Fausta's Blog

Hicks’s Full Account of Night of Benghazi Attacks
Full testimony at yesterday’s House of Representative’s subcommittee by Gregory Hicks, former deputy chief of mission in the U.S. embassy in Libya:

At Drudge:
Hillary Clinton Accepts Public Service Award In Beverly Hills On Day of Benghazi Hearings…

Susan Rice Honored With ‘Great American’ Award…

White House struggles to respond to new revelations…

Marco Rips Hillary…

MORRIS: Beginning Of End…

KRAUTHAMMER: ‘Where Was Commander in Chief?’

REPORT: CBSNEWS BOSSES IRKED BY CORRESPONDENT’S REPORTING; ‘DANGEROUSLY CLOSE TO ADVOCACY’…

At Memeorandum:

 Michael Hirsh / NationalJournal.com:

Benghazi: Incompetence, But No Cover-up  —  The hearings deepen the tragedy, but not the scandal.  —  There was tragic incompetence, plainly, in the Obama administration’s handling of the Benghazi attacks, and even possibly some political calculation.  It is a record that may well come …

Discussion: Speaker.gov, Daily Mail, Outside the Beltway, protein wisdom, The Moderate Voice, American Power, National Review and Most Recent

 John Podhoretz / New York Post:10 minutes ago

Failings of Bam & Hill laid bare  —  After a remarkable House hearing yesterday, we can say this with almost complete certainty: The Obama administration knew perfectly well that last year’s Sept. 11 attack on Americans and American facilities in Benghazi was a terrorist act …

Discussion: PJ Media and Politico

 Tom Bevan / Real Clear Politics:NEW!

A Coverup Laid Bare  —  Thanks to House Republicans, Americans finally got to hear from the State Department officials the Obama administration never wanted to testify.  They are now called “whistleblowers,” but that’s only because their accounts of what really happened in Libya on Sept. 11 …

Discussion: Washington Times, Washington Free Beacon and PJ Media

 Washington Post:
Diplomat: Request for Special Ops team in Benghazi denied

Discussion: The Maddow Blog, Betsy’s Page, Mother Jones, Yahoo! News, Rush Limbaugh, New York Times,Washington Wire and National Review

 Fox News:
Whistle-blower: Botched talking points hurt FBI probe of Benghazi attack

Discussion: Atlas Shrugs, Mediaite, Hot Air and Weasel Zippers

 Lindsey Boerma / CBS News:
Benghazi “whistleblowers” head to House committee

Discussion: NewsBusters, ThinkProgress, Hot Air, The Impolitic, Taylor Marsh,Mediaite, Yahoo! News, FP Passport, TIME, American Spectator, Applesauceand ViralRead

 Allahpundit / Hot Air:
Hicks: Higher-ups at State told me not to talk to GOP congressman about Benghazi; Update: “Effectively demoted”

Discussion: Politico, CNN, American Power, The Daily Caller andJustOneMinute

 Joel Gehrke / Washington Examiner:
Benghazi whistleblower: ‘I’ve been demoted’ for challenging Susan Rice’s claims

Discussion: Weasel Zippers and Jihad Watch

 Andrew Kaczynski / BuzzFeed:
Benghazi Witness Says State Dept. Told Him Not To Meet With Congressional Investigators

Discussion: Wizbang, Right Turn, Mother Jones, Washington Free Beacon,Politico, Weasel Zippers and Wake up America

 CNN:
Benghazi: WH blasted

Discussion: The Public Editor’s Journal, Wired, The Lead with Jake Tapper,Gawker, The Week and TheBlaze.com

Earlier today I listened to a blogger call on tomorrow’s Center for Security Policy’s conference, Chavismo without Chavez

Frank Gaffney, Michael Braun, Former Assistant Administrator and Chief of Operations, U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration, and Jon Perdue, Director of Latin American Programs at the Fund for American Studies, talked about tomorrow’s topics, particularly the collective threat Venezuela, Hezbollah, the FARC and Iran present to the Western Hemisphere and the US homeland.

I had the opportunity to ask Jon Perdue is it would be correct to assume that Timothy Tracy‘s detention in Venezuela (like Alan Gross‘ in Cuba) on espionage charges is orchestrated by Cuba. Perdue’s reply was yes, and both men are now political pawns of Cuba, which not only controls all of Venezuela’s intelligence services, but also the issuing of passports and ingress and egress into Venezuela.

My other question was to Michael Braun, are the direct flights from Iran to Venezuela still continuing after Hugo Chavez’s death? He replied yes.

