Category Archives: Failed foreign policy

Secret White House Meetings on Cuba, Shooting From the Hip

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To date, agenda items are in place for normalizing relations with Cuba, while the larger needs list to have business and economic conditions and interactions are far from successful or  advancing mostly due to distrust in the banking industry.

In part from the Miami Herald:

During a White House briefing last week with business people, academics and others who have been supportive of the normalization process, briefers said that a revision and clarification of some banking and travel rules would come out shortly. They also asked business executives to keep the feedback coming on the evolving rules.

Pompano-based Stonegate is the first U.S. bank to engage with Cuba under the regulations that came out in January.

But banks in general are very nervous about Cuba, said Ted Piccone, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution. “Part of it is the banking culture is very conservative, but the banks also have seen that they can be heavily penalized if they don’t abide by the letter of the law.”

 

Meanwhile, as U.S. business pioneers try to strike deals, they must also contend with a Cuban system that doesn’t necessarily mesh with U.S. business practices, limited Internet service, and a Cuban bureaucracy that often seems more interested in going slow than expediting business.

Beyond the sluggish bureaucracy, the government also is testing the shifting currents with caution.

Carlos Alzugaray, a retired Cuban diplomat, points out there are reasons the government wants to go slow and not risk losing political control by allowing too swift an economic transformation or rapprochement with the United States.

Secretive White House meeting reveals Obama’s plan to visit Cuba in 2016

Washington Examiner: A secretive White House meeting on Cuba last week revealed that President Obama is mulling a visit the island nation next year, and also discussed the controversial idea of the Cuban government opening consular offices in Miami.

After hailing embassy openings in Washington and Havana last week, the White House held an off-schedule, private meeting on Wednesday with U.S. officials involved in the administration’s Cuba policy. Nearly 80 activist members of the Cuban-American community from Florida and across the United States — mostly Democrats — were also there.

Valerie Jarrett, one of Obama’s closest advisers, was on hand, along with White House deputy national security adviser Ben Rhodes and Roberta Jacobson, assistant secretary of State for the western hemisphere.

The White House Monday at first declined to talk about the meeting, and referred questions about it to the State Department. A State Department spokesman then referred the same questions to the Cuban embassy, which was already closed for the day.

On Tuesday, a White House official told the Washington Examiner that the briefing took place as part of the administration’s ongoing efforts to reach out and engage the Cuban-American community on the president’s efforts to normalize relations with the island nation.

“The president has been very clear that he supports measures to improve travel and commerce and further increase people-to-people contact, support civil society in Cuba, support the growth of Cuba’s nascent private sector and enhance the free flow of information to, from, and among the Cuban people,” the White House official said. “The president has also called on Congress to begin the work of ending the embargo.”

On Obama’s plans to travel to Cuba, the official said there are no announcements.

But according to sources familiar with the meeting, Rhodes told the group that President Obama is considering visiting the island nation next year, and will make an assessment early next year depending on progress in U.S.-Cuba relations.

While that historic visit would likely help Obama cement his legacy as the president who started to open up bilateral relations, it could be marred by or even delayed by Cuba’s arrest of dissidents. Those arrests have continued despite Obama’s gestures to Cuba, and could put Obama at risk of appearing to be too friendly with a country that often arrests members of political or religious groups dozens at a time.

Eduardo Jose Padron, the current president of Miami-Dade College who came to the U.S. as a refugee at the age of 15, used the White House meeting to ask about the state of human rights in Cuba, and State Department officials acknowledged that it is a dangerous time for dissidents on the island, one participant told the Examiner.

Andy Gomez, a retired assistant provost and dean of the University of Miami’s School of International Studies, said that so far, the Castro regime doesn’t appear to be changing its ways. Gomez previously served on the Brookings Institution’s Cuba Task Force from 2008 to 2010, and told the Washington Examiner Cuba needs to demonstrate a stronger commitment to human rights before Obama travels there or the U.S. agrees to allow it to open a consulate in Florida.

“Up until now, the Cuban government hasn’t even brought Cuban coffee to the table … I don’t see any signs of the Cuban government loosening up their control,” he said.

Pope Francis’s visit to Cuba, scheduled for later in September, he said, would be a good time for the Cuban government to release more political prisoners and demonstrate a true commitment to improving relations.

The idea of a consular office of the Cuban government in Florida is one that is already stirring debate among Cuban-Americans. During a question-and-answer session in the White House meeting, one participant asked about the chances for opening a Cuban consulate in Miami, according to a source who was there.

