Ascertaining Putin's aims

 The notion that he's bluffing is a soothing balm. It would indeed be comforting to think that some kind of deal can be worked out whereby some kind of language vaguely approximating an assurance that Ukraine wouldn't be joining NATO any time soon would be sufficient for Russia to climb down from the present brink.

That doesn't square with facts on the ground, however:

Russian mechanized forces now rolling into Belarus directly threaten NATO, not just Ukraine. The U.S. and its allies are rightly focused on obvious Russian preparations to invade Ukraine and on trying to deter Moscow. Russian troops moving into positions in southeastern Belarus could be preparing to invade, and the West must respond in that context. But Russian forces are also taking up positions on and near the Polish borderwithin about 100 miles of Warsaw and near the Lithuanian border as well. Deployments to these locations serve little purpose as part of a plan to invade Ukraine. They dramatically increase the Russian threat to Poland, however, and to NATO’s ability to defend its Baltic members even more. The U.S. and its Western European allies must respond to this threat to the alliance — whether or not the Russians attack Ukraine.

Seven to 10 mechanized battalions (equivalent to two-to-three brigades with 4,200-9,000 troops) have travelled from Russia’s Far East to Belarus. Two battalions of advanced Russian S-400 air defense systems as well as 12 Su-35 advanced fighters have also deployed to Belarus. Russia’s Defense Ministry claims these forces will remain in Belarus until mid-February for exercises. The exercises will supposedly occur primarily at training areas near Brest (on the Polish border), Baranovichi (northeast of Brest), Grodno (near the Lithuanian-Polish border), and Minsk. These are not the optimal locations from which to invade Ukraine, although Baranovichi is a good rear base from which Russian forces could stage for an attack. Some Russian troops, however, have already appeared in southeastern Belarus, far from any announced training area, and in one of the ideal locations from which to launch an invasion against Ukraine. The new Russian forces therefore threaten both Ukraine and NATO simultaneously.

The Russian move into Belarus is no spur-of-the-moment or opportunistic action. It is part of a long-term plan Vladimir Putin has been pursuing for years, which is why we have been forecasting it for many months. Putin has expressed his intent to open a military air base in Belarus since at least 2015. Russia has been preparing to project forces into Belarus since at least September 2020 through intensified combined exercises with Belarus. Russian troops have also been rehearsing logistics and command-and-control tasks necessary to deploy Russian forces into Belarus, including supplying fuel, ammunition, and other essentials closer to Belarus.

It sure looks like Poland and the Baltics are in Putin's crosshairs as well as Ukraine. 

And he's shoring up his support from a geographically close neighbor of the United States:

Following recent threats of a potential military deployment to Cuba earlier this month, Russia’s President Vladimir Putin discussed the “strategic partnership” and further coordination of “actions in the international arena” with Cuban leader Miguel Díaz-Canel in a call disclosed Monday by the Kremlin.

In a tweet, Díaz-Canel said the two leaders held a “cordial and fruitful telephone conversation” about “the current international situation” and the development of “future links in different spheres.”

I realize that the US has sent Ukraine lethal munitions lately, and that Ukraine is determined to defend its sovereignty, but is 8,500 US troops being placed on "higher alert" for the time being sufficient US participation in that effort?  

Putin's a pretty astute cat. He saw that Germany was, in many ways, a wobbly member of the Western alliance, what with its rush to hobble its own energy independence and sign up for the Nordstream pipeline. That natural-gas delivery system is serving Putin's designs quite well at present:

An undersea pipeline set to deliver gas from Russia to Germany has become exactly what the two countries have always insisted it would never be: A weapon in a geopolitical crisis.

The United States, United Kingdom, Ukraine and several European Union member states have fiercely opposed the pipeline ever since it was first announced in 2015, warning the project would boost Moscow's influence in Europe.

The 1,200-km (750-mile) pipeline was completed in September and is now awaiting final certification. But even though the pipeline isn't operational yet, it has already acted as a huge wedge between the traditional allies at a time of huge tensions between Russia and the West.

According to experts, that on its own is a win for Russian President Vladimir Putin.

Kristine Berzina, a senior fellow at the German Marshall Fund of the United States, a nonpartisan research center, said Moscow has benefited from the drama around the pipeline. "Everything about the Nord Stream 2 pipeline has been a victory for Russia," she told CNN.

"Given that Russia's aim is to split everybody, if they're seeking to break apart unity in the European Union and in NATO, this pipeline has been a wonderful vessel."

What this adds up to is not a mystery. Putin is not inscrutable. He's perfectly upfront in demonstrating his desire to see the US removed as a military, economic and cultural influence in Europe, and he's willing to risk conflagration on a level not seen since the 1940s to achieve it.  

 

 

 

John Bolton is a national treasure

What a refreshing change from the days when the Most Equal Comrade was orchestrating post-America's decline:

“Members of this administration will never take a picture in front of Che Guevara…Under this administration we will no longer appease dictators and despots near our shores in this hemisphere. We will not reward firing squads, torturers, and murderers …… The troika of tyranny in this hemisphere – Cuba, Venezuela and Nicaragua – has finally met its match.”

