Mike Benz, the founder of the Foundation for Freedom Online, recently appeared on The Joe Rogan Experience, one of the most popular podcasts in the world with over 19 million subscribers. During his conversation with Joe Rogan, Benz revealed shocking details about how the Obama administration allegedly misused taxpayer dollars through USAID (United States Agency for International Development).
According to Benz, instead of sending legitimate aid overseas, the Obama administration laundered funds to train and organize “rent-a-mobs” and destabilize foreign governments.
Benz explained, “This was a scandal during the Obama USAID era. We were running a number of rogue USAID operations in Cuba at the time. I’m simply showing the American people where your tax dollars are going and how these things are structured in order to systematically fool you and to fool Congress and to fool the White House.” He went on to describe how USAID pumped $1.2 billion into funding activist groups and civil society organizations, teaching them how to use social media platforms like Facebook and Twitter to coordinate protests and push political agendas.“Learn how to use hashtags, learn how to coordinate street protests so that everyone knows where to go, what street to show up on, what kind of slogans to know, to use in order to create the pro-democracy predicate for it,” Benz added.
One of the most alarming revelations was the creation of a Twitter clone called ZunZuneo, a platform designed to push propaganda in Cuba. Benz stated, “So what they did is they took the exact same thing as Twitter, same user interface, same like, and retweet button. ZunZuneo is the Cuban slang word for hummingbird. So just, it means it’s the Twitter bird, the whole thing. But the whole trick about it was you have to make it look like it’s coming from the Cubans if you’re going to do this operation.” The platform was launched in 2010, coinciding with the Arab Spring, and was funded by USAID money originally earmarked for Pakistan. “They were using USAID funds that were designated to Pakistan,” Benz revealed.
The operation involved contractors funded by USAID who used data for micro-targeting efforts, focusing on both anti- and pro-government users in Cuba. Initially, the platform featured non-controversial content like sports, music, and hurricane updates to build a user base. However, the ultimate goal was far more sinister. Benz explained, “Once they built up enough subscribers, they would begin to introduce political messages through social bots and encourage dissent in this astroturfing—the whole point is, once they hit a critical mass, they would create ‘Rent-a-Riots.’”
The funds for these operations were allegedly funneled through Cayman Islands bank accounts, with the money never reaching its intended destination in Pakistan. “You’re using Cayman Islands bank accounts. You’re saying it’s earmarked for Pakistani aid,” Benz said. Instead, the money was used to fund these covert operations aimed at destabilizing foreign governments.
Barack Obama was using USAID to pretend to send money to a country for “aid” and instead laundering it to the Cayman Islands
He would then use that money to fund and train “Rent-a-Riots” for protests to overthrow governments
This shocking revelation underscores the deep-rooted corruption within the Democrat Party, particularly during the Obama administration. It also highlights why President Trump’s decision to shut down USAID was a necessary step to curb such abuses of power. The Democrat Party’s reliance on taxpayer dollars to fund their political agendas, both domestically and internationally, is a clear indication of their disregard for transparency and accountability.
FIRST ON FOX: A coalition of 20 states and a top conservative legal group is suing the Biden administration over its recently-expanded humanitarian parole program that allows tens of thousands of migrants from designated countries a month into the U.S. — arguing that the program is unlawful. The lawsuit, filed by Texas and America First Legal in the Southern District of Texas, is joined by 19 additional states who are seeking to block the Biden administration’s parole program which allow up to 30,000 migrants from Haiti, Nicaragua, Cuba and Venezuela into the U.S. each month.
The Biden administration announced the program for Venezuelans in October, which allowed a limited number to fly directly into the U.S. as long as they had not entered illegally, had a sponsor in the U.S. already and passed certain checks.
Earlier this month, President Biden announced that the program would be expanding to include Haitians, Nicaraguans and Cubans, and that the program would allow up to 30,000 a month into the U.S. It was announced alongside an expansion of Title 42 expulsions to include those nationalities.
Around 60 recently arrived Venezuelan migrants are seen entering a shelter at Bellevue early Wednesday morning, Oct. 12, 2022, in Manhattan, New York. ((Luiz C. Ribeiro/New York Daily News/Tribune News Service via Getty Images))
“We anticipate this action is going to substantially reduce the number of people attempting to cross our southwest border without going through a legal process,” he said.
In the lawsuit, led by Texas and America First Legal and joined onto by 19 additional Republican-led states, plaintiffs argue that the program is illegal given the “exceptionally limited” parole power available to the federal government. The lawsuit notes that parole is limited by Congress to be used on a “case-by-case basis for urgent humanitarian reasons or significant public benefit” — a standard which the lawsuit says the program fails to meet.
“The parole program established by the Department fails each of the law’s three limiting factors. It is not case-by-case, is not for urgent humanitarian reasons, and advances no significant public benefit. Instead, it amounts to the creation of a new visa program that allows hundreds of thousands of aliens to enter the United States who otherwise have no basis for doing so. This flouts, rather than follows, the clear limits imposed by Congress.”
The Biden administration has said the program is one of a number of ways it is expanding lawful migration pathways as a way to combat the ongoing migrant surge at the border that has seen historic numbers hit the border each month –and is calling on Congress to pass a broader immigration reform bill. Separately, it has used humanitarian parole to allow Afghans and Ukrainians into the U.S. in the last year. But conservative critics have said the latest program is illegal, and facilitates rather than stops the migrant surge.
The lawsuit says that the program is also unlawful as it did not engage in the notice-and-comment rulemaking required by the Administrative Procedure Act — by which a number of immigration policies have been at least temporarily struck down in recent years. It also argues that the states “face substantial irreparable harms from the Department’s abuse of its parole authority, which allow potentially hundreds of thousands of additional aliens to enter each of their already overwhelmed territories.”
“Every state in America, especially border states like Texas, is being crushed by the impacts of illegal immigration,” Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton said in a statement to Fox News Digital. “The Biden open borders agenda has created a humanitarian crisis that is increasing crime and violence in our streets, overwhelming local communities, and worsening the opioid crisis. This unlawful amnesty program, which will invite hundreds of thousands of aliens into the U.S. every year, will only make this immigration crisis drastically worse.”
The lawsuit also marks the latest in a flurry of legal challenges to the Biden administration’s policies by America First Legal — a conservative legal group launched by former Trump White House official Stephen Miller, who he described as being “at the forefront of the legal battle to save America’s borders from complete annihilation at the hands of this lawless administration.”
Miller labeled the Biden program as “pre-amnesty for what would be illegal aliens before they even arrive at our border.” He also compared it to the Obama-era Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, which granted protection from deportation to illegal immigrants who came to the U.S. as minors.
“This is a dramatic escalation in the open borders crusade – not only is Biden freely admitting illegal aliens who arrive at our borders, but he is now going to foreign countries to pre-approve innumerable illegal aliens to flood into our country without any legal basis whatsoever. It is illegal, unconstitutional, and contemptible,” he said.
The states joining onto the lawsuit with Texas are Alabama, Alaska, Arkansas, Florida, Idaho, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, Ohio, South Carolina, Tennessee, Utah, West Virginia, and Wyoming.
The new parole program came after more than 250,000 migrants were encountered at the southern border in December, a new record. However, the Biden administration has said it believes that the new measures are already having an effect and that there has been a drop in migrant encounters at the border from those nationalities.
“The December update shows our new border enforcement measures are working. Even as overall encounters rose because of smugglers spreading misinformation around the court-ordered lifting of the Title 42 public health order, we continued to see a sharp decline in the number of Venezuelans unlawfully crossing our southwest border, down 82% from September 2022,” acting Customs and Border Protection (CBP) Commissioner Troy Miller said in a statement last week. “Early data suggests the expanded measures for Cubans, Haitians and Nicaraguans are having a similar impact, and we look forward to sharing the additional data in the next update.“
Adam Shaw is a politics reporter for Fox News Digital, primarily covering immigration and border security. He can be reached at adam.shaw2@fox.com or on Twitter.
President Biden has finally found a solution to address the surge in illegal crossings at the southern border: tell the tens of thousands of aliens unlawfully entering the United States from Mexico that they can come to America “legally” if they instead fly to a port-of-entry in the interior of the country.
Seriously, for all the Biden administration’s spin, that’s his plan — and it is illegal.
Of course, when Biden announced his administration’s newest policy on Thursday in advance of his midterm inaugural trip to the southern border on Sunday, the press release heralded the plan as a “new border enforcement action.” But as National Review’s Andrew McCarthy exposed in his weekend column, it’s a scam.
The scam, though, is layers thick, both legally and politically. And to reach the core truth — that Biden refuses to faithfully execute his duties as the president of the United States by defending our sovereign border — one must first unpeel the specifics of the newest plan buried in the Department of Homeland Security’s official notice of the changes, while also analyzing the relevant immigration law.
The Plan
Today’s edition of the Federal Register, which serves as “the Daily Journal of the United States Government,” contains the details of DHS’s supposed “new border enforcement action,” in four separate “notices,” titled respectively: “Implementation of a Parole Process for Cubans,” “Implementation of a Parole Process for Haitians,” “Implementation of a Parole Process for Nicaraguans,” and “Implementation of Changes to the Parole Process for Venezuelans.”
Each notice summarizes the Biden administration’s supposed “solution” to the flooding of the southern border, which in short consists of allowing, on a monthly basis, a total of 30,000 aliens to enter the United States “legally” if they are Cuban, Haitian, Nicaraguan, or Venezuelan nationals. To qualify, aliens must have a “U.S.-based supporter,” which could be “non-governmental entities or community-based organizations,” and must “provide for their own commercial travel to an air [port-of-entry] and final U.S. destination.” National security and public safety vetting are also required, as well as any additional public health requirements, such as vaccinations.
But how is it that illegal-alien border crossers can become lawful noncitizens by just jumping through a few hoops and flying to the interior of the country, rather than sneaking over the southern border? They can’t. And in crafting its latest immigration plan, the Biden administration is again acting lawlessly.
