07/29/15

America’s Enemies Are Laughing at Us

Time magazine is out with a colorful and glossy “Inside the New Cuba” special edition, featuring smiling Cuban kids wearing Communist garb on the cover. Page 64 has a photo showing “Cuban fans” holding up “their national flag” at a baseball game. It turns out that the really happy Cubans are those who have been defecting from the island “paradise,” as Time magazine calls the prison camp country.

Credit goes to Christine Rousselle of Townhall.com for covering these defections. They seem to be developing into a regular feature, with Rousselle providing regular updates about additional defections.

So far, eight players from the Cuban men’s field hockey team, four rowers from the Cuban national team, and two members of the Cuban soccer team have defected.

The defections completely undercut the chapter of the special Time magazine issue on Cuba that is titled, “The Big League Next Door,” which speculates that normalization of relations between the U.S. and Cuba could “stop Cuba’s top talent from fleeing…” This chapter is written by Robert Siegel, senior host of National Public Radio, and Eyder Peralta, an NPR reporter.

Washington Nationals infielder Yunel Escobar defected from Cuba when he was 21. The Washington Post covered his story in a May 7 article, noting:

Escobar’s love of baseball was fueled by television broadcasts and video games, both forbidden in Cuba. He paid to watch MLB games and favorite players such as Alex Rodriguez, Roberto Alomar, Omar Vizquel and fellow Cuban Livan Hernandez on a TV with a hush-hush antenna at a friend’s house. He also grew to love Ken Griffey Jr. because of a video game he played often in secret. A friend had smuggled in a console and charged the equivalent of 50 cents per hour to play.

The entire story is worth reading and there are many touching moments, such as the story of when Escobar spent two days at an immigration detention center in Miami “and kissed the ground when he was released.”

These are the immigrants we should welcome, since they have developed an appreciation of the struggle between freedom and totalitarianism. They want to enjoy and celebrate American freedom, not distort and transform the country into a Third World welfare state of cheap labor for corporations and paid-for votes for the Democratic Party.

In the Time magazine version of Cuba, we are told in the section, “Scenes from the Revolution,” that Fidel Castro “promised to clean up the government, restore democracy and civil liberties, and promote social justice.” Nothing is said about whether he fulfilled those promises.

By contrast, we are told that his predecessor, Fulgencio Batista, was a “ruthless dictator” who ran a system characterized by “economic and social inequality and a corrupt government.” The implication is that Castro changed all of that for the better.

A caption on a page of pictures of Cuban cowboys on the communist island informs us that “Before Castro nationalized all farms, almost three quarters of Cuba’s arable lands was owned by fewer than 3,000 individuals and corporations, many of them American, while most farmworkers were renters.” One of the Cuban cowboys proclaims, “It is no longer of Communism or no Communism. It belongs to us.”

You mean communism works after all? That seems to be the message of this special Time magazine Cuba edition.

It’s completely absurd but this is what passes for serious journalism. It reminds me of the old Ronald Reagan joke, reportedly told to Mikhail Gorbachev, about two men walking down a street in Moscow, when one asks, “Is this pure communism? Have we passed through the stage of socialism and reached pure communism? The other replies, “Hell, no. It’s gonna get a lot worse.”

Ben Lewis wrote an article, “Hammer & tickle,” noting that “Communism is the only political system to have created its own international brand of comedy.”

These days, Oleg Atbashian makes fun of the Marxists and their apologists on a regular basis, on his “People’s Cube” website. One of his latest offerings is the new poster featuring the “Rebel without a gender.” The People’s Cube proclaims, “Che is dead, long live Conchita: a new rebel icon.”

His tribute to the Museum of Communism in Prague is a lot of laughs, as he displays some of the posters from the old communist days, such as the one announcing that communist women would have burnt their bras like their sisters in the West, “if there were any in the shops.”

Another communist poster said: “Sometimes there was no toilet paper in the shops. Luckily there was not much food, either.”

Meanwhile, believe it or not, the comedian Jack Black is being featured in a video campaign from the group Global Zero to sell the Iranian nuclear deal. He previously starred in such films as “Shallow Hal,” “School of Rock,” “Nacho Libre,” and the Kung Fu Panda films.

A comedian as the face of the Iranian nuclear deal? This is where the laughing begins to die down.

The Iranians and their Russian sponsors are the ones laughing at us now.

So are the Cuban Communists.

They may lose some people through defections, but they get an embassy on American soil where they can base their spies and recruit agents inside the U.S. government.