The White House responded that it was up to the Cuban government to decide when and where it would open the consulate.

But that response has only spurred more questions and concerns since the meeting, some of which deal with how it might hurt Hillary Clinton’s White House bid. The opening of an outpost in the heavily anti-Castro area of Miami could further anger Florida’s politically powerful Cuban-American community and create a backlash for Democrats that could hurt Clinton’s Florida presidential campaign operations.

“The consulate in Miami would create a bittersweet taste in the Cuban-American community, including those supporting these [normalization] changes,” said Gomez. “It would also hurt any chances of Hillary Clinton making inroads and gaining support among Miami’s Cuban-Americans.”

“I don’t think President Obama would do that to Hillary Clinton,” he added, noting that he believes a better place for the consulate would be in Tampa or Key West.

Ever since Obama’s December announcement to try to normalize relations with Cuba, South Florida’s major cities have fiercely debated the opening of a consulate, which would provide passport and visas services and emergency aide to visiting Cuban citizens, as well as other resources.

Officials have strongly objected to such an outpost in Miami-Dade County, home to nearly a million Cubans, the largest concentration in the world next to Havana.

But city leadership in Tampa, which has roughly 80,000 Cuban-Americans, is embracing the idea, viewing it as an economic opportunity for the city.

While recent polls have documented a generational shift in Cuban-American feelings about the Obama’s administration’s decision to re-engage with the Castro government, the political leadership in Miami is still heavily anti-Castro, dominated by descendants of those who fled the 1959 communist revolution regime, and some who had their property taken by Castro.

Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, R-Fla., who vehemently opposes Obama’s decision to restore ties, is strongly against a consulate in Miami. Two other Florida GOP congressmen, Mario Diaz-Balart and Carlos Curbelo, also are opposed, along with Miami Mayor Tomas Regalado.

Ros-Lehtinen said opening a consulate in Miami is another Obama administration effort to “legitimize an illegitimate regime.”

“Placing a Cuban consulate in Miami is nothing but an insult to so many who have been arrested, imprisoned, maimed, and tortured by the Castros and their ruthless thugs,” she told the Examiner. “This administration has done nothing but give dictators concession after concession yet what do we have to show for it? More arrests of pro-democracy activists in Cuba, a continued harboring of fugitives from American justice, and total disrespect for the suffering of victims of autocratic despots.”

Ros-Lehtinen also argues that any Cuban consulate would serve as a headquarters for espionage.

But others argue that South Florida Cuban-Americans are in real need of consular services and don’t view the opening as a serious problem.

“I would hope that it would make things easier for those traveling back home, about 400,000 are traveling back to Cuba a year,” said Jorge Duany, director of the Cuban Research Institute at Florida International University. “Right now, it’s very expensive and cumbersome to apply for a visa and make all kinds of travel arrangements.”

13 Hours of Benghazi, Hat Tip to the Heroes RIP to the Heroes

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Hello Tanto, thanks buddy and to you Col. Wood, we honor you. Hugs to Oz, Mark, and Tig.

 

WSJ: Michael Bay is notorious for mounting massive-scaled blockbusters crammed wall to wall with explosions, twisted metal, swaggering heroes and supermodels.

The director’s next movie, however, is shaping up to be a lot more serious because the Sept. 11, 2012, attack on U.S. diplomatic facilities in Benghazi, Libya, is anything but the stuff of pure entertainment.

“13 Hours: The Secret Soldiers of Benghazi” is based on Mitchell Zuckoff’s nonfiction book “13 Hours,” which tells the story of the efforts of six members of a security crew who seek to protect the U.S. compound during the chaos that claimed the lives of four Americans.

The trailer for the film is still packed with plenty of Bay trademarks, such as action and pyrotechnic virtuosity, not to mention men of action and duty, but the tone is dead serious in a way that even Bay’s previous war film based around true events, “Pearl Harbor,” wasn’t. It’s like “Argo” meets “Zero Dark Thirty,” but filmed with Bay’s kinetic, flashy style.

Chuck Hogan, co-creator of FX’s “The Strain” and a novelist, wrote the screenplay for “13 Hours.” The film stars James Badge Dale, John Krasinski and Pablo Schreiber, and it is due to hit theaters Jan. 15.

WSJ App users can watch the trailer here.

