Fausta's Blog

American and Latin American Politics, Society, and Culture

Archives for January 2016

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Panama, Mexico helping potential terrorists reach U.S.

I have been blogging about this for years – for instance, this 2012 post – but it’s nice to see someone else paying attention:
Todd Bensman writes at PJMedia on How Panama and Mexico Help Potential Terrorists Reach the U.S. Border

One might forgive developing Latin American nations, relatively new to democracy, for slow progress in achieving basic state functionalities that could disrupt or deter such U.S.-bound smuggling of Paris-like terrorists. But less forgiveness is warranted for easily reversible formal government policies, which — as I found in my Naval Postgraduate School thesis research —overtly assist SIA smuggling.

I call the policy “catch, rest, and release,” and peg it squarely on two countries that are among our closest southern allies: Panama and Mexico. Rather than detain, investigate, and deport, Panama and Mexico provide housing, food, and medical services for a couple of weeks, and then release the migrants with full legal status. They know this will enable the travelers to continue unmolested out of their own territories and towards America’s southwestern border.

That’s why “catch, rest, and release” is a third attackable fail point of the smuggling networks, right up there with Latin America’s enabling diplomatic stations inside Islamic nations and withthe multi-talented, hard-to-replace smuggling kingpins.

To understand the significance of “catch, rest, and release” to the SIA smugglers and their clients, one must grasp that migrants are paying once-in-a-lifetime fortunes to make it as far as Panama and Mexico. The mere prospect of deportation from one or both of those countries, short of the American border, portends a devastating financial loss not easily raised again for second attempts. Certainly, smugglers would have to charge more for routing adaptation that would have prospective migrant clients thinking twice about paying to attempt the new gauntlet. Therefore, in my estimation, lengthy detention and deportation from Panama and Mexico would threaten the viability of many SIA smuggling organizations.

It certainly would; however, neither Panama nor Mexico are interested in doing so.

For starters, neither country wants to deter effectively the human traffic from which thousands profit every day. Additionally, they would have to feed, house, process and transport the detainees – another expensive ordeal. And don’t forget that the White House favors an open border while not even talking of a possibility of terrorism.

So we will continue to read stories like this, “Military age men” at San Diego’s southern border. “Credible threat” posed by unknown Afghans and Pakistanis. I’ve been saying for over a decade that border security is national security; that headline is from yesterday.

Linked to by IOTWReport. Thank you!

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Venezuela: New National Assembly sworn in

I’m still fighting a miserable cold, so I’m still not up to par. Here’s a roundup on Venezuela’s news,

El Universal (Venezuela): Pro-gov’t deputies leave the National Assembly. At the inauguration session of the deputies in the National Assembly (AN), the parliamentarians of the ruling party left the headquarters of the Legislature that Congress Speaker Henry Ramos violated the rules of procedure

WSJ: Venezuela Swears In Opposition-Led Assembly. The new National Assembly was installed in Caracas amid rising political tension, as President Nicolás Maduro moved to curtail the body’s influence and block attempts to overhaul the country’s crippled economy.

Rival rallies called in downtown Caracas on Tuesday morning had sparked fears of conflict outside the National Assembly. Those fears were unrealized, as activists from both sides emphasized the need for peace in a country suffering from the world’s second highest murder rate.Inside the assembly, however, the nation’s political polarization found ample expression. Government allies called opposition leaders “murderers” for supporting a wave of deadly antigovernment protests in 2014; in response, opposition supporters chanted: “We are now the majority.” A speech by an opposition leader was interrupted by minor scuffles around the tribune.

NYT: Venezuela Opposition Takes Reins of Assembly as Tensions Rise

In late December the exiting Assembly members approved 13 new Supreme Court judges in what critics said was an attempt to stack the court and prevent the new body from filling vacancies that would have come up this year.Then, just days before the swearing-in, the Supreme Court blocked four newly elected legislators from taking office, three from the opposition and one from Mr. Maduro’s United Socialist Party. The court ruled in favor of a socialist candidate who had challenged the election results in Amazonas State.

The opposition viewed this as part of a bid to chip away at its two-thirds majority, which allows it to propose constitutional changes and remove Supreme Court judges, among other things.

