Who Signed the Iran Deal in the First Place?

Posted on September 21, 2015September 21, 2015 by Denise Simon

The gesture inspection. formality.

Iranian nuclear experts have taken environmental samples from the military base at Parchin without United Nations inspectors being present, the spokesman for Iran’s atomic energy agency was quoted as saying on Monday.

The procedure for taking the samples, which could shed light on whether Iran’s nuclear program ever had a military dimension, has been under intense discussion since Tehran reached a nuclear deal with world powers in July.

Western diplomats told Reuters earlier this month inspectors from the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), the United Nations nuclear watchdog, would observe samples being taken.

“Iranian experts took samples from specific locations in Parchin facilities this week without IAEA’s inspectors being present,” Behruz Kamalvandi was quoted as saying by state news agency IRNA.

“They followed regulations and standards and the samples were given to IAEA’s experts,” the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran (AEOI) spokesman added. He did not rule out IAEA inspectors being present for future samples being taken.

IAEA chief Yukiya Amano visited the site at Parchin on Sunday, the agency’s first visit there in a decade. Iranian state media described the visit as ceremonial rather than an inspection.

Was the Iran Deal Signed By Anyone? Rep. Pompeo Demands Answers From Kerry

Congressman Mike Pompeo (R-KS) sent a letter to Secretary of State John Kerry, this morning, requesting a complete and signed version of the Iran Deal finalized this summer in Vienna. The copy submitted to Congress for review, Rep. Pompeo notes, does not include the side deals signed between Iran and the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), nor have any representatives of the P5+1 or Iran signed it.

“As you know, pursuant to H. Res. 411, the House of Representatives considers the documents transmitted on July 19, 2015 incomplete in light of the fact that the secret side deals between the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) and the Islamic Republic of Iran were not provided to Congress,” Pompeo wrote.

Rep. Pompeo gave Secretary Kerry the benefit of the doubt, insisting that an administrative error must be at fault for Congress receiving an unsigned version of such a groundbreaking deal. Pointing to other international agreements, which were given to Congress complete with signatures, he assumed that Kerry would tout his accomplishment in organizing this deal by presenting Congress with the full, inked version.

“I am confident that you intended for the JCPOA to be signed by each of the P5+1 participants. I can find no international agreement of this ‘historic’ nature that was not signed by the parties,” he said.

He went on emphasize the importance of having a signature on such a document, to make it binding to all parties involved. He discussed the fact that President Rouhani announced that Iran is not putting the document through its national legislative process, so as not to place legal constraints on the Iranian government or people.

“[Having signatures] is particularly important with respect to JCPOA. Iranian President Hassan Rouhani has made clear that he does not believe that JCPOA is legally binding on his nation, saying, ‘If the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action is sent to (and passed by) parliament, it will create an obligation for the government. It will mean the president, who has not signed it so far, will have to sign it,” Pompeo asked. “Why should we place an unnecessary legal restriction on the Iranian people?”

He closed the letter by highlighting how many concessions Iran has received in this agreement, and that there is no reason they wouldn’t sign the copy submitted to Congress to approve.

“Given the many benefits that will accrue to the ayatollahs, the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps, and other unsavory elements of the Iranian regime, I believe that Iran should, at the very least, bind itself to the few requirements placed on it under the JCPOA by signing the agreement,” Pompeo wrote.

*** More real cause to worry about the Iran deal:

Boosted by nuke deal, Iran ups funding to Hezbollah, Hamas

Operating on assumption sanctions will be lifted, Tehran increases support to proxies, while freezing out Hamas leader Khaled Mashaal

Times of Israel:

On Sunday, the director of the International Atomic Energy Agency, Yukiya Amano, arrived in Iran for talks on the nuclear agreement, as part of what appears to be an attempt by the UN nuclear watchdog to evaluate whether Iran ran a military nuclear program in the past.

Hezbollah fighters hold party flags during a parade in a southern suburb of Beirut, Lebanon (AP/Hussein Malla/File)

Amano is expected to meet with various Iranian nuclear scientists for answers on this very subject. On December 15, ahead of the lifting of crippling economic sanctions on Tehran, he is slated to present the world with definitive answers that will determine whether Iran complied with the terms of a nuclear deal signed on July 15. But the Islamic Republic is not waiting for a green light from Amano or the international community, and is working under the assumption that the sanctions will be lifted.

Since the deal was signed, Iran has significantly increased its financial support for two of the largest terror groups in the region that have become political players, Hamas and Hezbollah. In the years before the deal was signed, the crippling sanctions limited this support, which had significantly diminished along with Iran’s economy. But Tehran’s belief that tens, or hundreds, of billions of dollars will flow into the country in the coming years as a result of sanctions relief has led to a decision to boost the cash flow to these terror organizations.