Biden’s Lawlessness
The Biden administration maintains it has the authority to allow aliens from Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua, and Venezuela to enter the United States legally under section 212(d)(5)(A) of the Immigration and Nationality Act, or INA. That section provides the secretary of homeland security the authority to “parole” noncitizens “into the United States temporarily under such reasonable conditions as [the secretary] may prescribe only on a case-by-case basis for urgent humanitarian reasons or significant public benefit.”
“parole” for purposes of the INA is a “legal fiction” in which “a paroled alien is physically allowed to enter the country,” but the alien maintains the same legal status as if he or she were held at the border waiting for an application for admission to be granted or denied. But besides obtaining the legal right to be present in the United States, an alien paroled into the United States may obtain employment authorization to work here lawfully.
As the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals recently explained, “Parole began as an administrative invention that allowed aliens in certain circumstances to remain on U.S. soil without formal admission, with Congress codifying the practice when it initially enacted the Immigration and Nationality Act (the ‘INA’) in 1952.” At that time, Congress gave the attorney general “discretion to parole into the United States temporarily under such conditions as he may prescribe … any alien applying for admission to the United States.”
However, “throughout the mid-twentieth century, the executive branch on multiple occasions purported to use the parole power to bring in large groups of immigrants,” prompting Congress twice to amend the INA “to limit the scope of the parole power and prevent the executive branch from using it as a programmatic policy tool.” First, as the Fifth Circuit explained, in 1980, Congress added a requirement that the executive branch only parole refugees where “compelling reasons in the public interest with respect to that particular alien,” exist. Then, in 1996, Congress amended the INA to provide “parole may be granted ‘only on a case-by-case basis for urgent humanitarian reasons or significant public benefit.’”
While the DHS’s just-announced parole plans claim the department is making parole decisions on a case-by-case basis, the qualifications set forth by the DHS establish that the Biden administration is illegally using parole power “as a programmatic policy tool,” rather than as designed by Congress, for example, by “paroling aliens who do not qualify for an admission category but have an urgent need for medical care in the United States and paroling aliens who qualify for a visa but are waiting for it to become available.”
The Biden administration’s lawless use of its parole power should come as no surprise, though, as since November of 2021, the president’s team has relied on Section 212(d)(5)(A) to release “family units” at the border to supposedly deal with “capacity constraints.” Florida has challenged the Biden administration’s granting of such carte blanche parole, as well as the president’s failure to detain illegal aliens as mandated under the INA, and trial is set to begin on both those claims later today in a federal court in Florida.
The ‘Standing’ Problem
A similar legal challenge to the Biden administration’s recent parole plan seems likely, although by requiring applicants to secure a vetted “supporter” who will commit to providing for the parolees’ financial needs while they are present in the United States, it will be challenging for anyone to show “standing” to challenge DHS’s plan.
For instance, in the Florida case, while the Biden administration argued the state lacked “standing,” or the right to sue, the court rejected that argument, reasoning Florida “plausibly alleged that the challenged policies already have and will continue to cost it millions of dollars, including the cost of incarcerating criminal aliens and the cost of providing a variety of public benefits, including unemployment benefits, free public education, and emergency services to aliens who settle in Florida after being ‘paroled’ into the country.”
But other than providing “free public education,” the same types of monetary harms are lacking in the case of the Biden administration’s latest parole proposal. And it is questionable whether a court will find that providing free public education to children paroled under DHS’s plans will be enough to establish standing.
Absent a plaintiff with standing to challenge DHS’s plan to parole some 30,000 aliens into the United States every month, the only way to fight the Biden administration’s latest lawless move will be politically. Here, those seeking to secure the southern border have ample ammunition, including highlighting the fact that the Biden administration’s plan does nothing to address that portion of the 200,000-some individuals crossing the southern border every month that herald from countries other than Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua, and Venezuela.
Further, while converting 30,000 illegal border crossers into parolees at ports of entry in the interior of the country may provide a reduction to the problem on paper, it does not secure the border nor promise any reduction in the number of individuals attempting to enter via Mexico.
The parole plan presumes, though, that there will be an even greater reduction in illegal border crossings than the 30,000 who enter as part of the parole process. The parole plan, according to the Biden administration, creates a disincentive for citizens of Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua, and Venezuela to enter illegally at the southern border because the DHS’s new policy also provides that aliens who bypass the parole process and enter the United States without authorization will be subject to an expedited removal to Mexico or their country of origin.
If so, then why not just institute a policy of expediting the removal of individuals who enter illegally at the southern border?
Biden’s Border Disaster
According to the figures included in last week’s DHS notices, prior to the surge at the southern border that followed the Biden administration’s change in enforcement policies, there weren’t even 30,000 aliens from Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua, and Venezuela crossing the border illegally on an annual basis.
For instance, the notice reported that for fiscal years 2019 and 2020 respectively, DHS encountered only 3,039 and 4,431 Haitian nationals at the southwest border, but by 2021 the number exploded to 43,484.
From 2014 to 2019, DHS encountered 589 Cubans on average every month, but by 2022, the average monthly encounter at the land border totaled 17,809, and in October and November of 2022, some 62,000-plus Cuban nationals attempted to cross the border.
From fiscal 2014 through 2019, border agents encountered a monthly average of 127 Venezuelan nationals, but by fiscal year 2022, the average number of Venezuelans crossing the border illegally on a monthly basis totaled 15,494 and rose to more than 33,000 in September of that year.
For Nicaraguan nationals, in 2022, DHS encountered an estimated 157,400 aliens, or an average of 13,113 per month, compared to an average of 316 per month from fiscal years 2014-2019.
These figures show the Biden administration does not need a parole policy: It needs an enforcement policy.
No End in Sight
There is a telling admission hidden in the DHS notice from last week that announced changes to the parole plan established for Venezuela in October of 2022. As originally established, the Venezuela plan capped the number of “parolees” at a total of 24,000 beneficiaries. But, as the DHS acknowledged in its notice modifying that plan, just two months in, “demand for the Venezuela process has far exceeded the 24,000 limit.”
“Absent immediate action,” the DHS notice explained, “there is a risk that DHS meets the 24,000 cap, which would in turn cause the [government of Mexico] to no longer accept the return of Venezuelan nationals and end the success of the parole process to date at reducing the number of Venezuelan nationals encountered at the border.” Further, should it reach the 24,000 limit, thereby making prospective migrants no longer eligible for parole, the “DHS anticipates that we would then see increased irregular migration of Venezuelans.”
In other words, the Biden administration is allowing aliens to come to America “legally” because if it doesn’t, foreign nationals will just start crossing the border illegally again.
Further, while the Biden administration’s current plan caps the number of parolees at 30,000 per month, the DHS notices indicate it may revisit that figure if necessary. What then, is there to stop the Biden administration from increasing the 30,000 cap two-fold or ten-fold? Or what is there to prevent the administration from expanding parole to aliens from countries beyond the four — maybe 14, or even 40?
While the intricacies of immigration law are detailed and often convoluted, the bottom line of the Biden administration’s parole plan should be clear to all Americans: Joe Biden has no intention of securing our border or faithfully executing his duties as the president of the United States.
Margot Cleveland is The Federalist’s senior legal correspondent. She is also a contributor to National Review Online, the Washington Examiner, Aleteia, and Townhall.com, and has been published in the Wall Street Journal and USA Today. Cleveland is a lawyer and a graduate of the Notre Dame Law School, where she earned the Hoynes Prize—the law school’s highest honor. She later served for nearly 25 years as a permanent law clerk for a federal appellate judge on the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals. Cleveland is a former full-time university faculty member and now teaches as an adjunct from time to time. As a stay-at-home homeschooling mom of a young son with cystic fibrosis, Cleveland frequently writes on cultural issues related to parenting and special-needs children. Cleveland is on Twitter at @ProfMJCleveland. The views expressed here are those of Cleveland in her private capacity.
Nikole Hannah-Jones argued in 2019 that Cuba’s socialist government affords residents a utopian form of racial equality unmatched anywhere in the Western Hemisphere
Nikole Hannah-Jones /Marcus Ingram/Getty Images
Last week, spontaneous uprisings erupted across Cuba as residents of the island nation bravely stood up to protest the pains inflicted upon them by the country’s oppressive communist regime. That news likely came as a shock to journalist and “1619 Project” creator Nikole Hannah-Jones, who argued in 2019 that the country’s socialist government affords residents a utopian form of racial equality unmatched anywhere in the Western Hemisphere.
During an interview with progressive journalist Ezra Klein for Klein’s podcast “Vox Conversations,” Hannah-Jones touted Cuba as the “most equal“ country in the Western Hemisphere, “largely due to socialism.”
“Are there candidates right now or even just places that you think have a viable and sufficiently ambitious integration agenda, and if so, what is it?” Klein asked, prompting the discussion.
“If you want to see the most equal, multiracial democ … it’s not a democracy — the most equal, multiracial country in our hemisphere, it would be Cuba,” Hannah-Jones responded, despite admitting she’s not an “expert” on race relations internationally.
“Cuba has the least inequality between black and white people of any place really in the hemisphere,” she continued. “I mean the Caribbean — most of the Caribbean it’s hard to count because the white population in a lot of those countries is very, very small. They’re countries run by black folks. But in places that are truly at least biracial countries, Cuba actually has the least inequality, and that’s largely due to socialism, which I’m sure no one wants to hear.”
Hannah-Jones’ controversial comments can be heard at the 1:12:20 mark of the podcast.
The National Pulse, which first unearthed the remarks, noted that the journalist also penned an op-ed in 2008 praising Cuba as a gold standard example for other countries to follow. In the op-ed, Hannah-Jones commended the communist country for its high literacy rate, low HIV infection rate, and for bringing about the “end of codified racism.“
“It manifests in what Cuba has accomplished, through socialism and despite poverty, that the United States hasn’t,” she stated.
After news broke about Hannah-Jones’ past comments, conservative critics pounced.