Then on Monday the lame-duck legislators approved a new package of government spending and Mr. Maduro signed a decree that stripped the Assembly of its traditional oversight of the Central Bank, including the ability to remove and appoint directors and receive economic data.

El País (Spain): Venezuela National Assembly vows to find ways “to change the government”. Speaker of opposition-controlled house sworn in at ceremony attended by independent press

The official party’s deputies were especially incensed by statements made by the head of the opposition sector, Julio Borges, of the First Justice (PJ) party, who said that the first item on the parliamentary agenda would be the passing of an amnesty and national reconciliation law to benefit the close to 100 political prisoners serving time in Venezuelan penitentiaries. According to the pro-government deputies, such a statement has no place in an inaugural session.

At the blogs:
The first day of the New Assembly

Day One of the Henry Era

A Bright And Hopeful Day For Venezuela



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Our Watcher’s Council Nominations – ‘Come And Take It’ – Edition

At the Watchers’ Council,

Embedded image permalink

Greg Abbott ✔ @GregAbbott_TX
Obama wants to impose more gun control. My response.#? COME & TAKE IT@NRA https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/post-politics/wp/2016/01/01/obama-to-impose-new-gun-control-curbs-next-week/ …

Well said, Governor!

Welcome to the Watcher’s Council, a blogging group consisting of some of the most incisive blogs in the ‘sphere, and the longest running group of its kind in existence. Every week, the members nominate two posts each, one written by themselves and one written by someone from outside the group for consideration by the whole Council.Then we vote on the best two posts, with the results appearing on Friday morning.

Council News:

A vacancy has opened up on the The Watcher’s Council. If you’re interested in finding out more information the Council and what’s involved, please leave a comment (which won’t be published) containing your site name, a link to your site and your contact e-mail.

So, let’s see what we have for you this week….

Council Submissions

Non-Council Submissions

[Read more…]

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The mini-Carnival of Latin America and the Caribbean

LatinAmerI’m fighting a cold and the holidays kept me busy, so this week we have a mini-Carnival:

ARGENTINA
Macri wants to rally the country around the old (loser) cause: Argentina’s new government says it will press claims to Falkland Islands. Buenos Aires demands talks over future of disputed territory dashing hopes that Mauricio Macri will offer more conciliatory approach than Cristina Kirchner. The Junta, the Kirchners, and now Macri.

BRAZIL
When do we get to call it a depression? Brazil Heads for Worst Recession Since 1901, Economists Forecast

Eletrobras, The One Brazilian Scandal Almost No One Is Talking About

COLOMBIA
Venezuela suspende envío de gas a Colombia

CUBA

EL SALVADOR
Human rights in El Salvador: Digging for justice. Survivors of wartime atrocities are questioning the country’s amnesty

JAMAICA
Jamaica smokes world stock markets in 2015

MEXICO
Agents nab Pakistanis with terrorist connections crossing U.S. border

El ‘policía del año’ en Texas era miembro del cártel más peligroso de México. Un policía del Departamento de Houston que fue nombrado como el mejor agente del año suministró armas y vehículos al cártel de Los Zetas desde 2006.

PANAMA
Panama canal expansion to be complete ‘around May’: president

PUERTO RICO
Puerto Rico Is Greece, & These 5 States Are Next To Go

While there are five states with significant challenges (Illinois, Connecticut, Hawaii, New Jersey, and Kentucky) , the majority of states have debt service-to-revenue ratios that are more manageable.

VENEZUELA
Venezuela Supreme Court blocks opposition’s parliamentary super-majority in ‘judicial coup’. Judges granted government request to suspend three parliamentarians due to take office next week – taking opposition below two-thirds majority needed to unpick Nicolas Maduro’s grip on power



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The Council Has Spoken!! Our Watcher’s Council Results

At the Watchers’ Council:

http://www.romanobritain.org/Photos/roman-senate2.jpg

The Council has spoken, the votes have been cast, and the results are in for this week’s Watcher’s Council match up.

