No 830 “En mi
opinión” Diciembre 23, 2014
“IN GOD WE TRUST” Lázaro R González Miño EDITOR
The True Christmas
This is better than a
Christmas card!!!! PLEASE OPEN & ENJOY!!!
THIS IS SO NICE,
YOU WON”T BE ABLE TO RESIST SINGING ALONG.
|
It’s time for a
Convention of States, particularly since Congress doesn’t think so
You
can help Allen West save this country.
Check it out:
Check it out:
You’ve
probably heard this story before. Following the Constitutional Convention in
September 1787, Elizabeth Powel, the premiere “Saloniste of Philadelphia”
approached Benjamin Franklin on his way out of the Pennsylvania State House and
asked what form of government the delegates of the Congress had agreed upon. He
replied, “A republic, madam, if you can keep it.”
It
was a simple challenge presented almost 220 years ago that resonates with a
stentorian echo to this day.
When
I travel the country, many folks ask what they can do, what can be done when
the rule of law — the US Constitution — is clearly being violated?
Well,
it seems more than a few Americans have an answer and have accepted Franklin’s
challenge – although it’s not something you’ll see widely reported in the
media.
As
Bryan Anderson writes for Investors Business Daily, “A very important meeting
is being held in Washington this week, but career politicians, lobbyists and
most in the media don’t want you to know about it. More than 100 state
legislators from around the country are meeting at the Naval Heritage Center.”
“The
Assembly of State Legislatures (ASL) will discuss the rules for the first-ever
Article V Constitutional amendment convention. This is their third meeting.
They’re preparing to take on Washington, and Congress doesn’t like it.”
“The
Framers of the Constitution had the foresight to anticipate what Congress has
become: a dysfunctional mess. In Article V they wisely provided a means for the
states to step in and amend the Constitution largely without congressional
approval. The state legislators in ASL are determined to convene an amendment
convention. Our situation is that dire.” Sounds like it’s high time for a
Convention of States.
Read more at http://conservativebyte.com/2014/12/time-convention-states-particularly-since-congress-doesnt-think/
Read more at http://conservativebyte.com/2014/12/time-convention-states-particularly-since-congress-doesnt-think/
BREAKING: Black Gang Issues Order To
Murder All White Cops.
An
there are not REACIST… nahh.
Pero ellos no son RACISTAS… Nooo.
Obama built this. This is part of
his ‘fundamental transformation’.
In the wake of several highly publicized media
accounts of the shooting deaths of blacks by white police officers, a violent
street gang has decided that the time has come for them to take justice into
their own hands — by murdering white cops.
The Cuyhoga County Sheriff’s Office in northern Ohio
said area street gang Heartless Felons has instructed its members to kill white
police officers in retaliation for the deaths of blacks likeMichael Brown and Eric Garner.
Sheriff’s office spokesman John O’Brien refused
to release details regarding how the sheriff’s office learned of the
instructions, fearing that the gang could benefit from the information.
Law enforcement officers in Bedford and Maple Heights
also confirmed that they had heard unsubstantiated rumors along the same lines.
THEY DON’T LIKE OBAMA: Armed Forces’
Support for President Obama Breaks All-Time Record
Wow.
This is ugly. But then again… Obama doesn’t like our military that much
either.
Bill O'Reilly: NYC Mayor De Blasio Should Resign
Fox News host Bill O'Reilly says New York City Mayor
Bill de Blasio has lost the backing of his police department and should resign
immediately.
O'Reilly was on Christmas break Monday night, but phoned in to "O'Reilly Factor"guest host Greg Gutfeld to criticize de Blasio's handling of the recent protests against police.
O'Reilly was on Christmas break Monday night, but phoned in to "O'Reilly Factor"guest host Greg Gutfeld to criticize de Blasio's handling of the recent protests against police.
O'Reilly said de Blasio lost the police when he called
an attack by protesters on two police lieutenants "alleged" when the
actions were clearly shown on video.
"Once he said that, that was the end,"
O'Reilly said. When de Blasio showed up at a hospital on Saturday where two
slain police officers had been taken, a line of police officers turned their
backs on him in protest.
"Good for them," O'Reilly said.
De Blasio cannot run the city and has lost the respect and control of the NYPD, he said.
"They will never come back no matter what he says," O'Reilly said. "He associated with the provocateurs and he has disgraced the office of mayor of New York City. He should resign."
"Good for them," O'Reilly said.
De Blasio cannot run the city and has lost the respect and control of the NYPD, he said.
"They will never come back no matter what he says," O'Reilly said. "He associated with the provocateurs and he has disgraced the office of mayor of New York City. He should resign."
Related Stories:
·
Bernie Kerik: NYPD Feels Mayor de Blasio 'Has Abandoned Them'
Read Latest Breaking News from Newsmax.com http://www.Newsmax.com/Headline/bill-oreilly-bill-de-blasio-mayor-resign/2014/12/22/id/614564/#ixzz3MjISZNeo
Urgent: Should Obamacare Be Repealed? Vote Here Now!
Read Latest Breaking News from Newsmax.com http://www.Newsmax.com/Headline/bill-oreilly-bill-de-blasio-mayor-resign/2014/12/22/id/614564/#ixzz3MjISZNeo
Urgent: Should Obamacare Be Repealed? Vote Here Now!
·
The Western Center
For Journalism.
He's Betrayed Us For The Last Time...
John Boehner Must GO!
When your
Blast Faxes and calls to Washington initiallyDENIED John Boehner the
votes he needed to fund Barack Obama's unlawful Amnesty Decree, John Boehner
didn't get mad... HE GOT EVEN.
And when it became clear he did NOT have the votes to fund Barack Obama's unlawful Amnesty Decree, John Boehner DECLARED WAR... not against Barack Obama, but against YOU.
Without missing a beat, he ABRUPTLY placed the House into recess and locked arms with Barack Obama. Working in concert, Boehner and Obama twisted arms and made deals behind closed doors and then, six hours later, Boehner called the House back into session in the dark of night to hold the vote.
And now, John Boehner must be made to understand that there are repercussions for treachery... and when we're done, every politician in Washington will know that PATRIOTIC AMERICANS WANT JOHN BOEHNER GONE!
And when it became clear he did NOT have the votes to fund Barack Obama's unlawful Amnesty Decree, John Boehner DECLARED WAR... not against Barack Obama, but against YOU.
Without missing a beat, he ABRUPTLY placed the House into recess and locked arms with Barack Obama. Working in concert, Boehner and Obama twisted arms and made deals behind closed doors and then, six hours later, Boehner called the House back into session in the dark of night to hold the vote.
And now, John Boehner must be made to understand that there are repercussions for treachery... and when we're done, every politician in Washington will know that PATRIOTIC AMERICANS WANT JOHN BOEHNER GONE!
It's Time To Strip This Peacock Of His Feathers.
John
Boehner was so cocksure that his betrayal of the American people would succeed
that he appeared before the press on the morning of the vote to crow that he
had the votes to fund Obama's Amnesty Decree.
But what the cocksure Boehner didn't know, as he announced his victory against the American people, is that patriotic Americans, like you, were still flooding the fax lines in Congress... and, hours later, Boehner received a rude awakening.
WorldNetDaily reports: "Some of the greatest drama in the House played out during the vote for the rule allowing debate on the spending package. Normally just a formality, the vote dragged on as GOP leaders lobbied members to vote for the rule. The procedural hurdle was cleared after Rep. Kerry Bentivolio, R-Mich., switched his vote and Rep. Marlin Stutzman, R-Ind., finally cast his ballot with leadership."
"However, Stutzman later claimed he supported the rule only after leadership vowed to pull the 'cromnibus' and put forward a simple short-term continuing resolution. The congressman alleges leaders reneged on that promise once Obama supported the plan and leadership concluded it could get the votes for passage...."
You read that right. A Member of Congress is saying that Boehner LIED to him to secure his vote in favor of this betrayal of the American people.
But the drama and deceptions weren't over... not by a long shot. Shortly after utilizing deceptive tactics to bring the measure to the floor of the House, Boehner realized he still didn't have the votes for final passage (your Blast Faxes and calls were doing the job), and at approximately 3 PM, Boehner abruptly, unexpectedly and underhandedly stopped the measure from failing by putting the House into recess.
And that's when Boehner and Obama and Joe Biden started working the phone lines, twisting arms and making back-room deals; and then, six hours later, after the measure had mysteriously grown by another 161 pages, Boehner gaveled the House back into session and immediately proceeded to vote on the measure before any more Members of Congress could change their minds.
Understand one thing, John Boehner simply didn't ignore the will of the American people. If Stutzman is right, BOEHNER LIED to a fellow Republican to do Barack Obama's bidding... If the 161 pages that were added to the measure at the last minute are any indication of what was happening behind closed doors, BOEHNER CUT BACKROOM DEALS to do Barack Obama's bidding... And he did it all to stick his thumb in the eyes of the American people so he could fund Barack Obama's unlawful and unconstitutional Amnesty Decree.
WorldNetDaily again: "Several conservative members were seething over the tactics used by House Speaker John Boehner and his leadership team to get the bill passed and made it clear they’d prefer that he wasn’t speaker in the next Congress."
You can make that happen. Congress will vote on who is to hold the Speaker's gavel in several weeks. If you want John Boehner gone then the time is now to start letting Members of Congress know that John Boehner must go.
And when we're done, every Member of Congress will know that a vote to keep John Boehner as Speaker of the House is a vote that will place their careers in imminent jeopardy!
But what the cocksure Boehner didn't know, as he announced his victory against the American people, is that patriotic Americans, like you, were still flooding the fax lines in Congress... and, hours later, Boehner received a rude awakening.
WorldNetDaily reports: "Some of the greatest drama in the House played out during the vote for the rule allowing debate on the spending package. Normally just a formality, the vote dragged on as GOP leaders lobbied members to vote for the rule. The procedural hurdle was cleared after Rep. Kerry Bentivolio, R-Mich., switched his vote and Rep. Marlin Stutzman, R-Ind., finally cast his ballot with leadership."
"However, Stutzman later claimed he supported the rule only after leadership vowed to pull the 'cromnibus' and put forward a simple short-term continuing resolution. The congressman alleges leaders reneged on that promise once Obama supported the plan and leadership concluded it could get the votes for passage...."
You read that right. A Member of Congress is saying that Boehner LIED to him to secure his vote in favor of this betrayal of the American people.
But the drama and deceptions weren't over... not by a long shot. Shortly after utilizing deceptive tactics to bring the measure to the floor of the House, Boehner realized he still didn't have the votes for final passage (your Blast Faxes and calls were doing the job), and at approximately 3 PM, Boehner abruptly, unexpectedly and underhandedly stopped the measure from failing by putting the House into recess.
And that's when Boehner and Obama and Joe Biden started working the phone lines, twisting arms and making back-room deals; and then, six hours later, after the measure had mysteriously grown by another 161 pages, Boehner gaveled the House back into session and immediately proceeded to vote on the measure before any more Members of Congress could change their minds.