“This Troika of Tyranny (the regimes in Cuba, Venezuela and Nicaragua)– this triangle of terror stretching from Havana to Caracas to Managua is the cause of immense human suffering, the impetus of enormous regional instability, and the genesis of a sordid cradle of communism in the Western Hemisphere,” Bolton said. “The United States looks forward to watching each corner of the triangle fall… The Troika will crumble.”

 

That's John Bolton yesterday, in a speech he gave in Miami announcing new sanctions on Cuba and Venezuela.

The Cold War may have ended in 1991, but the specter of Marx has continued to haunt our hemisphere.

There are some bad actors in the world that the US has to deal with for strategic reasons (think Saudi Arabia), but not this collection of hostile regimes.

John Bolton understands a fundamental truth about foreign policy: When a regime plainly states that it regards the US as the enemy, take it seriously.

A call to reverse a real bad move from the previous era (diplomatic relations with Cuba)

LITD is with these guys:

Five GOP Senators—Marco Rubio, Tom Cotton, Richard Burr, John Cornyn and James Lankford—have written a letter to Secretary of State Rex Tillerson calling on him to kick all Cuban diplomats out of the country and, if necessary, close the U.S. Embassy in Cuba. From the Hill:

“Cuba’s neglect of its duty to protect our diplomats and their families cannot go unchallenged,” the letter reads…

“The safety of U.S. diplomatic personnel and their families posted overseas remains one of our high priorities and a shared responsibility of those nations that host U.S. diplomatic facilities,” the senators wrote. “We urge you to remind the Cuban government of its obligation and to demand that it take verifiable action to remove these threats to our personnel and their families.”

The letter comes in response to the 21 American diplomats (and five Canadians) who suffered hearing damage while staying in hotels in Havana. Last month, reports revealed the injuries to some of the diplomats was much more serious than originally believed with some Americans suffering traumatic brain injuries.

Of course, the Communist regime in Cuba denies being behind this, but what is a more plausible explanation?

This, folks, is why you don't ever reach out to rogue regimes. You squeeze them with sanctions and let them know you're prepared to address any funny business they pull with whatever is needed.

It's why you don't engage in Agreed Frameworks or Six-Way Talks with North Korea.

It's why you don't enter into JCPOAs with Iran.

It's why you don't ever even hint that the Taliban might have a place at the table in any lasting settlement for Afghanistan.

Cuba has done nothing to improve its human-rights record since the Most Equal Comrade's disastrous move last year.

It is allied with the other rogue regimes of the world.

And it's pretty clear that it's damaged the hearing and brains of American diplomats.

Time to cut the cord.

Post-America's new Caribbean buddy: up to its eyeballs in spying on us

The Left's new-found indignation about what Russia is up to - most prominently manifested by the Most Equal Comrade's expulsion of 21 diplomats - doesn't extend to such a focus on post-America's newest partner in patty-cake, Cuba.

Quite the contrary. For Cuba, diplomacy equals spying:

 . . . in a rare hiccup of honesty (or ghastly error) CNN itself admits to some very important Cuba-sponsored unpleasantness, about which most Americans remain ignorant. “The Most Dangerous U.S. Spy You’ve Never Heard of,” is how they titled a special on this Castro-sponsored spy named Ana Belen Montes (16 years after her arrest.)

In brief: the spy’s name is Ana Belen Montes, known as "Castro’s Queen Jewel" in the intelligence community. In 2002 she was convicted of the same crimes as Ethel and Julius Rosenberg and today she serves a 25-year sentence in Federal prison. Only a plea bargain spared her from sizzling in the electric chair like the Rosenbergs.

Significantly, Ana Belen Montes was arrested on September 21st 2001. That’s exactly ten days after Al Qaeda demolished the Twin Towers. By then she had been uncovered for a while, but, as is customary in such cases, was being monitored to see if her activities would reveal others within her spy network. That monitoring was scheduled to continue for much longer, but her access to U.S. intelligence secrets unrelated to Cuba (mid-east, for instance) demanded she be shut down—and quickly.

Interestingly, just days after the 9-11 terror attack, Castro’s KGB-founded and mentored intelligence mounted a major deception operation attempting to trip-up our investigation into the terrorist culprits:

“In the six months after the 9/11 attacks,” ran the Miami Herald investigative report, “up to 20 Cubans walked into U.S. embassies around the world and offered information on terrorism threats. Eventually, all were deemed to be Cuban intelligence agents and collaborators, purveying fabricated information. Two Cuba experts said spies sent by Cuba to the United States were part of a permanent intelligence program to mislead, misinform and identify U.S. spies.”

"Montes passed some of our most sensitive information about Cuba back to Havana" revealed then Undersecretary for International Security, John Bolton.

Shortly after Montes’ conviction a Cuban spy named Gustavo Machin, who worked under diplomatic cover in Washington D.C. (and thus enjoyed “diplomatic immunity”) along with 14 of his KGB-trained Cuban colleagues, were all booted from the U.S. for serving as accomplices to super-spy Ana Belen Montes.

Now, thanks to Obama’s “normalization” with the Castro-Family-Crime-and-Terror-Sponsoring Syndicate (commonly and grotesquely mislabeled as “Cuba” by the media and Obama State Dept.) Gustavo Machin is a regular visitor and main operative in the newly-opened Cuban embassy in Washington D.C.!