“It is essential to seek out enemy agents who have come to conduct espionage against you and to bribe them to serve you. Give them instructions and care for them. Thus doubled agents are recruited and used.” – Sun Tzu

Once you’ve lived the inside-out world of espionage, you never shed it. It’s a mentality, a double standard of existence. – John Le Carre

“Espionage is the world’s second oldest profession.” -Vejas Gabriel Liulevicius

My notion of the KGB came from romantic spy stories. I was a pure and utterly successful product of Soviet patriotic education. – Vladimir Putin

http://2.bp.blogspot.com/--bd_Q_iBJfY/TsYx44QOX9I/AAAAAAAAAm8/QonbRkHSjmw/s400/Noisy%2Broom%2B2.jpg

This week’s winning essay,The Noisy Room’s
In From The Cold And Out Again… How The CIA Was Duped And Their Double Agent Failure is an incisive commentary and examination of a recent piece by Bill Gertz at the Washington Free Beacon. Here’s a slice:

Bill Gertz at the Washington Free Beacon has written a fascinating piece on the CIA being fooled by scores of double agents who pledged their loyalty to the agency, but instead reported back to the communists during the Cold War right on up into the present day. As I have said for years… the Cold War never ended, it shifted. Now Benjamin B. Fischer, the CIA’s former chief historian, analyst and operations officer, is verifying what I have long said. That is cold comfort, I assure you.

The duping of the CIA included at least 100 fake recruits in East Germany, Cuba and Russia. For decades, these double agents supplied false intelligence to senior U.S. policymakers that ranged all the way to the presidency. And it’s still happening. Fischer writes, “During the Cold War, the Central Intelligence Agency bucked the law of averages by recruiting double agents on an industrial scale; it was hoodwinked not a few but many times.” Is anyone surprised by this? Trevor Loudon and I have both said for years that the agencies and our governmental leaders couldn’t pass a background check to clean a toilet. It was true then and it is true today. These double agents weren’t thoroughly vetted. They were hurriedly turned and because of sloppiness, we invited the enemy into the midst of our intelligence agencies. It’s mind boggling. In an article last week, Fischer stated, “The result was a massive but largely ignored intelligence failure.” How’s that for national security? Feeling warm and fuzzy yet?

Fischer wrote in the International Journal of Intelligence that this wreaked havoc within the agency. I’ll bet. What’s worse is that the CIA dismissed the infiltration by communists and the disinformation as insignificant. No one, including congressional oversight committees, pushed for reform in the agency when this was uncovered either. Their vetting processes still suck and they aren’t listening to the likes of Fischer. The man was a career CIA officer. He joined in 1973 and worked in the Soviet affairs division during the Cold War. He sued the CIA in 1996, charging he was mistreated for criticizing the agency for mishandling the 1994 case of CIA officer Aldrich Ames, a counterintelligence official, who was unmasked as a long time KGB plant. It was a case of blaming the messenger instead of the spy. This was during the Clinton Administration, so it does not come as a surprise.

From Bill Gertz:

Critics have charged the agency with harboring an aversion to counterintelligence — the practice of countering foreign spies and the vetting of the legitimacy of both agents and career officers. Beginning in the 1970s, many in the CIA criticized counter-spying, which often involved questioning the loyalties of intelligence personnel, as “sickthink.”

The agency’s ability to discern false agents turned deadly in 2009 when a Jordanian recruit pretending to work for [the] CIA killed a group of seven CIA officers and contractors in a suicide bombing at a camp in Afghanistan.

Double agents are foreign nationals recruited by a spy service that are secretly loyal to another spy agency. They are used to feed[ing] false disinformation for intelligence and policy purposes and to extract secrets while pretending to be loyal agents.

Double agents are different than foreign penetration agents, or moles, who spy from within agencies while posing as career intelligence officers.

Lord only knows how many moles we have within our agencies.

Predictably, the first major double agent failure was in Cuba. The Cubans are notorious for using a variety of traps for agents from honey traps to straight up blackmail. Cuban intelligence officer Florentino Aspillaga revealed a massive failure when he defected to the CIA in 1987. No less than four dozen recruits over 40 years had been secretly working for communist Cuba while on the dole of the CIA. They easily supplied disinformation to the CIA, endangering agents and scuttled operations left and right. This is the same government – Castro’s government – that Obama just reinstated relations with. Now, instead of being made fools by the communists, we just crawl into bed with them. It’s the other definition of coming in from the cold. Then came the revelation on Cuban state television which confirmed the existence of 27 fake CIA agents. You would think that would have set off alarms in the agency and caused them to adjust their vetting procedures. But you’d be wrong. Instead, the intelligence failure was covered up by congressional intelligence committees. You see, the enemies within go way back. We willingly let the enemy in our doors and let them set up shop in our intelligence agencies and abroad. Is it any wonder we now have a Marxist in power who colludes with communist dictators and tyrants, as well as Islamists?