After the CSP presentation, the call had Col. Alan West, who talked about tomorrow’s 9:30 AM-11:30 AM press conference by three families of Navy SEAL Team VI special forces servicemen,

The areas of inquiry at the press conference will include but not be limited to:

1. How President Obama and Vice President Biden, having disclosed on May 4, 2011, that Navy Seal Team Six carried out the successful raid on Bin Laden’s compound resulting in the master terrorist’s death, put a retaliatory target on the backs of the fallen heroes.
2. How and why high-level military officials sent these Navy SEAL Team VI heroes into battle without special operations aviation and proper air support.
3. How and why the military brass carries out too many ill-prepared missions to boost their standing with top-level military brass and the Commander-in-Chief in order that they can be promoted.
4. How the military restricts special operations servicemen and others from engaging in timely return fire when fired upon by the Taliban and other terrorist groups and interests, thus jeopardizing the servicemen’s lives.
5. How and why the denial of requested pre-assault fire may have contributed to the shoot down of the Navy SEAL Team VI helicopter and the death of these special operations servicemen.
6. How Afghani forces accompanying the Navy SEAL Team VI servicemen on the helicopter were not properly vetted and how they possibly disclosed classified information to the Taliban about the mission, resulting in the shoot down of the helicopter.
7. How military brass, while prohibiting any mention of a Judeo-Christian God, invited a Muslim cleric to the funeral for the fallen Navy SEAL Team VI heroes who disparaged in Arabic the memory of these servicemen by damning them as infidels to Allah. A video of the Muslim cleric’s “prayer” will be shown with a certified translation.

The press conference will be livestreamed. I’ll post a link on it tomorrow.

The remaining blogger call discussed True The Vote’s settlement agreement

“True the Vote can now begin reconstruction and review of the 18th Congressional District election race between Colonel Allen West and Patrick Murphy,” True the Vote President Catherine Engelbrecht said. “We must stop this scandalous cycle of ignoring failures in our electoral process when the campaigns and cameras go home. Understanding how failures in administration can effect elections, as we saw in St. Lucie County, will help prevent them from occurring in the future. We cannot allow slipshod standards to become pandemic across our country’s election processes – citizens can and will stand up in defense of election integrity.”

If you can make it to the CSP conference tomorrow, here’s the information.

Today at 4:30PM EDT Silvio Canto’s guest will be Jon Perdue, author of the must-read book on Latin America, The War of All the People: The Nexus of Latin American Radicalism and Middle Eastern Terrorism.

Jon Perdue is the director of Latin America programs at the Fund for American Studies in Washington, D.C. In this capacity he travels extensively throughout Latin America, lecturing at universities and think tanks (in English and Spanish) and participating in conferences that bring together Latin America scholars and policymakers.

The Amazon page describes The War of All the People: The Nexus of Latin American Radicalism and Middle Eastern Terrorism as

The War of All the People elucidates the ideological and political war against the United States, capitalism, and the widely accepted tenets of modernity. Spearheading this war are Hugo Chávez of Venezuela and Mahmoud Ahmadinejad of Iran, two “revolutionary” leaders who have forged an active alliance hell-bent on destroying the established order in the developed world.

Adopted as the operative name of his war on U.S. “imperialism,” the “War of All the People” is Hugo Chávez’s plan to supplant U.S. dominance in the hemisphere with “twenty-firstcentury socialism.” Although U.S. presidents and policymakers have treated Chávez’s antics with benign neglect thus far, his 2010 missile accord with a soon-to-be nuclear Iran has escalated the threat to an unavoidable level. Chávez’s ability to thwart sanctions on Iran by providing oil, and possibly uranium, to the corrupt regime makes his bluster more sinister than the simple rant of a third world caudillo.

The War of All the People goes beyond merely pondering the unlikely alliance between seemingly antithetical cultures. Scholars, students, and policymakers will learn about the long history of cooperation between Middle Eastern and Latin American terrorist groups, from the radical mecca of Algiers in the 1960s, where Che Guevara and Amilcar Cabral both resided, to the Tricontinental Conference in Cuba in 1966, which first brought Fidel Castro and Yasser Arafat together.

I have recommended the book in the past, and can not emphasize enough that this is a must-read.

Listen to the podcast live at 4:30PM, or to the archived podcast at your convenience.

The Royal Canadian Mounted Police, their feds, have averted a potential bomb plot on a passenger train over the Niagara River

One police source said there were several scenarios being looked at during the year the suspects were tracked, including the train plot.