This support, for example, has enabled Hezbollah to obtain highly developed new armaments, including advanced technologies that many militaries around the world would envy. Al-Rai, a Kuwaiti newspaper, reported Saturday that Hezbollah has received all the advanced weaponry that Syria has obtained from the Russians. The report cited a security source involved in the fighting in Zabadani, on the Syria-Lebanon border, where Hezbollah is fighting the al-Nusra Front, the Islamic State, and other groups. It is evidently the growing Iranian financial support that is enabling the Lebanese Shiite militia to purchase advanced weapons, including ones that were hitherto outside of its reach.

The increased Iranian financial support for Hezbollah in the wake of the deal is not unrelated to other political developments in the region. The growing sense of security in Iran with regard to its political status has also been bolstered by a Russian decision to increase its involvement in Syria, and may be what drove Iran to send hundreds of members of its Revolutionary Guard Corps to play an active role in the Syria fighting. Iran, along with Hezbollah and Moscow, has decided to dispatch sizable forces to the Syrian front in the past few weeks to prevent the collapse of Bashar Assad’s regime.

The Shiite-Russia axis has been anxiously watching the Islamic State creep toward Damascus in recent months, and saw the territory controlled by Assad, an important ally, diminished to the coastal region of Latakia south of the capital. The Iranians and Russians grasped that not only was Damascus endangered, but also access to the Alawite regions, from Homs to Damascus — thus the urgency for intervention, including with troops on the ground.

The high morale and sense of security among the Iranians in the wake of the deal don’t stop with increased support of Hamas and Hezbollah. Today, Iran is the main, and likely only, power attempting to build terror cells to fight Israel on the Syrian Golan Heights, in areas under Assad’s control. This does not mean that the Syrian president is aware of these attempts or green-lighted them. But for Israel, that does not matter. Tehran is investing more effort and money after the nuclear deal to carry out attacks against Israel from the Golan, even under Assad’s nose.

As regards the Palestinians, in the past two months, Iran has sent suitcases of cash – literally – to Hamas’s military wing in Gaza. Not everyone is happy about this, including some Hamas officials. Hamas leader Khaled Mashaal, who was always the man who controlled the money, has found himself outside the circle of Iranian funding over the summer. Tehran, which was none too pleased by his visit to Saudi Arabia and meeting with King Salman, decided to take revenge on him in an original way. It bypassed Mashaal and has handed over the suitcases, by way of couriers, directly to the leaders of the group’s military wing in the Gaza Strip.

The exiled head of Palestinian Islamist movement Hamas, Khaled Mashaal, gestures during a press conference in the Qatari capital Doha, on September 7, 2015. (AFP/ AL-WATAN DOHA/KARIM JAAFAR)

The Hamas military leaders, for their part, are happy about two things: First, the money they are receiving during a difficult economic period in Gaza; second, the opportunity to weaken Mashaal and his cronies, who have been living in luxury in Qatar and dictating to Hamas in Gaza what to do and what not to do, who to get closer to (Saudi Arabia) and who to stay away from (Iran).

FBI Declines Cooperation with State Dept. Hillary Server

Posted on September 21, 2015September 21, 2015 by Denise Simon

Update: More data released via Judicial Watch

Judicial Watch today released more than 50 pages of new emails from the clintonemail.com server account of Huma Abedin, a former top aide to Hillary Clinton during her tenure in the State Department. The emails discuss seemingly sensitive security and foreign affairs issues and raise questions about the handling of classified material during Hillary Clinton’s tenure at the State Department. The documents were obtained as result of Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit seeking Huma Abedin’s government business emails conducted on non-state.gov email accounts (Judicial Watch, Inc. v. U.S. Department of State (No. 1:15-cv-00684)). The emails were produced from a search of State Department records, as the agency continues to delay full production of records turned over by Ms. Abedin recently.

In 2012, then-Secretary of State Clinton traveled to Finland (June 27-28), Latvia (June 28), Russia (June 28-29), and Switzerland (June 29-30). On June 26, 2012, former Principal Deputy Executive Secretary Pamela Quanrud, writes to Abedin:

Huma – if I could lobby to get to Geneva on Friday night. We have a big data dump to get from beth jones and others there to prep for Saturday, and it would be a lot better for us to work through the night there (with access to classified) than be stuck in St. Pete with no classified at all.

Abedin responds from her [email protected] account the next morning (June 27):

i had no idea about no comms

of course

we need secure

makes total sense

The emails show Abedin used the non-secure clintonemail.com server to discuss sensitive travel and operations security information that could have placed the personal security of Clinton and other government officials at risk, such as real-time location information while traveling abroad, and other hotel and travel arrangements.

On May 31, 2012, as Clinton and her State Department entourage are traveling in Scandinavia, Abedin writes to Clinton’s then-Special Assistant Lona J. Valmoro:

Abedin to Valmoro: “Let me know when u r leaving.”