In East Germany, all the recruited CIA agents working there were found to be double agents working secretly for the Ministry of State Security spy service, also known as the Stasi. All. Of. Them. Noodle that for a moment. According to Stasi officers, they failed at placing agents in the CIA. But there wasn’t a single CIA op on their turf that they weren’t able to detect using double agents and counterespionage operations. Fischer said the controlled East German assets “rendered U.S. intelligence deaf, dumb and blind.”

Markus Wolf was an East German spymaster. He wrote in the late 1980’s: “We were in the enviable position of knowing that not a single CIA agent had worked in East Germany without having been turned into a double agent or working for us from the start.” Wolf brashly claimed that, “On our orders they were all delivering carefully selected information and disinformation to the Americans.” He tagged a CIA officer working in West Germany and then dispatched double agents for him to recruit. Nifty.

Much more at the link.

In our non-Council category, the winner was Powerline with Obama’s disgraceful Hanukkah party [Updated] submitted by Joshuapundit. What occurred, of course was a leftist revisionist version of Hanukkah which desecrated both the historical and the spiritual meaning of the holiday.But there are quislings and sell outs in every group, and just as in the days of the Maccabees, there were Jews willing to cooperate. מבושה הם צריכים למות

Here are this week’s full results. The Glittering Eye and the Right Planet were unable to vote this week and one member only was able to find time to pick a first choice in each category, but no one was subject to the usual 2/3 vote penalty for not voting :

Council Winners

Non-Council Winners

[Read more…]

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Sunday palate cleanser: Attila

Last week we had Jonas Kaufmann’s undershirt; this week, Samuel Ramey’s abs:

More Barihunks.

Today’s opera is Verdi’s Attila, at La Scala, with some spectacular singing, especially from Ramey and Zancanaro,

Libretto here.

Performers: Cheryl Studer, Samuel Ramey, Giorgio Zancanaro, Kaludi Kaludov, Ernesto Gavazzi, Mario Luperi.
Conductor Ricardo Muti Teatro Alla Scala

And, for those of us fond of baritone and bass voices,
No Tenors Allowed: Famous Duets for Baritone and Bass, available at Amazon.

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Found: a Puerto Rican who hates the Beatles

When I was growing up, the entire world was in the grip of Beatlemania. I attended an all-girl’s school in Santurce, Puerto Rico, and hours were spent listening to and discussing John, Ringo (my favorite), George and Paul. Among the greatest fans was one of my classmates, a very talented jazz and classical pianist who grew up to become a very successful professional musician.

It is with some amusement that I read this,

Professor: Trying to Make Me Like the Beatles Is a Microaggression

A professor at Notre Dame de Namur University in California wrote a piece published by the Huffington Post claiming that his white friend trying to convince him to like the Beatles was basically a microaggression against him.

Psychology professor Adam J. Rodriguez, who is Puerto Rican, explained that his friend was part of “the dominant culture” that makes people Beatles fans — and the fact that he dared to criticize Rodriguez for not being one was insensitive and meant he just didn’t recognize the “power and privileges” he had as a white dude that Rodriguez did not have.

Say, wha?

For starters, Mr. Rodriguez (no relation) confuses race with ethnicity, but, let’s take a look at the HuffPo article by the San Francisco psychologist,

Here’s what my friend did not consider: He grew up a white middle-class male in the 70s and 80s, to parents who grew up on the Beatles and were immensely influenced by them and other rock and roll bands. I grew up a Puerto Rican lower-class male in the 80s whose parents played guajira, salsa, and Motown/classic R&B/soul growing up. My ears had grown up hearing syncopation, multi-chordal harmonies, diverse percussion, horns, and groove-oriented rhythm sections. The Beatles CDs I listened to were classic rock, non-syncopated, guitar- and drum-dominated, and rhythmically and harmonically simpler. The type of music that he grew up listening to and loving was quite simply different from mine. It was neither better nor worse. Only different. My friend, caught in his ethnocentric blindness, could not grasp that somebody would have a different experience and values from him.