Understand one thing, John Boehner simply didn't ignore the will of the American people. If Stutzman is right, BOEHNER LIED to a fellow Republican to do Barack Obama's bidding... If the 161 pages that were added to the measure at the last minute are any indication of what was happening behind closed doors, BOEHNER CUT BACKROOM DEALS to do Barack Obama's bidding... And he did it all to stick his thumb in the eyes of the American people so he could fund Barack Obama's unlawful and unconstitutional Amnesty Decree.
WorldNetDaily again: "Several conservative members were seething over the tactics used by House Speaker John Boehner and his leadership team to get the bill passed and made it clear they’d prefer that he wasn’t speaker in the next Congress."
You can make that happen. Congress will vote on who is to hold the Speaker's gavel in several weeks. If you want John Boehner gone then the time is now to start letting Members of Congress know that John Boehner must go.
And when we're done, every Member of Congress will know that a vote to keep John Boehner as Speaker of the House is a vote that will place their careers in imminent jeopardy!
Can
We Really Oust John Boehner And, If We Do, Could Nancy Pelosi Become The Next
Speaker Of The House?
The answer to those questions respectively are "yes, we can oust Boehner" and "no, it is impossible for Nancy Pelosi (or any Democrat) to be elected as Speaker of the House."
Memories are often short. Most people have already forgotten that John Boehner pulled the same shenanigans two years ago. When he railroaded an Obama-approved budget through the House of Representatives and actually dared to insult patriotic Americans for opposing him, we ran a campaign to oust Boehner as Speaker of the House and IT NEARLY SUCCEEDED.
Many people have forgotten that Mr. Boehner held on to the Speaker's gavel two years ago by the skin of his teeth and, this time around, we're going to finish the job.
In regards to Nancy Pelosi becoming the next Speaker of the House, it's procedurally impossible. To be elected Speaker of the House, a candidate must secure the votes of a simply majority (50% plus one) of House Members. Absent a majority, the House continues to hold votes until a candidate secures an actual majority.
What that means is that Republicans, as the ballots play out, will eventually decide on a consensus candidate and that person would become the next Speaker of the House.
Put another way, for Nancy Pelosi to become the next Speaker of the House, over two dozen Republicans must vote for her... and that's simply not going to happen.
One thing is clear. There will be no stopping ObamaCare... there will be no justice on Benghazi-gate... there will be no stopping Barack Obama's unconstitutional Amnesty Decree... and there will be no stopping Barack Hussein Obama's unconstitutional usurpations and abuses of power as long as John Boehner and his gang of Republican-Leaders-In-Name-Only pretenders hold the reins of power.
Floyd
Brown
|
Fernando de Magallanes: No lo puedo creer! Ahora
los marxistas estan en contra de las negociaciones de Obama con los Castros!
Sin embargo estan claro en lo que se refiere al Nuevo Orden Mundial. Ahora le
estan echando con el rayo a los Castros y a su sistema comunista!!!
Cuba
Faces U.S. Threat
"Socialism in One Country” No Answer
Three decades after the revolution, the Cuban people face a perilous
future. With the end of the Cold War and the onset of George Bush’s “New World
Order,” Cuba now confronts a more aggressive U.S. imperialism. The loss of
Soviet aid endangers its underdeveloped, beleaguered economy. The collapse of
Stalinism in Europe threatens to leave Cuba as an isolated outpost of
“socialism."
George Bush’s smashing of Iraq was meant to intimidate every
“third-world” country, especially one that has challenged its powerful neighbor
for so long. Even before the Gulf War, the end of Sandinista rule in Nicaragua
had whetted imperialist appetites. While the U.S. recognizes the USSR’s
interests in its own diminishing empire, it expects reciprocation in Latin
America. Clearly there is little room in the American orbit for an independent
Cuba.
Cuba’s stand against imperialism has won it many admirers. So have its
domestic achievements in mass education and health care, especially among the
poor of the Caribbean and Latin America. As well, the East Europeans’ overthrow
of hated Stalinism, along with the Beijing Massacre in China, make Cuba’s
reputation shine in comparison. But Cuba’s working-class gains and
anti-imperialist actions will now be tightly restricted, not only because of
imperialism but because of Castroism’s own policies and contradictions.
We will show here that the Castro regime has no claim to authentic
socialism in the Marxist, working-class sense. Nevertheless, it is the Cuban
people, not U.S. imperialism or its agents, who have the right to decide the
future of their country. The working class, in the imperialist countries
especially, must defend Cuba’s right to self-determination. That means fighting
the U.S.’s continuing efforts to strangle Cuba and any attempt at military
intervention.
From Nationalism to
Statification
Fidel Castro’s initial policies following the overthrow of the hated
Batista regime in 1959 were radical nationalist in character. His government
abolished the largest estates and redistributed about a quarter of the
country’s cultivable land; it also agreed to trade sugar to the USSR for oil.
Both actions antagonized U.S. capitalists, who owned substantial acreage in
Cuba and the oil refineries. The confiscation of the properties of the rich
mainstays of Batista were widely popular; they also meant a historical jump in
the living standards of poor, landless peasants.
When the refineries refused to handle Soviet oil in 1960, they were
nationalized. U.S. President Eisenhower canceled Cuba’s sugar trade quota, and
Castro replied by seizing other holdings. The U.S. retaliated with a
devastating trade embargo. And in 1961, President Kennedy sponsored the Bay of
Pigs invasion, which Cuba easily defeated.
Having defied U.S. domination, Castro led his country out of the
American imperialist orbit and turned to the Soviet Union and its allies for
survival. Cuba’s current crisis is rooted in the decisions made in the early
1960’s: the Bonapartist transformation of a U.S.-dependent capitalist country
into a system of state ownership resting not on working-class power but on the
Soviet alliance.
After brief attempts to industrialize, diversify its economy and go it
alone, Cuba became heavily dependent on the Stalinist states. It benefited from
preferential trade practices with Comecon and adopted Stalinist economic
planning methods. The USSR alone purchased 70 percent of Cuba’s exports and
accounted for 60 percent of its imports. Its loans and subsidies amounted to
many billions of dollars per year (many times the per capita aid from East and
West to the rest of Latin America).
During the Cold War, the USSR found it useful to sustain Cuba for
several reasons. Allowing a “socialist” country to be strangled by imperialism
would have been a humiliating defeat. Subsidizing Cuba provided a showcase for
the Stalinist system and good will for the USSR in the third world; and it
could be done relatively cheaply, given Cuba’s small population. It also gave
the USSR a surrogate for intervention in Africa and Latin America, where the
use of Soviet troops or agents would have provoked a U.S. response. Cuba was no
pawn but still very reliable.
Cuba’s Stalinization
In sum, Cuba adopted Stalinist statified capitalism. It is important to
note that the statification of property, which underlies all claims that Cuba
is socialist, was done at a time when the working class had been deactivated
and subordinated to the regime. In late 1959, the national trade union congress
elected as its leadership the “Humanistas” led by David Salvador, made up of
Castro’s initial supporters in the July 26th Movement. But in the process of
fusing the Movement with the pro-Moscow Communists, Salvador and his team were
purged, and the unions turned into instruments of management and the state.
In the Stalinist CP (which had proved its opportunism and contempt for
the working class by supporting Batista for years), Castro found a force that
could hold the workers in check. The CP’s ties to the seemingly powerful USSR
plus its Stalinist training and tradition enabled it to discipline
working-class militancy. As in East Europe, where extensive nationalization had
to await the violent crushing of the working classes, an undecapitated working
class would have been too volatile for the regime to risk statification. In
contrast to East Europe, the Castro leadership’s popularity and
anti-imperialist credentials made it easier to restrain the working class’s
self-activity.
With East Europe shifting to “free market” economies and Comecon winding
down, the Cubans today face the loss of their safety net. The USSR will now pay
for the four million tons of sugar it imports at the world price rather than at
higher subsidized prices. The Cubans will be hard pressed to pay for the fuel,
raw materials and equipment they need to import to keep their economy
functioning.
Given Cuba’s vulnerability, these international changes have a major
impact. Economic chaos is already under way. Time and again, the Cuban economy
suffers from shortages resulting from the failed delivery of raw materials and
parts from abroad. One Cuban economist claims that, due to slow deliveries from
the Soviet Union, some Cuban industries are operating at only 40 to 50 percent
of their normal capacity. (NACLA
Report, Aug. 1990.)
Heavily dependent on sugar exports to keep its economy afloat, Cuba saw
world prices plummet in the 1980’s. It has also lost hard currency through the
drop in oil prices, since Cuba had re-exported Soviet petroleum at a profit.
(This accounted for 40 percent of hard currency earnings in the 1980’s.) Cuba’s
most pressing problem is its huge foreign debt, on the order of billions of
dollars.
To earn hard currency to service its debt, Cuba has turned to austerity
measures. Rationing and domestic price increases on textiles, kerosene, sugar,
and imported goods have lowered the standard of living. Household electricity
has been cut by 10 percent and petroleum rationing introduced. Water and electric
services are interrupted. Services take months to deliver. Long lines to obtain
basic goods are the norm. Virtually all Cubans rely on the black market to
obtain what they need.
Nor is the situation expected to improve. Actions by the Castro regime
suggest that it is acutely aware of this. Castro has taken the lead in
preparing the nation for a kind of “war communism,” based on even harsher
austerity measures. He has warned of the possibility of a “special period”
where Cuba would cut back all social development programs for a number of
years. Since the Soviet subsidy had allowed Cuba a relative looseness as
compared, say, to Romania, its termination means tighter political as well as
economic control from the center.
In and Out of
Rectification
It would appear that Castro is engaging in the same kind of austerity
measures we see in Eastern Europe and the USSR. The picture of rising prices,
shortages of consumer goods, and the queues to obtain almost all goods and
services, seems all too familiar. But whereas the other Stalinist societies
couple austerity with elements of an open market economy, Castro calls for
“rectification,” a return to the “socialist morality” of equal sacrifice. Thus,
despite these attacks on the Cuban workers, Castro and his leftist admirers
continue to assert that Cuba remains true to a socialist course now abandoned
by other Stalinist states.
Rather than a reaffirmation of socialism, however, Castro’s
rectification campaign is only the latest zigzag by the statist regime. In the
late 1960’s, Cuba carried out a harsh, military-style austerity program
inspired by Che Guevara’s notion of moral incentives. Popular among
anti-Marxist New Leftists, the Cuban approach was an attempt to raise labor
productivity while denying material gains ("incentives") to the
workers. Workers’ demands for higher wages and better living standards were
dismissed as bourgeois and counterrevolutionary—a common idealist tendency of
“revolutionaries” of affluent background.
In the drive for the illusory goal of 10 million tons of sugar, the
workers were pushed to their limits. The results were disastrous. As material
incentives were cut, labor productivity declined and absenteeism soared. In
1970, it was estimated that 20 percent of the labor force registered absent; in
Oriente province, the figure reached 50 percent. When moral incentives failed
to inspire the masses to work harder, the regime resorted to labor
militarization. Mass mobilizations, although they attracted many volunteers,
were carried out under military discipline. This was made easier by the virtual
disappearance of the trade unions and the absence of any institutions to defend
the working class.