Valmoro: “We are en route to airport now. Could we do during the 45 minute drive from Oslo airport to hotel. Everyone can dial into Ops and will have minis.”

Abedin: “When? Who’s in car with her?”

Valmoro: “Cheryl is with her now. If we are wheels up by 9:35 pm, land at 11:25, start call by 11:35 or 5:35 pm EDT?

Abedin: “[I] could barely hear [Hillary Clinton] with the background….”

On June 25, 2012, Abedin writes that she is willing to discuss travel details while on a “packed train.” With the subject line “Could we get on the phone together at 11:30 – in advance of the [Russia] trip call?” Abedin writes to several people, including Quanrud:

I see call got moved to noon. We can talk right before then if you want. All shuttles were canceled this morning and I am sitting on a packed train so hard for me to talk but we can def do calls. [Emphasis added]

Other emails also provide details of Clinton’s plans and schedules for the 2012 trip that included Russia, including the timing of calls on trip planning.

The documents show that State Department officials sent duplicate emails about government business to Abedin’s official State Department address and her clintonemail.com account.

Other emails show sensitive foreign affairs information is contained on Abedin’s Clinton server account. A June29, 2012, email discloses a move to hold a meeting concerning Syria in Geneva. Pamela Quanrud writes Abedin and Clinton aide Valmoro an email with the subject: “UK and P3 meeting requests”:

UK has asked to meet at 8:45 ahead of a 9:30 with UK.US and France to coordinate. Jake thought P3 meeting necessary – what about UK? Should we say yes to 8:45?

Abedin writes back two hours later:

UK meaning hague?

Another email details a request from the Iraqi Foreign Minister for a bilateral discussion with Clinton. Abedin uses her clintonemail.com account to approve the “pull aside,” writing, “fine to add to list.”

Another document shows Abedin approving, weeks ahead of time, the Hanoi Sheraton for Clinton’s trip on July 10-11, 2013, to Vietnam. A June 22, 2012, email from Tulinabo S. Mushingi, who is now the U.S. Ambassador to Burkina Faso, details the hotel options in Hanoi for Abedin, with Sheraton as the number one option. The email details both the luxury and security aspects of the hotel:

The Sheraton hosted the Secretary in July 2010 and October 2010 and much of the hotel staff remains, so they know the drill The July 2010 visit S stayed in the Imperial Suite (shown in attachment and the suite available for this visit); in October 2010, since another Head of State was also in the Sheraton and occupied the Imperial Suite S stayed in the Presidential Suite. The Imperial suite is spacious and very bright and airy, with lake views. It has a large bathroom with Jacuzzi style tub and walk in shower. The Sheraton was redecorated and refurbished within the past 12 months, so it is in excellent condition and is very attractive. From a logistics perspective the hotel is excellent as it has a very large parking area for staging motorcades. It’s location is in close proximity to government buildings where most meetings are likely to be held.

***

P.S. Post reminded us that the entire focus of the Hanoi stop is to promote U.S. businesses and trade. Given the purpose of the stop, the optics of staying at the available quality American name brand hotels would carry the same message, hence another for choosing The Sheraton.

Mushingi also suggests that one other hotel choice is not up to par in that “the suite bathroom is nice, but not quite to the standard of the Sheraton.”

Again, Abedin receives and responds to this email on her non-government account, writing back the next day:

Sheraton worked perfectly fine.

On August 8, in response to a FOIA lawsuit, Judicial Watch obtained a sworn declaration from the former secretary of state in which she claimed to have turned over to the agency “all my e-mails on clintonemail.com” and conceded that “Huma Abedin did have such an account which was used at times for government business.” Neither the State Department, Clinton, nor Abedin has provided information about the status of Abedin’s emails (or the emails of any other government employee) on the clintonemail.com server.

“These emails Judicial Watch forced out through a federal lawsuit show that Huma Abedin used her separate clintonemail.com account to conduct the most sensitive government business, endangering not only her safety but the safety of Hillary Clinton and countless others,” said Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton. “And why would Ms. Abedin and Mrs. Clinton use this unsecure system to discuss foreign affairs and sensitive matters such as the Syria conflict? Hillary Clinton’s email games were a danger to the nation’s security.”

The FBI is probing Hillary Clinton’s personal email and data server but will not provide any progress report or findings to the Department of Justice or the State Department. Further, the FBI refuses to even reveal to the State Department exactly what the FBI technology team is researching. The judge has forced the State Department to cooperate with the FBI but it is clearly not a two way street.

One particular area of concern for the FBI team is to determine the evidence of hacking which could in fact be used to build on existing foreign hacking investigations. For the FBI to determine digital traces of foreign intelligence services and even more the likelihood of damage assessments is tantamount to the FBI investigation in the realm of cyber-espionage. The FBI is owning this process exclusively and not collaborating with the National Counterintelligence and Security Center, at least at this time.