Check Those Family Members: Iran and America

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With the names, relationships, dates and places listed below, a new picture emerges that this Iran deal with major U.S. concessions is a willful and purposeful deal of destruction. In fact so much that sedition comes to mind for all involved in the Obama administration including Barack Obama himself.

Who is Hassan Rouhani?

Several months after Rouhani resigned at top nuclear negotiator for Iran’s regime, he gave a speech on how he duped the west during nuclear negotiations, keeping Iran’s nuclear program on track while avoiding referral to the UN Security Council and possible sanctions.

Rouhani’s speech was published in the fall of 2005 by Rahbord, a magazine distributed by the Center for Strategic Research.

The regime had failed to disclose its nuclear enrichment and reprocessing activities and in September 2003 faced referral to the UN Security Council for possible sanctions.  The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) demanded Iran fully disclose its nuclear program, agree to tougher inspections, and suspend enrichment of uranium.

Rouhani said as a meeting with Iran’s leaders that the regime faced a dilemma.

“The issue was whether providing a complete picture would alleviate the problem or not? he said.  “The dilemma was if we offered a complete picture, the picture itself could lead us to the UN Security Council. And not providing a complete picture would also be a violation of the resolution and we could have been referred to the Security Council for not implementing the resolution.”

Rouhani said Iran agreed to the IAEA demands.  But work was only suspended in areas where technical problems were not an issue and work continued in areas where technical problems persisted.  By implementing this strategy, the regime was able to complete work on Isfahan, which converts yellow cake to UF4 and UB6.

Rouhani’s strategy was discussed in a news article by the Sunday Telegraph (March 5, 2006), titled, “How we duped the West, by Iran’s nuclear negotiator.”

“The man who for two years led Iran’s nuclear negotiations has laid out in unprecedented detail how the regime took advantage of talks with Britain, France and Germany to forge ahead with its secret atomic programme,” the Sunday Telegraph said.  “In a speech to a closed meeting of leading Islamic clerics and academics, Hassan Rowhani, who headed talks with the so-called EU3 until last year, revealed how Teheran played for time and tried to dupe the West after its secret nuclear programme was uncovered by the Iranian opposition in 2002.”

Rouhani completed his speech, stating “…I should tell you that we need some time to implement our capabilities. I mean if we could complete the fuel cycle and make it fait- accompli for the world, then the whole situation would be different.”

During his election campaign for president, Rouhani took credit for implementing the strategy that deceived Western powers on Iran’s intention to continue its nuclear program.  He said that, at the time, the political environment was different but “we managed to prevent any action against us while not giving up our rights.”

In his first press conference following his election victory, Rowhani rejected the notion of halting uranium enrichment, noting “That era is over with.” (AFP, June 17, 2013)

Agents of the Enemy

Is John Kerry representing America or Iran?

Frontpage: If any further evidence was needed to show that the nuclear talks with Iran were a tragic farce, choreographed and orchestrated by Iran, the startling revelations from a former top aide to Iranian President Hassan Rouhani ought to do the trick.

“The US negotiating team are mainly [in Lausanne] to speak on Iran’s behalf with other members of the 5+1 countries and convince them of a deal,” he told an opposition television network in London.

Amir Hossein Motaghi was Rouhani’s image-maker during the 2013 presidential elections, the man in charge of promoting Rouhani to the nation’s youth through a vigorous social media campaign. Thanks in large part to his efforts, Rouhani captured an overwhelming majority of the youth vote and beat his nearest opponent by more than 30 points.

A journalist by trade, Motaghi says he traveled to Lausanne to cover the nuclear talks for the Iranian Student Correspondents Association (ISCA), but then quit his job and applied for political asylum.

That makes him the most recent defector from the upper reaches of Iran’s political establishment to flee the regime and seek refuge in the West.

In his interview with the opposition Iran-e Farda television in London, reported by the Daily Telegraph, Motaghi accused the regime of sending intelligence officers posing as journalists to the talks “to make sure that all the news fed back to Iran goes through their channels.

“My conscience would not allow me to carry out my profession in this manner any more,” he added.

But his revelation about U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry and his negotiating team is the real shocker. It should wipe away any shred of credibility left to a process that has aimed from the start at helping Iran to slip the deadly noose of the international economic and financial sanctions that have crippled its economy and exacerbated social unrest.

Essentially, what Motaghi said is that Secretary Kerry is working as an agent of Iran and has been arm-twisting reluctant allies, such as the French, into accepting what they know is a bad deal.