And it's not just Machin:

"All Cuban personnel now working in the (U.S) Interests Section (in Havana) work for Cuban State Security,” revealed high-ranking Cuban intelligence defector Pedro Riera Escalante last year. “All housing for (U.S.) officials may have microphones and other devices installed.”

"Virtually every member of Cuba's U.N mission is an intelligence agent," revealed Alcibiades Hidalgo, who defected to the U.S. in 2002 after serving as Raul Castro's Chief of Staff and himself as Cuba's ambassador to the U.N. 

But it was more important for the MEC to stoke his ego and convince himself that he had left some kind of grand legacy of unicorns and rainbows that it was to see to actual US security.

There is no front, no aspect of American life, that has not been gravely harmed by this outgoing regime.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Monday roundup

Good morning, policy-and-culture observers.

Herewith a panoply of developments in the space-time realm as we commence Advent Week:

File this one under "I thought I was the only human being with this status": Tanza Loudenback at Business Insider proudly says she's never seen a Star Wars, Lord of the Rings or Harry Potter movie.

Gordon Chang at the Daily Beast says China's seizure of the US Navy underwater drone was an act of war. Of course, it doesn't seem to even be on the Most Equal Comrade's radar screen:

Today, President Obama cannot even talk about Chinese aggression. He did not, for example, mention it in his opening statement at his press conference Friday and did not address it when answering Mark Landler of the New York Times, who raised the drone seizure in his question. 

And another of the MEC's foreign-policy successes fiascoes has yet to improve its human-rights record since its patty-cake with post-America culminated in full diplomatic relations:

Authorities across Cuba have cracked down on dissidents, arresting dozens, keeping others from marching in Havana, and detaining an American human rights lawyer, activists said Sunday.

In the first such anti-dissident operation since Fidel Castro's death last month, President Raul Castro seemed to indicate the Americas' only one-party communist state was in no mood for dissent.

A roundup in the country's east snared dozens and derailed street protests planned to demand that political prisoners be freed.

"There was a joint operation at 6:00 am in Santiago and Palma Soriano. They searched four homes, and so far we have 42 reported arrests -- 20 in Santiago, 12 in Palma and 10 in Havana," Jose Daniel Ferrer told AFP by phone.

The 46-year-old, who heads the Patriotic Union of Cuba (Unpacu), had called the demonstrations to demand that political prisoners be set free. Castro insists there are no political prisoners, just lawbreakers.

Ferrer said he was detained in Santiago, Cuba's second biggest city, at a police unit known as Micro 9.

"They threatened me, and said by calling the demonstration I was facilitating public disorder.... disobedience and espionage," Ferrer said.

Most arrests of dissidents in roundups are brief. Sometimes, the authorities prevent them from leaving their homes to attend a protest or march.

- Ladies in White, shut in -

In Havana, the award-winning Ladies in White group, which presses for the release of jailed dissidents who are their relatives, said that at least 20 of its activists were "under siege," kept from attending their weekly march.

"At least 20 homes were blocking the residents to keep us from marching today," said group leader Berta Soler.

It was a step backward for the Ladies in White. They long have been considered the only dissidents the Cuban government allowed to march regularly; they hold one weekly protest outside a church in Havana.

But not this Sunday, Soler said.

- US rights lawyer held, freed -

Kimberley Motley, an American human rights lawyer, was briefly detained on Friday along with Cuban activists Gorki Avila and Luis Alberto Marino when they planned to visit graffiti artist Danilo Maldonado, known as "El Sexto," in jail.

Maldonado was also arrested on November 26, a day after the death of Cuban revolutionary icon Fidel Castro, after painting on a wall in Havana the phrase "He's gone," her relatives say.

According to online newspaper 14 y medio, Motley left Cuba at the request of the government.

Now she tells us:

Attorney General Loretta Lynch said on Sunday she regrets secretly meeting with former President Bill Clinton last June because of the negative impression it gave some voters.

"I do regret sitting down and having a conversation with him because it did give people concern. And as I said, my greatest concern has always been making sure that people understand that the Department of Justice works in a way that is independent and looks at everybody equally," Lynch said on CNN's "State of the Union."

The Obama official said it has been "painful" for her to see how the infamous airport tarmac meeting played out during the height of an FBIinvestigation into Hillary Clinton's use of a private email server.

Moral preening and nanny-state finger-wagging in the Circle City:

The Indianapolis City-County Council passed a resolution in support of Meatless Mondays on December 5, 2016. The resolution encourages Indianapolis residents and institutions to try a meat-free day at the beginning of each week, aiming to reduce the city’s environmental footprint and raise awareness about healthy eating.

The resolution was championed by Council Vice-President Zach Adamson (D - District 17), and co-sponsored by Jared Evans (D - District 22), Blake Johnson (D - District 12) and Jeff Miller (R - District 16). “I’m excited the City Council has made clear both the importance of a diet high in vegetables and the negative impacts meat products have on our health and our environment,” Councilman Adamson said. “With Indianapolis ranking so high in diet-related illness, including obesity, diabetes, cardiovascular disease, this is an important declaration that encourages our fellow residents to make healthy and environmentally sound food choices.”