But the government could not abolish the class struggle. Workers’
resistance to the regime’s economic policies forced Castro to change course.
During the 1970’s, Cuba underwent changes that, in part, anticipated some of
Gorbachev’s reforms in the USSR. Pragmatic policies replaced the “idealistic
mistakes” of the 1960’s. More material incentives were introduced, even
elements of a free market. In part, this was an acknowledgment of the
widespread black market. In 1976 a sort of profit-sharing by industrial
managers was introduced, and enterprises acquired forms of legal autonomy. As
in East Europe, the statified capitalist bureaucracy was becoming
bourgeoisified.
These changes created new problems. Corruption and lopsided income
distribution led to increased dissatisfaction among the less privileged. The
reforms whetted the appetite of the working class for more, at a time when the
regime couldn’t deliver the goods. And once more tied to its one-crop economy,
Cuba was just as economically dependent as it had been before the revolution,
still caught in the trap of world imperialism. In 1982-83 the economic recession
hit third-world nations, and they haven’t recovered since. As the prices for
their exports fell, countries like Cuba found themselves unable to pay for
needed imports. The resulting debt crisis meant that the masses had to be
squeezed.
Castro’s response was a turn back to “communist values” as a distraction
from material gains. Economic austerity is coupled with appeals to
revolutionary consciousness—moral incentives again. Once more the focus is on
labor productivity, especially in export production needed to earn hard
currency. Under the new policy, the regime has raised transportation fares,
utility costs and market prices, while it has halted moves toward
decentralization and free markets.
One area being “rectified” is workers’ wages. Complaining that the level
of wages and the social wage (free public services) were not supported by
actual production, the regime has tried to revise production norms upwards. The
average wage decreased in the latter half of 1986 when rectification was
introduced. Not surprisingly, many workers saw rectification as a drive to curb
wages.
Castro’s
“Internationalism"
Enthusiasts of the Castro regime argue that Cuba’s economic difficulties
are to be blamed on the immense pressure of U.S. imperialism. Largely so, but that
is not the sole reason. The Stalinist methods Cuba adopted have been exposed as
backward and exploitative in East Europe, the USSR and China—wherever workers
have found means to express their class interests. In Cuba, independent
working-class activity is still tightly prohibited. Undoubtedly the Cuban
workers will eventually recover their voice—and then we will see what happened
to the gains they once won and what they think of the conditions they live
under.
The argument that Cuba’s problems are all the fault of imperialism
defeats itself. Imperialist hostility toward radical change in the countries it
subjects is inevitable. The measure of a rebel leadership, therefore, is
whether its struggle and the system it builds point to a successful escape from
imperialism—or to a blind alley. The only hope for an anti-imperialist
revolution in an economically backward country like Cuba is revolutionary
internationalism. That means working to spread the revolution from country to
country to win power for the working classes and thereby undermine imperialism.
Success cannot be guaranteed. The Bolsheviks were inspired by
internationalist goals; the Russian revolution was meant to be the spark for
proletarian revolution in Europe. As the Soviet state degenerated, its leaders
sought an illusory refuge from imperialism by opting for “socialism in one
country,” and it was ultimately defeated. But capitalism’s triumph required the
Stalinist counterrevolution.
In Cuba, in contrast, the Stalinization of the revolution coincided with
its turn to “socialism.” Externally, the Cuban regime—along with its military,
economic and professional support for several third-world countries—has a long
record of conciliation with non-revolutionary forces. Examples: Castro
maintained a friendly alliance with the Mexican bourgeois regime even after its
savage repression of mass strikes and protests in 1968. He endorsed the
reformist “road to socialism” of Salvador Allende in Chile, which disarmed the
workers, both politically and militarily, and led to the Pinochet dictatorship
and the massacre of thousands. He flirted with the Peruvian military rulers,
the Panamanian regime of General Torrijos and even the fascistic dictatorship
of the Argentinian generals.
These alliances exhibit Castro’s idea of “internationalism":
supporting national leaders who claim some independence from imperialism, at
whatever cost to the masses of the country. In 1985 he explicitly denied that
social revolution was the solution for third-world countries. Faced with the
massive international debt crisis, he proposed a “new international economic
order” based on reconciliation with imperialism: not a revolutionary
repudiation of the debts but a gracious imperial cancellation. The Wall
Street Journal was
astonished: “Mr. Castro sounded less like a subversive than a worried banker.”
(See Proletarian Revolution No. 24.)
Even when Cuba defended Angola against South Africa in the 1970’s, it
enforced imperialist stability—for example, by shielding Western-owned oil
installations in Cabinda from attack by Congolese rebels. Castro’s worst
betrayal was in Ethiopia, where he turned against the Eritrean liberation movement
and sent arms and troops to the bloody Mengistu regime when it became the
USSR’s ally.
With his long anti-worker record and service to Stalinism, why do many
on the left look to Castro as an alternative to East European bureaucratism?
The fundamental difference is that the Cuban revolution was a popular (although
not a mass) struggle that defeated a brutal dictator as well as imperialism at
the outset. Castro was not another bureaucrat imposed by Moscow.
Was the Cuban Revolution
Socialist?
This fact has led some leftists to exaggerate Castroism’s achievements
and regard it as genuine socialism. Such views were given theoretical cover by
pseudo-Trotskyists, led by the U.S. Socialist Workers Party in the 1960’s. A
recent version comes from Malik Miah of Socialist Action (an SWP split-off),
who contrasts Cuba with Nicaragua. Addressing leftists shocked by the electoral
defeat of the Sandinistas, Miah claims that the “Cuban road to socialism” was
the “path not taken” in Nicaragua. (Socialist
Action, Nov. 1990.)
Why did Nicaragua fail to become another Cuba? Miah blames a failure of
leadership. Specifically, he charges the FSLN with defending a “mixed economy”
and not expropriating the capitalists. In contrast, the Cuban leaders “refused
to compromise with imperialism” and local capitalism.
Miah goes on to link the Castro strategy in Cuba with the Bolshevik
leadership of Lenin.
For
the first time since the Russian Revolution a revolution succeeded because of
the actions of its leadership. (This stands in sharp contrast to the overturns
of capitalism in Eastern Europe and China after World War II.)”
That is, while it is supposedly possible to create “deformed workers’
states” as in China and East Europe without revolutionary leaderships, Cuba’s
leadership was revolutionary and therefore achieved even more: a genuine, not
deformed, workers’ state on the road to socialism. Of course, as we have often
pointed out, the notion that workers’ states can be created by non-proletarian
forces violates the basic conception of Marxism; socialist revolution means proletarian leadership. To deal with
this blatant contradiction, the Castro boosters have to go farther. They
stretch the bounds of Marxism and reality to argue that Cuba’s was a working-class socialist revolution.
Explanatory Socialism
Miah makes this case by first explaining, correctly, that the July 26
Movement had been led by petty-bourgeois elements, with enthusiastic support
among the masses. The Castro leadership consisted of “genuine democrats” who
sought to implement an anti-imperialist, bourgeois-democratic program. How then
did they transform themselves into working-class Bolsheviks? Just as in East
Europe, they nationalized capitalist property, statified foreign trade and
began economic planning. Still, this all took place without a proletarian
revolutionary party, without workers’ councils, even without action by the
Cuban trade unions. The key for Miah appears to be that these steps had mass
support:
“They
were not administrative actions. Each expropriation and other acts were
explained to the masses. The workers and peasants understood them. They were
mobilized to carry them out and consolidate the political and economic
expropriation of the old ruling class.”
Some of this is true. The masses were indeed mobilized to hear Castro
explain his policies to them, and they undoubtedly did approve the
expropriation of their old bosses. But the workers did not make the decisions
themselves. They have always been denied the opportunity to “fit themselves for
power,” in Marx’s words, by exercising power in the course of making and
running their so-called workers’ state. Explanatory, plebiscitarian “socialism”
means that their all-wise bosses do it for them.
Similar explanations were given for the Stalinist takeovers in China and
East Europe. Mass support for eliminating hated bourgeois exploiters through
statification of property does not distinguish working-class socialism from
petty-bourgeois nationalism.
One argument sometimes given is that the 1959 revolution was accompanied
by a general strike of the working class. So it was, but the strike was far
more symbolic than decisive: it occurred after Batista & Co. had already
fled the country, and it was quickly called off by Castro. The strike did,
however, impress on the new coalition government (of Castroists and traditional
liberal capitalists) the need to offer concessions to the working class.
The case that Cuban Stalinism is qualitatively different from
discredited East European and Chinese Stalinism rests on the leadership’s
supposed revolutionary consciousness. But this case is belied by Cuba’s
relation with the Nicaraguan revolution. Indeed, as an article in the same
issue of Socialist Action points out, Cuba advised Nicaragua
against taking the Cuban “road to socialism.” It cites Cuban Vice President
Carlos Rafael Rodriguez in 1984: “We don’t believe that the Cuban model is to
be exported either to Central America or to the rest of the world."
Mixed Economy vs.
Nationalization
Castro was even clearer on his support for the mixed economy. The top
priority for Nicaragua was economic development, not the construction of
socialism, since Nicaragua was much less developed than Cuba had been.
“I
think the Nicaraguan plan—and I have no disagreements with it, neither theoretical
nor practical, and I say that sincerely—is perfect, given the conditions in
their country and in Central America.”
Socialist
Action attacks these views for obstructing the course toward
socialist revolution in Nicaragua. (Of course, the Sandinistas could not have
taken such a course, since they were no more working-class than the
Castroists.) Yet Castro’s advice to Nicaragua was essentially the same
petty-bourgeois nationalist view that shaped the Cuban revolution at the start.
And his assumption that Cuba was sufficiently developed for socialism
is pure Stalinist idealism. The only difference is that Cuba dealt with
imperialism’s attacks by nationalizing its property, whereas the Sandinistas
tried to be more accommodating. In the 1980’s, Castro feared that if Nicaragua
challenged the U.S. in its own hemisphere, that would also bring down
imperialist wrath on his island.
Cuba had followed the East European model of “socialism” via top-down
nationalization, which leads to statified capitalism. By 1979, however,
Stalinism’s economic decay was already sharply felt, and the Soviets knew they
could not subsidize another client in the U.S.’s sphere of domination. So
Castro was carrying out the Soviet line when he urged the Sandinistas not to
“go socialist."
As well, a radical measure like full nationalization was dangerous
without discipline over the workers. It would have tempted the revolutionary
Nicaraguan proletariat to run industry itself and create its own state. The
Nicaraguan Stalinists (like Stalinists everywhere by that time) had lost the
power to control the working class. Cubanization was therefore not a
possibility.
