07/16/14

Russian Intelligence Moves Back Into Cuba

By: Terresa Monroe-Hamilton


Russia’s President Vladimir Putin (left) hugs Cuba’s President Raul Castro after a meeting at the Revolution Palace in Havana last week.

This week, I listened to certain talk show hosts knock the Monroe Doctrine… saying that much of the trouble in South and Central America was due to our interventionism. What horsepucky. The Monroe Doctrine kept us safe and put our enemies on notice — it contained terrorists and Communists. In the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962, President John F. Kennedy cited the Monroe Doctrine as a basis for America’s “eyeball-to-eyeball” confrontation with the Soviet Union that had embarked on a campaign to install ballistic missiles on Cuban soil. Obama and Kerry declaring it ‘dead’ have left us extremely vulnerable to a whole host of Communist enemies, who are now gearing up over there to spy, and at some point, almost assuredly attack us due to our weak foreign policy. Welcome to the new and horribly improved Cuban Missile Crisis redux.


Raul Castro welcomed Vladimir Putin, where they met to discuss bilateral agreements. Before that, both presidents participated together in a flower offering to the Sovietic International Soldier Mausoleum.

Russia and Cuba have signed an agreement to reopen Russia’s intelligence base in Castro’s paradise. It was one of their largest bases ever and Russia used to pay them two million a year in rent for it. Now, Russia will be listening in on the U.S. and the entire Western Hemisphere unmolested. While this rages, Obama just implemented toothless sanctions that are nothing more than smoke and mirrors in the diplomatic shuffle among dictators (but it does include gun control):

President Barack Obama slapped Russia with another batch of economic sanctions on Wednesday for its incursions into Ukraine, including new restrictions on Russian government leaders, major banks and even the maker of the iconic Kalashnikov assault rifle.

Among those sanctioned were a top Russian spymaster, a Ukrainian separatist leader, a top lawmaker and Moscow’s minister for the Crimea, which Russian troops seized in an armed incursion earlier this year. The Treasury Department also sanctioned Russian arms manufacturers, parts of energy companies and financial institutions.

“We have to see concrete actions and not just words that Russia is in fact committed to end this conflict along the Russia-Ukraine border,” Obama said in the White House press briefing room. Thus far, he continued, “Russia has failed to take any of the steps” that the Obama administration called for to de-escalate the situation in Ukraine.

Russia Today, Putin’s and the Kremlin’s propaganda outlet, giddily reported that Russian President Vladimir Putin cemented the deal to resume operations at the intelligence facility in Lourdes, Cuba, after meeting last week with Cuban President Raul Castro in Havana. For those of you unfamiliar with the Cold War that never ended:

The facility in Lourdes, a suburb of Havana located just 250km from continental USA, was opened in 1967. At the peak of the cold war it was the largest signal intelligence center Moscow operated in a foreign nation, with 3,000 personnel manning it.

From the base Russia could intercept communications in most part of the US including the classified exchanges between space facilities in Florida and American spacecraft. Raoul Castro, then-Defense Minister of Cuba, bragged in 1993 that Russia received 75 percent of signal intelligence on America through Lourdes, with was probably an overstatement, but not by a large amount.

In 2001, Russia closed down the base after the U.S. threatened to not ‘forgive’ their debts unless they did so. The economic extortion now is on the other foot and payback is a bitch and a half with inflation.

While we are being destroyed from within and without thanks to Obama, Russia has made her move to expand her influence and power in the Western Hemisphere. The Russian Bear is ravenous and we are on the menu. So much for all those who did not believe me or Trevor Loudon when we warned repeatedly on this threat for years. Russia just inked a deal to build a nuclear reactor in Argentina. The Russkies have their dirty fingerprints all over Venezuela and virtually every other country in the region. At the same time, Putin finalized a deal between Russian and Cuban energy companies and waived 90 percent of Cuba’s Soviet-era debt — about 32 billion dollars. Trade will also increase exponentially between the countries and I’ll bet it won’t be with the U.S. dollar. The two countries also signed about a dozen accords in areas such as energy, industry, health and disaster prevention, including a $1.6 billion deal on four energy-generation units between Inter RAO EES OAO (MCX:IRAO), a Russian state-controlled energy company and Union Electrica, the Cuban state power company.

Putin gave his word to Cuba that they would overcome the “illegal blockade” imposed on it by the U.S. Gee, I wonder what that meant? He added that Russia was interested in placing their global navigation satellite system, or Glonass, ground stations in Cuba. The country could then access satellite communication services in the area of the stations. Feeling warm and fuzzy yet? What you probably feel is that target on the U.S. getting larger by the minute.