Oh, please.

That said, Matthew Scully at NRO offers a viewpoint worth of consideration, namely, that humankind still lacks a truly humane approach to its interaction with the animal kingdom's lesser species.  You will notice though, that he does not call for any stinkin' government involvement.

Saturday roundup

Still need convincing that the EPA is a poisonous body that needs to be dismantled pronto? Look at it this way:

The new implementation of EPA rules on heavy trucks has boosted the 10-year regulatory burden on America past $1 trillion, 75 percent of which have been imposed by the Obama administration.

That amounts to a one-time charge of $3,080 per person, or an annual cost of $540, according to a new analysis from American Action Forum.

LITD wrote Sarah Palin off last year as one of those Squirrel-Hair Kool-Aid guzzlers like Laura Ingraham, Sean Hannity, Conrad Black, Wayne Allen Root, Ann Coulter - you know the crowd I'm talking about - and it's hard to imagine any such people ever being able to redeem themselves. But Palin just may have made a first step with an op-ed in which she says that the Carrier deal, in its details, had better not  be a one-time package of sweetheart incentives to one particular company, or it's crony capitalism rather than free-market economics.

Walter Hudson at PJ Media offers an argument that is at least worthy of consideration: that conservatives should stop talking about equality of opportunity:

We cannot guarantee equal opportunity for the same reason that we cannot guarantee equal results. Opportunities emerge from a vast array of circumstances, many of which government has no rightful ability to control. If your father is rich, and mine is poor, how can we be born to equal opportunity? What must be done, in practical terms, to equalize those circumstances? It takes us full circle, doesn't it? To provide children with equal opportunity, you must redistribute their parents' wealth. It's the same effect as if mandating equal results, just applied at a different point in the process. Thus, every time conservatives talk about "equal opportunity," they provide rhetorical ammunition to the left. Like results, opportunities are not equal and never will be.

Consider the concept of "white privilege." The complaint regarding privilege is that certain people are afforded unequal opportunity on account of factors beyond merit. If you're a white heterosexual male, you will generally have an easier go than a black lesbian. We often get stuck arguing whether or not such generalizations prove true. But that's the wrong argument.

The real question is: Why does privilege matter? Why should we care whether certain people have it easier than others? Does the mere presence of unequal opportunity present a problem that needs to be solved?

It matters not whether people proceed from unequal opportunity. What matters is why opportunities prove unequal. If the inequality manifests from accidents of nature and the exercise of rights, then there is nothing which government should do about it. Being born to a rich father should not be a crime. Neither should being rich and having a child. People should not be penalized because they were born white, or straight, or with the genes for height or beauty. They should not be punished for having means which others lack, unless it came through force or fraud. Nor should they be punished for being something which others are not. Existing is not a crime.

Is it true then that "all men are created equal?" Yes, but only in the true sense which Jefferson actually meant. Jefferson was not implying an equality of attribute. The equality he noted was legal. Each man should be treated the same under the law, not be made the same by the law. All men have equal right to their life, not the lives of others.

Elliot Abrams, writing at The Weekly Standard, offers, for my money, the best summing-up of the arc of Fidel Castro's evil career, as well as the motivation behind the Left's adoration of him over these past 57 years.

John Hawkins, writing at Townhall, gets a parlor game going in my head. He lists five reasons why the Most Equal Comrade will be viewed as one of the worst presidents of all time. He admits in his opening paragraph that "compiling [such] a list . . . seems like a project for a book rather than a column." Which leaves readers free to come up with additions. Still, his five are biggies that belong on any compilation: nearly doubling the national debt, unleashing the genie from the nuclear weapons bottle in the Middle East, facilitating illegal immigration, encouraging racial polarization, and losing a war we had already won in Iraq.

Seems to me that taking a crowbar to the American health-care system would be the next addition to the list. And then imposing tyranny in the name of an utter fiction (anthropogenic climate change).

The Fidel-is-dead post

The last five paragraphs of Against All Hope by Armando Valladares:

The hour of my departure arrived. The procession of several cars headed down Rancho Boyeros Avenue toward Jose Marti International Airport. The plane was scheduled for seven in the evening. The setting sun dyed the afternoon pomegranate-red. My heart sent up a hymn of thanks to God, and I prayed for my family, who hadn't been allowed to come to say goodbye, and for my friends remaining behind in the eternal night of the Cuban political prisons.

As the cars sped along, a flood of memories rushed over me. Twenty-two years in jail. I recalled the two sergeants, Porfirio and Matanzas, plunging their bayonets into Ernesto Diaz Madruga's dying body; Roberto Lopez Chavez dying in a cell, calling for water, the guards urinating over his face and in his gasping mouth; Boitel, denied water too, after more than fifty days on hunger strike, because Fidel wanted him dead; Clara, Boitel's poor mother, beaten by Lieutenant Abad in a Political Police station just because she wanted to find out where her son was buried. I remembered Carrion, shot in the leg, telling Jaguey not to shoot, and Jaguey mercilessly, heartlessly, shooting him in the back; the officers who threatened family members if they cried at a funeral.