French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius, for example, has long been insisting that Iran come clean on its previous military activities, something we are now told that the American delegation, led by Secretary Kerry, wants to leave out of the negotiation. Why? Because the Iranians have said they will not come clean.

That was too much even for the normally pro-Democrat Washington Post, which wrote in a column attributed to its Editorial Board last Friday that the deal was “a reward for Iran’s noncompliance.”

Some Iranian-Americans believe that Secretary Kerry should have recused himself from the negotiations at the very outset because of his long-standing relationship to his Iranian counter-part, Mohammad Javad Zarif.

The two first met over a decade ago at a dinner party hosted by George Soros at his Manhattan penthouse, according to a 2012 book by Hooman Majd, who frequently translates for Iranian officials.

Iranian-American sources in Los Angeles tell me that Javad Zarif’s son was the best man at the 2009 wedding between Kerry’s daughter Vanessa and Behrouz Vala Nahed, an Iranian-American medical doctor.

The newlyweds went to Iran shortly after their wedding to met Nahed’s family. Kerry ultimately revealed his daughter’s marriage to an Iranian-American once he had taken over as Secretary of State. But the subject never came up in his Senate confirmation hearing, either because Kerry never disclosed it, or because his former colleagues were too polite to bring it up.

John Kerry has long advocated nuclear negotiations with Iran. During his 2004 presidential bid, he said that if he were President, he would have “offered the opportunity to provide the nuclear fuel” to Iran, to “test them, see whether or not they were actually looking for it for peaceful purposes.”

He also has a long track record of taking money from Iranian-Americans connected to Tehran or lobbying to get U.S. sanctions on Iran removed, Tehran’s prime objective for many years, a subject I have chronicled repeatedly.

But Kerry wasn’t the only person not officially part of the Iranian delegation who was carrying Tehran’s water in Lausanne.

Also showing up was Trita Parsi, president of the National Iranian American Council (NIAC), hobnobbing with Western reporters while striding into meetings side by side with the Iranian delegation.

The irony of a Swedish-Iranian running an Iranian-American lobbying organization then showing up in Lausanne to play “let’s make a deal” was not lost on the Iranian American community.

For many years Parsi and NIAC tried to disguise their lobbying efforts on behalf of the Islamic Republic of Iran. At one point, they sued an Iranian journalist, Hassan Dai, who openly labeled them the “Iranian lobby” in Washington – only to lose the case, with a U.S. court ordering NIAC to pay damages of over $100,000.

“Now it seems that after losing the court case, NIAC is no longer trying to hide its cozy relationship with IRI and openly communicates with the regime,” Dr. Iman Foroutan, a California entrepreneur and Chairman of The New Iran, a pro-freedom forum, told me.

“Those Iranian American members of NIAC that until now have not been aware of NIAC’s direct relationship with the tyrannical regime in Iran will now have to make a choice of remaining a member of or cancelling their membership with NIAC,” Dr. Foroutan said.

While Parsi’s relationship to Tehran officials angers Iranian-Americans, Secretary of State John Kerry’s lobbying his fellow foreign ministers to accept Iranian negotiating positions – if true – should make Americans livid.

That is, if anyone is still paying attention to the facts.

Qaddafi Sentenced to Death

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The failure today of Libya is directly owned by Hillary Clinton as noted by emails released from the State Department and Sidney Blumenthal due to the Benghazi investigation.

The emails between Clinton and Sidney Blumenthal about the inner-workings of Libya following the death of the North African country’s dogged dictator, Muammar Gaddafi, included one correspondence that suggested new Libyan leader, Mohamed Magariaf, would “seek a discrete relationship with Israel.”

Clinton, encouraged by the news, forwarded the message to her deputy Jake Sullivan — a current adviser to the Obama administration for negotiations over Iran’s nuclear program — saying he “should consider passing to Israelis,” according to the Times report that was released on Monday.

The Guardian: Gaddafi’s son Saif al-Islam sentenced to death by court in Libya

Saif al-Islam Gaddafi and other senior members of former Libyan regime sentenced by court in Tripoli after trial mired in controversy

Saif al-Islam Gaddafi, the son of Libya’s former dictator, Muammar Gaddafi, has been sentenced to death by a court in Tripoli.

Saif, once seen as his father’s heir apparent, was condemned to death along with eight other figures from the former dictatorship, including the former intelligence chief Abdullah al-Senussi and Gaddafi’s last prime minister, Al-Baghdadi Ali al-Mahmoudi.