Notice how the Beatles were “neither better nor worse,” yet “rhythmically and harmonically simpler.” Hmm.

He piles on his (probably former) friend because his friend, a true Beatles and Led Zeppelin fan, couldn’t talk him into liking both years ago, 

(yes, this is when music was not yet streaming)

because

There is an implication of a paradigm of normality, and when someone does not fit into that paradigm, it can be uncomfortable for that person, especially if they are dismissed because of their difference like I was.

Seems to me, that, if you have to go back to the olden days “when music was not yet streaming” to come up with an instance when one was made “uncomfortable”, one has been living a privileged existence indeed.

Especially when the HuffPo promises two more articles on social justice by Mr. Rodriguez.

As a person born and raised in Puerto Rico, I fail to sympathize with the outrage. I enjoy a large range of music, from Early Music and Gregorian Chant, to Matisyahu, but a little salsa goes a long way with me. It’s wonderful that so many of this blog’s readers enjoy the opera selections in the Sunday palate cleansers, but jumping from there into conclusions about “ethnocentric blindness” strikes me as, oh yes, ethnocentrically blind (or ethnocentrically deaf, since we’re talking about music).

No wonder Milo has declared war on so-called social justice (emphasis added),

Let me explain. In 2015, I saw the seeds of a movement begin to sprout. Across the internet, and even in fear-gripped halls on campuses, young people began to stand up and challenge the humourless, divisive, identity-obsessed elites that have taken over our cultural discourse. People of seemingly disparate interests and politics — gamers, pundits, metalheads, comic book and science fiction fans, atheists, Catholics, conservatives, libertarians and even many disaffected liberals — came together to agree on only one thing: art and culture should be left alone.

That movement is called cultural libertarianism. It stands against any authoritarian, from the Right or the Left, who sucks fun and freedom from the world like some kind of vampire without the cool factor, and who uses faux grievances and exaggerated victimhood to get what they want. Cultural libertarianism rejects the fainting-couch feminism and race-baiting of the Left in favour of deliberately provocative joyfulness and exuberance. It also predicates facts over hurt feelings, versus the social justice crowd who want to turn harrowing anecdotes into “lived experience” — which we are then expected to treat like scientific data.

And, failing those, there are the not-harrowing Beatles anecdotes.

2016 is going to be an interesting year.

Now, if you will excuse me, I’m off to listen to the White Album.

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Our Weasel Of The Week!

At the Watchers’ Council,

Yes, It’s time to present 2015’s last statuette of shame, The Golden Weasel!!

Every Tuesday, the Council nominates some of the slimiest, most despicable characters in public life for some deed of evil, cowardice or corruption they’ve performed. Then we vote to single out one particular Weasel for special mention, to whom we award the statuette of shame, our special, 100% plastic Golden Weasel. This week’s nominees were particularly slimy and despicable, but the votes are in and we have our winner…the envelope please…

http://editorialcartoonists.com/cartoonist/images/TelnaA.jpg?

The Washington Post’s Disgusting Cartoonist, Ann Telnaes:

JoshuaPundit : For a new bottom in political  Weaselness well below the norm, even in an election season. Simply an indecent person.

I have nothing more to say about this disgraceful, vicious human being I didn’t say above in the link. She is simply a vile human being without decency who richly deserves a Weasel.

Rep Ipso Loquiter…the thing speaks for itself.

Happy New Year Everyone.

Check back next Tuesday to see who next week’s nominees for Weasel of the Week are!

Make sure to tune in every Monday for the Watcher’s Forum, and remember, every Wednesday, the Council has its weekly contest with the members nominating two posts each, one written by themselves and one written by someone from outside the group for consideration by the whole Council. The votes are cast by the Council, and the results are posted on Friday morning.

It’s a weekly magazine of some of the best stuff written in the blogosphere, and you won’t want to miss it…or any of the other fantabulous Watcher’s Council content.

And don’t forget to like us on Facebook and follow us on Twitter..’cause we’re cool like that, y’know?

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