FBI refuses to cooperate in Hillary Clinton email server probe

WashingtonTimes: The FBI refused to cooperate Monday with a court-ordered inquiry into former Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton’s email server, telling the State Department that they won’t even confirm they are investigating the matter themselves, much less willing to tell the rest of the government what’s going on.

Judge Emmet G. Sullivan had ordered the State Department to talk with the FBI and see what sort of information could be recovered from Mrs. Clinton’s email server, which her lawyer has said she turned over to the Justice Department over the summer.

The FBI’s refusal, however, leaves things muddled. “At this time, consistent with long-standing Department of Justice and FBI policy, we can neither confirm nor deny the existence of any ongoing investigation, nor are we in a position to provide additional information at this time,” FBI General Counsel James A. Baker wrote in a letter dated Monday — a week after the deadline the Justice Department had set for the FBI to reply.

Judicial Watch, a conservative public interest law firm that is pursuing at least 16 open-records cases seeking emails from Mrs. Clinton and her top aides, said at this point it’s not even clear what Mrs. Clinton provided, since all that’s been made public at this point are the former secretary of state’s public comments and some assertions, made through her lawyer, to the State Department.

Judicial Watch is prodding the courts to try to delve more deeply into Mrs. Clinton’s emails, and the group said a number of questions persevere about both Mrs. Clinton and top aides such as Huma Abedin, who did public business on an account tied to the server Mrs. Clinton maintained.

“We still do not know whether the FBI – or any other government agency for that matter – has possession of the email server that was used by Mrs. Clinton and Ms. Abedin to conduct official government business during their four years of employment at the State Department,” Judicial Watch said.

“We also do not know whether the server purportedly in the possession of the FBI – an assumption based on unsworn statements by third parties – is the actual email server that was used by Mrs. Clinton and Ms. Abedin to conduct official government business during their four years of employment at the State Department or whether it is a copy of such an email server. Nor do we know whether any copies of the email server or copies of the records from the email server exist,” the group said in its own court filingMonday afternoon.

Judicial Watch did release more than 50 pages Monday of emails it obtained from Ms. Abedin’s account on Mrs. Clinton’s server, and said it was clear she was talking about “sensitive” topics that shouldn’t have been discussed on an insecure account.

Many of those were details of Mrs. Clinton’s movements overseas, such as hotels she was staying at.

He questioned what reason Ms. Abedin — who did maintain an account, [email protected], on State.gov servers — would have for using the other account for important business. Mrs. Clinton said she kept only one account, the one on the clintonemail.com server, because it was more convenient, but that reasoning does not appear to apply to Ms. Abedin.

The State Department is making all of Mrs. Clinton’s emails public under order of Judge Rudolph Contreras. But the department has said it won’t make all of the emails public from Ms. Abedin or other top Clinton aides Cheryl Mills or Philippe Reines. Instead the department only plans to release those messages specifically requested in open-records demands.

Mrs. Clinton turned over about 30,000 email messages in December, while her aides turned over more than 100,000 pages between them, with the final set only being returned, by Ms. Abedin, earlier this month, the department said in court filings.

Without those documents in hand, the State Department has been unable to do full and complete searches in response to subpoenas, congressional inquiries or Freedom of Information Act requests.

The State Department has asked for dozens of cases to be put on hold while it tries to get a single judge to coordinate all of its searches in more than two dozen cases. But the people requesting the records have objected, and say the State Department has nobody to blame but itself.

“The State Department acts as if Ms. Abedin’s and Ms. Mills’ documents fell from the sky on the eve of the State Department’s production deadline, but that is not remotely the case,” Citizens United, one of the plaintiffs who’s sued under the FOIA, said in a filing late last week.

Citizens United says the State Department missed its own deadline for producing Ms. Mills’s and Ms. Abedin’s documents.

The Obama administration countered that it went above and beyond its duties under the law by asking Ms. Abedin and Ms. Mills to return their records and then to search them in response to open-records requests. The State Department says it’s moving as quickly as possible, but says the sheer number of documents — and the number of requests for them — calls for a stay in most cases.

But of the 26 requests where the State Department has sought to halt proceedings, six have already been denied. Only one has been granted, one was granted in part and denied in part by the same judge, and another is being held in abeyance.

The State Department told one of the federal judges Monday that it’s facing nearly 100 different open-records lawsuits — not all of them related to Mrs. Clinton’s email server — that have stretched officials to their limit.

Monday’s FBI letter underscores the tangled situation Mrs. Clinton’s emails have produced. The letter was addressed to Mary McLeod, a lawyer at the Justice Department, which oversees the FBI — and which means, in effect, that the FBI is refusing to talk to its own parent department about the matter.

Mr. Baker pointedly noted in his letter that he was aware the response would be submitted to the court, which would presumably make it public.