The trial, which opened in Tripoli in April last year, has been mired in controversy after human rights groups and the international criminal court questioned its standards.

There is uncertainty about whether the sentence will be carried out, as Saif is being held by a militia in the mountain town of Zintan that is opposed to Libya Dawn, the militia coalition in control of Tripoli.

Saif has been held in Zintan since he was caught trying to flee Libya in the aftermath of the 2011 revolution. The militia has refused to hand him over to Tripoli.

The international criminal court has refused permission for Libya to try Saif, who has been indicted by the Hague, along with Senussi, for war crimes and crimes against humanity. Judges in the Hague have given permission for Senussi to be tried.

There are unlikely to be immediate executions after Sadiq al-Sur, head of the investigation department of the attorney general, said lawyers could appeal against the sentences.

In June last year, militias controlling the prison where Saif is being held briefly arrested a United Nations monitor, accusing him of black magic. He was later released.

 

Civil war engulfed the country last July, with Libya Dawn militias seizing the capital and the internationally recognised government fleeing to eastern Libya and losing control of the trial process.

***

Qaddafi was instrumental is several nefarious actions in Libya being a large part of his father’s inner circle.

There was the weapons of mass destruction program in Libya.

There was the case of HIV infecting 400 children.

There was the Lockerbie bombing, yet there is some linkage to Iran.

There was the disco bombing in Berlin.

The most interesting scandal of the Qaddafi family was their deep relationship to the British Royal family, the Rothchilds and Prime Minister Tony Blair.

 

Immigrants Globally a Boon to Mafia and Gangs

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Given civil wars, drug cartels, failed states, lawlessness and financial crises, refugees, asylum seekers and those fleeing their home countries for countless reasons are falling prey to gangs and organized crime operations like the Mafia.

This is a building phenomenon not only globally but here in the United States. Consider Libya, Syria, Sudan, Iraq, Yemen, Honduras, Guatemala, El Salvador and Mexico are noted to be failed states.

Every action has a reaction and the Obama administration is not facing any conditions or consequences here at home.

Italy’s Mafia is Profiting From the Immigration Crisis
The Mafia in Italy have demonstrated devious ingenuity in everything from drug trafficking to counterfeiting. Now they’re exploiting the immigration crisis.

The care and feeding of such migrants may end up costing the Italian government as much as €800m per year, with it offering private individuals, companies and non-profit organisations up to €35 a day per person to host them. That includes a daily pocket money allowance of €2.50 that hosts are supposed to pay directly to the refugees.

Those funds have proven irresistible to the Mafia, according to Italian prosecutors and watchdog groups, who say criminal groups have succeeded at rigging the awarding of the contracts for the management of migrant reception centres in several high-profile cases.

Then here at home, let us look no farther than Long Island.

Gangs on LI trying to recruit newly arrived Central American children

Latino street gangs led by MS-13 have tried to lure Long Island’s newest child immigrants into their ranks, police said, causing concern among local investigators as well as immigrant advocacy groups.

The violent, drug-dealing gangs have been vying for new members among the more than 3,000 children younger than 18 who resettled in Nassau and Suffolk counties between September 2013 and September 2014.

MS-13 has gone international as their syndicate is appearing in Australia.

FreeBeacon: Vice President of the National Border Patrol Council Shawn Moran told Fox News that the violent MS-13 gang is exploiting the chaos on the U.S. border to recruit new juvenile members.

“We know the cartels were exploiting this and continue to exploit this crisis in south Texas, it makes sense that MS-13 and other gangs would do the same,” said Moran.

According to Moran, the gang has been using a Red Cross phone bank on the border, originally intended for unaccompanied minors to use to contact relatives: “These phones are being utilized by gang members to recruit, to enlist, to pressure people, other juveniles into joining the MS-13 gang.”

And, Moran explained, border security is unable to isolate these gang members because they are juveniles, and they are required to treat all juveniles a certain way. “We’re being told we have to look the other way. If we see gang tattoos, we’re not allowed to treat them any differently than anybody else applying to be allowed to stay here or to apply for asylum.”

“It’s a security issue that we feel could really snowball out of control and it would put agents at risk. It puts the other detainees at risk,” Moran said.

Moran described MS-13 as “one of the biggest threats we face on our southern border. They do not hesitate to use extreme violence if necessary. They are considered one of the top threats to border patrol agents.”