By encouraging the Sandinistas’ accommodations, Castro aided the defeat
of the Nicaraguan revolution and helped keep Nicaragua’s workers and peasants
under the gun of imperialism and the counterrevolution. Castro’s
internationalism turned out to be little different from Stalin’s “socialism in
one country."
Castro vs. Gorbachev
Castro has positioned himself as the orthodox defender of communism in
opposition to Gorbachev’s reforms. While Gorbachev has moved the USSR towards
traditional market capitalism and seeks to promote the image of a responsible
imperialist power, Castro champions more centralized statified capitalism. He
still goes heavy on the anti-imperialist rhetoric. Given Washington’s absolute
rejection of Cuba’s post-Cold War overtures, he has little alternative.
Despite these differences, Castro and Gorbachev continue to face the
same task, keeping the working class in check. Gorbachev deepens the workers’
exploitation by promoting openly bourgeois policies. Castro’s method is to
maintain bureaucratically “planned” austerity and to accommodate with
imperialism in the international arena.
Leftists who attempt to counterpose Castro to Gorbachev are only
grasping at straws; there is no principled difference between them. Castro
still needs the Soviets, so his criticisms are carefully worded to avoid an
open break. As he said in 1989:
“We
must continue to develop our ties with the socialist countries, regardless of
their style or model of building socialism. We have our own ideas, but we start
by proclaiming our absolute respect for the right of each socialist country to
try to build socialism in the manner and with the methods it sees fit. What
they do does not involve us.”(From the SWP’s compilation of Castro speeches, In
Defense of Socialism, p. 135.)
This proclamation was false from every angle. Even from that of Castro’s
self-interest: the pro-Western course of the East European regimes led to
governments that halted aid to Cuba. Thus what they do indeed does “involve
us,” as any internationalist would have known. Moreover, Fidel was lying: his
“respect” for fellow “socialists” did not extend to allowing Cubans to read the
reformist Soviet press. The idea of many roads to socialism really means little
but mutual non-interference: you Europeans may have to make concessions to your
workers and intellectuals, but not we. Whatever you do, it is bourgeois and
counterrevolutionary for Cuban workers to demand their rights of class
independence. So keep your glasnost to yourself.
Castro’s supporters on the left can hardly take much comfort from his
criticisms of Gorbachev, since Castro has to line himself up with the right wing of the Stalinist bureaucracy
(linked in turn to various ultra-nationalist, racist and even Czarist forces).
In this Castro is true to his past. He has been a consistent opponent of every
mass struggle against the Stalinist regimes. He defended the Soviet invasion of
Czechoslovakia—conveniently overlooking his “essential” principles of
non-interference. He has never been a left challenge to Stalinism; his
opposition to marketizing “reforms” is not a revolutionary alternative but
rather an attempt to preserve the bureaucracy’s monopoly on power.
For Authentic Socialism
The Cuban revolution was a tremendous blow against imperialism. But
petty-bourgeois nationalism, including the Stalinist variant, offers no way out
of the imperial stranglehold. Castro has spent three decades propping up the
carcass of Stalinism. Rather than a genuine international revolution, he has
always promoted the illusion that real independence can be won without
overthrowing imperialism.
Castroism represents not a way out of the imperialist grip but, in
Trotsky’s words, the “reactionary utopia” of a nationally isolated “socialist”
society doomed to backwardness. Cynicism abounds in the third world today;
antediluvian ideologies like Islamic and Christian fundamentalism bloom because
the masses, still hating imperialism, learned to distrust the “Marxist” secular
alternatives. For this Castro bears much responsibility.
Cuba is in grave danger. Only the international working-class struggle
can save it from imperialist encirclement. The workers of all countries must
learn to overcome imperialist patriotism and “law and order"; in this they
will get no aid from Castro and his diplomats. That task requires the
re-creation of an internationalist revolutionary party—the Fourth
International. And that means confronting Stalinism in both its Gorbachev and
Castro forms.
“We Had
the Honor to"… Abstain
Recent events expose Cuba’s debatable internationalism. In the build-up
to the war against Iraq, Cuba played an ambiguous role in the U.N. Security
Council, voting against some decisions endorsing the U.S.-led war
effort. In a Havana speech last September, Castro boasted:
"We had
the honor of being the only country to vote ’No.’! [Prolonged applause] History
will record the honor, the dignity and the courage with which Cuba acted during
that moment of such importance to the life of humanity. It was necessary to
take a firm position and we did not abstain—we voted ’No.’ And we will vote
against everything we do not agree with, even if we are the only ones. [Applause]” (Quotes here are from the
SWP’s book, U.S. Hands Off the Middle East!)
Very noble, but that vote was on one subsidiary resolution (No. 670, to
embargo Iraqi aircraft). On more decisive questions Cuba had already failed to
stand firm: it endorsed the imperialist rationale for war. Cuba voted for the U.N.’s demand that Iraq withdraw
from Kuwait (Resolution 660), and for the restoration of the “legitimate
government” of the emirs (Resolution 662). It shamefully abstained on the key resolution (661) ordering
an all-out economic boycott of Iraq, itself an act of war against the Iraqi
people. It also abstained on Resolution 665 authorizing the use of naval force
to halt shipping into and from Iraq. And in an August 25 speech, U.N.
representative Ricardo Alarcón boasted that Cuba was cooperating with the
boycott of Iraq even though it had abstained on the vote.
Alarcón explained his government’s overall position:
“To
Cuba, the principles of non-interference in the internal affairs of states, no
matter what the reason may be; of the non-use of force in international
relations; of the peaceful settlement of disputes between states; and of
respect for the independence, sovereignty, and territorial integrity of all
nations are essential principles of our international order. It is in defense
of those principles that we have expressed our disapproval and condemnation of
the entry of Iraqi forces into the territory of Kuwait a few days ago, and have
declared that this state of affairs must be ended with the withdrawal of Iraqi
forces from Kuwaiti territory and the full restoration of Kuwait’s
sovereignty.”
Thus, while Cuba opposed the extreme measure of war to force Iraq to
withdraw, it nevertheless positioned itself with the rest of the cutthroats in
the U.N. The idea that small states like Cuba can defend themselves by
promoting bourgeois nationalist “principles of international order” has nothing
to do with revolutionary internationalism; it is a legalistic, not a
revolutionary, strategy. In this case the abstract principle ("non-interference…
no matter what the reason may be") placed Cuba alongside imperialism, not
against it. Rather than expose the lie that the U.N. or any imperialist
institution can defend the oppressed nations, Cuba disoriented oppressed masses
throughout the world.
Moreover, Cuba endorsed the dubious notion that Kuwait is a nation
entitled to self-determination. In fact it is an imperialist enclave whose
rulers operate in Europe more than “at home.” In a message from Fidel Castro to
all the Arab heads of state, cited by Ambassador Alarcón on August 9, Castro
endorsed the restoration of Kuwait’s “legitimate” emir. He added:
“Let
me share with you, Your Excellency, the certainty that inspires me of the
wisdom and courage of the leaders of the Arab nation, and the vitality of its
institutions.”
These wise and courageous leaders include not only the emir but also the
Saudi king, the Syrian butcher and the Iraqi dictator himself. More:
“Nothing
and no one can replace this strength, this authority and this morale in the
immediate search for a negotiated solution to a conflict between two Arab
peoples.”
Here Castro asserts the rights of the nationalist leaders as opposed to
imperialism. But he overlooks how much their “strength and authority” derives
from imperialism. Any revolutionary with the slightest regard for the masses of
the Arab world would insist that it is the Arab working people who can and must
replace the killers and slaveowners installed by imperialism. But Castroist
nationalism requires support for and non-interference with every nationalism, even the most retrograde.
Revolutionary opponents to Saddam Hussein in Iraq, Hafez al-Assad in Syria,
etc., can expect no help from Fidel. Remember the Eritreans.
Return to LRP homepage | Write to the LRP
State
Dept. Says North Korea Should Pay Back Sony for Cyberattack
·
Tweet This
·
·
North Korea should compensate Sony Pictures for the
damages it caused by launching a cyberattack against Sony Pictures, and by
issuing terrorist threats against movie theaters that screen one of its movies,
according to a State Department spokeswoman.
“The government of North Korea has a long history
of denying responsibility for destructive and provocative actions, and if they
want to help here, they could admit their culpability and compensate Sony for
the damages that they caused,” said State Department spokeswoman Marie Harf.
Over the weekend, North Korea said it is not to
blame for the cyberattack or threats against theaters that show the movie “The
Interview.” The comedy centers around two U.S. reporters who are hired by the
U.S. government to kill Kim.
North Korea even suggested the two countries should
work together to figure out who launched the cyberattack against Sony. But Harf
said the U.S. government is “confident” that North Korea is to blame, and said
it stands by that conclusion.
“If they want to help here, as they indicated over
the weekend they did, then they can admit their culpability and compensate Sony
for the damages this attack caused,” she reiterated.
The event has raised tensions between the U.S. and
North Korea, and has prompted the U.S. to consider putting North Korea on the
list of state sponsors of terrorism. It’s also led to conjecture about whether
the U.S. might respond in some other ways.
Weekend reports suggested that North Korea may have
lost access to the Internet, which led to questions Monday about whether the
U.S. was behind that. Harf didn’t deny that the U.S. was behind that outage,
and said only that the U.S. was in the process of responding to the
cyberattack.
“As we implement our responses, some will be seen,
some may not be seen,” she said.
At the same time, she called on North Korea to
“exercise restraint” in the growing war of words between the two countries.
FAT LIP: Rahm Emanuel’s Son
Jumped Outside Family’s Home
You see
Rahm, this is what happens when you don’t have armed guards around you 24/7 to
protect you. Imagine how the rest of the unarmed Americans in your state feel.
Fight the fight, go support my documentary and donate here: #GirlsJustWannaHaveGuns
Emanuel’s
17-year-old son went out to make a phone call when he was jumped by two men who
stole the teen’s cell phone.
A police report
obtained by the Chicago Tribune says that he was put in a chokehold by
one of the suspects and punched in the face by the other. Emanuel reportedly
suffered a fat lip and chipped tooth.
Emanuel’s
spokesperson Kelley Quinn released a statement saying, “Yesterday evening Mayor
Emanuel’s son Zach was assaulted in a robbery during which his phone was
stolen. He sustained injuries that required medical treatment, but was able to
join the family for a long planned trip. The Mayor’s focus is on his son’s
well-being, and as parents, he and Amy ask that the media respect their
family’s privacy at this time.”
Police
officers are assigned to the mayor’s home front and back 24 hours a day. There
are also cameras at both ends of the block. Read more at cbslocal.com
“EMO” No se pero este tipo
siempre le he visto pinta de “pájaro” y como el es amigo de otro pájaro, el
hijo posiblemente vuele también… Lazaro
R Gonzalez Mino
Watch: Rosie
Claimed To Know What Racism Is, And Whoopi Almost Fell Out Of Her Seat
“It’s not the same.”