I remembered Estebita and Piri dying in blackout cells, the victims of biological experimentation; Diosdado Aquit, Chino Tan, Eddy Molina, and so many others murdered in the forced-labor fields, quarries and camps. A legion of specters, naked, crippled, hobbling and crawling through my mind, and the hundreds of men wounded and mutilated in the horrifying searches. Dynamite. Drawer cells. Edwardo Capote's fingers chopped off by a machete. Concentration camps, tortures, women beaten, soldiers pushing prisoners' heads into a lake of shit, the beatings of Eloy and Izaguirre. Martin Perez with his testicles destroyed by bullets. Roberto weeping for his mother.

And in the midst of that apocalyptic vision of the most dreadful and horrifying moments of my life, in the midst of the gray, ashy dust and the orgy of beatings and blood, prisoners beaten to the ground, a man emerged, the skeletal figure of a man wasted by hunger, with white hair, blazing blue eyes, and a heart overflowing with love, raising his arms to the invisible heaven and pleading for mercy for his executioners.

"Forgive them, Father, for they know not what they do." And a burst of machine-gun fire ripping open his breast.

Today's evidence that there's no taking seriously anything that comes out of Squirrel-Hair's mouth

Hope nobody thought he was being resolute recently when he talked tough about Cuba:

Donald Trump has been hit with a pre-October surprise, one that has the potential of harming his outreach to the anti-Castro Cuban-American community, which strongly opposed any lifting of the U.S. embargo on Cuba.

Just a few days ago, Trump sought the support of this community, strongly embracing tough measures against Castro. And two weeks earlier, speaking in Florida, Trump promised to reverse Obama’s new policy towards Cuba:

[A]ll of the concessions that Barack Obama has granted the Castro regime were done with executive order, which means the next president can reverse them. And that is what I will do unless the Castro regime meets our demands. Those demands will include religious and political freedom for the Cuban people and the freeing of political prisoners.

But the cover story in Newsweek written by Kurt Eichenwald reveals that Trump's business interests stood above his promises to the anti-Castro Cubans in Miami:

[A Trump business] secretly conducted business in Communist Cuba during Fidel Castro’s presidency despite strict American trade bans that made such undertakings illegal, according to interviews with former Trump executives, internal company records and court filings.

The Daily Beast provides a summary of Newsweek's findings:

Donald Trump’s company officials secretly explored business opportunities in Cuba during the U.S. embargo against the communist island-nation, according to Newsweek report. An article by reporter Kurt Eichenwald posted early Thursday, citing documents he obtained, says Trump employees visited Havana during Fidel Castro’s presidency and, despite the clear violation of federal law, spent at least $68,000 in the country in 1998 without U.S. government permission. Eichenwald’s report is based on court filings, company records, and interviews with former Trump executives. According to Eichenwald, the company funneled the money to Cuba through a U.S. consulting firm -- with Trump’s knowledge -- in order to make the trip’s spending appear legal.

U.S. law at the time made any spending of even one penny in Cuba by U.S. corporations illegal without U.S. government approval.

Trump’s actions came at the very time he launched his first bid for the White House, when he sought the nomination of the Reform Party.

Laura Ingraham, Conrad Black, Sean Hannity, Wayne Allen Root, Ann Coulter, call your offices.

File this one under "you can't make this stuff up"

Where does the mayor of one of America's most failed cities go to get her economic-development ideas?

Cuba:

Remember how after Baltimore was half destroyed by rioters last summer Baltimore mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake’s made headlines by claiming she gave Baltimore rioters "Space to Destroy?"
She tried to walk back the unfortunate statement—but it only half-worked.In any case, as president of the U.S. Conference of Mayors, last week she was in (totally destroyed by Communism) Cuba leading a mayoral delegation which also includes Mitch Landrieu, mayor of New Orleans (among the murder capitols of the U.S.)
"These meetings and visits will provide U.S. mayors and Cuban officials the opportunity to share best practices for providing city services in education, healthcare, infrastructure, and transportation, according to the story."

Exit question: Which kind of Freedom-Hater is she? The kind who actually congratulates her self on the nobility of her intentions, or the type that is actually in the advanced stages of cynicism and just mouths that crap for the consumption of the cattle-masses?

The fruits of patty-cake - today's edition

Think Cuba is just a washed-up regime with no ability to harm the West the way it did in its heyday?

Think again:

In brief, regarding the terror-sponsoring totalitarian regime on our doorstep that pulled off the biggest and most brazen armed burglary of U.S. property in history, who tortured and murdered Americans both at home and in North Viet-Nam, whose senior military officials were indicted by U.S. courts for the gratuitous murder of U.S. citizens, who managed the deepest and most damaging penetration of the U.S. Defense Dept in recent history, who steals and traffics in U.S. military secrets, who came closest to nuking us, who facilitates the entry of hundreds of criminals, spies and potential terrorists onto our soil—regarding this place most Americans (thanks largely to the mainstream media) qualify as “low-information” voters.V

“Wait a minute?!” Some readers say. “What was that last point again? The one about facilitating the entry of potential terrorists onto our soil?”
Thanks for the cue, amigos. Thought you’d never ask. Now here’s a recent story in the Washington Post (no less!)
“Over the past two months, travel agents in Kabul have been surprised by Afghans showing up at their offices with Cuban visas, which are suspected of having been issued in Iran or acquired on the black market.