07/25/15

The Religious Origins of the Sanctuary Movement

By: Cliff Kincaid
Accuracy in Media

Thanks to Donald Trump, the major media are being forced to cover the illegal immigration movement, such as the proliferation of “sanctuary cities” across the U.S. that attract criminal aliens, give them legal protection, and let them back out on the streets to commit more crimes. But the really taboo topic is how these sanctuary cities grew out of a movement started by the Catholic Church and other churches.

Over 200 cities, counties and states provide safe-haven to illegal aliens as sanctuary cities, the Center for Immigration Studies (CIS) reports. What has not yet been reported is that the Catholic Church, which gave President Obama his start in “community organizing” in Chicago, has been promoting the sanctuary movement for more than two decades.

What’s more, in April, a delegation of U.S. Catholic bishops staged a church service along the U.S.-Mexico border and distributed Communion through the border fence. At the same time, Pope Francis said a “racist and xenophobic” attitude was keeping immigrants out of the United States.

No wonder the pope’s approval ratings have been falling in the United States. Overall, Gallup reports that it’s now at 59 percent, down from 76 percent in early 2014. Among conservatives, it’s fallen from 72 percent approval to 45 percent (a drop of 27 points).

“Few people are aware that this extreme left branch of the Catholic Church played a large part in birthing the sanctuary movement,” says James Simpson, author of the new book, The Red-Green Axis: Refugees, Immigration and the Agenda to Erase America.

Simpson says Catholic Charities, the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, and its grant-making arm, the Catholic Campaign for Human Development, are prominent elements of the open borders movement.

The sanctuary movement has its roots in the attempted communist takeover of Latin America.

With the support of elements of the Roman Catholic Church, the Communist Sandinistas had taken power in Nicaragua in 1979. At the time, communist terrorists known as the Farabundo Marti National Liberation Front (FMLN) were threatening a violent takeover of neighboring El Salvador. President Ronald Reagan’s policies of overt and covert aid for the Nicaraguan freedom fighters, known as the Contras, forced the defeat of the Sandinistas, leaving the FMLN in disarray. In 1983, Reagan ordered the liberation of Grenada, an island in the Caribbean, from communist thugs.

Groups like the Marxist-oriented Institute for Policy Studies (IPS) were promoting the sanctuary movement for the purpose of facilitating the entry into the U.S. of illegal aliens who were supposedly being repressed by pro-American governments and movements in the region. The U.S. Catholic Bishops openly supported the sanctuary movement, even issuing a statement in 1985 denouncing the criminal indictments of those caught smuggling illegal aliens and violating the law. Section 274 of the Immigration and Nationality Act prohibits the transportation or harboring of illegal aliens.

Two Roman Catholic priests and three nuns were among those under indictment in one case on 71 counts of conspiracy to smuggle illegal aliens into the United States. One of the Catholic priests indicted in the scheme was Father Ramon Dagoberto Quinones, a Mexican citizen. He was among those convicted of conspiracy in the case.

Through the Catholic Campaign for Human Development, an arm of the Bishops, the church has funded Casa de Maryland, an illegal alien support group which was behind the May 1, 2010, “May Day” rally in Washington, D.C. in favor of “immigrant rights.” Photographs taken by this writer showed Mexican immigrants wearing Che Guevara T-shirts, and Spanish-language communist books and literature being provided to rally participants.

An academic paper, “The Acme of the Catholic Left: Catholic Activists in the US Sanctuary Movement, 1982-1992,” states that lay Catholics and Catholic religious figures were “active participants” in the network protecting illegals. The paper said, “Near the peak of national participation in August 1988, of an estimated 464 sanctuaries around the country, 78 were Catholic communities—the largest number provided by any single denomination.”

A “New Sanctuary Movement” emerged in 2007, with goals similar to the old group. In May, the far-left Nation magazine ran a glowing profile of this new movement, saying it was “revived” by many of the same “communities of faith” and churches behind it in the 1980s.

One group that worked to find churches that would provide sanctuary to immigrants in fear of deportation is called Interfaith Worker Justice, led by Kim Bobo, who was quoted by PBS in 2007 as saying, “We believe what we are doing is really calling forth a higher law, which is really God’s law, of caring for the immigrant.”

But conservative Catholic Michael Hichborn of the Lepanto Institute says Interfaith Worker Justice is run by “committed Marxist socialists,” and that Bobo is “highly active and involved with the Democratic Socialists of America,” a group which backed Obama’s political career.

04/12/15

Obama Strangles the Monroe Doctrine and Embraces Latin Dictatorships, Communists and Fascists

By: Terresa Monroe-Hamilton

I wrote some time ago on how John Kerry went to Latin America and declared the Monroe Doctrine dead. Obama just finalized it in Cuba. The Monroe Doctrine has been in place since 1823 and has long warned America’s enemies to not even THINK about using South America as a back door to bring Communism and aggression to our doorstep. Well, Obama has thrown that proverbial door wide open to South America and has invited in every enemy we have. Hell, he’s thrown our door at the borders open inviting them into the US as well. He wants America at war and brought to her knees and he’s really going for it now.