“Please go to Cuba and stay in Cuba — Nicole [sic] Hannah-Jones,”tweeted American Conservative Union senior fellow Mercedes Schlapp. “The anti-American factions in our own country fail to understand the horrors of Communism.”
Another commenter quipped, “Yes, all the Cuban people are suppressed ‘equally’!!!” adding, “Send Nikole to Cuba!”
“Note to Nikole: Cuba has ‘equality’ because everyone is equally desperately poor,” another said.
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A.F. Branco has taken his two greatest passions, (art and politics) and translated them into the cartoons that have been popular all over the country, in various news outlets including “Fox News”, MSNBC, CBS, ABC, and “The Washington Post.” He has been recognized by such personalities as Dinesh D’Souza, James Woods, Sarah Palin, Larry Elder, Lars Larson, Rush Limbaugh, and shared by President Donald Trump.
Police in Miami, Florida, estimated on Saturday that 30,000 vehicles joined a caravan expressing rejection of communism, socialism, and leftist totalitarian ideologies – an event of historic size and diversity, organizer Orlando Gutiérrez-Boronat told Breitbart News.
Gutiérrez-Boronat – the co-founder of the Cuban Democratic Directorate, a human rights non-profit – joined a coalition of Cuban, Venezuelan, Nicaraguan, Chilean, Uruguayan, and other groups to create a “patriotic committee” responsible for the event. The caravan doubled as both a public display of rejection to left-wing totalitarianism and a “drive-in” seminar on the history of communism – participants tuned into Miami’s 670 AM La Poderosa to listen to experts, including this Breitbart News journalist, discuss the destructive history and legacy of communism around the world.
Gutiérrez-Boronat told Breitbart News that the success of the event – particularly in attracting people of all ages, nationalities, and backgrounds – was unprecedented in decades of activism against socialism.
Caravan against socialism and communism in Miami, Florida, October 10, 2020. Picture courtesy of Daniel Quiróz/Cuban Democratic Directorate
Caravan against socialism and communism in Miami, Florida, October 10, 2020. Picture courtesy of Daniel Quiróz/Cuban Democratic Directorate
“This community is more united than ever,” Gutiérrez-Boronat said, describing the crowd at the event as “Cubans of all makes and models, from el exilio historico [the historic Cuban exile community] to recent arrivals, young and old; a strong Nicaraguan presence; some Venezuelans and Colombians; a Puerto Rican contingent.”
Caravan against socialism and communism in Miami, Florida, October 10, 2020. A car drives by waving Puerto Rican flags. (Picture courtesy of Daniel Quiróz/Cuban Democratic Directorate)
Caravan against socialism and communism in Miami, Florida, October 10, 2020. A composite flag featuring the U.S. and the seal of the Republic of Cuba. (Picture courtesy of Daniel Quiróz/Cuban Democratic Directorate)
Caravan against socialism and communism in Miami, Florida, October 10, 2020. / Picture courtesy of Daniel Quiróz/Cuban Democratic Directorate
Participants waved a wide variety of Latin American flags; photos show the presence of the flags of anti-communist bastions Taiwan and Hong Kong as well, and a rainbow flag representing anti-communist LGBTQ people – a prominent community among Cuban exiles given that late dictator Fidel Castro forced suspected and openly LGBTQ people into labor camps. Some participants also brought a Welsh flag.
Gutiérrez-Boronat added that the size of the event – according to Miami police, he said, 30,000 vehicles participated,an unprecedented number – was just part of why it was different from other political moments in the past.
“It’s intergenerational because it spans different times of arrival (waves of migration) … it’s focused on anti-communism and anti-socialism,” he explained. “There is clear leadership and strategy. … All the main organizations are working in the same direction.”
The organizer hailed the event as representative of the “organic unity of a plural community unified against communism, que no le van a hacer cuentos [who won’t be fooled].”
While the caravan was a non-partisan event, many participants took the opportunity to promote President Donald Trump’s re-election campaign, waving Trump flags, wearing the now-iconic “Make America Great Again” cap, and dancing to the surprise salsa hit “Trump Song” by Los 3 de la Habana.
This led some media outlets to falsely identify the event as a “Trump caravan,” which Gutiérrez-Boronat rejected.
Caravan against socialism and communism in Miami, Florida, October 10, 2020. / Picture courtesy of Daniel Quiróz/Cuban Democratic Directorate
Caravan against socialism and communism in Miami, Florida, October 10, 2020. / Picture courtesy of Daniel Quiróz/Cuban Democratic Directorate
Not only were supporters of Democrat Party candidate Joe Biden welcome at the caravan – one, Gutiérrez-Boronat said, showed up holding a Biden sign. “Nobody bothered him,” he noted.
A small group of “less than ten” socialists also showed up, Gutiérrez-Boronat said, but left after their brief presence went largely ignored. Miami police reported no violence or significant disturbances.
Outside of Miami, the caravan generated two sister events in Uruguay and Chile. Chile, in particular, has suffered a wave of violent leftist rioting throughout the past year that has left much of its capital, Santiago, destroyed – prompting pushback from the family-oriented citizens and those concerned that nefarious leftist elements on the continent, most prominently in Venezuela, were planning an expansion into their country.
Some Cubans on the island also attempted to form a “caravan” of their own; any expression of anti-socialist or anti-communist sentiment in Cuba is a crime.
Journalists Esteban Rodríguez and Héctor Luis Valdés Cocho held up signs from their balconies reading “no more repression, no more fines, down with communism,” resulting in the arrival of six state security agents, two police cars, and two police motorcycles to their homes to intimidate them into silence.
National Hispanic news outlets largely ignored the event, according to an analysis by Newsbusters, though some assigned it to local affiliates:
Telemundo did send a local crew, and filed a report on the local Miami affiliate’s website. But so far, no video of the report on the caravan has been uploaded to social media where it can be easily shared by viewers and members of the community. But even Telemundo’s meager effort is far better than Univision’s outright omission- as if this massive anti-communist caravan never even happened.
Caravan against socialism and communism in Miami, Florida, October 10, 2020…. Picture courtesy of Daniel Quiróz/Cuban Democratic Directorate
At least one local news outlet also attempted to claim that only “hundreds” attended the event, while also reporting the presence of 30,000 vehicles, bizarrely suggesting the majority of the vehicles in the parade were self-driving.
All photos published courtesy of Daniel Quiróz/Cuban Democratic Directorate.
Cuban-American businessman Máximo Álvarez, who came to the U.S. alone as a child under Operation Peter Pan, warned the audience at the Republican National Convention (RNC) Monday that the promises and mob violence characterizing the modern left remind him of the nation he fled.
“I’m speaking to you today because I’ve seen people like this before. I’ve seen movements like this before. I’ve seen ideas like this before and I’m here to tell you, we cannot let them take over our country,” Álvarez asserted, referring both to Democrat Party presidential nominee Joe Biden and to the socialist faction of the party that largely supported rival Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT).
The businessman – founder of Sunshine Gasoline Distributors in Florida – specifically cited the “defund the police” movement and calls for universal health care and other socialist policies as “echoes” of the vows Fidel Castro made before seizing power in Cuba.
“Those false promises — spread the wealth, defund the police, trust a socialist state more than your family and your community — they don’t sound radical to my ears. They sound familiar,” he continued. “When Fidel Castro was asked if he was a communist, he said he was a Roman Catholic. He knew he had to hide the truth. But the country I was born in is gone, totally destroyed.”
“When I watch the news in Seattle and Chicago and Portland, when I see history being rewritten, when I hear the promises—I hear echoes of a former life I never wanted to hear again. I see shadows I thought I had outrun,” Álvarez continued. “I heard the promises of Fidel Castro. And I can never forget all those who grew up around me, who looked like me, who suffered and starved and died because they believed those empty promises. They swallowed the communist poison pill.”
Álvarez was one of over 14,000 children whose parents sent them to America alone under “Operation Peter Pan,” in which America agreed to take the children in cases where the communist regime would not allow families to escape together. While many families later reunited after sending their children to freedom first, thousands of other children never saw their parents again.
“I know all about the past — I’ll never forget my own. My family has fled totalitarianism and communism. And more than once. First, my dad from Spain, then from Cuba,” Álvarez relayed. “But my family is done running away. By the grace of God, I have lived the American dream — the greatest blessing I’ve ever had. My dad, who only had a sixth-grade education told me, ‘don’t lose this place. You’ll never be as lucky as me.’”
“I’m speaking to you today because my family is done abandoning what we rightfully earned. There is no place to hide,” he insisted.
The businessman then praised President Donald Trump for his work in combatting leftist ideals.
“I’m speaking to you today because President Trump may not always be politically correct … our president is just another family man,” Álvarez warned. “President Trump is fighting the forces of anarchy and communism. And I know he will continue to do just that. And what about his opponent? I have no doubt they will hand the country over to those dangerous forces.”
“I choose President Trump because I choose America. I choose freedom,” he concluded.
Yamil Lage / AFP via Getty ImagesPolice officers strengthen security in the El Carmelo neighborhood of Havana on April 4, 2020, after Cuban authorities announced its isolation as a measure to contain the spread of the novel coronavirus after the detection of COVID-19 cases. (Yamil Lage / AFP via Getty Images)
The coronavirus pandemic should remind all Americans how fortunate we are that we don’t live in a socialist country.
Most of my family fled to the United States from socialist Cuba; not all of them made it out alive, and some of them are still there. Growing up in California, I heard countless stories from my mom and grandparents of the government oppression that my relatives faced in their daily lives.
As I watch our own government’s efforts to mobilize the population in response to the coronavirus pandemic, I’m grateful that my family’s sacrifices enabled me to live in a country that has such immense respect for individual liberties. Curfews, restrictions on economic activity, scarce food and punitive, overbearing policing practices are a hallmark of both communist and socialist regimes in normal times. Here in the U.S., these things cause a shock to our system even during a crisis when they’re voluntary, precisely because so many of us take our individual liberties for granted.