Whoopi Goldberg and
Rosie O’Donnell got amped-up with each other on Thursday’s The View during a discussion about racism that
was centered on the Obama’s recent People magazine interview that described their experiences
with discriminatory treatment. The
President suggested in the interview that he had been mistaken for a parking
valet at a restaurant. Ms.
Goldberg commented:
“I’ve been black for 60
years. For me, stupidity,
there are dumb folks who just say dumb stuff because they’re not looking or
paying attention to the person they’re talking to which is why people could
walk up to Obama and not look up at him and see that it’s the President.”
Rosie Perez, who is
from Puerto Rico, disagreed with Goldberg’s statement:
“But that’s the
conscious racism! If me and
Rosie [O’Donnell] were going into a store together, they would follow me and
not her.”
The conversation became
more inflamed as the United States, as a nation, was described as being racist,
along with Congress, and then Democrats as well.
Ms. O’Donnell:
“Democrats are racist too. It’s our cultural history.”
Ms. Goldberg:
“You know what? Listen! You are a white lady telling me what
is racist to you.”
Rosie O’Donnell took the
conversation to the next level by declaring that she knows what racism is
because she has an adopted child in her own household.
Ms. O’Donnell:
“I’m a gay American whose been called a dike. I know what homophobia and
hatred looks like.”
Ms. Goldberg:
“It’s not the same.”
Ms. O’Donnell: “I
have a black kid I raise, Whoopi. I have a kid in my house.”
Ms. Goldberg:
“That is not the same thing.”
Ms. O’Donnell:
“You don’t have to be black to know what racism is.”
Ms. Goldberg:
“Yes you do.”
The two hosts continued
to disagree when Ms. Goldberg concluded her argument:
“America is not just a
racist country because there are white people who get it. That is why I will not accept
the blanket statement that America is racist.”
Read more at http://www.westernjournalism.com/whoopi-goldberg-black-understand-racism/#5DUkEkyT5GrdQ7VB.99
Read more at http://www.westernjournalism.com/whoopi-goldberg-black-understand-racism/#5DUkEkyT5GrdQ7VB.99
WATCH:
How NYC’s Former Mayor Just Pointed The Finger At The Current Mayor For Cop
Killings
"The politicians...are doing something that's shameful."
The cold-blooded, execution-style murders of
two New York City police officers over the weekend and the resulting
accusations by both police spokesmen and the mayor’s office have kept tensions
in the Big Apple at the boiling point.
Two uniformed NYPD officers were shot
point-blank Saturday afternoon as they sat in their marked police car on a
Brooklyn street corner. Investigators say a crazed gunman with a long police record assassinated
the pair to avenge the deaths of Eric Garner and Michael Brown.
As reported by the Daily Caller, two
high-profile representatives of police unions were extremely critical of Mayor
Bill de Blasio for, in their opinion, condoning, if not encouraging, protests
against his own police department in the aftermath of grand jury decisions
about officer-involved deaths of black men.
“Mayor de Blasio, the blood of these two officers
is clearly on your hands,” said Sergeants Benevolent Association police union
president Edward Mullins.
“That blood on their hands starts on the steps
of City Hall in the office of the mayor,” said Pat Lynch, president of the
Patrolmen’s Benevolent Association.
In response to police officers turning their
backs on Mayor de Blasio when he entered a news conference following the brutal
killing of the two NYC cops, the Mayor’s office fired off a harsh
criticism of the officers.
“It’s unfortunate that in a time of great
tragedy, some would resort to irresponsible, overheated rhetoric that angers
and divides people,” de Blasio spokesman Marti Adams said in a statement
following the union leaders’ remarks.
On Fox News,
former NYC Mayor Rudy Giuliani was highly critical of de Blasio and
others who, he said, are exploiting for political gain the dangerous
tensions between police and the communities they serve.
“The politicians with this propaganda,
separating the community from the police, are doing something that’s shameful.
And they have to stop doing that.”
You can watch Giuliani’s forceful defense of
the police during his weekend Fox News interview by clicking on the video
above.
Read more at http://www.westernjournalism.com/watch-how-nycs-former-mayor-just-pointed-the-finger-at-the-current-mayor-for-cop-killings/#2KGMDgyUC2DWpUXp.99
Read more at http://www.westernjournalism.com/watch-how-nycs-former-mayor-just-pointed-the-finger-at-the-current-mayor-for-cop-killings/#2KGMDgyUC2DWpUXp.99
North Korea Threatens Strikes Against the White House, Pentagon
and ‘the Whole U.S. Mainland, That Cesspool of Terrorism’
·
SEOUL, South Korea (TheBlaze/AP) — North Korea said President
Barack Obama is “recklessly” spreading rumors of a Pyongyang-orchestrated
cyberattack of Sony Pictures and warns of strikes against the White House,
Pentagon and “the whole U.S. mainland, that cesspool of terrorism.”
Such North Korean rhetoric during times of high tension with Washington
is routine. But a long statement from the powerful National Defense Commission
late Sunday also underscores Pyongyang’s sensitivity over “The Interview,”
movie whose plot focuses on the assassination of North Korean leader Kim Jong
Un.
North Korean leader Kim Jong
“The DPRK has already launched the toughest counteraction. Nothing is
more serious miscalculation than guessing that just a single movie production
company is the target of this counteraction. Our target is all the citadels of
the U.S. imperialists who earned the bitterest grudge of all Koreans,” a report
on state-run KCNA read.
“Our toughest counteraction will be boldly taken against the White
House, the Pentagon and the whole U.S. mainland, the cesspool of terrorism,”
the report said. CNN
noted that it also said “fighters for justice”
including the “Guardians of Peace” — a group that claimed responsibility for
the Sony attack — “are sharpening bayonets not only in the U.S. mainland but in
all other parts of the world.”
The U.S. blames North Korea for the cyberattack that escalated to
threats of terror attacks against U.S. movie theaters and caused Sony to cancel
“The Interview’s” release.
Obama said Washington is reviewing whether to put North Korea back on
its list of state sponsors of terrorism.
Other Must-Read Stories
·
·
·
Here’s
How Sheriff Joe Could Use A Drunk-Driving Case To Kill Obama’s Executive
Amnesty
...the blockbuster opinion issued by the
Pennsylvania federal judge...NORVELL ROSE
Maricopa County, AZ Sheriff Joe Arpaio has
already acted to strengthen his lawsuit challenging President Obama’s
executive action on amnesty — he’s already filed court papers citing
Tuesday’s surprise ruling by a federal judge in Pennsylvania that
Obama’s amnesty order is unconstitutional.
As Western Journalism reported yesterday, a federal court has determined that
Obama’s unilateral action to protect millions of illegal
immigrants from deportation violates the Constitution.
While that finding doesn’t mean
that Obama’s controversial order is invalidated, it does provide
powerful ammunition for others who want the courts to stop the president’s
action from taking effect.
As reported at washingtontimes.com, the
ruling is reverberating through court cases currently in process, including the
multi-state challenge led by Texas as well as Sheriff Joe’s anti-amnesty fight:
Both Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott and Maricopa
County, Ariz., Sheriff Joe Arpaio filed papers late Tuesday night in their
respective challenges to Mr. Obama’s amnesty, saying the Pennsylvania judge’s
ruling adds heft to their own attacks.
The D.C. court that’s considering Sheriff
Joe’s case has scheduled a hearing for next week on the possible issuance of a
preliminary injunction to halt the president’s amnesty order.
Curiously, the blockbuster opinion issued by
the Pennsylvania federal judge was tucked in his findings regarding the
drunk-driving case of an illegal immigrant.
National Journal notes that in researching the case, the court
requested information from the federal government over whether Obama’s
executive action applied.
…in [Judge] Schwab’s opinion, the first
priority is to “determine whether the Executive Action is constitutional.” And
he determined that it wasn’t.
“The Court holds that the Executive Action is
unconstitutional because it violates the separation of powers and the Take Care
Clause of the Constitution,” he wrote.
This is reportedly the first federal court
ruling on
Obama’s executive action and the first new opinion that gives opponents of the
president’s order a significant boost in their challenges. There are currently
24 states suing the president over his executive action on amnesty.
Read more at http://www.westernjournalism.com/heres-sheriff-joe-use-drunk-driving-case-kill-obamas-executive-amnesty/#3pevwkGcM1C5svKT.99
Read more at http://www.westernjournalism.com/heres-sheriff-joe-use-drunk-driving-case-kill-obamas-executive-amnesty/#3pevwkGcM1C5svKT.99
Watch:
What Trump Just Called Al Sharpton Will Cause Race Hustler Heads To Explode
Trump called Sharpton a...
Donald Trump is known for saying some pretty
provocative things from time to time, and his appearance this morning on “Fox
and Friends” gave him another chance to drop a huge verbal bomb.
When asked about Al Sharpton’s role in stirring
up racial tensions and turning communities of color against the police
departments that serve them, Trump was both blunt and accusatory.
Referring to the civil rights activist’s
involvement in Ferguson and New York City protests against so-called police
misconduct, Trump called Sharpton a “professional con man” who has “gotten away
with murder.”
You can watch Donald Trump’s explosive
interview on the Fox News show by clicking on the video above.
Read more at http://www.westernjournalism.com/watch-trump-just-said-sharpton-will-cause-race-hustler-heads-explode/#x7b2ZYUlKhg2eiGz.99
Read more at http://www.westernjournalism.com/watch-trump-just-said-sharpton-will-cause-race-hustler-heads-explode/#x7b2ZYUlKhg2eiGz.99
Pakistan
plans to execute 500 terror convicts, officials say. By Masroor
Gilani
Pakistan plans to execute around 500 militants in coming weeks,
officials said Monday, after the government lifted a moratorium on the death
penalty in terror cases following a Taliban school massacre.
Six militants have been hanged since Friday amid rising public anger
over Tuesday's slaughter in the northwestern city of Peshawar, which left 149
people dead including 133 children.
After the deadliest terror attack in Pakistani history, Prime Minister
Nawaz Sharif ended the six-year moratorium on the death penalty, reinstating it
for terrorism-related cases.
"Interior ministry has finalised the cases of 500 convicts who have
exhausted all the appeals, their mercy petitions have been turned down by the
president and their executions will take place in coming weeks," a senior
government official told AFP on condition of anonymity.
A second official confirmed the information.
Of the six hanged so far, five were involved in a failed attempt to
assassinate then military ruler Pervez Musharraf in 2003, while one was
involved in a 2009 attack on army headquarters.
Pakistani soldiers provide security during a mass prayer for the victims
of a school massacre, in Pe …
In Karachi, the Sindh High Court suspended the death warrants of two
terror convicts just a day before they were due to go to the gallows.
"The Sindh High Court suspended the death warrants of two
terrorists today," additional advocate general Mustafa Mehsar told AFP.
Defence attorney Abdul Razaq confirmed the news.
"We had filed a petition in the Sindh High Court and the second
review petition is pending in the superior courts and till the decision of the
petition, the death penalty could not be implemented," Razaq told AFP.
Both the accused were sentenced to death in July 2004 for killing a
doctor in Karachi in July 2001.