Governments such as Russia, China and Iran view Latin America as a “political vacuum” in light of less U.S. engagement in the region. Obama is content to let our enemies run amok over there and put the entire nation at risk. It’s Progressive inclusion militarily and anti-colonialist in his viewpoint. I call it national suicide. It should go really well with the invasion over our Southern border. If one doesn’t do us in, the other will. Actually, both will.

From The Washington Free Beacon:

The most recent example is in Central America, where the administration and lawmakers have reduced security assistance, he said. Tens of thousands of unaccompanied minors have now fled violence in their home countries to seek asylum in the United States.

“Latin America is not even in the top 10 of issues of perceived importance by this administration, and countries like Russia, China, and even Iran are certainly exploiting those opportunities,” he said.

The State Department declined to comment on this story.

Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (R., Fla.), a Cuban-American lawmaker and former chairwoman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, also expressed concerns about Putin’s actions in a statement to the Free Beacon.

“During his trip, Putin met with the Castro brothers, the worst human rights violators in our hemisphere, and forgave some of Cuba’s debt, signed a nuclear agreement with Argentina, and reaffirmed economic cooperation with Nicaragua,” she said. “Russia continues to undermine our foreign policy objectives throughout the world and its presence in our own hemisphere can destabilize the region and is meant to thumb its nose at the United States.”

If we were looking for a wild time as a nation and to die young as one, this fits the bill nicely. All the while a ruthless Putin snuggles with the murderous Castro brothers. If you actually listen to Putin’s blather, it sends a chill up your spine:

In an interview with the Cuban news agency Prensa Latina, Putin said the “Latin American nations that struggled for their independence inspire our deepest respect for their autonomy and their right to self-determination.”

“Today, cooperation with the Latin American nations is one of the key orientations and prospects of Russian foreign policy,” Putin told Prensa Latina. “Multilateralism in world affairs, respect to international law, strengthening of the central role of the U.N. and sustainable development are the principles that bring us together.”

You see, both Putin and Obama love the UN and have the same goals. Marxists of a feather… Putin slyly stated: “We are disposed to recover lost possibilities.” Yeah, I’ll bet. Meanwhile, the mainstream media fawns over the Russian emergence over here and the resurgence of Cuba, Argentina and Brazil with their Communist leaders. It’s sooo romantic, it’s to die for.

Yep, Russian intelligence is moving back into Cuba. They’ll be able to watch and hear all we do and strengthen their hold on the Western Hemisphere. Must be that flexibility that Obama alluded to.

07/16/14

Exploiting Illegal Children for Obamacare: Supplemental Immigration Request a Funding Gimmick

By: Denise Simon
Gulag Bound

Stand Up America

The smartest people in government who have gotten their hands dirty always seem to time their respective departures when corruption and sinister objectives go to DEFCON levels.

Such was the case with Lois Lerner, at the IRS, such was the case with White House spokespersons, Robert Gibbs and Jay Carney, and such was the case with David Axelrod, a White House advisor to name but a few. Now such is the case with Kathleen Sebelius.

refugee-chart1Either these people have a threshold they just wont cross when it comes to fraud, lies, and collusion or such fraud, lies, and collusion in emerging events were just too big to stomach.

Either way, it is time to focus on Kathlees Sebilius and how she fits in with the $3.7 billion supplemental request the President is seeking for the alien surge at our southern border. Ostensibly this money is designed to fix the problem, unfortunately this is not exactly the complete reason they are asking for the money.

Sebelius timed her departure knowing full well what was ahead during her tenure at Heath and Human Services. She knew that the immigrant incursion was about to break wide open as it was in process during her term at HHS; they all did in the Obama administration.

Now let’s look deeper. On July 8, 2014, the White House wrote a rather comprehensive letter and support document to John Boehner, Speaker of the House asking for $3.7 billion in funding as a solution to the insurgency problem of the White House’s own making.

Actually, that figure is a supplemental part of a larger request exceeding $4.3 billion. We do not know the entire scope for what the whole $4.3 billion was to cover but we do know where the $3.7 billion is actually supposed to go. The trouble is, it is not going where they say they want it to go.

The request supposedly involves the costs associated with this illegal immigration insurgency, but in reality, most of it is for covering the costs of shortfalls in other agencies.

The letter clearly references issues from June which demonstrate advanced knowledge of the problem coming before the public became aware. Of note is the money to be allocated to fighting wild fires in the west and that most of the funds do not go anywhere near the border, nor increase security at the border.

The timing of this is no mistake. But we do realize that it does take time to estimate and coordinate agencies involved but the ubiquitous bundling of dollars to pay for other items clearly began a ways back. We can see this in the White House Office of Management and Budget figures.