One of the plots uncovered by the RCMP and other agencies was a planned bombing of a passenger train on the bridge that connects Canada and the United States at Niagara Falls, a police source says.

The plot was “al-Qaeda supported” by al-Qaeda elements “located in Iran” consisting of “direction and guidance.”

Ed Morrissey has more.

Live feed at Fox News and 7News

Drudge’s headlines:

'Man in the White Hat' at large; Black hat man dead...
Massive manhunt underway in Boston suburbs...
Watertown on Lockdown... Residents Told to Lock Doors... No Fly Zone in Place...
ID'd as brothers from Russia region near Chechnya...
Region 'plagued by an Islamic insurgency'...
Suspects' Uncle: Men Lived In Cambridge Together For Decade; 'Absolutely Deserved' To Die...
Dzhokhar A. Tsarnaev, 19, on loose...
PROFILE? 'WORLD VIEW: ISLAM'...
TIMELINE: Bombs strapped to chest, men robbed 7-Eleven...
Police officer shot dead on MIT campus...
Chase after carjacking; suspects threw explosives at cops...
VIDEO: 'There's explosions, gunfire down the street'...
Black Hat Bomber may have blown himself up...
POLICE SCANNER: Trigger found on body; At-large bomber 'may be wearing suicide vest'...
Mass transit shut down in Boston...
Harvard University closed...
BOSTON.COM LIVE UPDATES...
REUTERS LIVE...
WHDH-TV...
WCVB...
WBZ...
LIVE: COPS SURROUND BUILDING...

1 BOSTON BOMBING SUSPECT DEAD

AP: Russia’s Caucasus: breeding ground for terror…

Boston Bomb Victim in Photo Helped Identify Suspects…

Live feed,

Details

Explosions Reported at Boston Marathon Finish

Two bombs exploded near the finish line of the Boston Marathon on Monday, killing two people and injuring at least 23 others, Boston police said.

Boston Police Commissioner Ed Davis said in a news conference Monday afternoon that there was a third explosion at John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum.

Hot Air is updating.

IF YOU TRY TO CONTACT ANYONE IN BOSTON, USE LAND LINES SINCE CELL PHONE COMMUNICATIONS HAVE BEEN INTERRUPTED.

In Venezuela, Nicolas Maduro, at least according to the chavista-controlled board of election, won last night. Henrique Capriles Radonski demanded a recount, asserting that electoral fraud had taken place. Here’s his speech last night (in Spanish),

In his speech, Capriles said he wants the Cuban military out of Venezuela’s government and institutions. As Mary O’Grady said, The Castro regime wasn’t going to allow an easy victory for the opposition candidate who has pledged to stop sending oil to Havana.

By now, ballot boxes are turning up,

(PHOTO) Found in dumpster boxes of votes that Chavistas stole from the centers RT #Venezuela2013 #VenezuelaSomosTodos twitter.com/IvonneKinser/s…

— Ivonne Kinser (@IvonneKinser) April 15, 2013

@douglirodil RT @cynthia823: Por favor RT! Estan botando las cajas! Terminamos d recoger 1 en avenida en Puerto Ordaz twitter.com/Cynthia823/sta…

— ricardo colon (@Riccolon) April 15, 2013

Maduro’s acceptance speech was a double dose of crazy.

ARGENTINA
Argentina’s economy
Gaucho blues
A dollar shortage bites

Via The Argentine Post, a link I missed when it was first posted,
Argentina’s Plan for Iran

BRAZIL
Brazilian state of Acre in illegal immigration alert
The Brazilian state of Acre has declared a state of emergency after a surge of illegal immigrants from neighbouring Bolivia and Peru.

CHILE
Chile poet Pablo Neruda’s remains to be tested in US
The family of the Nobel Prize-winning Chilean poet Pablo Neruda has agreed to send his remains to a laboratory in the United States for toxicology tests.

COLOMBIA
FARC links with Al-Qaeda?

Evidence has emerged of a link between the FARC and Islamist terrorist groups in the North African Maghreb after two Colombian nationals were arrested in Algeria last month by the US Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) and Spanish intelligence services.

Colombian authorities row over Farc jail terms
Colombia’s attorney-general has said members of the rebel group Farc could escape jail terms should a peace deal be struck.

Colombia’s emerald king
Death of a tsar

COSTA RICA
Via DP, National holiday turns violent as families blocked from president’s speech
Costa Ricans outraged that they weren’t allowed to attend the annual Juan Santamaría Day festivities in an Alajuela park.