Other agents in Kabul also report a spike in interest in Cuba, and U.N. officials in the northern Afghan city of Kunduz say they recently encountered a family with Cuban visas. Havana has been a way station in the past for South Asians hoping to transit to Central America and from there to the United States. 

Ten or 15 people have come just since January asking for tickets for Cuba,” Sayeedi said. “And they are not staying there. The only option is to move forward, probably on to Mexico and then America or Canada.”

Iran is collaborating with Venezuela and Cuba to exploit the seams in the Canadian immigration system,” documents Canada’s Center for a Secure and Free Society. “From 2009 to 2011, Latin America was the largest prior embarkation region for improperly documented Iranians migrating to Canada. Venezuelan authorities provided at least 173 passports, visas and other documentation to Islamist extremists seeking to slip unnoticed into North America.”

Nowadays “Venezuelan authorities,” actually means authorities from Venezuela’s colonial overlords: some of the 50,000 KGB-trained Cubans who essentially run Venezuela’s military, police and foreign policy sectors. This item has been thoroughly documented in the bombshell “Panama Papers” and was recently disseminated in a crackerjack investigative report by Capitol Hill Cubans: “as recently confirmed in the Panama Paperleaks, Venezuela's passport and national ID systems are completely controlled by Cuba's regime.” 

This is what you get when you are ruled over by someone who absorbed liberation theology and America-hatred for twenty years in the pews of Jeremiah Wright's Trinity Church, someone mentored in his youth by Frank Marshall Davis.

And the chances that someone equipped - morally and intellectually - to begin reversing his damage next year are pretty much nil.

 

IEW CARTOO

Wednesday roundup

How clueless is the State Department? This clueless:

Obama administration officials disclosed Tuesday that Iran has been granted access to about $3 billion in unfrozen assets in the months since the nuclear agreement was implemented, but it remains unclear to the administration if the Islamic Republic has spent any of this money to fund its global terrorism enterprise, according to top officials.

In the four months since Iran and world powers began to implement the comprehensive nuclear agreement, Iran has been able to recover around $3 billion in funds that were unfrozen as part of the deal. Iran is expected to be given access to another $50 billion to 55 billion in the coming months.

However, the Obama administration was not able to say if Iran has spent any of this money to fund terrorism campaigns.

“We don’t know” if Iran has spent this money on terror activities, State Department spokesman John Kirby told reporters. “We don’t know. We don’t have a way.”

Yes, indeed, there is no reprehensible regime that the Most Equal Comrade's nomenklatura won't rush to normalize relations with:

Weeks after President Barack Obama’s historic trip to Cuba, officials from the Communist island have ramped up their attacks on the U.S.

On Monday, Foreign Minister Bruno Rodriguez called Obama's visit "an attack on the foundation of our history, our culture and our symbols."

"Obama came here to dazzle the non-state sector, as if he wasn't the representative of big corporations but the defender of hot dog vendors, of small businesses in the United States, which he isn't," Rodriguez said.

The foreign minister’s response came days after Cuba President Raul Castro said that the United States is "the enemy" and warned Cubans to be vigilant about the United States' efforts to undermine the Communist revolution, according to Reuters.

The remarks came at the Cuban Communist Party's twice-a-decade congress, held over the weekend, where some of Cuba's most powerful officials criticized the creaking inefficiency of its state-controlled economy, tarred its vibrant private sector as a potential source of U.S. subversion.

Guess he needs to strive harder to get them to understand that he's one of them.


That Whole Foods store in Austin that was the target of an attempted wedding-cake-with-anti-gay-slur-on-it hoax is suing the slug posing as a human being who cooked the scheme up.  For cryin' out loud, the bakery staff member he dealt with was other than hetero.

Speaking of people with abnormal sex lives, Target saw fit to make a public statement saying that transgendered people can use whatever restrooms at their stores that they mentally identify with.

Brazil's Chamber of Deputies pulls the trigger:

It's been a tough week for leftist President Dilma Rousseff of Brazil. The Chamber of Deputies voted to impeach her: 

Impeachment supporters netted 367 votes in the lower house of Congress, well above the 342 they needed.
The "no" camp took 137 votes, seven deputies abstained and two did not show for the ballot.

We move on to the Senate, or upper house, and let's see what happens there.

Post-impeachment will be uncharted waters for Brazil. In other words, Latin America does not have a history of replacing leaders by impeachment. Instead, they get overthrown by the military or escape at midnight to avoid justice.

Remember when there was so much excitement over the BRIC countries, Brazil Russia, India and China, how they were said to be a model for "developing" nations to come on board as economic powerhouses and world-stage leaders?

Gestures of contempt in return for outstretched hands - today's edition

There's a pattern to this, is there not? The Most Equal Comrade and his nomenklatura play patty-cake with a sworn enemy of America, culminating in an agreement, and the other party immediately steps up the contemptuous rhetoric:

President Raul Castro warned Cubans on Saturday that the United States was determined to end Cuba's socialist revolution despite restoring relations and a visit by U.S. President Barack Obama, saying one-party Communism was essential to defend the system.