Earlier this month the Justice Department, in another pleading, insisted Mrs. Clinton didn’t do anything wrong in being the one who decided which of her messages were official business records that must be returned to the government, and which were purely personal and able to be expunged.

Judicial Watch said that raises thorny questions for a department that is supposedly investigating Mrs. Clinton.

Last week Sen. John Cornyn, the second-ranking Republican in the Senate, called for Attorney General Loretta Lynch to name a special counsel to oversee the investigation, citing too many potential conflicts of interest.

Stop the Migrants, Support H.R. 3314

Posted on September 21, 2015September 21, 2015 by Denise Simon

No one, including the FBI, law enforcement or even the State Department can or will assure much less guarantee there will be NO risk to our national security. It must also be noted, the migrants are from many countries including Afghanistan, Iran and even Pakistan to list a few.

Top 10 nationalities applying for asylum in Germany

Congressman Brian Babin of Texas is striking back hard on the immigration issue with direct attention placed on the migrant issue in Europe as the White House and the State Department are preparing to increase the number of migrants up to 100,000.

Representative Babin has introduced legislation, H.R. 3314 that requires our attention and support to advance it in the House.

Meanwhile, per orders of the White House, the taxpayer is giving yet another $419 million to Syrian refugees.

The United States will give $419 million more in humanitarian aid to assist Syrian refugees and the countries that are hosting them, administration officials said Monday.

The new aid brings the total U.S. donation since the Syrian conflict began in 2011 to $4.5 billion, more than any other country. It was announced a day after Secretary of State John F. Kerry said the United States would raise its annual refugee resettlement cap from 70,000 this fiscal year to 85,000 next year and 100,000 in 2017.

The United States has been the single largest donor of humanitarian aid to Syrians who have been displaced within their war-torn country or who have become refugees. But the administration has been criticized for not admitting more Syrians to America in the face of an epic wave of people fleeing the war zone. More details here.

The migrant issue in Europe has surpassed critical conditions, with regard to costs, housing, medical assistance, rescue/recovery, food, transportation, paperwork processing, jobs and challenges the legal system.

Embedded image permalink

The Hungarian government placed full-page advertisements in Lebanese and Jordanian newspapers Monday, warning migrants that they can be jailed if they enter the country illegally.

The “strongest possible action is taken against those who attempt to enter Hungary illegally,” the ads said in English and Arabic. Lebanon is reported to host nearly 1.2 million Syrian refugees while around 630,000 are currently in Jordan.

Speaking in parliament Monday, Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban said millions of migrants are “laying siege” to Europe’s borders.

He said “the migrants are not just banging on our door, they are breaking it down” and insisted that razor-wire fences the country is building on its borders with Serbia, Croatia and Romania are needed to defend Hungary and Europe, the Associated Press reported.

Hungary closed its border with Serbia on Sept. 15 and reopened it Sunday for vehicles, which are being checked by authorities.

In Turkey overnight, about 700 mainly Syrians who waited at Istanbul’s main bus station for a week after authorities suspended ticket sales to the northwestern town of Edirne, set off on foot toward the town — 150 miles away near the Greek border — in an effort to reach Europe, Agence France-Presse reported.

Some managed to board buses and private vehicles en route, but those who failed to do so were blocked by police about 31 miles from Istanbul, according to the news agency.

In Greece, fewer boats than normal landed on the island of Lesbos — a major transit point for Syrian refugees heading to Europe from Turkey — on Monday morning, ahead of an expected thunderstorm, Reuters reported.

It came after 13 migrants died when their boat collided with a ferry off Turkey on Sunday.

Hundreds of thousands of migrants and refugees, many of them from Syria, Afghanistan, Iraq and Eritrea, have headed to Europe this year fleeing conflict at home as countries along the route struggle to cope.

Monday, Austrian police spokesman Helmut Marban said nearly 24,000 refugees entered the country during the weekend, and another 3,200 arrived at the Nickelsdorf crossing — the main border crossing from Hungary — on Monday morning. Greek police also said 8,500 asylum-seekers crossed into neighboring Macedonia in the last 24 hours, the AP reported.

Foreign ministers from Hungary, Poland, Slovakia and the Czech Republic were meeting Monday, and were expected to voice opposition to Germany’s call for a more even distribution of migrants, the BBC reported. Germany says it is expecting at least 800,000 migrants this year.

European Union interior ministers are due to discuss the crisis on Tuesday and on Wednesday, EU leaders will gather for an extraordinary meeting in Brussels on how to deal with the influx of migrants and refugees.

The Croatian government said that 29,000 refugees entered the country by 6 a.m. local time Monday.

Speaking at a camp housing migrants near the eastern town of Tovarnik, Croatia’s Interior Minister Ranko Ostojic said he will seek to stop the flow of migrants from Greece at Tuesday’s meeting, Reuters reported.