CUBA
In Spanish: Jaime Bayly entrevista al bloguero cubano Orlando Luis Pardo Lazo,

Time to Occupy Beyonce and Jay-Z

US Treasury OFAC: Send Beyoncé and Jay-Z an Anniversary Present

Rosa Maria Payá denounces death threats against her and her family.
Rosa Maria Payá holds the Cuban government responsible for whatever may happen to her and her family.

ECUADOR
Quito’s new airport
A tight fit

HONDURAS
Smoke from nearby forest fires forces 4-hour closure of airport for Honduras’ capital

JAMAICA
Puerto Rican jury rejects death sentence in police killing

MEXICO

Mexico Is Picking Up the Peso
Reforms, Search for Risk Are Boosting the Currency; ‘a Cultish Characteristic’

Mexican Proposal to Allow Foreigners to Own Coastal Property

PERU
Rural development in Peru
The Andean connection
Diminishing distance, falling poverty

PUERTO RICO
Puerto Rico protects top US turtle nesting site long eyed by developers

Puerto Rico Agrees To Pay More Than $35 Million In Back Wages To Thousands Of Workers

SURINAME
Politics in Suriname
Guerrilla, rapper, gold miner…president?

URUGUAY
Uruguay president ‘sorry’ for Fernandez ‘old hag’ quip
The President of Uruguay, Jose Mujica, has apologised for apparently referring to Argentine President Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner as an “old hag”.

Luis Alberto Lacalle, abogado y presidente de la Republica Oriental del Uruguay de 1990 a 1995 envia un afectuoso saludo a la Fundacion HACER de Washington DC desde el 25 Aniversario de la Fundacion Libertad de Rosario

VENEZUELA
Maduro and Capriles: tale of two Venezuelan presidential candidates

Venezuela’s presidential election
Voting in St Hugo’s shadow
In his search for a popular mandate, Nicolás Maduro ascribes divine powers to his predecessor but offers few earthly policies

Venezuelan blogs for their complete coverage:
Caracas chronicles
Devil’s excrement
Venezuela Nr=ews and Views

The week’s posts and podcast,
Venezuela: Maduro wins

Venezuela: two election day live feeds

A word on elected Latin American dictators

Venezuela: How important is tomorrow’s election? UPDATED

If you are in Hialeah tonight: Rosa María Payá event

OLPL en el show de Bayly

G-r-o-s-s: Bolivarian “sanitary” towels

Venezuela: Capriles Campaign Chief killed

Venezuela: The meaning of April 14 UPDATED

Cuba this morning

Venezuela: Violent deaths per 100,000

Podcast:
Talking with Silvio Canto.

El Nuevo Herald reports (link in Spanish) that Ghazi Nasr al Din, in charge of all Hezbollah operations in Venezuela, served as business attache in the Venezuelan embassy in Syria. Nicolas Maduro, now president of Venezuela, was his contact, and allegedly provided Nasr al Din’s cover.

A 2008 US Treasury report stated that Nasr al Din was a Hezbollah agent who used his post as a Venezuelan diplomat to carry out essential fundraising efforts for Hezbollah.

The Herald’s sources indicated that Nasr al Din reported directly to then-Vice-president Maduro, bypassing the minister for Middle East affairs, and arranged travel to Iran for training.

In related news, Roger Noriega, a former United States ambassador and assistant secretary of state for western hemisphere affairs, has alleged that

Iran has illegally laundered billions of dollars through the Venezuelan financial sector and is currently stashing “hundreds of millions” of dollars in “virtually every Venezuelan bank today,”

Long-term readers of this blog may recall that in 2008 Italian newspaper La Stampa exposed how Iran was using Venezuela to bypass UN sanctions.

That’s Yasser Arafat, creator of modern terrorism, smiling down on the leader of the free world.

Hillary Clinton is scheduled to appear before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee at 9 a.m. and the House Foreign Affairs Committee at 2 p.m. today. That is, if her gallbladder doesn’t act up.

Boom: CBS’ Sharyl Attkisson tears into Obama Admin over Benghazigate.

Attkisson asks,

Who is/are the official(s) responsible for removing reference to al-Qaeda from the original CIA notes?

— Sharyl Attkisson (@SharylAttkisson) January 22, 2013

What time was Ambassador’s Stevens’ body recovered, what are the known details surrounding his disappearance and death…

— Sharyl Attkisson (@SharylAttkisson) January 22, 2013

. ..including where he/his body was taken/found/transported and by whom?

— Sharyl Attkisson (@SharylAttkisson) January 22, 2013

More at the link.