As Doug Ross pointed out, the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962 brought us to the very brink of nuclear war. The Monroe Doctrine stopped that apocalyptic nightmare from becoming a reality. 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.” That was before the Democrats went full blown Marxist and decided to destroy America from within her own shores. Obama has now stated for the world that the US will no longer act to resist overseas influence in the Western Hemisphere.

During the seventh Summit of the Americas, our enemies took turns swinging at American foreign policy. From 19th century territorial raids on Mexico to US support for the overthrow of Chile’s socialist government in 1973 and the 1989 invasion of Panama that removed Gen. Manuel Noriega, Washington’s interventions in Latin America were targets of rebuke during long speeches by Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro and his allies. Obama quipped, “I always enjoy the history lessons that I receive when I’m here.” I’ll bet he does. He’s also meeting with Maduro and cuddling with him while he’s there. Dictators of a feather. Next, it will be Obama’s ongoing bromance with Ecuadorian President Rafael Correa, who is a hardline Leftist and a long time ally of South American socialists Hugo Chávez and Evo Morales. Last week Correa tweeted “¡Heil Hitler!” in response to a Twitter user posting an article reporting that ex-Ecuadorian President Osvaldo Hurtado had called him a “fascist” for his repeated crackdowns on journalists. I’m sure Obama can relate. Remember, no matter the propagandic rhetoric from Correa on Obama being an “afro American,” Obama held hands with the Ecuadorian president to bring in as many illegal immigrants as he could and the two were aligned on common agendas. Things are never what they appear.

From the White House Dossier:

Obama, who spoke Friday during a “civil society” forum in Panama City, Panama, disparaged past efforts by the United States to forestall the spread of Communism in Latin America and suggested similar missions would no longer be undertaken.

“The days in which our agenda in this hemisphere so often presumed that the United States could meddle with impunity, those days are past,” Obama said.

Civil Society forum? How very George Soros… how very Progressive/Marxist. This condones Communism in our hemisphere – here on our turf, for our neighbors with our blessing. Virtually every country in South and Central America is now controlled by Communists and dictators because we decided to stay out of it. Regardless of the threat to America. Now, you’ve got Russians, Chinese and Iranians down there and I very much doubt they are on a goodwill tour. We are blatantly inviting an attack on America and Obama is welcoming it. He is not naive or clueless to the evil down there – he revels in it. He just apologized for the US’ intervention over the last 200 years – that intervention kept us safe and free, but no more.

James Monroe was a wise man who has now been undone by the enemy within here in America:

The American continents, by the free and independent condition which they have assumed and maintain, are henceforth not to be considered as subjects for future colonization by any European powers.

We owe it, therefore, to candor and to the amicable relations existing between the United States and those powers to declare that we should consider any attempt on their part to extend their system to any portion of this hemisphere as dangerous to our peace and safety . . .

With the Governments who have declared their independence and maintained it, and whose independence we have, on great consideration and on just principles, acknowledged, we could not view any interposition for the purpose of oppressing them, or controlling in any other manner their destiny, by any European power in any other light than as the manifestation of an unfriendly disposition toward the United States.

The US now finds itself the one restricted in the Americas – but our enemies are free to roam, plot and attack. This is a recipe for suicidal disaster of historic proportions and Obama knows it.

Obama is about to remove Cuba from the list of states sponsoring terrorism:

Sometime during this weekend’s Summit of the Americas in Panama, President Obama is expected to grant one of Cuban President Raul Castro’s top demands and remove his country from the Unites States’ list of governments that sponsor terrorism.

That, as Sen. Robert Menendez warns, not only flies in the face of all evidence, but removes critical leverage in Washington’s efforts to bring scores of fugitive American terrorists to justice.

The latest State Department report on state sponsors of terrorism — a list that has included Cuba since 1982 — notes that Cuba’s longstanding ties to the Basque terrorist group ETA “have become more distant,” though it still provides “safe haven” to its members.

Havana also harbors terrorists who struck in the United States, such as cop-killers Joanne Chesimard and Charles Hill (who also hijacked a plane), FALN bomber Guillermo Morales and scores of others who’ve avoided accountability for their crimes. (Many of those crimes, incidentally, were committed in the tri-state area.)

Weasel Zippers calls it his “reach out to terrorists” initiative. That’s right on the money.

Obama never lets a political platform go to waste and this Summit of the Americas in Panama City was no exception. President Obama expressed his anger and frustration over Iran with those “trying to short-circuit the actual negotiations,” insisting that “it needs to stop” and pointing the finger squarely at the GOP. I’m sure his aggressive sentiments were roundly approved of by all the dictators in attendance.