Pakistani mourners leave floral tributes outside the army-run school
where 149 people were massacred …
- Wrath at Khan -
Cricketer-turned-politician Imran Khan, whose Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaaf
(PTI) party leads the government in Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa province, of which
Peshawar is the capital, faced tough questions Monday from the relatives of
those killed.
Angry parents accused PTI of neglecting its duties in Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa
in favour of months of protests in Islamabad aimed at bringing down the
national government.
Shahabuddin, the father of one student killed in the attack, told Khan:
"We had voted for you to bring about a change, but you gave us nothing but
politics of dharna (sit-in protest)."
Police, troops and paramilitary rangers were deployed across the country
and airports and prisons put on red alert during the executions and as troops
intensify operations against Taliban militants.
A Pakistani soldier stands guard at a checkpost near the Kot Lakhpat
jail on the outskirts of Lahore …
Sharif has ordered the attorney general's office to "actively
pursue" capital cases currently in the courts, a government spokesman
said.
The "prime minister has also issued directions for appropriate
measures for early disposal of pending cases related to terrorism," the
spokesman said, without specifically confirming the plan to execute 500 people.
Pakistan has described Tuesday's bloody school rampage, claimed by the
Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), as its own "mini 9/11," calling it
a game-changer in the fight against extremism.
Political and military leaders vowed to redouble efforts to stamp out
the scourge of terror in the wake of the attack, which the TTP said was revenge
for the killing of their families in an army offensive in the tribal northwest.
The offensive against longstanding Taliban and other militant
strongholds in North Waziristan and Khyber tribal agencies has been going on
since June.
But a series of fresh strikes since the Peshawar attack, in which dozens
of alleged militants were killed, suggest the campaign is being stepped up.
The decision to reinstate executions was condemned by human rights
groups, with the United Nations also calling for Pakistan to reconsider.
Human Rights Watch on Saturday said the executions were "a craven
politicised reaction to the Peshawar killings" and demanded no further
hangings be carried out.
Pakistan began its de facto moratorium on civilian executions in 2008,
but hanging remains on the statute books and judges continue to pass death
sentences.
Before Friday's resumption, only one person had been executed since 2008
-- a soldier convicted by a court martial and hanged in November 2012.
Rights campaigners say Pakistan overuses its anti-terror laws and courts
to prosecute ordinary crimes.
http://news.yahoo.com/pakistan-plans-execute-500-terror-convicts-officials-093327925.html
http://news.yahoo.com/pakistan-plans-execute-500-terror-convicts-officials-093327925.html
‘NYC COP KILLER WAS A MUSLIM JIHADIST': Shoebat, ‘Be Prepared For More
Violence’
Here’s
something you won’t hear via the Lame Stream Media and …truth be told, I
haven’t heard Fox News mention these details yet. Check out what
terrorism expert, Walid Shoebat, just put out.
By
Walid Shoebat
So
Ismaaiyl Brinsley the killer of the two cops in Brooklyn, NY, has two
Muslim names “Ismaaiyl” and a middle name “Abdullah” (see mugshot bellow) which
means “servant of Allah,” is a fan of sheikh Yusuf Estes, who
is not only neck deepin the Muslim Da’wa movement (the call to convert westerners to Islam) but
Estes meets with both ISIS and Hamas financiers, and Brinsley loved the Koran,
specifically Surah 8 on his own Facebook page, which calls for arming for
preparation for Jihad war; it says all on what we need for motive as to why
Brinsley shot the two officers. All that, accompanied with Hamas
supporters, who were proven to have been behind the riots in Ferguson is a
complete recipe for killing cops as we present the evidence in this article.
Brinsley
is a jihad sympathizer who used the racial turmoil as an excuse to kill
Americans. The Ferguson riots as we shall see here were pushed and organized by
Muslim fundamentalists in America.
Firstly,
the verse he likes to read is:
Against
them make ready your strength to the utmost of your power, including steeds of
war, tostrike terror into (the hearts of) the enemies, of Allah and your
enemies, and others besides, whom ye may not know, but whom Allah doth know.
Whatever ye shall spend in the cause of Allah, shall be repaid unto you, and ye
shall not be treated unjustly.
Brinsley admitted himself that he was “Muslim” and also
frequented Al-Farooq Mosque which had a long history of
terror support
going back more than 20 years which hosted Al-Qaeda co-founder, a
Palestinian named Abdullah Azzam. Al-Farooq’s imam was Gulshair Shukrijumah, was not only a regular translator for
the Blind Sheikh Omar Abdel Rahman, but his son, Adnan, became
a top Al-Qaeda operative and was killed in a gun battle with
Pakistani intelligence just a few weeks ago. Yet another mosque official,
Sheikh Mohammed al-Moayad, was charged in 2003 with using the mosque as a front
to raise $20 million for Al-Qaeda. At the time, the New
York Times noted the mosque’s extensive
connections to terrorism. All that plus NYPD Chief of Detectives
Robert Boyce said he was “Muslim” but does not know if he was
“radicalized”. Well, if he was not “radicalized” then what’s this photo
of the most ‘radical’ verses from the Quran doing on his Facebook:
Koranic favorite of Ismaaiyl Brinsley which
calls for the preparation to kill from Surah 8. Taken from Brinsley’s Facebook
page. The text says: “Against them make ready your strength to the utmost of
your power, including steeds of war, to strike terror into (the hearts of) the
enemies, of Allah and your enemies, and others besides, whom ye may not know,
but whom Allah doth know. Whatever ye shall spend in the cause of Allah, shall
be repaid unto you, and ye shall not be treated unjustly.”
STUNNING:
See What US Service Members Just Said About The Popularity Of Their
Commander-In-Chief
According to a Military Times survey of almost 2,300 active-duty
service members...
Earlier this year, shortly after President
Obama announced his plan to gut military forces to pre-World War II levels, the Washington Post released the results of a poll of military
veterans.
The poll showed that Iraq and Afghanistan war
veterans did not view Obama favorably and expressed a much high approval for
their former Commander-in-Chief, President George W. Bush..Read more at http://www.westernjournalism.com/stunning-see-what-us-service-members-just-said-about-the-popularity-of-their-commander-in-chief/#Tgo3DE5xWyx8pwRw.99
Very
interesting picture... Look at the wall! {Para los que no lo habían visto}
Cc: Lazaro R. Gonzalez,
Je. Es que la gente "quiere" creer. Necesita creer.
Pero,
No se quiere/puede aceptar que estamos en un Circo
funcionando las 24 horas en todos los confines. Siempre hubo manipulacion de
los de arriba (laprimera que la utilizo eficientemente fue la iglesia
vaticana). Pero no se puede comparar con la actual manipulacion. La gente esta simplemente
catatonica con la vidita que le construyen los factotums.
El hombre promedio solo opina y sabe lo que le entregan
los medios masivos audiovisuales.Ahi le dicen lo que deben querer, odiar,
comprar, etc.
El que no este revestido de fuerza espiritual, esta perdido.
En fin... como dicen los babalawos, santeros y espiritistas de la
ex-islita cubana: "lo que se sabe no se pregunta".
On Mon, Dec 22, 2014
at 1:51 PM,
Este Articulo no me gusta pero si el partido Republicano sigue
comiendo hunga de vaca y no saca a los descarados comunistoides que se le han
metido dentro… Esta perdido. Ah y nada de Tea Party que tambien a cada rato se
le van los fusibles. ¡NO! El partido republicano tiene que ser un partido
Conservador de personas decentes y patriotas. Debe ser un
espejo del Presidente Ronald Reagan.
Is It Time to Abandon the Republican Party?
Posted 7 Hours Ago by Gary DeMar Filed under 2014 Election, 2016 Election, Congress, Constitution, Email Featured, Government, Politics, Tea Party
We’re
hearing about third parties again. Mark Levin has said that “he’s one inch away
from leaving” the Republican Party. Matt Barber has written “I
Am No Longer a Republican.” In the second paragraph of his article (you can
read it here
on Godfather Politics), he writes:
“Even
before the gavel has sounded on the Republican-led 114th Congress, these
treacherous cowards shamelessly, eagerly, it seems, squandered perhaps the one
opportunity they had to stop, in his tracks, America’s first cultural Marxist,
anti-American, palpably evil president.”
There is a
key point in what Matt Barber writes. The effects of the 2014 election are not
yet in play. Yes, I realize the GOP Establishment despises the Tea Party and is
doing everything to neutralize its impact. Before any decisions are made
about abandoning the GOP, however, let’s at least wait until we learn what this
new crop is going to do.
We need to
recall that not a single Republican voted for Obamacare. Half
of the Senators who voted for Obamacare will not be a part of the new Senate. This is
some type of progress. is the glass half full or half empty?
Did any of
us actually think that Boehner and McConnell were going to have a Damascus Road
political experience when they saw the 2014 election results? I didn't.
Will this
new crop of congressmen create a conservative minority and caucus with those in
the House and Senate who want to fight the Republican Establishment? If this
happens, the GOP Establishment will be hamstrung. Hopefully the current crop of
conservatives in Congress are contacting the upcoming arrivals and putting
together an adversary party within the GOP.
Being
subversive from the inside is the best approach.
At this
point in time, we are stuck with a two-party system. Deal with it. If radical
leftists were able to take over the Democrat Party and a mini-Republican
Revolution was started by Reagan in 1980 and revived congressionally in 1994
and 1996, I can’t understand why we would not put our efforts into taking over
the Republican Party. If we can’t take over an existing party, what makes us
think we’re going to be able to start a new party?
The old
adage that you can’t change just one thing applies here. First, a two to
six-year election process needs to begin now to capture the Senate and the
House by picking the most vulnerable political party. Right now, that’s the
GOP. We’ve had great success. The November 2014 election is a shining example
of that success. Let’s not forget that they’re not in office yet. The GOP
Establishment is afraid of them; that’s why they rigged the game before they’re
sworn in.
Second,
begin to recruit and groom candidates who will run as reform candidates on a
unified competing political platform within the GOP. It would help to find
candidates who have political experience and some name recognition.
Third,
bloggers and websites should be started immediately to lay out the specifics of
the new platform. Use the web to get around the political gatekeepers.
Fourth,
build a giant email list of donors, bloggers, information gatherers, and
propagators of the party-within-the-party takeover movement.
Fifth, keep
the kooks from taking over the process. The Bible says, “be wise as serpents
and gentle as doves.” As Bobby Darin said, “People hear what they see.” Don’t
give anybody a reason to reject a position other than the position itself.
Sixth, the
energy and success behind the effort will encourage other candidates to jump on
board and energize the base. We might even get a good presidential candidate
out of the process. Talk about abandoning the process when we've just scored a
major victory is foolish and short-sighted.
The
Establishment Republicans want the Tea Party types to abandon the GOP. It's
what they're hoping for. Don't give them the satisfaction. Take over the party
like they did.
Will the
malcontents follow this strategy? Probably not. They will bellyache about how
bad the candidates and the two-party system are then tell those who don’t vote
for one of their miracle candidates that they are not voting in terms of
principle.