This shock you feel should serve as a reminder that we’re all united by our great fortune to live in the most free country ever to exist. There is no better time to reflect on and appreciate our freedom as we get a small glimpse into what others living under communism and socialism experience every day.
Counterintuitively, the sight of bare shelves in grocery stores across the country also underscores the superiority of our capitalist system. Americans are shocked by the fact that it has become difficult to obtain certain staples such as toilet paper, but for citizens living under socialist regimes, severe shortages are simply a fact of life — and they don’t even have the option of settling for lasagna instead of spaghetti, because the shortages they endure day in and day out are far more widespread than anything Americans have encountered in recent weeks.
Rationing is common in Cuba for this very reason. The government limits the amount of food and supplies each Cuban is allowed to buy, and enforces those limits brutally.
When my mom’s cousin was dying of cancer in Cuba, the government wouldn’t provide sheets or food for her feeding tube. Our family in Cuba had to scour the black market to get her the appropriate food to be able to feed her through a tube during her last days. This was after the Cuban government missed her brain cancer diagnosis for years due to broken machines and poorly educated doctors. It was only discovered when she had months left to live.
When you hear that “health care is a right,” this is an example of what the health care Cubans have a “right” to looks like.
Innocent Cubans have been killed and jailed over violating rationing rules and for speaking out about their hunger. We don’t have to worry about that here in the United States. The closest thing to rationing that we’ll ever experience are reasonable per-customer limits on high-demand products put in place by the stores themselves.
President Trump may have encouraged Americans to scale back their hoarding of toilet paper, but there’s no way he would ever restrict how much we can buy, because he knows that the free market will restock those shelves far faster than any draconian government intervention could possibly manage.
Since long before the coronavirus crisis, I have been concerned that too many Americans have accepted a whitewashed history of socialism that glosses over the widespread brutality and hardship that characterize socialist governments. It’s no secret that our education system is dominated by the ideological political left, who have made strides in normalizing socialism as a Norwegian fairytale, ignoring the fact Norway is not a socialist country. I’ve seen American teachers with my own two eyes proud to prominently display a celebratory image of Marxist murderer Che Guevara in their classrooms — a distressing sight for those who actually know the brutality of his actions.
It seems that some Americans are so accustomed to freedom that we can’t even imagine the privation and fear that families like mine endured under socialism. It’s easy to think socialism is the answer when the words sound pretty, but when faced with the ugly reality it becomes too late to turn back. Once these ideologies take root in a country, the rot rapidly infects every crevice of the government and suddenly the citizens have no freedom to lawfully change it.
It’s no surprise that Cuban and Venezuelan immigrants living in the United States are overwhelmingly conservative and pro-capitalist. We see the empty shelves in the meat, dairy or toiletry sections at the grocery store caused by this pandemic and are reminded that in our home countries, the everyday reality is much worse.
For people like my mom, it evokes memories of having her last possession, a doll, destroyed and stolen from her by a Cuban government official. That was the one item she was allowed to flee with, but an overwhelming need for control drove the official to make sure my mom wasn’t hiding money inside of the doll.
Similarly, we were bewildered when Democrats praise the government-run health care system in Cuba — the same type of system that is failing so spectacularly to cope with coronavirus outbreaks in countries such as Italy.
When my grandpa visits our family still stuck in Cuba, we all rally together to fill suitcases full of medicine, female hygiene products and other basic health necessities because we know those things aren’t available in a socialist country. Unfortunately, the coronavirus is exposing the deficiencies of socialized medicine in a much more serious way — ventilators aren’t nearly as easy to fit in a suitcase.
As state and local governments across the U.S. ask citizens and business owners to make sacrifices in order to stop the spread of a deadly virus, I’m reminded of my time traveling in China with the recording artist Akon, where our guide was required to obtain special government permits just to enter certain parts of the country. Curfews, internet firewalls, bans of social media like Twitter and shutdowns are a regular part of life in China — and violating them brings severe consequences. Freedom of speech does not exist in China; people live in fear of vocalizing their thoughts. When I’d ask a hard question about living under communism, their eyes told me what they could not vocalize due to their fear of being monitored. Even Chinese citizens are restricted from entering certain districts, based on their status. As an American, that was strange to watch; it felt like we had been transported into the Hunger Games universe. It served as a stark reminder that we have such remarkable freedoms and opportunities in America that we often don’t even realize just how good we have it.
The parallels between our temporary “coronapocalypse” and everyday life under socialism should make us wary of those who try to present socialism as some kind of panacea. It should also make us grateful to have a president who knew communist China wasn’t being honest with us about the severity of the virus that originated there. President Trump’s instincts about communist China led to flights from China being shut down in January, despite the protests of xenophobia from Democrats, a decision we now know saved countless lives.
Most of all these parallels should make us grateful that we have a president committed to ensuring that the United States of America never becomes a socialist country. As I reflect on the difficulty my relatives stuck in Cuba face every day, I’m more grateful than ever to be an American.
Robby Starbuck is a Cuban-American producer and director. Robby was nominated for Best Rock Video and Best Indie Video at the Much Music Video Awards and has won the YouTube Play award, the Kerrang! Video of the Year award and Best Video with a Message at the MTV VMAs.
An incredible number of Cuban-Americans rallied to support the President on Saturday after a week of Senator Bernie Sanders defending the Cuban dictator Fidel Castro.
Miami is always a party but on Saturday Cuban Americans got together to support President Trump and sent a very clear message to Democrats, there will be no socialism in the United States. All over social media pictures and videos popped up of trucks flying Cuban and American flags, people were wearing MAGA hats and waving Trump 2020 flags.
These videos below destroy the false narrative of the media that only “old white men” support the President.
During an interview last week, Sanders defended Fidel Castro’s “literacy program” which was really an indoctrination program.
But this weekend Miami was packed with vehicles that had signs and painted slogans like, “Viva Trump,” “Free Cuba,” and “Abajo La Dictadura” (Dow with Dictatorships).
“Wondering what that excessive honking was in Coral Gables, Miami and Brickell?” asked the Miami Herald. “It’s about Trump.”
On the same day, over 150 Cuban Americans in Kentucky held a similar protest also giving speeches and honking their horns, blasting their music while wearing their MAGA gear.
With flags and music, Cubans in Louisville are holding a caravan through the city decrying socialism in Cuba. Recent remarks about Cuba and gains of presidential candidate Bernie Sanders have stirred fears among some in a community with diverse political views @courierjournalpic.twitter.com/RxI93F8Qw1
A.F. Branco has taken his two greatest passions, (art and politics) and translated them into the cartoons that have been popular all over the country, in various news outlets including “Fox News”, MSNBC, CBS, ABC and “The Washington Post.” He has been recognized by such personalities as Dinesh D’Souza, James Woods, Sarah Palin, Larry Elder, Lars Larson, Rush Limbaugh, and has had his toons tweeted by President Trump.
The co-founder of The Home Depot slammed supporters of socialism during a Friday interview on Fox News. Bernard Marcus, The Home Depot co-founder, talked to Fox News host Neil Cavuto about the failure of socialism in Venezuela and Cuba. Marcus said socialism has devastated those countries and compared their present state to what they were like before socialist rule. He specifically called Cuba a “perfect example of socialism gone wrong.”
“They took a great country. They put it right down the drain in every way possible,” Marcus said about Cuba.
“People are starving to death. Medical (care) is not available for them. And we have a group of people in Washington today, new representatives especially, that look at socialism as the way to go,” he said. “And if you don’t think that’s dangerous, I do.”
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Marcus told Cavuto that he believed the growing support for socialism among young Americans “comes right out of the universities.”
“You see students graduating today and a very high percentage … almost 50 percent of students coming out of universities today believe that socialism is the answer,”Marcus said.
One recent survey found that that 51 percent of American millennials would rather live under socialist or communist rule than in a capitalist country. A study by Campus Reform found that Ocasio-Cortez’s alma mater, Boston University, overwhelmingly supported Democratic causes. The study found that of the donations given by Boston University faculty in 2017-2018, 97 percent were to Democrat politicians and Democrat organizations. And support for socialism springs from these disproportionately left-leaning schools.
“That’s frightening to me because the things that made this country great, that created the wealth of this country — and I mean the wealth of every single person right down the line — the best medical care in the world, the best housing in the world, that’s why people want to come here, is because of the system, and that’s the free enterprise system,” Marcus said.
Instead of looking to socialism, Marcus said to look at what the U.S. is doing right. He pointed to the current low unemployment and economic prosperity.
“Why would you want to take that formula, where there’s prosperity, where jobs are out there where people can pay their own way, take care of their families. Why would you want to change that?”
It’s a good question to ask those like Ocasio-Cortez who are eager to proclaim the virtues of socialism. One just needs to look to Cuba or Venezuela to see what a few decades of socialism will do to a country.
The growing crisis in North Korea may be dominating the news, but another communist nation may have just attacked American diplomats. A strange but alarming report from BBC News indicates that Cuba may have covertly harmed American embassy officials in Havana.
Several U.S. diplomats have been forced to leave the island country after their residences in Cuba were allegedly targeted by sonic devices which cause serious and possibly permanent hearing loss. It sounds like a plot element from a Cold War thriller novel, but two major news sources — BBC and the Associated Press — are standing by the story.
“Some of the diplomats’ symptoms were so severe that they were forced to cancel their tours early and return to the United States,” reported the AP.
“After months of investigation, U.S. officials concluded that the diplomats had been exposed to an advanced device that operated outside the range of audible sound and had been deployed either inside or outside their residences. It was not immediately clear if the device was a weapon used in a deliberate attack, or had some other purpose,” continued the report.
The U.S. government is also taking the possible covert attack seriously. In response to the incident, two Cuban diplomats have been expelled from Washington, D.C.