Raul Castro generously absolved Barack Obama of America’s past imperialism. That’s what Communist families are for right? Better have a barf bag ready – the crap speweth:

Castro, whose country was invited to the gathering for the first time this year, received an ovation when he began his speech by saying the “time had come for him to speak here” on Communist-ruled Cuba’s behalf.

He referred to the United States’ “wars, conquests and interventions” in the region, saying through an interpreter that the country has been a “hegemonic force that plundered territories throughout the Americas.”

Castro recalled that the U.S. Congress authorized military intervention in Cuba in the late 19th century and that led to the establishment of a military base in Guantanamo that still “occupies our territory.”

In the 20th century, the United States carried out a series of “interventions to overthrow democratic governments” in Latin America, where “dictators were installed in 20 countries, 12 of them simultaneously.”

“In South America alone, hundreds of thousands of people were killed,” Castro said, adding that the most “brutal” episode was the 1973 U.S.-backed coup that toppled Chilean President Salvador Allende’s democratically elected socialist government.

But after finishing his review of Latin American history, Castro issued an apology to his U.S. counterpart.

“The passion comes out of my pores when the revolution is involved, but I want to apologize to President Obama because he doesn’t have anything to do with all of that,” Castro said, eliciting another round of applause.

“All (of the previous U.S. presidents) are indebted to us, but not President Obama,” who is an “honest man … with a manner about him that speaks to his humble origins,” the Cuban leader said.

So, Obama strangles the Monroe Doctrine and embraces Latin dictatorships, Communists and fascists, while decreeing long live Communism in the Western Hemisphere. Is there anyone out there that still laughably thinks Obama is not an enemy from within? Once again, I join with Doug Ross in longing for a true conservative president. The question is, will we make it to the next election before the Communist crap hits the fan? How can our military leaders not see the impending attack on America that is all but certain when you throw our borders wide open and actually bring in massive amounts of illegal aliens, kill off the Monroe Doctrine, then cozy up to every Communist dictator and fascist in Latin America and as a finale, invite in the Axis of Evil: Russia, China and Iran into your midst… just what do you think is going to happen? Is America truly that suicidally oblivious to our enemies?

Obama, his lieutenants and minions have spent months — even years — crafting a narrative of harm done to Cuba by our embargo of trade with them. What’s missing from this narrative is this almost-never-mentioned fact: “Despite the Spanish term bloqueo (blockade), there has been no physical, naval blockade of the country by the United States after the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962. The United States does not block Cuba’s trade with third parties: other countries are not under the jurisdiction of U.S. domestic laws, such as the Cuban Democracy Act […]. Cuba can, and does, conduct international trade with many third-party countries; Cuba has been a member of the World Trade Organization (WTO) since 1995.” (Quote from above link.) So, ponder that for a moment. Cuba is today and has been for decades a cesspool of human rights denial, a commercial and industrial failure, and a place from which natives fled to have any chance of a decent life. This despite the fact that Cuba has been free to trade with the entire rest of the world. It is clear from this that Cuba’s problems do not, even in the smallest degree, originate with America’s refusal to support or endorse the tyranny enforced by the brothers Castro. They did this entirely to themselves.

Obama said of his critics of a potential Iran deal: “Consistency is the hobgoblin of narrow minds.”(*see footnote) So, chaos would be the justice warrior of an open society? Obama is pumping his fist in the air and a la Che Guevara is shouting “Viva la revolucion!” while proclaiming the Monroe Doctrine is dead, long live the dictator.

Unsavory Agents

*(Obama’s familiar sounding “quote” is actually a misquote of Ralph Waldo Emerson’s famous statement:

“A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, adored by little statesmen and philosophers and divines. With consistency a great soul has simply nothing to do. He may as well concern himself with his shadow on the wall. Speak what you think now in hard words, and to-morrow speak what to-morrow thinks in hard words again, though it contradict every thing you said to-day. — ‘Ah, so you shall be sure to be misunderstood.’ — Is it so bad, then, to be misunderstood? Pythagoras was misunderstood, and Socrates, and Jesus, and Luther, and Copernicus, and Galileo, and Newton, and every pure and wise spirit that ever took flesh. To be great is to be misunderstood.”

Emerson’s actual quote illuminates the small-mindedness of the man who, in an effort to project sophistication, instead utters the bland, repetitious and fallacious consistencies so thoroughly woven through the fabric of his life and administration: that socialism will cure all of Man’s ills. Obama’s attempt to appear the scholar reflects instead Emerson’s “little statesman,” as he dissembles once again.)