This is all about not letting a good crisis go to waste as Rham Emmanuel said so famously in the past.

Enter Sylvia Burwell. She was the Director of the White House OMB from 2012-2013 and now she has officially replaced Sebilius.

So she is fully aware of the dire financial situation at HHS as well as other agencies and was reporting all the numbers that were released in the past before taking over.

Not only does Burwell have a handle on financial and economic needs of major programs but she is well aware that the Congressional Budget Office can no longer predict the financial status of Obamacare with any accuracy. Eric Pianin tells us in his Financial Times article:

One of the Obama administration’s major selling points in passing the Affordable Care Act in 2010 was a Congressional Budget Office forecast that the controversial legislation would reduce the deficit by more than $120 billion over the coming decade.

The CBO has consistently projected that President Obama’s overhaul will reduce the deficit, and the agency estimated that the Republicans’ 2011 effort to repeal the legislation would increase deficits by $210 billion from 2010 to 2021.

In April, the agency quietly signaled that it can no longer make that projection; that the law had been changed and delayed so much that there is no longer a credible way to estimate the long-term effects on the deficit of all elements of the program taken together.

It is in fact clear that the numbers of enrollees into Obamacare, as well as countless other factors, prove that Obamacare is not financially stable now nor will it ever be in the future. Because of the White House changes, Health and Human Services needs to infuse cash into the voids for financial sustainability of Obamacare, but that money appears to be coming from what is being sold as medical care for the illegals flooding into America. House members know this and are pushing back hard.

Politico tells us more about what the White House’s intent was, and craftily worded the request:

The White House opted not to include legislative language calling on the unaccompanied children to be deported more quickly to their home countries. But officials made clear that their intent is to speed the current turnaround process by increasing money for the immigration courts and putting a priority on recent arrivals. (Read more here.)

In summary, this new supplemental request by the White House is not only hiding financial shortfalls of other government agencies, but it is a planned and well executed event. It is also clear that favoritism played a large role. So America, don’t be fooled by the rhetoric, especially about language saying most will be deported and that laws are being enforced.

Immigration-Hondurus-kids

Border Patrol and a Honduran Family

A little more history and perspective

Incidentally, testimony on “Private Organizations’ Role in Refugee Resettlement” by Lavinia Limon shows us the history going back as far as 1996, where the immigration surge had been initially discussed. However, past Congresses have chosen to ignore real solutions for over 18 years. Unfortunately, the American taxpayer has been footing the bill for refugee resettlement and private organizations have been receiving grant money to play a large role, including the Catholic church.

In 2008, the ASPE study by HHS was completed revealing the exceptional costs of attending to resettlement and “Refugee Economic Self-Sufficiency” issues handled by the Refugee Resettlement office under HHS. Additionally, the Government Accountability Office performed an intense study in 2012 as well, but few were watching, but they did not interview the local stakeholders on the financial and demographic implications.

Finally, take a look at the surge in asylum seekers across the board. The numbers have grown dramatically under Obama. In fact, Neil Munroe from the Daily Caller tells us:

…the number of foreigners who successfully filed asylum claims in the United States almost tripled from 2012 to 2013, up to 30,393 alone.

That’s 10 times the number from 2008, when President Barack Obama was elected, and it is evidence his immigration officials are agreeing that many people in the growing wave of Central American migrants face a “credible fear” of harm if they are returned. Official approval allows the migrants to file for asylum in immigration court, where judges will approve or reject the asylum request.

If you came illegally to the U.S. seeking asylum in 2013, you had better than a four-in-five chance of successfully filing an asylum claim. That’s up from a three-in-five chance in 2008. (Read the rest here.)

This is madness of epic proportions, while the larger matter is we are in a national security condition that is reaching the red level of the DEFCON alarm system.


Denise Simon with co-host Bobbi on their Uncommon Knowledge program on Patriots’ Resistance Network discuss the orchestrated illegal immigrant flood, Tuesday, July 15:

07/16/14

Victims: The Nun, The Teen

By: Wayne Lutton, Ph.D.
Victims of Illegal Immigration – A Collection of Essays
Hat Tip: Dick Manasseri

Failure by federal law enforcement agencies to remove criminal aliens from our midst places all Americans at risk. Two cases from the summer of 2010 highlight this outrageous situation.

On August 7th, in Houston, Texas, Shatavia Anderson, 14, was walking home when she was confronted by Melvin Alvarado, 22, a twice-deported illegal alien from El Salvador, and his partner Jonathan Lopez-Torres, 18, a native of Honduras, previously arrested for auto theft. When she attempted to run away, Alvarado fatally shot her in the back. According to police, the two Central American thugs saw Shatavia as an easy “target of opportunity” for armed robbery. After murdering the girl, they took her purse containing a few dollars and her cell phone. Shatavia was killed less than 100 yards from her family’s apartment.