“We requested their departure as a reciprocal measure since some U.S. personnel’s assignments in Havana had to be curtailed due to these incidents,”explained Heather Nauert, a spokesperson for the State Department. “Under the Vienna Convention, Cuba has an obligation to take measures to protect diplomats.”
Officials also increased security around the embassy in Havana, as well as the residences where American officials and their families live. If the reports of a covert attack are accurate, the incident could mean a serious blow to budding relations between the United States and the communist island. Diplomatic connections between the two countries were only recently restored by Barack Obama, after decades of an embargo against the Castro regime.
The alleged assault could prove critics of normalized relations to be right: The Cuban government is no friend of the United States, and pretending otherwise could have serious consequences.
President Barack Obama plans to transfer out at least 22 of the 59 detainees who remain at the U.S. military prison in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, by the time he leaves the White House, a move that will liberate jihadists who have threatened to behead and bomb Americans, the Daily Mail has learned.
In recent weeks, the number of detainees who are expected to be set free by the end of Obama’s tenure on January 20 has varied by news agencies from 17 to 19. Earlier this week, the White House responded to incoming President Donald Trump’s urging to stop transferring prisoners out of Guantánamo, saying it plans to liberate more detainees before Obama leaves office.
The Obama administration reportedly told Congress last month that the sitting president would reduce the population of Guantánamo, also known as Gitmo, by 19 to 40 detainees.
Now, the Daily Mail reports:
Image added by WjhatDidYouSay.org
President Obama is planning to transfer at least 22 additional Guantanamo Bay detainees out of the military detention center before he leaves office later this month, DailyMail.com has learned.
The group being released will be drawn from those held at Guantanamo – who include an accused senior al Qaeda bomb-maker, the terror group’s top financial manager, and two intended 9/11 hijackers, who have all been held in the Cuba-based U.S. detention facility for more than a decade
U.S. transfers 15 Guantanamo detainees to United Arab Emirates
Image added by WhatDidYouSay.org
Of the 59 prisoners still held at Gitmo, 22 have been cleared for release by Obama’s multi-agency parole-style board known as the Periodic Review Board (PRB) and nearly half (27) are considered “forever prisoners,”or too dangerous to release.
However, the PRB has made the decision to liberate prisoners who had already been designated too dangerous to release, which means the “forever prisoner” designation has not prevented the Obama administration from transferring out detainees.
According to theMiami Herald, the remaining 10 prisoners are still undergoing war crimes proceedings at military commissions, including six who are facing death penalty tribunals.
The Daily Mail reports:
The list of “recommended for transfer” prisoners includes a number of top al Qaeda operatives and commanders
[…]
Image added by WhatDidYouSay.org
Some of the recommended transfers have also vowed to return to jihad if they are ever released, according to reports from US military officials. They have also threatened to assassinate the U.S. president, kill American citizens, and attack other world leaders who are allied with the West.
At least four countries — including Italy, Oman, the United Arab Emirates, and Saudi Arabia — are expected to take in some of the 19 prisoners who are expected to be transferred by January 20.
On Wednesday, Reuters reports that Obama will transfer four prisoners to Saudi Arabia in the next 24 hours.
The Daily Mail notes:
Fifty-nine enemy combatants in total still remain at Guantanamo, including terror “mastermind” Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, two of the “20th hijackers” for the 9/11 attacks, and the strategists behind the USS Cole bombing of 2000.
The group includes al Qaeda henchmen from around the world who are trained in lethal military tactics – ranging from sniper assassins and rocket-propelled grenade operators, to explosives and chemical weapons experts.
Image added by WhatDidYouSay.org
According to the latest estimate by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI), three out of every 10 Guantánamo detainees who have been released under both Presidents Obama and George W. Bush are suspected or confirmed to have re-engagedin terrorist activities. Some of the liberated prisoners are believed to have American blood on their hands.
The Daily Mail points out, “Some released detainees have gone back into terrorism. Four of the senior leaders in al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) are former Guantanamo Bay detainees that were transferred to Saudi Arabia or Sudan.”
First the anthem protest, anti-cop socks and now this stupid t-shirt. Way to go, Kaepernick! For those of you still watching the NFL, yeah, this guy is still there with his anti-Americanism intact.
Here is a close-up:
The shirt reads, ‘Great Minds Think Alike’ and has photos of Malcolm X and Communist Dictator, Fidel Castro.
The embattled quarterback, who was spotted in a T-shirt depicting Mr. Castro earlier this year, initially demurred when asked about the shirt by a reporter from the Miami Herald who comes from a family of Cuban exiles. He pointed out that the shirt also pictured Malcolm X.
“I’m not talking about Fidel Castro and his oppression,”Mr. Kaepernick said on Wednesday’s press call, the Palm Beach Post reported. “I’m talking about Malcolm X and what he’s done for people.”
But when pressed on the point, he praised the Cuban autocrat’s comparative commitment to education and criminal justice reform.
“One thing that Fidel Castro did do is they have the highest literacy rate because they invest more in their education system than they do in their prison system, which we do not do here, even though we’re fully capable of doing that,”Mr. Kaepernick said.
When the reporter rebutted that Mr. Castro broke up countless families during his half-century, one-man reign over the oppressed island nation, Mr. Kaepernick said the United States breaks up plenty of families, too.
“We do break up families here,”he said. “That’s what mass incarceration is. That was the foundation of slavery, so our country has been based on that as well as the genocide of Native Americans.” Read more:Washington Times
It seems that every time Kaepernick makes some political statement with his kneeling, clothing choices or speeches at a press conference, he just shows what he is.
The Obama administration believes that at least 12 detainees released from the prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, have launched attacks against U.S. or allied forces in Afghanistan, killing about a half-dozen Americans, according to current and former U.S. officials.
In March, a senior Pentagon official made a startling admission to lawmakers when he acknowledged that former Guantanamo inmates were responsible for the deaths of Americans overseas. The official, Paul Lewis, who oversees Guantanamo issues at the Defense Department, provided no details, and the Obama administration has since declined to elaborate publicly on his statement because the intelligence behind it is classified.
But The Washington Post has learned additional details about the suspected attacks, including the approximate number of detainees and victims involved and the fact that, while most of the incidents were directed at military personnel, the dead also included one American civilian: a female aid worker who died in Afghanistan in 2008. The officials, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss a sensitive matter, declined to give an exact number for Americans killed or wounded in the attacks, saying the figure is classified.
Lewis’s statement had drawn scrutiny on Capitol Hill, where some lawmakers see the violence against Americans as further evidence that the president’s plans for closing the prison are misguided and dangerous. They also describe the administration’s unwillingness to release information about the attacks as another instance of its use of high levels of classification to avoid discussion of a politically charged issue that could heighten political oppositionto its plans.
One U.S. official familiar with the intelligence said that nine of the detainees suspected in the attacks are now dead or in foreign government custody. The official would not specify the exact number of detainees involved but said it was fewer than 15. All of them were released from Guantanamo Bay under the administration of George W. Bush
The official added: “Because many of these incidents were large-scale firefights in a war zone, we cannot always distinguish whether Americans were killed by the former detainees or by others in the same fight.”
Military and intelligence officials, responding to lawmakers’ requests for greater details, have provided lawmakers with a series of classified documents about the suspected attacks. One recent memo from the National Counterterrorism Center (NCTC), which was sent to the House Foreign Affairs Committee after Lewis’s testimony, described the attacks, named the detainees involved and provided information about the victims without giving their names.
But lawmakers are prohibited from discussing the contents of that memo because of its high classification level. A similar document provided last month to the office of Sen. Kelly Ayotte (R-N.H.), a vocal opponent of Obama’s Guantanamo policy, was so highly classified that even her staff members with a top-secret clearance level were unable to read it.
“There appears to be a consistent and concerted effort by the Administration to prevent Americans from knowing the truth regarding the terrorist activities and affiliations of past and present Guantanamo detainees,”Ayotte wrote in a letter to Obama this week, urging him to declassify information about how many U.S. and NATO personnel have been killed by former detainees.
Rep. Edward R. Royce (R-Calif.), who chairs the House Foreign Affairs Committee, has also written legislation that would require greater transparency surrounding the transfer of Guantanamo detainees. Royce and Ayotte are among the lawmakers who opposed a road map for closing the prison that the White House submitted to Congress earlier this year. That plan would require moving some detainees to U.S. prisons and resettling the rest overseas.
“The administration is releasing dangerous terrorists to countries that can’t control them, and misleading Congress in the process,”Royce said in a statement. “The president should halt detainee transfers immediately and be honest with the American people.”
Just under 700 detainees have been released from Guantanamo since the prison opened in 2002; 80 inmates remain.
Secrecy about the top-security prison, perched on an inaccessible corner of Cuba, is nothing new. The Bush administration for years refused provide a roster of detainees until it wasforced to do so in a Freedom of Information Act case in 2006. To this day, reporters have never been able to visit Camp 7, a classified facility that holds 14 high-value detainees, including the five men on trial for organizing the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.
Both the Bush and Obama administrations have provided only limited information on current and former detainees; most of what the public knows about them comes from defense lawyers or from documents released by WikiLeaks.
According to a 2012 report from the House Armed Services Committee, the Defense Intelligence Agency ended the practice of naming some suspected recidivists in 2009 when officials became concerned that it would endanger sources and methods.
National Security Council spokesman Myles Caggins said it was difficult to discuss specific cases in detail because the information was classified.
“But, again, we are committed to being forthcoming with the American people about our safe and responsible approach to Guantanamo detainee transfers, including about possible detainee re-engagement in terrorist activities,”he said.
One Republican aide who has reviewed the classified material about the attacks on Americans said the information has been “grossly overclassified.”
Administration officials say that recidivism rates for released Guantanamo inmates remain far lower than those for federal offenders. According to a recent study, almost half of all federal offenders released in 2005 were “rearrested for a new crime or rearrested for a violation of supervision conditions.” Among former Guantanamo detainees, the total number of released detainees who are suspected or confirmed of reengaging is about 30 percent,according to U.S. intelligence.
