore the balance of power in our democracy."

Earlier this month Facebook removed ads by Warren promoting her call for the breakup of the tech companies, initially stating they violated their terms by using Facebook's logo. After an uproar from her campaign, Facebook restored them to promote "robust debate." Her campaign fundraised off the public spat, telling supporters, "if you want proof of Elizabeth's point that Facebook has too much power, look no further than their ability to shut down a debate over … whether Facebook has too much power."

Warren's plan includes getting legislation passed that would designate Facebook a "platform utility" required to "meet a standard of fair, reasonable, and nondiscriminatory dealing with users." A Warren administration would also appoint regulators to stop what she deemed "illegal and anti-competitive tech mergers," like Facebook's purchases of Instagram and WhatsApp.

Tyagi's biographical page on her company's site notes she co-authored the best-selling books The Two-Income Trap and All Your Worth, although it doesn't state she wrote them with her mother. She is Warren's only daughter and oldest of her two children, whom Warren had with her first husband, Jim Warren. They divorced in 1978. Warren married her current husband Bruce Mann in 1980 and retained her last name from her first marriage. The Massachusetts lawmaker is part of a wide field of 2020 Democratic candidates, and her campaign has been marked by numerous progressive policy proposals. In addition to her call for breaking up major tech companies, she's proposed an "ultra-millionaires tax" to fund initiatives such as universal child care.

https://freebeacon.com/politics/facebook-is-client-company-run-elizabeth-warren-daughter/

>>5897103

People like him think they are cloaked in invincible mode, nothing can touch them no matter what the carnage. I think at the end of this his problems get a whole lot worse, I have a feeling him and his partner in crime orchestrated the Smollette fraud.

>>5897165 @ >>5897202

>>5897180

2 of them

>>5897234

Just have to laugh at the lunacy, they always trip over themselves.

>>5896836

Interesting…..it doesn't say "Former" as past tense…present tense.. hmmm, wonder if this is old information recirculated.

US Concealed Secret 9/11 Tapes Of Alleged Mastermind Plotting With Co-Conspirators: Lawyer

The United States concealed the existence of taped telephone calls between the alleged mastermind of the Sept. 11 attacks, Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, who spoke in code with three of his accused co-conspirators, according to the New York Times.

The existence of the tapes was revealed by their defense attorney, Jay Connell, as part of a protest over plans for prosecutors to use them as evidence at the death penalty trial more than 17 years after 19 hijackers took four commercial airplanes by force - crashing them into the World Trade Center, the Pentagon and a Pennsylvania field, killing nearly 3,000 people according to the 9/11 Commission Report - aspects of which have been refuted by groups such as Architects & Engineers for 9/11 truth. Defense attorneys have known of the tapes since September 30, 2016 - when prosecutors handed over audio and transcripts of the conversations, making clear that they intended to use them against the men at trial. When the defense attorneys attempted to investigate the tapes - including the method used by the government to record the calls, they hit a brick wall. The original trial judge, Army Col. James L. Poul had secretly issued an order preventing them from knowing about the call collection system - or asking questions about it. Connell - who questioned in court whether the tapes were recorded during the years that Mohammed and the other defendants were imprisoned in the CIA's secret prison system - is now arguing that the tapes should not be allowed as evidence in the death penalty trial, as the defendants' basic right to challenge the evidence being used against them are being violated.

According to the report, the military trial judges have yet to decide which aspects of the Constitution apply to military commissions - war courts established by President George W. Bush following the 9/11 attacks. Arguing for the government, prosecutor Clayton Trivett responded that defense attorneys should be allowed to question an FBI linguist who analyzed the tapes and compared the defendants' voices to determine that they belonged to Mohammed, his nephew al-Baluchi and the two other alleged plotters. Trivett added that the defense team should be able to question the FBI analyst who decoded the conversation. The only catch? They still don't get to know about how the calls were recorded.

The Times notes that "The Hunt For KSM" author Terry McDermott said that he found during his research that US satellites "randomly scooped up calls" between Mohammed and an alleged deputy, Ramzi bin al-Sihbh. "The N.S.A. intercepted calls but didn’t listen to them or translate them until after 9/11," McDermott said. "Afterward, they went through this stuff and found out what it was." Trivett denied that the voice samples were from the CIA black site prior to their transfer to Guantánamo in 2016 to stand trial. This week, attorneys will argue in what will be the 24th round of pretrial hearings since the men were arraigned in 2012, in front of military judge Col. Keith Parrella of the Marines.

https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2019-03-25/united-states-concealed-secret-911-tapes-alleged-mastermind-plotting-co