The
Republicans and Democrats are in power because they’ve worked at it. If you
want to revamp the political system, it’s going to take a lot of hard work and
very few miracles. Are you up to the task?
Jackson: 'Unfair' to Blame Cop Slayings on Discontent With Police
Blaming political figures, protesters or civil rights
leaders for Saturday's execution-style killing of two New York City police
officers is an "unfair" and "extreme" response to a
horrific but isolated event, the Rev. Jesse Jackson told Newsmax
TV on
Monday.
The civil rights leader told "MidPoint" host Ed Berliner that the families of the slain NYPD officers "need all the condolences and mercy we can afford," and said their murders on Saturday in Brooklyn were "not a political assassination," but the act of a "cold-blooded" and "deranged" individual.
The civil rights leader told "MidPoint" host Ed Berliner that the families of the slain NYPD officers "need all the condolences and mercy we can afford," and said their murders on Saturday in Brooklyn were "not a political assassination," but the act of a "cold-blooded" and "deranged" individual.
Note: Watch
Newsmax TV now on DIRECTV Ch. 349 and DISH Ch. 223
Get Newsmax TV on your cable system — Click Here Now
Get Newsmax TV on your cable system — Click Here Now
"We should not equate the actions of a sick man who
did a sick thing with mass demonstrations for justice and for healing,"
said Jackson. "Don't make that equation."
On-duty officers Rafael Ramos and Wenjian Liu were gunned down in broad daylight as they sat inside a patrol car. Their killer, Ismaaiyl Brinsley, had already shot and wounded his ex-girlfriend earlier that day in Baltimore, police said.
Brinsley traveled from Baltimore to New York, vowing on social media to target police for the death of police chokehold victim Eric Garner. After shooting Ramos and Liu, Brinsley turned his gun on himself as other officers closed in on him inside a subway station, police said.
Jackson, founder and president of the Rainbow PUSH Coalition, condemned violence of any kind in connection with protests for equal treatment under the law.
"Those who are saying they want 'dead cops,' they don't represent the heart of our civil rights struggle," said Jackson. "Those who call for violence, they don't represent the heart of our civil rights struggle.
On-duty officers Rafael Ramos and Wenjian Liu were gunned down in broad daylight as they sat inside a patrol car. Their killer, Ismaaiyl Brinsley, had already shot and wounded his ex-girlfriend earlier that day in Baltimore, police said.
Brinsley traveled from Baltimore to New York, vowing on social media to target police for the death of police chokehold victim Eric Garner. After shooting Ramos and Liu, Brinsley turned his gun on himself as other officers closed in on him inside a subway station, police said.
Jackson, founder and president of the Rainbow PUSH Coalition, condemned violence of any kind in connection with protests for equal treatment under the law.
"Those who are saying they want 'dead cops,' they don't represent the heart of our civil rights struggle," said Jackson. "Those who call for violence, they don't represent the heart of our civil rights struggle.
"We believe we can have nonviolent conflict
resolution," he said, adding that with violence, "No. 1, you cannot
win the fight; No. 3, it distracts from the message of healing; and No. 3,
there is no redemption in violence.
"So we believe in nonviolent action, and most people in those marches represent just that," he said.
Jackson said that the issues raised by protesters in recent weeks — since grand juries cleared white police officers in the deaths of Garner and Michael Brown — still need to be addressed, and that protest is a legitimate outlet for concerns about policing.
He said there remains a "a pattern of blacks being killed" by police and that "at some point we must decide that an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth, will leave all of us blind and disfigured and dead. We must stop being so quick on the trigger finger."
Jackson also defended his civil-rights contemporary, the New York-based the Rev. Al Sharpton, against charges of inflaming tensions, and he criticized the NYPD cops whoturned their backs on New York Mayor Bill De Blasio inside the hospital where the two fatally wounded officers were brought.
"To turn your back on the chief executive officer of the city is unprofessional and it cannot be justified," said Jackson.
He also defended President Barack Obama against accusations that, in trying to assuage African-Americans' worries about law enforcement, he has contributed to a climate in which cops feel besieged, and failed to speak for all Americans by voicing enough support for law enforcement and public safety.
He said that Obama, Sharpton, and Attorney General Eric Holder have all "sought justice" and worked "to get the glass out of the wound," and are not culpable for the officers' deaths.
"So to throw their names around that way is irresponsible and not fair," said Jackson.
"So we believe in nonviolent action, and most people in those marches represent just that," he said.
Jackson said that the issues raised by protesters in recent weeks — since grand juries cleared white police officers in the deaths of Garner and Michael Brown — still need to be addressed, and that protest is a legitimate outlet for concerns about policing.
He said there remains a "a pattern of blacks being killed" by police and that "at some point we must decide that an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth, will leave all of us blind and disfigured and dead. We must stop being so quick on the trigger finger."
Jackson also defended his civil-rights contemporary, the New York-based the Rev. Al Sharpton, against charges of inflaming tensions, and he criticized the NYPD cops whoturned their backs on New York Mayor Bill De Blasio inside the hospital where the two fatally wounded officers were brought.
"To turn your back on the chief executive officer of the city is unprofessional and it cannot be justified," said Jackson.
He also defended President Barack Obama against accusations that, in trying to assuage African-Americans' worries about law enforcement, he has contributed to a climate in which cops feel besieged, and failed to speak for all Americans by voicing enough support for law enforcement and public safety.
He said that Obama, Sharpton, and Attorney General Eric Holder have all "sought justice" and worked "to get the glass out of the wound," and are not culpable for the officers' deaths.
"So to throw their names around that way is irresponsible and not fair," said Jackson.
"I do not communicate with him that much, but I
understand what he is trying to do," Jackson said of the president.
"He is a fair man and he is a just man and it's unfair to [describe] his
appeal for reconciliation, which he has campaigned on … as being the cause of
the killing of these two policemen. That's really extreme rhetoric."
Read Latest Breaking News from Newsmax.com http://www.Newsmax.com/Headline/Jesse-Jackson-Al-Sharpton-Barack-Obama-police-officers/2014/12/22/id/614464/#ixzz3MfKPwkto
Urgent: Should Obamacare Be Repealed? Vote Here Now!
Read Latest Breaking News from Newsmax.com http://www.Newsmax.com/Headline/Jesse-Jackson-Al-Sharpton-Barack-Obama-police-officers/2014/12/22/id/614464/#ixzz3MfKPwkto
Urgent: Should Obamacare Be Repealed? Vote Here Now!
Last week, U.S. President Barack Obama and Cuban
President Raul Castro agreed to an exchange of prisoners being held on espionage
charges. In addition, Washington and Havana agreed to hold discussions with the
goal of establishing diplomatic relations between the two countries. No
agreement was reached on ending the U.S. embargo on Cuba,
a step that requires congressional approval.
It was a modest agreement, striking only because
there was any agreement at all. U.S.-Cuba relations had been frozen for
decades, with neither side prepared to make significant concessions or even
first moves. The cause was partly the domestic politics of each country that
made it easier to leave the relationship frozen. On the American side, a
coalition of Cuban-Americans, conservatives and human rights advocates decrying
Cuba's record of human rights violations blocked the effort. On the Cuban side,
enmity with the United
States plays a pivotal role
in legitimizing the communist regime. Not only was the government born out of
opposition to American imperialism, but Havana also uses the ongoing U.S.
embargo to explain Cuban economic failures. There was no external pressure
compelling either side to accommodate the other, and there were substantial
internal reasons to let the situation stay as it is.
The Cubans are now under some pressure to shift
their policies. They have managed to survive the fall of the Soviet Union with
some difficulty. They now face a more immediate problem: uncertainty in Venezuela.
Caracas supplies oil to Cuba at deeply discounted prices. It is hard to tell
just how close Cuba's economy is to the edge, but there is no question that
Venezuelan oil makes a significant difference. Venezuelan President Nicolas
Maduro's government is facing mounting unrest over economic failures. If the Venezuelan government falls, Cuba
would lose one of its structural supports. Venezuela's fate is far from
certain, but Cuba must face the possibility of a worst-case scenario and shape
openings. Opening to the United States makes sense in terms of regime
preservation.
The U.S. reason for the shift is less clear. It
makes political sense from Obama's standpoint. First, ideologically, ending the
embargo appeals to him. Second, he has few foreign policy successes to his
credit. Normalizing relations with Cuba is something he might be able to
achieve, since groups like the U.S. Chamber of Commerce favor normalization and
will provide political cover in the Republican Party. But finally, and perhaps
most important, the geopolitical foundations behind the American obsession with
Cuba have for the most part evaporated, if not permanently than at least for
the foreseeable future. Normalization of relations with Cuba no longer poses a
strategic threat. To understand the U.S. response to Cuba in the past half
century, understanding Cuba's geopolitical challenge to the United States is important.
Cuba's
Strategic Value
The challenge dates back to the completion of the
Louisiana Purchase by President Thomas Jefferson in 1803. The Territory of
Louisiana had been owned by Spain for most of its history until it was ceded to
France a few years before Napoleon sold it to the United States to help fund
his war with the British. Jefferson saw Louisiana as essential to American
national security in two ways: First, the U.S. population at the time was
located primarily east of the Appalachians in a long strip running from New
England to the Georgia-Florida border. It was extremely vulnerable to invasion
with little room to retreat, as became evident in the War of 1812. Second,
Jefferson had a vision of American prosperity built around farmers owning their
own land, living as entrepreneurs rather than as serfs. Louisiana's rich land,
in the hands of immigrants to the United States, would generate the wealth that
would build the country and provide the strategic depth to secure it.
What made Louisiana valuable was its river
structure that would allow Midwestern farmers to ship their produce in
barges to the Mississippi River and onward down to New Orleans. There the
grain would be transferred to oceangoing vessels and shipped to Europe. This
grain would make the Industrial Revolution possible in Britain, because the
imports of mass quantities of food freed British farmers to work in urban
industries.
In order for this to work, the United States needed
to control the Ohio-Missouri-Mississippi river complex (including numerous
other rivers), the mouth of the Mississippi, the Gulf of Mexico, and the exits
into the Atlantic that ran between Cuba and Florida and between Cuba and
Mexico. If this supply chain were broken at any point, the global consequences
— and particularly the consequences for the United States — would be
substantial. New Orleans remains
the largest port for bulk shipments in the United States, still shipping grain
to Europe and importing steel for American production.
For the Spaniards, the Louisiana Territory was a
shield against U.S. incursions into Mexico and its rich silver mines, which
provided a substantial portion of Spanish wealth. With Louisiana in American
hands, these critical holdings were threatened. From the American point of
view, Spain's concern raised the possibility of Spanish interference with
American trade. With Florida, Cuba and the Yucatan in Spanish hands, the
Spaniards had the potential to interdict the flow of produce down the
Mississippi.