He added: “It is absolutely unacceptable to have Greece emptying its refugee camps and sending people towards Croatia via Macedonia and Serbia.”

Secretary of State John Kerry on Sunday said that the U.S. will accept 85,000 refugees from around the world next year, up from the previous quota of 70,000. He also said the total would rise to 100,000 in 2017.

USA TODAY reporter Kim Hjelmgaard is currently traveling the land route taken by many migrants from Lesbos, Greece, to Berlin, Germany. Follow his journey here:

Pay Attention to this Pope, Unknowns

Posted on September 21, 2015September 21, 2015 by Denise Simon

WSJ: HOLGUÍN, Cuba— Pope Francis commiserated with Cuba’s Catholics on Monday about the difficulty of religious life in a communist country but stopped short of any direct criticism of its leaders.

“I know the efforts and the sacrifices being made by the church in Cuba to bring Christ’s word and presence to all, even in the most remote areas,” the pope said, as he celebrated Mass as the first pontiff to visit the central Cuban city of Holguín.

The pope’s relatively mild public complaint came during a trip that has been marked by his cautious stance toward the island’s government.

The previous day in Havana, Pope Francis met Cuban President Raúl Castro and his predecessor and brother Fidel Castro, shortly after dissidents said they had been detained to prevent them from attending a papal Mass.
Other groups of dissidents were also detained on Sunday, including a group that had been invited by the Vatican’s diplomatic mission to greet the pope behind closed doors. The meeting never took place.

Asked on Monday whether Pope Francis knew about a reported 50 arrests of dissidents, Vatican spokesman Father Federico Lombardi said, “I don’t have any information about this.”

Before the visit, the pope came under criticism for his decision to meet with both Raúl and Fidel Castro, but not to meet with any dissidents.

Neither day’s homily contained any strong political statements, though on Monday the pope told a congregation of thousands in Holguín’s Revolution Square that faith in Jesus “pushes us to look beyond, not to be satisfied with the politically correct.”

Cuba is no longer an officially atheistic state, but the Catholic Church and other religious groups here continue to operate under many of the restrictions imposed by the communist government in the years after the 1959 revolution.

Visits by then- Popes John Paul II and Benedict XVI, in 1998 and 2012, respectively, led to government concessions including visas for foreign missionaries and the establishment of Christmas and Good Friday as national holidays.

The Catholic Church in Cuba is still generally unable to run schools, build new houses of worship or maintain older ones, and its social-service activity remains limited by a virtual monopoly of the state.

In a speech to President Castro and other dignitaries during an arrival ceremony at Havana’s international airport Saturday, Pope Francis said the Catholic Church in Cuba should have the “freedom, the means and the space needed” to evangelize and provide charitable service to the island’s people.

While the church has publicly pressed its own case in Cuba, it has so far been silent on the lack of political rights and freedoms on the island.

The church has occasionally worked quietly to ease the plight of dissidents. In 2010 and 2011, Havana’s Cardinal Jaime Ortega arranged for the release of more than 100 political prisoners, most of whom then left the country.

The Vatican has said the pope would likely address concerns over religious liberty or the civil rights of dissidents not in public remarks, but rather in private meetings with Mr. Castro and other officials.

Holguín, a city of 1.65 million in the center of the country, is usually overshadowed by Havana and Santiago, the other two cities the pope was scheduled to visit during this trip. The Vatican said the pope added the seven-hour stop there because it had been neglected by John Paul and Benedict when they visited the country.

Small clusters of people greeted the pope’s motorcade on its way in from the airport, and he covered last two miles in an open-sided popemobile. The sweltering heat seemed to take a toll on the 78-year-old pope, who looked and sounded especially fatigued as he celebrated Mass.

The pope was scheduled to fly shortly before 5 p.m. to Santiago, where he was to meet Cuba’s Catholic bishops and pay homage to the country’s patroness, the Virgin of Charity of El Cobre. After less than a day there, he will fly to Washington, the first of three stops on a U.S. tour that ends Sunday in Philadelphia.

*** What you may not know:

WASHINGTON, McClatchy

Pope Francis arrives in Washington Tuesday to start his first visit to the United States. Here are 10 things you may not know about the religious leader of the world’s 1.2 billion Roman Catholics.

He is fluent in four languages, but English isn’t one of them.

The Argentine pope is fluent in his native Spanish, Italian, German and Latin, the official language of the Vatican. He also has addressed crowds in clear but heavily accented English, French, Portuguese and Ukrainian. In a nod to the growing importance of the U.S. Hispanic population, the pope will celebrate at least one Mass in Spanish during his visit, at the canonization ceremony of California missionary Junípero Serra. He will read his address to Congress in English.

He has a rather unusual resume for a supreme pontiff.