Nearly 21 percent of those released prior to 2009 have reengaged in militancy, officials say, compared with about 4.5 percent of the 158 released by Obama.
Human rights activists say the statistics are suspect and cannot be verified because the administration provides almost no information about whom it is counting and why.
Most of those suspected of re-engagement are Afghan, reflecting the large numbers of Afghans detained after the Sept. 11 attacks and the ongoing war there. More than 200 Afghan prisoners have been repatriated from the prison.
Officials declined to identify the woman killed in Afghanistan in 2008. But there are two female aid workers killed that year who might fit the description. Cydney Mizell, a 50-year-old employee of the Asian Rural Life Development Foundation, was abducted in Kandahar as she drove to work. Her body was never recovered, according to a former colleague who said he was told about a month later that she had died.
Another woman, Nicole Dial, 30, a Trinidadian American who worked for the International Rescue Committee, was shot and killed the same year south of Kabul, along with two colleagues. Relatives of Mizell and Dial said they have not been in touch with the FBI for years. Dial’s brother said he was unaware of a former Guantanamo detainee being involved in his sister’s killing. Mizell’s stepmother said she was never told the exact circumstances of her daughter’s death or who abducted her.
“She was definitely killed,”Peggy Mizell said. “I figured she was shot.”
Don’t say Barack Obama never tells it how it is. When he revealed to Jeffrey Goldberg that, in his opinion, the Washington foreign policy establishment fetishizes “credibility,” that obsession with credibility got us into Vietnam, and that he personally has broken out of credibility’s limiting box—well, you might have thought that deep down this was just an embarrassed, ex post facto rationalization of the Syrian red line debacle. But to watch him stand there today in Cuba, next to a doddering, pompous communist dictator going out of his way repeatedly to insult Obama and the United States, and in response mustering little more than a weak, “You know, I actually welcome President Castro commenting on some of the areas where he feels we’re falling short,” it is painfully clear that our president is a man long past caring about public humiliation.
Before a televised press conference in Havana, Raul Castro harangued Obama about the continuing American “blockade” of Cuba, its “illegal” occupation of Guantanamo Bay, seemed to accuse the president of being friendly to “destabilization” in Venezuela, and implied that his own family’s corrupt ownership of an entire country was justified because, unlike in America, “We find it inconceivable that a government does not defend and ensure the right to health care, any patient, social security, food provision and development, equal pay, and the rights of children.”
Welcome to Cuba, Mr. President!
With the man who ought to command the title of “leader of the free world” standing right next to him, Castro flatly lied to an American reporter who asked him about political prisoners, saying that CNN’s Jim Acosta should give him a list when the press conference was over, because he was unaware of any such detainees. (A partial list is here, if you’d like to see it.) When another reporter followed up on human rights issues, Castro responded with a robust defense—you can’t make this stuff up—of Cuba’s commitment to a woman’s right to equal pay for equal work.
And the president of the United States just stood there and took it. Virtually the only resistance he offered came at the end, when Castro, a man whom we may presume is accustomed to getting what he wants, grabbed Obama’s wrist and tried to hoist it into the air for some sort of victory photo op. Obama responded by letting his wrist go limp as Castro weirdly waved his arm around in the air.
As Obama advanced his foreign policy of giving away the store to third-rate dictatorships in the supremely arrogant belief that his generosity will teach their leaders to be virtuous, almost simultaneously the GOP frontrunner was in Washington advancing a vision of American leadership that appears to be based on shaking down our allies. Trump told the Washington Post‘s editorial board that “NATO is costing us a fortune,” and that “we are not reimbursed” for the help we give South Korea. Because America is “a poor country now,” we need to pull back from these and other similar relationships—though, implicitly, our friends could always pay up if they wanted to keep our protection. In an appearance later in the day, he also appeared to support cutting off aid for Israel, before walking that position back a few minutes later, because he’s pretty much making most of this up as he goes along.
In short, this was a pretty humiliating day to be an American
Thomson Reuters; Cuban-themed murals adorn SW 8th Street in Little Havana, Miami
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The Obama administration is expected to announce an agreement with Cuba in early July to reopen embassies and reopen embassiessevered more than five decades ago, U.S. sources familiar with the matter said on Friday.
The two sides hope to conclude the deal by the first week of next month, clearing the way for Secretary of State John Kerry to visit Havana soon afterwards for a flag-raising ceremony to upgrade the U.S. Interests Section to a full-scale embassy, the sources said.
Since a breakthrough between the two former Cold War rivals announced in December, negotiators have settled all but a few differences and were confident they would soon be resolved, several sources told Reuters. They said the exact timetable for the formal embassy opening was unclear because of Kerry’s recovery from a broken leg suffered in a May 31 biking accident in France, as well as the looming June 30 deadline for a final nuclear deal with Iran, which would dominate Kerry’s schedule over the next weeks.
Restoration of relations would be the latest phase in a normalization process, which is expected to move slowly because of lingering problems over issues such as Cuba’s human rights record. A U.S. embargo will remain in place, and only Congress can lift it. The sources said the administration hoped to formally notify Congress within the next two weeks of its intention to reopen the Havana embassy. The State Department is required by law to give Congress at least 15 days’ notice of such an action.
Cuba’s Communist government is likely to act in sync with the United States on reopening of the embassies, issuing its own announcement on restoring ties, one source said. But it was unclear how fast the two sides would act in naming ambassadors. As part of its preparations to turn its interests section in Washington into a full-fledged embassy, Cuba erected a large flagpole on the front lawn of the building on Wednesday. The flag itself will await the formal announcement of relations. Obama and Cuban President Raul Castro pledged full restoration of ties on Dec. 17. The two leaders met in Panama in mid-April.
REUTERS/Peru Presidency Cuba’s President Raul Castro (L) stands with his U.S. counterpart Barack Obama before the inauguration of the VII Summit of the Americas in Panama City April 10, 2015.
Major issues resolved, officials say
Cuba was formally removed from the U.S. list of state sponsors of terrorism late last month, a critical step toward rapprochement 54 years after Washington cut off relations at the height of the Cold War and imposed an economic embargo. U.S. and Cuban negotiators have resolved all but a few minor differences since the last round of high-level talks in May in Washington, the sources said. The main obstacles had been U.S. demands for relative freedom of movement for their diplomats on the island, comparable to that in Russia and Vietnam, while the Cubans had objected to U.S. training courses in journalism and information technology given at the U.S. interests section in Havana.
Negotiators are now settling issues such as how many shipping containers will be allowed into Havana for renovating the U.S. mission there.
U.S. officials say there is little, if any, chance that hardline anti-Castro lawmakers in Congress would be able to block the restoration of ties.
The White House declined comment on the timing of any announcements. There was also no comment from the Cuban government.
(Editing by David Storey and Ken Wills)
Read the original article on Reuters. Copyright 2015. Follow Reuters on Twitter.
HAVANA (AP) — The Obama administration on Friday formally removed Cuba from a U.S. terrorism blacklist, a decision hailed in Cuba as the healing of a decades-old wound and an important step toward normalizing relations between the Cold War foes.
Secretary of State John Kerry signed off on rescinding Cuba’s “state sponsor of terrorism” designation exactly 45 days after the Obama administration informed Congress of its intent to do so on April 14. Lawmakers had that amount of time to weigh in and try to block the move, but did not do so.
“The 45-day congressional pre-notification period has expired, and the secretary of state has made the final decision to rescind Cuba’s designation as a state sponsor of terrorism, effective today, May 29, 2015,” the State Department said in a statement.
“While the United States has significant concerns and disagreements with a wide range of Cuba’s policies and actions, these fall outside the criteria relevant to the rescission of a state sponsor of terrorism designation,”the statement said.
The step comes as officials from the two countries continue to hash out details of restoring full diplomatic relations, including opening embassies in Washington and Havana and returning ambassadors to the two countries for the first time since the U.S. severed diplomatic relations with the island in January 1961. The removal of Cuba from the terrorism list had been a key Cuban demand.
The Cold War-era designation was levied mainly for Cuba’s support of leftist guerrillas around the world and isolated the communist island from much of the world financial system because banks fear repercussions from doing business with designated countries. Even Cuba’s Interests Section in Washington lost its bank in the United States, forcing it to deal in cash until it found a new banker this month.
The terror list is a particularly charged issue for Cuba because of the U.S. history of supporting exile groups responsible for attacks on the island, including the 1976 bombing of a Cuban passenger flight from Barbados that killed 73 people aboard. The attack was linked to Cuban exiles with ties to U.S.-backed anti-Castro groups and both men accused of masterminding the crime took shelter in Florida, where one, Luis Posada Carriles, currently lives.
“I think this could be a positive act that adds to hope and understanding and can help the negotiations between Cuba and the United States,” said director Juan Carlos Cremata, who lost his father in the 1976 bombing. “It’s a list we never should have been on,”said Ileana Alfonso, 57, who also lost her father in the attack.
U.S. and Cuban officials have said the two sides are close to resolving the final issues but the most recent round of talks ended last Friday with no announcement of an agreement. Even as many of the biggest hurdles, including the terrorism designation, have been cleared, Washington and Havana are still wrangling over American demands that its diplomats be able to travel throughout Cuba and meet with dissidents without restrictions. The Cubans are wary of activity they see as destabilizing to their government.
Both the U.S. and Cuba say the embassies are a first step in a larger process of normalizing relations. That effort would still have to tackle bigger questions such as the embargo, which only Congress can fully revoke, as well as the future of the U.S. military prison at Guantanamo Bay and Cuba’s democracy record.
Yesterday, President Barack Obama announced that the United States would be removing Cuba from the U.S. State Sponsors of Terror list as part of his push to normalize relations with the communist dictatorship. But just hours later, a terror group long fostered by Cuba — even today, the Castro brothers are harboring several wanted members of the group — murdered 10 Colombian soldiers and wounded 17 others in a terror attack on a military base.