Alvarado was in the country illegally, having been deported in April 2008 and again in May 2009. But with a virtually unprotected border, he was able to walk right back into the U.S. and resume his life of crime. As Shatavia’s uncle, Joe Lambert, remarked, “What I’m trying to figure out is how they [criminal aliens] started coming over here and why they can do whatever they want. What [the government] is doing is giving them the green light, tellin’ them, ‘Hey, you can come over here and do what you want.'”

On August 8th, Benedictine Sister Denise Mosier, 66, was killed when a drunk Bolivian illegal alien spun out of control while driving in Prince William County, Virginia and crashed his Subaru head-on into the nun’s Toyota. The suspect, Carlos Martinelly Montano, 23, has a long list of arrests and citations, including two prior DUI convictions. He has used multiple aliases and fake Social Security numbers. He should have been deported years ago, but immigration authorities released him pending further proceedings. This gave Montano the opportunity to get drunk and hit the road again – this time with fatal consequences.

Prince William Commonwealth’s attorney Paul Ebert was angry at this turn of events: “He’s thumbed his nose at the laws of Virginia for years. He continued to drive, even though his privilege had been revoked… and he continued to drive drunk, which led to this horrible, horrible situation.” Rep. Harold Rogers (R-KY) noted, “A life could have been saved had ICE [Immigration & Customs Enforcement] just simply done their job to begin with [by deporting Montano after his earlier convictions]… The U.S. government is literally putting lives at risk.” Unless law enforcement agencies fulfill their responsibility to protect U.S. citizens from criminal aliens, there will be more victims of their reckless and ruthless behavior.

Wayne Lutton, Ph.D. is the editor of The Social Contract

07/16/14

Watcher’s Council Nominations – Hamas Delenda Est Edition

The Watcher’s Council

http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-rLCPC9L_Rb4/UoaGIgz4sOI/AAAAAAABvjM/3kMxuQqW7s4/s1600/122643_600.jpg

Hamas delenda est indeed.

One of the most ludicrous quotes out there about this situation came from Secretary of State John Kerry, slamming the Hamas response to the Egyptian brokered ceasefire attempt:

“I cannot condemn strongly enough the actions of Hamas in so brazenly firing rockets in multiple numbers in the face of a goodwill effort to offer a ceasefire, in which Egypt and Israel worked together, that the international community strongly supports.”

Kerry said that Hamas is “purposely playing politics” by continuing the rocket fire, using innocents as “human shields… against the laws of war.”

“And that is why they are a terrorist organization,” Kerry added.

So, why are you and President Obama still funding them, Mr. Secretary? And why do you want so badly to give a terrorist organization a state?

Welcome to the Watcher’s Council, a blogging group consisting of some of the most incisive blogs in the ‘sphere and the longest running group of its kind in existence. Every week, the members nominate two posts each, one written by themselves and one written by someone from outside the group for consideration by the whole Council. Then we vote on the best two posts, with the results appearing on Friday morning.

Council News:

The Council In Action!!

*Nice Deb’s Debra Heine scored with Holder DOJ Finally Finds A Scandal Worth Investigating – An Anti-Obama Parade Float at Breitbart.

*Yours Truly at Joshuapundit published two pieces over at the Times Of Israel, one pre-ceasefire, A Ceasefire In Gaza? A Huge Mistake and one post-ceasefire, The Ceasefire That Never Was Ends As Hamas Bombards Israel With Rockets.

This week, Le·gal In·sur·rec·tion, Blazing Cat Fur and The Pirate’s Cove earned honorable mention status with some great articles.

You can, too! Want to see your work appear on the Watcher’s Council homepage in our weekly contest listing? Didn’t get nominated by a Council member? No worries.

To bring something to my attention, simply head over to Joshuapundit and post the title and a link to the piece you want considered along with an e-mail address (which won’t be published) in the comments section no later than Monday 6 PM PST in order to be considered for our honorable mention category. Then return the favor by creating a post on your site linking to the Watcher’s Council contest for the week when it comes out Wednesday morning.

Simple, no?

It’s a great way of exposing your best work to Watcher’s Council readers and Council members, while grabbing the increased traffic and notoriety. And how good is that, eh?

So, let’s see what we have for you  this week…

Council Submissions

Honorable Mentions

Non-Council Submissions

Enjoy! And don’t forget to like us on Facebook and follow us on Twitter… ’cause we’re cool like that!