"We must be alert, today more than ever," Castro said, speaking in front of a giant portrait of his brother Fidel Castro at the inauguration of the Communist Party's first congress in five years.

Speaking for over two hours, Castro used a defiant tone that belied the breakthrough between the Cold War enemies. He said Obama's desire to end U.S. sanctions was welcome but just a change of "method", in reference to efforts by Washington to bring political change to Cuba ever since the Castro brothers toppled a pro-American government in 1959.

Obama and Castro announced in December 2014 they would end decades of hostility and normalize relations. But on a historic trip to the island last month, Obama angered the government with a speech broadcast directly into Cubans' homes calling for more political freedom and democracy in the one-party state.

Castro and his lieutenants, many of them in their 70s and 80s, faced some discontent ahead of the congress among younger members who are critical of their slow delivery on promised economic reforms in the past five years and a lack of transparency on discussions.

"The key function of the congress is a message that the Obama visit has not changed anything. To reduce expectations," said Bert Hoffman, a Latin American expert at the German Institute of Global and Area Studies.

Once again, what was the point of this "normalization" exercise?

Monday morning roundup

Georgia Governor Nathan Deal, a two-term Pub, caves to the goose-stepping jackboots of the Human Rights Campaign, several major corporations and the NFL and vetoes a religious-liberty bit that mirrors the national-level bill that Billy Jeff the Zipper signed into law in the 1990s, the gist of which is that the burden is on government to prove there's some compelling interest to make Christian business owners conduct business in violation of their faith. (No, such bills don't specifically mention Christians  - or homosexuals, for that matter - but does anyone doubt why such bills are necessary?)

San Francisco's mayor bans official travel for city employees to North Carolina over that state's legislature overturning a law that would have permitted Girls (who think they're boys) and boys (who think they're girls) from using each other's restrooms. Of course, the city by the bay has a history of using such bans to make statements. In 2010, the state was Arizona and the issue was immigration, and in 2014 the state was Indiana and the issue was a religious-freedom law.

Oh, sheesh, now there's a lawsuit about North Carolina's action, filed by a group of the terminally confused.

Speaking of California, the Land ofLa-La offers more proof that the minimum wage is bad and wrong:

deal that would raise California's minimum wage to $15 an hour was met with a mixture of joy and anxiety across the state Sunday.

Some workers and labor officials hailed it as a breakthrough in providing higher-wage jobs in fields where it's a struggle to make ends meet. But some business owners feared the shift would hurt their bottom lines -- and perhaps even put them out of business.

The debate is likely a preview for the weeks ahead as the minimum wage proposal works its way through Sacramento.

Selwyn Yosslowitz said that minimum wage hikes add increased pressure to restaurants, which already operate on very slim margins. With the minimum wage going up, Yosslowitz said he's going to have to rethink his menu and what dishes his restaurants serve.

"First, you have to raise prices, otherwise you'll be out of business," said Yosslowitz, president of the Marmalade Café, which operates seven Southland restaurants and an outlet at LAX. Restaurant owners also have to think about "re-engineering the menu" to require fewer kitchen workers.

"We will try to re-engineer the labor force," he said. "Maybe try to reduce the number of bus boys and ask servers to bus tables."

Death toll in the jihadist slaughter of Christians in that Lahore park is now up to at least 72.

When it comes to supposed anti-corruption icons to admire, Hillionaire share knows how to pick 'em:

The Brazilian president praised for “setting a global standard” on how to fight corruption by Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton now has protestors calling for her impeachment thanks to her own alleged corruption.

The New York Times reported that this month’s protests calling for Dilma Rousseff’s ouster, including a 500,000-person gathering in São Paulo, were the largest since the protests that toppled Brazil’s military dictatorship in the 1980s. Recent polling shows that 68 percent of Brazilians want the legislature to impeach Rousseff, who has made clear she will not step down and plans to fight the charges against her.

Clinton praised Rousseff in Brazil in 2012 at the first meeting of the Open Government Partnership, an international initiative co-chaired by Brazil and the United States aimed at fighting corruption.

“I want to commend and thank Brazil, in particular President Rousseff, for the leadership that they have given to this initiative,” said Clinton at the April 2012 meeting in Brasilia. “There is no better partner to have started this effort and to be leading it than Brazil, and in particular, President Rousseff. Her commitment to openness, transparency, her fight against corruption is setting a global standard.”

Despite this praise, Rousseff’s potential impeachment is based on charges that her administration illegally used money from state-run banks to cover up budget shortfalls amid the country’s economic problems

An audit court found that Rousseff borrowed up to $26 billion to pad government accounts in 2014, hiding economic problems that could have ended her reelection bid.

Brazil’s Superior Election Court is also looking into charges that Rousseff brought in money for her 2010 and 2014 elections through an illegal scheme involving state-owned oil giant Petrobras. Rousseff chaired the company’s board of directors from 2003 to 2010.

Rousseff claims that she knew nothing of the illegal Petrobras graft scheme, but other politicians implicated in the scheme say that’s not the case. 

One senator, a political ally of Rousseff who was arrested last year for trying to bribe Petrobras executives to keep quiet about his involvement, recently said that Rousseff “knew about everything” and “benefited from the scheme” she inherited from her predecessor, Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva.