Back when he was still Jorge Mario Bergoglio, the future pope moonlighted as a Buenos Aires bar bouncer and a janitor sweeping floors before joining the Jesuit Order in 1958. As a teenager, Bergoglio got his secondary school diploma as a chemical technician and worked at a food laboratory running tests on nutrients.

He’s a big fan of tango, soccer and “Lord of the Rings.”

Pope Francis has an “intense fondness” for tango dancing and the traditional music of Argentina and Uruguay known as milonga. In 2014, over 3,000 dancers from all over Italy celebrated his birthday by dancing tango in Saint Peter’s Square. A lifelong fan of the Argentine soccer team San Lorenzo, he is number 88,235 on the club’s member list. In 2013 he celebrated the team’s victory by hoisting the trophy over Saint Peter’s Square for the crowd to see. The pope is also a “Lord of the Rings” aficionado. In a 2008 sermon he used the Tolkien characters Frodo and Bilbo as inspiring examples of hope conquering doubt.

Pope Francis has never been to the United States.

Up to now, he has made a point of prioritizing the margins of society over developed countries in the Western world.

For his first official papal trip outside Rome he went to a Sicilian island to meet migrants who had survived the dangerous ocean crossing from Africa. In his two years as pope he has traveled to Israel, Jordan, the Palestine territories, the Philippines, South Korea and Sri Lanka in addition to several South American countries.

The designated ‘popemobile’ for the U.S. visit is a Jeep Wrangler.

The Holy Father will be shuttled around the streets of Washington, New York and Philadelphia in a Jeep Wrangler that is already in the hands of the Secret Service, according to the Vatican.

A similar car with open sides and a glass-front roof was used for the pope’s visit to Ecuador in July. This layout will give the surrounding crowds a clear view of the pontiff, unlike the closed and bulletproof “popemobiles” of his predecessors.

The pope’s aircraft is nicknamed ‘Shepherd One.’

Typically the pope flies in an ordinary chartered jet operated by Italy’s national carrier, Alitalia. Although the pope owns no special airplane, Americans nicknamed the chartered papal flight “Shepherd One” when Pope Benedict XVI visited the U.S. in 2008.

According to traditional protocol, when a pope travels abroad he flies out on the Alitalia chartered jet and returns to Rome on a flag carrier of the visited nation, although this depends on where he goes.

The 266th pope likes being out on the streets.

Pope Francis is famously unpretentious. A few examples: He was spotted popping out of the Vatican in his Ford Focus to buy new glasses at an optician’s shop in Rome. During his recent visit to Bolivia, he stopped at a Burger King to change his clothing before saying Mass. He’s the first pope to wander down into the cafeteria to eat lunch with Vatican employees. He’s also the first pope to carry his own luggage onto the plane.

Pope Francis has prioritized climate change and environmental issues.

He criticized those who deny the human connection to climate change in a strongly worded 184-page encyclical, “Laudato Si,” issued in June. He wrote that the modern “use and throwaway” culture and the “disordered desire to consume more than what is really necessary” is to blame for global warming.

“Never have we so hurt and mistreated our common home as we have in the last 200 years,” he wrote. The encyclical was sharply criticized by many as inappropriate meddling by a religious institution in a political issue. He is expected to address climate change during his U.S. visit.

The pope (no longer) wears Prada.

While predecessor Benedict XVI was known for wearing the customary bright red shoes rumored to be designed by Italian fashion house Prada, Francis prefers to stick to the same simple black leather shoes from his days as archbishop of Buenos Aires.

He also prefers humbler papal garments, doing away with the velvet capes, fur trim, elaborate crucifixes and gold rings of the office.

He is the first pope from the developing world.

The Buenos Aires native of Italian ancestry is the first pontiff to come from the developing world, the first pope from the Americas, and the first non-European pope since Syrian Gregory III in 741. He is also the first Jesuit pope.

Read more here: http://www.mcclatchydc.com/news/politics-government/article35740713.html#emlnl=Morning_Newsletter#storylink=cpy

Putin’s Military Countless Moves/Top Threat

Posted on September 21, 2015September 21, 2015 by Denise Simon

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Russia has started flying surveillance missions with drone aircraft in Syria, two U.S. officials said on Monday, in what appeared to be Moscow’s first military air operations in Syria since staging a rapid buildup at an airfield there.

The U.S. officials, who spoke to Reuters on condition of anonymity, could not say how many drone aircraft were involved in the surveillance missions. The Pentagon declined to comment.

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NYPost: After weeks of dancing around the issue, the Obama administration has expressed concern about “heightened military activity” by Russia in Syria.

But what if we are facing something more than “heightened military activity?” What if Moscow is preparing to give Syria the full Putin treatment?

For years, Russia has been helping Syrian despot Bashar al-Assad cling to a diminishing power structure in a shrinking territorial base without trying to impose an overall strategy.
Now, however, there are signs that Russia isn’t content to just support Assad. It wants to control Syria.