Ten soldiers were killed and 17 injured in western Colombia Wednesday, in a dawn attack on an army garrison that officials blamed on leftist FARC guerrillas (The Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia—People’s Army (Spanish: Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia—Ejército del Pueblo, FARC–EP and FARC). The attack occurred in a small town in Cauca province, governor Temistocles Ortega told Blu radio, adding that four of the injured soldiers are in serious condition.
The Cauca region has been a stronghold for the rebel fighters, who are in peace talks with the Bogota government to end more than a half-century of hostilities. “This is precisely the war that we are trying to end,”President Juan Manuel Santos said on Twitter.
The FARC in December declared a unilateral ceasefire, which it has said was meant to advance the negotiations, which have been under way since November 2012. The Colombian government last month temporarily halted air raids against the Marxist rebels. The five-decade-long conflict has killed more than 200,000 people and uprooted more than five million.
Yesterday, in an article titled “Why Cuba Was, And Must Remain, On Terror List,” PJ Media’s Henry Gomez reported that Cuba has not changed its policy of fueling and defending leftist terror whatsoever since they were initially placed on the list. Wrote Gomez:
The Castro brothers continue to harbor international terrorists from Spain’s Basque separatist group ETA and Colombia’s Marxist rebels FARC, as well as American domestic terrorists from groups like the Black Liberation Army. Nothing has really changed on this front. It’s estimated that 70 U.S. fugitives are being harbored by Cuba, including Joanne Chesimard (AKA “Assata Shakur”), a convicted cop killer.
Apologists for the Castro regime try to argue that Cuba does not meet the criteria of state sponsor of terrorism via technicalities. They insist that the Basque terrorists in Cuba are a matter for Spain to resolve bilaterally with Cuba, and that the FARC terrorists don’t count because Cuba is hosting peace talks between FARC and the Colombian government, and that Chesimard doesn’t qualify as a terrorist because she didn’t kill a civilian, conflating a police officer with a member of uniformed armed forces in a declared war.
Needless to say, the straws they grasp at paint no more of a flattering picture of the totalitarian dictatorship they defend, which is in its sixth decade.
Gomez is correct in his description of the apologists’ behavior as “grasping at straws.” Harboring terrorists matches the qualifications required for the list, as this act was specifically included in every yearly report dating back to Cuba’s being placed on the list in 1982.
Cuba was designated as a State Sponsor of Terrorism in 1982. Reports in 2012 suggested that the Cuban government was trying to distance itself from Basque Fatherland and Liberty (ETA) members living on the island by employing tactics such as not providing services including travel documents to some of them. The Government of Cuba continued to provide safe haven to approximately two dozen ETA members.
In past years, some members of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) were allowed safe haven in Cuba and safe passage through Cuba. In November, the Government of Cuba began hosting peace talks between the FARC and Government of Colombia.
There was no indication that the Cuban government provided weapons or paramilitary training to terrorist groups.
The Cuban government continued to harbor fugitives wanted in the United States. The Cuban government also provided support such as housing, food ration books, and medical care for these individuals.
The Financial Action Task Force (FATF) has identified Cuba as having strategic anti-money laundering/combating the financing of terrorism deficiencies. In 2012, Cuba became a member of the Financial Action Task Force of South America against Money Laundering, a FATF-style regional body. With this action, Cuba has committed to adopting and implementing the FATF Recommendations.
Recently, when it serves him well, the president has resorted to beating on Christians with ridiculously out of context scripture references. Well, Mr. Obama, I have one for you.
“Woe to those who call evil good and good evil, who put darkness for light and light for darkness, who put bitter for sweet and sweet for bitter!” ~ Isaiah 5:20 English Standard Version (ESV)
Basically, woe to the confused who think right is wrong and wrong is right! Mr. Obama, I have been listening to your carefully chosen words with these 2 major boondoggles you have going on.
First, there’s Iran.You stated in a recent interview that you thought it was crazy that the legislators were out there “spinning” the Iran agreement that hadn’t happened yet (but then you said it did happen over a week ago.) You are concerned that the legislators are saying that Iran will not live up to the proposed agreement. Not that that matters. Iran won’t put it in writing and the legislators wouldn’t sign it anyway!
You also say that the way we’ve been handling Iraq isn’t working and hasn’t worked for 30 years. Shouldn’t we use an entity’s previous track record or “MO” (modus operandi) anticipate how they will respond? Our military experts do it. Financial experts do it and you’ve even cited them many times. Business experts do it to predict the market and consumer buying trends. But Obamavision seems to be blind to this. It seems you believe that you have the Midas touch and everything you do is golden. Actually, I think you’re more like Schleprock from the Flintstones. You have a dark cloud that follows you around and everything you get involved with fails!
And now you want to give Iran a chance because you say this time they will actually stick to the agreement. Interestingly, almost every Middle Eastern leader thinks otherwise, but your crystal ball must be clearer than theirs. The fact that in the past they have cheated and lied to U.N. inspectors doesn’t concern you. The fact that they built an enrichment facility deep inside a mountain so we couldn’t see it doesn’t concern you. The fact that they have been playing war with their navy ships while bombing replicas of American ships doesn’t concern you. And what about the fact that their leader says there is no agreement, says you are lying, and says that they will not do anything until ALL restrictions are removed? Remember, you said restrictions would be removed gradually. Why don’t you call him out? Prove you’re not lying to us and that you have a spine. Never mind. I knew you wouldn’t.
The agreement says we won’t be able to inspect their military installations. Does that mean they promised us with a cross my heart and a kiss up to Allah that they will not be having any uranium on the bases? To coin an old seventies term, “Sure, I’ll still love you in the morning.”
Then, there is Cuba. Mr. President, you say we have been handling them the same way for 50 years and it has changed nothing. You’re right, I agree! They still oppress their people. The Castro brothers are still vicious dictators. They still imprison and torture political prisoners. Their 1% percenters are the Castro brothers. They still imprison homosexuals (so much for human rights.) But none of those things bother you. And you think that if we just lighten up and start doing business with them again all that will change?
Don’t you think if they really wanted freedom for their people they would have installed, or allowed to have elected, a democratic government? Just sayin’!
What do you think normalizing relations with an oppressive, communist, human rights offending government will do for them, and for that matter, us?
Raul Castro wants money and an apology for how we have treated them over the years and I have a sneaky suspicion, Mr. President, that you’re trying to figure out how to do that! I’ll tell you what, you get them to apologize for the human rights violations they have committed against their people since they took over and you can tell them, well, nothing. We did nothing wrong.
You tap the phones of all our friendly allies and then give a pass to the nations who hate us. You won’t help arm or rearm those who are willing to really fight for freedom for their people, but you will allow Iran, another human rights oppressing, woman and homosexual-hating country to get closer to creating a nuclear weapon.
Mr. Obama, I really am seeing the hate and distain you have for the American way of life and living.
America has always had issues but has always worked at correcting those issues and mistakes (although maybe not fast enough.) We have righted many wrongs. We have even helped our enemies rebuild. We have fed and defended peoples all over the world. We are not the big, bad country that you make us out to be. And still, you continue to beat on us, yes all of us, except a chosen few that you deemed worthy.
Newsflash, Mr. President, we will come back. You are awakening a sleeping giant. Even from within your own Party they are seeing the damage you do, and although they can’t stand Republicans, they can’t stand what you’re doing to this country even more!
Next to you, Joe Biden looks like an Oxford Professor, and I am sure Jimmy Carter is dancing in his living room knowing when he leaves this earth he will no longer be known as the worst president ever. Your real danger comes from thinking you know more than lifelong military experts, lifelong economic experts, lifelong foreign affairs experts, and that you simply know more than anyone else on the planet!
You have confused right with wrong. You have confused truth and lies. And you are confused as to who the ultimate judgment comes from. As a professing Christian, I am sure you won’t mind if I ask my brothers and sisters in Christ to pray for God to open up your eyes with understanding so you can see what you need to do to make things right again.
President Barack Obama’s 5-year-old campaign to close the federal prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, suffered a major setback as lawmakers finalizing the annual defense policy bill rejected steps toward shuttering the facility.
Sen. Carl Levin, D-Mich., chairman of the Armed Services Committee, told reporters on Monday that the final bill omits a provision giving the president the authority to transfer terror suspects to the United States if Congress signs off on a comprehensive plan to close the prison.
Levin had pushed for the authority and hailed it in May as creating “a path to close Guantanamo.” With lawmakers rushing to complete the defense bill in this month’s lame-duck session, Levin said proponents were unable to prevail.
“Our language … (on Guantanamo) … will not be in,”Levin said.
The House and Senate are expected to vote and overwhelmingly approve the sweeping policy bill in the coming days, sending it to Obama.
The president has pushed to close the post-9/11 prison since his inauguration in January 2009. He has faced strong resistance from Republicans and some Democrats in Congress who don’t want terror suspects housed in U.S. facilities and have warned of suspects returning to the fight when they are transferred back to their home countries.
In its version of the defense bill in May, the Senate Armed Services Committee included a provision that would authorize the transfer of terror suspects to U.S. soil “for detention, trial and incarceration, subject to stringent security measures and legal protections, once the president has submitted a plan to Congress for closing Guantanamo and Congress has had an opportunity to vote to disapprove that plan under expedited procedures.”
The House version of the defense bill prohibited the transfer to U.S. soil, and Republican and Democratic lawmakers who have repeatedly and successfully fought White House efforts to move detainees prevailed in the final version of the defense bill.
Currently, the prison holds 142 men, including 73 already cleared for release.
Last month, the Pentagon said it sent a Saudi citizen who has spent the past 12 years detained at Guantanamo to his homeland. The transfer of Muhammad al-Zahrani was based on the conclusion of a U.S. government board that has been re-evaluating the need to continue holding some of the men as prisoners.
Published: 09:24 EST, 16 July 2014 | Updated: 12:18 EST
Russia has agreed to reopen a major Cold War listening post on Cuba that was used to spy on America, it was reported today.