And from the files of the-pattern-of-the-architect-of-post-America's-planned-decline-getting-his-outstretched-hand-gestures-to-evel-totalitarians-responded-to-with-contempt, check out this statement from the architect of the Cuban revolution:

President Barack Obama did not meet with Fidel Castro during his historic visit to Cuba last week, but apparently that does not mean that Castro did not have any thoughts about el presidente norteamericano in his country.

Castro ripped into the president and his words during the visit in El Granma, the official state newspaper of the Cuban Communist Party, bringing up Obama's relative youth, the failed Bay of Pigs invasion in 1961 and the role of both countries in ending the apartheid in South Africa and elsewhere on the continent in an article titled "El hermano Obama."

Native populations do not exist at all in the minds of Obama," Castro wrote. "Nor does he say that racial discrimination was swept away by the Revolution; that retirement and salary of all Cubans were enacted by this before Mr. Barack Obama was 10 years old."

Referring to the 1961 failed invasion of the Bay of Pigs, Castro wrote of the U.S.' "mercenary force with cannons and armored infantry, equipped with aircraft ... trained and accompanied by warships and aircraft carriers in the U.S. raiding our country. Nothing can justify this premeditated attack that cost our country hundreds of killed and wounded."

Castro referred also to Obama's invocation of both countries' role in the end of apartheid in South Africa, remarking upon his country's 1975 intervention in Angola backing the leftist People's Movement for the Liberation of Angola against other U.S.-backed revolutionary forces. Ridding apartheid South Africa of nuclear weapons "was not the goal of our solidarity," he wrote, "but [rather] to help the people of Angola, Mozambique, Guinea Bissau and other fascist colonial rule of Portugal."

In referring to the origins of South Africa's nuclear weapons, Castro mentioned the "help that racist South Africa had received from [Ronald] Reagan and Israel."

"I do not know what Obama has to say on this story now," Castro wrote, adding, "although it is very doubtful that I knew absolutely nothing."

"My modest suggestion is to reflect and do not try now to develop theories about Cuban politics."

And weep not for the polar bears:

A new study by Canadian scientists once again debunks the notion polar bears are currently being harmed by global warming. Researchers with Canada’s Lakehead University found “no evidence” polar bears are currently threatened by warming.

“We see reason for concern, but find no reliable evidence to support the contention that polar bears are currently experiencing a climate crisis,” Canadian scientists wrote in their study, published in the journal Ecology and Evolution.

Scientists looked at 13 polar bear subpopulations and found “much of the scientific evidence indicating that some polar bear subpopulations are declining due to climate change-mediated sea ice reductions is likely flawed by poor mark–recapture sampling.” This means researchers aren’t able to put together accurate “demographic parameters.”

And that's the state of things on the third stone from the sun.

Just how shameful was the Most Equal Comrade's conduct in Cuba?

Ben Shapiro at Townhall lays it out in disgusting detail:

This week, President Obama visited Cuba. There, he was snubbed on the tarmac by tin-pot dictator Raul Castro; he took a staged photo before a massive building-sized mural of genocidal murderer Che Guevara; he smiled and bowed to Castro when they met. Castro treated Obama to a harangue about America's moral inferiority, blustering, "We defend human rights." He adds, "Actually, 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." Obama nodded along, then stated placidly, "I personally would not disagree with that." He then added, idiotically, "The goal of the human rights dialogue is not for the United States to dictate to Cuba how they should govern themselves, but to make sure that we are having a frank and candid conversation around this issue. And hopefully that we can learn from each other."

The United States does not need to learn from Cuba; Cuba needs to learn from the United States. But in his desire to glorify his own name, in his even deeper desire to level the global economic playing field, and in his greatest desire to tear out Americanism at the roots, Obama kowtows to some of the worst people on the planet.

And kowtow he does. After that awkward exchange, Raul Castro grabbed Obama's wrist; Obama went limp, and allowed Castro to raise his hanging hand high in the air. Then, hours later in a press briefing, the State Department did not directly say anything about the crackdown on hundreds of dissidents who were jailed just before his arrival. The Cubans arrested one of the dissidents' leaders scheduled to meet with Obama. Ben Rhodes, Obama's national security advisor, shrugged all of that off, stating that the United States understands that the Cuban government sees these political prisoners as criminals under Cuban law. Obama himself did not directly say whether he would give Castro a list of political prisoners for release.

In other words, Obama went to Cuba with the express purpose of snuffing out the last hope that Americans would be willing to stand with freedom. In the end, he won't succeed. America remains free, and Obama's self-congratulatory virtue signaling on behalf of a terroristic authoritarian nightmare doesn't change that. But Obama's actions in legitimizing one of the worst regimes in modern history will damn at least one more generation to their tender mercies.

Remember that the Most Equal Comrade sat in the pews of Trinity Church for twenty years, listening to the jeremiads of a dyed-in-the-wool liberation theologian. "Reverend" Wright had participated in junkets to Cuba and Sandinista Nicaragua to express solidarity with those regimes.

The plain fact is that the MEC admires how effectively the regime in Cuba has implemented the Great Leveling Project.

He still has several months to implement it here in post-America.