Former President Andrew Jackson played the key role
in Jeffersonian strategy. As a general, he waged the wars against the Seminole
Indians in Florida and seized the territory from Spanish rule — and from the
Seminoles. He defended New Orleans from British attack in 1814. When he became
president, he saw that Mexico, now independent from Spain, represented the
primary threat to the entire enterprise of mid-America. The border of Mexican
Texas was on the Sabine River, only 193 kilometers (120 miles) from the
Mississippi. Jackson, through his agent Sam Houston, encouraged a rising in
Texas against the Mexicans that set the stage for annexation.
But Spanish Cuba remained the thorn in the side of
the United States. The Florida and Yucatan straits were narrow. Although the
Spaniards, even in their weakened state, might have been able to block U.S.
trade routes, it was the British who worried the Americans most. Based in the
Bahamas, near Cuba, the British, of many conflicting minds on the United
States, could seize Cuba and impose an almost impregnable blockade, crippling
the U.S. economy. The British depended on American grain, and it couldn't be
ruled out that they would seek to gain control over exports from the Midwest in
order to guarantee their own economic security. The fear of British power
helped define the Civil War and the decades afterward.
Cuba was the key. In the hands of a hostile foreign
power, it was as effective a plug to the Mississippi as taking New Orleans. The
weakness of the Spaniards frightened the Americans. Any powerful European power
— the British or, after 1871, the Germans — could easily knock the Spaniards
out of Cuba. And the United States, lacking a powerful navy, would not be able
to cope. Seizing Cuba became an imperative of U.S. strategy. Theodore
Roosevelt, who as president would oversee America's emergence as a major naval
power — and who helped ensure the construction of the Panama Canal, which was
critical to a two-ocean navy — became the symbol of the U.S. seizure of Cuba in
the Spanish-American War of 1898-1900.
With that seizure, New Orleans-Atlantic transit was
secured. The United States maintained effective control over Cuba until the
rise of Fidel Castro. But the United States remained anxious about Cuba's
security. By itself, the island could not threaten the supply lines. In the
hands of a significant hostile power, however, Cuba could become a base for
strangling the United States. Before World War II, when there were some
rumblings of German influence in Cuba, the United States did what it could to
assure the rise of former Cuban leader Fulgencio Batista, considered an
American ally or puppet, depending on how you looked at it. But this is the
key: Whenever a major foreign power showed interest in Cuba, the United States
had to react, which it did effectively until Castro seized power in 1959.
The
Soviet Influence
If the Soviets were looking for a single point from
which they could threaten American interests, they would find no place more
attractive than Cuba. Therefore, whether Fidel Castro was a communist prior to
seizing power, it would seem that he would wind up a communist ally of the
Soviets in the end. I suspect he had become a communist years before he took power
but wisely hid this, knowing that an openly communist ruler in Cuba would
revive America's old fears. Alternatively, he might not have been a communist
but turned to the Soviets out of fear of U.S. intervention. The United States,
unable to read the revolution, automatically moved toward increasing its
control. Castro, as a communist or agrarian reformer or whatever he was, needed
an ally against U.S. involvement. Whether the arrangement was planned for
years, as I suspect, or in a sudden rush, the Soviets saw it as a marriage made
in heaven.
Had the Soviets never placed nuclear weapons in
Cuba, the United States still would have opposed a Soviet ally in control of
Cuba during the Cold War. This was hardwired into American geopolitics. But the
Soviets did place missiles there, which is a story that must be touched on as
well.
The Soviet air force lacked long-range strategic
bombardment aircraft. In World War II, they had focused on shorter range, close
air support aircraft to assist ground operations. The United States, engaging
both Germany and Japan from the air at long range, had extensive experience
with long-range bombing. Therefore, during the 1950s, the United States based
aircraft in Europe, and then, with the B-52 in the continental United States,
was able to attack the Soviet Union with nuclear weapons. The Soviets, lacking
a long-range bomber fleet, could not retaliate against the United States. The
balance of power completely favored the United States.
The Soviets planned to leapfrog the difficult
construction of a manned bomber fleet by moving to intercontinental ballistic
missiles. By the early 1960s, the design of these missiles had advanced, but
their deployment had not. The Soviets had no effective deterrent against a U.S.
nuclear attack except for their still-underdeveloped submarine fleet. The
atmosphere between the United States and the Soviet Union was venomous, and
Moscow could not assume that Washington would not use its dwindling window of
opportunity to strike safely against the Soviets.
The Soviets did have effective intermediate range
ballistic missiles. Though they could not reach the United States from the
Soviet Union, they could cover almost all of the United States from Cuba. The
Russians needed to buy just a little time to deploy a massive intercontinental
ballistic missile and submarine force. Cuba was the perfect spot from which to
deploy it. Had they succeeded, the Soviets would have closed the U.S. window of
opportunity by placing a deterrent force in Cuba. They were caught before they
were ready. The United States threatened invasion, and the Soviets had to
assume that the Americans also were threatening an overwhelming nuclear attack
on the Soviet Union. They had to back down. As it happened, the United States
intended no such attack, but the Soviets could not know that.
Cuba was seared into the U.S. strategic mentality
in two layers. It was never a threat by itself. Under the control of a foreign
naval power, it could strangle the United States. After the Soviet Union tried
to deploy intermediate range ballistic missiles there, a new layer was created
in which Cuba was a potential threat to the American mainland, as well as to
trade routes. The agreement between the United States and the Soviet Union
included American guarantees not to invade Cuba and Soviet guarantees not to
base nuclear weapons there. But Cuba remained a problem for the United States.
If there were a war in Europe, Cuba would be a base from which to threaten
American control of the Caribbean, and with it, the ability to transit ships
from the U.S. Pacific Fleet to the Atlantic. The United States never relieved
pressure on Cuba, the Soviets used it as a base for many things aside from
nuclear weapons (we assume), and the Castro regime clung to the Soviets for
security while supporting wars of national liberation, as they were called, in
Latin America and Africa that served Soviet strategic interests.
Post-Soviet
Cuba
With the collapse of the Soviet Union, Castro lost
his patron and strategic guarantor. On the other hand, Cuba no longer
threatened the United States. There was an implicit compromise. Since Cuba was
no longer a threat to the United States but could still theoretically become
one, Washington would not end its hostility toward Havana but
would not actively try to overthrow it. The Cuban government, for its part,
promised not to do what it could not truly do anyway: become a strategic threat
to the United States. Cuba remained a nuisance in places like Venezuela, but a
nuisance is not a strategic threat. Thus, the relationship remained frozen.
Since the Louisiana Purchase, Cuba has been a
potential threat to the United States when held by or aligned with a major
European power. The United States therefore constantly tried to shape Cuba's
policies, and therefore, its internal politics. Fidel Castro's goal was to end
American influence, but he could only achieve that by aligning with a major
power: the Soviets. Cuban independence from the United States required a
dependence on the Soviets. And that, like all relationships, carried a price.
The exchange of prisoners is interesting. The
opening of embassies is important. But the major question remains unanswered.
For the moment, there are no major powers able to exploit Cuba's geographical
location (including China, for now). There are, therefore, no critical issues.
But no one knows the future. Cuba wants to preserve its government and is
seeking a release of pressure from the United States. At the moment, Cuba
really does not matter. But moments pass, and no one can guarantee that it will
not become important again. Therefore, the U.S. policy has been to insist on
regime change before releasing pressure. With Cuba set on regime survival, what
do the Cubans have to offer? They can promise permanent neutrality, but such
pledges are of limited value.
Cuba needs better relations with the United States,
particularly if the Venezuelan government falls. Venezuela's poor economy
could, theoretically, force regime change in Cuba from internal pressure.
Moreover, Raul Castro is old and Fidel Castro is very old. If the Cuban
government is to be preserved, it must be secured now, because it is not clear
what will succeed the Castros. But the United States has time, and its concern
about Cuba is part of its DNA. Having no interest now, maintaining pressure
makes no sense. But neither is there an urgency for Washington to let up on
Havana. Obama may want a legacy, but the logic of the situation is that the
Cubans need this more than the Americans, and the American price for
normalization will be higher than it appears at this moment, whether set by
Obama or his successor.
We are far from settling a strategic dispute rooted
in Cuba's location and the fact that its location could threaten U.S.
interests. Therefore, opening moves are opening moves. There is a long way to
go on this issue.
Read more: The Geopolitics of U.S.-Cuba Relations | Stratfor
Follow us: @stratfor on Twitter | Stratfor on Facebook
Read more: The Geopolitics of U.S.-Cuba Relations | Stratfor
Follow us: @stratfor on Twitter | Stratfor on Facebook
Jorge Alberto Villalón Y.
Chicago Mayor’s
son mugged in political ploy
Get
a shotgun, Mayor Emanuel, then maybe your kid won’t get mugged?
We
learned from a Kelly Quinn, spokeswoman for Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel
that his 17-year-old son Zach was mugged near the family’s home.
Pull
my finger, as this “mugging” doesn’t pass the smell test for this black man,
but here is what is being reported.
Chicago Mayor's Son Robbed Near Family Home
WGN - Chicago
Chicago
Police spokesman Thomas Sweeney didn’t name the victim but says police are
investigating the attack Friday night near the mayor’s home.
Here
what we do know. According to Sweeney by way of Zach, two males grabbed the victim,
took his phone and fled.
The
good news is his mugging didn’t get in the way of the family vacation to Chile
over the past weekend, as his injuries weren’t that serious.
If
this is what happened, let’s just set the record straight. The perps were either
black teens or white crackheads. My bet is they were two black teens, because
white crackheads are smart enough to work alone on this type of crime.
Two
black teens on the other hand are stupid enough (thanks to Liberal
miseducation) to think that a cell phone will provide enough money to split,
when they redeem it at one of those “We will pay you for your phone” kiosks.
Now,
as a conspiracy realists, I don’t think this crime happened as they say, if at
all. This is because Emanuel is running for re-election in February, and
he needs press…sympathetic press.
I
think this was a staged mugging and here are my reasons.
·
First, his son being mugged
would make Emanuel more “human,” if you can actually do that to a snake.
·
Further, as dumb as black
criminals are (yes these staged perps are black), I can’t imagine they would
not have stolen Zach’s bling, his wallet, and other cash on hand, along with
his phone.
·
Next, two black men would
have stuck out like Rosie O’Donnell tanning at an anorexic’s convention. The neighborhood
would have been on HIGH alert, yes racially profiling.
·
Finally, Emanuel didn’t
report who the perps were. Nice ploy to assuage the black population and not
snitch.
Ghetto
points in tact, the Emanuels can go to Chile for vacation.
Read more at http://theblacksphere.net/2014/12/chi-mayor-son-mugged-political-ploy/
Read more at http://theblacksphere.net/2014/12/chi-mayor-son-mugged-political-ploy/
“EMO”
El papa es flojiiiiiito y el hijo parece muchiiiiiisimo mas floooooooojito.
LRGM.
“FREEDOM IS NOT FREE”
“En mi opinión”
No 829 Diciembre 22, 2014
“IN GOD WE TRUST” Lázaro R González Miño EDITOR
No comments:
Post a Comment