Moscow-based daily Kommersant claimed Russia and Cuba have struck a deal ‘in principle’ after President Vladimir Putin visited the island last week.
Citing several sources within Russian authorities, the respected daily wrote: ‘The agreements were finalised while President Vladimir Putin visited Havana last Friday.’
The former Russian listening station at Lourdes some 20 miles south of Havana is seen in this December 2000. It was mothballed a year later but could reopen, it is reported
Moscow dismantled its radar stations in Lourdes in 2001 as part of cutting back military installations abroad. The stations were built in 1964 after the 1962 Cuban missile crisis
Satellite dishes for the Lourdes radar station, which was Russia’s biggest covert military outpost abroad. Around 1,500 Russian engineers, technicians and soldiers observed submarine activity from the base built in 1964
The signals intelligence facility near Havana at Torrens, also known as Lourdes, was the largest Russian SIGINT site abroad, but has been
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mothballed since 2001.
It covered a 28 square-mile area with 1,000-1,500 Russian engineers, technicians, and military personnel working at the base.
Russia had closed the Lourdes spy base south of Havana on Putin’s orders to save money and due to a warming of relations with the U.S. after the September 11 attacks.
But Moscow has since shown a new interest in Latin America and its Cold War ally Cuba and relations with the West have deteriorated amid the Ukraine crisis.
The base was set up in 1964 after the Cuban missile crisis to spy on the United States.
Just 155 miles from the U.S. coast, it was the Soviet Union’s largest covert military outpost abroad with up to 3,000 staff.
Russia’s President Vladimir Putin (left) hugs Cuba’s President Raul Castro after a meeting at the Revolution Palace in Havana last week
Raul Castro welcomed Vladimir Putin, where they met to discuss bilateral agreements. Before that, both presidents participated together to a flower offering to the Sovietic International Soldier Mausoleum
It was used to listen in to radio signals including those from submarines and ships and satellite communications.
‘All I can say is – finally!’ one Russian source told Kommersant of the reported reopening.
The defence ministry and military high command declined to comment on the report to Kommersant.
Ahead of Putin’s visit to Cuba last week as part of a Latin American tour, Russia agreed to write off 90 per cent of Cuba’s debt dating back to the Soviet era, totalling around $32 billion.
Russia paid Cuba rent of $200 million per year to use the base in the last few years it was open.
A former head of Russia’s foreign intelligence service, Vyacheslav Trubnikov, told the newspaper the base would strengthen Russia’s international position.
‘Lourdes gave the Soviet Union eyes in the whole of the western hemisphere,’ he said.
‘For Russia, which is fighting for its lawful rights and place in the international community, it would be no less valuable than for the USSR.’
Putin’s spokesman Dmitry Peskov was not immediately available for comment on Wednesday.
CNN landed the interview, but the dramatic allegation comes from Sgt. Evan Buetow — Bowe Bergdahl’s team leader. To briefly recap what we’ve learned today, according to Fox News, “many” US intelligence officials have harbored concerns that Bergdahl may have “actively collaborated” with the Taliban enemy. The New York Times and Fox both published scoops regarding Bergdahl’s desertion note, which may have suggested (whatever that means) a desire to abandon his American citizenship. And now this:
Within days of his disappearance, says Buetow, teams monitoring radio chatter and cell phone communications intercepted an alarming message: The American is in Yahya Khel (a village two miles away). He’s looking for someone who speaks English so he can talk to the Taliban. “I heard it straight from the interpreter’s lips as he heard it over the radio,” said Buetow. “There’s a lot more to this story than a soldier walking away.” … “For 60 days or more, I remember, just straight, all we did was search for Bergdahl,” said Buetow, “essentially chasing a ghost because we never came up with anything.” At least six soldiers were killed in subsequent searches for him, according to soldiers involved in those operations…Many soldiers in Bergdahl’s platoon said attacks seemed to increase against the United States in Paktika province in the days and weeks following his disappearance. “Following his disappearance, IEDs started going off directly under the trucks. They were getting perfect hits every time. Their ambushes were very calculated, very methodical,” said Buetow. It was “very suspicious,” says Buetow, noting that Bergdahl knew sensitive information about the movement of U.S. trucks, the weaponry on those trucks, and how soldiers would react to attacks. “We were incredibly worried” that Bergdahl was giving up information, either under torture, or otherwise, says Buetow.
“Honor and distinction.” This is deadly serious stuff, literally. Bergdahl’s unit leader on the night he evidently deserted claims that intercepted communications from shortly after Bergdahl’s disappearance indicated that he may have been proactively seeking out the Taliban. The kindest explanation is that Bergdahl was already being held against his will in some fashion and was desperate to communicate with his captors as a means of self-preservation. But it’s pretty clear that Buetow doesn’t believe that. He takes things a step further, theorizing that Bergdahl may have lent his expertise to the enemy in order to improve the effectiveness of their ambushes and IEDs. If your instinct is to wave that theory away as extreme, consider two factors: (1) Wikileaks cables appear to corroborate a major part of Buetow’s account, and (2) the UK Daily Mail printed this all the way back in 2010:
A captured American soldier is training Taliban fighters bomb-making and ambush skills, according to one of his captors and Afghan intelligence officials. Private Bowe Bergdahl disappeared in June 2009 while based in eastern Afghanistan and is thought to be the only U.S. serviceman in captivity. The 24-year-old has converted to Islam and now has the Muslim name Abdullah, one of his captors told The Sunday Times.
In a vacuum, I wouldn’t necessarily put too much stock in the word of the Taliban, or Afghan intelligence officials. But now we have Buetow’s accusations to add into the equation, and people on both sides of this conflict have told a hauntingly similar story. These fears look more realistic than ever. The president must have known Bergdahl’s case was a minefield, but some combination of arrogance and tone-deafness led him to disregard internal concerns from the defense and intel communities, and to convince himself that this news would be met with euphoric celebrations. In case you were curious, Obama is “unapologetic” over the decision, of course. The same can’t be said of many Senate Democrats who’ve suddenly gone, well, AWOL on this story. I wonder why. Could it be that unlawfully releasing five hardened Taliban commanders from US custody with loose (if any) security precautions in place in exchange for an apparent deserter and alleged enemy collaborator might be…politically toxic? As you know, I’ve been scratching my head over this whole thing for days now. Finally, some pieces seem to be falling into place. Between the “expected euphoria” report, the Guantanamo Bay closure experiment angle, and the crucial detail that Team Obama was reportedly itching to relieve themselves of these particular jihadists for some reason before Bergdahl became a hostage, I suspectAllahpunditmay be right on the money:
“Could this be President’s Obama attempt at empting GITMO in order to shut it down? Could he be depending on his Muslim buddies kidnapping Americans (anywhere) and holding them for GITMO detainees exchange? Sounds credible given President Obama’s conduct over the last 6 years. SORRY YET?” JB
The simple calculation came to a halt when the public, press, and Bergdahl’s former brothers didn’t react the way the White House anticipated.
After Democratic Senator Tom Harkin praised Cuba on several issues, Senator Marco Rubio gave what has been called by Miami Herald reporter Marc Caputo as the “best oration of his career.” Its passion and candor about the despicable socialist regimes of Cuba and Venezuela should put those politicians who can actually praise the oppressive nations to shame. The best lines from Rubio’s stemwinder, which is worth every minute:
Let me tell you what the Cubans are really good at, because they don’t know how to run their economy, they don’t know how to build, they don’t know how to govern a people. What they are really good at is repression.
He cited a poll, ‘More Americans want normal relations with Cuba.’ So do I — a democratic and free Cuba. But you want us to reach out and develop friendly relationships with a serial violator of human rights, who supports what’s going on in Venezuela and every other atrocity on the planet?
Editor’s Note: We first told you about Manuel Martinez back in April of 2013. At that time Martinez blasted Democrat gun grabbers as Communists. This piece by Kim Paxton reports on Martinez’s latest declaration to the Oregon Senate Judiciary Committee.
Imagine fleeing a Communist regime to escape to freedom…and then watching that freedom slip away.
That’s exactly what Manuel Martinez is observing in Oregon. He eloquently spoke to the state’s Senate Judiciary Committee and told them what they were doing was exactly what he watched happen under the rule of Fidel Castro in Cuba.
“Marxism is not coming,” Martinez told the committee. “Marxism is HERE. Marxism has been in this country for quite a while, and the politicians allow that, because they are ignorant, or they are part of the plot.”
Martinez was voicing his passionate objection to Senate Bill 1551, which would expand strict background checks even to private sales of guns, criticizing it as a step towards gun control, and eventual confiscation.
“Don’t sell me this. A very powerful man tried to sell me this 50-something years ago, I didn’t buy it. This is Marxism, plain and clear.
They put this dog and pony show saying hey, we are going to protect you. No, what they did was enslave a country. They destroyed a country the same way that this country is going to be destroyed if we continue in this fashion. This is what you’re selling here! [Martinez displayed some Cuban communist magazines]
You are not selling protection. You don’t care if we die or live. This is what you’re selling.
[A round of applause from spectators at this point caused one of the Senators to threaten to clear the room if there was another “outburst”]
…This is what you’re selling: subjugation.”
We must heed the warnings of those who have witnessed this insidious creeping takeover before. Just as Katie Worthman bore witness to the communist occupation of her native Austria, Martinez saw the rise of Castro’s Cuba. If we don’t learn from history, we are doomed to repeat it.
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American Family Association
American Family Association (AFA), a non-profit 501(c)(3) organization, was founded in 1977 by Donald E. Wildmon, who was the pastor of First United Methodist Church in Southaven, Mississippi, at the time. Since 1977, AFA has been on the frontlines of Ame
American Family Association
American Family Association (AFA), a non-profit 501(c)(3) organization, was founded in 1977 by Donald E. Wildmon, who was the pastor of First United Methodist Church in Southaven, Mississippi, at the time. Since 1977, AFA has been on the frontlines of Ame
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