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Russia is calling for “concrete action” after a shell landed on its embassy compound in the Syrian capital, Damascus.

The Foreign Ministry said on September 21 that the mortar attack was launched in the morning of September 20 by forces battling Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.

It said the shelling did not cause damage.

The militants have “outside sponsors” who are responsible for influencing their actions, the ministry said.

“We are expecting a clear-cut position on this act of terror from all members of the international community,” it added. “What is needed is not just words but concrete action too.”

The statement comes amid Western concerns over Russia’s military buildup in Syria.

Moscow says its aim is to help Syria, a longtime ally, fight the Islamic State extremist group.

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A nuclear-armed U.S. ballistic missile submarine arrived in Scotland this week amid growing tensions with Moscow over Ukraine and Russia’s strategic arms buildup.

The submarine, the USS Wyoming, arrived at the British naval base at Faslane, Scotland, Wednesday morning for what the U.S. Strategic Command said is a routine visit.

However, ballistic missile submarine movements and port visits normally are not announced by the Navy or the Strategic Command, an indication the Wyoming’s port call is intended as strategic messaging to Moscow.

The submarine visit “demonstrates the closeness of the U.S./U.K. defense relationship and our commitment to the collective security of all NATO member states,” Stratcom said in a brief statement.

The submarine deployment followed an earlier unannounced visit by a British missile submarine to Kings Bay, Ga., the homeport of the Wyoming.

***

Russia and Iran have stepped up coordination inside Syria as they move to safeguard President Bashar al-Assad’s control over his coastal stronghold, according to officials in the U.S. and Middle East, creating a new complication for Washington’s diplomatic goals.

Senior Russian and Iranian diplomats, generals and strategists have held a string of high-level talks in Moscow in recent months to discuss Mr. Assad’s defense and the Kremlin’s military buildup in Syria, according to these officials.

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The Russian president announced today he has agreed a Government proposal to sign a deal for the military airbase and ordered defence and foreign ministry officials to start talks with Belarus – although the plan is not expected to face major obstacles.

His announcement comes at a time of tension with the West over Russian involvement in Ukraine and Syria and may also signal the Kremlin’s interest in keeping unpredictable Belarus within its geopolitical orbit.

The idea for an airbase in the ex-Soviet republic was revealed by Russian Defence Minister Sergei Shoigu in 2013 and follows a 2009 agreement where Russia and Belarus agreed to defend their common external frontier and airspace.

Russian defence officials said the base would be used to station Su-27 fighters.

Russia already has some fighter aircraft in Belarus but this would be the first full-scale base in the country since Soviet times.

The world’s biggest country has scaled back its military presence abroad, closing bases in distant Cold War allies such as Cuba and Vietnam.

However, a naval base at Tartus in war-torn Syria has recently become the focus of world attention as Russia has boosted its troop presence there in a move seen as bolstering its diplomatic influence in the region.

In summary from 2014 and later Congressional testimony:

Pentagon Fears It’s Not Ready for a War With Putin

The U.S. military has run the numbers on a sustained fight with Moscow, and they do not look good for the American side.

A series of classified exercises over the summer has raised concerns inside the Defense Department that its forces are not prepared for a sustained military campaign against Russia, two defense officials told The Daily Beast.Many within the military believe that 15 years of counter-terrorism warfare has left the ground troops ill prepared to maintain logistics or troop levels should Russia make an advance on NATO allies, the officials said.

Among the challenges the exercises revealed were that the number of precision-guided munitions available across the force were short of the war plans and it would be difficult to sustain a large troop presence. Full article here.

March 2015: WASHINGTON —The nominee to be the next chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff said Thursday that Russia poses the greatest national security threat to the United States and that it would be a “reasonable” military decision to supply lethal arms to Ukrainians fighting against rebels backed by Moscow.

“Russia presents the greatest threat to our national security. … If you look at their behavior, it’s nothing short of alarming,” Marine Gen. Joseph Dunford said during his confirmation hearing before the Senate Armed Services Committee
Relations between Russia and the West have sunk to post-Cold War lows after Moscow’s annexation of Ukraine’s Crimean Peninsula and its support for a pro-Russian insurgency in eastern Ukraine. The United States has responded with sanctions but so far has refrained from providing lethal arms to the Ukrainian forces.

Asked if the U.S. should provide lethal arms to Ukraine, Dunford said that from a military standpoint, it would be a “reasonable” response.

“Frankly, without that kind of support, they are not going to be able to defend themselves against Russian aggression,” Dunford said.

That comment was welcomed by Sen. John McCain, chairman of the chairman.

“In Europe, Vladimir Putin’s Russia continues its onslaught in Ukraine,” said McCain, R-Ariz. “But even as Russian troops and equipment execute this neo-imperial campaign to undermine Ukraine’s government and independence, the United States has refused Ukraine the weapons it needs and deserves for its defense.” More detail here.